Why I Miss My Hallucinations with Kit Wallis aka SchizoKitzo

In this powerful episode of Inside Mental Health, host Gabe Howard sits down with Kit Wallis, also known as SchizoKitzo, a content creator living with schizoaffective disorder. Kit shares her deeply personal journey of experiencing positive, persistent internal voices—friends she called Orion, Allie, and Nyx—for nearly a decade before a psychotic break led her to seek treatment. Though these hallucinations were initially a source of comfort, companionship, and academic support, they were ultimately silenced by antipsychotic medication. Kit reveals a profound emotional conflict: while she acknowledges the necessity of treatment for her severe religious delusions, she also mourns the loss of her voices, whom she describes as real in their emotional impact and presence. She challenges the dominant narrative that all hallucinations are purely pathological, arguing that the mental health community often fails to acknowledge the grief of losing meaningful internal relationships—even if they are not 'real' in a literal sense. Kit emphasizes that medication has improved her life, but also calls for greater empathy and nuance in clinical conversations about psychosis, advocating for space to grieve the good that was lost alongside the bad. The episode offers a rare, humanizing perspective on psychosis, reframing hallucinations not as purely symptoms to be eradicated but as complex, lived experiences with emotional depth. Kit’s story underscores the importance of personalized care, emotional validation, and the need for mental health professionals to explore patients’ relationships with their symptoms. She urges listeners to keep taking medication, even while acknowledging the pain of loss, and calls for a more compassionate, less binary understanding of mental illness. Her advocacy highlights the tension between clinical recovery and personal identity, reminding us that healing isn’t just about symptom reduction—it’s also about honoring the emotional landscapes we’ve inhabited.