I think one of the best things someone (my sister) has done for me was warned me in advance of a scheduled flooding at a dam that I lived nearby. The reason why this was such a fantastic idea was that she knew about my paranoia/delusions about nuclear bombs, and she knew that the dam sets off an alarm when flooding that could be confused with an air raid siren.

I could have easily figured out for myself after a while that the alarm was for the dam, and that it definitely isn’t an air raid siren, but it’s super useful to have a 3rd party know about possible triggers and to help manage my response to them.

One of the most common and taxing tasks in the daily life of a schizophrenic is figuring out what’s real and what isn’t. Having someone that knows my symptoms and helping me make these determinations is a wonderful way of showing support.