I suffer from Truman’s syndrome, or the Truman Show delusion, named after the movie.
I’ve believed since I was nine that people are watching me through hidden cameras over the internet every second of every day, and that I’m a famous celebrity known by millions. If someone reading this were to tell me they don’t know who I am, I would assume they simply hadn’t heard of me or were lying to cover up what the people behind making me live in an involuntary reality TV show are doing so they can keep it going.
As much stress and paranoia as this delusion causes, with me wanting to entertain and please my "
audience" lest they start to hate me, I believe it’s a coping mechanism. I started having this belief during a period of isolation after my family had just moved. I had no friends, I was lonely, and this period was extremely stressful with my mother starting to treat me differently than she had before, and developing this belief made me feel like I wasn’t alone and made me feel special. I was also neglected by my mother and no one knew, and having this belief made me feel like people finally saw and knew about what my mother was doing to me.
Now, as an adult, this belief helps me feel good about myself. I believe that most of the people that watch me love me, and I have yet to seek therapy for this delusion because I’m afraid of how I’ll cope without it. I have extremely low self esteem and I can’t tell you how comforting it is to think I’m some extremely beloved celebrity that all the people I look up to know exists, all by simply being myself. I have no idea how I would cope with coming down from living eleven years with this extreme of a grandiose delusion.
Also, believe it or not, I’ve never seen The Truman Show and developed this belief about my life entirely on my own. The typical sufferer of this delusion develops it after seeing the movie. I most likely developed it because my mother watched a ton of reality shows.
Do any of you have delusions you think you’ve developed to cope? I know a lot of people get comfort from thinking they’re prophets or martyrs or God is talking directly to them, but that’s the extent of my knowledge of delusions that bring comfort.
I have the same delusion. It doesn’t seem to be a coping mechanism. I am a hardcore introvert who hates excessive attention, yet it still happened to me. Something real seems to be going on, metaphysically.
Regardless of whether you think it’s real or not, good treatment shuts the phenomenon off.
I wish that movie had never come out, it seems to cause a lot of trouble.
The truth is, other than the one or two hundred celebrities in our country, our lives are incredibly insignificant on a country-wide scale. Nobody really knows who you are, and your social circle only extends as far as your friends and family. I was only delusional my first two years with the disorder and had similar delusions, but they faded after a couple years of treatment.
I was taking off in a plane during a visit to California back when I lived in Virginia and noticed the thousands of people below, like ants, and it made me realize how few people know about me. Helped me cement the knowledge that nobody knows who I am. Once you realize that, it really takes the pressure off.
It doesn’t sound like it’s helping you cope though. Cope with what, loneliness? I do that by gaming online or talking to my family. I think that’s the best way to do it. Delusions can be dangerous, I think the first step in fighting the disease is to overcome them and fight your way to some insight.
I get a lot of comfort from God talking to me, and unfortunately, me talking to him the same way he talks to me. But regardless, I know it’s a symptom now and I’m getting it under control, but there’s a part of me doesn’t want to remove it, because it brings me comfort. Still, I’ll do whatever is in my power to control delusional thinking so I won’t completely break again.
Yeah, it causes me a ton of stress. I feel like an actual celebrity would, constantly trying to keep up a good image with my “audience”. Deep down I feel like if I don’t, they’ll realize what a horrible person I am and start hating me.
It helps me cope with loneliness and a lot of other issues. I have no friends in real life and I haven’t for years, so they’ve always kept me company. It helps me cope with feeling like no one really cares about me. I’m suicidal a lot and being under the impression that millions of people will be hurt if I kill myself has kept me from doing it many times. I believe all the people in the world I look up to know about me and like me, and that I see them talking about me in coded ways on social media, and it’s the ultimate validation. It also makes me feel like I’m a good person because I’m open about the fact that I’m schizophrenic to “them” and it makes me feel like I’m helping other people by being open about mental illness.
There’s a long list of other factors too I could add too, but those are the main ones I’ve noticed.
It pretty gives me the sense that I have everything you could ever want in life. Being loved, being important, people liking you, and I also feel like it promises me a good future, like one day when I publish a book it will be successful because people know who I am. It’s all an elaborate fantasy of having everything a person could want. All the things I feel like without this fantasy I’ll never have.
And yes, I second wishing that movie wasn’t a thing. I doubt the people who created ever anticipated the affect it would have, but damn.
