For me the desire or need to feel special played some role in my delusions, and now that I am (positive)symptom-free, it still plays a role - I will admit.
I am a believer in motivated reasoning. The idea that motives can influence our reasoning processes and thus, in short, that we do not only belief what we have evidence for but also what serves us well. Maybe it is wrong to say I am a believer in this, and better to say that I accept and am aware of the fact.
At one point, when delusional, my objective was to get rid of the distress, in any way possible. I identified my delusional belief in the subjectivity of my voices as a main source for distress. If I would only be able to see things differently, I thought, I would be less distressed. Finding evidence for or against that belief, reality checking, wasn’t really working for me though.
My reasoning was as follows: it was true I did not have any non-circular proof of the subjectivity of the voices, yet, no evidence in favor does not yet mean the proposition is false. My mind always found exceptions and ways which this delusion could be true, and this was enough for me to take it as true. This is ofcourse somewhat of a leap in reasoning: when nothing counts for it, the rational response would be to possibly entertain the idea, but not to endorse it.
Here motivated reasoning comes in. For although I had no evidence to belief this delusion, it nevertheless was appealing to me. I sought for possible explanations for this in terms of motivated reasoning. Maybe there were motives that made me endorse this delusion, in the absence of evidence. I found one that I could subscribe to, the desire to feel special was something I reflectively could admit to myself. And my delusion, while extremely distressing, did also make me feel special.
So, to get rid of the distress, I either had to change my motive/desire to feel special, or find another way to satisfy it. I already played with the thought of interpreting the voices as a symptom of some pathology, but since my queer mind wasn’t playing the game of evidence, I thought I had to exploit motivated reasoning here as well. To have a mental illness does make one special, but not in an appealing way because of stigma etc. It was when I conceived of coming to insight into mental illness by self-reflection as an achievement that could satisfy my desire to feel special that I could exploit motivated reasoning to endorse the picture of my voices as a symptom of pathology. So I glorified this to myself, and am still guilty of doing that, while from another perspective one could say that my delusion ‘spontaneously subsided’. All this may sound insane, and maybe it does take insanity to combat insanity - if not assisted by external sources of help I mean. But yes this desire to feel special and to conceive of insight as a means to satisfy it has helped me to stay on the good side of delusion.