Delusions and Getting Past Them

One of the most crippling symptoms from Schizophrenia type illnesses is the Delusions. Most people would immediately jump to Hallucinations, but Delusions are ultimately the core of paranoia and of irrational thoughts and actions, and can even produce hallucinations.
For example a paranoid delusion would be thinking that somebody has poisoned your drink.
You refuse and pour out the drink based on this fear.
Maybe you think somebody is watching you.
So you plug up everything and hide in your room.

Being able to recognize a delusion during/after you have it can tremendously help getting past it.
It can prevent some symptoms from getting worse.

What are your tips and tricks to getting past delusional thinking?
(not just paranoia based ones, but others as well)

Mostly sleep seems to help me. Shutting up my brain and letting it rest. So I tend to look at any sleep problems as a trigger for me and usually is. Although It’s an art in itself sometimes trying to get not too much and not too little.

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The little whispers in my mind I can ignore and the visual glitches I can ignore.
The delusions are one of the symptoms I have the hardest time with too. Sometimes my way of thinking makes perfect sense. I still have to fight this one and it is very hard to do sometimes, but I have to trust the people around me.

My therapist helps a lot as well.

Help from my family, checking some of my journals to see if I’ve felt this before will some times help me see things a little more clearly.

There are some ideas in my head that just stuck deep and I can’t understand how people don’t see the situation I do.

But like I said, the therapist helps and having a family and a friend or two who are very patient.

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the telepathy delusion was the hardest one for me to ignore. i was stuck in it for years but i never had the head space to actually think about it. i never questioned the authenticity of it. silly really but then i wasn’t supposed to think about it. but when i finally thought, ok, if this is true then how does it work?, what are the consequences for the scum that r receiving my thoughts? there didn’t seem to be any and i found that odd as they all have to learn scripts, write songs, create tv shows, write new material for whatever they are working on and yet having over 200 voices in their minds didn’t seem to affect their out put at all…it sort of collapsed in on itself there and then when i thought deeply about it. that’s beside the mechanics of how it would even be possible. they still try and convince me of it’s authenticity but i’m just not having it now at all. it’s ■■■■■■■■. i know it but they don’t. they firmly believe they are these people and that they are telepathic with me. it’s laughable really. tragic but stupid.

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I get a lot of hypochondria… I might get a twinge and think it’s cancer. I try to come up with alternate explanations like my osteoarthritis, my gallstones, bacteria in my gut…etc… The doctors don’t seem concerned so I probably shouldn’t be either.

My paranoid delusions seem mostly better when I am physically healthy and not having a lot of responsibilities placed on me.

I have dealt with this topic on and off for a long time.

I have found that delusions do not come out of thin air and manifest, they usually are systemic, meaning that there are certain necessary components, a structure if you will, that the delusions are built upon.

Most of what we experience we are not conscious of, or does not reside in our randomly accessed memory. Like a computer on the internet, there are tons of things going on but all you are aware of right now is what you are reading on the screen.

Your unconscious is like the operating system in a computer, it processes everything that comes in the senses and then only presents what is necessary for a task to be completed. But really we have all sorts of messages coming in every moment, and not only that our deep memory, like a hard drive of a computer stores tons of information and occasionally it burps up some conflict.

In some people these take the form of delusions and the resulting hallucinations. It is thepsyche of a person is in revolt and trying to rid itself of a malware (bad program).

Initially, you may have been raised a certain way and programmed a certain way, but certain things happen in life, life changes and events, and suddenly an existential crisis occurs and your whole system is upturned.

I find not only questioning and searching for the truth in regard to a particular belief, but also questioning the entire belief system that holds it up is necessary.

Therapy if it is existential or transpersonal can help a person work through deep existential questions like : Who am I? Why am I here? etc Along with meditation techniques being learned can move through an existential or psych crisis like schizophrenia and resolve it. Whether you are on medication or not you can do these things. Don’t expect overnight success, all discovery takes work and time to come to a resolution.

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one that my voices have been on for years, is a time travel trial that i know never happened. if it had then the main protagonists would have been dead backwards a long time ago or i would’ve been taken out by either my enemies or british intelligence backwards long b4 this spectacular trial ever got off of the ground. it’s a persistent but silly favourite topic of the voices. one in which, i no longer believe. if it were to have happened then where are the deaths? just never happened but my voices do like to harp on about it…boring shite. xxx

medication keeps all my demons at bay, keeps the wolf from the door, i take a low dose but it is enough to stave of the incomprehensible and i am grateful for that.

what delusions ?
dark sith goes out of the house and gets into his space freighter and flies off to another universe in search of the treasure of 'the lost gods '.
take care

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I don’t know if this helps: “Whenever possible, consider alternative explanations.”

Do not discuss delusions. Eventually you can see this as your control over your environment and symptoms.

Mental care doesn’t help with these or provide any coping skills…(Gang stalking/cause stalking/thought broadcasting as exception…) ‘Rational’ worries/reactions are normal but sometimes labeled delusions by the mental care who are trained not to discuss this, unfortunately causing confusion to become insanity. Insane delusions are planning to harm someone, anything with a child, self harm, thinking you are Marvin the Martian, Napolean, cartoon character, arming yourself for anything except official legal hunting…You know right from wrong. If you do something illegal, the poor people ALWAYS go to prison. Insanity is no longer a defense for anything so they lock you up and throw away the key. Pagan delusions - you have a ghost friend, you have x-ray vision, you are possessed by aliens/demons, ghosts, aliens, psychics, tarot, crystals…anything from the movies - is hardest to believe in as a psychotic…It increases symptoms and suffering…Latter stuff is sort of harmless but still pedaled by scam artists + crooks so use caution…

Remember, if you get angry with the mental care staff, they can lock you up in the mental hospital for forced care at your own expense for as long as justified so just be okay & mellow.

Exercise quiet avoidance of the weird people (including people talking crazy to strangers) as these peoples’ problems affect all friends with constant money problems/employment problems/babysitting demands/borrow stuff/couch crash/legal problems…

You do need to watch your drink on dates and in the company of strangers. Time bathroom stops with end of drink. Order a fresh drink when you get back from the ladies room. Date rape drugging does happen.

It is best not to visit the bars alone as you are more desirable target for trouble. The designated driver will know if you are in trouble with some guy …

It is unwise to travel with strangers who are acting the littlest bit weird. I’ve heard some terrible stories. The real abusers LOVE to take victims to another police jurisdiction, harm someone and strand them. The ones bragging about illegal stuff, trying too hard to get friends, too wealthy to work, telling impossible stories because too much of the bad part is left out, or seem to be surrounded by a lot of fake friends who just suck up will ruin another person…Avoid these friends. Just quit returning phone calls,text or emails. You will probably get stalked…You sometimes need to move after meeting these.

If someone is smiling like up to no good, I change routes when walking. Later I see the guy breaking into cars.

I don’t travel with men unless romantically ‘involved’ because I know some women get left behind by the jerks after an argument. Never start an intimate relationship on a trip unless you have your own way home…

Just keep basic possessions…Trying to keep up with the Jones or look flashy will break you financially if you think your place is being trespassed. Never spend all your money so you can keep an emergency fund. So, keep your RX glasses on you…These are favorite thing to disappear. This is worst part of whole thing…No locks will keep out anyone who wants in…no security system, no camera system…Intermittent glitches of electronics are another favorite and very costly torment…Some of the wrong people will cause everything in your place to break 5+ times to cause you financial problems to gain submission to whatever demands…Most of the women who had a trespassing or unwanted male attention (sometimes work sexual harassment), shacked up or married current good one they were seeing. You have less social harassment, less work sexual harassment & a little less trespassing.

Some people are creepy. Men are sometimes socially encouraged to act like this. Avoid them. At work, these can be devastating to someone with schizo as the gang stalking can result in firing without unemployment insurance, sometimes you cannot get your disability check back if you are fired. Plan your employment attempts with forethought but case management might not be that helpful or even interested either. Do not date coworkers. Do not discuss your diagnosis. Carry a tape recorder if you are being harassed by coworkers and it won’t happen as much. Do not try to be pals with coworkers until someone shows interest but be selective, any employee with bad performance or no need to work due to wealthy parents can be a big curse to friends. You need to know the work rules on SSDI or SSI so you will be prepared…If you earn over $700 a month on SSDI, you will eventually have to pay $700 for health insurance so better to not go over this limit until you really want to return to work. SSI is totally different…

Some social situations are not worth the effort as sometimes it is just men hunting down women with no regard to what he will have to destroy to get this one…If you try a social group with the normals & anyone is weird or gives you unwanted attention, you should not go back. This can be so bad, you should not even put down your last name or an identifying email or you would be tracked down. (You need an email you cannot find on a google which does not contain your name and you did not use it as a username on any public comment forums…You can always set up another free email.) These situations are usually filled with a lot of ruined people who are stuck serving this group leader so they can be okay…some lost their jobs over it and new women they meet will definitely get this treatment if you are desirable. Even some well employed women are even ruined for possibilities…Women only groups and most mental care consumer groups are okay. It is the wealthy men who are trouble, even at church sometimes.

Some of the male college professors are bullies. You will get screwed into having to immediately pay back student loans or pell grant if you try to drop a class with a bully professor. The colleges in some cities keep a lot of people who will act like this plus disruptive student body who will mess up group assignments. If you have the psychosis symptoms, it is almost better to just take the classes online any longer for your degree. You also need to pay cash for 2-3 classes to make sure the place will treat you okay. You can file some psychiatrist paperwork for assistance through the Disability Supports department at the college if your current mental care provider will cooperate. You will have better ability to use college management for help if a professor is mistreating you or sexual harassing you. You can also get more time on assignments, clarification on assignments if professor stops following syllabus, take tests/homework completion in other location if classmates are allowed to be verbal harassers during classes and option for alternative assignments when you are placed with mentally unstable students for group assignments. Sometimes your new mental care doctor may not cooperate if you move to go to college so you need to get your old psych doctor to fill out this paperwork which the school Disability Supports department should email to you or you can get it from their web site. After being mistreated at two schools and terribly disappointed by quality of classes (out of date materials, DVD only teaching and instructor who Googles her subject, disrespect, useless degrees), I find it is best to self study or purchase use of online training libraries if you want any continuing education past your first degree…There is just too much personality and BS to even go into debt for the colleges sometimes.

Some people will follow orders from the voices to target a specific person to date. These kind almost always try to tell you something private they shouldn’t know or parrot your internal train of thought not related to current activities or environment. These kind will harm someone if voices demand it. These kind are almost always the reason the women were in the domestic violence shelter beaten up. The women are serial cheaters, financial abusers or witches…The dating sites were good if you say hello first & just make sure you initiated contact, otherwise every weirdo will look you up if you are listed. It is best to avoid any Facebook friends you do not know either. A lot of women returned to the men they already knew were okay using Facebook, maybe, for dating to be safe…

If you cut contact with anyone who makes your psychosis symptoms worse, who may have been bragging about illegal stuff or trying to get you upset prior to onset of your symptoms, you will have fewer problems over time. You can just stop talking to whole group of them and anyone you met there and keep quiet. Do not follow orders from voices or talk to self aloud, symptoms and social problems will get better over time. These kind will usually stalk someone so if you have too many problems, you may want to move. If you report too much stuff to police about stalking/trespass, the cops can throw you in mental hospital and forcibly treat you at your own expense so only report it if you have an eye witness, you get pictures or you need to file insurance because house was trashed or everything stolen. Restraining orders are usually impossible to obtain and not even enforced by police anyway.

Some cities have A LOT of gang stalkers. I was surrounded by a different group of people 3 times and harassed about being ‘on the check’…I stand my ground, keep moving and show reaction and it was okay. I never discussed my disability check ever. Some poor neighborhoods work this way. These poorer kids are not so bad as they have more to lose, the middle class ones supported by their parents have no problem verbally harassing coworkers/customers or ruining work for customers until they get fired over and over. The middle class ones are bigger problem as the parents are enablers… I have been harassed numerous times by strangers saying they are ‘preaching’, I need to get a job, they like to work…if you reach this situation and you comply, you will be ruined as this is passive aggressive. You need to plan a work re-entry carefully as even accepting a full-time Walmart job will ruin some…These are miserable situations. I do not shop much any longer as a lot of the service or retail workers will bug specific customers (used to be called a spastic) and I get bugged or worse. Crooked auto mechanic is usually a part-time psychotic and will ruin vehicles…having the mechanic talking nuts with my car and wallet at his disposal frightens me badly. Some victims on this website had cars quit timed with the voices so choose your mechanic carefully or have family do the work.

(I am working on getting a work at home business started BTW…I’ve had some of the local wealthy businessmen ‘POS’ say hello threateningly and they are a ‘deal with the devil’ as they will screw anyone the voices demand. Many of the successful got wealthy by knowing when to buy out a distressed business owner/victim or exactly how to screw someone over to get a good business op. I avoid these. Plus working around the verbal harassers in a sales job scares me bad. I’m working on getting into another field as I need to see a job as part-time or if I get screwed into a firing AGAIN, I will not get unemployment or get my disability check back. I’ve only been fired when something was wrong with my employer’s people…There is so much to know about working…)

Thought insertion - Your internal mental voice can be hijacked. You will hear a word or phrase repeated which is not related to your current train of thoughts, activity or surrounding. This is fake. This can happen with people around you. They are not aware of this most of the time. It is most likely with elderly or children. These will sound like they are possessed but it is only a bad joke. It is best to ignore this as person has no clue and no way to stop it. This is considered a delusion but kids are harmed over this a lot in south america where the catholics keep them all pagans.

Sorry such a long one…
Not much response to harassment (called grace at okay churches) and appearing undesirable to bother help. Coping is the rest of this. Eventually, you can even work hearing the voices a lot and just let it run like background noise. Yoga is huge help, eat right, exercise to keep away depression and keep weight low. If new to this, you need to work on reading magazine articles, video games and artistic stuff to learn to concentrate again and go from there. Insomnia will put on the weight…Consider trazadone if you have continued problems with it, ambien occasionally if needed.

Regarding hypochondria, tactile hallucinations can be really unpleasant and anything from crawling bugs, heart palpitations, punches in stomach, burning feeling anywhere, flash headaches & rotating stabbing paints. If you just get the basic preventative medicine, try to move it and keep weight down, live a no drama life with good friends only, you may feel better if you ignore a lot of unpleasant physical sensations and just try to take a over the counter pill and keep moving. See how you feel in a little while unless you think it could be stroke, heart attack…learn the signs of serious situations where you should go to ER. This is especially true as you get older or have family history of these, serious health problems are more likely. I am not a doctor…

I will add…I got a lot of threats from my voices sometimes. I’ve had a lot of nuts say something but I am big, unattractive mess so things are easier.

I will add, I tried living in bigger city for a year and just found it too threatening. I ended up in employer with coworker who was a problem, making such bad threats I left it. It’s not worth taking that for almost minimum wage. I found better job within a couple months anyway…Got hurt at apartment bad enough to need 2 weeks in hospital. School has bully instructors who admitted they had been sued before for mistreating mentally ill so students should file psychiatrist paperwork with Disability Services at college but no local mental care will cooperate. I get to pay student loan for long time but I know friend who got mistreated & paid for a lot more…The store employees were obnoxiously coocoo… then social activities got ruined by a few nuts. Not everyone was nuts but there were so many thought broadcasters, it was not even worth trying to stay to work with these so I left after ending up in a bad apartment situation. So many colder things happened to some people…I have inside info on this city due to other victims of my former friend who was bragging about driving other people crazy to keep the family abuser busy. Even the men from my abuser who tried to live in this place ran off because it was just too much & so were the coworkers. Some coworkers were too busy being crazy to work. This city served up colder to some. Given the negative attention I thought it better I leave to avoid a much harsher ending.

This city had insanely violent stuff happening with ‘wrong victims’ frequently mentioned. Cops were just barely going through the motions except on traffic stops. The HORRIBLE financial situation in city, crooked charities, bad mental care and intentional urban neglect IMHO, made this one harsh place. I felt watched most of the time…I didn’t even feel safe sitting at home in my apartment as I slept with the chair on the door because former tenant was obviously freaked by neighborhood situation too with cops, drugs, gangsters, everything else…

Even in wealthy area, I would only walk on the sidewalks for exercise. I did not feel safe trying the hiking trails due to local crime and so many nuts bothering me. Sometimes, couples were found dead on the hiking trails and it was not a suicide.

Work in city was SO easy to get as local workforce was such a mess. Do not discuss diagnosis or whatever lead up to it or any present problems with whomever, it goes REALLY nicely sometimes if you get into right place. You know it is bad when employment ads are stating there are no men in the office & workers with no ‘drama’, meaning they just let people work & leave it alone.

Smaller town was a little better but someone was mistreating new people so they would gang stalk, verbally harass strangers. Hardware store was stealing keys to offices in town and houses…torment went on from there with some new folks running off after a look at this place, an economically thriving little town with a hip little green/historical/arts things going along with the farmers hanging on for dear life. Any town desirable is tough.

After living in my hometown for my first 40 years, I sold my long-time home when it became obvious my local police, courts were supporting my abusers and running off victims plus a local economy with 30%+ reduction in wages which would not support me. I can tell you something is just wrong with people in a lot of places. If you move, you need to just expect trouble with some in any place you look, ride through whatever usually happens to new people and just see if you want to stay. These problems can affect your work which is VERY sad. Only plus is smaller towns have less threatening crime rate.

I will add, someone who ran off with some guy to get away from a group of abusers ended up with a man who beat her badly enough to break bones. Unfortunately, she had children with him and he took every opportunity to torture her with unnecessary child support by filing for Medicaid when unnecessary right after woman lost her job and had to take job making 1/3 less. She could NEVER get the child support amount reduced because Discounted Legal Assistance refused to assist her with her out of state husband. Local police will arrest someone at traffic stops if behind in child support even due to unemployment while you are on the way to first day of new job (frequent situation for some reason) and hold you until you get a court hearing in a few days to catch up your payments. Firing usually results. Kids ended up hating her and abusers like their dad. Poor woman was tormented into returning to her hometown with the wrong people still living there and her family almost hated her so she was on her own. Next relationship was bad too…Lovely lady with a curse I expect. Warning on this kind of thing. It happens.