For delusions: reductio ad absurdum

reductio ad absurdum is a form of argument that attempts either to disprove a statement by showing it inevitably leads to a ridiculous, absurd, or impractical conclusion

By taking your premise and finding irrational implications of it you can defeat the argument

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do you have an example of how you would use that logic with schizophrenia…say, during a psychosis?

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One might be if you have people talking to you that you think are real, but they talk to you day and night, then that means they do nothing else with their day. That would be absurd

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Well said! 15 characters

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Bump bump 15251

Sounds like a Harry Potter Spell! lol.

Yes, hallucinations using the form of physical senses like visual and audio may be easier to figure out. But what about the voice in your head?

Actually a similar method was used by John Nash to overcome his illness. He argued with the concepts that the voices presented. It’s extremely important when using this strategy that you don’t argue with the voices themselves.You’re arguing with the concepts that the voices present . For example if a voice or negative thought that was tell me that I would flunk out of school, I would tell myself well let’s look at the evidence and see that I have been doing well in school so far and I worry about this a lot and always works out. I am not engaging with the voices. This is important because engaging with the voices will make things worse.

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@Best_dude I can agree with you and John Nash. My voice used to tell me that since it controlled my body, it would make me hurt the ones I love. It still does during strong psychosis. But after many negative unconscious psychosis during my early days of psychosis, where I tried to kill myself or ran around raving, I noticed that all the threats made were about the future and based on fear.

The last one I had was also the strongest and longest one. I was in a low quality mental care home at the time. When I woke up that day, the voice started telling me that I was in Hell. When I argued with it, it would tell me that if I thought i was going to overcome it, it would make me kill my friends in the care home by suffocating them with a pillow while they slept in the rooms nearby that night. That increased my fears because I knew that I had lost consciousness as well as control of my body after arguing with the voice in the early days of my psychotic history. But I kept listening to it while it talked this time, and accepting the fear I experienced within. I stopped interacting with it mostly. It became stronger when I did and gained more control over my mental reality even preventing me from thinking in the later stages. Finally, in the evening, I surrendered to it. I told it “Fine. I am in Hell. Do what you will. I am just going to lie on my bed and watch.” It just kept making threats without actually gaining control of my body and that strengthened my own consciousness. I fell asleep in that state during the night. When I woke up in the morning, the memory of the previous day’s experience and the fact that I had got through by surrendering to it while still maintaining control of my body brought me great joy and happiness.

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