Is this a thing? Can you still function during psychosis out of necessity, because you have no support system, no family? Like you’re going nuts, I mean really losing it. You don’t know what’s hear or there. Start hearing voices, but still be able to do your daily duties. Like, picking the kids up from school, cooking them a simple dinner then just zone out for the rest of the day, go to bed and start the whole thing over the next day? Going through the motions of living, but zoned out while doing it and going bonkerd in your head. I don’t know if this is clear or not without giving you the whole back story.
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I was highly functional during my psychosis. I worked, payed bills, went out with friends. Then everything collapsed because I started talking to voices outloud and a few months after that I was hospitalized.
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I’ve never seen anything like this, so I can’t give you a definitive answer, but I would think you could function normally with a mild psychosis for a while. A lot would depend on what kind of demands were being made on you.
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I was pretty functional in the beginning of my psychosis, then slowly started to drift during conversations etc. Second time around, I couldn’t focus very well but it was still manageable. I just say and do some crazy stuff.
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i could barely cope in hospital during psychosis, i didnt even eat for a full week there
I was very delusional for years - was married, owned a home, worked for decades - it is possible
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What is FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOSIS 1?
Psychotic state for which no specific neurological or other physical pathology is demonstrated. 2. Obsolete name for any severe mental disorder where no specific neurological or physical pathology is demonstrated.
FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOSIS 1: “Functional psychosis has no specific pathology.”
I had to weed out the “bad seeds” in my family, set boundaries with them, and build my own support system. A system built on =facts= rather than the opinions of others who were as sick as I was.
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How does coda work?
If you browse that website, it will become pretty evident. There are meetings (for a dollar or two), books, booklets, a program of 12 Steps to do (in a workbook or with a “sponsor” who has already done them). It’s like AA, but it’s for people who got socialized and normalized to putting up with caca from those they are “close” to to get approval, support, conditional love, and the other spurious prizes we get from manipulative relationships.
CoDA appears to be quite popular with those who are neurotic, borderline and psychotic owing to combinations of genetic pre-dispostions (e.g.: to hypersensitivity or emotionality) and environmental stress during childhood and adolescence. I have gone to CoDA meetings for 25 years and seen many borderline and florid – but medicated – sz pts in them.
I’m hoping someday to be functional and psychotic (or not psychotic at all). I don’t know how people do it. I get too much anxiety and freak out internally. I literally cannot function.
Yes I did it. I worked full time during a psychosis. It was horrible. It was after a week long period of madness. Then the voices I was hearing and the stuff I was l seeing my parents just told me it was demons so I tried to fight it for the next month.
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It takes serious rationalizing ability. Most people can’t remain cool and calm and functioning while experiencing those things. Also when your brain’s reasoning system just isn’t working right it’s not always so easy to rationalize things.
I’m actually in that position right now. My family doesn’t know about my diagnosis and neither do my friends. I see mental health professionals in secret. I’m unmedicated. I don’t recommend any of this. Most of the time my life is hellish and like I mentioned on another post, about every other day I would much rather be dead than alive. Managing my mental health is like a full time job on top of everything else. Luckily socialization helps keep me anchored and can pull me out of my psychosis. If it didn’t I don’t think I could hide it so well.
Really I just think it depends on the person.
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I don’t know if you would call it functioning, but who actually does nothing? We may be doing the bare minimum but we’re doing SOMETHING. Even when I was in the hospital I was getting weekend passes to visit my parents. I was extremely psychotic but on a Saturday morning I would walk a mile to the bus stop, wait for a bus and take a bus across town to my parents house. Then we would go out to eat or play tennis with the neighbors or do other stuff. And it seemed perfectly normal.
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It is possible, very possible…
I have no support. I’m a total recluse, yet everything works out near-perfectly day-to-day when it comes to necessary physical events.
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I feel on the verge of a nervous breakdown at least once a day. I manage and things calm down… I still get delusional and hallucinate, but I know it’s not real. It’s just ■■■■■■■ annoying more then anything. I need a brain surgery!
Hey,
There’s no function in psychosis.
You can pretty much draw a line in the sand and say periods of psychosis and depression are actually damaging your brain.
Seriously. It’s like doing hallucinagenics. You learn about maintaining over the reality…there’s no fun like knowing you’ve taken a tab and it’s all gone pear shaped really quickly! You realise you’ve got 9 hours to go…
Meantime in schizophrenia- You don’t know…if you do know then take the meds and keep off the streets and your doing better than most!
A friend ,
Rogueone.
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Functional psychosis is possible. When I started hearing voices I was pretty functional for a week or two before I started wandering around the country and roaming cities at night. It really depends how much you let events and stories your voices tell you drag you around.
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Yes it is possible, but it is really no way of living in my opinion. I finished my last semester as an undergrad while floridly psychotic for the first time. I did a thesis aside from the normal curriculum. But somehow it was a no go to compromise my studies, though obviously it was hard to focus on them. Ironically my thesis included some stuff on CBT. At first I used to laugh about it, sticking to my delusions while writing about CBT. Later I applied it and dismantled my delusions myself. I realized I was ill but wanted to finish my semester before telling anyone, out of fear for being stigmatized. It was the most stressful period I went through though. A dermatologist diagnosed a stress induced skin condition after a month or two. Could have been tactile hallucinations, but stress makes sense to me as well. Most of all I wouldn’t want to live without being able to have peace of mind. The constant battling with voices wears me out, the idea of being in a life or death situation all the time is not how I’d like to spend my days.
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