Grandeur as escapism from trauma?

Unusual Beliefs
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Grandeur, matrix delusion, truman show delusion, solipsism, are they ways to avoid trauma?
I have them all

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I think they are just symptoms that come on their own, but sometimes the delusions I get are an escape. When I had my first break and I felt like I opened my third eye, had some sort of ego death, I felt an awakening, and it was less like an escape and more like a trip

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Yes, I think they’re symptoms that come with schizophrenia and nothing to do with trauma too.

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Maybe schizophrenia is escapism

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It’s just brain chemistry gone wrong unfortunately. Nothing to do with psychology.

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Of course psychotherapy helps dealing with delusions. So, psychology is important as well

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I do sometimes just wonder… Wonder… If it has something to do like a protective mechanism for low self esteem cos Ive usually felt being taken under the wing by someone like a protective thing. At the start. The rest is awful and makes me see this is probably a disease

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I never really suffered from trauma… actually that’s not true because I suffered two or three rapes. I just block those out, for the most part. I keep seeing these rock stars driving by. They love me. LOL The best escapes are my delusions.

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One theory is that the inflamed brain thinks too fast, which leads to mania and delusions, as the critical faculties are unable to process sensory input at a reasonable speed, since the faculties are working too hard (they are engorged with fluids from being inflamed, which forces them to work harder.)

Mania and delusions are your conscious mind’s way of handling all that extra information.

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@naturallycured Does this mean we are smart? We have overactive brains.

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Arguably more creative than average, and maybe smarter pre-illness, but once the illness hits full-on, intelligence takes a big hit sadly.

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Philippe Rochat seems to imply that the truth is too traumatic to be faced, at least because it results in the dissolution of self, and that coming too close to it leads to schizophrenia. So, I think he is saying that schizophrenia, including all the related delusions (of grandeur and irreality) are escapism, from a sort of fundamental human trauma (Rochat, 2009, p.207) - of having an ‘other in mind’.

That might reiterate the last two posts – schizophrenics were smarter, then took a big hit.

Rochat, P. (2009). Others in mind: Social origins of self-consciousness. Cambridge University Press.

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That doesn’t make any sense. Meds remove the psychosis and it doesn’t make us function worse. This just sounds like someone really wanted to explain it psychologically and came up with a silly rationale that fit their biases.

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Maybe psychosis itself is escapism.
I don’t know.

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15

And also Art as escapism

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I felt mentally raped by my mother. That is trauma i believe. In her belief and purity she tried to save me from trauma by treating me the way she did. Instead of asking whats wrong with my mother the question was whats wrong with me. I love my mother but she went to far in her controlling ways. She should have grown me into independence and let me leave home when the time came for me. Instead it was more like prisonbreak from the movies.

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I think Rochat thinks that meds are good, but being able to see the truth is bad.

When I was psychotic I thought I glimpsed something too bad, and big, to mention.

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With APs and an 80% heritability, trying to explain the etiology of schizophrenia with psychological mechanisms is beating a horse that’s been dead for half a century. Psychology isn’t irrelevant, it’s just a very unlikely main cause, and denying that is intellectual laziness.

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Everytime I read his posts, I have to use google for half words @anon9798425 says. :sweat_smile:

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[quote=“Treebeard, post:18, topic:177122”]
Psychology isn’t irrelevant, it’s just a very unlikely main cause, and denying that is intellectual laziness.[/quote]

Yes, I agree and stand corrected. Rochat didn’t say it was a necessary or sufficient cause, just that it may be one, rare or minor cause, or factor. Stress, birth complications, “heavy cannabis use in adolescence,” being an unwanted child, and poor mothering, said to be risk factors too, by some. In in respect of Dunno2’s “prison break”, “Subjects with schizophrenia [snip] reported significantly less care and more overprotection.”

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