It doesn’t happen all the time but it’s very scary when it does
I can imagine because usually your relaxed when watching something and this sort of thing can startle a person. What medication you on?
Yes I agree. I’m on clozapine. What are you on?
I am risperidone 3mg but might change it a bit in January when I see my psychiatrist again.
My pdoc wants to put mine up but I had a seizure so not so sure
I realised that there is something wrong when I realised that my thoughts are simply impossible to be true. First delusion was that the police had inserted radio transmitters in my teeth and were listening to what I was saying. I talked with my mouth closed for a few weeks.
This sort of thing went on for a while, then I started realising that these things are really not in the realms of the possible, so they must be delusions.
Then I beat myself up for years about why I was having delusions. I didn’t believe the diagnosis, I thought I was faking it for some reason I didn’t understand and was trying to ‘think’ my way out of it.
Eventually I came to accept it and laugh at my delusions and it’s much easier that way.
It sounds like your beginning to get some insight, your questioning your beliefs, which is good. Keep using the nurses for reality testing - it can really help.
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I was soooo preoccupied with the disease that even wen I was in the dam ambulance I didn’t think of how seriously unwell I actually was. It was just me being terrified if I am not obeying the voices.
It took until I was on the meds to gain some insight! Crazy
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hi @Windy.
I accepted I had a psychotic illness when anti-psychotic meds helped.
I developed insights into how unwell I was by identifying early warning signs of being unwell:
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a big pile of dirty clothes on the floor, can’t remember how they got there, felt like I’d lost time
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talking to myself out loud in public, complete with facial expressions and gesticulating like I’m having a conversation with another person.
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haven’t brushed my teeth is days & can’t remember when I last did
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open the fridge and nothing is in there, can’t remember why or when that happened
It dawned on me one day.
In 1980 I was 19 and I went into my first psyche ward. I was there a week but left there feeling 50 times worse than when I entered.
Next stop was Soteria House, a world famous, experimental house for schizophrenics. Their tenet was that they claimed they could help schizophrenics better without hospitalization or meds. There were a few of these houses around the world in certain countries. They closed down in about 1984 for lack of funding.
For staff, Soteria hired a bunch of young, friendly, open-minded, likable, intelligent people who had no formal training in the psychiatric field. They were there to sit and mingle with us clients and just listen to anything we wanted to say.
It was a nice, old, two story house. Pretty much any behavior was tolerated but no violence or drugs. I saw some pretty weird stuff there for the year I lived there and pretty strange people. I was so naïve when I first got there. After I had been there about a week I learned an older client had served time in prison. I flipped out and told a counselor and I was indignant that they let this guy live there. I thought the guy was dangerous and I think I even told staff to kick him out, lol.
I calmed down and over the course of the few following weeks I saw the guy was harmless and didn’t start any trouble and then I grew up a little when a few other guys moved in who had been in jail and even one guy who had been in Vietnam.
Anyways, I had been there about three or four months and I thought nothing was wrong with me. In fact I thought I was perfect. I also thought I was a genius. I was feeling like this but one day, my parents took me to a psychiatrist. He was actually from our church. Me, my dad and my mom drove to his office and met with him.
I thought it went well. The psychiatrist wanted to talk to me without my parents so my parents went outside. The psychiatrist told me my parents were very worried about me. I remember telling him, “There’s nothing wrong with me, they were the ones who had the problem.” I sincerely believed this.
The meeting ended and my parents drove me back to Soteria. But actually I think meeting with the shrink had put just a little doubt in me that maybe I wasn’t as well as I thought I was. Here I was living with 7 schizophrenics, suffering and barely hanging on to sanity and i thought I was fine.
After a month or so it just popped into my head that maybe I was wrong and everybody else was right when it came to my mental health. This is how I got insight that I was truly ill.
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i started hearing voices many years ago but on occasion only. i saw from my parents reaction that i wasn’t well.
it was a terrible letdown.
i am finally now realizing that i hallucinate.
judy
When I took abnormal psychology in college , that’s the first time I started to consider myself as ill, but I still didn’t get put in the hospital until 8 years later. Nowadays when I look back on things, I was always ill, probably with sz.
How people were treating me. I have people yelling and screaming at me, now I have tv personalities making comments and others. Having intrusive thoughts. Just want to be left alone.
In my experience I became so accustom to my antics, that I never noticed, until I talked to my psychiatrist and family, they all said they can see the mentally ill side of me; even the doctor said it. After that I started to look into myself and picture Forlorn Saint as how he acts and I came to realize I was ill.
I had been living in a mentally abusive relationship. I started believing that my husband wanted me dead - why else would he be so hurtful and cruel. I explained to my sister that I believed he was trying to poison and drug me so she took me to the Doctor for a drug screening test. It came back negative and I was left with written evidence there was something seriously wrong with my way of thinking.
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I suppose when I realized the scars I was putting on my left arm weren’t fixing anything.
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I came to that conclusion because a lot of other people were telling me that.
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When I was found on the streets screaming at a church and the ambulance was called by a pizza shop. I was a mess.
I’m always amazed by your soteria story. I had a researcher tell me to look into one and I told her I had met someone who actually lived in one, and a lack of meds did not help
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I started out knowing I was ill and lost insight over time.
i always knew right from the start something was wrong but as much as i tried to deal with it i could not correct the problems and they just got worse and worse, idk why it happened, its very strange i think one thing just led to the next and it snowballed