When I hear things that indicate the whole world is spying on me, they sound very real and make very good sense in that belief system. I’ve heard from other people with schizophenia that their hallucinations seem very real at times. Any tips or tricks to rationalize? Thanks for reading.
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When I was in the grip of delusional thinking, I couldn’t rationalise my way out of it. The only solution for me was aps.
I never told anyone about my delusions though, as I thought they would think I was crazy, which I guess I was but didn’t know it.
I have a theory that people get better at knowing they are delusional as they get older and have more experience with it.
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Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
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I can tell the difference between an internal hallucination and an external sound. But if you’re unsure you can just record with your phone and replay. If you can’t hear anything you know it was a hallucination.
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I can’t tell if I see visions or reality.
Usually visions last only for 3 seconds.
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Someone on the forum suggested, that you could take a photo of your hallucination to tell whether it is real or Not. That of course if it is a visual hallucination.
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Didn’t think about visual hallucinations. I only have auditory hallucinations. I did have some visuals like spiders on the wall, mosquitoes and dead flies but that was years ago. I was able to tell that they weren’t real because they were simply too big to be real.
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Ah I know that. I saw a big orange/red butterfly, and I too realized that it was too big to be a real butterfly. Also it disapeared right in front of my eyes.
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Do a reality check with your family if you are at home?
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I felt like I was going ok, only the usual things, but the other day I had a super real 3-D hallucination that shook me and fked up my world for a long time - I was watching a movie with my friend and suddenly between us there was a thing, looked like the torso of an animal or maybe small human,.I only saw the back, skeleture, pale and bony, no head or limbs I could see, respiration, long enough to see but then gone, I was so fking freaked out that I didn’t mention it to my friend, coz she doesn’t get it and it would be bad. Still my reality isn’t stable or correct
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All I know is I always knew my hallucinations were not real, well they were real to me but but i could always tell the difference between what really existed in the real world and what was a hallucination.
The visuals always looked like floating heads or they were heads shooting out of peoples faces and looked like they were made out of pure energy, and they were translucent, and I saw them with my mind, not my eyes, but they where “out there” not inside my head so I knew that was a hallucination, they never looked like a real head.
My auditory hallucinations were the opposite, they were always internal and sounded like when I talk to myself in my head, but it wasn’t me thinking/talking to myself in my head, it was an external communication, and I would also talk to them in my head, I never heard auditory hallucinations out loud come from outside my head. So I knew those were hallucinations cause I wasn’t thinking the things I heard.
My tactile hallucinations felt like parts of my body and sometimes my whole body was burning up, but I wasn’t near a heat source so I knew it was a hallucination.
I’m pretty sure the disembodied heads I see are hallucinations, I don’t even have to guess about those. Sometimes tho if it weren’t for odd things, like the size of the person or animal I see, or the fact the animal might talk to me, or they disappear altogether, I wouldn’t know.
Saw a marble roll across the dashboard once while driving. Not sure about things like that sometimes. Never did find the marble tho.
The voices are trickier.
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Im struggling with this really badly right now. I have my first appointment in a few hours and i feel sick from anxiety. I dont know if i should tell my therapist about my thoughts because they sound a lot like schizophrenia, but what if i dont have sz but then they think i do? Or what if they think im pretending and dismiss it all as a joke or a lie?
I normally dont get any external auditory hallucinations but last friday (a really bad day for me) i was walking to the grocery store at night with my head buzzing like it usually does and i heard someone loudly go “psst!” right into my left ear, just like an inch away. I thought i got caught by someone and my head went silent for a second, but then i turned around and it was just a completely empty street. No people or cars. Spooky stuff.
As far as visual hallucinations, idk if this is normal and for most of my life i assumed it was, but whenever im around other people i get images in my head of myself brutally attacking those people with nearby objects or things i have in my hands. When im not near other people but im close to a brick wall then i see myself smashing my head against the wall as hard as i can. Or sometimes im cutting my stomach open with a knife. It can feel extremely real, and sometimes i get the feeling that the hallucination is about to happen for real, but so far it never has. It can be extremely compelling though.
Hi @rhizome, how did your appointment go?
My advice would be to be open and honest about what you are thinking and feeling so they can accurately assess you.
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I made a thread about it in the health and recovery forum
I saw disembodied heads floating around, but they looked like they were made of pure energy so I knew they were hallucinations? Do yours look life like?
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I figured out I hallucinated when I had a conversation with a little girl who came in to the room through a wall and a chair. I still talked to her but I was like how the hell is this happening. That was in 2012. No telling how many times it happened before then.
It took me a while to figure it out but made me a slave to those meds. It still happens occasionally but is mostly controlled.
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Yep I wish there were better APs out there.
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I was hearing transient voices around me on my walk last night and couldnt tell if they were real. Just very short sounds of human voices at moments when other noises were happening. There were people having a conversation but then i heard a third voice that was much closer than them and it sounded like it was trying to get my attention. Also i was at my weekly work meeting this morning and when my boss was introducing it i could hear a second, deeper voice that was really muffled and wasnt saying any words.