This is a topic that has begun to interest me recently. I’d like to see how people’s hallucinations and/or delusions change throughout their lifetime (or if they don’t change at all) whether in content or severity/frequency.
Example for me
-Hallucinations-
Ages ???-7: Vivid auditory and visual hallucinations. I saw all sorts of strange and even fantastical things. Paintings moving, little men climbing around in blankets, stuffed animals breathing, etc. Auditory I heard voices and music. I had mild control over them, as in sometimes I could induce the visual hallucinations and could sometimes control what music I heard by thinking about a song
Ages 8-14: Hallucinations faded away around the time I hit 3rd grade. I experienced only a few more by the time I was around 10 or 11 and really nothing else after that.
Ages 15-18: Visual hallucinations return, only far milder than before. Mainly consist of seeing colorful lights, swirling floors, “breathing” pillows and stuffed animals, and occasionally walls melting. However I do begin to experience vivid closed eye hallucinations of places and bizarre creatures and scenes. Mild control over closed eye hallucinations but no control over regular ones. Begin to experience horrific and STRONG tactile hallucinations of sexual abuse as well as being injured. The tactile hallucinations decreased sharply in severity after about a year and half, and were reduced to only light touching.
Ages 19-now: Visual hallucinations steadily increase in content and become noticeably more intense if I am sleep deprived. Begin to see things like people’s faces warping as I talk to them, people and creatures that disappear when I look directly on, etc. Also visual “distortions” happen more frequently (ordinary objects suddenly take on disturbing forms) Again though the most dramatic hallucinations I have typically only happen when I’m sleep deprived/under a lot of stress. Generally I only see pretty mild things and only if I’m kind of zoning out. I still don’t experience auditory hallucinations at all. My tactile hallucinations have largely vanished, which is a HUGE relief to me.
-Delusions-
Ages 5-13: Believed I was a werewolf. Incredibly in depth. Developed an entire world around this.
Ages 14-15: Delusions suddenly become religious/spiritual in nature, flurry of various beliefs of this nature (i.e. I’m God, I’m an entity from another plane, I’m the next messiah, etc)
Ages 16-18: Delusions become paranoid. First believed devil was coming to kidnap me and take me to Hell, second believed was going to be the mother of the antichrist.
Ages 19-now: Delusions greatly reduce in frequency. Only delusion I had was that I was going to be a warrior in the apocalypse. Honestly even now I still do believe that I am not an entity from this plane and belong on the nonphysical plane…but compared with the frequency and intensity of my delusions before what I experience now is much more mild in my opinion. I find it weird that as I entered adulthood I just stopped getting delusional beliefs as much, perhaps due to me becoming aware of my illness.
Anyways I think it’s fascinating how things develop and am still theorizing on why it is these things may change.