I wanted to make some kind of guide that explains how you can use dreams to better enhance awareness during psychotic episodes/paranoia attacks, etc. Also just other tips in general I guess. This will be long, but hopefully useful.
Anyways as has been proven in a number of studies, those with sz and other psychotic disorders have been shown to have issues in the areas of their brain that regulate sleep, making sleep disorders in those affected more prevalent than they are with healthy individuals. This leads to a sort of constant deprivation in sleep, and similar deprivation in sleep in healthy individuals has caused symptoms and mindsets that are remarkably similar to those with psychotic disorders. Ie, this is adding to my hypothesis that one possible cause behind the more psychotic aspects of sz (hallucinations, delusions, paranoia) is the misregulation of sleep in the psychotic brain.
I have studied the similar mental states through my lucid dreaming capabilities, and realized that during my psychotic episodes my brain and thought process functioned in a way that was basically the exact same as how it functioned in dreams. I am lucky to be aware of this because most do not become lucid enough in dreams to be able to observe their thought processes while in the dream.
The dream world functions on an entirely different and separate system of laws than the waking world. A dream is made up of a plot, which can center around almost anything, whether it be deep psychic conflicts or just what you did that day. Delusions therefore, by my theory, are the plots of dreams that are being inserted into the waking world due to the issues with sleep processing. How to combat delusions? This is the probably the most difficult aspect of any psychotic disorder, because it almost REQUIRES the individual to be a lucid dreamer. In a state of heightened awareness in dreams, I can acknowledge that the plot is fake and not actually happening. This allows me to follow along with it (which is what I usually do, because it’s entertaining) or if it is a frightening/unpleasant plot, to disengage from it and craft a new plot or just do away with a plot entirely.
I believe that my ability to do this while in dreams slowly transferred it’s way over to my delusions in the waking world. By the time I hit the end of middle school, I had reached a level of half-awareness, I knew I regularly experienced odd beliefs but did not recognize them as delusions, just knew that regularly I would be caught up in some sort of different engagement and wondered what it would be, similarly to when I am only half-lucid in dreams, to the point where I may recognize that I am in a dream but am not aware enough to realize I can change the plot. By age 15-16 with help from a friend I began to combat my delusions by challenging them with reflective thought. This took a few more years. I am now at the point where I can easily recognize delusional thoughts, and then choose to avoid them and not get involved, just as I do in my dreams. This is because as I became aware of my thought processes in dreams, I became aware of my thought processes in delusions. My hypothesis is that any psychotic individual that gains the ability to monitor thought processes and self-reflect WHILE DREAMING will be able to perform similarly while delusional, thus greatly reducing risk of falling into the thought traps of delusions.
I strongly suggest analyzing the content of past delusions to see what type you are more prone to. After measuring the different types of my delusions and comparing them with central themes in my life I was dealing with, I found that delusions of grandeur (you are god, speak w higher beings, etc) tend to be brought on by issues with self-esteem, delusions of being powerful are brought on by issues of fear/insecurity (usually related to paranoia one w a psychotic disorder may experience), paranoid delusions are brought on by high anxiety or stress, whether it’s social anxiety (everyone hates me, everyone can read my thoughts) or generalized anxiety (delusions of being in grave danger for whatever reason). Knowing what causes what kind of delusions in you can also help you recognize when you are getting delusional thoughts, acknowledge why you are experiencing them and getting to the root of the issue without becoming absorbed in false beliefs. This process is very similar to dream interpretation, and will become easier if you start journaling and interpreting your dreams in a similar fashion. Again, all things to do with combating delusions are incredibly difficult and require intense self-reflection, examination and awareness on a regular basis. Psychic maintenance, you could call it, that healthy individuals do not usually practice due to lack of necessity. Always be aware of how you are feeling and what issues you are dealing with because they WILL present in your delusions in one way or another, so prepare yourself. In addition be aware that while in a delusional state, you will see “evidence” that your delusion is true EVERYWHERE. This is because of the brain’s selective attention. The reason why you are finding evidence everywhere is because you are subconsciously LOOKING for proof of your beliefs and you WILL find them because while in a delusional state the brain warps things a great deal. (I will use a experience of pansdisease as an example, I hope he doesn’t mind and I don’t mean any offense to you if you see this!) Anyways pan says how his aggressors cause him to see the same times every time he looks at the clock. This is an example of selective attention of the brain. Your brain learns that a set of numbers or a certain pattern is important. It then eliminates details that do not fit that pattern or number. In other words, your brain doesn’t remember seeing other times as much as it remembers seeing the ones is has been TRAINED to see. This issue could be fixed by regularly checking and monitoring the time, and retraining the brain that those specific times are not any more important than the others. I did something similar, when I would always find injuries on myself and automatically attribute them to demonic attack. When I began to keep track of every time I injured myself, I realized all injuries were accounted for and my brain had simply omitted the experiences of when and how I got them because it was so eager to fit it into my false beliefs that I was living with demons. I also used to believe that everything I wanted to happen happened, almost as if something was granting my every wish. However as I raised my state of awareness by taking note of any time I did NOT get what I wanted, I realized that once again, my brain had just omitted the memories of any time my wishes had not been granted, making me feel like I got what I wanted all the time. Instead of constantly seeking evidence to back up your delusion, constantly seek evidence to disprove it, and you will find that instead. Your brain finds what you want it to find, same way you train a dog to sniff out drugs or people.
Ok onto paranoid states and hallucinations. These can be manipulated fairly simply, assuming one has the ability to lucid dream. The first step to avoiding paranoia attacks doesn’t involve dreaming at all! It involves knowing what triggers them, to be honest. Whenever you start feeling fearful, think of what activity you were doing or what you were thinking about that may have caused the fear. Avoiding triggers is the MOST effective way to avoiding paranoia attacks. However, triggers are not always able to be avoided, and maybe you accidentally set yourself off one day. This is where lucid dreaming comes in.
Back to laws of the dream world real quick; the world of dreams is shaped immediately by your thoughts and feelings. While in my dreams I noticed that my thoughts and feelings manifested almost immediately in the world around me. The more fearful I would become in my dreams, the more terrifying the surroundings and situation would become. In the dream world, if you expect something bad to happen it HAPPENS. Whatever you believe is true. My idea is that the psychotic brain continues to process the waking world in this manner, subconsciously believing that whatever they believe will be true/if I think bad thoughts they will happen/etc. This leads to increased and constant fearfulness.
While caught in nightmares, I have always been able to resolve the horror by changing my mood within the dream. I calm down. Maybe I act friendly with whatever was attacking me. Crack a joke. I change my thought process. Immediately the dream reflects this psychic change and becomes calm, and I have turned many nightmares into normal and even pleasant dreams through this technique. The exact same thing can be done to combat paranoid thinking. If you become aware that you’re set off and are very frightened do something to CHANGE YOUR MINDSET because it’s in a bad place. Do something intensely distracting and absorbing. Remind yourself to remain calm and acknowledge that you have been triggered. This will pull your mind out of the paranoid state. Know that the more you allow yourself to get worked up, the more awful things will become. The calmer you get, the calmer and less threatening your surroundings will become. Main points here include again, high self-awareness of your triggers and adept mood management/ability to change thought processes. (Know thyself! What distracts you? What calms you??)
Interestingly enough, for any of you who have experienced a trauma such as myself, this technique can also be used to combat flashbacks. Become aware of flashback triggers, and if you find yourself in one, acknowledge you have been triggered and immediately do something to change mood and mindset. Staying on the same path will result in a full-blown and deeply unpleasant flashback. You will be stuck in a waking nightmare, just the same as the paranoid state. Don’t push yourself into the nightmare.
I’ve mentioned dreams change in situation and content depending on what mood and thoughts you are having during them. Hallucinations will be affected by this similarly. I personally do not experience regular visual hallucinations, but have practiced the the technique through use of hypnagognic hallucinations brought on by induced sleep paralysis. (Yes, I used to be able to induce sleep paralysis on myself and did so to study hallucinations-I have weird hobbies ok?!) Anyhow I noticed that the hallucinations were exactly the same as dreams in that my thoughts and emotions dictated what I was seeing/hearing. If I allowed myself to be frightened by the sleep paralysis, the hallucinations I experienced were deeply unsettling. Distorted voices, evil cackling, loud machinery clanging, seeing an imp grinning nastily beside me. When I lowered my fear levels and relaxed myself during the episode, the scary hallucinations IMMEDIATELY faded to become more calm. A deathly wheeze faded into a soft breeze. Evil cackling became a gentle beeping noise. Angry machinery sounds turned into the sound of a pencil skritching on paper. Thus if you hallucinate, employ the same methods you would to pull yourself out of a paranoid mind state and remain calm. The hallucinations should QUICKLY change to non-threatening ones. It may not make them go away, but it’s better to see a harmless butterfly than a vicious monster lurking in your room I would say. Again I cannot stress how quickly hallucinations will change to reflect your inner state of mind/feeling. Sadly I lost the ability to induce sleep paralysis because snapping out of it became so easy for me that I began to do it automatically upon experiencing it (when you first get sleep paralysis you’re overwhelmed by fear, which can then be resolved) so that I eventually stopped experiencing the sleep paralysis all together. I have been able to carry on a less accurate study of hallucinations through the closed eye hypnagognic hallucinations I experience regularly, though I am not actually sure of how these compare to true open-eye hallucinations. I found that I was able to train myself not only to change my closed eye hallucinations from scary to tame, I learned how to physically see what I was thinking about. If that could be accomplished with open-eye hallucinations it would be extraordinary, allowing any who experience them to basically impose their own reality over the physical world and literally be able to lucid dream while awake. I have never heard a case of this happening though, and cannot practice it myself. It is also important to retrain your brain not to look for horrible things, because the paranoid mind is constantly on the hunt for threats (again this is the brain’s selective attention) and if psychotic WILL find them, whether through a distortions or hallucinations. When you’re paranoid, start looking for physical objects in your room, play I spy. This will train your brain to look for familiar objects when frightened instead of it automatically trying to find threats and then creating them where there are none.
This was my best attempt at stressing the importance of monitoring/understanding/gaining control over your dreams and mental processes and emotions and what provokes them. It is a full time job, but you will gain so, so much more control over your symptoms. I am the master of my psychosis now, just as I am master of my dreams. You are in control at all times of what you experience, but you aren’t aware that you’re in control, and dreams will act as training wheels of a sort to learn just how much power you have over your experiences while awake. Also looking up some info on how exactly your brain works is helpful too 
Knowledge is power!
As for how to start lucid dreaming, first start with self-monitoring and awareness while awake. Then train your brain that dreams are an important thing to remember because a normal person’s brain by default sees dreams as unimportant and tosses out the memory. Journaling dreams every day teaches you brain that dreams are important to remember. Regularly monitoring consciousness during the day will also help you be better able to do so while asleep. This is the best advice I can offer on the matter, because I began lucid dreaming naturally at the age of 8 so I never really had to do anything to train myself…there are plenty more techniques people have found that you can research online. Awareness is the most difficult part of overcoming psychosis. Without awareness, your best hope is medication in all honesty. (Medication can also help clear your mind from the madness, making becoming aware an easier task, though with the unknown long term side-effects of it and daunting list of negative side effects, wouldn’t you so much more prefer to not have to be on meds?? I myself dream of future where only the minority of sz and those w psychotic disorders need to be on medication-or at least a future where antipsychotics are improved to a decidedly safer state w less negative side effects, but I’ll leave that one to the pharmacists, ha!)
I’m going to keep performing self-experiments and research to try to learn more techniques that could be possibly helpful. I hope some of you found this interesting at least, even if you didn’t find it useful (though I’d prefer it to be interesting and useful!) Also sending mental homemade cookies to anyone who actually took the time to read this entire thing
Hope you guys are staying warm through the winter! Time for me to stop typing and start relaxing hahaha. (And by relaxing I mean nervously waiting for your guys’ thoughts/feedback on all this ;)) End post!