Living in two worlds is confusing

Unusual Beliefs
1

I’m sorry I just need to get this out somewhere. It’s eating at my brain. This will be long and rambling so if you want to pass it over I won’t be offended.

I’ve experienced literally no serious negative events in this life. None. I’ve managed to somehow avoid any kind of major tragedy. I’ve been entirely safe my whole life, I’ve never even come into contact with a truly bad person and it all makes me incredibly antsy.

Why? Why hasn’t anything bad ever happened to me? I’m not complaining. You know I actually used to complain, to God. I would tell him it wasn’t fair. That I felt like it was some sort of favoritism. (Which was wrong, God has no favorites, but it felt that way at the time) I would tell him to stop giving me special treatment, I didn’t deserve it, I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

Well I gave up on that after a while and just try to be grateful but it still feels so weird. Like my life has all been carefully set up. I have all these mental/emotional problems and it’s like those were the only problems I was given because someone knew it would push me over the edge if I had to deal with anything else. I can’t help but see everything as calculated.

And then I look at my life in the other world, the one I feel more at home in, and I’m not sure why I feel more at home there because my life in that world is terrible. Sure it has way less limits than the physical world, but things aren’t good. I have to constantly hop from plane to plane to avoid trouble. Most of the things there either want to hurt me, use me, or both. I’m so tired of being hunted. Blackmailed. Taken away. And every day I can escape all of it and come back to the physical world and I appreciate it and dread it at the same time and it just hurts my brain to think about how I jump between the physical and nonphysical plane and that no one is going to understand that, ever. What that’s like.

I have a lot of power in the nonphysical plane, and I claim that’s why I like it better but really it just gets me into a lot of trouble. When you have no power you get left alone. That’s why I get left alone in the physical world. Right?

Or am I just not being overly picked on by the devil because he’s grooming me to be a puppet and thus I need different treatment than a victim? I’m very confused by everything and overthinking it.

Every day my thoughts are half consumed by my troubles and half consumed by wondering what the physical plane even is and why it exists. Why I’m here. What I am. A thousand questions run through my head every day and it just makes me feel even more alienated from my peers, who think mostly about their next exam, or work, or the guy or girl they’re interested in. No one in my life can even come close to sympathizing with me and it’s just very frustrating. I’ve always been alone and living in two worlds and sometimes it all comes crashing down on my brain like it’s doing now and it keeps me up at night, you know?

That’s my rant.

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This is just my small idea… but from what I’ve read about your life… you are on a tight schedule with many expectations.

It sounds like in the other life you see… there is no schedule and not much expectation… so not as much self pressure… stress or dead line.

Maybe you crave more freedom in your day? Maybe some part of you is trying to reach where the wild part is.

That’s just my odd idea. I do hope you feel better soon.

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The schizophrenic duality. Is it real or is it the mind. I struggle with that. I get the two worlds thing.

You’re not alone is all I can really say.

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Anna: a couple comments.

That’s pretty much how my life has gone. I’m not even a challenge so people let me do my work at my job and when I went to college not one person bugged me. But, I still get to socialize.

We have some things in common tonight so here’s my comment from my experience. I may be way off base. But are you remembering correctly? Because I often feel like nothing bad has happened to me these last 5 years. Like I’ve led a charmed life for 5 years. I would swear nothing bad has happened.
But then I sit still and think.

I got in a car wreck that was my fault (no one got hurt)
In a separate accident I ran into a bicyclist and sent him to the hospital (the police declared me not at fault and nothing happened to me legally. The kid was OK)
I almost relapsed when I ran out of medication.
I’ve pissed off people who then tried to attack me.
I ran up a $4000 credit card debt.
My mom had to have surgery where her chances we 50-50 that she would survive. She survived.
My brother-in-law almost lost his leg to an infection.
I have an ongoing feud with my neighbor.
I was watching my sisters dog and I forgot to let her out to go to the bathroom for 10 hours. ( My sister was close to not trusting me ever again with her dog so it was a big deal. If the dog really had to she could have gone on my rug).
I failed a college class.
I almost got kicked out of my apartment twice.
My cat got diagnosed with asthma.
I got diagnosed with kidney problems.

But if you ask me it still seems like no tragedy’s have happened.
I guess it’s one of two things: either my psychosis when I was 20 was so bad that nothing will ever seem so bad after going through that. OR. I guess it depends on your definition of tragedy. I may be way off base.

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There is no time there.

I think that’s what I struggle with the most here, is time. Everyone’s always pushing you to move faster and to use up every minute.

The nonphysical plane has no true measurable time, and with no time there is no past set in stone to obsess over and no future to worry about. Everything happens as you think it and goes away as soon as you stop. There are no permanent consequences and no continuity. These are all things I struggle with greatly in this world. It is draining to me. Every day I get out of bed and feel like I’m bound by chain after chain here. There’s no freedom for me here, you’re right, and there never will be because of my chains.

But again, that’s just life here.

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No it’s true that I tend to see the world through rose-colored glasses. I remember once, when I was accusing God of giving me everything I wanted and for making my life perfect while others suffered he asked me if I was sure all of this was true and that I wasn’t just blocking out any times where things didn’t go my way and life wasn’t so fun. And I thought about that for a long time, and that’s actually what lead to me recognizing the thought patterns that contributed to my delusional thinking. (Ie only looking for evidence to prove my delusions instead of evidence disproving them)

I still feel I have avoided major tragedy. So what if I grew up with an angry and controlling dad. Could’ve been worse. He could have been an alcoholic or physically abusive. And under it all he’s a good man, and he’s improved and I love him. I have never lost a loved one. I have never been seriously ill or injured. Never struggled with money. I am surrounded by people who love me and always have been. What issues I’ve experienced in my life have all revolved around my mental health, and I could sit here and be a big cry baby over how my parents ignored my issues or constantly swept them over the rug, but that’s just foolish.

I’ve lead this incredibly lucky life here. And I won’t let myself get sucked into a guilt spiral again, because I’m trying to pull myself away from those lately, but I see people on here and everywhere who are going through all of the mental things I’m going through but ALL of this other stuff on top of it, and I feel awful for even making a peep about any of it.

There are so many things I don’t understand…

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It’s overwhelming. Like I’ll be walking back from dinner enjoying the weather and then the next second I realize that I don’t even feel like one thing, I feel like a lot of things crammed into one body. And I get all of those things different opinions on everything so I can’t think a single flipping thought without getting ALL of my opinions on it. It’s EXHAUSTING I’m not allowed to just think something, I’ve got to deal with what all of me thinks and it’s like a debate over every little thing I think or feel.

I can’t just be me because there’s so many things in here with me but they’re all me. And none of it makes sense and I can’t even explain it. You know, in my inner narrative I don’t even refer to myself as I anymore because it feels so wrong. It’s we, always we.

I don’t want these things to pop into my head, I get all fired up and can’t sleep. And when I can’t sleep, all the other stuff comes in too.

You know this is stuff I don’t think I could ever, ever bring up in real life anyways because I read people’s faces really well, and lord knows people wear their thoughts right on their face and in all honesty I wouldn’t be able to bear watching their expressions change from neutral to judgemental. That’s I think what really haunts me and keeps me from being fully open about things. Just picturing the expression change.

The rabbit hole just goes deeper and deeper, and I don’t really want anyone to see, you know? I don’t want their opinions of me to change.

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I mean I can already see my therapist’s reactions if I delved into all of this stuff. Her brow would furrow and I would be able to see her thinking “Is she conscious right now? Is she aware?”

And I am aware. I know all of this is wrong. Or at least some of me does and the others argue it’s right and others say I should trust my instincts and others say I shouldn’t worry and then the debates start and it goes on and on. I mean I like the opinions because they give me perspective but still.

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It can be paralyzing to keep taking different perspectives on matters, and keep questioning things and needing to dig further, (like a rabbit and its hole indeed). We need somewhere to start from to get things done, but when psychotic, all my mind wants to do is to keep looking for an argument. The inner dialogue of justification and refusal goes on forever, no thought remains untouched. And at the same time you try to live in the physical world. The title of your post reminded me of something I used to say to myself while psychotic: ‘All the time I have to play chess on two boards. And I don’t even know how to play chess!’

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Yeah I get that. The multiple perspectives thing. When I felt like I had privacy my mind was a lot more normal. The Sz has made me super self critical. The judgment really only comes in one form.

Crazy after the madness of last night I can hear people outside my window… And I’m not getting any telepathy!

Considering it all just yourself is an incredibly tough thing to do. I hope you can find some way to cope with all that.

I like to think I’m climbing out of the rabbit hole but it’s pretty deep. Sometimes I jump back in because it’s all I know. The climb only gets easier.

Anyways I think you’re gonna be just fine. Perhaps a little mentally disoriented but you seem to be championing your illness.

Take care.

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I like that! Made me chuckle.

Yeah my brain will just dig and dig.

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Yeah I cope with that by distracting myself with normal stuff until I forget again for a while.

I had a good night’s rest and some interesting dreams last night so I hope today is mor chill!

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Read all of Anna’s posts and was struck by recurring themes of distraction and avoidance (both with which I am waaaaaaaay familiar :smirk:). Many of the “experts” I’ve read (hundreds, actually, and they’ve really helped) point to schiz as a fine means of distracting oneself from, and avoiding, certain realities (or memories thereof, as well as associated “awful emotions”) that one believes one cannot tolerate.

(If I provide examples, I may set off some “depth charges,” so I’ll just have to leave it to peoples’ imagination… or suggest that they look into “depth chargers” like Alice Miller, Bessel van der Kolk, Roland Summit, Diana Russell, Pia Mellody, Claudia Black, Janet Woititz and Judith Lewis Herman.)

One may need a licensed “jungle guide” to plow through their distractions and avoidances, but I can say from first-hand experience that having done exactly that, and by later developing a mantra of observing to perceive to recognize to acknowledge to accept to own to appreciate to understand, the distance between “one mind” and “the other” in my head is a lot shorter, =and= I have a “new mind” that can keep an eye on the other two.

I’m able now to spend more time dealing with “what is,” less time being “captured” by my distractions and avoidances, and waaaaaaaaaaay less money on prescribers and anti-psychotics.

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That sounds really interesting…I wouldn’t mind knowing more about that.

I always think it’s really weird that I didn’t start really feeling and struggling with anxiety until the year I became aware of my psychosis and started fighting my delusions. I always wonder if the delusions were a coping mechanism themselves. Interesting to think about.

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Yep that be a rant.

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Anna: I’ve run into at least 20 post-doctoral experts who say that the delusions are indeed coping mechanisms. Freud and his contemporaries were all over that; Pierre Janet probably being the easiest to understand via Ono van der Hart’s articles and translations from the French. The greatly famed William James (same era) said as much, but his stuff is dry as a bone.

After Freud abandoned the views of etiology (roughly “cause”) of “hysteria” he’d asserted in the mid 1890s (because a lynch mob of wealthy Viennese were ready to string him up) and flew off into his own (cocaine-induced?) delusions about instincts and drives, it took about 70 years to get back on track. One can point to Alice Miller’s books (like =For Your Own Good= and =The Drama of the Gifted Child=) as the work that broke through all the denial of what Freud (and Janet) had asserted to begin with. (This stuff is really worth Googling.)

For a while, though, people went too far with Miller (as well as legions of followers like Judith Herman and Diana Russell) and blamed all forms of “hysteria” on grosser forms of child abuse of one sort or another. The etiology is, however, much more complex, as was demonstrated by Theodore Lidz, Stephen Fleck, Gregory Bateson, Paul Watzlawick, Don D. Jackson, R. D. Laing, Aaron Esterson, and Jules Henry… =especially= with regard to the “understandable delusions” and “protective coping mechanisms” of “schizophrenia.”

That said, when I dug through their work, it was like reading about my childhood of “subtle confusions” and “conflicting instructions” and “saying this vs. doing that,” not to mention “you will do as we say… or else” (when I was sure that “all else” meant “taking me back to adoption agency and leaving me to the fates”). (Feh.)

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Weird…yeah I guess I haven’t read so much on this opinion of it. I’ll look into it though!

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I think everyone lives in at least two scenarios’ of life. The one in the now mode and the one that is looking forward to becoming what we see ourselves as being in the future.

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