It is interesting to think that sz would be a personality, rather than an illness that affects our personality, what do you think?
"Of course, there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. According to Niko Tiliopoulous, of the University of Sydney, too much openness can make one paranoid and prone to delusions. “At those levels of openness, people may actually see reality differently,” he said. “For example, they may ‘see’ spirits, or misinterpret interpersonal or other signals.”
It’s obviously not just personality. But you might be interested in reading about this:
I believe in a continuum from normality through neurosis to at the end severe psychosis.
Something I wrote back in c2007/8.
How do you define whether someone has ‘personally experienced psychosis’ given that to my mind, rather than there being a clear demarcation , there is a continuum from normal to neurotic to psychotic with one gradually shading into the other?.
My own position on that continuum is self described thus
Quote"For some of us the line between abnormality and normality is not clearly demarcated. We sit on the cusp of neurosis and psychosis.
We rail against those that suggest or hint at any semblance of
psychosis.We try to convince ourselves we are too together for this to be true of us.Yet inside there is this perpetual nagging doubt;
the feeling we are possessed by a ‘subtle lack of togetherness’'.[/color]I think most people would agree that delusions/hallucinations/and confused/disturbed thinking are the core features of psychosis.
Paranoia may or not be a psychotic symptom depending on the quality of the paranoia. Some would also possibly add depersonalisation and derealisation within a ‘broad’ definition of psychosis.
Of course how one defines ‘delusional’ and to my mind an auditory hallucination is to my mind(others may differ) not always totally clear.
For example intrusive thinking v internal hallucinations with regards to auditory hallucinations. What qualities definitively separate one from the other?Re delusions the following descriptor can be found
Quote
Definition of Delusion
Delusion: A false personal belief that is not subject to reason or contradictory evidence and is not explained by a person’s usual cultural and religious concepts (so that, for example, it is not an article of faith). A delusion may be firmly maintained in the face of incontrovertible evidence that it is false
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art … ekey=26290
but how does one classify people like myself in relation to delusional v non delusional ie someone who can work out that what he is thinking does not stand up to reality testing but for whom the ability to do so does not necessarily result in an immediate reduction in the persistence of such thinking and for whom such experiences can be described as short lived and episodic.
We are not fully delusional given the definition shown but neither is such thinking necessarily normal.
A recurring though episodic experience of mine is getting it into my head that inanimate objects are going to start talking to me . I can reality test it but as previously stated reality testing doesn’t result in an immediate lessening on my part of the feeling that at any point they are going to start talking to me.
It may of course be that i have an imaginative mind and it is nothing more than the joining together of anxiety and imagination.
Where lies the boundary between a vivid imagination and delusionality?
Well those are my views .
(2) I believe that there is a continuum from normal to neurosis through to full blown psychosis.
On such a continuum it would be possible for there to be a point where one has odd thoughts but is aware that one is having odd thoughts.I would put that at a point beyond mere neurosis but short of full blown psychosis.
I can be prone to odd/bizarre thoughts but am able to reality test that they are odd. Despite being able to reality test that they are odd that doesn’t necessarily reduce the persistency of them when they are there.
Like you Umbrella i find that stress can have a decidedly negative effect on my thinking .
In my case anxiety and paranoia ramp up and the ability to think clearly and rationally/express myself is affected .
Stress can tend to make me acutely irrational and excitable.
As a former co ordinator once wrote on a care plan“Timothy has difficulty expressing himself clearly when he is angry,agitated or frightened”
I take a small dose of Zyprexa 5mg . My psychiatrist is reluctant to prescribe me an AD because of the possible negative effect on my mood.
Indeed the only time i have ever taken an AD by itself without another class of medication.
ie anti psychotic and or mood stabiliser was when i was first put on medication(anafranil) pre my first hospitalisation.(3)
Best to see psychosis in terms of a continuum stretching from extreme psychosis to the kind of transient stress related psychosis that can be experienced in a PD such as borderline through to normal/non psychotic .(4)Do you think people understand the continuum between normality----->neurosis------>psychosis and how it’s not always easy to see what station you’ve stopped at on the mental illness line.
I can appear boringly normal at times in an articulate and intelligent fashion then change the settings slightly and hello noxious mixture of anxiety/paranoia/fear/irritability/irrationality with measures of depersonsalisation/derealisation/somatism thrown in.
Or is it politically expedient for them to use situation A as a means of extrapolating and defining how situation B will affect you.
Then there’s the times you keep it all inside because that’s easier than the telling and the not being understood or the misinterpretations.
Or you’re falling apart but it’s hard for them to see beyond the superficial nonchalance.
(5)Here is something i wrote on another forum in response
to a thread covering psychosis/stress/schizophrenia(susceptibility)There are of course the ‘acute and transient psychotic disorders’ (ICD10)which embrace clinical concepts such as bouffee delirante, cycloid psychosis, psychogenic (reactive) psychosis and schizophreniform psychosis and of course ‘brief psychotic disorder’(dsm) .
The concept of ‘reactive psychosis’ has primarily been used in Scandinavia.
I agree that there are those who are more susceptible to the effects of stress than others. The stress level to cause a psychotic/psychotic like reaction in some individuals may be a mere copeable with iritant to others.
I know that when i get emotionally stressed/out of my depth then i tend to react in a way that could be seen to be one of ‘psychotic ideation’ or within the spectrum of psychosis.
Given the right environmental triggers then i can quickly descend into an accute state involving a mix of paranoia,hysteria,irrational outbursts and certain decline in my ability to reason clearly. The stronger the emotions that are stirred up the worse it can be.
These for me are best defined in terms of a firework zooming suddnly into the sky and burning intensely for a short time.
Other reactions to what for me is an emotional/stress overload include what could be best described as ‘derealisation’ .
Here is something written in a highly stressed state while looking after my late wife
'iF IAM F***ing lucky i 'll get to have the mental fever breaking bit was
what happened real or wasit a dream disconnected everythingh is
unaturally calm bit with the room looking
slighly weird insome way smaller bigger clearer just basically somehow
out of sync like everything is veing seen through the lwens of a an
avant garde camera man stoned on on lsd.May be it’ll even be accompanied by intrusive thoughts -who f***ing knows.
Everything but everything is a means of ny being stresased iout .It is
no good saying anything no one who ahould hewlp will help ,When the fever breaks and the unatural clm and weierd feeling comes if
it comes then there ‘ll be a kind of release in a distuirbing kindof way.’Luckily for me i do pull out of it in reasonably quick time,
sometimes quicker than others though at the time the accute intensity of that state makes it hard for me to see that.
I am very much caught up in that irrational/paranoiac etc state of mind.The other reaction to such emotional stress for me can be physical. In my case this involves what is best described as a ‘flu like’ reaction.
I hold to the view that there is a continuum from non psychosis to the frank psychosis found in schizophrenia.
It is also possible i guess that there are certain areas of cognitive deficit that feed those stress induced flights into such a state such as definite problems with executive
functioning and thinking things through.In my experience other people are not at all sympathetic or understanding when one enters into such a state which in itself can exacerbate or lengthen that state especially the paranoiac element.
It is funny in a perverse way how some psychiatric behaviours illicit a more favourable response in terms of an attempt to empathise/show tolerance and be supportive of than others irrespective of the fact that in the game of mental illness we do not get to choose our cards(symptoms)
(6)
(2)
I personally believe there is no clear dividing line between normal,neurotic,and psychotic with there being gradual shading from normal ie non neurotic/psychotic through to mildly neurotic,very neurotic,mildly psychotic right through to severely psychotic.
My personality changed when i got sz. I went from …afraid of people…ti supersocial person…fear vanished.
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