As I read through the forum and topics I am amazed at the level of recollection you people have of your delusions, paranoia and voices. Before I was medicated I remember a time that I was so psychotic that I could hardly see through my own eyes yet strangely I remember most of the emotional agony I went through in detail. It is as if a part of the true self was fighting for reality and survival amidst all the delusions.
I always find it odd when people say, “I’m having this delusion…” If you know it isn’t real, then it’s not a delusion. A person can remember delusional thinking they’ve had in the past but if they’re actively having delusional thoughts then they wouldn’t be calling them a delusion.
I have wondered about this myself. For many many years I was so ill, I had zero insight into my delusions of grandeur.
I mean I had complete blindness to how I was thinking. Now that Im on meds I can still have disorted thoughts, or beliefs connected to my illness. I have insight but not 100 percent insight. Before when I was very ill, having no insight is called Anosognosia. I am more aware of these false beliefs, so I do not know what to call them. Distorted intrusive thoughts? as opposed to true delusions?
Through most of it I had some amount of insight, knowing that there was something wrong with me, but it wasn’t enough to stop what the illness was doing to me.
I remember it all very well, and it’s embarrassing.
I’ve seen a psychologist for four years before I was diagnosed. I told him how I was being spied on, harassed and stalked. It felt like some force was bringing me to justice so I told him all my deepest and darkest secrets. I also knew something was wrong to me but I just didn’t know what. I begged the old psychologist to please tell me what is wrong with me. He persisted that nothing was wrong with me. He thought that people were just playing games with me. At one stage he told me to go and have talk with my alter ego. Eventually he asked if I was getting any better with the therepy. I said no it’s getting worse…so he finally refered me to the psychiatrist after years of hell. Looking back at it all I also feel embarrassed at my lack of insight. On my first appointment with the psychiatrist she was livid with the psychologist for taking so long before referring me when she saw the state that I was in. I never went back to see that psychologist again. The insight that I’m gaining is what I experience from getting better on the meds and from what I’m reading up on sz and what I’m learning on this forum.
I wrote down every little thing. I wrote long journals on what the kidnappers did, tried to do and were thinking of doing. I wen into long detail of were they were, what I did to thwart them, how I trained my sibling to thwart them.
I would take a walk and get home and write up all kidnappers who just tried to snatch my kid sis. Because if I ever went to the cops I wanted them to know that everyone in the world was a kidnapper. Then I knew the cop were kidnappers too.
Now that I’m getting much better and can read this without getting freaked out I look at these huge journals and shake my head. It’s not that I have that good of memory as much as I can still read my writing from back then.
Kidnappers have been such a huge issue with me that when I hear the word in my head now something else come’s in… the countless times my therapist, pdoc, family, on and on has talked me down from the kidnapper ledge.
There is some beliefs that I still slip and struggle with. But when I calm down or come back into my head I again just read what I was writing.
The first doctor I went to was the same toward me. I went a long time undiagnosed. It makes me mad.
i recall them all. my first one was that i had to crack some sort of code that didn’t exist. i was very good at doing the daily codeword targets in the newspaper but suddenly they took on an ominous meaning and i had to crack what the code was before 3 and i couldn’t do it. now i know it wa a pre-programmed response and it was just to make me watch and get triggered. when i finally moved into number 3 i knew it was the wrong thing to do but i did it anyway and all hell broke loose with the voices. so i won’t b moving into number 5 wherever, however much i like the house. because it will just trigger more ■■■■.
my second forced delusion involved area 51 and a space/time ship that i had supposedly invented…completely ridiculous but there you go…that one lasted for a while…then i started hearing voices. my next one after that was that everyone i met was against me lol. i was terrified at the time but looking back, yet again it was ridiculous. i could hear all the voices of everyone i met and they all wanted me dead. it was terrifying at the time but ridiculous nonetheless. the next was that i was a mad scientist on a space/time ship and had cloned my family and placed them here on earth and they were all against me for it. again, completely ridiculous but it scared me shitless anyway for about 3 weeks. my “delusions” are all lead by voices but i don’t believe in their ■■■■anymore so now it’s gonna get physical i just know it. i will start to feel things that arent there. that’s my prediction for my future, and b haunted by a ghost…that’s also a prediction for the future. because i won’t back down so they’ll have to do their worst this time if they want me to enter into a fully fledged psychosis coz if it’s just voices lead then it ain’t happenin coz i don’t believe their ■■■■■■■■anymore. there latest is trying to convince me that they know of other dimensions that r accessable to them…bollocks basically and i’m not buying into it anymore. it’s ■■■■, ■■■■and more ■■■■so far as i’m concerned. don’t believe the hype. that’s what i say and i’ll stick to it like ■■■■to a blanket. rant over
yes, however i do think there is something out there “reality” that cannot be described
by mere science, or "psychologie.
i may not remember all, yet i have seen a lot.
and its odd, it is nothing we are used too
I don’t know…I sometimes have delusions now and then for a minute (yay medication) but I feel like I am half-delusional and half-not when I experience them. It’s like knowing you’re doing something wrong but not knowing the right way to do it? It’s a hard experience to put to words, having insight into a psychotic symptom.
My hallucinations are sometimes really scary,so believable I only know if they are in this reality by trying to think from this realities perspective or asking someone if it’s correct what I’m seeing.
I have a book where I draw pictures and write down my thoughts.
What I believe is that hallucinations are things I am seeing in the 4 and 1/2 world, things from the 4th world are crossing over into this world which is number 5 and it’s half in the world and half in ours because it’s trying to get through and I can only see them.
I have gotten these fun circus games where I’m sure I’ve seriously hurt my sis. My heart is sure I’ve broken her arms and nose and jaw and I’m so heart broken and ashamed of this I feel sick. But then my sis walks in to my room to feed my fish and she’s fine. Not a scratch on her. Then I know that one was a delusion.
Others are not so easy.
Reading through this I found the hallucinations you got being interesting.
I received my first at actually 4-5 years old and I can say a childhood with schizophrenia is quite the childhood playground, what I mean by that is there is obviously scary hallucinations I received but also amazing ones,I remember being transported to different worlds also I rarely heard voices at this stage,I only heard little bits every few days I would say and to,when I was 10 I remember hearing more than usual,by the age of 13 I believe it was BOOM…started bein soo much more active,scary active and continuous talking it was like… I remember crying of being threatened by one of them and picked on.
To this day I have my symptoms and experience hallucinations,delusions,psychotic symptoms,voices etc but I try and think good when the time gets tough, think this is me,I’m who I am I don’t wish to change anything about myself,love us all and try in public to try your best to control your symptoms even though it’s extremely difficult and no one barely understands what I go through on a day to day basis with my schizophrenia. So I say to all schizophrenics out their love yourselfs,we are unique,special and do have each other regardless