I am really hoping someone can give me some advice because things are getting bad again and I don’t know what to do because I discharged myself from my mental health services. I’m just looking for answers and advice about whether this is a psychosis-spectrum thing or whether I am just confused (I have been diagnosed with anxiety disorders, depression, and anorexia for context and have been through trauma. These particular things are quite manageable at the moment). I am scared because I don’t want to have to live like this. I am really sorry if this is the wrong thread I don’t know how this site works. I guess I should put a trigger warning on this or something I really don’t know what I am doing
For a year and a half I have been having these symptoms. It started when I was put on an antidepressant for severe OCD, it made me feel worse and I ended up on a ward because I was hallucinating + low mood + disorganised speech and had ‘delusions’. They asked me if I was hearing voices and I said no because I don’t hear voices often but I do hear them inside my head a lot (not auditory hallucinations). They sound like distortions of my own inner voice and they tell me to do bad things. But they’re on the inside of my head, not the outside
Ever since that incident, every two/three months I get intense episodes for about 3-7 days where I have these symptoms. It usually starts with feeling very low and mild hallucinations where the objects around me shift e.g. Walls start moving like they are breathing. Then it gets worse for a few days and I get bad ideas about things and am stuck in a state of high anxiety and paranoia. The voices tell me to do things and sometimes they say horrible things like racist comments and I can’t make them stop and I bang my head on surfaces to try to make the voices go away but they won’t go away even when I bang it hard. I get scared that people have been replaced by imposters and that the government is tracking me. I sometimes hallucinate or hear voices that sound like people talking in my ear but I don’t hallucinate often and they are usually fleeting which is what makes me feel like I am confused about everything. During the episodes I am usually aware that I am having an episode, this also makes me feel like I am just confused and this isn’t real.
Sometimes talking becomes difficult because my brain just isn’t working, and sometimes I lose blocks of time or have a distorted sense of time.
I am scared because talking is getting difficult again and objects keep moving but the last episode was only about two weeks ago and I don’t want to do it again so quickly I cannot deal with another one this month
There is one thought that is really bad and it never goes away so I don’t think it is a delusion because it is always there even not during episodes of symptoms, I am terrified I am responsible for a bad thing that happened and that everyone knows I am responsible for it, this bad thing is really awful. I am scared and I don’t want to be alive because it is such a bad thing. I wasn’t born when it happened but I am sure it must somehow be my fault, I am really scared and I don’t know what to do, I am sure that this is real and I don’t know how to fix it and the voices talk about it sometimes and it just makes me feel worse
I feel really alone and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what this is. My old mental health team told me I was making everything up which really upset me because I do not lie about symptoms. They don’t understand how frightening it is partly because I didn’t explain all the symptoms to them but they still made me feel like a fake and now I don’t know what to do because if I talk to anyone about this I don’t think they will understand. They made me feel even more isolated so things have continued to be really bad. I know this isn’t part of my disorders that I have been diagnosed with because those disorders are hardly noticeable now e.g. I am completely recovered from anorexia, whereas the bad voices and thoughts are still just as bad as they were a year ago. It is the only thing that hasn’t gone away
I feel really alone and scared and I don’t want to keep going, I don’t know what is wrong and I want my head to stop being bad, I have cut myself off from friends because I don’t want to talk to anyone or admit that things are getting bad. I don’t know what to do
I’m sorry you’re going through so much right now. And I’m sorry your mental health team wasn’t receptive to your problems. Is it possible to find a new doctor and explain all of your symptoms to them? I swear, things can get so much better if you just get on the right medication. I used to think I was sucking the life force out of everyone around me. I even left my family and became homeless and traveled all over to avoid draining one person for too long. Medication and therapy helped me get rid of that belief. It still comes back occasionally, during stressful times, but it is much easier to manage now.
I hope you stick around here. This people here are good at helping each other rationalize away delusional thoughts. And everyone is very supportive in general.
ninjastar thank you for being lovely, it means a lot, thank you for your message I really needed that today
I see a psychologist twice a month but I don’t tell him much, I have asked to go on medication again but the appointment for that isn’t until the 9th December I think. It will probably be for an SSRI again which do not work for me but they said it is the only thing they can do for me
I convinced my mental health team to perscribe me an antipsychotic about a year ago but I never took it because I thought it might be poison. They only prescribed it at my request and told me I did not need it etc even though things were really bad. My current psychologist says that my symptoms are things normal people have and they aren’t bad but I don’t understand how other normal people live like this because it is really hard to function and leave the house
When you think about this terrible event that you believed you caused, what is going on in your life? Do these thoughts happen at random? Only during times of severe anxiety and depression?
Do you take any prescription medication for anxiety? Severe anxiety can cause dissociation (a psychological separation from one’s self).
If you are hallucinating and think you have a disorder in the psychotic spectrum then you should really try an antipsychotic. They’re not poison, what do you have to lose?
@kindness I don’t know because usually if I am feeling paranoid I lose most of my memories from the week so I can’t really remember. It is something I think about all the time but I think (?) it bothers me the most just before hallucinations start when I am feeling unusually low
I am not on anxiety medication at the moment, I haven’t had a panic attack in about a year so my anxiety hasn’t really been noticeable. I will look into dissociation though, thank you
@TomCat I don’t know I wouldn’t know where to start, I have to write all of my own medical records and referrals and they would ask me to choose the meds myself and I don’t know the difference between the different ones
This is something I experience all the time. Could be due to Sz or psychosis or breaks from reality. If you experience these things like I do, you would need an anti-psychotic. However, things vary from case to case. If your doctors don’t think you need an AP, then most likely you don’t need an AP. You have to trust their expertise.
You seem to describe many things that could be on the psychosis-spectrum, but whether you truly need an AP … a lot of this depends on your appointments. What kind of verbal feedback are you getting from your doctors? If you are communicating well enough during appointments, I believe that can be a big reason they think you do not need an AP.
@SlowMotional I don’t know, I don’t tell doctors much about my symptoms anymore because of the way my old mental health team spoke to me about it (they told me they couldn’t help me and that I should be in a unit). I haven’t spoken to anyone about this in detail for a long time. Sometimes I try to explain how intense the symptoms are to my psychologist but he never tells me his opinions about what I am experiencing, so I can’t get a professional opinion or any feedback at all. I have given up asking doctors for advice because they only ever seem to make me feel isolated.
In the past year the only helpful person has been one of my friends (who has schitzophrenia) who sends me the worksheets and reality-checking exercises he has been given by his outreach team.
When I was a child I thought I had killed people, I was so sure of it at the time. But I did not kill anyone, and importantly I never hurt anyone. But at the same time I can see how easy it would be to actually do something bad. I definitely did some very unusual and creative things that would make most people scrunch their faces up in confusion, but fortunately the only person I ever harmed this way was myself.
The first thing you should do is question your memory to see how good it is. Why were you there, how did you get there, who were you with, what did they say, what did you eat that day. Not always, but occasionally small questions like that might help you decide if it was real or not.
The second thing you should do is plan how to forgive yourself. First you have to figure out why something happened, then check if it could happen again and take measures to prevent that, then look up Teal Swans guides on youtube about how to heal yourself and to forgive yourself.
Possibly meds might be relevant but I can’t help you with those.
If you are not telling your doctors everything, then they can’t help you effectively. You need to be completely honest with them. It might help to write down your symptoms in a letter. Maybe you could even just copy down your posts and give them to your doctor.
Do you mind telling me what country you live in? If you live in America, Canada, or most of western Europe, they won’t put you in a psych unit unless you are a danger to yourself or others. It doesn’t sound like that’s the case here.i don’t know the rules in other countries.
@Bee3 Thank you so much for your advice. I will try, I am trying really hard it is just something very hard to get rid of that I never get any relief from, I don’t want to be responsible for the deaths of millions but the thought just won’t go away. Thank you
@Ninjastar I am in London so we have the NHS which is not very good in practice. Last year when I was housebound I was referred to a team who were meant to visit me at home every day (so that it resembled being on a ward slightly) but sometimes they would not turn up for months. Now that I am mainly seen privately I don’t think I will get put back in hospital but I am worried about it
And turtle thank you. I may try to give it to them, I have a list of symptoms written out. I am just scared that yet another psychiatrist will tell me that they won’t help me
This sounds like psychosis to me, whenever I become psychotic I lose my memory of things that have happened in the weeks leading up to it. Paranoia is definitely a sign of paranoid schizophrenia, most people on this forum mention experiencing it. The difficulty speaking sounds like mild negative symptoms of psychomotor slowing or alogia, I have alogia and it is a lot like what you have described. I feel like maybe you are prodromal or maybe your prodrome is transitioning over to full blown psychosis. I think your best option is to, at your next apointment with the psychiatrist explain how you feel and say you would like to avoid having these episodes by trying an antipsychotic. I am on high doses of antipsychotics and I still have episodes (I am having one now) so I know exactly how you feel and I know the feelings you are feeling are of the kind you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Hang in there until your next appointment, remember that it is possible that without any intervention you might end up with an even more severe episode than those you have been having. If you are in position to talk to the psychiatrist make sure to be agressive and explain everything clearly as well as that you expect schizophrenia. Don’t give up hope that life can get better than how it currently is.
Are you still on the medication you were when you initially started getting psychosis? If so I recommend switching it. Certain antidepressants can cause aggravation of psychotic symptoms, especially if they influence dopamine levels.
My advice is to be very firm that you are not making things up. Something I’ve learned from being in the mental health service system is you are your own biggest advocate. If need be you should find a professional who will believe you, it’s very important you work with someone who takes your treatment seriously. To me you certainly sound like you are suffering from symptoms of psychosis and need an apt professional to help you through this.
@eduvigis Thank you. I think I might take a list of symptoms to my medication review, I know I have to do something about this so that it doesn’t get worse. I just have to hope that I am doing okay on the day because the internal voices get angry when I speak about symptoms out loud. I guess I just have to cross my fingers.
someguy they act differently like they are a completely different person or when I speak to them their voices sound different. I don’t know. I didn’t speak to a family member for a year because I was convinced they had been replaced.
I don’t know, I’m just completely sure sometimes, when I get paranoid I feel like everything around me is orchestrated by the government. One episode was set off because someone flew a drone over our local area. I am still worried it was sent for me.
@Anna I’m not on them anymore just because of how bad they make me. The only thing I take is melatonin because otherwise I only get 3 hours of sleep a night, I don’t know if sleep meds affect psychotic symptoms, I really can’t give it up
Not always the case. In my case, I just go into appointments not knowing what to expect. It’s that I don’t communicate enough that tips off schizophrenia. Well, that and a couple other things such as disconnecting.
It can be actually what you don’t say at the time that can alarm mental health professionals.
If a doctor sees me for an hour, for instance. It’s that forces seem to be disallow me to verbally communicate. To the point where an hour can go by and there’s little speech from me or in other words little conscious brain activity. This really alarms mental health doctors. To the point where I think one doctor I saw in the past actually quoted word for word everything I said during an appointment (in my records), which amounted to only a few sentences.
It’s when you don’t function like the norm. That’s what alarms doctors more than anything.
