Strategy to manage delusional thoughts

My delusional thoughts started some years ago and it’s been a rough ride. When I have the symptoms, I think that my thoughts are broadcast and therefore I’m some sort of special person. I think that people pretend to be normal, that they have to keep my situation secret until the time is right. I think that when people cough it’s a signal (an aversive signal), they’re communicating that my thoughts are broadcast.

My delusional thoughts seem so very real to me. It’s easier to fight the aversive delusional thoughts, I don’t want to believe those anyway. ‘Pleasant’ delusional thoughts are a little tougher to negate, they draw me in and make me happy (maybe even quasi-manic), they alleviate my fears.

I prefer the days when I have no delusional thoughts. My therapist and I developed a strategy which has worked very well: never believe any delusional thought. Maybe that sounds too simplistic, but it works. Never buy into delusions, whether they feel good or not. Never believe them. Life is normal, it’s the way it was before my delusional thoughts started. I can rely on and believe that. Delusional thoughts are a fantasy, life is better without them. So much better.

I’d appreciate any comments or insights into my situation. I’m very thankful for everyone here, reading this forum has helped me so much. I see my own symptoms in so many of the posts. It doesn’t work very well to ‘fight’ this on my own. So, thanks.

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when i have my delusional thoughts, i don’t experience them in the same way as you described. i don’t fear my thoughts are being broadcast anywhere in any way. i just think that they are very very real. i might think that i have to walk down certain blocks in the city a certain way or i will be harmed. i have rituals that i do and if they are not done right, something bad will happen to me or a loved one. also, sometimes, i believe that people are trying to trick me. like if i step on the scale in the morning, and it says that i weigh a certain amount, but when i look in the mirror, i doubt that the weight amount was correct, i believe that my husband is f-ing w/ the scale to try and trick me. also, i have the persecution complex in which i am certain that the government is spying on me; i don’t know why they would want to waste their time doing that; i just think that way. this is when i am most symptomatic. on a good day, i just do my rituals and try and block out any of the more upsetting thoughts.

as far as sobriety and recovery are concerned, i just do it one day at a time. this took me years of practice, as i used to believe that the people in the rooms were all actors hired by my family to try and trick me into stopping drinking. i thought “who on earth would share this incredibly personal stuff in a room full of strangers?” it made no sense to me.

maybe this helps you a little bit.

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Thanks DaisyMae. I definitely see myself in what you wrote.

Oh my gosh, I could have written almost all of this. When I first started posting here and got my first reply to something I said, I spent so much time staring at that person’s profile and reading their other posts, trying to work out whether it was one of my coworkers spying on me.

The following popular psychotherapies come from “critical thinking” and the correction of “logical fallacies.” The core position is that thoughts can and should be observed, questioned and revised according to new evidence.

REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
Standard CBT – http://www.beckinstitute.org/what-is-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/About-CBT/252/

This second group of widely used psychotherapies come from the core position that thoughts are merely collections of words reflecting unconscious beliefs that are not grounded in what is… but, rather, what is not… and that one merely needs to observe them as “just thoughts” to see that they have no power other than what our minds give them. (“It is enough to just not misunderstand; understanding will take care of itself.”)

DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing

My sense (after 28 years of working with psychiatric patients) is that both styles of therapy may be needed for sz pts who hear voices.

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Excellent links! Exploring them will result in significant improvement, no doubt. Much much thanks.

I’ve done CBT before but I forget the stuff pretty quickly and thus hardly ever learn from it. What really helped me with my singular delusion is Socratic questioning. It’s amazing.

"Socratic questioning has also been used in therapy, most notably as a cognitive restructuring technique in cognitive therapy, Logotherapy and Classical Adlerian psychotherapy. The purpose here is to help uncover the assumptions and evidence that underpin people’s thoughts in respect of problems. A set of Socratic questions in cognitive therapy to deal with automatic thoughts that distress the patient:[5][6]

Revealing the issue: ‘What evidence supports this idea? And what evidence is against its being true?’
Conceiving reasonable alternatives: ‘What might be another explanation or viewpoint of the situation? Why else did it happen?’
Examining various potential consequences: ‘What are worst, best, bearable and most realistic outcomes?’
Evaluate those consequences: ‘What’s the effect of thinking or believing this? What could be the effect of thinking differently and no longer holding onto this belief?’
Distancing: ‘Imagine a specific friend/family member in the same situation or if they viewed the situation this way, what would I tell them?’
Careful use of Socratic questioning enables a therapist to challenge recurring or isolated instances of a person’s illogical thinking while maintaining an open position that respects the internal logic to even the most seemingly illogical thoughts."

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning

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You can also make up your own set of questions. That’s what I did.

I’ve read about Socratic questioning but it’s been a while. Much thanks for an excellent reply.

Wow what happened to @notmoses? He gave some good advice here. The delusions are just thoughts.