I haven’t been diagnosed with schizophrenia but I couldn’t find anywhere else appropriate to place this topic in.
I have suffered from tactile hallucinations now for over a year and they are becoming horrendous. They are mainly sexual and regularly force me into an affliction I would rather not have. I do not hear voices and I do not have visual hallucinations, just tactile ones. I have tried to live with it but it is becoming deeply hurtful to be forced into acts I would never choose to engage in. I have talked to family about it and they didn’t want to know. I also talked to someone outside the family and he wasn’t much help either. Consequently, I am now at the desperate point of taking my own life. I can’t visualise a future beyond that of more suffering, more doctors and more heartache. This tactile stuff is freakish to the extreme: I feel hands on my shoulders and feel someone (or something) embracing me regularly in bed. I could have coped with that, but this sexual stuff is impossible. ‘They’ want me to engage in this ‘affliction’ every day, and if I don’t I receive a pinprick of electrical shock into my back for resisting. As I type, ‘something’ is feeling about ‘downstairs’.
All this is making me feel extremely tired and ill and I have fallen into complete non-functionality. I have lost interest in all the things that used to give me enjoyment, and I feel totally isolated.
I do get tactile hallucinations… they used to be bad. It took a lot of therapy and meds to get this straightened out.
The only thing I can offer is distraction. I know it’s so very hard to distract yourself from this. It gets a bit all consuming.
Also the only other thing I can offer is to not beat yourself up if you do end up giving into the feelings.
I can imagine it’s hard for the family to talk about. I do love my family… I feel very lucky in the family department… but some of the sexual tactile chaos… I can’t discuss with them… I lay that on the desk of my therapist.
Meds can also help with this.
The biggest thing is try to fight it. Get up… try to engulf your mind in something completely different if this is causing you distress.
You need help. I know how almost painfully all encompassing this can get… I needed help. There was no way I was able to tackle this completely alone without meds or help.
Good luck and I hope you find some ideas… If I think of any specific that helped me… I will come back and post.
I agree with the advice. It takes willpower to divert your attention, and if it’s a symptom of psychosis then medications could greatly improve your life.
medication helped/helps me a lot with tactile things. mine aren’t quite the same sounding as yours, but i just wanted to say that medication really does resolve much of that for me and i hope you press on to see if something might help you, too–medication or otherwise. you said you’ve talked to one other person outside your family. i encourage you to talk to a few more. there might be things unexplored to consider.
i’m so sorry to hear you’re suffering this way and wish you well in finding some solutions that aren’t taking your life. best to you. and take care. if i can think of anything more useful, i’ll certainly post it.
It would be worth talking to a doctor who specializes in schizophrenia to see if it is that. I have tactile hallucinations too and medication has helped. Keeping myself distracted helps a lot too. Doing artwork really helps. Give some medication s a try.
Suicide is not your answer to this. It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I have had tactiles too. Meds helped me. I had ghosts poking me and trolls biting my legs.
Get help at once. If you feel suicidal you really need help NOW.
The tactile stuff has now moved on to inflicting pain. I feel sharp pinpricks like an electrical shock, but mainly at night. I am going to get help, but I am very distressed at having to do so. I have just come through five of the worst years of my life and had hoped for some happiness. Aside from the tactile stuff I feel exhausted most of the time.
I’m sorry those have hit you. Those do hurt. I call those voodoo pin jabs. Sometimes a gently warm bath… not a hot one… but sort of not hot not cold… bath will help with those.
Light used to hurt me. Light was like spears piercing my body. It could be sunlight or artificial light indoors. I tried to shut down the lights in ER. Also my voices told me to stay out of the light. "Stay away from the light. They are in the light. " i still don’t know who are in the light.
I feel ya. This was me from around 15-17. It was the most awful thing I’ve ever experienced and my therapist thinks it may have given me symptoms related to extreme trauma.
I always “heard” demons yelling abuses at me while it was going on…(they speak telepathically). Sometimes they’d force images in my brain as well. Do you ever experience anything like that or just the sexual stuff?
Anyways my hallucinations have gone down drastically from what they were. I mostly just get flashbacks now. I think what changed is I started to do self-therapy to retrain the way I thought about sex. When I was 15 I had just started getting strong sexual desire which I didn’t understand and it scared me, so I think I subconsciously dissociated from it and it became the “demons” that tormented me. Maybe you are doing the same?
I’m certainly not completely comfortable with sex today, I still can’t bring myself to do anything in that area, but I have accepted my natural urges and impulses and that I get them quite often. Try looking at your views on sex.
I think you may have a point Anna. I am 44 and my life has basically been a train wreck from day one. My thyroid gland was damaged and consequently I never went through puberty. At all. (I have hypopituitarism). I had got used to being the way I was and didn’t think anything of it. However, I have recently developed osteoporosis to the point that I require a yearly infusion of Reclast to help my bones. My doctors recommended I start testesterone replacement therapy to also help my bones, and since I started on it I have gone through some really weird ‘■■■■’ including religious delusions and tactile hallucinations. The latter progressed from hands on my shoulders/waist to sexual touching which often results in an ‘affliction’ I would rather not discuss openly. The hallucinations are getting stronger, but in the past few days they have progressed to inflicting pain (the sharp pin pricks mentioned earlier). This is too much for me to bear.
Regarding your comments on sex, I have to say it is an area I am very uncomfortable with, and to be honest, I can live without it. It is the natural urges caused by this ‘touching’ that is the problem, and it is compounded by my faith which views sex outside of marriage as a grave and mortal sin. As a result I feel ashamed and embarrassed, and I wonder if such a guilt-laden and fear-based faith is actually worth pursuing any more. So yes, I think it all stems from that, though how the brain achieves all this I have no idea. I do try to dissociate myself from these urges and resist them as much as possible.
Are you male , i suffer them too. Just a question , do you have any psychotic sympthoms? I have researched this quite a bit ,
If your not psychotic , you could try a ssri
If your epileptic , try an anti convulsant
If you have a psychotic disorder , then find a med and up it until it manages your symptoms
Also no harm adding a bcomplex regimen
On religion , im an atheist. You could read a bit on the origin of species , what we know about paleontology , geology , geneology , chemistry , evolution ,physics,astrophysics, neuropsychology , biology , evolution and history
you need to talk to your doctor about this. he certainly will figures something out. if this is not a medical condition then probably its a demonic possestion.
I still get tactile hallucinations, but no longer sexual. Though I have been discharged by my psychiatrist back to my GP.
My imaginary friends (as I call them) injecting me in my arm veins or trying to take blood from me.
I’ve changed anti psychotic and still get this. however no where nearly as bad as I used to.
One year I sat in a pub at a Christmas party almost fainting as they kept on injecting me time and time again.
I think CBT helped a bit, as did mindfulness and breathing exercises. This helped me so I didn’t get aroused by the stimulation. This enables me to not get that fight or flight impulse or feel faint.
As for the negative symptoms of apathy or lack of doing anything I take a 100mg omega fish oil tablet as this has been shown in some circumstances to help.
I also volunteer 3 days a week and goto town EVERY DAY even though I hear voices talking about me,
Mohammed, it is really unhelpful to be posting things like that. Please don’t.
This morning I have been co-erced into my affliction once again by my invisible ‘friends’/tactile hallucinations. I don’t know what is happening to me, I am falling apart.