Has any of you found that one of their delusions actually has a following of sorts?
I’ve found that many of my more out there delusions that I’ve developed during my stronger bouts of psychosis and that I’ve distanced myself from are held unironically by otherwise normal people and shared by seemingly well-adjusted people.
Without going into details about my personal experience, since I’m finding it hard to put the specific beliefs into words, what are your thoughts about things like that? I find that some degree of validation for the ideas from the outside can reduce anxiety around them but it can also make you dig deeper into them and it scares me.
Why are normal people drawn to out there delusions without experiencing psychosis? Do you see it as a threat or a consolation? Has it happened to you? What do you make of the whole thing? How do you cope with people who would convince you of the validity of your own delusions?
I know someone who isn’t diagnosed with a mental illness but believes we’re all slaves to the Anunnaki (a group of aliens that come to Earth periodically believed by humans to be gods)
I remember when I was extremely unstable, I wasn’t happy being validated or invalidated. People couldn’t win with me, because I’d get irate if they did either. It really helped when they just talked about themselves and I would listen. Better than listening to the voices, but not always.
The way I see it, anyone can convince themselves of anything. If they choose to believe something untrue, be it for misguided judgment, emotional reasons and so on, that’s a normal thing that people do. Only when you can’t choose what you believe in it becomes a disease.
Actually I’ve always felt the opposite personally. When I am not psychotic it doesn’t matter how much I try, I can’t move my beliefs an iota while when I am psychotic every thought or feeling carries so much more weight for my beliefs. I think that whether you have control or not over your beliefs is irrelevant to your sanity. The issue lies in the fact that when you have a problem with delusions you are not in control of the pace of the change.
I am not schizophrenic. I had a bit of psychosis 35 years ago in which I found that there were others, or at least one other, in my mind. For better or for worse I came to believe the ‘delusions’ that I experienced then, and (though I can’t see them any more) now research “others in mind,” in a low level way.
Lately, or for about the past 10 years, I have found that I have become more and more paranoid, and conspiracy theory obsessed.
One of my overseas students, from China, said that lots
of people in China believe the 9/11 attacks to have been staged.
Googling in particular skyscraper fires (and the corresponding
youtube videos) made me think 9/11 was indeed strange, and
possibly even a demolition. But I forgot about it.
The demolition thing did not seem plausible until I read about
the Libyan revolution in which Gaddafi was ousted.He, like Sadam,
had proposed a different way of trading the black gold. The standard
method of purchasing the same allows the Yanks to “ease” their paper
indefinitely, and tax the globe.
The creation therefore of a puppet evil entity, can lead to enormous power.
This the above structure paralleled my own psychosis. It was as if I had
created a demon, or terrorist, within myself so as to achieve self-love/self-esteem power.
Not long ago I found a Japanese philosopher (Nishida) that says that in order to have a self we need to create a demon within ourselves.
I live in Japan. Japanese animations and comics often feature dual heroes that have an Other or familiar. Ash/Satoshi has Pickachu. Tobita has Doraemon. Ultraman is an entity possessing a guy called Hayata. Sentai (power rangers) are generally possessed by something other. Masked rangers (kamen riders) likewise.
Further, major theorists such as Mead, Derrida, Freud, Adam Smith, Lacan, Nishida, Freud and many more assert that we have a friend in mind.
I find this interesting. I think nearly everyone has a devil inside them, that is ever ready to come to the surface in the right circumstances or situation.
I think theres a difference between normie delusions and sz delusions. A normie when presented with enough evidence contrary to their false belief, can change their mind. For us we get stuck with delusions even if theres a lot of evidence against it, and it can last a lifetime.
They are, but they just haven’t been fully diagnosed.
I most of the time see it being very threatening on some occasions, but not all.
Normality isn’t really being normal, it’s just that one has the ability to blend in with the others not be noticed a psychopath.
I would ignore them and try to sort out what really going on and in my mind, then try meditating it away or doing slow deep breathing exercises to fix it .
No. It is: If one person believes something illogical, it is a delusion. If ten people believe something illogical, it is a cult. If a hundred people believe something illogical, it is a religion.
