Were you traumatized by your psychosis?

Did being psychotic traumatize you?

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The fear and the grandiose. The paranoia and the emotion. The voices and the visions.

Normal people will never understand what it’s like. Once the mirror cracked, no amount of filigree benefits.

Those experiences have changed me, left scars and questions.

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Intially, yeah. Now I find most of the leftovers in my head silly and amusing. I was able to re-frame things and think differently.

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This is true, true but sad!

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I feel like I have gotten PTSD from psychosis that I went through, things have calmed down but the whole experience was traumatic.

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Can I ask if meds helped you get out of psychosis?

So well stated.

:heart:

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I have a little ptsd from my first episode. I get flashbacks to it whenever i hear someone cry.

But besides that i have dealt with it and moved on from it

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Can I ask how long your first episode lasted?

We’re all pickles here. We started as cucumbers, but you spend enough time in the brine that is schizophrenia… It permanently changes you. You’ll never quite fit in with the other cucumbers again. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a pickle. Lots of people like pickles. We just have to learn to like ourselves as pickles as we move forward.

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Like 6 or 7 months

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I’ve always preferred pickles anyway. Not a big fan of cucumbers.

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We cronchy with the big taste.

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Yes. It was pure terror. That’s the best word I can use to describe it. Like a fear you’ve never known. It knocks you right out of yourself and you’re forever changed.

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@shutterbug I’m impressed. Do you still have voices? That is my one remaining symptom

Yes, I would say I was traumatized. During my first psychotic episode, I was being torn to shredz by insurance companies only a year after breaking my neck. Some of the things that happened while I was psychotic, still haunt me to this day.

It’s still there, but not part of my daily thinking anymore. I am slowly regaining perspective over time

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The psychosis that I first felt was so traumatic that I believe it knocked my chemicals out of order and gave me schizophrenia. It was a disturbing anxiety filled with delusions and hallucinations. I could be mistaken. I don’t think anyone can say they weren’t traumatized.

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So very true. I can’t imagine anyone going full-blown psychotic, and not be scarred by the experience to some degree

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Yes. I can eliminate them at higher doses of APs, but the side-effects from them are hard to take. More meds also result in lower cognition and more emotional bluntness. I would be unable to function professionally or personally. I’m okay with some positive symptoms as I no longer take them seriously. I just need enough medication to maintain my insight. I always lose my insight when I go completely off meds.

Knife’s edge, right?

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Same, sometimes I’ll get like what you could call a “flashback” of things that happened during psychosis but it’s not constantly nonstop haunting me anymore

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