And how do I do it? My counselor said it, but I didn’t catch the explanation.
It’s where you run a belief by another person, preferably a person without a mental health diagnosis, to see how valid it is. Like if you think you smell bad you could ask a family member if you smell bad. That’s a common example, for if you had an olfactory hallucination.
You could tell a family member you’re feeling spied on and they could dispel that by reminding you they love you and that nobody is watching you like that. I’ve done that before. It helps me stay grounded.
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Ok cool thanks @agent101g
i can agree with that. also some people think they are better than other people and when some people get an ego too big when its said you need a reality check, it means that you are put in your place to the reality of who you are and not what you think you are because of ego
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I used to have to "reality check "all the time. It got old.
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My mom told me to say to myself, out loud, that the beings (my voices) weren’t real. I was not having any of that, no mam.
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Sometimes we don’t have people around or someone we trust to check with. Reality checking by oneself is mindfulness. To stop what you’re doing and to do an assessment of right now. I get racing thoughts at times and I often have to stop what I am doing and take a quick inventory. What is happening/ not happening. If I’m confused I try to think as logically as I can to stop the racing thought. It takes some practice and discipline but it’s a useful technique to stay in the present here and now.
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I do that all the time. Yesterday I was smelling a perfume no one else was smelling
I don’t think that one can do reality checking in the middle of an episode or a delusion.
Delusion means you believe something wholeheartedly. You don’t have doubt about it
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Insight and psychopathology
The reciprocal relationship between insight and psychopathology[9,10,11,16,17,18,19] suggests its association with delusional thinking and beliefs. However, severe delusional illnesses, by their definition,
preclude alternative explanations in those with severe disease, especially at the height of their illness. Thus, people with severe illness will by definition lack insight as they will believe in the validity of their psychotic experience and will not be able subscribe to a biomedical understanding for their condition. Therefore, people with milder forms of psychosis, who acknowledge disease within themselves rather than alternative explanations for their psychotic experiences, will be considered to have insight. Consequently, people with good insight will be those with milder disease, who are able to entertain and consider alternative biomedical explanations for their illness, which suggest disease and will, therefore, have better clinical outcomes compared to those with more severe psychotic states who firmly believe in their delusional convictions.[2]
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Oh I try to read those ncbi abstracts but they are so technically written.
Thank you @noahide @SkinnyMe @Sardonic @Om_Sadasiva @firemonkey @agent101g
@gene
Thank you for the explanation of mindfulness. What if it’s more than a racing thought. What do you do if you don’t know something is real?
A reality check is something you do to help yourself come to grips with reality. When you have paranoid/delusional ideations, you have to do reality checking to help remind you of what is truly real and what is all in your mind. For example, if you hear voices telling you demeaning comments or that you can fly and that you be best left in a dark corner and you believe these thoughts to be true.
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@FlyingPurplePeopleMeeter: Then I would check with someone.
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It’s also for when you see someone or something and you’re not sure if it is real. You could ask a trustworthy person if they see it too.
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Doesn’t this sorta run on the honor system? Like Co worker friends and family are known to try to pull one over on you. And why would you want to be the rock? What if you don’t have all the details or the asker read the situation wrong? Your answer could potentionally make you look stupid. If you say don’t quote me what weight does it have at all? Now I’m confused and have to ask somebody if I’m confused.
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Well focus on the first paragraph then, it’s not open to interpretation and the information received won’t change based on the person you ask. “Do I smell bad.” Most people will be honest with you. My second paragraph deals with how I choose to use the concept myself, because the person I ask has my best interests in mind and shares my world view.
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Checking reality.
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A change of scenery usually works for me whether I am aware of the delusion or not. I recall when I was here before and my mindset then which did not include the delusion and some time this will cause me to be able to disregard the delusion as questionable.
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An example of my reality checking was if I got the paranoid thought that someone hated me, or the paranoid thought that a group of people thought I was a monster, I would ask them, “Do you hate me?” and “Do you guys think I am a monster?” They would always say “no”, and I would never believe them.
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