I was just thinking about this. My therapist and her supervisor always make comments on how my level of insight is so strange.
For example, the last time I had a paranoid episode, all the clothes in my closet looked like people hanging. All the objects on the desks and dressers looked like little people sitting there watching me. I was really scared, but I was able to realize that I was in a paranoia attack, and rationalize through it. “That may look like a hanging person, but I KNOW that is impossible and it is just my robe, regardless of what it looks like.”
Or my paranoid belief that if I didn’t watch my reflection in the mirror that it would come out and kill me. They were very confused as to how I realized this was a very false belief but still was terrified during the event.
I’m kind of confused by it myself. I remember the supervisor telling me that I MUST have had a high level of awareness due to me never completely flipping out over my scarier delusions and I think that’s true, that somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that this couldn’t possibly be true, but I was scared anyways just in case it was true.
It’s sort of the same with my dreams. I’m a lucid dreamer, but I’m only aware to an extent, usually. For example, I am constantly aware that I am in a dream, and have even started analyzing the meaning of my dreams while in them! However, this doesn’t stop me from freaking out when a monster attacks me or following the plot line of the dream, because I am not aware to the point where I can say “This is a dream, so none of this is real and I can do what I want to.” I am just aware enough to be able to navigate the dream world without becoming overly frightened and disturbed (due to my use of coping mechanisms-aka dream powers) which is very similar to how I function in the real world as well.
This lead to my theory of using lucid dreams to help schizophrenics become more aware during their psychotic episodes, as I find the two VERY closely related, with delusions being the same as the plotline of a dream, hallucinations being the dream characters, the psychoses and hallucinations constantly being changed and effected by the individuals’ emotional states. To use that as a therapy would first require me to figure out how the heck I can lucid dream/go through my psychoses lucid in the first place!
My level of insight depends largely in part on how much medication I’m taking. The delusions and paranoia are louder and more difficult to ignore when I’m not taking medication; when I am taking higher doses of medicine, it’s easier to recognize them for what they are.
I’ve said it before: it can be exhausting constantly monitoring one’s thoughts for delusions or paranoia.
I find that my ability to maintain awareness drops as my stress levels rise, which is when I become most prone to delusions and paranoia.
Upon which my helper voices will actually tell me that what I’m experiencing and believing is false…for example when I would cry out to God (one of my helper voices) over the demons attacking me he would tell me that it was a battle I would have to fight on my own, because the demons were coming from inside me and were due to my attempts to repress my sexuality.
I didn’t believe him or fully understand what that meant until this week…why do I have voices like that? I remember when I’d be lost in delusion God would stop talking to me. And when I’d ask him why he said it was because he didn’t want me to connect him with the false beliefs I was having, to which I’d throw a hissy fit and say he was lying to me because my beliefs were true. Then I’d sheepishly apologize later when I’d come out of the episode and realize I was completely off the deep end.
Indeed. I feel like I’m trying to sail a boat all the while I’m bailing out said boat because it leaks continuously. It gets easier over time, thankfully.
I guess I do the same thing when I’m frozen in fear when I stare at something that stares back at me. Such as the long faced, pointy chin alien with the sideways mouth hanging in the folds of the shower curtain, that said to me, “you’ve been a wafer too long”.
Took me a few minutes before I got it (try it phonetically) then my fear dissolved into silly laughter.
Matters not my insight, I still got yelled at for talking to myself too loud.
I have had to really pay close attention to what my girlfriend says about how I’m doing with reality in regards to my past with drinking and toking weed. Now that I’ve gave up those things I feel much more stable and not so needy for a backdrop to what I’m thinking from my girlfriend which I think is a big relief to her.
10 out of 10.
dark sith takes a bow…" thank you, thank you…i know i am brilliant !"
" now where are my pants…?..demons have you seen my pants…?"
take care
I thought I would give my perspective here I made a post last week about myself. Now Regarding " insight"… Now I’m on medication and improving I see things diffrently but still I’m never quite sure until I’m reassured ( at times). I can rationalize things better were previously I coudnt . I still don’t think " I’m ill" but I know there’s a problem as I’m taking medication which is working which Is good enough for me.so does that mean I know I’m " unwell" in my own terms?
I currently question whether I’m schizophrenic or just a victim of an insane psychic experience. I know believing in a so-called psychic experience (instead of an illness) makes me sound like a nutcase to other people, and I know outsiders will never believe I’m not just mentally sick. I don’t even bother to try to convince people I’m not ill. So I have that much insight, at least.
I’m always aware I might be insane, I just don’t always really believe it, due to a lot of weird phenomena I have experienced.
Also, my level of delusion never varies. Meds and stress do nothing to alter my level of “delusional thinking.”
could you explain this do you mean you did something pschic like meditation or and then got schizophernia.dont worry anything you let me know .by the way i had voices esarlier but now i only have loud thoughts
I just mean I’m not sure if I’m really schizophrenic - i.e. mentally ill - or if my voices and delusions are actually real. Like they’re true, genuine psychic communication. So I don’t know if it’s really a sickness or not.