I was always a spiritual person. When I became schizophrenic I thought It was because I was off track with my spiritual path. Since medication has helped me I see that my schizophrenia is not from any existance or person or me bieng wrong with them or decieved by them or controlled by them. I feel better spiritually with my medication than I did before bieng on it. Before I thought It was because I was decieved by an existance or persons or an existance decieveing people. Now I can relax and enjoy my spirituality and others more and not blame myself or tell myself others are on the right spiritual path and I am way off. I also can see the athiestic view on life while bieng way more relaxed and see the good in it.
1 Like
A big part of my psychosis had to do with being deceived. Although for me it was actually being decieved that led me into it in te first place.
Anyway what I realized is early in my development that I developed a “false self” as a coping mechenism to conform my reality to the demands of my environment to receive nurturing from my primary caregivers. This false self became an overarching pattern that I had fallen into and attached the identity of my real self too.
The schema modes model of psychology indentifies different schema modes that make up the structure of the “false self”. The theory of the false self vs the real self is explained in the book, “the search for the real self: the personality disorders of our age.” The book uses the theory to explain the personality disorders of narcissism and botderline personality disorder. But the false self is something everyone has.
Well to be more clear it is like the different schema modes are what we attach to the false self.
The false self exists to avoid feeling pain and truamas that are too painfull to deal so it become compartmentalized. In an ordinary state we are in general for the most part or varying degrees unaware of this compartmentalized truama. During psychosis that comparemtaliZed trauma hides behind a persecutory, feeling, voice or “entity.” People in general fall into life patterns where this original core trauma re enters the persons life to, “get it right this time.” The real self wants to be found but the pain of the original truama must be experienced. What typically happens is the false self utilizes defence mechanisms to avoid actually figuring out the core trauma it is avoiding in the first place. So the feeling of being decieved is become aware of this dichotomy of the false self and real self. The “problem” is when the false self utilizes defence mechenisms to project this inner conflict onto seemingly random scenerios that become the subject matter of delusions people in psychosis often fixate on.
So what can often happen is the false self projects that it is deceiving you onto the, for example, voice of the television or the cops or whatever. At that point the fear of confronting the core truama becomes the fear of the cops or tv voice etc and then the logical mind can write off everything as a mere “delusion,” effectivly avoiding what the psychosis is trying to actually have you confront deep within your psyche.