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Originally Posted by Wayfarer25
I was doing some journaling this morning about my difficulties with determing what's real and what's not and wondered what some of you might think if you have a similar problem.
I have general difficulty telling what's real versus what's not real. It's not particularly distressing to me. I think I've simply come to terms with the fact that I can't tell the difference and that what I'm experiencing might be a complex hallucination/delusion. But when I do get stressed out and my symptoms worsen, my difficulty stresses me out even more and starts feeding the anxiety.
So I'm wondering if anyone else has trouble determining what's real and what's not. Are you able to eventually figure out if something is real or not and how do you do it? My previous T always says to "reality test" the situation, but when I'm stuck in the moment I find it impossible to do any kind of reality check.
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I get paranoid thoughts, and hallucinations both auditory and visiaul, and it is difficult to reality check.
For example, when I was in the hospital (for physical reasons) it was taking a nurse or doctor a long time to come in and talk to me and my husband about what was going on. This kept happening. Now, I owe that hospital some money, because I had my baby there, and we're pretty low income so it is hard to pay back (I owe thousdands of dollars, hard to pay back...) Anyway, the "financial people" came in and made me sign a paper saying I knew I still owe on my balance. They came in twice!
So after the second time I look at my husband and I say, "You see, they are only waiting to treat me because I owe them money from the baby."
Now, my husband is very grounded and logical and down to earth. So he says, "No, they can't do that. This is public hospital and they can't not treat you because of money." Although I received excellent care after that, it took him almost the full two weeks I was admited to convince me I was being paranoid.
So, my reality checking is "check with someone else."
I will hear music and say, 'do you hear that?' If he says no, then i worry. Usually he says yes and gives me the teasing 'don't be paranoid' face.
