When you are having symptoms (of any flavor), how well do you think that you hide them?

I feel like I am pretty darn good at hiding my really bad symptoms, but anyone close to me, I can't really hide the self-neglect very well, of course.

But for many years now I've sort of prided myself a bit (however irrationally) on how well I am able to drift through life with severe ideation issues, constant intrusive thoughts, occasional visual hallucinations, etc without anyone seeming to be able to pick up on it at all.

I only seem to slip it up when an episode gets really bad, because I start to lose touch with reality to the point that I'm unaware of things that, if I were paying attention to them, I would try hide them, but when it gets to a certain point, like I can go two weeks without showering and it won't even register in my awareness.

But verbally I've always managed to be pretty good at hiding things, most of the time. I can spend three hours having horrendous intrusive paranoid and morbid thoughts, then have a brief 'normal' and pleasant conversation with someone, and then go back to my madness.

Although I wonder if the cause/effect might not be somehow reversed. Like I noticed not long ago that I was having visual hallucinations, brief and nothing too crazy, but still just unpleasant in and of itself. Then I hung out with someone for a few hours, and I felt a lot more stable the whole time they were with me, didn't see anything that wasn't real (I don't think). I had a very hard time focusing and understanding things I normally would be quick about, but other than that, it was like I genuinely felt less nuts and was able to come across as less nuts than I really was that day.

There have been countless times when I've been talking to someone and getting all sorts of intrusive issues, imagery of violent and startling and random things, seeing imagery in my head, having flights of internal stimuli and feelings, but I've always felt fairly confident than the people around me were oblivious.

Over the past several months, there have been so many times when my mother has been going on and on about her vacations and such, right down to the details about her hotel rooms, and I feel like I do a pretty good job at seeming like I am 'there' even when my mind is a million miles away or running multiple different thought trains at the same time. Or I'll have spent the whole day contemplating the true nature and fate of humanity or some such thing, feeling very passionately and thinking very deeply in spiraling circles, and then switch to 'normal mode' to listen to someone talk about their day at work. Or at least seem to be in a 'normal mode'.

I also seem to be able to muster up the motivation for ADLs for the sake of other people. The thought will occur to me when I realize I have an obligation. My first pdoc appointment, I hadn't showered in several days, but I showered for the appointment in order to be respectful. I felt extremely anxious and agitated, but I managed to speak in a somewhat steady tone. I'd spent the previous week extremely wound up, suicidal, agitated, no hygiene and having hallucinations, yet was able to present myself as clean, dressed right and relatively sane for the appointment.

Problem is that I can only 'fake it' in short bursts. If I had to put on that presentation day after day, it would probably only be a few days to a week before I would deteriorate pretty damn fast. I know this just from previous job endeavors alone.

What about you guys/gals? Feel free to wall-of-text me here because I am rather curious on this.