I usually get really weird thoughts which is the only way I know these days. My last episode of strong positive symptoms didn't even really feel like psychosis because it felt too real. The only way I knew was because people were really really concerned about the way I was thinking.

The paranoia was more like pronoia (People spying on me to help me) and Truman show type thing.

It's a lot different than in the past where I was extremely paranoid but now I seem to understand what is happening to me in a way when losing touch with reality.

It's like that movie "Beautiful Mind" where the guy recognized that the children in his hallucinations didn't get older as he got older and was able to make sense of it all.

I seemed to have made sense of my personal experience with psychosis faster than average because I hear schizophrenia gets more severe as you get older but as you get even older, it levels off. It's different for everyone though.

It's like when you hear voices and know they are hallucinations sometimes instead of not being sure if they are real or not which happens especially during a first psychotic break.

I hope you can see this post because I think it's a good reply to what you are looking for, in my experience anyways which gives you a different perspective on it =]