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Originally Posted by Sometimes psychotic
So I have to agree they’re meaningful in some way. Basically I was drawn to shamanism by a new age friend I knew in grad school. She took me on a journey and found a spirit animal that was willing to help me. It must have been buried in my subconscious for 10-15 years. There’s just something super appealing about the concept to me, possibly because I was missing spirituality in my life.
The part of my brain that believes in shamanism is also is the part that believes in God...but this seems different than my conscious belief system. My conscious belief system is still a non believer in anything. It’s all very complicated in a way, but I believe there can be different areas of the brain with different levels of consciousness. Part of my delusions involved the right half of my brain as a distinct entity from the left, but it could not speak, auditory hallucinations were the result of it trying to communicate. Super weird I know, but there was one study where thy put half the brain to sleep and give questions and you can get different answers from each half.
Sorry I’m rambling on but the point is there is this spirituality belief that is disconnected from my conscious mind and also another delusion I had was that I needed to reintegrate my brain [emoji3447] and I’d be stable. It’s almost as if my brain were giving me instructions to get better again. I could never figure out what to do for the reintegration though. It’s possible it’s just a delusion, or it could be meaningful. My brain in th psychotic state was actually really good at providing a different type of answer than would typically occur to my conscious mind. For example, i was playing star ocean and very near to th end of the game. Suddenly my team of characters could not make it past soldiers with ranged weapons. I must have died 50 times and then a hallucination said I needed to fight ranged weapons with ranged weapons...well it worked. While I’ve always enjoyed video games I’m not particularly skilled at strategy so this was a revelation and it came somewhere from my own mind....should I disregard it just because it’s not coming from my conscious mind?
Given psychosis you can either dump everything in the trash in which case you’re ignoring part of your own mind or you can work though it in some way. I’ve chosen to work through it and respect all the inner subconscious components of my mind. This seems to provide peace for me.
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No you should not disregard it. In my belief system, it is equally as important. It just speaks a different language. They say we only use a small fraction of our consciousness.
You said 'It’s almost as if my brain were giving me instructions to get better again.' This is EXACTLY how I feel about it. Every bit of the crazy that came out of me points directly to something that is broken or abandoned in my past. Some of it is even relevant to the collective consciousness. Just because it appears to be disordered and chaos doesn't mean it isn't true.
I also believe consciousness is segmented or faceted like you describe. In extreme cases it is dysfunctional as in DID. Different pieces connect with various aspects of our experiences. I think we have to find creative ways to work with our holistic self and realize we express things like spirituality differently through our various personas or archetypes.
And yes, I agree about the different processing styles of the hemispheres and sometimes one side has an answer we need when we cannot 'see' it on our own. I love to use figurative language to teach for this very reason. It lights both sides up.
I once watched a TED talk of a woman who found a way to thrive through schizophrenia by working with her psychosis in similar ways. It sounds like we both have formulated our own systems like she did. It makes sense to me something unique would work for each person as our experiences and consciousness are unique.
My therapist doesn't really get it, but she can agree what I am doing is working for me and she supports it while keeping a watchful eye. My pdoc gets it and thought it was quite interesting. He sent me on my way and wished me well and said his door is open any time...