[hamster-bamster]

I usually do not realize I am in psychosis during it. Sometimes I do, but usually do not. Here, I read that people report, with ease, how they are psychotic. Can you please give some concrete examples?

I usually do know when I am in the midst of psychosis, if hallucinations are present. If it it dellusions that is much trickier. If I am seeing things such as little people hiding in my closets, or voices coming from my hot water tank , I can bounce that off of what I would know to be rational or reality. All tho I "know" it isn't real, it still feels real and I still do get caught up in it. Delusional thoughts tho, that is much more an after the fact realization. Sometimes I will bounce these thoughts off others whose judgement I trust. even with the hallucinations I jump back and forth from knowing it isn't real to believing it is, but I still have awareness.

It's very common to have awareness, even tho we are always told things like " if some one is crazy ( psychotic ) they would not know". That is not always the case. I wish that saying never caught on.

I hope that makes some sense.

[hamster-bamster]

It does make sense, thank you, Anika!

Oh also, I think that If a person has been dx as having psychosis this brings about an awareness too, you will likely remember your psychotic experience, so you do have some sort of reference point.

Is there a difference between having psychosis and being psychotic? I think so, and the difference would be the patients insight. If I am having psychosis but I am aware to a degree, and it isn't seriously affecting my daily living, I would not consider myself psychotic. Psychotic would be having no insight, loss of reality.

Personally I think I lie in the middle, I have some awareness but not complete, holding onto the awareness is a constant struggle during these times.

There is a lot written about people who hear voices, but have no mental illness. They are able to ignore the voices and continue on. This would not be psychotic.

The only reason I said I wish that saying had not caught on is because it's misleading. I think it can deter some people who are experiencing psychosis but have some awareness to not seek help.

Now I'm just talking too much

[Forgive77]

No! I think this is a great topic, and you hit it well Anika! Before I knew what psychosis was...I didn't know I was having unreal feelings or thoughts. When I found out it was psychosis...it was depressing. My reality turned upside down!! My issues are always with demons, and the bible...if the bible says that demons, and the evil one is real and we are to stay away from them, yet I can literally feel I'm in constant attack...??? And...if my psychologist says I need to lay off of watching Joyce Meyer....is she someone trying to misdirect me from God?? I have heard demons growling from my sink. It scared the living day lights out of me...at that time, I thought it was 'real." A few weeks ago I had sleep paralysis...totally explained it away when i checked it on the internet..I posted about it when I had it. I thought a demon was trying to have sex with me. Then, I read about it, and it all went away...however...at the same time, I still feel as though it is the devil pulling a trick on me, to pull me away from God, and believe there is not such thing as the devil. Does this make sense?...I hope so..these are one of my huge trials and tribulations with the disease. I believe in God, and am religious....the bible says demons are real, and so are profits, and that they are ravenous wolves...and I'm to believe that..but I'm not to believe I'm in a constant state of saving my sole, and that these are figments of my imagination? I watch ghost hunters all the time, and if there is 'proof' of what the bible says....than am I really crazy or just sensitive? They can lock me up...I'll still believe what I believe. So, long story short....yes! I now know I'm in 'psychosis," but do I really believe it's psychosis...or what I'm to spiritually believe? Thanks for the topic!

Good call forgive, bringing religion, cultural beliefs and such into the equation = muddy waters. Is it psychosis, is it spiritual?? How can anyone prove that for sure?

[SunAngel]

I know, at times, when I am psychotic.

Other times, I have no idea. When I was in the ER using my sneaker as a telephone, I had no idea until I was told by my husband and my therapist at the time.

I know when I am suffering from psychotic paranoia though.

Originally Posted by Anika

I usually do know when I am in the midst of psychosis, if hallucinations are present. If it it dellusions that is much trickier. ... I can bounce that off of what I would know to be rational or reality. All tho I "know" it isn't real, it still feels real and I still do get caught up in it. Delusional thoughts tho, that is much more an after the fact realization. Sometimes I will bounce these thoughts off others whose judgement I trust. even with the hallucinations I jump back and forth from knowing it isn't real to believing it is, but I still have awareness.

This makes sense. (Preamble about where I'm coming from: I can only recall one visual hallucination (true hallucination, not, say, hypnopompic) that was quite unsettling. Minor vague peripherals somtimes when very depressed. Oh. And olfactory hallucinations [same scent, definitely not there] from time to time.) So anyway(!) Though I do not experience to the degree you speak of, delusions, yeah, like paranoia --knowing it just can't be reality, but nonetheless undissueded. I had a time of being absolutely convinced that the apartment complex had a bunch of surveillance-cams. I'll skip the details, but it really impeded me. TG I didn't think the were inside(!) Reality check 1: cheap*** apt. complex. As if they would spend the $ and put them at the stupid places I had "figured out" they were! Reality check 2: BF. But I still wouldn't go by where I thought they were, and couldn't stop thinking about them. So, yeah, it was clearly a delusion. But it took awhile to realize it (a week or so). Thanks to reality checks, I knew it wasn't real, but still "knew" it was(!) On the weirdest visual, it was a cat. We didn't HAVE a cat! So, aware that it must have been a hallucination, but damn, I saw it!

Which leads me to wonder. Perhaps how long it goes on contributes to lack of awareness?? Like, my thought process when deeply depressed for a very long time is... I'll "say" that I concede that perhaps it is "off" a bit from what others say (ie. reality check), but not only do I deeply believe my twisted thinking, I really don't know how veeery far off base I am. Like you say, Anika, realizing it after the fact. The delusion of the spy cams went on for awhile before I was sure it wasn't real. The hallucination of the cat could be verified right away. Maybe part of the awareness comes from the battle between what you know or hear to be real and what you are seeing or believing??

Originally Posted by Anika

It's very common to have awareness, even tho we are always told things like " if some one is crazy ( psychotic ) they would not know". That is not always the case. I wish that saying never caught on.

I hate that saying too.

Ok thinking about this more,

Do pdocs or mental health teams try to bring awareness to the patient? Say with schizophrenia? I'm not sure what the treatment for schizophrenia entails, but you would think that this would be an important step. Someone with psychosis who has insight would likely have more success with treatment, be more med compliant, and seek help sooner and stick with it.

[cocoabeans]

Innerzone, refreshing, that whole I know it isn't real but, I believe it anyway is something I go through at times. I don't know if I believe things for awhile first though, I'm a bit stupid about myself sometimes. Huh.

[Chompers]

Originally Posted by Forgive77

A few weeks ago I had sleep paralysis...totally explained it away when i checked it on the internet..I posted about it when I had it. I thought a demon was trying to have sex with me. Then, I read about it, and it all went away

I was very religious when I was younger, & during that time I also had an episode of sleep paralysis & thought I was being attacked by a demon! I would not read about sleep paralysis for probably 15yrs, & when I did it was huge to learn what really happened to me. Even though it was only a few years after it happened I gave up religion, that experience still always made me wonder what exactly had happened to me & that is the search that finally led me to finding out about SP. Hurray for the internet! It was such a relief to finally know there was a logical explanation for it, so I no longer had to wonder if it was demons, aliens, elvis, etc.

[Secretum]

This is a tricky question. I think that it is possible to be aware of psychotic hallucinations. My intro psych professor, however, insisted that people with delusions are always 100% convinced that their delusional thoughts are true. If they doubt the thoughts, then the thoughts aren't delusions. I suppose that he could be wrong, though.

During my first episode of depression at age 12, I had some religious delusions. I thought that I had done something horrible (not writing what it was because it is too shameful/embarrassing, sorry), and that to make up for it I had to run away from home and become God's prophet. I was 100% convinced until the day came, and then I doubted enough to not leave my house. Sometimes I wish I hadn't doubted; maybe the police would have found me and I would have gotten help a lot sooner...

[AniManiac]

Honestly, I've been surprised by how many people here report psychotic symptoms and how often. At times I feel like maybe I'm not as sick as others because I don't have that particular symptom set, crazy as that thinking is in itself.

I've really only had that happen once, and it was medication-induced, but there was no interpreting it as anything other than a hallucination!

Awww Ani we are all struggling in our own ways. I had psychosis early on in childhood. About age 11. I also grew up in a very stressed environment and who knows what role that played. Interesting, my father was also dx as bipolar 1 with LOTS of psychosis and little if any insight, but not dx until later years. When I think back to our childhood it's amazing just how much of his illness directed our lives.

When I was a child I thought the psychosis was maybe something everyone had, and just didn't talk about. I had a cube above my head that I thought protected me. I could even see it in the mirror. I would hear conversations of people who were not their, ect. I asked my mom about it one day when I got brave enough. It just didn't "seem" right in a way to me. Her response made me start to realize that this was not the norm.

[spydermonkey]

Hi hamster (and others)

When I have a psychotic episode either during mania or depression...I am just really scared. I think people are watching me and I'm always watching my back and accuse people close to me of things they're not really doing.

No, I don't really notice it's happening, just my life suddenly becomes very scary...but when it is pointed out to me by someone I trust, "hey spyder....that's not normal...." I can see it for what it is. Not that that makes the psychosis go away, not at all, but I know that it is not "really reality" if that makes sense.

Originally Posted by AniManiac

Honestly, I've been surprised by how many people here report psychotic symptoms and how often. At times I feel like maybe I'm not as sick as others because I don't have that particular symptom set, crazy as that thinking is in itself.

I've really only had that happen once, and it was medication-induced, but there was no interpreting it as anything other than a hallucination!

You know, it's funny. Writing my previous post I was going to start with a preamble saying I probably had no business chiming in for not so much having them (but still having some questions/thoughts). Then started to list some incidents. And was surprised how many there were, on account of the list being far from exhaustive(!) Most have been in severe depressive states, which, even then, though not commonly so, can still fall in BP II (according to my reading, because yeah, that did worry me).

On the hypo end, I think anything delusion-like that I experience could probably safely fall under the grandiosity umbrella (even if at the edges sometimes, lol). There was only one that really raised Pdoc's eyebrow as possibly going beyond grandiosity into delusion. She said, "but you didn't believe it, did you?". "Hell, yeah I did!" If I told you what it was, you'd laugh your *** off. There was another biggie that I worried might have been delusion, but it was from my OCD -- an obsessive thought that got way out of control. It wasn't just in my mind. I acted on it in a big way. It was a completely irrational belief (actually, impossible). Probably could be said it reached "delusional intensity" though not in fact a genuine delusion.

Yikes, rabbit-trailing (new generic not working for ****). Long and short. I don't really consider myself to have psychosis in any problematic sense. (For example, my olfactory hallucination is annoying, but not problematic.) I have had some psychotic type experiences (various types of hallucinations). But since I'm moderately sure they could reasonably be attributed to factors besides the BP alone, I'm not going to count them. Very freaky and disturbing to be sure, but I don't want to count anything unless I have to, lol.

[nacht]

If they're mild enough, I can sometimes recognise my psychotic symptoms, especially auditory and visual hallucinations. That said, I can't always tell. I scared the poo out of myself in the hospital a few days ago when I thought someone was standing in the middle of my room watching me undress. It took me a minute to go "oh I must be hallucinating," because for a moment it was very real (and scary, I almost screamed!). I can't tell when I'm delusional either, which sometimes makes things difficult for people around me.

[grandmaof3]

I hear voices, mostly when I'm manic. Usually I can tell they are not real, but sometimes its hard to tell the difference. Delusions on the other hand seem very real and I don't know I'm being delusional until someone points it out, and then I don't always beleive it isn't real. After the psychosis goes away I look back and think "wow, I must be crazy. I don't know how I beleived in that crazy idea". The voices are much easier to deal with because I can look around and see that there is no one there and I must be hearing things. Its harder when there are alot of people around.

I'm always in a borderline of knowing it's real, yet being skeptical of the unreality I am experiencing. That being said, even when I am planted firmly in everyone else's reality, I tend to doubt that one too. It's a bit of a trade off, but at least I'm partly "conscious" at any given time!

[CastlesInTheAir]

I've been catching myself lately when I start having paranoid thoughts. Think its the meds aiding and cbt

-Trish
"Don't curse the rain, without it things don't grow. Instead find the beauty in it."

[hamster-bamster]

Thank you very much for all the replies, which were eye-opening to me in all respects.