I've never been totally out of touch with reality/experienced psychosis. However, I've had multiple experiences of very strange thinking patterns/events, for example:

- wondering if someone is trying to poison me (my bf slipping something into my mouth while kissing, roommates putting something in my toothpaste)

- sex/relationship-related conspiracies (my bf is having an elaborate affair based on truly ridiculous/irrational 'evidence,' or my married friends are trying to entangle me in a bizarre sex game)

- seeing the shadow of my eyelid on the white of my eye and believing the reason for the bruised/black look was that my brain was leaking blood...(I feel this is related to other fears I have about getting sick, e.g., when I thought I had a brain tumor etc.)

-generally 'heightened' perception - like my peripheral vision is more like an animal's and I see/react to tiny movements very quickly, which sometimes feels like I'm seeing things that aren't there (some movement/shadow becomes a spider crawling across my bed)

With the paranoid thoughts I definitely react to them but not as someone would if they were totally convinced. for example, I still used my toothpaste but very hesitantly and with anxiety, and I got into a huge fight with my married friends but didn't explain my anger. As far as the blood, I did completely lose it and called family hysterical while driving myself to the ER, only to go temporarily 'blind' and end up at a friend's panicked and in tears...once they calmed me down and had me look in a mirror with them though I was ok.

I feel like this kind of warped thinking is partly why I have such a hard time maintaining a sense of perspective...I feel like I can't trust myself. I'm wondering if this is a BP thing and/or if anyone else experiences something similar?

[kaliope]

if i am using my terminology right, i believe these are delusions. this is beyond bipolar, not a symptom of it. talk to your dr about what you are going through.

[Victoria'smom]

I get these types of things if it's with an episode you'll probably get w. Psychosis attached to BP. If not your Dr may want to add a diognosis on to the BP. Generally it just means a Med change so your not so scared.

when I was a TA a while back I had a student who was obviously, excuse the term, crazy. She would show up late all the time having not slept for days - which sometimes resulted in her forgetting what day it was altogether) sometimes forget to wear shoes, dressed very provocatively but didn't wash or comb her hair (often appeared to be wearing days old makeup), insisted on sitting on the floor and would snap at people for making the tiniest noises (even breathing), was very inappropriate and intrusive. For her final paper, she turned in a rambling 40 pages in which she had a conversation with herself. I wasn't aware of her diagnosis but figured it was a pretty severe case of bipolar 1.

This is what I think of as BP w/psychosis (of course I know there is a vast spectrum/range) - but even so, in comparison it's really hard for me to think of myself as someone with 'psychotic' features of any kind...let alone even bipolar (!)