What does psychosis feel like?

How do you when you're having a psychotic episode? I had one several years ago after being taken off effexor too quickly, but I don't really remember much about it. Worried I might have experienced another last week but not sure.

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Sometimes you don't know because you're too far detached from reality. I knew because I still had a little tenuous connection to the real world so I thought that my thoughts at the time were strange and might not be real. But it felt absolutely real.

I guess you know when you're out of it and you can look back and say wow, that was crazy.

Hmmmm....that sounds exactly how I felt. I guess I should talk to my Pdoc about it when I see her next.

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I know mine was extreme paranoia (FBI coming after me), believing in conspiracy theories, delusional beliefs about events that weren't really happening. I believed I had special powers (delusions of grandeur)

I have had it happen twice, quit my job both times. Went on a 2 month hotel and Lavish spending spree the first time. After the second, I haven't felt the same since honestly. I didn't realize it was happening until damage was mostly done. Geodon helps it go away quick if I ever get that way again.

Mine all felt completely normal at the time, some were the most amazing experiences of my life that I can't ever put words on. The last one was terrifying in every way but it still felt like normal reality, just a different one from everyone elses.

I don't recall all of mine either...I know I was convinced trash cans were out to get me.

I felt like all my senses were heightened. Everything was so clear in my mind. Except it wasn't. My mind was lying to me about everything. It scared me after it was done.

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I get that too! Everything makes absolute perfect sense, the clearest truth you could ever see and you wonder how you didn't realise it before. Looking back on my last one it was pretty terrifying to think how crazy I was, and that I thought it was normal to do and think those things.

Actually it was only the last one that made me realise the others might not have been real... it all seemed to carry on and I never actually stopped believing most of it, just was able to put it to the back of my mind until it took over again :/

My last episode, a very bad one with multiple hospitalizations, I felt like I was having an acid flashback. Lots of light patterns and voices to guide me. All very biblical and spiritual - I actually wandered into a church and freaked out the people inside to the point they called the cops.

I also would writhe and arch my back as far back as I could as I thought I could transform into a sea turtle by pushing and straining all my muscles. I did this in the back of the police car, and the mental ER and several times, trying to wake up from the nightmare or something. As the Risperdal built up more and more in my system, I slowly came down and eventually slept. After a few meals and a few doses, I was back to reality.

moogs

All this has helped me so much. I'm convinced I have psychosis quite often, when my depression gets out of hand. It's a scary thought. I will be talking to my T and Pdoc about it!

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I wonder if I have psychosis. I don't have experiences that afterwards seem outlandish, like CIA is after me, numbers all mean things, this kind of thing... What I get, and I've read that this can be a symptom of psychosis, is just like more normal paranoia. For example, I got myself really worked up today, definitely hypomanic, and then perhaps psychosis. There are these two people that I work with, and one got irritated with me, and then I became convinced that she is in touch with the other, and they are both done with me, and that in fact the other has just been pretending to like me in order to advance aspects of her career, and the other hangs out with people who I know and who I have had issues with, and I imagine that they are all sitting around downing me, and then it becomes this general thing that I am just poorly received in my social and professional milieu and people just pretend to like me because they feel sorry for me or need something from me, and then I start wondering what I'm going to do about it, and making lists of people I am going to cut out of my life, etc...

I guess that does sound pretty crazy now that I am writing it down. But does that sound like psychosis? Even though it is super paranoid, it doesn't ever become preternatural or extremely fantastical, like believing I am being surveiled by governmental bodies. Know what I mean?

Anyone got any insights?

It doesn't sound like psychosis to me, sounds more like worry and social anxiety. You don't really believe the things you are thinking, and you think it's crazy. During psychosis things seem very real. Psychosis is a loss of contact with normal reality in someway.

Hmmm... OK... That is what I always kind of thought, but I read some definitions and a bit about it and it included some experiences that are more low key which surprised me, and I could relate to those experiences. But you are right, there is a degree of being able to think, 'perhaps this is crazy' going on. So maybe that makes it not psychosis. It's definitely not something I am jockeying for! Was just wondering...

Thanks for your reply.

This sounds like what people say LSD trips are like.