[mattjstead]

I have researched on multiple websites and web search engines and I keep getting mixed results and opinions.
Is there symptoms before psychosis hits?
I have been literally on a roller coaster by the hour. One hour I feel great the next I feel like I'm in a dark hole and everything is falling in around me.
I feel like I just need to leave and clear my head. I live in Dallas, and yesterday I literally had the website up to buy a ticket to LA and just leave and go there and think (I have no family or friends in LA it was just the first place I thought).
Anyways, just a question. Is there Pre-Symptoms to psychosis and should I be worried?

Thanks,
Matt S.

[lovejoy91]

Hey, I'm in Dallas, too. Link up one day?

[BeyondtheRainbow]

I think you have 2 different questions maybe but they have the same answer. Taking off impulsively is more mania and I think most people have warning signs although they can be very subtle and sometimes noticed by other people before the one who has the bipolar.

With psychosis you are losing touch with reality through hallucinations and delusions and thought patterns that are disconnected from reality. I honestly didn't know this until now (I've had psychosis but never a psychotic break and this time the psychosis has been more worrisome for reasons I'm not completely clear on) but apparently early signs of psychosis can come before a psychotic break. Because I've had some signs my therapist has been watching really carefully because he says he's worried that it will come from hallucinations and some confusion about reality/cognitive issues to full-blown psychosis.

I think bipolar tends to throw warnings at us before it does things but it usually takes therapy to help figure out what those signs are and how to counter them.

If you have a therapist or pdoc you should probably get in touch with them since you had that experience and if you don't have both of them you probably need both. The work from different angles and both help a lot.

[Soul Quake]

Yeah I think there are "pre-symptoms." Maybe not in all cases. For me it seems to be when derealization and/or depersonalization set in.

I only have paranoia and delusions along with sensory issues. I never thought of it a psychotic until recently.

[~Christina]

I start to lose time, Can't remember what I was doing an hour ago. I disassociate, I have trouble explaining how I am feeling, Cant find the words.. This is usually how my episodes into Psychosis start. If I can catch them at the early stages I can usually turn it around.

But I have also gone from Zero to Psychosis in 3.2 seconds and not have a chance to fight it or even knew it arrived.

My therapist told me I was psychotic. I just thought I was very manic. But I think the paranoia and delusions may qualify as psychotic.

[Crazy Hitch]

I know I'm psychotic when I literally feel like the whole world can kill me within a split second.

Then I have to just stop doing whatever I was doing that made me think that in the first place.

I dunno what causes it for BP ppl in general.

For me it's probably getting involved in other people's business that has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

[cashart10]

For me, during my major psychotic break, there were definitely symptoms before the psychosis began. The "symptoms" presented themselves through severe mania. I once read about this girl, a christian with special talents, who drank a glass of water every morning to help keep herself pure. I held onto that and, once delusional, drank gallons of water so the Holy Spirit wouldn't leave. I started having panic attacks that I eventually believed were the presence of an outside spirit, possessing me. Beginning to read the Bible daily, turned into reading it 6 times a day. Believing I "received" the Holy Spirit turned into hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit (internally). Having had someone "cast a demon" from me when I was young and struggling from Bipolar, I decided that the fear (especially), anger, and pride I was experiencing were actually evil spirits and that the Lord had given me, through the Holy Spirit, the gift of casting out these demons. This turned into me "casting out my demons" in the shower, and vomiting out these evil spirits, in reality from drinking too much water so quickly (because that's what the Lord told me to do). It was as though to some degree, when delusional, I held onto rational thoughts and twisted them into delusional beliefs. If someone had picked up how wrapped up I was in my faith earlier, it could have been prevented (maybe), I think.

[Toodles333]

I've had a recent experience.

Mine built up over a few weeks. At first I started to think quite a lot about higher beings. I'm not religious, so god and religion never played a part. I started to question the point of me being here any longer and what a miserable existence somebody had planned out for me.

I then started to see signs and messages in things, all related to past and recent traumas. I felt that I was being mocked and taunted by this higher being. I believed that I was being watched by cameras in one room in my home and also in one of my cars. I would talk to these cameras sometimes. Looking back now, it wasn't too pretty.

My tipping point was getting a message in a fortune cookie. I thought that somebody had to be spying on me to know what to put in the message. I taped up the corner of the room at home where I thought the camera was. I rang my local crisis team and made a threat to kill. I was unmedicated at the time, suffering from severe sleep deprivation and I was basically spiralling out of control, so please don't hold it against me.

I ended up in hospital that evening.

[jacky8807]

my worst psychotic built up for weeks with anxiety and extreme paranoia. Then i start connecting things that were in no way connected. Then all of a sudden im also losing time...things are getting wierd scary and blurry. The next thing i know im not sleeping or eating things are getting stranger and stranger (as if i dropped acid or something) and the next thing i know im gonzo