Can you be aware that you're having delusions?

Doesn't really make sense, does it? You would think having a delusion means you 100% believe in said delusion despite all contrary evidence. But I am seeing some searches on google that are contradicting. What I am wanting to know...is if anyone here as suffered from delusions as a part of Bipolar I Psychosis....is it possible for it to slowly develop so that at first you are half-aware that you are having delusions?

I'm asking this because since I am aware of the symptoms of my bipolar mania, I do somewhat find it odd that all of the sudden I keep thinking and truly feeling like I am this great musical composer that no one has discovered yet...and at the same time I have a logical "sane" part of me that knows this can't be true but my feelings are so strong and my thoughts so persistent it just *FEELS* true....I don't know if I'm explaining this very well.

I've already been having some other strange symptoms of psychosis for the past couple of weeks...all of the symptoms revolving around music...kind of why it feels like I must be extremely musically gifted and have untapped talent if I'm having all of these musical experiences. I don't know. So can you be at least somewhat aware of a delusion, at least early on?

Yes, I think it is possible. There is a sort of in-between phase where reality testing becomes necessary (start of delusion) but the reality testing is still possible. So you can sort of slip in and out of delusion by frequently reality testing.

This article explains it pretty well IMO:

Progression of Psychosis in Bipolar Disorder - HealthyPlace

I once belived things that I knew other people would think were crazy but I thought weren't crazy. However, I, at first, used phrases such as 'either the Holy Spirit has done something amazing or I have completely lost my mind.' In the beginning, there was a huge internal (or with certain people, external) struggle.

Extremely helpful link! Thank you so much! I've contacted my therapist and psychiatrist to see what they think.

Interesting, Copper!

I have a lot more "bizarre thoughts" than I do delusions. Sometimes they grow into delusions, but usually not.

I also have delusions that I completely don't recognize until way after the fact. These delusions usually concern something that is plausible, not as strange as the stuff that I have insight into in the beginning. When I thought I was a demon, I knew it was weird. When I thought that my pdoc could barely stand me and thought I had a personality disorder and was attention seeking, I didn't question it.

I had strange delusions that I didn't catch at all, even in the beginning, before I was dx'd and knew what bp was. I think now I've trained myself to "be on the lookout" for anything weird.

I think of it as being similar to the idea of knowing you're having a hallucination. I tend to know when I'm hallucinating because I can reality check and ask the people around me if they heard/saw what I saw. Or things will just be completely out of context, like radio music at 3am that sounds like its coming from downstairs where there's not even a radio.

Also DBT has taught me that you can hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at once. You can believe in your delusion and believe that your delusion is false by reality checking. The time I had a delusion that my cat's evil shadow twin (a hallucination) wanted me to jump off my roof, I was able to recognize that that was insane even though I believed it to be true as well. I thought to myself "My thinking is insane".

Nailed it! I've had some of the same experiences, like with the nonexistent radio. I "knew" it couldn't be, and yet my mind insisted the sound was there. And when I "saw" cats running underneath the linen carts in the ER last fall, what was left of my rational mind told me that was impossible, but I did continue to see them. At one point I even asked my husband if he saw them, which of course he didn't.

Wow I've heard a far off radio playing ragtime music before. I looked and looked but couldn't find it. I kept hearing it and couldn't sleep.

Idk if I have delusions but I get paranoia where I think there's cameras in people's houses and they're wRching me from far away. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just paranoid but it feels so real!

Also, when I'm in mania..pArt of my racing thoughts is like a radio sometimes. Song after song playing over and over again.

That was a really great article CopperStar. Thanks for the link.

In the beginning, during my last episode, I knew my delusions couldn't be true. I felt I was dreaming, but would reality check by snapping my wrists with rubber bands.

But then it progressed, and just got worse, and I truly believed I was dreaming, and while I was sleeping (which was like two to three hours a night) I was actually awake, and then the racing thoughts came on full force, I truly believed I could save the world with my positive energy once I made enough of it (I made positive collages, wall to wall), and that once I "woke"up it would be released out into the world.

I believed all of that. There was no doubt.

Oh, and needless to say I ended up in the hospital after a pathetic OD attempt to "wake" myself up, and obviously the world has not been saved. Lol.

Good article copper. That really explained the progression of my experience.

Yeah. I think if it's slow to come on and or slow to fade there can be moments of mixed perceptions, you know, loosing it, but still maintaining a slight grip on reality.

I went through this in 2009 where the build up to the actual psychotic episode and the coming down were so slow, I felt as I described above. I knew what I thought was ridiculous but that didn't change the face that it scared the crap out of me.

For me, personally depends.

Some can happen within seconds .... literally .... and there's no time for that testing / questioning reality check type thing.

Others may be a bit more progressive so yeah I guess there's time for me to question the theory but sometimes it's so far gone by the time it's hit me I don't know what's going on

I've had to talk myself down and out of things like that a few times. So far it hasn't progressed to the point where I didn't realize that I was "losing it", it was weird, in that I knew I was being irrational but I couldn't make my self not be irrational.

Checking my thought process to see if it seems normal seems to fill my days and years. Asking people what they think is common.

Keeping a log of daily symptoms (graph and check marks with 1-10 scale) helps me to know when I am more prone. Or sometimes notice what I thought was logical is actually a symptom of (for example) psychic. "Was I psychic today - oh not at all, wait - there was that hour when I was connected spiritually to a little girl from Texas, but that was real.... wasn't it?" Instead of that being a zero, suddenly that becomes a 8. Ya, I thought I was psychic today, maybe instead of being psychic, that was my illness.

It is really hard knowing where reality begins and delusion ends.

Raspberry: I am exhausted by all the positive energy I have sent out. My delusions of being able to do this same thing has happened for over 30 years. We bipolarites so often experience similar delusions, and my continuing fear is - what if we are right? Its so mentally confusing not knowing what is actually real. But, the normeys all want us to understand it isn't real. What if its not real to them? What if we bipolars are people who are more prone to psychic, or what if we understand some great understanding of how to create a better world. What if we are more at one with the cosmic? See, the trained side of me sees these thoughts and says - oh ya, that is me being prone to mania and delusions at this time. Believing that. But the part of me that lived without doctors and whose life was literally hell for decades because of ignorning my illness says - yes but you used to understand the stuff in the invisible is real, and the truth, and the current educational and governmental systems have no use for, purpose or point for what they consider delusionary thinking.

omg, why are our minds split in two between reality and imagination.

Its exhausting. But for my part - Thank you Raspberry, for making the world a better place by expanding your spirit and lifting us. Humankind is heavy.

After I got out of the hospital I researched different types of psychosis, and I was like, wow, mine was pretty typical. Lol

Ima - Thanks.

For me yes. I was driving and thought I saw a woman in the woods. I stopped and thought to myself real hard and knew this wasn't not true.

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Thanks for all the feedback!

Well it turned out I was indeed having delusions and some hallucinations and ended up going to the hospital that day. I stayed inpatient for a week. Any time I've ever been psychotic, it always revolves around music. I will hear music, have OCD thoughts and behaviors about music, and I guess now sometimes I have delusions and paranoia regarding music. So weird. Anyway, I'm feeling a lot more stable now....I'm currently doing an intensive outpatient program. It's pretty fascinating to read other people's delusions. Our brains are so interesting.

One of my delusions, involved my brother, his wife and my best friend and her family "Plotting against me" They planted listening devises in my home, and had people outside my house, at all hours watching me. I felt they had a network of people in place, to follow me everywhere.

I began removing all the wall sockets from my home and looking inside them for listening devises. I began video taping all the cars and people in front of my house. I'm sure my neighbors noticed me constantly peeking out windows and video taping things.

My husband would tell me my thinking was off. "Part" of me would listen to him, the other part was sure he just didn't know how awful people could be.

So yes, it's possible to have some insight into your delusion. I have a smidgen.

I usually don't realize it while it's happening, but I will later on even within the same day. Once I realize it I let it go and try not to think about it. It doesn't happen to me very often though.

There is that place where I thought it was real and yet knew that if I told anyone then THEY would just think I was crazy and deluded. So it is like one step up from thinking it and yet realizing it probably isn't true...

I guess

That's my thought