what convinced you?

What convinced you you were actually psychotic?

Here's my story: I thought I was Persephone (I had other delusions, but the current one at the time was Persephone) also known as Kore. I was sure it was really happening, it was right after the spring equinox,and I thought I was "waking up" from being in the underworld through winter. I called 911 three times becuae I was freaking out from hallucinations and delusions. I wanted them to stop. The ER kept sending me home. My meds weren't working(Abilify) I was already diagnosed as bipolar,although that's been changed now to schizoaffective. Anyway, my sister was driving me to another hospital, two hours away. I stopped at a bathroom,and on the wall it said "KOR" with an arrow pointing downward. I thought it was meant for me personally. After getting on new meds, the hallucinations/delusions for the most part stopped, although I still believed something was going on. On the way back, we stopped at the same place. I was scared, but I decided to check the bathroom to see if the word was still there. It was, but it said KORN, with a funny N(like the band name,maybe)

I realized my mind had played tricks on me. That I really HAD been delusional. This was actually a relief for me, because now the end of the world/beginning of a new one, wasn't resting on my shoulders. I wasn't someone important, just a regular person with a sickness that was manageable.

I first got delusional at 11 or 12. Around 16, I started reading a lot about psychology. I came across Capgras syndrome, the delusion that someone has replaced someone in your life with an imposter. When I was 11, I believed that dark spirits in my basement had kidnapped my dad and replaced him with a robot. I tried hard not to think about it, thinking that maybe if I ignored it, I would never experience symptoms like those again.

My misguided beliefs/delusions (not sure which) throughout high school were not as bizarre, so they went undetected. I thought that I was subhuman, that everyone was judging me, that I was really stupid (despite having straight As). When I was diagnosed with bipolar at age 19, I realized that my beliefs when I was 11 and 12 were just that, delusions. But I still didn't recognize the subtler stuff in high school as being potentially psychotic, even though they had caused me more pain over time.

At 21, I began having strange delusions again, thinking I could talk to dead people and inanimate objects, that I was a powerful demon, that I could do magic, stuff like that. I am just now recognizing that stuff as a delusion, and sometimes I still think I have superpowers. Thinking I'm a demon makes me feel powerful; thinking I'm ill makes me feel weak.

The thing about delusions is that it is almost impossible while in one to know you're delusional, even if you recognize you've been psychotic in the past. I've had very short-lived paranoid delusions (thinking that the guy sitting next to me at Starbucks had put a date rape drug in my coffee-about 20 minutes after he left, I realized that I was probably safe and proceeded to drink the rest of my cold gingerbread latte); though I was able to see clearly within an hour of the delusion starting, while I was under its influence, I believed it and didn't even think it was strange.

I'm glad that you find comfort in knowing that you're not really Persephone. This illness is manageable, and you can live a full life!

I knew something was wrong when I started hearing voices. Before that I was just seeing "spirits" and having visions which I thought was the result of psychic powers. Hearing voices is something you hear about as shorthand for crazy. Now I just use "psychotic" to describe what's happening to me. Whether it's a result of a mental disorder or something else... eh I still have trouble answering that a lot. Especially when the symptoms are more subtle... It's like as soon as one delusion is gone another one comes to take its place.

I had delusions since as far back as I can remember. I never told anyone about my hallucination or voices because I thought it was normal to have people talk inside and outside of a person head. All my relationships went to hell since I was 14 or 15 because I was constantly paranoid I was being cheated on, lied to, etc.. Self fulfilling prophecies i guess. Nobody questioned growing up, why i was withdrawn, I was also a very depressed baby and slept 18 hours a day, which I can still do. In my early 20s I again tried relationships and they failed, I was not hearing voices very much but by the time i was 25 I was full blown psychotic. I thought people were trying to have me killed, that people were watching me etc etc... I ended up in the ER and in an ambulance to the ward. I was there for 3 weeks, bu the time I left I still thought people were after me but I acted like I was fine because being in there was like a rat in a cage, just going outside for a walk on the last day was such a relief.... I still hear voices and have hallucinations, I started hearing people talk the other day and I am on medications already. Maybe they are really there, maybe the experiences I had really had some truths to it, I guess I will never know. I could take a spiritual approach to it and say I hear dead people and see dead people, but that just makes me look crazy to people, i very seldom tell anyone when I am sick, I act like all is fine, I put a good front on which I have learned to master since a very young age. I take my pills and go to college, do my homework and from time to time get very delusional, but I have learned to question myself and my perspective, if i am seeing things correctly. One can never be to sure what reality is being a SA, but, I use my therapist as a good grounding for reality.. I think without mental health support I would end up homeless walking up and down the street talking to myself, There goes the schizo guy!

I never knew until it was over. Last year I heard someone talk about their cameras on YT and suddenly I started realizing all my past delusions.

I had hallucinations and visions and voices since I was in my twenties. I always thought it was a gift rather than a mental illness. I've since come to understand it maybe both and I realized I could still have a gift and see things that other people don't see, maybe spirits, and see the dead which I call the ancestors, so its not frightening for me. I'm on medication and I see a therapist weekly and that helps me understand my delusions and my visions.

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Until about a year ago I thought it was normal. Everyone is irrational some times and I thought that's what they meant. I mean my siblings go through the same thing. I still don't accept it most of the time.

The people and psychotic issues have always been a part of my life but even as a child I knew I had to keep it a secret. My psychosis ebbs and flows--sometimes, I have a psychotic break and don't realize it until something major happens.

like...sudden awareness that chasing the people down the street with a loaded 9mm was a bad idea--especially since it was directly across from a middle school. I had enough insight to determine it was best if I put the gun away and go to the hospital where the people could not get get me.

like...deciding to go to the drs for meds and to stay in the little room because I had been driving non-stop for 3 nights (fleeing the people) and I could not remember how long it had been since I last slept--I knew it was 4 or more days before I took off in my car--so, at least 7 nights but could have been 8-10.

I've been good about my meds for a long time so nothing too dramatic happens very often. I occasionally get chased by a black monster and get a little freaked out but mainly just its paranoia and anxiety. I am fully aware of my illness and that my delusions, hallucinations are not shared by others....but, they still seem awful real to me.

It was a slow realization for me and even now I dip in and out of insight. I had one moment in the hospital last year where I realized just how sick I was/am, but that's faded into the background and now I'm still struggling with insight. It's strange. Logically I can see that my thoughts are strange and that hearing voices isn't normal... but then it switches over and I'm just psychotic with no insight whatsoever.

I think the trick is realizing when you are starting to go in that direction. I catch myself sometimes getting delusional, it will usually start after the voices begin, I have believed so many things that have turned out not to be true, that I don't really know what is real and what isn't, at any moment I could have just been delusional again. I spend ALOT of time thinking too, about everything, all kinds of scenes going on in my head, with that and voices and being delusional, how can one ever really know reality at all?? Is there one?

Complicated answer considering sometimes I convince myself that what I'm thinking is untrue, and will forget all about it when I "find evidence" that makes me feel whatever I'm thinking can be true. For example, I'm currently convinced that (though I've made many realizations to the contrary) I am somehow connected with multiple realities and can see and hear things from those multiple planes. Sometimes the info is from a reality so similar to my own that I'm cabable of "predicting" what happens in this "main" reality. My therapist and I agree that this is an illusion. I am currently inclined to disagree with both of us.

I went to my PCP to get meds for depression. In the midst of the conversation with him, he decided that there was more wrong with me. I took me awhile to accept it... in fact, the very idea of my illness led me to a sort of mini breakdown that required me to be hospitalized. I think it was there, in the hospital that I realized that I was sick. That was just a couple of years ago.

I have lived my whole life with delusions, voices, social anxiety, etc... never comprehending that it was an illness, or that I had treatment options.

Today my problem is that my delusions make more sense that real life. It makes the struggle harder, but I have a life that is worth fighting for.

I realized I was psychotic after coming out of a bad relationship that fed my psychosis. Then for a while I was battling the idea that it was just my ex, even though sometimes I was fully "in that world", and partially "not in that world". For the longest time my entire identity was different, and I've had to come to terms with my own name. I kind of want to cry thinking about this, honestly. My parents don't even know. I'm so good at hiding my sickness.

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When the prophecies of the shadow man did not come true I started questioning whether it was real or not. When I took my medications, my dog didn't die, so I thought it was safe to take meds again and for a while I still believed in the shadow man and now it is over a year later I still wonder if he is real or not.

I just assumed that I was having spiritual experiences or that at other times they were normal. I had been having delusions and hallucinations for years and was only convinced two years ago. My incredibly kind and spiritual psychosis began to become something more sinister which made me question everything about what I was seeing and hearing. Also, I was convinced that I was disease ridden with one particular disease especially. The way that I knew that I was sick was because the "signs" were everywhere. It finally took test after test from doctor after doctor to convince me that maybe something was going on with me.