God and mental illness

How have your psychoses and/or manias been closely related to God, if at all?

I don't think I understand the question...

For example, I mean something along the lines of what is called a messiah complex, or feeling that God is talking to you, that one is a prophet, and so forth. Especially when these events surround a psychotic episode or manic episode.

I'm certainly not convinced that any of the above are actually symptomatic of mental illness although such might be considered highly delusional and, consequently, indicative of mental illness.

Just wondering if anyone else's so called psychoses and/or manias are related to God.

Hmm no I haven't but I've had moment where I felt like I wasn't alone. I've heard things that weren't really there but not like there was a God talking to me.

Lol although now I think about it we would label Jesus and Mosses as mentally unstable if their age of revolution was staged in our times lol.....
I never thought of that before...

I, too, have had similar feelings that I was not alone. My mind sometimes races when trying to understand this impression.

Indeed.

On the other side of the coin, some people who think God is talking to them really scare me.

Religion plays a large part in my manic episodes, which is odd because when I'm feeling well I'm not religious at all.

During my first manic episode, I was delusional and thought that Jesus Christ was my best friend...I felt better than everyone else and decided to kill myself to join Jesus in heaven. There was also the satanic aspect as well...I was paranoid and looked out for people with red eyes or moving black shadows around them, as those were signs that they were "evil". I attempted suicide, failed, and ended up in hospital.

During my second episode, it was pretty much the same except instead of Jesus it was a "Divine Power" who gave me odd quests to do, such as walking outside with no shoes on to be like Jesus, who could walk on water. Another big difference is, I wasn't suicidal this time. The Divine Power wanted me to stay on Earth.

Interesting...and sad. I'm sorry to hear that you attempted suicide. Sounds like things were better during the second mania in terms of not being urged to commit suicide like the fist mania.

I've been hospitalized several times and often I have blackouts during my stays. I'm not sure if I have a mild case of D.I.D. or if the blackouts were due to haldol injections or what (no street drugs were involved). So sometimes I read the hospital notes after my release. On one it said that I said that I hear the voice of God. That and "poor judgement" were the two reasons I was given the label "gravely disabled" and 5150'd.

Indeed, I have had many instances where God played a central role in my psychosis and mania. (I think people with schizoaffective disorder experience both if I'm not mistaken.) I once told an evaluating mental health practitioner that I thought I was a prophet. There were things I interpreted as signs and clues and I felt God was showing me the way, not unlike Moses' burning bush.

I still do think about God a lot but I have, with medication, tempered things down and I haven't acted out for a couple of years now.

Oh wow......can I relate to this! I'm maybe a spiritual person, but not "religious". And here I am thinking I was the second coming of Christ.....probably to be killed on the cross......and then decided I was was sent to deliver the message to everybody who would listen. Then, finally, still firmly entrenched in my psychosis, I figured I was safely one of millions of "born again" Christians. I also thought God was keeping all the lights green for me at intersections, and that he was parting the clouds for me to see the light......and just for the record, I too attempted suicide and ended up for a long time in the hospital with serious injuries. This chills me to think about it, but it's comforting to know I'm not the only one......

My experience is very similar it appears.

WLFTW......could you tell me what D.I.D. stands for? I'm still learning my terminology but don't think I've seen this. Also, I think I'll look up shizoaffective disorder. That hasn't been included in my Bipolar 1 diagnosis, but I've seen mention of it somewhere before......now I'm starting to wonder.......

Hi greylove

DID is dissociative identity disorder which is the relatively new name for multiple personality disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissoci...ntity_disorder

You might have heard of a movie called Sybil which came out in 1976 which, to a degree, popularized this condition:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075296/

The causes for lots of disorders aren't precisely known but it seems that extreme trauma and abuse is a strong correlating factor in causing DID. As far as I know, at least.

My blackouts could also have been fugue states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue_state

I've had a few diagnoses. The two most recent seem identical to me:
bipolar disorder with psychotic features
(current) schizoaffective disorder with bipolar features

My doctor tried to simplify it for me since the descriptions of those two are very similar. In bipolar disorder, it is common to find psychosis during manic episodes. However, when not having an episode (depressed or manic), someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder does not exhibit signs of psychosis. What's different about schizoaffective disorder is that there is psychosis when not having an episode.

It appears to me that schizoaffective disorder is a mix between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder though that's not something my doctor told me.

Winston

Thank you WLFTW, for that thorough response to my question. I found it very interesting and it has me doing some serious thinking. Somewhere I read that a person was experiencing flashes of something in their peripheral vision.....I believe that was under a "Psychotic" heading. It caught my eye (so to speak) because I have the feeling that that's what I've been experiencing. Just a quick, fleeting glance of something. I don't want to confuse it with "floaters"......those common things on the eyeball that most of us develop as we get older. I definitely had psychosis during my one and (hopefully) only manic episode and I'm really questioning if I might have something a bit more. Well, at least I would be in good company

All the best,
greylove

No problem, anytime.

Sometimes I see what are popularly known as shadow people. One major question I have with hallucinations are just imaginary and all in the mind or if this is the result of a form of second sight or esp.

http://paranormal.about.com/od/trueg...dow-people.htm

A lot of people see fleeting, shadowy movements out of the corner of their eye.

Who knows? Is it a hallucination or actually seeing something others just don't see?

A couple of times though, I looked directly at a moving shadow and it stayed still(ish) long enough to be examined. Once, recently, I saw a shadow take a crystal-like form and it was slowly growing. I was looking straight at it..it was three dimensional and very cool.

Winston

WLFTW: How have your psychoses and/or manias been closely related to God, if at all?



Spirituality was a prevalent theme. My own experience was quite marked in that I experienced myself as being in a different world which was populated by other figures. The most important figure was a male who served as my companion but other figures were also of great importance. All of them were related to real people in what had been my reality but within that different space I was in, they all become larger-than-life figures including: the Devil, Jesus, God, a fierce warrior Goddess and a small cameo performance from some trees which were angels in disguise, charged with the task of helping to keep me safe at that time.

Some of the "spiritual themes" experienced in that state included:

- self-identifying with the suffering, pain and betrayal of Christ
- feeling immense sorrow, compassion and grief for myself and others
- feeling I'd had to make a great sacrifice
- the sense of a "crucifixtion"
- experiencing a presence I had no other term for but to label as "God"
- feeling that my very soul was at stake and I had to "save it"
- feeling that what I was doing had a spiritual purpose
- feeling connected to the universe
- feeling the pain of all of humanity
- experiencing "hell"
- experiencing darkness, a void, nothingness, intense energy
- experiencing light that "filled the rooms" of my [psychological space]
- feeling that I had to "save the world" by "killing the devil" (I was quite concerned with this task because I felt that if I employed any method of violence or hatred, I would only be empowering the evil that the devil epitomized. In the end, I settled on love as my weapon of choice.)

Other prevalent themes in that experience:
- death
- birth
- water
- fire
- experiencing a place where neither time or I existed (this would be the place I'd referenced as "God")
- the emergence of old traumas
- feeling separate from or "out of" my body
- feeling I was out in the cosmos somewhere
- union

I was not a religious person previous to that experience and although I am aware that in some ways I am deeply spiritual, I'm still not what I'd call a religious person. For example, I do not self-identity with any particular religious faith (although I've learned from a number of them) nor to I attend any sort of formal religious services or group.

Meantime, I didn't understand what all those things meant at that time -- I was simply experiencing them and doing my best to get through that. Later, when I was trying to understand, that's when I came across the work of the Jungians and realized that all the "characters" that had featured in my experience could be mapped upon Jung's model of the psyche.

- Some of the symbols and themes served to represent the collapse of my Ego/Persona/self-identity: This was the death, the sacrifice, the cruxifiction.

- the Shadow was represented by several characters, including the Devil: In "killing the devil" I was attempting to conquer my own shadow.

- the male companion was equivalent of my Animus. There came a point where he also took on "Christ-like" characteristics. We "saved" each other.

- God/Goddess were symbols of the Self.

See also: How to Produce an Acute Schizophrenic Break

Music of the Hour:

Yeah.. I once went into a trance and started writing and it was God telling me I have no respect for the written language. I then picked up my bible and the commandments were bookmarked, which FREAKED me out even more in that moment in time. I then some how came up with the conclusion my mother is going to die because of me, because of God. Because of my disrespect.
But I don't really believe that anymore. more like aliens.

spiritual_emergency,

I'm so glad to meet some people who have had similar experiences!

I'm interested in your use of the past tense throughout your list of "symptoms." What has changed so that now you're not in the same zone as you were while having these experiences?

I've felt (past tense as well) similarly to many of the items on your list. You're hitting the nail on the head. To say these experiences were weighing upon me would be an understatement.

At one point, I believed I was processing the hatred of the whole world, and was attempting to "Defeat" it all by myself. I have felt that I am "in the lord's navy," a warrior of God to let its will work through me. I've had a few dreams about this.

All of these spiritual undertones have, at times, dominated my being and I look back at it now and see that I felt suffocated by them.

Thanks for posting the link to that article; it was quite an interesting read.

Your song really appeals to me. Thanks also for that.

Just wondering...the word emergency in your moniker. I wonder if it could be interpreted as emergence-y, an emergence of something within.

My beliefs about my experiences underwent changes throughout my days... I really don't know if there were aliens or time travelers or God or what was going on...what the source was and is. That or maybe it's all in my mind.

I thought i was jesus, and then i thought i was a angel, and later i thought i was prophet

We may be of ilk nature then...

All of these things are happening inside your head. (I did not say "just" happening.) What their relation is to things outside your head may be another question.

Every experience can be thusly marginalized and, yes, it is an important question.

Every experience of ours is inside our heads!

troo dat.

Just curious, are you a solipsist?

Negatory. We do not create ourselves.

Then the question you asked becomes highly relevant, especially when it comes to the differentiation of mental illness from spirituality:
What their relation is to things outside your head may be another question.