Personally I had a thought disorder from a very young age. My mind always took an oppositional view to voluntary thought processes. I would call myself names and always have a counter argument. If I was confident the mind would tell me I was arogant and so on and so on. Anyway was your psychotic break really that much of a surprise. Had you always had a schizo type personality.

[Sometimes psychotic]

Total shocker for me---I've always been socially awkward and withdrawn but no indication my mind was any different than anyone else---I mean I was always at the top of my class, went to college, grad school etc----was fine working for like 8 years as a post-doc, but then I got promoted and got really stressed because people jobs including my own suddenly became dependent on the outcome of my work---around a year of major work stressors then overnight a change---only I had no idea until my friends dragged me to the pdoc a month later---

[RRex]

Mine hit me like a brick ****house. I always had problems, but the psychosis was a complete surprise. Plus it snuck up on me because I didn't know what was happening. Then it hit me like a BSH.

Originally Posted by Sometimes psychotic

Total shocker for me---I've always been socially awkward and withdrawn but no indication my mind was any different than anyone else---I mean I was always at the top of my class, went to college, grad school etc----was fine working for like 8 years as a post-doc, but then I got promoted and got really stressed because people jobs including my own suddenly became dependent on the outcome of my work---around a year of major work stressors then overnight a change---only I had no idea until my friends dragged me to the pdoc a month later---

Its funny but I guess both our pasts cause us to come to different conclusions on the condition. I think you view of psychosis is very plausible given its onset in you , and I take an other view because I had a different onset.



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[Sometimes psychotic]

Originally Posted by paulycoll

Its funny but I guess both our pasts cause us to come to different conclusions on the condition. I think you view of psychosis is very plausible given its onset in you , and I take an other view because I had a different onset.



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I think we're both right! For me it really had an onset just like for a drug or chemical induced psychosis---so it had to be something that can change fast in my case---I also recovered so it had to be something that could switch right back so for me any sort of structural/developmental change seems unlikely.

But yeah this is part of why I think the whole thing is highly heterogeneous. At least between acute and transient psychosis and sz---but I really like your theory for sz.

[blackwhitered]

I think I had signs of schizotypal personality disorder leading up to my psychosis. I wasn't always like that, because I was very rational at a young age, but from mid/late-childhood I had beliefs that were unusual-- I believed in ghosts, tarot cards, witchcraft, and fairies, even though I was an atheist; on some occasions I saw "ghosts" and I had glimpses of fairies (corner of my eye business or hearing giggling). This was from ages 10-14 ish. The full-on psychosis started, as far as we can tell, at about 15. I was moderately psychotic for 2 years, but the nature of my hallucinations and delusions made me extremely secretive, and no one knew what was going on. It was stress from midterms last year that pushed me over the edge and made me acutely psychotic and suicidal (but NOT depressed-- I was misdiagnosed with psychotic depression at first because of the suicidality and my negative psychotic symptoms, but in my reality I was not trying to end my life, I was just listening to the voices and trying to complete my mission; I didn't believe I could die).

So after that, they put me on Abilify, which gave me horrible side effects, but nearly eliminated my psychotic symptoms. The problem was that it would make me OVERALL "normal", but if triggered by stress (or sometimes out of nowhere) I would have acute psychosis... With little to no warning beforehand.

Now I'm on Seroquel, and it seemed to be working at first, but I still feel myself slipping...

[faerie_moon_x]

Well, it's a tough question. The bipolar part is not a surprise at all. I was always a sensitive kid.

But, I was also a weird kid. Just kind of weird. And, in looking back, I now see little things in my thought process or beliefs as a kid that make me wonder. Some people say to me kids have good imaginations, but I definately felt persecuted and spied on as a kid. No question. I was bullied, that's true, but it went beyond that. My thought process always seems to follow the lines of persecution even in milder forms, like people installing cameras in the bathroom, or people plotting against me using twitter... stuff like that... it's similar but different.

So, no, maybe it shoudln't have been a surprise.

The big surprise for me was learning I'd had a break all on my own while driving down the street. Going from normally traveling along to suddenly being confronted with the original trigger, and all the memories flooding in of that time and what I believed to be true but seeing it in a whole new perspective. That moment, like an epiphany, was incredibly profound and I can still feel it now just thinking about it.

[propliopithecus]

I have learned from a young age that I was psychologically disturbed (=shy) and didn’t function at school. Later it went better and I finished university and talked a little bit more, but was still very lonely.
I had already the idea that sometimes people who didn’t know me, thought that I was crazy. I didn’t think so myself.
The development of voices was a gradual process with no clear boundary between mishearing something and having auditory hallucinations.
But there was a clear moment whereupon my peace of mind was severely disturbed. That was the moment whereupon I tried out if I could communicate with others by talking with my mouth closed. I tried if my neighbors could also hear it and they seemed to answer. Thereafter I developed the idea that I somehow couldn’t stop saying all my verbal thoughts this way. This made that I thought that all my verbal thoughts were overheard, which was a clear departure from my previous state of mind.

[The_little_didgee]

One afternoon when I was eight years old, I had some very vivid premonitions that I would go through psychosis/mental illness in my 20s.

I have always known that I was very different and had the ability to perceive stimuli that most people cannot. I still get premonitions today and visits from a dead relative that I was very close to in my dreams.

My acute senses and sensitive disposition have always interfered with relationships. I have always felt like an outsider who could not connect to many people, besides my parents, grandmother and brother. My existence has always been on the periphery. Somehow I also knew this made me susceptible to mental illness.

When I got ill in my mid twenties I was going through some major changes and realizing the realities of life. It was a very difficult time that seemed to start with depression and withdrawal. Then I started getting noise in my head that was filled with foreign thoughts from another dimension and people walking by. Soon it became directions and criticisms. Slowly the world around me become alive. I was able to sense the embedded parallel universe that exists in this reality. There were messages left for me everywhere and communications with God in magazines and the television. The secrets of the universe were revealed to me. Then things started to involved aliens, FBI and communists. I became convinced that the bottom half of the world was red that the world was unaware of. They were getting ready to invade the the northern hemisphere. Then olanzapine killed it all.

After that experience I changed.