Post in this thread if you have a mental illness that involves psychosis. What do you have? What are you taking for it? Does the medication work?
>>25447876
how to tell if I have psychosis?
Ive isolated myself from society and lost contact with my friends but im about to go to school.
I think im in reality
>>25447909
Psychosis is basically you lose touch with reality.
I've never gone to a doctor for it, mostly because I don't think meds are usually the answer to anything. I don't even know if it's a "condition," I just get intense feelings of disconnection from the world that make driving, social interaction, or even walking through public places nearly impossible when they strike. It feels like playing an online game and having your ping suddenly spike, causing a severe discrepency between you and the server.
>>25447994
I should add that this happens almost every time I drive for longer than 20 minutes, and very often when I'm in a large, populated place like a theater or shopping center.
Bipolar reporting in. I have psychotic features while depressed and manic. Not too many hallucinations and the paranoia is generally not that bad, I just tend to see patterns which may or may not exist. Hallucinating music can be fucking epic though. My brain is a way better composer of music than anything else in the know universe imho.
>>25447994
Sounds like depersonalization/derealization.
>>25447943
so everyone on r9k has psychosis then
>>25448235
They actually literally do in a lot of cases, yes. Look up major depression with psychotic features.
The delusions many robots suffer from are characteristic of this disorder.
Schizoaffective bot.
I talk to people all the time only for me to open my eyes and realize they're not there. Some of them have been really cute girls who think I'm funny. Why does everyone I love vanish before me? Is the idea of a woman liking me so alien that it must be a hallucination?
I've also thought I was the greatest prophet in the world, sent by God to bring upon the new era of man. The new era was supposed to be characterized by a sort of Internet of minds, where all could communicate freely with one another and our senses expanded several billion-fold, which makes our thoughts much more provoking and accurate. We would also harness the collective unconsciousness within our brains, to discover our true purpose here.
I'm pretty manic if you can't tell. The collective hivemind thing seems like a good idea to me right now, I hope it doesn't become a full-on psychotic state.
>>25447909
I suffer from psychotic depression. I hallucinate demons that try to kill me at night. It has made life almost completely unbearable. I just drink now. My uncle killed himself because of this and now I can understand why.
I have psychosis NOS, which is similar to schizophrenia but doesn't qualify as it for whatever reason. It can be long or short term...in my case it's long term. I have auditory and more recently visual hallucinations, anhedonia(not feeling anything), derealization (feeling as if the world is not real), depersonalization (feeling as if you are not in your body, like an out of body experience.), severe suicidal thoughts, Catatonia (going motionless or making repetitive motions for an extended time) and depression.
During my initial breakdown, I stayed in my room for 3 days straight and didn't eat anything, the voices got really bad and the suicidal thoughts unbearable. I hit myself and tried to drink myself to sleep (didn't work). My parents would try to drag me places and I would just sit there staring and wouldn't speak.
I got help after about a week. I went to a therapist first because it takes a month to get into a psychiatrist and I refused to go to the hospital. Somehow my therapist didn't put me in the hospital despite me being completely honest about how close I was to committing suicide. I think I was really close to an involuntary commit, one time she asked me a bunch of questions about it (how I planned to do it, if I had the supplies). I had answers to all her questions, I could even hear her weighing in her mind whether she should commit me or not.
I finally got into a psych office and was misdiagnosed with depression and given antidepressants. That was a horrible psych in general and had no business being around people who were suffering.
I had to wait 2 months to scale up and down on antidepressants that didn't work before switching to my current doc, who diagnosed me with psychosis NOS and put me on Abilify.
Abilify has been great for me, recently I've added Zoloft for the anhedonia. Besides a head from Abilify I have no side affects from the meds.
Recently though I'm going though a bit of a relapse. My symptoms are getting worse...
>>25448516
That sounds terrible m8. I was diagnosed with psychosis NOS after being incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar. Psychosis is a bitch.
>>25448235
No, psychosis is generally a symptom of other serious disorders such as schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, or extreme drug abuse. People just going psychotic for awhile is pretty rare, maybe it could happen as an extreme reaction to a stressful situation I suppose.
>>25449380
Yeah it really is...hope you're feeling better.
What's psychosis?
>>25449580
Losing touch with reality for a bit.
>>25449580
Psychosis is basically losing touch with reality. Symptoms can include hallucinations, delusions, Catatonia, and more. It's a part of schizophrenia and can be a part of other disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder.
>>25447876
I've taken in so many drugs in the past 5 years every day has seemed like a day dream.
I'm lucid (mostly) but certain aspects of life blend so well into cryptic BS I imagine that it's hard to tell what's actually going on
Life as a robot I guess
Anyone see spooky shit when psychotic? I posted this story of mine yesterday in another thread, but I'll post it again just for shits...
>laying in bed listening to music
>sit up in bed so that I can get up and go to the bathroom
>suddenly stop when I see the ghostly face of an old woman emerge from the center of my vision
>the face lingers for a few seconds and is then replaced by glowing animal heads drifting across my vision
>both confused and terrified, I hear a moan come from outside my bedroom door
>convinced that this spirit/demon of the old woman is standing just on the other side of the door
>wait for a few minutes before deciding to slowly open the door
>nothing is there, of course, but something else is wrong
>there is a tall, dark figure standing at the end of the hallway like in pic related
>shut the door immediately and retreat back into bed with a strong ringing sensation in my ears
>finally reopen the door and notice that nothing is there any more
>get into bathroom and look at myself in the mirror
>feel the sensation of a fingernail dragging down my back
>spin around to see nothing there as well
>try to sleep
Life is becoming more and more like a nightmare with each passing day. I'm now concerned about these demons greeting me at night, which makes me paranoid and restless.
>>25449768
Not had anything spooky happen to me really, luckily my voices aren't malevolent. I did see another person lying in bed while I was lying in bed. That was weird. The scariest thing that's happened to me is when I asked the voices what they wanted. They said they wanted me. It was the first time they talked back to me.
Are you receiving treatment?
>>25449856
I'm on risperidone and zoloft right now for psychotic depression. It works when it's in my system, but shit like this happens when I go to bed without recently having taking my medication.
>>25449896
When do you take your meds? I usually take mine a couple hours before bed. It allows time for it to kick in before night, which is when my symptoms get bad.
>>25449958
I take it in the morning and at 3pm. That's why it's so bad for me at night. I've decided to take an extra dose of risperidone at night now, however.
>>25449768
I experience a similar things
>up for 2 days due to insomnia
>start hearings random talking in lower level of house
>no one home
>go investigate
>no one home
>go back up
>hear screaming in lower level of house
>rush down
>no home up
>walk back up stairs
>right at the pinnacle of the staircase is an out of focus silhouette of a man
>rush up stairs
>shadow no where to be seen
>whole upstairs has doors open, mid-day, light throughout the house
I'm schizotypal. Currently taking Rimron and Abilify but I'm somehow staying twiggish. I still have weird thoughts and depression but the voices are gone so it's the worst of both worlds. I miss the voices and hate the depression.
>>25449995
What is hearing voices like? Is it disembodied or does it sound like it's coming from a specific location? I've only ever heard a baby crying as far as "voices" goes.
>>25450047
I'm not who you replied two but for me there's two kinds of voices. One is a disembodied voice that sounds just as it would as if someone were talking to you from an intermediate distance in a small room. I only get that voice when I'm having a really bad go of it.
The more common voice (for me anyways) is more of an internal voice. You know that voice in your head when you're reading something? Imagine that, except it's not your voice and you're not controlling it.
>>25450047
The first time I heard a full voice and realized what it was, it seemed to whisper in my ear so I could tell where it was. That's how most voices were for me except for what I call "foreign thoughts" that appeared as my thinking voice in my head. Lately, I've been trying to think without words.
>>25449994
Yeah lack of sleep can cause hallucinations, and make it much worse for people who already have them.
>>25449995
I miss the voices too :/. Now they are coming back though, and I'm afraid everything else will too.
Is losing the ability to move considered catatonia if you know why it is happening?
I think I'm OK, but I get this weird thing when all of a sudden I feel I don't know the person I'm speaking to (could be gf of 2 years) and I feel really panicked. I know I know them, but I feel completely alien to them. It subsides pretty quickly.
I also have it that I almost feel like I forget my gf or someone is a person, it's like I'm in a dream or something, I know they're there, then all of a sudden they're more real and it freaks me out.
I'm sorry I'm really bad at describing this. Is this a known problem?
>>25450354
That's a great question, I believe it does although all patients who experience Catatonia should also be checked for seizures as far as I'm concerned since symptoms can be similar. When I was catatonic my thoughts went in slow motion and my limbs felt wooden and too heavy to move. I sort of understood what was happening though but my mind was processing so slowly it didn't matter.
>>25450047
If you hear voices as if somebody else is literally talking to you, that's bad. If you hear voices but they don't sound like somebody else, more like talking to yourself in your head, you're fine and they're actually called "intrusive thoughts".
>>25450642
Intrusive thoughts can be maladaptive too, if severe enough, but they are pretty common occurrences.
>>25450642
Thank you for explaining this. I have plenty of intrusive thoughts as you described, but no voices.
>be me
>a month ago
>wake up one day
>alone in my apartment
>see a girl next to me in bed
>still sleeping
>has her arm around me
>I reach up to touch her
>nothing there
>I was hallucinating her
>she starts to move through the bed into the floor
>want her to stay
>yell "don't go"
>she just looks at me
>tfw even being detached from reality won't stop that feel
kill me
>>25450229
I only mentioned that because the person I replied to mentioned life being a living nightmare
When I try to sleep I get disturbing dreams
Not violent, or horror-ish
Like, unbearable unsettling, ineffable shit
That causes me to be unable to sleep for days on end etc etc
>>25451137
Have you seen anyone about it? There are treatments for this type of thing and they can help dramatically.
>>25451137
Have you seen anyone about it? There are treatment options for persistent nightmares.
>>25451216
>>25451239
all doctors try to prescribe me medication
I truly believe that most Rx fries people so I always avoid taking it
I think this is just the consequence of being a pariah
The sub-conscious effects of no contact with other people
>>25451433
You're right. I've been taking risperidone for a few months and I'm already retarded, basically.
>>25451481
My friends and family tell me I'm a conspiracy theorist or that I just like to reject help from others
Meanwhile, some of those same people take the drugs I'm recommended and are different people 90% of the time (ie: risperidone)
>>25451433
I'm on two psych meds and my only side affect is a headrush if I get up too quickly. I thought it was going to be horrible too and almost refused meds even though I was suffering immensely. It was totally worth taking them and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
That said, there are therapy options. Check this out.
http://www.aasmnet.org/resources/bestpracticeguides/nightmaredisorder.pdf
If you're interested in the therapy aspect talk to a psych/psychologist/therapist and they should at least be able to refer you to someone.
