idk who needs to hear this but the necessary time you spent and things did while recovering from varying delusions, in order to be a functional person, is time not wasted <3

my first psychotic episode

I wanted to talk about this for so long, so I’m finally getting it off my chest. I want to share my first experience with psychosis and how it affected me in the long run, and hopefully my story resonates with others as well.

This is going to be a really long post so I’m putting it under the cut.

(cw for descriptions of psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, and paranoid ideation)

It was around Valentine’s Day 2021 and I first started noticing something was off while I was at work. I was feeling unusually paranoid about everything. I would think people were following me to work, that my bosses were conspiring against me, or that customers recognized me from somewhere. This made me incredibly stressed from work, even more stressed than usual, and after my shifts I would sit in my car for half an hour in complete silence just trying to process everything that occurred.

After a few days I noticed I wasn’t sleeping well. I had trouble falling asleep and I was only getting a few hours of sleep each night. Not only that, but my appetite became severely reduced. I would constantly skip meals because I just didn’t feel like eating. My boyfriend actually noticed this and notified my mom, who tried making me my favorite foods but I couldn’t get myself to eat any of it.

At some point I started having ideas of reference. I would scroll through social media and think the posts had a special meaning behind them, or had some kind of code that needed to be deciphered. I would also misinterpret posts as being directed towards me when that wasn’t the case. For example one of my friends made a post about grief, and I thought she was describing how I was about to experience grief soon. Another friend posted “god is real” and I thought he was specifically telling me I was going to meet god soon. It was very confusing and off-putting.

Then came the voices. I began hearing whispers at night, which caused me to lose even more sleep, and they eventually turned into command hallucinations telling me to attack my boyfriend. This frightened me, and at this point I knew something was very wrong. I even tried reaching out to a crisis text line although it wasn’t much help at this stage. So I told my bf and mom that I was hearing voices and not getting any sleep and they encouraged me to call an advice nurse, which I did after a sleepless night. I described my symptoms to the nurse, who determined that I needed to be taken to the emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation.

My mom and I got ready to go to the ER. This is when my psychosis really took off and reality started to warp. Notifications on my phone became the FBI searching for me. A noise at the front door meant the cops were after me. I was suddenly in major trouble because I chose to trust the advice nurse, who was one of them. On the drive to the ER, I had to ask to turn the radio off because it was talking to me. I also thought cars were following us and trying to contact me. I was having illusions of other drivers waving at me and asking if I needed help. Upon arriving to the ER, a security guard walked by and I thought he was there to arrest and deport me. While I was being evaluated I kept muttering nonsense to myself while the staff asked me questions about my symptoms. I was really starting to lose it.

There wasn’t enough room in the ER to accommodate every patient so I was placed on a gurney in the middle of the hallway with other patients. At this point I began to experience more delusions. I could feel one of the patients reading my mind and I complained about it to the doctor who evaluated me. I started to realize this was all fake, all staged, and there were actually people behind the scenes watching me like the Truman Show. I wasn’t really in the ER, it was all just a game. So I left my gurney and tried to escape, but a security guard stopped me, and we got into a minor physical altercation but no one was hurt. I calmed down and went back to my gurney. I talked to other patients and staff as if we were friends because I genuinely thought we were. I had absolutely no social boundaries, and even insulted another patient completely unprovoked. I felt like I had no control of my thoughts or actions at this point.

After spending the night in the ER, I was determined to be 1. gravely disabled (due to not sleeping/eating) and 2. a danger to myself, and I was put on a 5150 hold and transferred to a mental hospital. I still was convinced this was all part of some kind of game, and didn’t take it very seriously. So when the staff at the hospital asked me questions about my name, age, etc., I would give them false answers. Some of the other patients tried talking to me but I would brush them off and respond with something either rude or nonsensical. Why did it matter when none of this was even real?

The first night at the hospital was rough. I would sit in the admissions chair unmoving for hours, going through countless delusions at once. When it was time for dinner, I refused to even open my food because I thought it was a bomb. When I was finally made to open it, I refused to eat it because I thought it was poison. I tried hanging out in the day room, but I was bothered by the TV because I felt like it was talking to me. I also thought I recognized some of the other patients and tried talking to them like they were my friends, which they were put off by. When it was bedtime, I would wander the hallway like a lost child, wondering where the hell I was and why I wasn’t waking up from this nightmare. One of the MHT’s escorted me to my room and encouraged me to sleep, but I got no sleep that night. I was too terrified that the staff or roommate would try to kill me.

It didn’t get much better from there. I spent 11 days in the mental hospital and I was psychotic the whole time. I got into trouble a couple times, as my social boundaries continued to be broken. For example I would rummage through my roommate’s belongings, and one time I barged into my neighbor’s room unannounced because the voices told me to go there. I had multiple terrifying delusions about the hospital, including that they were performing human experimentation, that they were serving us human meat, and that they were killing patients. I was able to see a psychiatrist while I was there, who I complained to about my delusions. He informed me that I was experiencing a psychotic episode, and diagnosed me with depression with psychotic features. I was put on a bunch of different antipsychotics, including ones that had awful side effects like muscle stiffness and trouble speaking.

When I was finally discharged, I didn’t feel like myself. I was heavily medicated, and still psychotic. I was having a hard time adjusting back to normal life. I couldn’t take walks because I still felt like cars were following me or neighbors were watching me. I couldn’t go to the craft store without feeling like the employees were secretly talking about me or that other customers were calling the police on me. I was able to get a doctor’s note for work, but upon returning a few weeks later my work performance was severely impacted by my symptoms and medication side effects and I was fired. My life just wasn’t the same anymore.

When I finally started to come out of psychosis, it felt like waking up from a long dream. It was like I could breathe again, but I also felt like I left so much devastation behind. I started to realize how unacceptable my behavior was, how ridiculous my delusions were, and just how much irreversible damage psychosis did to my mental health. I felt like there was a permanent scar left on my psyche. I wondered if I could ever get my old life back or if I was doomed to be like this forever. I started to mourn the life I once had before psychosis, before I lost my mind.

Psychosis took away a part of me I can never get back. It took control of me and caused me to lose myself almost completely, as if I were possessed by a spirit. But it also taught me a lot about myself and how fragile the mind can be. Before psychosis, I took my mental health for granted. Now I’m grateful for every moment I feel mentally stable. I still experience mild psychosis every now and again, but none as intense and disruptive as my first psychotic episode. I think it’s easier to manage nowadays, because I know what to look out for. But psychosis has a way of creeping up on me when I least expect it and I can never be fully prepared for a psychotic episode.

I am now on medication that works for me and has minimal side effects. I have a good support system and I’m receiving therapy and psychiatric help. I think I’m taking good care of my mental health and I have not experienced a psychotic episode in months. I like to think I’m still recovering from my first one, even two years later. But now I’m slowly getting my life back, one day at a time.

This one...is very personal.

My experience with depression and psychotic features is now up on Medium.

Magnus should have been canonically bipolar but whatever

So, health updates:

I had my MRI on October 18th, it was the wrong scan, so I had to redo it on the 21st. What's strange is the 1st scan showed something on my left hippocampus, so I wondered if it was possibly from epilepsy? Uncle Dave had looked up the possibilities, and said aside from stroke, all were treatable. Then stranger still, the second scan showed nothing was there!

The following week I hallucinated in distress that my SO Karasu had heart problems and told me he had a heart attack the past Thursday (the 19th) I would later learn the same night that my muse for Karasu, Atsushi Sakurai of BUCK-TICK, had passed away the SAME past Thursday of a brainstem hemorrhage … which stunned me when I realised later that could've been me, if the strange abnormality on my left hippocampus had been dangerous. I'm saddened to lose a role model, but somehow more grateful to be alive.

I went to my IOP intake yesterday. I was early, thus was seen by another than the person I was supposed to. The lady who did my intake was gracious enough to help me get a refill with a psychiatrist there who came in, and evaluated me which will be continued on Monday when I start groups (3 groups a day x 3 a week).I have to squeeze in seeing my social worker each week, so I will be busy going out four times a week … and hopefully start back at church on Sundays, and one of their life groups during the week as well. That will all be new for me, as I rarely go out by myself.

The lady who did my intake also let me have some of the chocolate in her heart shaped glass bowl, and let me take photographs through the window of the bird sculptures and gnomes. She related to my daydreaming saying she believes everyone has done this at some point in their life.

Other things I liked: the plants in the waiting room, the painting on the wall, the desk lady's grandchild's drawing of a cat, and the fake tattoo of a glittery pizza on my psychiatrist's arm she said her toddler stuck on her the night before, hehe. :3

me six months ago when my therapist of 2 years said a schizoaffective diagnosis would be more appropriate than a bipolar diagnosis:

me currently, as i experience gradually worsening psychotic episodes without any mood shifts:

my favourite part about being psychotic is remembering something that happened to me that only i saw/heard and no one else did and going "wait. that was a hallucination"

My worth

I woke up today dreading the day, wishing I were dead. I tried consoling myself by saying it is only one day but I felt miserable. I had therapy and my therapist didn’t seem concerned with my apathy and despair. We talked about what to get out of therapy more. She suggested EMDR. I told her I would look into it. She said it is an approved therapy. I was shocked to hear this as it was still…

View On WordPress

I’ve fully accepted I probably have a psychotic disorder and am too scared to bring it up with my psychiatrist because she scares the shit out of me and I don’t want that on my medical records because like, will I be able to continue my career path with that on there? I’m really not well-suited for anything else, and at the very least I want to keep the option open for myself. it’s pretty minor, too, I manage it well. but is that morally unsound of me to not disclose? it’s never affected anyone other than me. at the height of it all I did was just hide in my house and have a panic attack and call my mom

thinking about things I said to my HS therapist that they SHOULD HAVE FOLLOWED UP ON 

if a depressed teen pt told me that they felt like they were rotting from the inside I wouldve had one hand on my quetiapine holster and sent them to the ER, not Follow up in a few weeks lmao

In retrospect it as probably the several cans of diet coke a day giving me acid reflux that made me feel acutely rotten. on god though you have to have a high index of suspicion with a depressed undiagnosed misophonic! 

Recovering from guilt delusions is not being able to slay on slither because u feel so bad and ur scared of regressing again

I still struggle to tell the difference between schizoaffective disorder and depression with psychotic features. I was diagnosed with the latter by one psychiatrist, and the former a year later by a different one. Even though my diagnosis changed on paper, in person I feel like my symptoms are exactly the same. So what changed?

The only explanation I could find that makes sense comes from a somewhat dated article from 2007

I guess my answer then is: time. I was diagnosed with PMD immediately after my first psychotic episode, which probably wasn’t enough time to be given an accurate diagnosis. After a year of monitoring my symptoms, I assume my current psychiatrist felt more confident in changing it to schizoaffective disorder.

Me *with an incredible and all encompassing emptiness inside of me that has completely swallowed me whole* : oh God. I need to remain silly

I looked up “anger from PTSD” and found this, cos I’m experiencing some anger out of nowhere, and couldn’t figure out why … okays, not entirely “out of nowhere” … I am irritated with how slow the xfinity internet is on Micky’s laptop which I use nowadays, as well as the slow mobile data on my smartphone (I need to upload my pics and such, as I’m running out of space, so that probably adds to how slow it is).

Anyways, I have C-PTSD, which is officially written down as “chronic PTSD” on my chart, but is otherwise commonly known as “complex PTSD” … I get all of these symptoms on the list and more, but I don’t substance abuse.

My “major depressive disorder” and crippling “anxiety”, officially written down as “social anxiety” (and is literally “social phobia” level for me these days – although I tend to get super anxious about everything) are most likely just part of my C-PTSD, rather than their own disorders, as I learnt more about C-PTSD and PTSD through the women’s trauma group … which I haven’t been attending in a while, as it’s too heavy and too much for me to start with, and I don’t feel comfortable, or safe, around, or like hearing the stories from, the other patients, either. I get, like, “vicarious trauma”, from hearing other people’s experiences, and being exposed to media with traumatic events, and it bothers me, a lot. 🥺

Being an empath, as my social worker calls me, really sucks. I also saw a post about “hyper-empathy” being a trauma response to protect one’s self, so who knows. Maybe that applies to me.

Oh, and my everyday hallucinations, occasional delusions, and slight paranoia being anxiety and trauma based?

Clearly from my C-PTSD.

It isn’t my “major depressive disorder”, as it isn’t mood based. I hallucinate regardless of mood.

And I don’t have a psychotic disorder, as I am always aware they’re not real (look up “pseudo-hallucinations” aka “non-psychotic hallucinations” for more info).

It’s just difficult being immersed in them when they happen, cos the experience and emotional responses I’m having FEEL real, even if I logically KNOW better, but I can’t just turn them off, hence “psychotic features” (this is totally different from fantasies and daydreams, btw – I add this note here, as my friends and mutuals often say they can “relate” with their own imaginary friends, but … I’m not so sure about that).

Plus, I’ve gotten much better being off antipsychotic medication aka the “wash out” trial, which proves it’s not a psychotic disorder, according to my APRN, and also proves my social worker’s theory it’s anxiety and trauma-based.

But what’s interesting is that if I’m immersed in a pastime, or around other people, even if I’m quiet, I don’t hallucinate unless I WANT to talk to my imaginary friends in my head (this is fantasizing and daydreaming, although I really do hear their voices respond, feel their touches, etc. – I guess it’s like my conscious mind roleplaying with my subconscious mind, in a way).

Oh, and I used to refer to what I experienced as “sensory overload”, until I was taught about hyperarousal (nothing to do with sexuality) aka hypervigilance, which is a symptom of PTSD and C-PTSD.

I get easily overwhelmed and startled by crowds, loud/sudden sounds, strong smells, closed in spaces, being touched without warning, etc. – my brothers, particularly Micky, get a laugh out of spooking me cos I’ll always respond so dramatically, LOL!

I don’t mean to, it just happens … >o<;;

SORRY I HAVE GOTTEN LESS COHERENT LATELY IT'S THE MENTAL ILLNESSES

In a grumpy mood

I’m in the hospital. I’ve been here since Thursday. The depression and grief were just so overwhelming that I didn’t want to live anymore. So before things progressed to a bad place, I got evaluated. Sleep has been an issue so we are working on that while I am here. I had a difficult night sleeping. For some reason dreams hurt my head and give me severe headaches. Not fun waking up to them. My…

View On WordPress