It’s been a while since I had a manic episode, and I’m not sure it’s exactly psychosis, but when I was an unmedicated teen I had more prolonged and consistent hallucinations.
I think the worst depends on how you interpret worst, I don’t remember ever being scared of what was in my head, it was the lack of control, lack of ability to articulate my thoughts or communicate clearly, the unpredictability of other people and the situation, all of the external things were what was scary, and even then it was more frustrating and disorienting than scary.
The vast majority my hallucinations were audio so that might also be a factor, but if I was ever freaking out or panicking it was usually because I couldn’t process information normally and was aware of that, like imagine your legs stopped working, whenever you moved the muscles or did the motions to move your legs they just floo around unexpectedly, but while you’re in the middle of running for your life, it feels like that but for your mind
I wouldn’t consider what I have experienced as psychosis only because it seems to go away and stow away neatly when needed and I haven’t been confronted or made much of an effort to change and there isn’t consistency to how it occurs beside sleep deprivation and dehydration but, they always seem accurate even as they subside into ignorance, like any outbursts and targeted disruption of the offending disruption paralyzes the threat through precision to let me think and interfering or not being allowed to be alone or without offending noise aligns you with the threat. So the delusions and rage are a counter to what is attempting to counter my thought. Get out of the way of me and my thoughts not being in the way or get jujitsu’d or at least canceled out by me raising my voice enough to internally mute the corrupt, errant, exterior dialogue or manipulation or harrassment.
Only experienced it once after withdrawing from DNRIs (buproprion).
I kept begging to be hospitalized because I was afraid I’d hurt somebody, and I even bolted out of the car at one point. I do not remember this incident. It was relayed to me after the fact.
I only remember the emotions I felt. I don’t think I hallucinated but I was definitely out of it/delusional. I kept thinking I was gonna get better if I detransitioned and I remember considering myself filthy at the time. That’s about it.
Ironically after quitting psych meds altogether I’ve not experienced anything remotely similar since. I feel normal-ish, despite the severe depression. I can at least accurately tell which of my thoughts are legitimate and which are hogwash, and my impulse control is a million times better.
I saw people standing in my room just watching me while I slept. I asked them who they were & why they were there but they would only smile & not answer me. I also saw little birds coming out of my bathtub drain one at a time. I called my mother to show her & ask her how that was even possible. Yea, I ended up 5150’d. I’m glad I didn’t see anything horrifying!
I had a mental break years ago from family stress and trauma combined with insomnia.
I had become convinced that I was infact Dead.
I couldn’t process peoples faces, they looked blurry and out of focus. In that state I was in I believed that at any moment the grim reaper would appear to collect me and I had somehow been forgotten. I stopped eating entirely and only drank small amounts of water.
A week of believing i was dead passed and a thought occurred “I look sick but, I’m not rotting.”
I went to a hospital and started treatment after that. I’ll never forget how real it all felt to me.
I almost jumped off a fourth floor window saying I wanted to “experience true free fall”. I had 3 classmates trying to talk me down and I just couldn’t understand the concept of being dead or hurt. It was like I had no idea what pain feels like, and I couldn’t comprehend the mere idea that it could happen to me.
Then a fourth classmate saw, went to the school cafeteria, got my favorite candy and lured me off the windowsill with it. She told me if I got off the window, she would give me one, and of I waited until tomorrow to jump, she would give me a second one at the end of the day. I agreed. Somehow the promise of a kitkat was more compelling than the risk of death or lifelong disability or broken bones.
That day 3 of my classmates walked with me all the way home, making sure to not let me walk straight into traffic, and told my parents what happened. Nobody told any of the teachers or school admin, and I’m not sure why.
This was 12th grade and we were 16-18yo so we were left unsupervised at school frequently, which is why no staff noticed this going on. I don’t remember most of this, btw. My classmates told me later, once I was back to class.
It went on for a solid year straight and was a gradual descent into full blown psychosis.
I was heavily abusing stimulants for a long time… well, any drug really, but being who I am and how my brain is wired, stimulants gave me the best feeling comparatively.
I remember the first spark of the paranoia like it was yesterday. I was cleaning out my old apartment, having moved most of everything into the other one. By then I had graduated to smoking coke off of foil, then quickly went to crack. Took a big hit like I had done so many times before, and suddenly something clicked in my head.
I stared out the window and thought, “Does that look like a cop?”
It was like someone else’s voice screamed it across some other dimension. Like an echo already bounced back a few times. Then it got louder and louder. Every time I took I hit I swore I could hear them. See them.
I started reading novels in my stucco-covered walls. I could see all of the awful things I’d done in my life written out in the patterns. Everything was critical, every word was harsh and packed with vitriol and disgust at my current state.
I could hear them tunneling through the walls. They were coming for me at all times. I would watch Apple Maps and truly SEE that it was a live feed of the police raid on my house. All of my neighbors were in on it. If they were outside, they had weapons and were ready to strike.
The trees spelled messages to me. All from the police. I would see helicopters flying above my apartment, ready to unleash hell. They were outside my studio’s door. They were waiting.
They had planted trackers in everything. I destroyed every book I owned, tore apart most of my clothes. Destroyed every electronic except my phone.
This isn’t even anywhere near all of it. And I remember it all.
I’d smoke a couple grams and be on the floor bawling, begging for my life from the nonexistent police that were about to break my door down.
All of this was about a year and a half before I even tried meth. It got worse once I started shooting that shit up. There’s so much more I can tell yall.
When I get sick sometimes (flu/cold) I do experience psychosis, and its to the point that I tie myself to the bed when I feel it coming, just so I don’t get myself in trouble.
Its kinda hard to explain the experience. Its always the same. Its a hallucination where something mundane suddenly feels huge, and that its multiplying itself. It feels as if this thing will in an instant multiply so much that it will fill the whole universe, and everyone will die. And its somehow my fault.
When its hits, I feel like I’m having a panic attack, because of how dire this crisis is. I cannot think straight. There’s only fear. One time, it felt like toilet paper rolls were filling up the space in my room, So I ran to my balcony and began throwing out the rolls, but they never lessened.
I feel so afraid when it happens that I am willing to do anything to make the fear go away.
So many of these accounts don’t look and feel like psychosis to me… I wonder how many of these traumatized people will realize what they’ve experienced…
I still suffer from this I just live it wit but I always see this person standing in the corner of the room at times just watching me. Was a guy we lost when I was deployed VA thinks I’m making it up no brain tumors no rhyme or reason why just stands there staring at me doesn’t talk though life is otherwise normal
My worst one was that I was a prophet from God. I wrote “prophesies” and tried to spread them. All ends of the earth type stuff. I got out of it on my own though, thankfully. Didn’t really need help, just time to get over it.
During psychosis I was often or usually aware I wasn’t well. Plus it wasn’t consistent. So many changes throughout a day or from one day to the next. Extreme mood swings. So much anxiety and paranoia. Sort of like psychosis was the result of too much prolonged stress. But ya know, recovery from psychosis is a different thing and also sucks. Can take a long time. Like a year or two.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve really dealt with this but around like 2020 I saw something that really kinda fucked me up for a bit, this was also during a really low point in my life. Just seeing that and also already having a really stressful time in my life I just went into psychosis. Seeing what I saw every time I closed my eyes eventually turned into thinking that my head was going to suddenly explode or something was going to suddenly cause my head to be obliterated the same exact way I saw happen. I had moments where the fear was so real that I’d stop what I was doing, curl up, hold my head like it was somehow going to keep everything in if I did and I’d cry because I was so scared. Even when I was at a friends house I’d be perfectly fine and then out of nowhere I can’t focus on them because everything in my mind is screaming at me that my head would explode and my friends would be absolutely traumatized by seeing that and I was scared because I didn’t want them to see that too. I became really paranoid too. I started worrying that my family was purposefully trying to poison me and ruin my life and I became very distrustful of them during this time. I also stopped being able to recognize myself in the mirror, I was just looking at a complete stranger, so I would take a sheet and cover up the bathroom mirror. I stayed in the hospital as a result of this psychosis for a couple of weeks. The hospital stay didn’t really help tbh and neither did the therapy afterwards, but since then I’ve put a lot of work into myself to break out of it.
Worst: a premonition that took over every aspect of my life and I thought would result in my death, leading me to an intensive outpatient program (one of a few reasons). I’ve crafted some of the way it “came true” and found ways to grow from it.
Funniest: when I was younger I was entirely convinced one night that all my socks were puppies that I had to take care of. I don’t remember how amused my mom was, ha.
I started thinking this guy — who was someone I knew from a professional context through a coworker slash friend — was a crowned prince of France. I thought, of course he has his own security detail, which has set up a stake out operation in my apartment. I was madly in love with him, and, one day he just ghosted me. To my added brain, he was protecting my by separating himself from me, and we could communicate through the police, anyway. This meant photographers in the bushes, cameras in and all around the apartment, and my every move being watched. Even through two hospitalizations, I still believe this because it was part of my job, as a princess, to say nothing about my secret mission. I have a lot more to tell, if people are interested.
When I gave up alcohol, there was a period where reality felt like overcooked noodles.
I swear I hear a violin playing in the background that fades off when I try to listen for it
And time flows weird. Like I felt like I have lived for months, not it’s only a literal couple of hours. Or I think, wow I did that in 2 minutes, and the clock actually said it’s 2+hours
Sitting alone in my apartment with my dog of 14 (at the time) years. To me he looked like he was going to lunge and kill me. It was a battle of who was going to kill who first. The psychosis was so strong I literally almost killed my dog. Thankfully I am now medicated and my pupper is still with me, turning 16 this month.
Does chronic and consistent dissociation count? I’m genuinely asking because that’s almost a daily occurrence for me. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m experiencing reality in the moment.
Well as someone who is quite reasonable, and is put into unreasonable situations quite a lot.
I thought I was Hades, the god of the dead. I kinda just remember dressing in all black, and being super amped up. I came too in a psych ward with a busted up leg.
Adderall-induced psychosis. I had a psychotic break in middle school. I have religious trauma. I was having an episode where I literally climbing up the wall. My mom held me down and tried to perform an exorcism on me lol. I saw her face as a demon on a doorknob. I was like her face but every small wrinkle was deeper and black and her skin was white and cracked kinda. I was convinced that the rapture was gonna happen at any moment so I would store food under my bed so that if my family didn’t go to heaven and we were stuck in my room, we would have food. I have struggled with thoughts like this a lot. I have OCD so it’s hard to decipher if some thoughts are intrusive or psychotic. An example was that on 4/20/Easter, I smoked pot and I didn’t pray that day. The Pope died and I was convinced that he died because of the “sinful” acts that I and the world committed that day.
it started when i was home playing some minecraft, just chilling, when i saw a spider on my hand. naturally i swiped it off as quickly as i could, but realized i didn’t even feel it on my skin, though it was gone already. i went to the bathroom to wash my face and sat on the bed to calm down. i noticed in my peripheral vision a humanoid just staring at me, but when i focused on it it disappeared. several have appeared in the same way, just going through the average day. it would happen when i’m walking, in school, at home, anywhere. when i’d go to sleep i’d hear some unintelligible whispering coming from behind me, which would come from just behind me.
after i started losing my mind over it, i told my mom, who said that i should talk to my psychologist about it, who later prescribed me some antidepressants (i forgot the name) and the hallucinations went away after a while, yippie! got off of the meds later (which i now realize was a big mistake) and they never came back.
I actually have a ‘delusion’ where I feel like people are making fun of me or lying to me. It has SOME basis in past relationships, but it’s made me suspicious and afraid to open up to people. I guard my heart with everything I have, well, normally.
I was actively dying from a heart virus, was in so much pain i was on tramadol so i could get out of bed. The pain was so bad i accepted death and was waitingfor it to take me out, but i survived, and physically healthy today. The tramadol + stress + pain made me see shadow people when it was dark, i heard voices when it was quite but they were either whispers or when load it was not human. Its been a decade since i recovered but i still cant be left alone without audio stimuli or i fear the voices will return. I need complete darkness or im afraid i will see the shadows again. Still have some anxiety issues but funny enough, i have no problem sleeping in the woods by myself, its loud and completely dark so i dont get triggered. Haven’t seen or heard the shadows or voices in a decade but when your mind cracks like that, it doesnt really heal, it scars.
Also my bodies sense went out of wack, i do not feel my heartbeat anymore, like no matter how much cardio i do, i dont feel it. I have to use a tracker to make sure i dont get hurt. The only time i feel my heart is when i get stressed, then i have ptsd and feel the same chest pains i felt when i was dying. So thats not much fun
Overall 3/10 do not recommend, literally mentally scaring.
I have bipolar and was diagnosed but not on a strong enough dose of meds. My most severe delusions were related to the devil, who I thought was stalking and following me. I was on a holiday visiting my mom. I wasn’t in full blown psychosis so I knew to hide it. I thought the devil was hiding in the furnace room. She took me out on a kayak and I saw the sky reveal itself to be another sky that was red and hellfire and the devil was enormous. We saw some bald eagles in their nest and I thought they were the devil’s minions. My family kept asking me why I was so agitated. That was fun. A few days later and a med increase, the delusions calmed down but I got really obsessed with the Bible for a bit. I’m not religious at all.
I had a drug induced psychosis around 10 years ago ( recovered since then, yay)
I think the worst ones for me were the sometimes very dark and violent thoughts. I had “visions” of brutally torturing my pets for example, and felt absolutely horrified and disgusted by even thinking anything like that.
The worst delusions were somewhat tame. For around a week I was convinced everyone around me could read my mind, so I got very paranoid about anyone noticing what I was going through.
Luckily it only lasted 2 weeks ish total. Left me with a nice panic disorder afterwards ( fully worked that one out too, yay)
A few months after graduating HS I had not slept for a week using lots of cannabis plus i took over the counter cold medicine which made me delusional. I thought the tv was all a conspiracy to make me feel like a failure. Like in football all I saw was players fumbling the ball. The newspaper was all lies geared toward manipulating my feelings. Ended up in a detox facility for a week.
Hi, I think I’m in the beginning stages of psychosis and I’m currently still aware of my mental decay. I have lived behind my eyes for around 1.5 years, I self soothe, I drink alcohol, I smoke weed barely because it will spiral into anxiety moreso than I already feel. I have diagnosed ADHD from 8yo, im 30yo now. I have eczema, I pick and scratch, I don’t know what reality is at some level, but I’m also a rational person as far as self awareness goes. I have HPPD from being maybe a little too wild one night and now it haunts me. i cut off a bunch of text because I’ll vent forever to anyone who actually cares. I use reddit to just go off to strangers
Here’s my story – I remember everything. Every terrifying, confusing moment. Here goes. Have a history of complex trauma. My illness created something long and elaborate, so naturally this comment will be long and elaborate. This is difficult for me to share. I thought I could reduce my meds and was under extreme levels of several stressful life events, good and bad, lined up in quick succession. That’s the kicker. That’s what did it.
I truly believed I was on a special mission from God. I thought I was chosen and that my friends and family were possessed and persecuting me. Animals seemed kind because they sensed something holy in me. Colors around me exploded like bright mosaics. I believed movies were a prophecy about me, that I was destined for something extraordinary.
One day, while on a walk, I tripped and fell in front of a church. To me, it was a sign that I had to be baptized, or my life would be doomed.
When my dog was pregnant with a litter of puppies, I was convinced it was part of God’s plan — that I had to keep one of the litter to fulfill a divine purpose. But when I asked a lady to help rehome the puppies, I became terrified, thinking she was possessed by demons trying to ruin God’s plan. I believed I was the reincarnation of Jesus, carrying His spirit.
When my dog was spayed, I was terrified. My head said it was the right thing, but my illness screamed no. Afterward, I believed that procedure had “spayed” my own potential – that my spiritual and feminine energy had been corrupted beyond repair. I thought death and resurrection were the only ways to save me. At this point I should have gone to my doctor and told him everything but I was living solo and didn’t think I was ill, just spiritually attuned.
I wandered into freezing wilderness, thinking I might die but also simultaneously that God would somehow protect me. I became dangerously cold and exhausted, then returned home and drank warm tea to survive. I feared the cold had caused irreversible brain damage.
I went weeks without food or water, convinced my salvation depended on following strict “holy rules” like a video game – where good and bad actions affected my spiritual health, taking or adding points. Objects, clothes, even people had sacred or dark energies. I believed my left hand was “bad,” my right hand “good.” I was severely starving and dehydrated which worsened my experience.
A demon spoke through me, promising salvation if I obeyed his strict commands. I tried to purge the demon with a very hot shower, but it didn’t work.
Eventually, I believed I had died and was trapped alone with no other living thing in this purgatory realm, punished for trying to end my life. I thought God and heaven no longer existed, and that Satan ruled everything.
I saw Satan watching me in my house. He had sharp teeth and the eyes of a predatory snake. He was salivating. He could read my thoughts. Satan told me my family had died because I hadn’t converted them to Christianity. He possessed my “dead” body in another timeline/plane of existence in the hospital I had “died” in. I believed paramedics had implanted a chip in my brain after I had died, condemning me to eternal, virtual, solitary suffering. There was the virtual world created by the chip, and the outside real world I could not access or sense. In a way, this elaborate delusion wasn’t wrong in the existential sense. My mind was indeed creating a world of its own, separate from real reality.
A friend helped get me to safety, but I thought the world was an artificial holographic prison created by Satan and others. I wouldn’t eat or drink, fearing poison or spiritual corruption, often both.
When my dad took me to the hospital, I thought it was Satan’s headquarters. I saw staff as demons. The hospital was a labyrinth of hell. I believed my cross necklace was the only protection.
I refused most food and water, terrified it was made from human remains or “demonic” ingredients. I felt putrefying disgust and horror every time I ate, convinced demons were forcing me into sins I couldn’t undo.
After months of aggressive treatment, the delusions faded. I began eating again and was eventually discharged.
I can’t fully explain the terror I experienced. It was beyond anything I imagined. This happened as I was making progress in my life and career, and it nearly destroyed me. A really shitty experience all round. I have to start all over again. This is the third time in my twenties I have had to start again and rebuild.
But I’m still here, somehow. Sharing this helps me feel a bit less alone and maybe it can help others feel this way too. It was pure hell; the horrors of a highly creative imagination brought to terrifying life. I don’t ever want to experience anything like that ever again.
Severe trigger warning for childhood SA and other types of abuse, so if details of such things csn trigger you then please don’t read any further, last thing i want is what i’m going to say causing anyone distress.
When i was 14 i ran away from home after my entire life time up until that point of extreme physical, psychological and really violent and regular sexual assaults. From my earliest memory my parents beat me, my mother would whip me with a straightened out metal clothes hanger, sometimes would burn me on the stove element as punishment, and emotionally tortured me. My older brother too would beat and also rape me on a regular basis even rupturing my colon when i was 8 years old. So needless to say, i had never known what it felt like to feel safe and lived soaked in fear, confusion and pain. I decided to run away at 14 because i knew if i didn’t either i was going to kill one of them or i was going to kill myself, and despite being actively suicidal i didn’t want that, as counter intuitive as that sounds.
At the age of 15 i was heavily addicted to alcohol, cocaine and ecstacy (the ecstacy was unbeknownst to me also heavily laced with meth, the person i bought from didn’t tell me til after i quit but i only bought from him and always the same kind, and they said all of it was laced with meth). I was also heavily involved in environments that required fighting both voluntarily but also where i would be attacked at random, so again that level of fear was still present. One day after several weeks of being high and drunk every day the entire time and having very little sleep i became extremely paranoid that i was being hunted. I locked myself in my apartment with a knife and a gun and spent 3 days pacing back and forth from window to window, gun in hand mind you, waiting for my “hunters” to bust down the door and kill me. Every person near my place was the enemy and watched with extreme vigilance.
It should also be noted that whole time i was still doing coke and drinking while pacing. My girlfriend at the time was doing those drugs too. She was also the only one i wasn’t paranoid about. And i spent that whole 3 days trying to convince her that the threat was real and i wasn’t crazy. She didn’t believe me of course but thankfully also didn’t feel as though i was a threat to her in any way, knowing i wasn’t going to hurt her. We talked extensively about it after things calmed down and she said she knew i wasn’t a threat to her because i was also telling her how i was more afraid for her safety than my own and she needed to stay with me in the apartment because that was the only way i could keep her safe. She told me she chose to stay to keep an eye on me. After those 3 days she managed to convince me to give her the gun so she could “take up my security patrols” while i went and slept. When i passed out i slept for almost 19 hours and when i woke up the paranoia was mostly gone and i knew no one was after me and things returned to my normal.
I had psychosis from PTSD after I was SA’d. You know how in movies people see other peoples faces on the wrong persons body, when they are hallucinating? Yeah, I experienced that. It was terrifying trying to leave my dorm to go to class.
I also had extreme paranoia where I felt like everyone on campus was out to get me for reporting what happened; and I was convinced I needed to change my name and move to Arizona under witness protection.
I’ve had psychotic depression a few times where I have been convinced that my brain is rotting and full of maggots. I can smell an overwhelming disgusting stench of rotting flesh, and I can feel maggots wriggling around in my brain. The cognitive effects of the psychosis make it feel like my brain is shutting down because it’s being consumed. Freaky stuff.
parasites were by far my worst delusion. hallucinating worm shapes under my skin, “feeling” worms wriggling around in my brain, meticulously checking all my food. shook me up and made me feel violated + helpless medically in a way that makes other delusions pale by comparison. it’s what pushed me finally start taking antipsychotics.
Didn’t happen to me personally but an old friend went down deep to the point that he was convinced his neighbors had Obama tied up in their basement. So, naturally, he realized he had to go and save the president. Literally broke into the neighbor’s place, cops came and he went to jail. AND he got a lot of help and is waaaay better now.
The worst episodes for me tend to happen when I’m walking somewhere alone, I’ll see people peaking out from behind cars, bins, corners, whatever, watching me, and if I look away, they get closer, often times they’re horribly malformed, bordering inhuman, if I look away long enough, I can hear and feel them running towards me at full speed, I can almost see it from their perspective, it’s like I’m being hunted for sport, only, the hunter can teleport and enjoys scaring me.
I was walking home from work in 2021 and smelled smoke. I was convinced, sure, positive than my house had burned down while I was at work. I rushed home and stood on the sidewalk crying, because I swear my house was charred.
I was able to snap out of it relatively quickly by going up to my porch and touching my house, but I’ll never forget the feeling of horror and the certainly that my house had completely burned.
We need to eliminate stigma. Psychosis is a lot more common and universal than people realise. Around 3 out of 100 people will develop this illness during their life.
A lot of people think it’s funny or scary or weird but you truly believe everything your mind is telling you. And you can’t escape. There’s no reality testing, anything could happen, good or bad. You’re just stuck there. And this shit can kill you.
You don’t know when or IF you’ll fully recover, or where that time will be. When you’ll get to escape.
I hold the belief that psychosis is usually a reenactment of past trauma or suppressed emotions past and present that need to be heard, acknowledged or fixed. But I’m not a psychiatrist.
Usually induced by severe stress or traumatic events, it can also be caused by illicit and legal substances and nutritional deficiencies.
Think of it as a complex neurochemical event/storm turned protective coping mechanism to escape an unbearable reality by creating a new one. It’s actually very clever. (I also wonder how social media is exciting the susceptibility towards psychotic illness by pumping our brains with dopamine, but that’s a question for another day.)
Dopamine antagonists (antipsychotics) are usually the first line of treatment. Hospitalisation is usually necessary in severe cases.
More sympathetic awareness of this condition as a condition and not a defect or character flaw is needed. It’s on the same destructive scale and can affect lives (especially during crucial periods of human development during young adulthood) as devastatingly as cancer can. But people look the other way cause it’s not them.
Can happen to anyone without warning. And like cancer, it is catastrophic if not treated early.
Check up on your friends and family, even your neighbours. Psychosis is particularly dangerous for those who are socially isolated or live alone. Remember folks, it’s a severe illness, not a character flaw or sign of deficiency.
Reddit, I want to normalise this illness. Many people are often too scared to talk about psychosis openly. Let’s allow people to safely discuss their experiences here. Let’s get rid of stigma. 💪
Important Information:
Experiencing things that feel unreal or overwhelming can be incredibly scary and isolating.
If your mind is playing tricks, or you’re feeling disconnected from reality, please know you’re not alone. This is a sign that your brain needs some support, just like any other part of your body might. Reaching out to a mental health helpline is a brave first step towards understanding what’s happening and getting the help you deserve. They’re there to provide help and support to those who need it. Your well-being matters.
Psychosis is treatable, and many people who have experienced it go on to live rich, fulfilling lives. It’s not a death sentence.
I dealt with this through my father. He’s doing good work now and seems very healthy but he would leave my teen brother at home for a week and refuse to return home, bouncing around hotels up and down the state. Anyone with tinted windows was suspect and wanted to hurt him, he could hear angels and banish demons, etc. I love him immensely, but there have been a few episodes to deal with and when it’s psychological it can get really difficult to navigate.
Every day is a new day and a new opportunity for growth.
Epileptic here: When I’m having a seizure, I hear a voice/voices. Each time, it is different. There’s been an Omnipotent God, a Persausive Devil. Sometimes, it’s just everyday sounds. 1 time I would’ve sworn I had been in New York during summer and was hit by a cab. In reality, I was in front of a classroom, started giving a book report, and fell hitting my head on the corner of the teachers desk, while my ribs took the lecturn to the ribs.
The 30-40 seconds I’m out in reality are a lifetime on the inside of my thoughts. The Persausive Devil is the worst by far. They(the voice is neither make or female) lay bare each self doubt, every insecurity, mistake and folley I have.
I’ve been recovering from PTSD-induced psychosis for literal YEARS. In the past, I often had extreme anxiety that someone was always watching me and would hallucinate the feeling of someone breathing on me. Typically, I’d see shadow figures at night and have horrible nightmares when I tried to sleep. I think my worst delusion was when I had convinced myself I was actually dead and everyone around me was secretly trying to lure me back into my grave. To be fair, many people during this time had told me I looked dead/lifeless.
i have schizophrenia and i experience psychotic symptoms daily. the worst delusion, fear AND annoyance wise, is probably believing im constantly being hunted down by some secret group idk of. worst hallucination fear wise is seeing figures in the hall, but the worst hallucination annoyance wise is seeing cats and dogs in areas there isnt. i live with 3 cats and 1 dog, so it becomes a real mf inconvenience even tho it doesn’t scare me 😭
This isn’t going to really make sense, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
I have had roughly 6 psychotic episodes, and they were “BPD-type” (edit: as opposed to bipolar or schizophrenia as most of this thread is referring to); after a brief period of being provisionally diagnosed with BPD, we now believe they were caused by severe rejection sensitivity associated with ADHD. Universally, the sole delusion was “my ex who just broke up with me has been lying to me the whole time.” I’m normally very trusting, and don’t generally date people who lie to me, so this is odd, but what makes it a psychotic delusion is the strength of the belief compared to the evidence. Zero evidence and INSANELY STRONG BELIEF = delusion. They tended to last about 2 weeks, which included a great deal of verbal abuse, and none of them ever spoke to me again.
Incidentally, I was taking 600 mg of Seroquel during four of these and it did nothing.
funny story: my bf at the time had psychosis (still does) and a common visual+tactile hallucination that came on from stress was “there are bugs crawling on me”, and needed a camera, a second set of eyes, or a good few minutes to discern the truth. Poor thing stayed over my place in a farmhouses apartment in the spring, and wakes up from a dead sleep “b0rb there’s bugs on me”. I assure it’s a hallucination, everything is fine, “no b0rb i need you to turn on the light and check”
reader. it was ladybug season and apparently my room was the Love Bug Hotel that night. i felt SO bad and never doubted double checking a bug hallucination again.
I thought I had been secretly molested by a family member and others for many many years as part of a pedophile cult. It occurred almost overnight, I believe due to stress, lack of sleep and mild drug overdose.
The resulting episode lasted for just over a year. It was horrific.
But something I’ve learned from it later in life is, if someone one day out of the blue claims they remember being raped and molested many many years ago, unfortunately… You can’t always believe it. As this delusion is actually much more common than people realise.
Every single night, auditory hallucinations keep waking me.
Just various voices constantly saying “hello? Hello, is anyone there? Hello? >my name< can you hear me? I need your help. Hello? Could you please help me? Come outside and help me! Hello? Are you there, >my name<?”
After having my first son my mental health declined rapidly. I was convinced that family would sexually abuse him if I left him with them. I was getting these horrible playthroughs in my head of myself and family abusing him. I tried for months to ignore it because I was worried if I told anyone they would take away my baby.
I eventually broke down and told my husband and doctor. I was actually scared to even cry near my baby because I thought i would contaminate him with my negative emotions. It was a scary time because I trust my family and husband but during that time everyone was an enemy.
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It’s been a while since I had a manic episode, and I’m not sure it’s exactly psychosis, but when I was an unmedicated teen I had more prolonged and consistent hallucinations.
I think the worst depends on how you interpret worst, I don’t remember ever being scared of what was in my head, it was the lack of control, lack of ability to articulate my thoughts or communicate clearly, the unpredictability of other people and the situation, all of the external things were what was scary, and even then it was more frustrating and disorienting than scary.
The vast majority my hallucinations were audio so that might also be a factor, but if I was ever freaking out or panicking it was usually because I couldn’t process information normally and was aware of that, like imagine your legs stopped working, whenever you moved the muscles or did the motions to move your legs they just floo around unexpectedly, but while you’re in the middle of running for your life, it feels like that but for your mind
I wouldn’t consider what I have experienced as psychosis only because it seems to go away and stow away neatly when needed and I haven’t been confronted or made much of an effort to change and there isn’t consistency to how it occurs beside sleep deprivation and dehydration but, they always seem accurate even as they subside into ignorance, like any outbursts and targeted disruption of the offending disruption paralyzes the threat through precision to let me think and interfering or not being allowed to be alone or without offending noise aligns you with the threat. So the delusions and rage are a counter to what is attempting to counter my thought. Get out of the way of me and my thoughts not being in the way or get jujitsu’d or at least canceled out by me raising my voice enough to internally mute the corrupt, errant, exterior dialogue or manipulation or harrassment.
Only experienced it once after withdrawing from DNRIs (buproprion).
I kept begging to be hospitalized because I was afraid I’d hurt somebody, and I even bolted out of the car at one point. I do not remember this incident. It was relayed to me after the fact.
I only remember the emotions I felt. I don’t think I hallucinated but I was definitely out of it/delusional. I kept thinking I was gonna get better if I detransitioned and I remember considering myself filthy at the time. That’s about it.
Ironically after quitting psych meds altogether I’ve not experienced anything remotely similar since. I feel normal-ish, despite the severe depression. I can at least accurately tell which of my thoughts are legitimate and which are hogwash, and my impulse control is a million times better.
I saw people standing in my room just watching me while I slept. I asked them who they were & why they were there but they would only smile & not answer me. I also saw little birds coming out of my bathtub drain one at a time. I called my mother to show her & ask her how that was even possible. Yea, I ended up 5150’d. I’m glad I didn’t see anything horrifying!
I had a mental break years ago from family stress and trauma combined with insomnia.
I had become convinced that I was infact Dead.
I couldn’t process peoples faces, they looked blurry and out of focus. In that state I was in I believed that at any moment the grim reaper would appear to collect me and I had somehow been forgotten. I stopped eating entirely and only drank small amounts of water.
A week of believing i was dead passed and a thought occurred “I look sick but, I’m not rotting.”
I went to a hospital and started treatment after that. I’ll never forget how real it all felt to me.
Not me personally, but I had a client for a few sessions who was having trouble sleeping at night because the moon was purple.
I almost jumped off a fourth floor window saying I wanted to “experience true free fall”. I had 3 classmates trying to talk me down and I just couldn’t understand the concept of being dead or hurt. It was like I had no idea what pain feels like, and I couldn’t comprehend the mere idea that it could happen to me.
Then a fourth classmate saw, went to the school cafeteria, got my favorite candy and lured me off the windowsill with it. She told me if I got off the window, she would give me one, and of I waited until tomorrow to jump, she would give me a second one at the end of the day. I agreed. Somehow the promise of a kitkat was more compelling than the risk of death or lifelong disability or broken bones.
That day 3 of my classmates walked with me all the way home, making sure to not let me walk straight into traffic, and told my parents what happened. Nobody told any of the teachers or school admin, and I’m not sure why.
This was 12th grade and we were 16-18yo so we were left unsupervised at school frequently, which is why no staff noticed this going on. I don’t remember most of this, btw. My classmates told me later, once I was back to class.
It went on for a solid year straight and was a gradual descent into full blown psychosis.
I was heavily abusing stimulants for a long time… well, any drug really, but being who I am and how my brain is wired, stimulants gave me the best feeling comparatively.
I remember the first spark of the paranoia like it was yesterday. I was cleaning out my old apartment, having moved most of everything into the other one. By then I had graduated to smoking coke off of foil, then quickly went to crack. Took a big hit like I had done so many times before, and suddenly something clicked in my head.
I stared out the window and thought, “Does that look like a cop?”
It was like someone else’s voice screamed it across some other dimension. Like an echo already bounced back a few times. Then it got louder and louder. Every time I took I hit I swore I could hear them. See them.
I started reading novels in my stucco-covered walls. I could see all of the awful things I’d done in my life written out in the patterns. Everything was critical, every word was harsh and packed with vitriol and disgust at my current state.
I could hear them tunneling through the walls. They were coming for me at all times. I would watch Apple Maps and truly SEE that it was a live feed of the police raid on my house. All of my neighbors were in on it. If they were outside, they had weapons and were ready to strike.
The trees spelled messages to me. All from the police. I would see helicopters flying above my apartment, ready to unleash hell. They were outside my studio’s door. They were waiting.
They had planted trackers in everything. I destroyed every book I owned, tore apart most of my clothes. Destroyed every electronic except my phone.
This isn’t even anywhere near all of it. And I remember it all.
I’d smoke a couple grams and be on the floor bawling, begging for my life from the nonexistent police that were about to break my door down.
All of this was about a year and a half before I even tried meth. It got worse once I started shooting that shit up. There’s so much more I can tell yall.
Post partum psychosis and sleep deprivation. I saw spiders crawling all over the ceiling and was terrified they would fall on the baby
When I get sick sometimes (flu/cold) I do experience psychosis, and its to the point that I tie myself to the bed when I feel it coming, just so I don’t get myself in trouble.
Its kinda hard to explain the experience. Its always the same. Its a hallucination where something mundane suddenly feels huge, and that its multiplying itself. It feels as if this thing will in an instant multiply so much that it will fill the whole universe, and everyone will die. And its somehow my fault.
When its hits, I feel like I’m having a panic attack, because of how dire this crisis is. I cannot think straight. There’s only fear. One time, it felt like toilet paper rolls were filling up the space in my room, So I ran to my balcony and began throwing out the rolls, but they never lessened.
I feel so afraid when it happens that I am willing to do anything to make the fear go away.
So many of these accounts don’t look and feel like psychosis to me… I wonder how many of these traumatized people will realize what they’ve experienced…
Spiders
When I took too much Benadryl I saw SPIDERS. Don’t take Benadryl to get high lol
I still suffer from this I just live it wit but I always see this person standing in the corner of the room at times just watching me. Was a guy we lost when I was deployed VA thinks I’m making it up no brain tumors no rhyme or reason why just stands there staring at me doesn’t talk though life is otherwise normal
My worst one was that I was a prophet from God. I wrote “prophesies” and tried to spread them. All ends of the earth type stuff. I got out of it on my own though, thankfully. Didn’t really need help, just time to get over it.
During psychosis I was often or usually aware I wasn’t well. Plus it wasn’t consistent. So many changes throughout a day or from one day to the next. Extreme mood swings. So much anxiety and paranoia. Sort of like psychosis was the result of too much prolonged stress. But ya know, recovery from psychosis is a different thing and also sucks. Can take a long time. Like a year or two.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve really dealt with this but around like 2020 I saw something that really kinda fucked me up for a bit, this was also during a really low point in my life. Just seeing that and also already having a really stressful time in my life I just went into psychosis. Seeing what I saw every time I closed my eyes eventually turned into thinking that my head was going to suddenly explode or something was going to suddenly cause my head to be obliterated the same exact way I saw happen. I had moments where the fear was so real that I’d stop what I was doing, curl up, hold my head like it was somehow going to keep everything in if I did and I’d cry because I was so scared. Even when I was at a friends house I’d be perfectly fine and then out of nowhere I can’t focus on them because everything in my mind is screaming at me that my head would explode and my friends would be absolutely traumatized by seeing that and I was scared because I didn’t want them to see that too. I became really paranoid too. I started worrying that my family was purposefully trying to poison me and ruin my life and I became very distrustful of them during this time. I also stopped being able to recognize myself in the mirror, I was just looking at a complete stranger, so I would take a sheet and cover up the bathroom mirror. I stayed in the hospital as a result of this psychosis for a couple of weeks. The hospital stay didn’t really help tbh and neither did the therapy afterwards, but since then I’ve put a lot of work into myself to break out of it.
Worst: a premonition that took over every aspect of my life and I thought would result in my death, leading me to an intensive outpatient program (one of a few reasons). I’ve crafted some of the way it “came true” and found ways to grow from it.
Funniest: when I was younger I was entirely convinced one night that all my socks were puppies that I had to take care of. I don’t remember how amused my mom was, ha.
I started thinking this guy — who was someone I knew from a professional context through a coworker slash friend — was a crowned prince of France. I thought, of course he has his own security detail, which has set up a stake out operation in my apartment. I was madly in love with him, and, one day he just ghosted me. To my added brain, he was protecting my by separating himself from me, and we could communicate through the police, anyway. This meant photographers in the bushes, cameras in and all around the apartment, and my every move being watched. Even through two hospitalizations, I still believe this because it was part of my job, as a princess, to say nothing about my secret mission. I have a lot more to tell, if people are interested.
When I gave up alcohol, there was a period where reality felt like overcooked noodles.
I swear I hear a violin playing in the background that fades off when I try to listen for it
And time flows weird. Like I felt like I have lived for months, not it’s only a literal couple of hours. Or I think, wow I did that in 2 minutes, and the clock actually said it’s 2+hours
Sitting alone in my apartment with my dog of 14 (at the time) years. To me he looked like he was going to lunge and kill me. It was a battle of who was going to kill who first. The psychosis was so strong I literally almost killed my dog. Thankfully I am now medicated and my pupper is still with me, turning 16 this month.
Does chronic and consistent dissociation count? I’m genuinely asking because that’s almost a daily occurrence for me. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m experiencing reality in the moment.
Well as someone who is quite reasonable, and is put into unreasonable situations quite a lot.
I thought I was Hades, the god of the dead. I kinda just remember dressing in all black, and being super amped up. I came too in a psych ward with a busted up leg.
Adderall-induced psychosis. I had a psychotic break in middle school. I have religious trauma. I was having an episode where I literally climbing up the wall. My mom held me down and tried to perform an exorcism on me lol. I saw her face as a demon on a doorknob. I was like her face but every small wrinkle was deeper and black and her skin was white and cracked kinda. I was convinced that the rapture was gonna happen at any moment so I would store food under my bed so that if my family didn’t go to heaven and we were stuck in my room, we would have food. I have struggled with thoughts like this a lot. I have OCD so it’s hard to decipher if some thoughts are intrusive or psychotic. An example was that on 4/20/Easter, I smoked pot and I didn’t pray that day. The Pope died and I was convinced that he died because of the “sinful” acts that I and the world committed that day.
it started when i was home playing some minecraft, just chilling, when i saw a spider on my hand. naturally i swiped it off as quickly as i could, but realized i didn’t even feel it on my skin, though it was gone already. i went to the bathroom to wash my face and sat on the bed to calm down. i noticed in my peripheral vision a humanoid just staring at me, but when i focused on it it disappeared. several have appeared in the same way, just going through the average day. it would happen when i’m walking, in school, at home, anywhere. when i’d go to sleep i’d hear some unintelligible whispering coming from behind me, which would come from just behind me.
after i started losing my mind over it, i told my mom, who said that i should talk to my psychologist about it, who later prescribed me some antidepressants (i forgot the name) and the hallucinations went away after a while, yippie! got off of the meds later (which i now realize was a big mistake) and they never came back.
I actually have a ‘delusion’ where I feel like people are making fun of me or lying to me. It has SOME basis in past relationships, but it’s made me suspicious and afraid to open up to people. I guard my heart with everything I have, well, normally.
Alcohol induced psychosis: I was convinced a group of people were trying to break into my apartment and bedroom to murder me.
I was actively dying from a heart virus, was in so much pain i was on tramadol so i could get out of bed. The pain was so bad i accepted death and was waitingfor it to take me out, but i survived, and physically healthy today. The tramadol + stress + pain made me see shadow people when it was dark, i heard voices when it was quite but they were either whispers or when load it was not human. Its been a decade since i recovered but i still cant be left alone without audio stimuli or i fear the voices will return. I need complete darkness or im afraid i will see the shadows again. Still have some anxiety issues but funny enough, i have no problem sleeping in the woods by myself, its loud and completely dark so i dont get triggered. Haven’t seen or heard the shadows or voices in a decade but when your mind cracks like that, it doesnt really heal, it scars.
Also my bodies sense went out of wack, i do not feel my heartbeat anymore, like no matter how much cardio i do, i dont feel it. I have to use a tracker to make sure i dont get hurt. The only time i feel my heart is when i get stressed, then i have ptsd and feel the same chest pains i felt when i was dying. So thats not much fun
Overall 3/10 do not recommend, literally mentally scaring.
I have bipolar and was diagnosed but not on a strong enough dose of meds. My most severe delusions were related to the devil, who I thought was stalking and following me. I was on a holiday visiting my mom. I wasn’t in full blown psychosis so I knew to hide it. I thought the devil was hiding in the furnace room. She took me out on a kayak and I saw the sky reveal itself to be another sky that was red and hellfire and the devil was enormous. We saw some bald eagles in their nest and I thought they were the devil’s minions. My family kept asking me why I was so agitated. That was fun. A few days later and a med increase, the delusions calmed down but I got really obsessed with the Bible for a bit. I’m not religious at all.
I had a drug induced psychosis around 10 years ago ( recovered since then, yay)
I think the worst ones for me were the sometimes very dark and violent thoughts. I had “visions” of brutally torturing my pets for example, and felt absolutely horrified and disgusted by even thinking anything like that.
The worst delusions were somewhat tame. For around a week I was convinced everyone around me could read my mind, so I got very paranoid about anyone noticing what I was going through.
Luckily it only lasted 2 weeks ish total. Left me with a nice panic disorder afterwards ( fully worked that one out too, yay)
A few months after graduating HS I had not slept for a week using lots of cannabis plus i took over the counter cold medicine which made me delusional. I thought the tv was all a conspiracy to make me feel like a failure. Like in football all I saw was players fumbling the ball. The newspaper was all lies geared toward manipulating my feelings. Ended up in a detox facility for a week.
Hi, I think I’m in the beginning stages of psychosis and I’m currently still aware of my mental decay. I have lived behind my eyes for around 1.5 years, I self soothe, I drink alcohol, I smoke weed barely because it will spiral into anxiety moreso than I already feel. I have diagnosed ADHD from 8yo, im 30yo now. I have eczema, I pick and scratch, I don’t know what reality is at some level, but I’m also a rational person as far as self awareness goes. I have HPPD from being maybe a little too wild one night and now it haunts me. i cut off a bunch of text because I’ll vent forever to anyone who actually cares. I use reddit to just go off to strangers
Here’s my story – I remember everything. Every terrifying, confusing moment. Here goes. Have a history of complex trauma. My illness created something long and elaborate, so naturally this comment will be long and elaborate. This is difficult for me to share. I thought I could reduce my meds and was under extreme levels of several stressful life events, good and bad, lined up in quick succession. That’s the kicker. That’s what did it.
I truly believed I was on a special mission from God. I thought I was chosen and that my friends and family were possessed and persecuting me. Animals seemed kind because they sensed something holy in me. Colors around me exploded like bright mosaics. I believed movies were a prophecy about me, that I was destined for something extraordinary.
One day, while on a walk, I tripped and fell in front of a church. To me, it was a sign that I had to be baptized, or my life would be doomed.
When my dog was pregnant with a litter of puppies, I was convinced it was part of God’s plan — that I had to keep one of the litter to fulfill a divine purpose. But when I asked a lady to help rehome the puppies, I became terrified, thinking she was possessed by demons trying to ruin God’s plan. I believed I was the reincarnation of Jesus, carrying His spirit.
When my dog was spayed, I was terrified. My head said it was the right thing, but my illness screamed no. Afterward, I believed that procedure had “spayed” my own potential – that my spiritual and feminine energy had been corrupted beyond repair. I thought death and resurrection were the only ways to save me. At this point I should have gone to my doctor and told him everything but I was living solo and didn’t think I was ill, just spiritually attuned.
I wandered into freezing wilderness, thinking I might die but also simultaneously that God would somehow protect me. I became dangerously cold and exhausted, then returned home and drank warm tea to survive. I feared the cold had caused irreversible brain damage.
I went weeks without food or water, convinced my salvation depended on following strict “holy rules” like a video game – where good and bad actions affected my spiritual health, taking or adding points. Objects, clothes, even people had sacred or dark energies. I believed my left hand was “bad,” my right hand “good.” I was severely starving and dehydrated which worsened my experience.
A demon spoke through me, promising salvation if I obeyed his strict commands. I tried to purge the demon with a very hot shower, but it didn’t work.
Eventually, I believed I had died and was trapped alone with no other living thing in this purgatory realm, punished for trying to end my life. I thought God and heaven no longer existed, and that Satan ruled everything.
I saw Satan watching me in my house. He had sharp teeth and the eyes of a predatory snake. He was salivating. He could read my thoughts. Satan told me my family had died because I hadn’t converted them to Christianity. He possessed my “dead” body in another timeline/plane of existence in the hospital I had “died” in. I believed paramedics had implanted a chip in my brain after I had died, condemning me to eternal, virtual, solitary suffering. There was the virtual world created by the chip, and the outside real world I could not access or sense. In a way, this elaborate delusion wasn’t wrong in the existential sense. My mind was indeed creating a world of its own, separate from real reality.
A friend helped get me to safety, but I thought the world was an artificial holographic prison created by Satan and others. I wouldn’t eat or drink, fearing poison or spiritual corruption, often both.
When my dad took me to the hospital, I thought it was Satan’s headquarters. I saw staff as demons. The hospital was a labyrinth of hell. I believed my cross necklace was the only protection.
I refused most food and water, terrified it was made from human remains or “demonic” ingredients. I felt putrefying disgust and horror every time I ate, convinced demons were forcing me into sins I couldn’t undo.
After months of aggressive treatment, the delusions faded. I began eating again and was eventually discharged.
I can’t fully explain the terror I experienced. It was beyond anything I imagined. This happened as I was making progress in my life and career, and it nearly destroyed me. A really shitty experience all round. I have to start all over again. This is the third time in my twenties I have had to start again and rebuild.
But I’m still here, somehow. Sharing this helps me feel a bit less alone and maybe it can help others feel this way too. It was pure hell; the horrors of a highly creative imagination brought to terrifying life. I don’t ever want to experience anything like that ever again.
Severe trigger warning for childhood SA and other types of abuse, so if details of such things csn trigger you then please don’t read any further, last thing i want is what i’m going to say causing anyone distress.
When i was 14 i ran away from home after my entire life time up until that point of extreme physical, psychological and really violent and regular sexual assaults. From my earliest memory my parents beat me, my mother would whip me with a straightened out metal clothes hanger, sometimes would burn me on the stove element as punishment, and emotionally tortured me. My older brother too would beat and also rape me on a regular basis even rupturing my colon when i was 8 years old. So needless to say, i had never known what it felt like to feel safe and lived soaked in fear, confusion and pain. I decided to run away at 14 because i knew if i didn’t either i was going to kill one of them or i was going to kill myself, and despite being actively suicidal i didn’t want that, as counter intuitive as that sounds.
At the age of 15 i was heavily addicted to alcohol, cocaine and ecstacy (the ecstacy was unbeknownst to me also heavily laced with meth, the person i bought from didn’t tell me til after i quit but i only bought from him and always the same kind, and they said all of it was laced with meth). I was also heavily involved in environments that required fighting both voluntarily but also where i would be attacked at random, so again that level of fear was still present. One day after several weeks of being high and drunk every day the entire time and having very little sleep i became extremely paranoid that i was being hunted. I locked myself in my apartment with a knife and a gun and spent 3 days pacing back and forth from window to window, gun in hand mind you, waiting for my “hunters” to bust down the door and kill me. Every person near my place was the enemy and watched with extreme vigilance.
It should also be noted that whole time i was still doing coke and drinking while pacing. My girlfriend at the time was doing those drugs too. She was also the only one i wasn’t paranoid about. And i spent that whole 3 days trying to convince her that the threat was real and i wasn’t crazy. She didn’t believe me of course but thankfully also didn’t feel as though i was a threat to her in any way, knowing i wasn’t going to hurt her. We talked extensively about it after things calmed down and she said she knew i wasn’t a threat to her because i was also telling her how i was more afraid for her safety than my own and she needed to stay with me in the apartment because that was the only way i could keep her safe. She told me she chose to stay to keep an eye on me. After those 3 days she managed to convince me to give her the gun so she could “take up my security patrols” while i went and slept. When i passed out i slept for almost 19 hours and when i woke up the paranoia was mostly gone and i knew no one was after me and things returned to my normal.
I had psychosis from PTSD after I was SA’d. You know how in movies people see other peoples faces on the wrong persons body, when they are hallucinating? Yeah, I experienced that. It was terrifying trying to leave my dorm to go to class.
I also had extreme paranoia where I felt like everyone on campus was out to get me for reporting what happened; and I was convinced I needed to change my name and move to Arizona under witness protection.
Nice try, APA.
I’ve had psychotic depression a few times where I have been convinced that my brain is rotting and full of maggots. I can smell an overwhelming disgusting stench of rotting flesh, and I can feel maggots wriggling around in my brain. The cognitive effects of the psychosis make it feel like my brain is shutting down because it’s being consumed. Freaky stuff.
parasites were by far my worst delusion. hallucinating worm shapes under my skin, “feeling” worms wriggling around in my brain, meticulously checking all my food. shook me up and made me feel violated + helpless medically in a way that makes other delusions pale by comparison. it’s what pushed me finally start taking antipsychotics.
My son doesn’t really look like me so I became convinced his mother was inseminated by an alien and my son was an alien.
Didn’t happen to me personally but an old friend went down deep to the point that he was convinced his neighbors had Obama tied up in their basement. So, naturally, he realized he had to go and save the president. Literally broke into the neighbor’s place, cops came and he went to jail. AND he got a lot of help and is waaaay better now.
The worst episodes for me tend to happen when I’m walking somewhere alone, I’ll see people peaking out from behind cars, bins, corners, whatever, watching me, and if I look away, they get closer, often times they’re horribly malformed, bordering inhuman, if I look away long enough, I can hear and feel them running towards me at full speed, I can almost see it from their perspective, it’s like I’m being hunted for sport, only, the hunter can teleport and enjoys scaring me.
I was walking home from work in 2021 and smelled smoke. I was convinced, sure, positive than my house had burned down while I was at work. I rushed home and stood on the sidewalk crying, because I swear my house was charred.
I was able to snap out of it relatively quickly by going up to my porch and touching my house, but I’ll never forget the feeling of horror and the certainly that my house had completely burned.
Side note:
We need to eliminate stigma. Psychosis is a lot more common and universal than people realise. Around 3 out of 100 people will develop this illness during their life.
A lot of people think it’s funny or scary or weird but you truly believe everything your mind is telling you. And you can’t escape. There’s no reality testing, anything could happen, good or bad. You’re just stuck there. And this shit can kill you.
You don’t know when or IF you’ll fully recover, or where that time will be. When you’ll get to escape.
I hold the belief that psychosis is usually a reenactment of past trauma or suppressed emotions past and present that need to be heard, acknowledged or fixed. But I’m not a psychiatrist.
Usually induced by severe stress or traumatic events, it can also be caused by illicit and legal substances and nutritional deficiencies.
Think of it as a complex neurochemical event/storm turned protective coping mechanism to escape an unbearable reality by creating a new one. It’s actually very clever. (I also wonder how social media is exciting the susceptibility towards psychotic illness by pumping our brains with dopamine, but that’s a question for another day.)
Dopamine antagonists (antipsychotics) are usually the first line of treatment. Hospitalisation is usually necessary in severe cases.
More sympathetic awareness of this condition as a condition and not a defect or character flaw is needed. It’s on the same destructive scale and can affect lives (especially during crucial periods of human development during young adulthood) as devastatingly as cancer can. But people look the other way cause it’s not them.
Can happen to anyone without warning. And like cancer, it is catastrophic if not treated early.
Check up on your friends and family, even your neighbours. Psychosis is particularly dangerous for those who are socially isolated or live alone. Remember folks, it’s a severe illness, not a character flaw or sign of deficiency.
Reddit, I want to normalise this illness. Many people are often too scared to talk about psychosis openly. Let’s allow people to safely discuss their experiences here. Let’s get rid of stigma. 💪
Important Information:
Experiencing things that feel unreal or overwhelming can be incredibly scary and isolating.
If your mind is playing tricks, or you’re feeling disconnected from reality, please know you’re not alone. This is a sign that your brain needs some support, just like any other part of your body might. Reaching out to a mental health helpline is a brave first step towards understanding what’s happening and getting the help you deserve. They’re there to provide help and support to those who need it. Your well-being matters.
Psychosis is treatable, and many people who have experienced it go on to live rich, fulfilling lives. It’s not a death sentence.
I dealt with this through my father. He’s doing good work now and seems very healthy but he would leave my teen brother at home for a week and refuse to return home, bouncing around hotels up and down the state. Anyone with tinted windows was suspect and wanted to hurt him, he could hear angels and banish demons, etc. I love him immensely, but there have been a few episodes to deal with and when it’s psychological it can get really difficult to navigate.
Every day is a new day and a new opportunity for growth.
Epileptic here: When I’m having a seizure, I hear a voice/voices. Each time, it is different. There’s been an Omnipotent God, a Persausive Devil. Sometimes, it’s just everyday sounds. 1 time I would’ve sworn I had been in New York during summer and was hit by a cab. In reality, I was in front of a classroom, started giving a book report, and fell hitting my head on the corner of the teachers desk, while my ribs took the lecturn to the ribs.
The 30-40 seconds I’m out in reality are a lifetime on the inside of my thoughts. The Persausive Devil is the worst by far. They(the voice is neither make or female) lay bare each self doubt, every insecurity, mistake and folley I have.
I don’t know if it was a light PPP or just sleep withdrawal, but when I had a newborn I started seeing geometric shapes every often
I’ve been recovering from PTSD-induced psychosis for literal YEARS. In the past, I often had extreme anxiety that someone was always watching me and would hallucinate the feeling of someone breathing on me. Typically, I’d see shadow figures at night and have horrible nightmares when I tried to sleep. I think my worst delusion was when I had convinced myself I was actually dead and everyone around me was secretly trying to lure me back into my grave. To be fair, many people during this time had told me I looked dead/lifeless.
i have schizophrenia and i experience psychotic symptoms daily. the worst delusion, fear AND annoyance wise, is probably believing im constantly being hunted down by some secret group idk of. worst hallucination fear wise is seeing figures in the hall, but the worst hallucination annoyance wise is seeing cats and dogs in areas there isnt. i live with 3 cats and 1 dog, so it becomes a real mf inconvenience even tho it doesn’t scare me 😭
This isn’t going to really make sense, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
I have had roughly 6 psychotic episodes, and they were “BPD-type” (edit: as opposed to bipolar or schizophrenia as most of this thread is referring to); after a brief period of being provisionally diagnosed with BPD, we now believe they were caused by severe rejection sensitivity associated with ADHD. Universally, the sole delusion was “my ex who just broke up with me has been lying to me the whole time.” I’m normally very trusting, and don’t generally date people who lie to me, so this is odd, but what makes it a psychotic delusion is the strength of the belief compared to the evidence. Zero evidence and INSANELY STRONG BELIEF = delusion. They tended to last about 2 weeks, which included a great deal of verbal abuse, and none of them ever spoke to me again.
Incidentally, I was taking 600 mg of Seroquel during four of these and it did nothing.
funny story: my bf at the time had psychosis (still does) and a common visual+tactile hallucination that came on from stress was “there are bugs crawling on me”, and needed a camera, a second set of eyes, or a good few minutes to discern the truth. Poor thing stayed over my place in a farmhouses apartment in the spring, and wakes up from a dead sleep “b0rb there’s bugs on me”. I assure it’s a hallucination, everything is fine, “no b0rb i need you to turn on the light and check”
reader. it was ladybug season and apparently my room was the Love Bug Hotel that night. i felt SO bad and never doubted double checking a bug hallucination again.
I thought I had been secretly molested by a family member and others for many many years as part of a pedophile cult. It occurred almost overnight, I believe due to stress, lack of sleep and mild drug overdose.
The resulting episode lasted for just over a year. It was horrific.
But something I’ve learned from it later in life is, if someone one day out of the blue claims they remember being raped and molested many many years ago, unfortunately… You can’t always believe it. As this delusion is actually much more common than people realise.
Every single night, auditory hallucinations keep waking me.
Just various voices constantly saying “hello? Hello, is anyone there? Hello? >my name< can you hear me? I need your help. Hello? Could you please help me? Come outside and help me! Hello? Are you there, >my name<?”
It is terrifying
After having my first son my mental health declined rapidly. I was convinced that family would sexually abuse him if I left him with them. I was getting these horrible playthroughs in my head of myself and family abusing him. I tried for months to ignore it because I was worried if I told anyone they would take away my baby.
I eventually broke down and told my husband and doctor. I was actually scared to even cry near my baby because I thought i would contaminate him with my negative emotions. It was a scary time because I trust my family and husband but during that time everyone was an enemy.