#psychosis trigger

[jennifer-hamilton-wb]

WARNING, please read if it's not triggering.

Before you read this post, people have warned me that I seem disressed (I sure am), and the things I say may be influenced by ,my psychosis. Personally, I feel in control, if you've seen my past psychotic episode posts before i've deleted them you'll see the difference. Anyways I thought it would be vital to tell people about this issue, warn people.

If you deal with psychosis, This post might be triggering, learning this information sure was for me.

So today I learned that Abilify MyCite is a thing that exists. i'm putting a link so everyone understands that this is a real thing that I am not making up. Abilify MyCite are Ariprazole pills with fucking trackers in them to "improve patient compliance" (direct quote from the linked article this is fucking real). The official Abilify MyCite page admits that they have no idea if it works. It's here to track you they want to track us how am I supposed to ever trust my psych again hpow am I supposed to ever take a fucking medication again if they do it with abilify (WHICH I WAS FORCED TO TAKE FOR SEVERAL FUCKING MONTHS JESUS FUCKING CHRISTS). How do I know my seroquil is safe or my antidepressant I need to air on the side of not fucking taking it because fucking christ what the hell holy fucking fuck Trackers in the fucking pill. What the fuck. Please for your saftey avoid Abilify. Who knows what they could do with it. Holy shit I am not okay christ.

[moodr1ng]

a funny thing ive been thinking abt recently is.. as a crazyperson dealing with delusions, the one thing that best lets me manage them is not "convince myself that its not real" (i cant actually just turn off my psychosis :/) but saying "it IS real, this IS true, but only in my reality".

like, idk whether or not "objective reality" is a real thing and im sooo not interested in finding out, but i do know there is a... communal reality? one which is based on things which are observable to anyone, and which impact and are impacted by multiple people. so if thats our basis, the communal reality, then one might consider the idea of an individual reality; one where a person may observe, be impacted by, and impact things which are inobservable to anyone else, and which no one else can interact with directly. the observability and impact of what is being perceived by the person is undeniable to them, but it is very much deniable by anyone else, because its not true in the communal reality.

the crucial part of this, to me, is that if i use this framework, the only course of action that makes sense is to determine that i should avoid doing anything that would negatively impact people, things, or myself in the communal reality based on anything i observe solely in my individual reality. those things are not in the communal reality, so i have like, a sort of moral and also just rational duty to consider them fully irrelevant to the communal reality and to act accordingly.

like, ok, sometimes i become very aware (more than usual) that theres a woman on my balcony at night, and shes looking through my bedroom window and trying to get in, and some nights im so afraid of her that i lock my bedroom door and close the metal blinds all the way and sleep with the lights on. the woman on the balcony is very real... in my individual reality. but thats kind of the reality im in! so shes very real to me!

but, i know, shes not real to anyone else. so i shouldnt do dumb shit based on her being there. i know she cant impact the communal reality (my roommate isnt in danger, etc), so... its kinda fine that shes here?

she is scary and she does want to hurt me and im scared of her and i hate her and wish she would leave. and some nights i need to do my lil 'lockdown procedures' to get away from her, and it fucking sucks, and thats a very real shitty experience.

but, well, once i am able to recognize that shes not real to other people, then she can just be something i observe. i recognize that her reach is limited; that she cant hurt me or anyone else in any meaningful way; eventually, on most days she becomes background noise. eventually, me and them, in our pocket reality no one else experiences, i start to accept them a bit. if the lady could hurt me she would have by now - and i do think the lady on the balcony is also the 'witch behind the curtains' from my childhood, so.. she's had plenty of time.

she cant really hurt me. shes just trying to spook me. shes like these actors in walk-through haunted houses who are behind cages or fences - grabbing towards the audience, putting on a big show of how scary they are.. ultimately, theyre actors in a cage, still. the woman on the balcony is like that. scaring me is the only thing she actually can do; there is no true threat, because the cage of common reality will always hold her at arms length. and sure, shes really, really good at scaring me. and i really dont like it! but i can go through it and remind myself that its all an act. a haunted house tour i didnt sign up for, sure, but none of the actors are allowed to touch me. they cant affect the common reality.

like thats been p dope? im never gonna manage to believe that its "just not real". but i can manage "its real for me and nobody else". and that makes it bearable.

i talk to the man on the ceiling now, sometimes. when i leave my room in the dark i dont turn on the light - and i have always turned on the lights! - and i talk to him. i know hes there. and for years i checked the ceiling at night, compulsively, to make sure he wasnt there. he doesnt want me to see him, right, so i had to keep checking because that way he had to remain hidden and couldnt get close to me.

now i go sit in a completely dark, closed room and i say "hey man, hows it going up there", and hes there on the ceiling, of course, but i dont check now, to be polite (if hes that committed to hiding then clearly its nicer to not look for him!). i tell him about my day a bit. he doesnt respond, obviously, but also id really hate it if he did, so its all good with me. i picture his weird, blank head hanging down from the ceiling, his featureless face hovering just above me, watching me while im blinded by the darkness.

and those are the thoughts ive tried very, very hard to avoid having for so many years! i got into a habit of ig.. very intensely thinking the lyrics of a song while going through my apartment at night, doing the choreographed circuit of turning the lights off and on to make sure i was never in the dark, because if i let my thoughts slip for just a second id think about the ceiling man right behind me, and thatd freak me out.

just sitting there in the complete darkness, knowing hes so close, listening to me talk to him? not so long ago i wouldve had a panic attack about it. but its ok. because the ceiling man cant hurt me, either. and probably isnt even trying to.

i thought about it more, and i realized that while i know the woman is trying to hurt me - shes purposeful about scaring me - the ceiling man has never really been antagonistic. he follows me around, but moreso in the way an animal would follow some strange smaller animal out of curiosity. hes not really trying to do anything to me. hes just here. thats not his fault. hes stuck with me too! so, im chill with him now i guess.

like, seriously.. just saying "the paranoia entities are real actually, but just for me" has actually really really really helped. i wish i hadnt spent all this time thinking and being told that getting better meant no longer having delusions. like, sure, thatd be great!!!! but i cant just turn them off. and theres no treatment that can just 100% make psychosis go away. so, most likely, im still gonna have delusions, and, most likely, i will for the rest of my life, and possibly itll worsen with age. its not realistic to just think "the only real option here is to convince myself that my experiences are fake". what, like im smarter than my own brain? my brains not gonna let me think this isnt real. its making it up in the first place!! so yeah. whatever! it is real. so now i can focus on "whats the best course of action to take when i have (x) experience, while remembering that it cannot infringe upon other peoples reality?", and as it turns out theres a lot more i can do while working within the delusion. damn.

[alfiely-art]

Btw I just wanted to say if you see someone acting delusional (like. Legitimate delusions. Not being misinformed or wrong. Legitimate delusions.) then please mind your own business. It's not your job to reality check them and by doing so you can harm them even further. Unless the person has asked you to reality check them and you're doing what they ASKED you to do, butt out.

When I'm having a delusion about bugs under my skin or something stalking me or literally any other delusion, I don't need someone to tell me "it's not real". I don't care if it's real or not. It's still terrifying to me. Being told "it's not real" doesn't help me, and once the delusion has passed, it makes me feel bad- like I'm just crazy, like my fears and experiences don't matter because they could just be delusions and hallucinations.

This goes for any delusion by the way. You see someone who believes they're God? Cool. Mind your own fucking business. You see someone who believes they have super powers or are an important figure? Cool! Mind your own fucking business.

Now. You may be asking. "Alfie, what if it's my friend and the delusion is stressing them out?"

Comfort them. Treat it like any other problem- if the person prefers advice, give them advice that matches with the delusion. If they just need comfort, do exactly that- tell them you're there for them, etc etc. You're not feeding the delusion- you're comforting your friend when they're stressed and afraid over something.

Don't reality check a delusional person unless you have been asked to by the delusional person.

[faeriekit]

Despair of Your Discovery

Phic phight fill for @carelisswriting. I am so sorry.

(Relevant warnings are tagged below)

**********

“Oh my god,” Danny says, horrified. “That’s…oh my god.”

The plant looks very innocent amongst the rows and rows of lush green pots in Sam’s greenhouse.

It isn’t.

“You cannot tell anyone,” Sam hisses, and shoves the wicker harvest basket back over the bush, as if there was anyone safe to tell! “Not a word. Not a whisper.”

“This is bad. This is really, really bad.”

“I know!” Sam snaps, looking two steps away from a screaming freakout. “But what can I even do with it?!”

The answer seems obvious. “Get rid of it?!” Danny exclaims, throwing his arms out for additional emphasis. “Making sure there isn’t any evidence left??”

“By what, burning it?!”

Danny opens his mouth to affirm the obvious— only to realize there is another, equally as obvious problem with the usual method of extermination.

“...Put it in the trash?” Danny tries again, grimacing. He crosses his arms, taps his toes. “I mean. It’ll go out eventually.”

“And if someone sees it in the trash?!” Sam volleys back, eyes wide with furious distress.

Okay. There's a clear problem here. All they need is a solution.

Tucker wanders into the greenhouse; he probably found out that they weren’t in Sam’s room and figured out their second location pretty quickly. “Hey, Sam; hey Danny. I thought we were doing Doomed today?”

“We’re not,” Sam and Danny chorus.

Tucker frowns. His eyes go back and forth between them. “...Is everything good?”

“No,” Sam says, cutting off Danny’s: “Sam stole another plant from the school garden again.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

Sam throws herself over the wicker basket and grooooooooans.

“Apparently someone was experimenting,” Danny offers flatly. “It’s bad.”

“How can a plant be bad?”

Sam straightens herself up, makes dead-on eye contact, and lifts the basket.

“Is that WEED?!” Tucker yelps. Danny immediately darts over to slap a hand over Tucker’s mouth, and the basket gets slammed back on top of the plant.

“Don’t shout!”

“Shouting is merited!! Sam grew drugs!!”

“On accident!!” Sam shouts back, very, very pale. “They just left the sprouts in the garden shed without any light or water!! I had to do something!!”

“Saaaaaamm,” Tucker groans, which is pretty unmerited, considering that Sam is probably the person suffering the most here. “Sam, we have to do something!"

“I know, I know!!”

“We know you hate pesticides, but isn’t there…some kind of natural weed killer? Or something?” Danny tries, struggling to think it through. “You can’t hand-pull all your weeds in this greenhouse. It’s massive.”

Sam bites her lip. She doesn’t answer.

“Sam…”

“It’s a waste of plant life to kill it,” Sam whispers. Her two best friends groan out loud, angled in two different directions.

“Sam. It’s illegal. You’ve got to get rid of it.” Tucker’s logic is cold, and brazen.

“...Fine.”

The procedure for killing off a plant the organic way is apparently pretty simple; vinegar, salt, and sunlight. The plant is looking dead and crispy under the glow lights in Sam’s greenhouse in less than an hour; by tomorrow, it’ll be long gone.

“We can never tell anyone this happened,” Danny decides, for obvious reasons. Tucker nods solemnly.

Sam sniffles a little, mascara running. Danny gently rubs her back.

[melanovia]

I feel like people forget psychiatry is a paradigm we created with flaws and biases of our own and not something divinely decreed by reality . many forms of treatment are designed to profit off people's symptoms ongoingly without finding solutions in a holistic way. not to mention the ableism of how it's diagnosed which often stigmatizes people ("personality disorders") without recognizing the root cause (which is often a response to trauma/survival). Throughout history people have been damaged by treatments seeking to make them more palatable to society rather than improve their quality of life.

also the way that diagnoses are weaponized against patients. "oh, they're a (____), so you can't trust what they have to say." leaving them vulnerable to systematic abuse.

[howdoyousleep3]

I would like to rant about motherhood and the awful things about it, read more bar is there if you don’t want to read it or engage with my rant. I don’t blame you if you want nothing to do with it, it’s more for me anyway lol

Never in my life have I ever felt so lonely and so depressed, just genuinely, at the core sad and alone.

I have people in my life, but I don’t have a village. My village is in shambles. It’s full of people who like to ask how I am, but don’t like to hear that I’m not well. The people I’ve reached out to got angry at me for reaching out, so I’ve just stopped reaching out. “I’m fine.” The people who have helped me with the girls fuck it up every fucking time, don’t listen to me or my wishes or my open anxieties. So, not only do I not share how I’m actually doing, now I don’t call on people to help me because it isn’t worth the trouble of them fucking up my children’s day-to-day life and schedule.

It’s impossible to not feel like a burden to others when their lives are unaffected, when they aren’t drowning like I am, when every aspect of their life hasn’t been greatly altered and twisted. I am not the same person I once was and I’ll never go back to her. I don’t know how to dress, I don’t know how to interact with people, I don’t know what my hobbies are. It’s hard to not feel like a bother when I’ve been this sad for this long.

No one understands if they haven’t done this before, if they haven’t become a mother. I understand what mothers before me were talking about when they told me motherhood is lonely. This is an experience that is so specific and can only be understood if you have experienced it. Another reason I don’t confide in others in my life— they don’t understand.

I’m so tired of the empty, “I’m sorry”s. I’m so tired of waking up and living the same day over and over. I’m so tired of my husband’s life being virtually unaffected by the birth of our girls while mine is so genuinely fucked up now.

I’m just so tired and so lonely and so sad.

And now Husband leaves in a week to start a new job three hours away and I’ll be staying here with the girls. Even more alone.

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

Psychotic System Culture is...

Being "stuck" in a Safe Place until your partners come back home and can urge you out so you can eat lunch because there are too many spiders in the wall (/delusion)

[wolvertooth]

alright. lets see if i can actually get a bingo this time around.

[adhbabey]

i think like. so much would be solved if we normalized the fact that some people do experience delusions and hallucinations. like yes, its something that those people need help with/need more accommodations for, but we could use being more understanding of people with psychotic symptoms in general.

like, i can tell you that at least one person raving about conspiracy theories is someone who experiences delusions, and if we understood that, we wouldn't have such a hard time getting them back to a more grounded perspective.

i am someone who experiences delusions and I do get incredibly triggered by all the unreality bullshit, the simulation theories, all that unreal bullshit, and it is actively negatively impacting people like me.

we could really use a better understanding of those with these symptoms, because acting like having hallucinations/delusions makes you a killer is a take that makes zero sense. Like, genuinely, you have no idea what you're talking about if that's where you immediately go. I can point out a bunch of shit discussing the darkness of humanity and that logic applies to anyone, regardless of mental illness. Delusions and hallucinations don't mean you'll act on anything, it just means that your brain is creating false images or thoughts, and that can get really fucking confusing.

We could use a little more empathy or compassion towards those with these symptoms, because obviously this shit isn't going away for us, just like other disabled people dealing with their disabilities. We are not idiots or monsters, our brain just gives us random false shit sometimes and it really fucking sucks. Be more understanding or I'll telepathically insert false shit into your brain one day, y'all should see the nightmare that some of us have to deal with.

[ghostlyschizophrenic]

looking back on my childhood objectively and with the insight of knowing what my schizoaffective psychosis symptoms are, i realize that most people weren’t just constantly terrified of everything growing up. they didn’t develop multiple UTIs from holding their pee at night because they thought someone was waiting in the bathroom to kill them. they didn’t calculate all the ways they could hide in their room if someone broke into the house and went over these steps in their heads for hours every night. they didn’t lose sleep over the feeling of bugs crawling around inside their bodies. they didn’t have this terror in their lives before they even hit double digits and by the gods am i sad for young me that he had to deal with it

[samsrosary]

sam week day three : neurodivergent sam / mental health / trauma

[icannotgetoverbirds]

I am no longer consumed by bloodlust!

[megaaceofspades]

as someone who’s experienced stress induced psychosis before (i’m fine i’ve got a great community and i’m loved dearly) i think people don’t write characters hallucinating/ having delusions effectively. idk if i’ve been reading the wrong stuff but the only time it’s really felt right is harrowhark nonagesimus (i’m pretty sure she’s schizophrenic though idk if the author specified) from the locked tomb. it’s even worse in fanfic i think because i’ve actually never read a psychotic break that felt like it was accurate to what it actually is like. then again i know psychosis is slightly different for everyone and maybe i should be the change i want to see in the world but i’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

not being critical or anything most people do treat it with care and tact now which is much more than when i was a child which is nice!

[seaweedstarshine]

RIP Krakoa 🌹 I can’t lie I’ve been kinda behind since midway through Fall of X I’m gonna catch up before my first SDCC this summer but I hear Vulcan didn’t see much action anyway. Anyway my hand slipped and I found myself looking into the eyes of my canonically psychotic son the best Summers brother who’s never done anything wrong in his entire life, (he’s done lotsa wrong things but I love him more for it)

[rigormortisangel]

how "schizoposters" feel when they find out i thought a demon lived in the woods behind my house that told me i had to kill my parents so i spent years trying to figure out how id make it look like an accident only to hit the legal age of responsibility and attempt suicide instead and when i lived i was attacked by wasps and i thought it was the demon punishing me for not killing my parents

[ineffectualdemon]

Me: I don't experience delusions!

Also me: I avoid any and all religions because whenever I get involved with one I get this sort of religious euphoria and believe I am specially chosen by whatever god is involved and may even be a prophet and that the deity is speaking to me to me both directly and through signs telling me how special I am. This happened so much when I was younger that people made jokes about my "religion hopping" anyway that's why I avoid religion now

...

My lack of self awareness in the past is astounding