#semi-intrusive thoughts about graphic violence haunted me during this episode

[therianimal]

Recently I've been talking a bit about how my last psychotic episode had a massive effect on my identity and self image.

I often use Picrew to show how I see myself moreso than how I really look - they're essentially self portaits. I noticed a pattern today when looking through old ones, and decided to compile some for this post. The first image is a compilation I made a couple years ago; the second I made today using pics from a few months ago (during psychosis); the third shows a Picrew maker that I coincidentally used two separate times, once before the episode and once during.

My self image now looks very much like the "before" pics. Now that I'm both out of the episode and medicated I have essentially reverted to who I was before (with slight differences, plus some trauma from the episode itself). This is not meant to represent what psychosis "is" - psychotic people aren't dark or evil, but I thought I was and everything felt so frightening in the moment.