Story A god once [delusions of grandeur]

[Alayna]

STORY/DISCUSSION

Substance induced, some years ago. Pretty severe. Lasted a few months

My mission was the complete unitary triangulation of everything

Remember believing I'd resurrected my sister somewhere and started the singularity

Remember crying my eyes out reading of a terrorist attack in Somalia, thought I'd lost concentration and allowed it to happen.

Remember a bunch of other embarrassingly psychotic stuff

I decorated my room, lay down to die my perfect death. Woke up back in hospital strapped to a gurney. Needles

Spent months in captivity slowly digesting that I was nothing, in fact a less-than-nothing

Fought against that with every inch of my insanity, each new piece of evidence of my ordinary mortality and powerlessness hurt and so so scared

All that false power gone, and more - I'd lost all my personal freedoms, and the chemical means to escape into my warped, blind, egocentric psychotic world

Here, ashamed to admit all this. That stupidity and arrogance. It felt so real though.

It's made me afraid of my ego, and attempt to kill it whenever I notice it rear its head. It's meant that I can't look certain people in the eye. It's made me mistrust all kinds of certainties.

Anyone else felt any of this, or anything similar? Or were you on the receiving end of someone else's delusions?

How was it all? How did you recover? How did it change you?

 

[jodes2]

I've had psychosis several times, it is always hell for me. Governments after me, spying on me, manipulating me, wanting to torture me. I was talking to walls thinking I was being listened to. When I heard voices in the distance I talked back, assuming they were monitoring me and undercover police or something. I thought the world was against me.

 

[BipolarExpress]

I had a manic/psychotic episode earlier this year in which I thought I was the first real-life incarnation of the biblical Moses. I thought I had the power to judge the living and the dead, to change the course of history and get everyone on the internet to use good grammar. I was also British royalty and a high-ranking CIA and MI6 spy. After I was dragged off to the psych ward in an ambulance and pumped with Haldol and lithium, I came to the dawning realisation that I was a nobody with no magical powers whatsoever. Coming down from the episode is part of what engendered my current suicidal ideations.

 

[manukahoney]

I thought I was an evil omen, and responsible for all bad events that were happening to people in close physical proximity to me, and to my friends and family members.

I never thought I was God (although being responsible for everything was a grandiose belief), but I became obsessed with seeing everything in strict dichotomies of good/bad, and I believed I could see how and why everything was related and dependent on one another (from pieces of grass to the words spoken in social interactions). I felt I knew that all the suffering in the world (including mental illness, climate change, inequality etc.) was the result of sin. I became obsessed with the idea of "perception", and how each person lives in their own vacuum of perception which is never penetrable to another because each perception is so intricate and meaningful only to the individual experiencing it - and this is what made it impossible to tell the truth about good versus evil.

It goes on and on, but I had very specific beliefs about the links between mental illness and spiritualism, which unfortunately I cannot shake even outside of psychosis, which frightens me the most. I don't however think much of them anymore, but the shadow of this "insight" remains.

Unfortunately, what I thought I could "see" from a religious perspective, is somewhat consistent with what many Christians espouse, so I can truly relate to your saying that it is difficult trusting all kinds of certainties - this makes "recovery" for lack of a better word, difficult. I would now say that I do believe in God, this is not a belief I had prior to my breakdown.

I haven't recovered, I am no longer delusional, but I have gone from pursuing a clinical postgrad degree to dropping out and hiding for 6-months. I don't see that this will change for me. Unfortunately, amongst the paranoia and delusions, I did come to some stark truths about myself, which are completely undeniable, which I can no longer unsee and this has rendered me completely dysfunctional.

Sorry that there is no happy ending here! I hope that yours, and others post-psychosis was more optimistic than this?

 

[Scythe]

I do not wish to discuss in detail, but I recognize that I would be diagnosed with some kind of delusion disorder if I were to discuss this. However, I also recognize that I cannot prove myself wrong, nor can anyone else. My delusions will falter, but I do not believe I can truly prove that they are wrong. That, and I am stuck onto them, I simply cannot accept that they are false. For if they are false, my suffering will increase tenfold.

 

[BipolarExpress]

I haven't recovered, I am no longer delusional, but I have gone from pursuing a clinical postgrad degree to dropping out and hiding for 6-months. I don't see that this will change for me. Unfortunately, amongst the paranoia and delusions, I did come to some stark truths about myself, which are completely undeniable, which I can no longer unsee and this has rendered me completely dysfunctional.

Sorry that there is no happy ending here! I hope that yours, and others post-psychosis was more optimistic than this?

I can understand the feeling of not having recovered. I'm working and can keep up appearances, but inside I'm a suicidal husk of who I used to be before 2020.

 

[manukahoney]

I can understand the feeling of not having recovered. I'm working and can keep up appearances, but inside I'm a suicidal husk of who I used to be before 2020.

I'm sorry that you feel similar - I am happy for you that you can keep up appearances, you must be quite capable in many ways. Were the consequences of the pandemic an antecedent to some sort of breakdown for you?

Feel free not to respond if you would rather not share x

 

[BipolarExpress]

I'm sorry that you feel similar - I am happy for you that you can keep up appearances, you must be quite capable in many ways. Were the consequences of the pandemic an antecedent to some sort of breakdown for you?

Feel free not to respond if you would rather not share x

Absolutely. The pandemic broke my goddamn brain. It made my autistic traits more pronounced—obsessions, fixations, inflexibility, rigidity, unusual fears—and it made my bipolar mood episodes more pronounced. Normally I can hide or mute some of my fixations, but I wasn't really able to do that during the height of the pandemic. I'd never had full mania before this year. If I were diagnosed with bipolar before that happened, it would have been a diagnosis of bipolar II, but because I had a manic episode that (a) lasted over a week and (b) landed me in the psych ward, it's bipolar I. Before the manic episode, I had a diagnosis of major depression, though I had hypomanic episodes as well.

I'm embarrassed by how I acted throughout all that. I'm fucking MORTIFIED. That's part of what's behind my suicidal ideations.

 

[manukahoney]

Absolutely. The pandemic broke my goddamn brain. It made my autistic traits more pronounced—obsessions, fixations, inflexibility, rigidity, unusual fears—and it made my bipolar mood episodes more pronounced. Normally I can hide or mute some of my fixations, but I wasn't really able to do that during the height of the pandemic. I'd never had full mania before this year. If I were diagnosed with bipolar before that happened, it would have been a diagnosis of bipolar II, but because I had a manic episode that (a) lasted over a week and (b) landed me in the psych ward, it's bipolar I. Before the manic episode, I had a diagnosis of major depression, though I had hypomanic episodes as well.

I'm embarrassed by how I acted throughout all that. I'm fucking MORTIFIED. That's part of what's behind my suicidal ideations.

Ah, I am truly sorry, we do not realise what protective factors we have in place before they are swept out from underneath us - and we can't be prepared to feel something that we never new existed. I can relate to the severe mortification. I wish you well x