#psychotic break

[schizoetic]

Just because something you experience in psychosis isn't happening in reality, it doesn't mean it wasn't real to you. The trauma you get from those experiences is real.

#psychosis #psychotic #schizophrenia #psychotic break #schizophrenic spectrum #schizo spectrum #schizoaffective #schizo speaking #schizo spec

[schizodiaries]

👤 what psychosis feels like (to me)

like my brain has been turned into goo

like my thoughts become tv static

like a dream I can’t wake up from

like there are monsters living inside my head

like my third eye is wide open

like my thoughts aren’t my own

like my body isn’t my own

like the rules of reality are bent

like time has become nonlinear

like people are out to get me

like sleeping with one eye open

like everything has a special meaning

like the ground will swallow me whole

like the sky will come crashing down

like my food/medicine is unsafe

like I can’t trust my own senses

like I’m the second coming of christ

like the stars are talking to me

like hell/heaven on earth

#psychosis #psychotic symptoms #actually psychotic #psychotic confessions #psychotic break #ik some of these sound really cliche #but they’re honestly how I feel #also might make a schizoaffective version of this post

[johnnyiscaged]

LET'S GET HARMFUL STIGMATIZING POSTS DOWN !!

tags in mind are stuff like schizocore, schizoposting delulu is the solulu and the fog is coming. shit like that and just anything that is harmful to psychotics & schizospec

the post this is referring to: https://www.tumblr.com/johnnyiscaged/746385499137179648/why-are-non-psychotics-so-obsessed-with

#psychotic disorders #actually psychotic #psychotic break #psychotic spectrum #cripple punk #cripplepunk #cpunk #crip punk #tw derealization #derealization #schizospec #actually schizophrenic #schizophrenic spectrum #paranoid schizophrenic #schizoaffective #schizophrenia #schizophrenic disorder

[wyhoysuniverse]

VENT - talk of hallucinations

I hate the way if I recite what I’ve written down about my hallucinations thus far it would sound like a genuine horror story and I just I hate that so much I hate that my reality sounds like a horror story all because I’m having hallucinations but I don’t want society to see schizophrenics and psychotics and everyone on the spectrum as just a horror trope because please god no it’s genuinely terrifying I was pleading for my life to be spared by my hallucinations so that I wouldn’t be drowned in my own bedroom I hallucinated blood streaming down the walls and a giant tarantula climbing my naked body in the shower acid dripping from the ceiling all in one episode that was FIVE HOURS LONG please make it stop I’m so tired. Ive been sleeping so well but these episodes are making me so mentally exhausted.

Not diagnosed just using tags for reach

#actually schizophrenic #schizoaffective #schizophrenic spectrum #psychosis #schizophrenia #hallucinations #psychotic #psychotic break #psychotic symptoms

[fraser343]

Smiles all round

#artists on tumblr #artwork #digital art #digital painting #drawing #painting #sketch #digital illustration #art #lineart #witch #witches #witchcraft #witchblr #witchcore #witch community #witch aesthetic #wiccan #satire #psychotic break

[sweetdees-gf]

VENT!!

TW: Psychosis, (child) r*pe, m*rder, cannib*lism, p*rn

psychosis is really fucking scary. I thought I killed my cat and lizard. I thought I was dying. I thought my family had abandoned me and been replaced with special agents trying to send me to jail. I kept asking hospital staff “are you staying? will you stay with me?” because I thought my family had left me. i thought I was being filmed at all times. I thought my family was watching from cameras telling the nurses and patients what to do next in order to torture me. i thought my dna was being collected for evidence so I tried not to go to the bathroom or touch anything. I thought I was being accused of canib*lism, p***philia, r*pe, and m*rder. I thought my little brothers were being “played” by child actors. I thought I was being poisoned with rotten food. I thought all the nurses were trying to sleep with me. I thought all the male nurses were trying to physically restrain and hurt me. There was another psychotic patient there and I believed that I was communicating with him and that he was being punished in the same way I was. I thought I was on a movie or TV set and every one in the hospital was an actor being told to act like people from my life or characters from my favorite movies and shows to try and appeal to me to get information. I rejected visitation from my father because I believed he was the ringleader of it all and when he came around it meant I was being arrested. I thought I was being sent messages through music and tv. I thought certain programs were carefully curated to mimic my life and talk to me. I thought the books they were giving me were AI generated. I thought they were giving me child p*rn to read. I thought they were just finding the most racist shit possible and giving it to me. I thought everything in the books were metaphors for r*pe, beasti*lity, racism, or child r*pe. I thought everyone was in on it, everyone I’d ever met , my school, my family, I thought every moment of my life was leading up to them “catching” me.

#psychosis #mentalwellness #mental illinois #mental instability #mentally disordered #mental heath issues #mental health #shizophrenia #phsyco #psychotic episode #psychotic disorders #actually psychotic #psychotic break #psychotic symptoms

[impala-in-gotham]

I’m not sure I want to publicize this but chances are only a few will see/read it and maybe I won’t be alone in this. EDIT: k wow, more than a few, thank you, spnfam. 🥺💜

Crazy!Cas or Honey!Cas, despite Misha not being completely satisfied with his portrayal, was the best portrayal for what the aftermath of having a psychotic break can be like. Everyone will experience it their own way but from my experience it deeply resonated.

For starters, you revert back to almost child-like level of interest in things. Playing board games/twister because of its simplicity. It’s safe. Looking at the world from a broad perspective and making these intricate connections that you find more profound than they actually are. The very sensitive (in this case literal) flight response at any form of confrontation. The guarded bracing of your self when someone’s tone comes across as angry when they’re actually just worried/frustrated/scared. The dissociation from what others are dealing with cause you KNOW what they’re dealing with and the guilt that it’s YOUR fault for having to. The self sacrificing seems like the only way you can make it better and your own life doesn’t matter as much as theirs. Then there’s the second aftermath, once you’re “sane” again, and everything you did before the break, during and after sinks all the way in. “If I see what heaven’s become.. what I…what I made of it, I’m afraid I might kill myself.” All of this was one of the most accurate literal (yet also metaphorical) portrayals I’ve ever seen but you don’t really notice it until you’ve lived it.

Yet to every one else it’s “aww how cute and sweet.” “Cas loves bees! He’d get bee themed everything.”

The point wasn’t the bees. It was the innate nature of having a purpose from creation and performing it exactly as you’re supposed to without altering the grand design. Bees=angels and Cas is a broken angel. He went against his innate purpose and decimated heaven. He never forgives himself. And I think bees would actually be triggering for him cause he remembers what he did before, during and after. He remembers the embarrassment of having those he cares about most watching him go through it. He doesn’t talk about them again.

Maybe this concept and interpretation is just mine but crazy!Cas resonated on a much deeper level after re-watching him go through the process after I lived it. (Cause your comfort show is safe). This show gets a lot of stuff wrong and more than likely it was on accident or unintended to be as deep as that. But it also seems like it was intentional when you really look at Cas’ character arc. I just wanted to say that. Please be kind.

#castiel #supernatural #i love castiel #Cas #crazy!cas #honey!cas #spn s7 #spn s8 #spn seasons 6-8 #purgatory #psychotic episode #psychotic break #cas doesn’t love bees #cas blames himself for everything #playing sorry #spn s7 finale #leviathans #angel of thursday #misha collins #the good spn in our heads #spn

[itspixthecrazybitch]

“Oh wow you had your first crush at 12? That’s cool, I had a suicide note and a psychotic break!”

#lol #humor as a coping mechanism #vent #tw vent #tw childhood trauma #tw childhood mental illness #tw suicide #tw: suicide #tw suicide note #tw suicide mention #tw psychotic break #psychotic break #psychotic episode #I’m fucked up #mental illness jokes

[thepeakexperience]

I'm the Villain

I'm a nice guy. That's what people tell me. What I don't tell most people is that I have schizophrenia and I just finished a book proposal after completing draft two of my memoir.

If you're one of the few I've told that I've written a memoir, then you expect a book with some wild drug stories leading to serious mental illness, but that's not what the book is about.

The book is about all the events leading to the moment I almost killed an innocent person. One thing to keep in mind is that mental illness is a small contributing factor for violence. There are about 5% of violent acts attributable to psychosis, bipolar, or major depressive disorder with many other contributing factors including but not limited to being a younger age, male, abusing drugs or alcohol, and being a victim of childhood abuse.

This incident happened (or almost happened because no one was hurt) 5 years into a 6-year-long psychotic break long before I was diagnosed or medicated for schizophrenia.

Yes, nowadays I'm a nice guy, but in this story I'll always be the villain and the guy that other people with schizophrenia don't want to talk about.

#schizophrenia #psychosis #memoir #schizophrenia memoir #drug memoir #addiction #psychotic break #mental health #mental illness #writing #recovery

[schizoetic]

The hardest thing with psychosis is that point where you start to come out of it and have to process all the shittiness that was done and said to you or residual embarassment. If you are near that point then I would like to tell you that it is absolutely possible to get through it.

#schizophrenia #psychosis #psychotic #schizophrenic spectrum #psychotic break #mental illness #schizo spectrum #schizoaffective #mental health advocate #mental health awareness

[schizodiaries]

my first psychotic episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#personal #psychosis #psychotic episode #actually psychotic #psychotic #psychotic disorders #psychotic depression #psychotic major depression #depression with psychotic features #long post #story time #my first psychotic episode #psychotic break

[cazort]

We Need To Talk About How Common Meds Can Increase Psychosis Risk

Someone I know recently experienced a psychotic break and, while there were likely many factors at work that contributed to it, we realized that a major factor was likely drugs that she was taking, including prescription drugs for ADHD, OTC allergy meds, and caffeine. It took a disturbing amount of time to figure this out.

I have been disturbed by the way a lot of people, including some psychiatrists, seem oblivious to the fact that psychosis is a possible side-effect of many different types of medications, including widely-taken ones. A lot of psychiatrists will prescribe people meds that have a risk of psychosis, not ask the person exhaustive questions about their use of OTC and/or recreational drugs, and not check in with the people to monitor whether or not any of the early signs of psychosis risk are showing up.

In general, stimulants, including ADHD meds like Adderall, Ritalin, and Vyvanse, and illegal ones like cocaine and meth, and even milder ones like caffeine, can also increase risk of psychosis. Most OTC allergy meds, including Claritin, Zyrtec, and Benadryl can as well. And many common recreational drugs, including marijuana, can. In general, with most of these drugs, the risk tends to be higher with higher doses or heavier casual or recreational use.

Other common drugs that can contribute to psychosis include corticosteroids and other steroids, as can less-commonly-taken drugs like anti-malarial and anti-retroviral drugs. This is not an exhaustive list either.

Psychosis can be really dangerous for the person experiencing it, placing them in all sorts of risk. It can also place others at risk and be very stressful and costly to everyone involved.

It upsets me that psychiatrists treat all these drugs that have risk of psychosis so casually, when they are supposedly professionals trained in these sorts of interactions. So many people I know see psychiatrists regularly and they basically just rubber-stamp the prescriptions, they aren't really in tune with what is going on in the person's lives, aren't looking at them holistically, and they rarely ask enough questions to assess the true risk factor of harm coming from side-effects and catch problems before they balloon out of control. And they do this while getting paid a lot. Insurance can easily get billed a couple hundred for an appointment that is little more than a rubber stamp session.

It also upsets me the way people in the broader society talk about these things. Like...I see hundreds of posts on my Tumblr dash where people talk about these drugs, and I have never seen anything talking about psychosis risk, even for drugs where the rate of these side-effects is significant. And I know dozens of people who take allergy meds, dozens who take ADHD meds, and I've seen several people close to me end up with psychiatric problems related to their use, and I have literally never heard anyone talking about these issues, yet when I research it, I find that this stuff is disturbingly common. It's like it's being pushed under the rug. It is taboo to talk about psychosis but not taboo to talk about taking drugs. And this is by design.

Our society is drug-happy and we often have a pro-drug bias skewed by big pharma, which pours money not only into marketing but into behind-the-scenes schmoozing with doctors and pharmacists, healthcare journalists, researchers, people working in insurance, and other influential players in the healthcare system, so they can keep pushing these drugs on the population.

I'm not anti-drug across the board. Sometimes drugs really help people. I'm skeptical of drugs myself but I've even had times when drugs really helped me. But we need to stop ignoring the risk of serious psychiatric problems including psychosis, associated with widely-prescribed meds, widely taken OTC meds, and widely-used casual and recreational drugs including caffeine. I want us to at least talk about these things, so that it's part of the cultural knowledge, so that when someone in our social network experiences a psychotic break, some of the first questions we ask are: what meds was this person taking? Could any of these meds, perhaps a combination of all of them, have contributed to this situation? Maybe look into that, maybe look into family history and see if anyone else in the family reacts weirdly to these drugs (in this case, it turns out other people in the person's family experienced anxiety and irritability when taking some of these same meds, that is often a tip-off because these reactions often run in families and what manifests as irritability or anxiety in one person might be bad enough to push another person into psychosis who is at greater risk of it.)

So yeah, that's my soapbox of the day, thank you for listening if you've reached the end!

#psychosis #mental illness #mental health #drugs #big pharma #psychotic break #psychotic disorders #psychotic symptoms

[manicpixieidiot]

I found this amazing art. It looks how it feels at the end of and episode and the beginning(the actual episode is far more abstract). It’s losing shape, losing self, losing reality. It’s coming back from that slowly, slowly.

#mentall illness #mentally unstable #actually mentally ill #i am not mentally well #actually psychotic #im psychotic #psychotic episode #psychotic spectrum #psychotic break #psychosis #mental health

[f-elixie]

idk, i feel invalid as a schizospec person. like, i have experienced psychotic breaks and paranoia in my life, that's for sure, but i don't know if in my situation i am welcome in the schizospec comminity. kind of posting to ask for further advice/asking if those things are "valid"?

absolutely not invalidating anybody else's experiences here, this is just my moment of doubt. keep that in mind.

// delusion descriptions and psychiatry talk

so, to point out, i do have in fact borderline personality disorder and i am currently on quetiapine (seroquel).

through my life, i've been experiencing various delusions (not speaking of those ptsd-related). i've had a few psychotic breaks, some of them quite severe, and i often experience paranoia (as in "they want to hurt me/they speak ill of me/shit like that). i've been told by some therapists that i also have schizotypal personality disorder and frankly, i think the description somewhat fits me.

i'm here to ask, is seeing cats in peripheral vision normal? i sometimes hear whispers, sometimes start thinking that i am god, or that i am in one way or another blessed, and a few minutes later i'm snapping out of it. i don't have outright hallucinations, i don't hear obvious voices. all this stuff is so subtle, yet somewhat worrying.

i'm asking schizospec people, when does the spectrum start? what do i do with these experiences? is this stuff valid, like as a psychotic person, or is it a common human experience?

idk i'm down bad and tired and yeah just having a lot of doubt in myself.

#seriously schizophrenic #schizophrenia #actually schizospec #schizo spectrum #psychosis #psychotic break

[sweetdees-gf]

My review for Fools Paradise ❤️

#fools paradise #charlie day #latte pronto #psychotic break

[drlooneylegs]

One time I was having a psychotic breakdown and my friend compared me to Technoblade.

#that was NOT it #what the fuck #genuinly #psychosis #actually schizospec #schizophrenia #psychotic break #psychotic episode #they said cuz I heard voices #uhm #Minecraft roleplay lore does NOT apply to real people #please never say that to anyone again #that in itself was an experience