What does it feel like to be psychotic?
The majority of people with bipolar disorder one will experience psychosis in a full blown manic episode. Many people with bipolar one and bipolar two experiences paranoia, a form of psychosis, but often don’t know what is happening as the symptoms feel so real. People with bipolar disorder who also have a separate psychotic disorder, like Keith and myself actually have an illness called schizoaffective disorder. People with bipolar disorder can also have schizophrenia, but schizoaffective is more likely. I believe that psychosis is much more common in bipolar than we think- read below and ask yourself, Do I have psychosis?
Hello from Keith and Julie,
Hello, my name is Keith Bates…. I am a 22-year-old undergraduate Social Work student and sufferer of psychosis. My psychosis stems from my schizoaffective disorder, which includes paranoid and bizarre delusions with auditory hallucinations and intrusive thoughts, amongst other criteria. I am currently prescribed an antidepressant, mood stabilizers and an antipsychotic medication: Prozac, lithium carbonate, Lamictal and Clozaril.
Hello, my name is Julie A. Fast. I’m a mental health author who was diagnosed with rapid cycling bipolar disorder two with psychotic features in 1995 and later diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I control my psychosis with my management plan and lithium orotate as needed as I am not able to take anti psychotics. I would love a little lick of Seroquel right now, but as this is not possible, my only option is to be aware of my symptoms in order to keep them under control. I’d say on a psychosis scale of 1-10, I’m about a four today.
We thought you might like to know what it feels like to be psychotic!
Keith, what does it feel like to be psychotic?
Living with psychosis is like dreaming in real-life. And sometimes, those dreams manifest themselves as nightmares. I’ve come to realize (or at least am coming to realize, and sort of understand) that the reality I experience is different than the reality most people experience. There are many people who deal with anxiety, paranoia, and delusional thinking. But as someone with schizoaffective disorder, my psychosis is in a league of its own. I am always anxious. I am always paranoid. I am always delusional. And it scares me.
When someone wakes up in the morning, their first thoughts may be about showering, brushing their teeth or brewing a necessary cup of coffee. Waking from my much-needed slumbers, my acute thoughts are fueled by crafty voices which command me to get out of bed and cut off several parts of my body. The shower is a thriving environment for these specific conferencing voices, so I don’t shower most of the time. I generally go three to five days without showering or changing my clothes, using a generous dousing of cheap Calvin Klein cologne to smell more neurotypical. The sight of the more sensitive parts of my naked body increases the persistence of the voices in their effort to eunuch-ify me. I’ve been dealing with these specific “dismemberment” voices for several years now, and yet they still scare the life out of me.
I can’t use knives at dinner; I’ve had all of the knives in the household hidden carefully by loved ones in order to keep me from stabbing myself in the stomach at Thanksgiving dinner because the voices told me to. And for a long while, the voices even convinced me that the food I was eating (whilst using plastic silverware as to not hurt myself) was actually parts of my own body and other unpleasantries. The voices would say that salsa was blood, oatmeal was maggots, meat was brains or my own flesh. I would believe that everyone around me was “in on it” and attempting to poison me with this food that they themselves were also eating. I assumed the poison food did not affect others because they were reptilian aliens who were used to consuming poisonous Keith flesh.
The voices never stop telling me to hide from the police who, according to these voices, are out to arrest me at every time of the day. I am even hesitant writing this as I feel like they may be reading as I type. I should stop now.
Keith
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Julie on what it’s like to be psychotic:
From my journal on a day where I’m psychotic:
Today I feel like I’m not real. I can see my body, but it’s like I’m in a bubble. I’m fascinated and obsessed with my crime story materials that I love to read, but when I get psychotic, they feel a bit too real. It’s like I have super powers and can think what other people are thinking. I am submerged and not open to the world. It’s like a cocoon. I feel slightly tingly and charged with thoughts that are more like feelings than thoughts. I don’t feel connected to my body. I’m all thinking. I am not hallucinating. Instead, I feel separate. I see the cars go by and see the people all around me talking and interacting and I am separate and sealed off in a bubble.
I am not manic or particular depressed. I am apart. Separate. Not scared, though psychosis is often scary. I feel like I’m a being and not human. Words feel deep and my ideas are intense and interconnected. It is like being drugged. I have to be careful where my mind leads me as I will get fascinated with crime and other people who are psychotic such as mass murderers.
Psychosis is very personal. It’s important to separate psychosis and mania. People who are manic and psychotic act differently than people who are just psychotic. Psychotic mania will be very vocal and active. The kind of psychosis I have just percolates in my brain and tells me things- or should I say, creates feelings that are so real there is no way I would ever know they are psychosis unless I knew what to look for.
It would be very easy to isolate and create my own interpersonal world where I look up things on the internet to fuel my psychotic thinking, keep away from real people, look for items that match my thinking such as shows that talk about criminals. I also experience psychosis while sleeping. This is different than dreaming. People know when they are dreaming. Being psychotic at night is more like an experience than a dream. You know it is not real, but it feels so real. You get scared.
When I am psychotic, I’m also very anxious. This is picture of what I look like when anxious and psychotic.
I often feel certain pictures capture what it feels like to be psychotic. Here is one.
My psychosis is more about anxiety than just depression. I don’t get manic psychosis unless I use marijuana, which is why I don’t touch the stuff. I get ideas that my food is actually monkey brains or I have hallucinations such as rats running around chairs or hearing my name called as though I am alone in a sports arena and I hear my name shouted from a seat far away. I feel that I’m being followed by demons or that I have super powers that I can’t tell anyone about. I work hard every day to prevent psychosis.
Julie
A note from Julie: Keith and I did not share our stories and compare notes and yet, can you see how similarly we experience psychosis? Our stories are the same because they are about an illness. Keith is a young man, I am a 54 year old woman and yet our experiences are the same. His are more intense than mine which means his psychosis is stronger on the schizoaffective scale. Mine tends to be more anxious and paranoia with less hallucinations unless I’m really ill.
Keith and I had a talk the other day about living with paranoia and still getting on with life. When we are paranoid, it feels real. The cops following us feel real. The idea that we have no friends and that people talking about us feels real. But it’s not real. Learning to live with a feeling and learning to live in reality can happen at the same time. Not acting on our psychotic thoughts is hard, but it is the only way to survive while we are getting help. Keith is an amazing man. He is open about his mental health, open about cannabis and how THC can lead to psychosis and open to talking about this psychosis even though he is paranoid that he will be punished by the police for writing about his life. I simply could not admire him more.
Click here to watch Keith’s Delusions:Possible vs. Probable | Binary video.
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Do you have psychosis?
If our stories feel like your own, write down your symptoms and talk with a health care professional and get help. It will be painful. It will NOT feel good, but it is needed. Psychosis is a relationship wrecker. It’s an illness. We can learn to live with and manage psychosis. I hope that Keith truly knows how much I admire him. If you also admire Keith, please let him know. He is on Facebook and is a great guy.
