You know it could happen to anyone, but it could never happen to you, right?
It started with a voice, a male voice outside my head whispering “24hr” repeatedly. Over the course of a week this drove me to the brink of suicide. After a GP visit I found myself in a meeting with a crisis team who gently yet forcefully told me I need to be admitted.
This led to 3 months as an impatient , during which time I was temporarily ward restricted, In which I missed being my sisters bridesmaid at her wedding in Rome , in which I managed to get myself detained and in which I worked through an impressive range of antipsychotics.
In psychosis every sense is heightened and colours are especially bright. The world is on a giant flat screen TV. Everything seems more crystal clear than you ever knew, but then it all becomes confused and muddled. You make your own realities, constantly decoding messages that seem extremely important, but are ultimately meaningless. They further the storyline in your head that seems so real.
Your mind tells you something is true and your body You know it could happen to anyone, but it could never happen to you, right? with animal instinct.
I fully believed people were trying to poison me, that I had something in my brain that they wanted to take.
You have to fight inside your brain – to argue that what you’re believing instinctively is wrong.
Imagine your darkest moment plastered all over Facebook. That was my experience with psychosis. I believed my thoughts were being played out in email, Facebook, texts, and phone calls. I am all for being open and honest about my illness. But, it was not my goal to be recognized through psychosis on social media. It is an embarrassing experience.
I would describe psychosis as a dream state. Only, I am acting it out and awake rather than laying in my bed asleep. It is scary and dark.
As my psychosis worsened things became more severe,the images changed. I saw things on the ground like branches n plants that looked like a severed hand.
I suffered delusions that my hands were being broke violently, where I could hear the crunch of bones shattering and see my hands changing shape in front of me. I no longer had capacity to do simple tasks, arrange appointments, speak on the phone. Forms were signed which enabled my mother to become my voice, to have the power to make decisions in my best interests. My voices hit their peak when I am trying to concentrate on something else, making telephone calls a complete nightmare when you don’t know which voice to answer to.
“It feels like you’re stung by a wasp in your brain”
The worst part of psychosis is isolation. When the perception of my illness is that I might kill someone or “go crazy,” it deepens my pain.
If I had cancer, people would run a race for me. With this illness, people avoid me. I am not doing stuff that “normal” people do. I am going to a psychiatrist or psychologist and trying to figure out the best way to get through the day. It feels very isolating.
However, This time i was more open with people. I was touched by the number of people who were accepting and supportive. It eased my pain.
Even if you go through bouts of hopelessness, lean on those around you. They will carry you through the dark moments. Because it is just a moment in the grand scheme of things.
Even now when the negative symptoms have hit me hard, I know enough people who want to help me without judgment, which for me far outweighs all the other people still blinded by stigma.
This video I found is the closest I’ve seen that captures what it’s really like to live with psychosis and hear voices.
Before you judge , could you live with this ?
