Reality Testing

From what I understand, a reality test is something you do to help yourself come to grips with reality. When you have paranoid/delusional ideations, you have to do reality testing to help remind you of what is truly real and what is all in your mind.

However, this can get quite paradoxical. For instance, if you currently have a faulty perception of reality, how are you going to know what is real so that you can test it against your fantasies? Soon you'll be doing reality testing of the reality test, and reality testing of the reality test of the reality test. If you ask me, reality testing is madness. I'd like to believe my paranoid ideations are not real, but who am I to say so? Sure, I can do "reality testing" to convince myself that they aren't real, but am I just deluding and deceiving myself further?... or am I truly combatting non-real thoughts?

Something to think about I suppose.

I think a reality test only can work if you have one foot firmly planted in reality. If you don't have a footing in reality for your testing, you won't have a constant and the test is useless. Then it's best to let somone else do the reality testing for you.

Is this something you've made up? Because I've never heard of reality testing, and have no idea what it might entail.

I only heard of reality testing as lucid dreaming technicality. So waking you can see the time on the clock but sleeping the clock face changes. It's usually easy to tell when you are awake even when you experience a failed reality test. (The hallucinations as you know!) Though dreaming I often have to verify that it's a dream, or at least notice that I'm dreaming.

The definition:

reality testing
1. in psychiatry and psychology, the ego function by which the objective or real world and one's subjectively sensed relationship to it are evaluated and appreciated; the ability to distinguish internal distortion and fantasy from accurate representation of external events.


From Freud:

"Reality testing" is defined as the process through which the psyche gauges the difference between the internal and external worlds. Freud first defined this process as founded on perception and motility, but as he progressively elaborated his theory of the ego, reality testing became one of the functions of the ego.

Freud's most complete description of this concept occurs in "A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams" (1916-1917f [1915]), where it appears in tandem with another concept, the "reality-indicator," which makes it possible for the psyche to determine whether the experience it is undergoing is present or is the recall of a previous one. The need for both of these concepts in psychoanalysis stems from the psyche's proclivity to hallucinate. If a previous experience is hallucinated, meaning made present to perception by the action of intense instinctual cathexis, this may fog up the ego's capacities to differentiate between past and present, internal and external, and thus require it to refer to the intensity of the cathexis to differentiate between actual perception and hallucination.

In Freud's inaugural texts, the ego's capacity to make and change cathexes devolves upon reality testing. In the texts that followed, this capacity was assumed by perception, which conveys external reality inward (1911b), then motility, which enables flight from extreme sources of excitation and thereby enables the ego to differentiate the excitation from internal sources (1916-1917f).

However, all of these processes assume means that cannot be used in the psychoanalytic session, where motility and perception are in large part suspended. Freud's successors, Winnicott in particular, have therefore emphasized another process that contributes to distinguishing the realm of fantasy and differentiating internal and external realities. This process is based on the fact that external reality resists fantasized destruction and is not destroyed by it. Reality, or rather externality, can thus be discovered by its capacities to resist the subject's destructiveness. This confers upon the analysis of negative transference a preponderant role in treatment.


For dreaming:

Have You Done a Reality Test Today?
In class tonight, Dr. LaBerge wore an "Oneironauts" t-shirt (oneironauts being people who travel in dreams). On the back, it said:

HAVE YOU DONE A
A REALITY TEST TODAY?
1 - 800 - GO - LUCID

Reality tests are a quick and easy way to tell if you're dreaming. The most common test is to find something to read (a clock, sign, book cover, whatever) then read it, look away, then read it again. In a dream, it will nearly always be different the second time. Of course, he tells us this and then goes and wears a shirt that just messes everything up. It may be more obvious here on a screen in smaller type, but everyone in class had to read his shirt about 5 times before we figured out what it actually said. (Read it slowly, word by word, if you don't get it right away.)

One suggestion for inducing lucid dreams is to get in the habit of performing regular reality checks when you're awake, with the idea that, sooner or later, you'll do one in a dream and realize that you're dreaming. Apparently that's not really a very efficient way to do it though, since it takes a lot of practice to build the habit. Plus, once you're dreaming, there's usually plenty of other weird things going on to tip you off about it. The real trick is to remember to notice that you're dreaming. Unfortunately, simply remembering to do things in the future is very hard to do. Our homework assignment for the week is this: every time we walk through a doorway, we will remember to touch the door frame on the side with the hinges. Sounds simple. I remembered both doors on the way out the classroom, and forgot both doors coming back into my house and my room. Darn.

It's interesting that you linked it to dreaming, because it's a theme in the movie Inception, the danger of not being able to tell whether you are awake or not. But I've been told I need to work out a way of reality testing to control my fearful thinking and avoid returning to my delusions. Another way of putting it is to look for the evidence. If you couldn't convince someone else with the available evidence, why allow yourself to be convinced that something is true?

I reality check quite a bit and usually just ask other people if they hear or see the same. It's the most accurate way I know.

Barsine wrote:If you couldn't convince someone else with the available evidence, why allow yourself to be convinced that something is true?

This is an extreme example, but I'm sure if you were raped, knew it was traumatic for you and everyone was telling you it's no big deal, it would be better to stick to what you believe. And I'm sure less extreme examples can be found.

I reality test by telling my experiences to people I trust. Based on their response to my stories I can tell if it is real or not. This insight is how I function through delusional experiences.

Sunny

Reality that is not individual reality is proven when multiple people experience that reality. So yes, it would really have to involve other people, at least for acts and sounds etc. Emotions are entirely self-perceived and promoted though, as are thoughts. It seems to me that it would be very important to be able to learn to separate thoughts from emotions from perceptions, so that you can see when your thoughts are due to the perceptions or if they're coming up from nowhere inside of you. Once that's done, you can check the perceptions with people you trust.
Trust is important. Trust is crucial because people can lie, because motives usually aren't known, etc. It would be awful to not be able to trust people, especially those that are in your everyday life. If you start to fear everything around you, you start to lose your ability to check reality, and that seems like hallucinations could become the worst.

So yeah, find a person or two who you trust, get them to stay in your life when you need them, and work on separating out what thoughts derive from emotions derive from perceptions.

If you learn to trust yourself, or even one of your voices, you can always think: "Hey I'm not new to this whole delusional reality thing, sometimes I perceive emotions/situations that just aren't there, all I have to do is remain calm and take things on with an unbiased mind!" Sooner or later you'll find that you can inject a bit of positivity into your step and then you can use this trick every time your mind hits a crossroads. Just remember: "Things probably aren't as bad as I feel like they are, maybe if I just focus on the things I can control right this moment then I'll know that I'm doing all I can to keep myself undistracted by inappropriately timed realities."


Sometimes I have to make a game out of it until it becomes natural, just make sure you take a moment to appreciate the small things. You'll find that "appreciation" can be just as strong an emotion as the negative ones we associate with our mental health. And that habits of success and forward thinking can rival or outstrip the habits of slothful disorder when we look at the truth behind our intentions. If your soul's intent is goodwill, then you're a good person in my book, nomatter what or where life's journey has placed you.

Stay Strong, Stay Positive!