You Know You're Delusional When...

Hi everyone,
I just came across a great thread that used this as a starting point for people to share their stories about how they first knew their diagnosis was real.

I'll go first.

I have blogged about "the single black glove" before, but for me...

1. You Know You're Delusional When, you think you ate lunch with God at McDonald's on Main St. and when you tell your mother, a religious woman, and she doesn't buy it at all.

2. You Know You're Delusional When, you are home alone and things start moving around the house.

3. You Know You're Delusional When, the text in your browser starts giving you bold font messages... actually, maybe I was hacked... or the advertising software was having an off day.

Sunny

Sunnyg, I so disagree.

You know its a dissociation induced delusion when almost everyone else is thinking the same thing.

"I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes."

HL Mencken

So you don't think you experience any distortions or delusions?

Am I always right? Of course not. But being wrong does not make me delusional.

Some of us poor souls were born into the schizoid reality with a hypersensity that allows us to see its twisted nature. The story is pretty much the same. At a very young age you see something odd in the communication. You sense it is going on simultaneously at two different levels. Eventually you experience enough to decipher it and discover not only two levels of communication but that they are at times diametrically opposed. Humans are two faced by nature. Humans are dissociated beings. You then find yourself in the unenviable position of being in the distinct minority of sane people who the insane will then call delusional. Resentment can naturally build up over time.

I think the whole idea of delusions is delusional. The fact that 99 people might not understand what 1 is saying tells me nothing. There are always going to be outliers on the intelligence scales.

The other thing that kills me is the idea that anything of a spiritual nature must be thought of as delusional. Google Iona Miller. I can tell you Iona's version of reality is spot on, but only 1 out of 1000 might get it.

How do you know that you were not having a spiritually transforming experience unless you have read about them. A person can have a STE by thinking he was Jesus. Was he Jesus? Maybe not but that does not make the experience any less transforming ie inspirational.

I have never thought I was Jesus, but I know for a fact I communicate with the collective unconscious. Does that make me delusional. Did that make Jung delusional. There is great truth in this quote:

“If the human race survives, future men will, I suspect, look back on our enlightened epoch as a veritable age of Darkness. They will presumably be able to savor the irony of the situation with more amusement than we can extract from it. The laugh's on us. They will see that what we call 'schizophrenia' was one of the forms in which, often through quite ordinary people, the light began to break through the cracks in our all-too-closed minds.”

R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, p. 107

One of your fellow moderators edited out some spot on comments I made to the lady who was struggling with the question of delusions while on adderal and anti-psychotic meds. I can assure to near certainty that the lady was having a spiritually transformative experience and desperately needed to be directed to someone who would understand. Unfortunately most psychiatrist and many psychologist do not yet understand because the info has not yet fully trickled down. I put in some good links to potentially save her great pain and your comoderator zapped them out. Incredible.

Or, as The Book of the SubGenius puts it:

...if you are reading this in the late 20th Century, EVERYTHING YOU KNOW REALLY IS WRONG. You are an uncivilized, ignorant, BARBARIC peasant that will be looked back upon by future generations with every bit as much pity as you regard the plague-ridden wretches of Downtown Medieval Europe.

The label of delusional is continuously abused both as a weapon of social conformity or simply by lazy people who don't want to confront the idea that things might be more complicated than they think. You are correct in saying that they are massively over-diagnosed, by professionals or otherwise. That is not a delusion itself.

That said, from first-hand experience I can say that delusions do happen, and that they are a real phenomenon. I dunno, maybe I did actually contact the terrible hyper-dimensional alien presence that permeates all of space and time, only one Planck length away.

When your best friend has basically drafted a form letter he sends every time you ask if he's secretly romantically / sexually attracted to you.

Dear Lily,

No I do not want to sleep with you. We have had this argument ___10___ times now. No, our most recent deep conversation about ___rainbows___ did not change anything. No it was not a subtle hint that I was interested when I ___handed you a soda___. I like you very much, but please don't let this happen again.

Yours,
________

When you think every goddamn person on the planet is against you

It is not easy to accept that you are delusional but has taken me years to cope, My doctors tell me I am rare because I have insight into my delusions and go in and out of it, not always 100% believing my own delusion. I would say I know I am having a delusion when everyone around me is trying to tell me it is a delusion. The hardest thing though is that means you have to betray your mind by admitting you are not seeing things clearly. I have had to admit that sometimes I cant trust my own mind. I hope this helps others....if you think you are haiving delusions, talk to your counselor or Psych, it only gets worse not better without treatment.