This must be psychosis, right?

So, I have a problem, which is scary as ###$...

I feel like I no longer believe that anything is real. By this I mean that the way I think about the world around me has changed. I've had the "unreal" feeling, as well as the "OCD- what ifs". This is completely different.

It's like, I can look around and everything seems normal as long as I don't really think about it. If I try to imagine that everything is actually... there, I just cant. Suddenly it becomes what I see, instead of what actually IS. I really can't describe it better.

Oh, and I've had this for like two weeks, but I feel like it's always been like this and I just realize it. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone....

Maybe check out the dissociative/depersonalization/derealization disorder section and see if anything there rings a bell.

Actually I've done many many times. This is not it. As I wrote before, what worries me is that it is my way of thinking that has changed, rather than my perception. . Which would make this a delusion, if I'm not mistaken.

I went through years and years believing the world was just some kind of ghoulish nightmare that I somehow couldn't wake up from. So you're not alone in that!

I have minor hallucinations and delusions that come and go all the time. Normally I have no problem telling that these are not actually happening, and it's only when my wits are threadbare for some other reason that I start forgetting. I just don't worry about them and tune them out. Sometimes they're even entertaining.

I have a blazingly powerful visual imagination, and often it's much more vivid and "real" than the outside, and when I am really in a bad way this appears to me to be the real world and the outside is flat and colourless and two-dimensional and dream-like.

I think that as long as you never have a problem telling what's actually happening, you can just ignore it. I've met a lot of other seemingly "normal" people who have admitted minor sensory disturbances to me. People seem to expect their brains to function optimally at all times and they tend to freak out when they find out that that's just not how it works.

sixprime wrote:I went through years and years believing the world was just some kind of ghoulish nightmare that I somehow couldn't wake up from.

Could you please tell me, did you actually believe this?

Because today was the worst day yet. It was like I was more awake, more aware, than ever before. And I just "knew" that what I see isn't really there. Kind of like what you wrote about your hallucinations, except it was about everything. And even worse, everyone...

Yes, absolutely I believed it. It made me extremely apathetic, because what was the point of doing anything if it was just going to be a waste of time? I found the idea that the world could have any kind of concrete existence just too awful to bear. I saw suffering everywhere and it was comforting to believe that it was not "really" happening, surely the world couldn't be that cruel?

But yes, I did believe it, and often still do when I'm in the pit. I can have diametrically opposite beliefs at the opposite poles, and each time I dismiss the memories of the other pole as a "what was I thinking?"

It can get hard to keep on top of the delusions and it often takes quite a bit of my attention. I've gotten used to continuously checking myself, sometimes three or four times to make absolutely sure. I would sometimes make arithmetic mistakes in something with a lot of digits, because I would see the wrong number the first time I looked. I basically have to turn a critical eye on absolutely everything all the time. It does get very exhausting, but I've been doing it for so long that it's an automatic habit.

Before I started taking lamotrigine, the intensity of the moods would be such that they eventually overrode my discipline and that's when things started spiraling and other people noticed strange behaviour. Now they're mild enough that I haven't had a psychotic episode since April.

It seems so bizarre when I write it down. It feels like brain incontinence

Glad to hear that you're doing better. I absolutely recognize the "what was I thinking" thing. A mouth ago, I couldn't really believe the thoughts I've had. Now, every "normal" moment I think of seems completely abstract.

Yeah, it's so weird. I don't get how delusions work. When I'm at the ends, those beliefs are total!

By the way, right now the white background of this site is filled with a reddish hexagonal lattice that's kind of bendy and droopy and biological-looking.

Oh BTW, this has happened before, and it's like I stop believing more and more each time. Like it gets worse everytime it comes back. Is this true or is it more like the thoughts move on to new things every time?