I was recently diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome.
Before that I was temporarily diagnosed with AvPD, and before that NPD was believed by one psychiatrist, and before that someone else considered Schizotypal PD, and before that, in my early to mid teens, I had personally considered Aspergers, ADD and BPD.
Anyway, I've had periods of Dissociation/Psychosis particularly in the last couple of years, which is about the time I started to use pot and stopped a year later.
I've always been interested in the paranormal, supernatural magic, metaphysics, etc since I was a child.
Also I think I have high sensory sensitivity, which I guess is an Aspergers trait.
But I also think my mind is more sensitive too to being overwhelmed.
First about what causes my DPD/Psychotic or similar state:
Examples of high sensory sensitivity: my eyes seem to always have been bothered by sunlight more than others, incl. as a child.
In large crowds I sometimes get, and I can also "activate" this by will particularly while in crowds, a slowed down time perception (every moment of perception becomes "focused" or concentrated, but each moment is wider apart).
In fact this slowed down time perception seems to be key to my DPD/Psychotic symptoms too, when it's combined with strong sensory inputs (to me - even if they might not bother most other people), which evokes fear in me (so the recipe for the state for me is: concentrated/sensitive conscious state + fear).
Examples: like when my neighbors in this apartment complex I live in keeps banging at the walls or doing something which sounds like banging into the walls, which is sometimes constant, like several times a minute all day, but it's usually less frequent than that.
Or when the kids playing outside scream like they're being attacked by someone every 0.2-5min for hours and their screams are heavily echoed into the buildings (about 2-3 echoes from 1 sound spread out on 0.3s or something) - ps: 1-2 screams are enough to already bewilder me a little, and so both of these things agitates me and occasionally triggers apparent DPD/Psychosis episodes in me.
My full-blown states so far has always been brief, like usually less than an hour up to max a few hours, but they can sometimes be very frequent, and a mild sense of the state might be present for days up to a week, and might come and go.
Things that puts me immediately or slowly into the state: some/most videos about metaphysics/reality/conspiracy theories etc, loud alarming sounds (train flute, banging sounds, kids screaming), and other types of fear-invoking input, especially anything that reminds me of the supernatural.
Now to the actual state:
Synchronicity or "meaningful coincidences" is the biggest keyword.
Like, as I mentioned, when my internal state weirdly matching external events in indirect ways.
Sometimes I hear voices (I think only for a period of the last couple of years), though this has always been at a time that I'm getting tired/is about to go to bed, or is about to fall asleep, and I've always been aware that the voices are my "own creation" (not externally based, though I'm sometimes unsure if they might still be "paranormal" or "spiritual" in some sense, because some aspect of them is completely outside my conscious control), that they're internal and comes from my subconscious.
Most often the voices are of my family members, and often it starts with me just remembering things they've actually said in their own voice, and then it often progresses into the voices getting their "own life" in the sense that I don't use my memory anymore to try to recall what the people representing the voice(s) in real life actually has said; my subconscious has at that point taken over control over the voice(s).
Sometimes the voice(s) is a Demon-like voice, or skeleton, and they'll usually mock me by just laughing or appealing to things I don't want to consciously look at, like the fact that I sometimes have a secret desire to die (to end this sometimes tormenting life), or anything to cause chaos/take over control.
This is so far the full spectrum of voices though: family members and 2-3 different demon voices, and I think I once had a "good voice" of some kind.
Most of the episodes, especially full-blown episodes, happens when I go to sleep.
For the 1-2 years I've only been sleeping on the sides or on my stomach as I've been afraid of sleep paralysis.
I sometimes feel -- most recently yesterday -- when I'm about to go to sleep like I'm losing conscious control, like my impulses are dangerously controlling me in that state.
Like if I wake up during the night I have to concentrate more than usual to regain control.
And sometimes I get "panic attacks" when I wake up if I've had a mild or strong nightmare, which for example a couple of months ago triggered a skeleton voice laughing at me, and I had great trouble collecting my mind/regaining control for hours at that point.
In that state I would question and doubt and wonder what is reality, what should I think about to survive or to relax and regain control, etc, every second or so.
Symbolism also becomes a big thing in this state of mind...
Like I might think about drinking water, then asking myself what does water symbolize, remembering it symbolizes the subconscious and kinda the spiritual, and so I might either not drink or I'll drink and think "I hope this won't make it worse".
And so I might have racing thoughts about symbolism, up to several thoughts a second, like thinking one thing leads to another leads to another, because that object is red and red is (...) and so on.
When in this state around people I will notice all the words they use and think that I'm reading their subconscious, and sometimes thinking that I'm being "guided by the universe", like if I'm about to reveal something to a person and a car alarm goes off at that exact moment...
This actually happened once when I was in this mental state, and there are such few cars here that car alarms here almost never goes off, like maybe once a year, and I was only around this person for one hour per week, and the car alarm would go off right before I was to tell her about the mental state I was in.
I'm not saying now that this is proof of, or that the car alarm actually was a signal from the universe.
But I'm saying that there are kinda good reasons why I, and maybe others in this state too, think these things in the moment - it's not pure delusion, it's often based in seemingly implausible coincidences(?).
And I wish that would be talked about more often and accepted - that these so-called symptoms of mental illness are actually normal in nature, just in larger concentrations than normal, so just like some people have greater physical strength some people have greater mind/spiritual sensitivity I think...
Anyway, back to the psychiatry: are these symptoms of psychosis? As seen in schizophrenia? Or a milder form?
PS: I have tried to talk reasonably to the couple of psychologists that's been available about this stuff, but the first one immediately asked me to enter a mental health hospital (the mental health hospital found no signs of psychosis, but my mental state changed a lot very fast when I got there because the workers there were surprisingly really nice), and the second psychologist was considering diagnosing me with Schizotypal instead of Aspergers, and so I decided to share less details to avoid the Schizotypal diagnosis which I fear can be used against me later.
And if I don't share enough details they'll just shrug it off as I don't have to worry.
So when I talk about this topic either I'm crazy and need drugs or there's nothing wrong with me whatsoever - so that's why I rather talk about this online currently.