Hi all
I am still struggling with some bizarre delusions. Is anyone willing to share their experience of what they believed to be true when they were having their psychotic episode? The narrative of mine changed quite a few times, and I struggle to make sense of it. I just want to feel normal again and thought hearing other people's experiences might help me feel less alone.
hi Zebrawhite,
I’m sorry to hear you are struggling, recovering after pp can take time and years later for me it’s hard to patch together what happened.
I had all sorts of delusions, I thought every song on the radio, every magazine advert, tweet etc was aimed directly at me. I thought I could ‘heal’ people - I was in an and e for 12 hours and for part of it I kept wandering and talking to people. I thought I’d been pregnant with twins but the second baby had only just come out (2 weeks after having my daughter). I wasn’t, I only had the one baby, I got put in a mental health ward away from my daughter, but kept asking to see ‘my baby’ .
I’m sorry you feel alone in this, we are here on the forum. Are you still under any professionals who you can talk to?
I had to piece together what had happened to me and I had to speak to a few people including the staff on the ward I was on to get the full picture.
Maybe writing about what delusions you experienced, and hearing others might help you. Your not alone here.
Take care
Rachel k
I am under care of a mental health team and have a meeting with them soon. Thank you for your reply. My pp started after I thought messages were being sent to me online and I tried to send messages back. I went through various beliefs, but the persistent ones are that someone is tracking me and my baby, and something has been done to my body to stop me from being able to die.
Did anyone else experience anything like this?
Hi Zebrawhite,
I'm sorry these delusions are lingering for you, it's so difficult when our reality has been pulled from beneath us.
I too had rapidly changing thoughts and beliefs - some were pretty abstract (I was language, I was colour), some seemed to be influenced by books I'd read and films / TV programmes I'd watched, especially sci-fi... I believed I was Mother Earth and 'the chosen one' in some way, that everything in my life so far had led me here (this madness in a room in an MBU) and I needed to figure out why in order to be able to leave...
As the acute psychosis settled, the paranoia and utter confusion took time to shift, but things gradually got better and clearer.
Keep talking to your team, do tell them these thoughts are still bothering you. Keep talking to those around you. I had to make an effort sometimes to bring myself back to the moment and not let my mind drift, I hope you can find some ways to help you feel more grounded when things feel particularly unsettled. And do write here whenever it helps - know you're not alone and that in time you'll feel like you're back on solid ground.
Sending very best wishes,
Jenny x
Thank you Jenny. I can relate to the feeling like the chosen one too. At one point I thought I was supposed to do something to help save mankind. I also remember some conversations I had with other patients and felt like they were actors trying to test me in some way. I still can't make sense of some of the conversations. One lady told me I was under hypnosis and she could take me to another hospital to be hypnotised in some other way. It's all really confusing and I still feel like I'm supposed to work out what it all means.
I am finding it hard to accept I might never make sense of it all but have to move on regardless.
Yes I had to do something to save mankind too… A lot of the time I didn’t know if I was awake or dreaming as it all felt so real but unreal at the same time. So much was going on in my head then I’d do something like jump out of bed, spin around and shout “ta-daaaaa” - it made total sense to me at the time.
I steered clear of the other patients in the MBU - having conversations like that must have been all the more confusing for you. I also believed the patients and staff were all actors and everything was some kind of test.
I think it’s so difficult and exhausting trying to make sense of something that just doesn’t make sense. I did find writing down what I could remember helpful, and my husband over time has helped me to order some of the events or correct things I thought I’d said or done that I hadn’t.
I think trying to understand and make sense of things is all part of processing the experience and that takes time. There will be things we’ll never make sense of but hopefully in time you’ll reach a place of acceptance and peace. In the meantime, be super gentle with yourself and know we’re here to listen.
Sending love,
Jenny x
Thank you Jenny. Whilst I was at the hospital I felt a wave of sensation go through me which I thought was someone cloning me or trying to make me immortal. Has anyone here ever felt any sensations as part of their delusions?
I am trying hard to let go of the delusions, but I still feel like I'm supposed to do something in particular. I don't know what though. I still feel like some people are actors and are watching me. I am trying hard to believe otherwise.
Hi Zebrawhite, whenever I read your posts I am always in awe of your self awareness, that's a really great tool that will help you immensely. And thank you so much for sharing here, thoughts that are not always easy to share.
Your experience and Jenny's resonate a lot with mine. I also believed that everyone around me were actors and that I had to find the clues to get to the "truth" so I could leave the MBU. In retrospective I know this was my brain trying to piece together what had just happened, and using whatever was at its reach to find an answer. Like Jenny, movies figured a lot in my delusions.
I have to say mindfulness did help me overcome some of those thoughts. I had a little mantra through my time in the MBU that grounded me in moments of anxiety, "let my thoughts only be thoughts".
I hope that some of this helps, know that you are not alone, we have had similar experiences in our recovery and we were able to come through the other side. Take very good care, thinking of you
Maria
It's so strange that we all felt like we had to find clues to solve getting out of hospital. I wonder why and how common it is among people who have had Psychosis.
Warning: self harm and suicide mentioned.
When I first experienced psychosis I didn’t know what it was, but I was afraid of the dark corners of my home like the closets. I was afraid there were sentient beings in there, not aliens exactly, but “things” that were alive that shouldn’t be alive. I also came to believe that aliens were trying to break into the house. I began to see ordinary things as faces or eyes that were looking at me. I also had “voices” in my head running 24/7, these were some kind of intrusive thoughts but I interpreted them as different people, and they told me to harm myself. At first they told me to cut myself with a knife, which I did start doing, and then they started telling me I needed to die, and if I killed myself they would leave me alone. It was very compelling and I was bent on suicide for a while. I had no prior history of self harm and this was pre-social media, so I wasn’t reading about anyone else doing it. I did have internet but not much access to information. The point being, I didn’t get the idea from elsewhere.
After my baby stopped nursing, the television and radio started talking to me in alien voices. To this day I still jump if I hear an unexpected electronic voice, and until recently I sometimes had to leave the vicinity. I know what it is now and don’t believe it’s anything bad, but it still brings back that feeling of extreme fear occasionally.
That all sounds really scary. I am so glad you are doing better now. I really hope to be better one day too and support others.
You will. My bipolar settled down a lot after I hit menopause. For me that came early because of cancer treatment, but it probably wouldn’t have been more than another ten years as my periods were already getting irregular. I have no doubt you will get better as the years go on. Give it time.
I was told my experience was unusual for PP in that I was also seeing and hearing things, not just having delusions. Those went away, but the voices in my head stuck around for a long, long time. It all went away eventually. I still am prone to a lot of anxiety but that may have to do with the meds I take.
Hang in there. We are brave and strong.
You have had so many things happen to you, you are an inspiration to get where you are. Thank you for sharing, it gives me hope.
Hi Zebrawhite I also struggled to understand why I had the various thoughts and delusions pop into my head during PP. I found they were intrusive thoughts that got out of hand, and my brain was on overdrive. It was a kind of fear state.
I thought it was the end of the world, and I had to make a decision about ascension. That some people were ascending to another realm but those left would be stuck on Earth to essentially start civilisation again. I felt a lot of fear about being returned in a kind of barbaric caveman age where men would abuse women and children. Like my soul was being doomed to hell with my family.
I also thought I was connected to Mother Earth and the suffering of all women felt quite overwhelming. I developed a distrust of men and even thought my husband being an abuser, and that I was in the MBU to get away from him.
It was such a confusing time where I wasn’t making decisions about my care, so my brain tried to make sense of what was happening. However, because those thoughts stem from a place of fear, they were misplaced. I had constant conflicting thoughts of distrust of my own family or anyone new. Luckily deep down, I was quite aware this was not really me, so I didn’t act on any of those thoughts and was able to appear calm.
There were so many more themes at play, so that’s only a bit of what I experienced with PP. I found writing what I thought of down helped. Then you can get rid of them out of your head. You can even burn them and do a sort of return them to the universe ritual. Talking about it and writing it down will hopefully help you process as it did for me.
"I thought it was the end of the world, and I had to make a decision about ascension. That some people were ascending to another realm but those left would be stuck on Earth to essentially start civilisation again. I felt a lot of fear about being returned in a kind of barbaric caveman age where men would abuse women and children. Like my soul was being doomed to hell with my family."
A lot of that paragraph in particular resonated with me. I thought an agency had selected me to ascend to another realm, but it would mean leaving my family behind, which I couldn't do. I then felt forsaken for not having chosen to ascend, but I don't know how I thought I was supposed to choose to ascend anyway! I keep trying to work out what I was 'supposed' to have done.
Yes, that is very similar to the feelings I had. Some of mine was to do with the angel of death and my soul being on trial. It’s good to know you are not alone in these thoughts. A lot of PP experiences are similar in theme. I wonder if it’s a collective consciousness and programming we are brought up with where these fears come from. I don’t think we will ever fully understand it. You just have to realise that it was not your fault, and remember that you have done so well to get to were you are now.
Hi Zebrawhite
Yes I think the delusions are one of hardest things to make peace with. At the very beginning of being unwell with pp I looked out of the window and saw my mum waving to me. (My mum had passed away 2 years previously) I was so convinced it was her and went to leave the house with my newborn son, but my husband stopped me. For a long time afterwards I thought maybe it was still my mum and she wasn't dead.
This was coming up to nine years ago now and it still brings up strong emotions sometimes. In my experience talking about it does help, even having a little joke about things with my husband. It kinda takes away the sharp painful edges to the memory.
I hope that makes sense and it's a comfort that you're absolutely not alone in this.
Take care
Becky xx
One thing I still can't get my head around is that I felt a sensation run though my body very slowly in the hospital, and I thought it was something being done to my dna. I also had a conversation with another patient where they were quite intense and mentioned things that made me think something had been done to me as well. I am finding it hard to disregard these things, but don't know how to recover otherwise.
Hi Zebrawhite ,
Sorry you had to go through all that. I don't think you necessarily need to "dismiss" your experience. What you experienced was "real" in the sense that your brain constructed it the same way reality is "constructed".
Your brain gets input from your senses and uses that to decipher the outside world and "create" reality. When your brain works as it is supposed to, it is very good at doing this and your experienced reality matches the outside world. There are some inherent "bugs" such as visual illusions and similar, but for the most part your brain does a pretty good job.
However you were sick, your brain couldn't do what it always does, and a different "reality" was constructed because of it. You experienced it as real because it was for you, and that's why you are struggling to dismiss it.
I believed all kinds of things during my PP: I had given birth to multiple children, I had died in childbirth, my child had died, I was an elderly woman in an elderly home, I was in prison, I had flushed my baby down the toilet (!), I had written a book, the MBU staff were members of my family, everyone was an actor. You name it, I believed it. I also had to figure it all out if I wanted to leave the MBU. I felt there was something really important I needed to remember.
Your brain is made to solve problems, that's what it does. However, because of the illness, our brains were confronted with an unsolvable puzzle. We can't solve the ultimate problem of deciphering reality, so our brains can get stuck in the confusion.
Once I started recovering, I still struggled making sense of my reality. Comments from the staff in the MBU sounded confusing and with double-meaning. This is your brain trying to make sense of aberrant input as it's not working properly.
Try not to get hang up on the details. Understand this was your reality then, but learn to move on. It was so real to me that I still believe the MBU staff were messing up with me, laughing at me and purposefully trying to confuse me. This is probably the illness but it was so real. In the end it doesn't matter, because I am here, I survived, and I can move on. I hope you can too.
Thank you so much for your reply, it makes so much sense and I will try to remember it. I wonder why we think so many different things during psychosis. I heard voices, but I also took comments from people in strange ways too sometimes. They fed my strange beliefs. I suppose analysing it can only get you so far in understanding it, as like you say our brains aren't working correctly at those times. I hope to move on like you have. A lot of inspirational people in this forum.
I really wish I could meet someone who has been through this. I will maybe try to make the next face to face London cafe if I can find out when it is.
Hi Zebrawhite,
I’m sorry you’re still struggling with what happened to you. I also really try and make sense of it all and feel I need answers to everything. Unfortunately with this experience I’ll never have answers.. did it happen because of hormones, a bad reaction to the drugs at the birth or something that plays on my mind a lot is that I was being punished by something greater for something that I don’t even know that I’ve done.
I too had physical sensations, when I was in the hospital after my daughters birth (emergency c section) I felt like something was running through my body and could feel my body falling/ numbing and I felt like i was dying. This happened everytime I closed my eyes or tried to sleep. It got progressively worse the longer I didn’t sleep and took over 11nights till something shifted and this all stopped. I also had some sort of seizures (my eyes flickered and strained) this also only happen when shutting my eyes to go to sleep and my body would shake frantically, the only reassurance I have is that my husband witnessed all of this. Health professionals didn’t believe me, as when I wasn’t trying to go to sleep this wasn’t happening. It was unbelievably scary and I do still think about it as punishment, I really don’t know why as I am the kindest most gentle person in reality.
Hope you find some inner healing so you can move forward from it all.
Take care
Hannah
That sound really scary. I'm glad you feel better now. I felt something running through my body too and thought it was something doing something to me, but I don't know if it could have been hormones or something else due to my heightened stress levels.
We are such a great community Zebrawhite,
hope you are feeling fine today. Yes, I resonate with many stories told by those fabulous mums.
I felt quite lonely and confused and continued to struggle another 6 years until I found APP. My foot prints were not lost in the water anymore. Suddenly I could find other prints and able to share and walk the path with women, who experienced PPP and/or BP1.
Take good care. x
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