Tag: psychotic symptoms

I think, therefore I am, as the saying goes. ..

[Sorry. I know this post makes little sense. It’s a mess of thoughts in my head tonight since I realised how much I “am” what I am experiencing and feeling and cannot stand it and get lost along the way. ]

“I think, therefore I am.” ??

I think…

I feel…

It’s harder than you’d expect to separate thoughts and feelings. Thoughts can hurt. Thoughts are (must be?) quickly judged. Thoughts desire; thoughts need and long and that again is judged at once, answered or unanswered, and that brings feeling.

Can thoughts be stopped? Those that come unbidden, spiraling or shouting and yet never to be trusted, tell me I am deceiving, tell me – too bad to write… memories…

And feeling. Nothing. Terrible nothing with something clawing at me to come back, or blessed numb. Or everything.

Everything. Everything I am. All I am – pain, hurt, need, frightened – everything I am, all I am. Can’t anyone else see? Can’t you see? Everyone is in so much pain. Feeling it and absorbing it – theirs or mine? But it hits me like a wall and it’s all there is that moment, separated from time, not knowing what to do or what to be but – pain.

I think, therefore I am? I’m not sure about that! But I feel, therefore – I am not. My self, my certainties, are lost and all I’ve become is the feeling and the fear.

Back to work

I go back to work tomorrow after a few days’ annual leave. I’m really anxious right now. It’s harder than usual for me to go out at the moment. I’m better than in the last few days where I was crying all the time, but still feel dangerously out of control and shaky. This makes me feel like I have to double check how I’m behaving and what I’m saying all the more and the thoughts and voices in my head are all the stronger – you’re stupid, freak, ugly, fake, selfish, why did you say that, stop talking, deceitful, it’s your fault, disgusting, you’ve made it all up, why did you do that, not good enough, they know how bad you are now, they’re angry with you….it would all have been fine without you, everyone knows it’s your fault – until the frightening emptiness comes back and I just want to sleep.

I know it’ll just get worse if I don’t go to work and it does no good to think about all this. I need to turn outwards, look at everyone else, work, try to do good, try to do my job, try to just ignore the ache and the anxiety, not let it take everything over.

I’m going to try to do some things immediately to overcome it. I’m going to call a friend who I know has been having a bad time recently, having recently lost a friend of hers; I’m going to try to make some cards in preparation for a charity fundraiser in the Spring; I’m going to prepare my clothes for work tomorrow. I’m going to be thankful for having a job to go to.

Ginny xxx

What if I don’t trust them?

I’m still struggling to process what I’m feeling after therapy group on Friday. Tomorrow I have my 1:1 appointment and I know we will be talking about it. It is going to be so hard to go and even harder to go back to group when it comes around this Friday.

Just when I’d dared to start to think it’s okay, it isn’t. Just when I’d started to think group might be a safe place, somewhere that you can dare to speak about things that are otherwise forbidden, it isn’t.

Just when I’d started to let my guard down a little and trust, it turns out I’ve hurt everyone and didn’t even know. How did I not know? Usually I can feel it right away and know it’s my fault and this time I didn’t. I so so needed to trust them there and now I can’t. I couldn’t understand what I was feeling then last night the thought hit me – what if actually I’m angry and hurting because I feel I can’t trust them? I did the wrong and I caused the hurt but what if I’m angry because I feel people didn’t say what was really happening?

What if I’m angry because I feel I can trust or speak anymore?

What if I’m angry because I really needed to trust and yet again it all breaks down, just as usual, every other time? I know and felt so so strongly they hate me, they are angry, they don’t want me there, they hate me, they’re angry, and they’re angry for each other too because I’ve done wrong and got it wrong and they think I’m nasty, a fake, no right to be there, they just want me to go away and just put up with me because they had to. What if that made me angry as well as guilty because I can never know where I am and know I must never ever let anyone close but so desperately need people?

Does anyone else ever just wish they could never have to speak again?

The hallucinations are multiplying as my thoughts spiral through all these things.

Ginny xxx

Psychosis… trying to process that word…

I saw a psychiatrist at the personality disorder service yesterday. I’d asked if I could have a medication review and talk to someone about my fears about my hallucinations (because of the focus of MBT therapy we don’t really talk about them at length in group or regular 1:1 sessions).

I was scared why are the hallucinations getting worse and why it seemed to be getting harder to know they aren’t real. They used to be voices inside my head. Now they’re often outside and at the time they’re totally real. Only after can I work out they couldn’t have been. And I’m seeing things too.

My mother had hallucinations and I’m just a year younger than she was when she gave birth to me and after that things got really bad for her. So I was scared is the same thing happening to me at the same age?

The psychiatrist was really nice,  understood me, understood my terror, understood the frightening experiences of my childhood and she took more interest in this background than I’d expected. Which was important because it allowed me to tell her about unusual, possibly hallucinatory (is that a word?!) visual experiences as a child and the very strong imaginary world I created to escape into, away from the bizarre experiences day to day caused by my mother’s weird beliefs and behaviour. I told her about feeling I dissociate into different personalities and worlds.

Then we talked about psychosis and schizophrenia. The psychiatrist used the words psychosis and psychotic symptoms for what I was describing. I asked if she thought I had Psychosis as another illness separate from my Borderline PD. She said it is hard to separate because having unusual external experiences is part of Borderline and I could be at a more extreme end of that, worsened by stress and perhaps as therapy is opening things up. Also she thinks I had a sort of ‘propensity’ towards it as a child – I can’t remember the word she used – and this interacted with my mother’s schizophrenic behavior and the abuse to make things worse.

I knew I have hallucinations. I was scared of Psychosis. One of the drugs I take is actually anti psychotic though I didn’t realise that.

It’s still scary that the word psychosis and psychotic symptoms is used for what I have. Partly, I think this is because I fear I’m going to lose all knowledge these things aren’t real and lose contact with the world and become as my mother did. Partly, it’s saying for sure I’m experiencing things that aren’t real. And I’ve so many fears about what’s real and what’s not real. Partly I don’t know yet.

I’m holding on to what the psychiatrist said, that if you keep taking the medication you do not tend to lose the knowledge that the hallucinations aren’t real. They might even go away.

So she’s writing to my GP for changes in my medication and higher dose of the anti psychotic meds.

I don’t know what to think right now. There seems a lot to get my head round again.

Ginny xx

Hearing things

Hearing things

This post contains discussion of experiencing hallucinations, or sensations, which are not “really there”, as well as in very general and brief terms touching on self-destructive ideas. I put this as a warning because I am not sure whether this may be disturbing, distressing or triggering to anyone. I have discussed this very little before. Please consider not reading further if it may not be helpful to you. Thank you.

I have a question on which I would be very grateful to hear any thoughts or answers.

My understanding is that in borderline personality disorder, heightened states of emotion for a prolonged period of time can cause transient psychosis and that people who have Borderline may experience hallucinations.

A few other people I’ve met who have Borderline have shared that they experience things which I think might be termed hallucinations, for example, hearing voices, sensing presences, seeing people or things, sensations of touch, and so on. These seem to be with varying degrees of – I cannot find an adequate term – solidity? For example, ranging from the sensation of a presence with you or a sound, to clearly and specifically seeing another person in the room.

I’m frightened by hallucination experiences I have.  I know I am more likely to have them when I am in a state of high emotion. Until recently, I was more likely to have them when alone. Most commonly (I think) they are auditory – hearing someone calling my name (most commonly my mother’s voice), hearing something happening or being said again which happened a long time ago (this is closely bound to my experiencing flashbacks as part of my PTSD), hearing a voice which I am aware is in my head but which appears to come from outside of me telling me to do self-destructive things or telling me how stupid, disgusting, ridiculous, greedy etc I am, or hearing non-distinct voices but knowing that it is accompanied by a sense of pain / anger / urgency in some way. Sometimes I am aware that what I am hearing is in my head (like the voice telling me to do things to myself), but increasingly, sometimes I am certain it was in the world outside (like my mother calling me). More recently, the hallucinations are visual as well, for example, inanimate objects seeming to move or shine. I am always aware immediately afterwards that this cannot be real. Or they can be sensory – this tends to be bound up with the flashbacks again, for example, during a flashback believing that the people present when the traumatic thing happened, the people I feared, or just a non-specific sense of terror that is much more an external sensation than emotion should normally be.

These things are all intensifying. I am scared. I fear am I developing psychotic symptoms? I know my mother’s illnesses started to worsen when she was just a little older than me. Is the same thing happening to me? I would like to know, does anyone else with PTSD or personality disorder experience this kind of thing? Or even, if you are not diagnosed with a personality disorder or PTSD, have you ever experienced anything similar? How do you deal with it? At the moment I have an awareness on some level that these things I’m experiencing aren’t real. How do I make sure that I do not lose that?

I know that these are hard questions and personal questions and I understand you may not feel comfortable to answer. Anything you would like to share, I would be very very grateful for. I really do not want to distress anyone or trigger anyone in any way and if discussion of this kind of thing is not helpful for you I do not want to draw you in.

Ginny xx

With thanks for image to: http://freewallpaperdekstop008.blogspot.co.uk/