An article in The Guardian described an alternative treatment called Avatar Therapy [1] that has the therapist create a digital simulation of the voices, interact with the patient using the simulated voice and work through a script that gradually gives the patient more power over the voice.
It can get surprisingly radical for a therapy session, at one point even inciting the patient to commit suicide! [2]
I've had these pernicious pseudo voices off an on since I did something stupid as a lonely teenager: tulpas or tulpaforcing. Basically an imaginary friend that you try to hypnotize yourself into believing it really exists.
Once I got really busy in my late teens and early twenties it became just a chapter in a shitty past life but in times of stress or use of drugs like weed it comes back. Crazy how impressioned the practice became.
Lately the stress and boredom of being unemployed had morphed it into having old traumatic relationship experiences becoming that pseudo voice. Like my own mother abandoning and rebuking me. Quite luckily I found out that cimetidine helps a lot.
That's the thing, it really isn't that different. It's just that the practice involves learning to split off your internal monologue until it's done unconsciously. In a way you are literally giving yourself schizophrenia. 4chan didn't get me to put magnets on hard drives but they did get me to do it to my brain.
I hadn't heard of this, but it sounds like it comes from the Theosophist's misunderstanding of an emanation body (nirmanakaya) in Vajrayana Buddhism. There's a reason why many of the practices in Vajrayana are taught progressively and under guidance, and that's mainly because confusion and misunderstanding can arise when not grounded in proper view (samyagdrishti), which can have a very real and direct impact on a person's mind. But from what I can tell this western practice is completely divergent from anything found in the kangyur or tengyur.
Have you considered talking to a Vajrayana teacher to help understand what's going on? Tergar has an ongoing teaching this year on Buddhist psychology [1]. Also, a teacher I practice with posts most of our sessions online for free as well [2].
If I'm not really with strong determination for cultivating a Vajrayana practice, do you think I can still benefit much? It's just these "introjects" that bother me or maybe what you called it.
I googled it and there seems to be an entire community of people doing or attempting to do that ?
Surely a symptom of the industrio/tech induced epidemic of loneliness.
A very interesting question on the ethical side as well.
My knee-jerk reaction is that the promotion and propagation of such methods should not be allowed, as it can risk nudging vulnerable individuals the wrong way.
But if this is not allowed, why would meditation be ?
What makes it different ? Only the outcomes ?
I cannot help but to be overwhelmed by the human condition sometimes.
I recall finding them as a teen myself on the internet, there were books and stuff on the subject but it was treated like something that might be risky, in the best of cases you would end un with a benign tulpa worse case you end up similar to OP or worse
It was certainly treated as "underground" knowledge, less something like you would share and more something you would find on a chan
One alcohol withdrawal caused me to hear faint music everywhere all the time. I thought it was an unreasonable neighbour and was thoroughly convinced as it seemed to get louder as I walked around.
Nope, it was withdrawal. I discovered I could change the lyrics of the song by thinking them. And fans or other noise sources made it worse. Once I knew it was in my head, it was harmless and easy to ignore, if just a little annoying.
My personal experience is that knowing the source of ubiquitous annoyances or health issues much more bearable.
I had issues breathing around Corona and that stuck for 3 years. 1.5 years into that and after running from doctor to doctor I was cleared from a fear that it could be lung cancer or some shit. Still don't know what it is, but that helped tremendously.
I was smelling a sweet smeel for a month until I discovered that my neighbour grows weed. I was going mad because that seriously never crossed my mind cause he was never the type to smoke. And thought I am imagining stuff. Once I knew that, it was just a minor nuisance.
So the fact that this treatment of accepting the voices helps is easy to believe for me.
I had exactly this! I kept having flare ups and couldn't figure out the pattern until we tore up a bathroom and discovered mold. Suddenly I realized my lungs hurt everytime I had people come stay over. They'd use the spare shower, it'd excite the mold and then I'd need an inhaler. Cheap hotels also put my lungs into a tizzy. Definitely worth checking cause mold is everywhere.
A jukebox in your head! Great unless it malfunctions (e.g., gets stuck on one song like "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer...", a friend's musical nemesis):
wait.. really ? please share some links with info. I've had this several times in my life and i don't think I've ever been an alcoholic but i have had a relationship with several substances but I'm not really sure I've ever had withdrawal symptoms from any of them
I think these are just really common hallucinations that can be caused by a lot of things. I've had them when nearing heat stroke, but also from various substances. I write it off as brain doing what brain does best; over active pattern matching due to stress or the like. Hearing music in white noise, "whispers in the walls" etc. Very different from actually hearing personified voices.
Yep. I've had this happen to me since I was a kid, and it's ramped up slightly over the past few years. Background noise especially at night, will seem to form music, or the sound of dialogue of a television through a wall.
Usually just sitting up and accurately identifying the source of the sound (ceiling fan, radiators, passing train, cat water bowl) makes it go away.
My brain is very bad at identifying what people are saying with background noise, but at least I get free night music.
I only get this with very faint white noise in very quiet environments. Humans can actually sense things under the noise floor, so the line between hallucination and truth is blurry.
> The rate of schizophrenia-related emergency-room visits for men ages 18 to 44 years old is 16% higher so far in 2024 compared with 2018, according to health-analytics company Truveta; men ages 30 to 44 showed a 24% increase.
A better working treatment is good but understanding these numbers seems important. That's a large increase in a very short time.
We knew a guy who retired at ~30 and was institutionalized by 35. That’s really the only person I’ve been able to watch go off the rails. And in his case it really did seem that the isolation drove the decline, rather than the decline driving the isolation. That was around the time we were first exploring the idea that staying busy with novel problems can delay the onset of dementia. Being around people is perhaps an incentive to keep the wheels on a bit longer. We thought going to work did that for him in a way that parties and lunches with friends did not.
My alcoholism is significantly worse when I am not working, even if I have other things to do. Like week long 24/7 drinking level. That's one of the reasons the FIRE stuff doesn't appeal to me. I have been willfully unemployed and it is not always a bed of roses.
My friend who's been in psychosis for a year and a half now, and may have schizophrenia (we can't get her to see any doctors), was doing a lot of "microdosing" mushrooms, acid, ecstasy, and plenty of macrodosing too. I think there's a very likely chance this contributed to her falling into psychosis (along with menopause and the stress/idleness of losing her job).
Could equally be the case that these were coping mechanisms she was using to try to accommodate her early symptoms. The classic addiction story is that at the root of problematic alcohol or drug use there's serious trauma - frequently sexual abuse, early life neglect etc. While these things aggregate (losing her job etc), there could be a common root.
i would wager its more likely that people who are prone to developing it are more likely to be smoking weed to try to deal with earlier symptoms. Weed isnt a particularly new thing, despite its recent potency.
I have schizophrenia and both times I caught COVID my first symptoms was a horrible psychosis. First time almost went to the psych hospital but that is worse than just dealing with the psychosis. Luckily I had a friend who talked me through it and got me some meds. I told my doctors this and they just shrugged. No one cares if you are mentally ill.
To add another trope, do not be shocked if EMFs are also found to be contributing. I know, this is coming from a schizophrenic, so whatever.
Having schizophrenia does not in any way invalidate your conjecture on a possible link between EMF exposure and schizophrenia. However, there has been a very large amount of research on EMF exposure and various health concerns, including schizophrenia specifically, without much effect shown. So, unlike you, I would be quite surprised if it was found to be contributing.
Interestingly though, there have been some studies that show a possible link between schizophrenia and ionizing radiation. (for instance: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11087010/ )
> there has been a very large amount of research on EMF exposure
What type of EMF exposure? You see, there really has not been studies of real world newer EMF frequencies and none on mmWave exposure that are not only based on the thermal effects.
However, the available studies have not investigated the health effects resulting from exposure from the 5G mobile phone and base station antennas from 700 MHz to 30 GHz on the cognitive performance, well-being subjective symptoms, human physiological parameters, and EEG of adults. There is a need for such research regarding this current emerging technology. Such studies are significant in determining whether 5G technology is indeed safe for humans.
There have been some EMF studies showing increased glucose consumption in areas of the brain exposed to it. If I remember correctly, this was related to some cell phone research. There haven't been any studies that I have come across that look deeper into what it might mean long term.
At least several of the early cell phone exposure studies that showed negative effects on rats used irradiation levels that equalled putting your head in a microwave oven.
So just keep that in mind before drawing conclusions.
I think your claim is exaggereated and without evidence. I can assure you, putting a rat in a microwave will damage/kill it, in momonets.
But let say they were overpowered, but not at the extent you are claiming. Were these studies "over powered" on purpose? There is evidence that they were to dismiss any health effects in studies completed by companies that make thee devices and this is discussed by researchers.
> I think your claim is exaggereated and without evidence
I calculated it myself. It was in response to one of those anti-EMF folks posting these papers as proof that cell phones were very dangerous. It's been several years since I did this, I don't have the references or calculations handy.
They exposed rats to increasing levels of radiation power for relatively short durations, and only the highest had the adverse effects.
Of course, could be I calculated it wrong. But it was a fairly simple scaling thing ala watts per gram of tissue, and I did do it for at least a few papers.
And yes, I think these were overpowered on purpose. If there was no effect at these extreme levels, it wouldn't make much sense spending resources studying lower-level exposure.
Who cares about rats. There are plenty of human studies we can look at. The point is, we know EMF can affect things, but we don't know if those affects are harmful. Going back in the comment history, this was about telling someone that maybe they're crazy, but maybe they aren't crazy about EMF affecting their mental state. There are things they can look up, such as brain glucose metabolism, EEG changes, etc. We know these changes happen, but we don't know what they mean or how they might interact with a condition like their's as it's hard enough to find good EMF studies let alone ones where the subjects aren't "healthy individuals".
the biggest problem with any of these theories is the sun. the sun puts out a mind boggling amount of millimeter wave radiation so it's very hard to believe a-priori that the cell signals are a problem.
Nobody is askin you to believe anything a-priori. The point here is that we haven't looked into what the affects mean. The sun puts out considerably less radio emission than it does any other EMR (xray, UV, visible, infrared). Many of the wavelengths are then deflected, absorbed, weakened, etc by the atmosphere. Logically speaking, if the wavelength that we use for forms of radio communication make it to earth, then we would need to transmit at a higher power to overcome that background noise. Again, logically speaking, when the tests are being done, the observation in increased glucose consumption etc are being observed over the natural baseline affects of the sun.
> Logically speaking, if the wavelength that we use for forms of radio communication make it to earth, then we would need to transmit at a higher power to overcome that background noise.
If this were true, GPS wouldn't work. It's entirely possible to communicate below the noise floor. See https://www.pa3fwm.nl/technotes/tn09b.html for a mathematical analysis.
The difference between sunlight and mmWave 5G EMFs is so much different that I cannot convince you here.
But, lets sy they are the same, we are not exposed to sunlight at night, but we are exposed to ELF-EMFS and RF-EMFs now 24x7. Imagine living with a 24 hour sun.
Is there any actual study on this? I have encountered some extraordinarily strange people in places like Reno, Bakersfield, Yuma, and other desert cities. Strange in a different way from the usual wierdos I run into in places like Seattle, LA, NY, ATL, etc.
The only population I’ve encountered with a similar strangeness to them is folks who have worked their whole life in a high VOC environment. Paint shops, print shops, that kind of thing. We were shopping for some custom canvas work for a boat, and at every shop we got quotes from there was overpowering smell of polyvinyl chloride, and every shop owner had a very weird affect to them.
As someone with schizophrenia I know for a fact bright sun and heat make my mood disorder harder to handle. Heat and humidity are well know triggers for mood episodes [1]. The stress could be from inflammation, catecholamine release, or even the increased blue light.
In a way, I guess? One of the three people suffering from schizophrenia who I know had their first episode when he, in the peak of COVID, could not get any information about his mother who was taken to hospital with COVID. She died, but he didn't learn that before a week after her passing.
Such events leave emotional scars on anyone, but can trigger schizophrenia in those who have a family history of the disease.
FYI: Schizophrenia and psychosis are two different things. The latter can be a symptom of the former. But psychoses can occur for many different reasons. They're quite common in bipolar disorder ("manic depression", during manic phases). And it isn't always about "hearing voices". Both of those seem like pretty common misconceptions.
I have a friend who trained themself to recognise the onset of their psychoses, and to only medicate when that happens. Antipsychotics can have pretty unpleasant side effects in many people. This strategy is not without risk.
"Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. It’s a matter of presenting yourself as safe. Little old men wander around London hallucinating visibly, but no one gets upset. The same behaviour in a younger, more vigorous person would get him shut away. A Canadian study on attitudes to mental illness concluded that it was when someone’s behaviour was perceived as ‘unpredictable’ that the community rejected them. A fat lady was admiring a painting at a private view at the Tate when the artist strode over and bit her. They threw him out, but no one questioned his sanity—it was how he always behaved."
Or autists. People want them shot on sight for having “tism rants”. Emphasis on the shot part given that Hans Asperger only saved those kids from literally being shot by justifying their utility to the German rocketry program…
This is really interesting. A proof that "not everything was thought of yet" and revolutionary ideas still wait for people whose thinking is sufficiently out of the box.
Who would have thought that "confronting your demons" could work in such a literal way.
Many people probably do this already, somewhat intuitively. If you look around, descriptions of such problems and similar advice is found in many contemplative traditions. I've heard an sermon recently that was named something like "pay no mind to the evil thoughts". Now in the tradition of that priest (mainstream/Orthodox Christianity) they overly attribute some things to demons, but you'll find similar advice elsewhere without that baggage.
It is nice to see it in secular medicine as well, though.
I think calling them "demons" is part of the problem. I take my delusion as clues, psychic hints, a sort of over sensitivity and Cassandra like quality, that should be used by people without schizo. But I cannot tell you how many time sI was called stupid and crazy about my ideas on here yet I talk with research scientists on the regular.
To me Schizo is nothing more than an intensely creative mind. Why see nothing when you can see somthing?
Note that hunter gatherer genetics are linked to schizo and the idea of aa demon is a particularly Christian view of insights that do not fit the norm. More so if the ideas were coming from "pagan" people.
TBH these voices might have been the original reason why "demons" got defined by the ancients as evil spirits.
They often speak evil things, are unseen to the general population, but torment the sufferer ... a basic candidate for the category of "demon", especially in pre-modern times.
Also, I don't think that demons are a particularly Christian phenomenon. They certainly predate Christianity and various "heathen" religions were full of them: Indo-European, Amerindian, African...
But the idea of schizophrenia as a very intense mind going on empty is interesting. Only I would say that it needs some specific pathway to go down the schizophrenic route. Plenty of people with intense fantasies are normally adjusted and don't fulfill the criteria for a mental disease.
But it does look like there are some people who are tormented by mental issues and preoccupied with bizarre thoughts, occult imagery, and aggressive behaviors. And honestly, even though I've seen myself how meds work on my family member, it's so surreal to believe after seeing such manifestations, and demons would be the right term for the behaviors I've seen first hand, it also sounded like a living nightmare to the person experiencing it. The acceptance of these nonsensical ideas and going with the flow reminded me of how dreams work, but at least I'm not awake to live out the dream.
If the demons control your body by abusing your brain and nerve impulses, it could be. Our bodies work through electrical signals and various neurotransmitters like serotonin, so an anti-psychotic that affects brain receptors could prevent such a "hotwiring".
Would it be any different than if aliens could beam signals to individual neurons to force you to do something? What about a skilled surgeon with an Arduino, or those seizure prevention circuits they can install?
I sometimes wonder if the voices are suppressed in the “healthy” population, but to some extent still influential - but dangerous in that they operate out of sight. For reference: non-professional opinion.
That seems like a Freudian theory of repressed trauma or the more
general idea of "coping mechanisms" that go wrong. The "healthy" mind
isn't afraid/ashamed to hear and process discomforting thoughts. For
the more fragile mind, pushing them back makes them more and more
intrusive. Ronnie Laing, Thomas Szasz, Erich Fromm, and many others
have said, variously; "Mental illness is a sane reaction to an insane
world", "In a mad world, only the mad are sane", or "Coping is making
yourself part of the problem".
That's not the same as being dismissive about the state of world, or
legitimising/glorifying real and distressing medical insanity - it's
just saying; be careful how you "cope". That said, just look around
you. Aren't intrusive voices just reason tired of us telling it to
shut up.
I’d say it’s less Freud than it is Internal Family Systems theory, which posits human personality is multiple. And we’ve somehow learned to suppress voices that we know sub-consciously to be unacceptable, maybe through socialization etc. Writing this, I make the leap to Jung and need for awareness and management of these suppressed voices before they overwhelm us.
I’m conscious I am (maybe we are) fumbling towards statement or acknowledgment of the same thing.
Ye olde question: is the crucial aspect of innovation if someone did that first, or if someone was able to break into the mainstream?
If the technique wasn't used for 50 years after Nash, wasn't it like the tree that fell in the forest and nobody heard it falling?
Imagine finding out that someone observed antibiotic effects of Penicilinum in the 1880s, but patients still dying of banal infections until Fleming; in that case, I would give the "revolutionary" credit to Fleming.
No, it’s not revolutionary if someone manages to find a counter-example 22 minutes after someone proclaims that it is revolutionary. It clearly hasn’t been relegated to obscurity.
Revolution means pretty literally "turn something around".
Which a first actual large-scale deployment of something fulfills, but isolated experiments don't.
Was Falcon 9 revolutionary? For me, absolutely, because it was the first widely deployed rocket that made partial reuse economical, and thus enabled projects such as Starlink.
We can call the previous small-scale experiments bold or maybe groundbreaking, but there was no revolution achieved.
You are onto something. I moved the goalpost. One of the reasons might be that the conversation dragged over hours and I lost the precise context in my head, with tons of distractions coming my way.
this and other alternative schizophrenia treatments a very good thing when they work, which is relatively rare.
as we can see from the comments here already, many people choose to believe these alternative treatments always work and there is never any need for antipsychotics.
it completely makes sense that some people who suffer from the horrible side effects of antipsychotics would have some wishful thinking of this kind.
what i don’t get is why random people with no skin in the game, are often so emotionally invested in the idea that antipsychotics don’t work or are unnecessary. but it’s very common.
I would tend to presume that alternative treatments paired with lower doses of antipsychotics would be a goal, rather than none. There comes a point where control is the goal rather than quality of life. And the treatment of Thorazine in the media in particular has not been kind.
I would presume that as well. For myself, cognitive behavioral therapy greatly reduced my need for medication because I could recognize symptoms and preemptively deal with them before they spiral out of control.
I’ll still be taking antipsychotics for the rest of my life, but at least the side effects are manageable enough I can live with it.
>> what i don’t get is why random people with no skin in the game, are often so emotionally invested in....
Insert any subject there. This is a really interesting topic. I can understand having an idea on a subject, but why cling so tightly to the flimsy ones or refuse to accept them as wrong when given evidence?
Myself I am schizotypal which means I have unusual experiences. For instance things like Ouija boards and dowsing rods work really well for me even though I don't believe in them at all (and actually have all the reason to be an arch-reductionist)
For a while though I practiced a kind of visualization I called "shapeshifting" which has recently turned into a project to be possessed by a fox spirit because I found out that everywhere there are foxes people have been getting possessed by fox spirits so why can't I do it? (No need to explain it in terms of science, reconcile it with western approaches to religion, none of that...)
I had it come in and take over my standing reflex (the first thing it does) we said a few words and then I was left with the message that I was not in good enough shape and I could get hurt doing this (not like a serious injury but sprains and strains, yes, to express itself it will ask more of my body than I do.
I'm going to have to talk about my goals with a trainer next week, I don't think I'm going to come completely clean that a fox sent me.
>I'm going to have to talk about my goals with a trainer next week, I don't think I'm going to come completely clean that a fox sent me.
This is one of the wilder comments that I've read on this site.
Can you talk more about Ouija boards and the dowsing rods? When you say that they work really well for you, does that mean that you're able to use the Ouija board to correctly answer questions that people ask, even if you don't know the answer ahead of time? As for the dowsing rods, does that mean that you're able to find water/minerals/lost items?
> When you say that they work really well for you, does that mean that you're able to use the Ouija board to correctly answer questions that people ask, even if you don't know the answer ahead of time?
I have a family member who I'm now suspecting might be schizophrenic. They will interrogate an ersatz Oujia board and have genuine conversations with...something that appears, to them, as a separate entity from themselves.
The advantage of communicating through a Oujia board (or spirit manifestation) seems to be you control when and where the other...consciousness?...manifests. Versus untamed schizophrenia where the hallucinations are occuring constantly and unprompted.
I can use these things as well as anybody else can use them, like the dowsing rods can seem to practically jump out of my hands. I don't expect to pass a test from a parapsychologist but going out with me could be like going out with a dog who has a good tracking instinct and in my neck of the woods I can tell you where to drill and you'll probably find water. I do find lost items from time to time.
It boggles my mind that circa 1880 you could claim to channel the spirits of the dead and get away with it. This gave way to the likes of Edgar Cayce (if I couldn't predict the future better then him with I'm thinking rationally...) and Jane Roberts.
That's so interesting, thanks for answering. I wonder if anybody's ever run a test where they take "normal" people and schizotypal people like yourself, give them dowsing rods, and see who has a higher accuracy rate of finding water.
Foxes are known however to be quite tricky and deceptive, as are fox spirits; for instance in the Hungarian film "Liza, the Fox-Fairy (2015)" and of course the well-known Japanese kitsune.
Our neighbors who had a flock of chickens also had a fox family living in a hollowed-out stump. Their chickens were safe because they had a really solid hen house but their game camera caught the fox mama repeatedly bringing back chickens from the neighbors that it had taken.
What strikes me most is how your approach intertwines personal meaning and physical embodiment. Whether interpreted through a mystical lens, as you’re exploring, or as an imaginative and deeply personal form of visualization, it seems to function as a powerful motivator for change and self-awareness
Great LLM impression! ChatGPT said nearly the same thing to me the other day, and it was quite annoying. This isn’t annoying exactly. What would you call it? Let’s delve. Shall we delve?
Isn't this a main idea in the film A Beautiful Mind?
If rates of psychosis are going up, why? It seems very worrying when rates of depression, suicide, psychosis, and other mental illnesses are increasing with what seems like no understanding of why or what to do to prevent the increase.
I was just researching John Nash. In the film, he takes antipsychotic medication because the film producers didn't want to encourage people to not take their meds. In real life, he never was on antipsychotics and learned to live with his disease.
And to some extent, Brian Wilson (of Beach Boys fame). Who has told that his voices are mostly negative, but sometimes also a positive force. But in any case, apparently he learned to live with them since his onset in the mid 1960s.
I thought of the same film, and in the film (if I remember correctly) the John Nash character in the end even uses the same strategy to deal with the hallucinations. To paraphrase, he says something like, he sees them but he knows they are not real, and choses not to listen.
(Oh, and of course, am not saying this is the only strategy for dealing with psychosis, but it is just that it was also the first thing that came to mind when I read this article:)
By coincidence I re-watched that film this weekend (I like it a lot) and seeing this article immediately made me think of it. Yes, in the film he takes meds, but he stops doing it after a while because of the side effects (impotence amongst others). Then he learns to live with the voices.
I do not hear voices (frequently), but have delusions. This is what I do, I do not trust anything I see. I found that I think people are looking at me when they are not so now I just accept it and do not read anything into it. The medication to treat us are ancient and horrible and this is the only healthy way out for us. I had to learn this on my own though since medicare does not care enough about anyone's health.
This was my first thought - hearing voices are only one of many symptoms of psychosis. Disordered thinking is a big one.
It's hard to convince someone who isn't thinking logically that they have a disease and the voices aren't real. Their grip on reality is already tenuous.
Delusions are the worst, once they are too far gone there's no sense in trying to convince the person it's not real. We've been through it with a family member many times, the worst part is that it starts slowly, but they hide it so well or they self isolate and alienate everybody. Once the signs are there, they are already too far gone, broadcasting, paranoia, persecution, grandeur, telepathy, false memories, you name it. If it were only voices, I think that could be managed more easily than delusions. Not sure if it's true that relapses cause further damage (neurotoxicity) but so far only the neuroleptic shots have proven to be reliable and prevent the next manic episode. Regrettably, these cause a host of other issues, like depression, lack of motivation or pleasure and so on.
Yes, thank you. I already do a high omega 3 keto diet and it has enabled me to come off of medications, only needing klonopin for triggers I cannot control. 7 years now.
Mental illness is a metabolic disease, mine is caused by a problem with purine metabolism. (carbohydrates will turn into purines) Each person will be different. I have Schizoaffective disorder like she does. I would say we are remarkably similar in many ways.
I've also come to believe a mix of metabolic therapy and targeted supplementation (particularly B vitamins, chiefly B3), yields much better results than medications. And it seems the medical profession is slowly waking up to it too.
If you don't mind me asking, do you have any cues or techniques that you use to help differentiate between a delusion and something real? Or are the kind of delusions you have consistent to the point where you've already categorized and figured out how to deal with them?
The way I read his post is that categorizing and differentiating is fundamentally not possible, because sensory input cannot be trusted, period. This makes sense to me because part of what can drive you mad is the constant questioning, so one way to short-circuit this is to simply not play the game.
It's zero trust networking for your brain, and you're asking "but how do you decide which ip addresses are safe?". That's the neat part, you don't.
Yes, that is it. But sometimes I can get clues to differentiate. Another example. The water coming out of my bathtub looked really really blue. So blue that I called the water company. The woman came out and had that look on her face and just said, your water looks fine. I have learned that the look is a clue for me to not trust myself and let go and trust other people. It is sort of like being blind having to trust people to tell you the right way to go.
> If you don't mind me asking, do you have any cues or techniques that you use to help differentiate between a delusion and something real?
Nothing is real. Not for me or for you. That is my greatest insight of my illness.
You all have very narrow band schizophrenia, mine is just more, uhm, loose.
So if I feel like some shadow agency is tracking me I just say; "So what.", If I think what I picked up from the supermarket I just say; "So what if I die." I really had to stop caring about dying or suffering.
The only time I know when I am alone in my perceptions is when I ask someone. For example, I was sitting in a restaurant and I these four Mexican workers were turned around staring at me. I asked my friend if they were and she said no. Now I do not know if I am able to pick up on something, maybe I could somehow tell they were talking about me adn my brain made me aware by making it look like they were looking at me. But again, so what is my answer.
The day before that I felt my dead great uncle was telling me to go to Dillon, MT to make amends for him getting arrested there in 1954. So it was a tough week for me.
I've noticed from my family member that their brain seems to connect more dots, things are more abstract for them. So basically very good for creative work, they are good with words and novel ideas, but also sucks when you attribute behaviors and intentions when they are not there.
> I've noticed from my family member that their brain seems to connect more dots
I've seen that too. It's as if the brain's "saliency threshold" is set too low - suddenly, there are no coincidences; everything is relevant and connected and has personal significance. There's no clear dividing lines between logic and intuition and madness; many of the people we perceive as smartest or most creative are somewhere in the middle.
"saliency threshold", I like that. Yes, this is it. But what is remarkable is that I can get people to believe my delusional thoughts are true because they are so creative and convincing!
The teleological thinking is the worst. And actually so is the creativity. It is fun but it is hard to make a dollar, and also, not everyone likes creative thought because it destroys paradigms.
I don’t want to belittle a condition that is clearly real, but if it helps I think you’re a 100% normal human.
All people have neurotic moments (That someone is looking at them, or believe in some mild conspiracy or whatever). The people who say they aren’t are lying or good at hiding it.
Someone close to me and typically pretty rational has one where she thought bugs were in her bed after repeatedly bug bombing the house. Half the State of New Jersey think we are in the midst of a drone invasion. Thank god we invented the scientific method and other tools for reasoning that can compensate for our flawed perceptions.
100% normal people do not get involuntarily committed to a psych ward. (Well, sometimes they do, but that is another story) The disorder comes when it disrupts your daily life. The thing you mentioned do not do that. Mine did.
There are not 100% normal people. And pathology is essentially multidimensional even though we reduce it to one, and labelled people fallaciously as "sick" or "well."
If this treatment is “surprising”, it might point to a unskilful way of conceptualizing the disease in the first place.
I wonder how many people make things worse for themselves by worrying that they’re going crazy, which ends up feeding the cycle.
As opposed to “What can I do with this/How can I work around it?”
Giving people agency and making them know that they don’t need to own every random voice that comes into their head is nice. Even for non-psychotic folks.
In my deeper psychosis, asking myself “What can I do with this/How can I work around it?” is literally impossible. I am too busy running down the street secretly taking pictures of people who I think are agents from some unknown organization.
There are people online claiming to be harassed by groups of people hired by governments or shadow organizations. This ranges from being followed in the street or having people looking at you menacingly at the supermarket, to being subject to psychic warfare using electromagnetic weapons.
I have yet to find a case that convinces me it's not pathological paranoia.
But where it gets interesting is that these people also claim the "harassment" happens on the very forums where they discuss this topic: some posters allegedly make subtle references to info they shouldn't know about, especially because on these imageboards anonymity happens at the thread level.
After having spent enough time on these platforms, this happened to me on a few occasions: posters alluding to my geographical location, or making mentions of things I wrote in other threads with high emotional involvement. I can't tell whether I'm over-interpreting, but one thing that is certain is that these posters were LLMs. I came to that conclusion using various tricks: context-length exhaustion, talking about topics that go beyond their reasoning ability (such as anagrams), and I noticed they fail to properly understand concepts from pictures or to read text behind a link.
Conclusion: the idea of gang-stalking is not an assessment of the situation, it's the tip of a spear meant to induce pathological paranoia.
Modeling the Impact of Combat and Influence Actions on Population
Attitudes toward Forces
During the last decades, stabilization, COIN and CT operations around the world have brought to light an increased need for influence capabilities on local populations and key individuals. Today, western Forces often face non-state actors and other kind of irregular opponents, which have strong interactions with the “human environment'' and find there some support based on ethnic, political or religious affinities. Influence actions aim at altering the perception, attitudes and behaviors within the population and at hindering proinsurgent dynamics. In order to counter them and stabilize the crisis zone, one must win the so-called ‘‘heart and minds’’ of the local population. The understanding of the human terrain and its dynamics is the key for answering those new operational needs and obviously calls for a modeling and simulation effort. Our goal is to develop a simulation of the dynamics of the population in terms of attitude and behavior change and to use in training and decision aid applications.
I believe like me may be targeted, not because they want to kill or torture us, but they can use us since our outlook and actions are more easily manipulated.
I had such an interaction in real life, an attempt of an agency to use me. This interaction was seen by a friend or else I would have dismissed it.
One cannot easily dismiss these claim since there is a history oif the CIA experimenting on Schizos.
"He sat in a chair, had headphones placed upon him, and was subjected to statements, screams and noises designed to frighten. Electrodes were placed upon his body, his heart rate, body temperature and sweat level measured."
And this, a bill banning "mind control"? Psychotronic weapons? Mood management?
through the use of land-based, sea-based, or space-based systems using radiation, electromagnetic, psychotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control of such persons or populations; or
A very good friend of mine is in some kind of severe psychosis right now. She's cut off all her friends and family. While she was still talking to us, she was still so paranoid she refused to even consider seeing a doctor, even though she knew she was on some kind of "never-ending acid trip" as she called it.
But she's still taking care of herself and not a danger to herself or others, so there's nothing we can right now. My big hope is that someday she'll get perspective on this like you have now.
I had several family members experience episodes, and i have as well. In my own case it struck me as i was preparing to board a plane. Thankfully i was allowed off briefly before the takeoff. I knew that what im experiencing is so unlikely as to be impossible (eg large scale conspiracy) but could do nothing to shake it off. Eventually i found a safehouse and just hid there, letting it ride over me until it passed after a day.
Hasnt occurred since. Unfortunately, even after having experienced and successfully (in my subjective experience) navigating this, i was able to help others do the same (at least to what i would calk that).
Looking back, my friend has had some paranoid instances in the past, going back decades, usually on alcohol and drugs. So we feel like maybe it was always there, and it's possible menopause really brought it out, or stopped holding it back.
The problem is she never reconciled any of those episodes that it was her being overly paranoid. She just wrote those people out of her life and moved on. Which is what she's trying to do now to literally everyone in her life, and it's never occurring to her that the problem might be her. She thinks she's in a giant Truman Show and all her friends and family are punking her.
What works during recovery or in milder phases of psychosis might not work in its more extreme manifestations. Recognizing and respecting those limits doesn’t diminish the value of this therapy
Can I draw from this that when the psychosis gets deep enough you can sort of recognize that you’re in the state (since you’re telling people sorry) but simply cannot control it?
Is it controlled by medication? Does the medication ever fail you and return you to the state of psychosis?
You don’t get to say you’re sorry until it’s over. I got to watch myself in third person fuck up most of my relationships while I spent the whole time screaming in my head to stop.
Of course, I thought this was a normal reaction stress. I only got diagnosed a few years ago. I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal till I offhandedly mentioned it to my psychiatrist and she couldn’t prescribe antipsychotics fast enough.
For me, medication is only part of the solution. I spend a lot of time and energy, keeping track of my mood and preventing myself from spiraling into an episode. Even the medication doesn’t always work and I have to take more of it. Can’t be manic if you’re sleeping. :)
Wow, thank you for sharing your experience and feelings, that was a very interesting read. I sympathize for the paranoia – did you somehow had nice feelings from this experience, regardless of how insanely stressful it was?
> Paranoia and other psychoses felt normal to me before I learned I was bipolar.
Same with me. What helped me was years of Theravadan Buddhist Mediation. I do not recommend it, but it helped me create a mind that was separate from my delusional mind. I would easly have wild trips when I was meditating, whcih I think was from the excess serotonin released or my over sensitivity to the seritonin via the HTR5A g protein coupled receptor.
> my psychiatrist and she couldn’t prescribe antipsychotics fast enough.
> Can I draw from this that when the psychosis gets deep enough you can sort of recognize that you’re in the state (since you’re telling people sorry) but simply cannot control it?
No, it is too deep and I am fully in it. The sorry happens when I come out fo it and read the texts I sent out. :)
I did not have psychosis all the time. Mostly bipolar symptoms. Yes, meds stopped psychosis but made my life even worse. Klonopin will take me out of psychosis in about 30 minutes. See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5354128/
I can only tolerate antipsychotics because my medication mix counters a lot of the side effects.
I have an entire page of notes for my psychiatrist, listing my medication’s and their side effects, and how they interact.
I’m probably one of the few people who never wants to stop taking medication. They helped me focus my creativity. I never could’ve become an author without them.
What happens when it passes? I've never had that kind of thing, but I did find "internal family systems" therapy useful and have wondered if those extreme conditions might be extreme manifestations of the same concepts. If so, there may be a way to tame that stuff.
I say "Sorry" to a lot of people and they I try to find the trigger.
I do not think internal family systems is designed for biological triggered mood disorders, but I see where you are going here. I do not see the person that comes out in my everyday pschye.
Think of what happens to me akin to giving someone methamphetamines and trying to get them out of the high by talking about internal family systems. It just will not work.
Years ago after some terrible things happened to a friend, she was "diagnosed" by a social worker in Los Angeles as schizophrenic and prescribed (I think it was abilifi). I called bullshit, so she skipped the drugs and has never had another "episode" (because that terrible thing that happened didnt happen again!)
A friend's son was about to be diagnosed Schizophrenic after more than a few nights broken sleep due to night-horrors. Fortunately his Mum could recognise schizophrenia and she managed to get sleeping pills prescribed (with much difficulty) instead of antipsychotics and he got back to normal over a few days with a few nights good sleep.
I don't think a doctor would work off of a social workers diagnosis, but I don't know LA. I have personally talked with the Attending Dr. at two of SF's psychiatric wards and they were emphatically opposed to making any kind of schizophrenic or even bipolar diagnosis for a patient without a significant history of psychotic episodes.
i think if the main thing is “hearing voices” this kind of thing is probably a good strategy, but there are lots of other probably worse symptoms of psychosis.
You identify objective metrics, and confirm that they're objective and useful over the course of several days / weeks in a variety of different mental states. For example: "everyone thinks The Cloud™ will solve their problems, even though it never has" -> mass insanity. "Everyone thinks the sun will rise tomorrow, because it always has" -> extrapolation / inductive reasoning (probably fine).
It's helpful thinking for bipolar or depression. When I learnt I had ADHD I realised my "acute depression" was just extreme exhaustion and that there was no need to be sad - that is just my System 1 trying to explain why I can't do anything.
Basically there are a lot of useful heuristics you can get from the concept that your thoughts are only partially under your control.
A close family member of mine is schizophrenic, and, as I understand it, they've always (or, at least, for the past 5-8 years) relied on a combination of drugs and these sorts of therapies to manage their symptoms. That is to say, the drugs are helpful for helping to keep their thinking organized and reducing the frequency and severity of hallucinations/delusions, but those issues never really go away completely, and sometimes a given drug regime stops being effective for whatever reason, so it's very important to have (and to practice!) strategies for identifying when your thoughts are "right" vs "wrong," and being able to deal with the problem effectively when it's the latter.
This is similar to what has worked for us for Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Due to trauma in our past, we've split into multiple identities living in the same body. For many years I tried to deny this and shove the other parts of me deep down and kill them internally. They tried to kill us externally.
Ultimately we both failed at that and are learning how to work better together. We had to accept that our plurality is our reality. We talk together, each get different times when we can control the body, and negotiate on what choices we're going to make. We have different names, personalities, likes, dislikes, and desires. Though this is something we hide to most of the world, we have let the people closest to us know, and they have started to get to know each of us personally.
There's enormous value in accepting who you are and focusing on how to live positively with that instead of repeatedly trying to ram yourself into a box that's "normal" and expecting that to be healthy.
"Cannabidiol and Amisulpride Improve Cognition in Acute Schizophrenia in an Explorative, Double-Blind, Active-Controlled, Randomized Clinical Trial" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8117353/ :
> This study shows that both CBD and AMI improve neurocognitive functioning with comparable efficacy in young and acutely ill schizophrenia patients via an anandamide-independent mechanism.
> Clients learn to accept them and move forward. People might “truly believe that they are spies for the government and lived on Mars,” Menschel said. “But they now know not to bring that up in social situations.”
Many people believe in such things and are also successful. The difference is that successful people align themselves with those who hold the actual keys to Reality.
"Researchers can’t fully explain the growing epidemic of people suffering from psychosis, particularly younger men." - well let me take a wild guess: cannabis maybe?
The most nasty thing about antipsychotics is that getting off them causes psychotic symptoms - even in healthy people. So you if you get psychotic for some reason (even meditation can induce it) and start taking those drugs, you can be later very easily gaslighted into a serious mental disorder.
This is the self-described strategy that John Nash [1], the Nobel Prize winner, ended up using in his latter life to face his serious mental condition.
"Cannabidiol and Amisulpride Improve Cognition in Acute Schizophrenia in an Explorative, Double-Blind, Active-Controlled, Randomized Clinical Trial" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8117353/ :
> This study shows that both CBD and AMI improve neurocognitive functioning with comparable efficacy in young and acutely ill schizophrenia patients via an anandamide-independent mechanism.
