Are you hearing me/feeling me/seeing me, or do you just think that you are?

I have about a million posts lined up, but first, my unwavering curiousity leads me to asking you a few questions. I’ll apologise once more for not writing in here about much recently other than the continuing dogged depression.

Today in “Seaneen’s being Nosey”, I want to know about your experiences of psychosis.

I sometimes frown when I read descriptions of this site, or my good self, and the word “severe” is chucked in.  As experience is subjective, I have always thought that my experiences were quite typical and moderate.  Those who’ve been in charge of my care do believe I have severe manic depression, and those around me certainly believe that I have severe manic depression.  But as it has yet to kill me, and since I have less extreme episodes than I used to (thanks mostly to antipsychotics and mood stabilisers), the “severe” status I occupied means less and less to me.

Because the online world of mental health is competitive (and this is true, although it pains me to say it.  In certain circles some people do compete to be “worst”), “severe” to me has always seemed like an unnecessary almost-boast that is designed to exclude the less severe.  To say, almost, “I have it so bad that your puny experience is null”.  This isn’t how I feel.  Because I am me, with my eternal inferiority complex, my line is more so, “My experience is null and yours matters”.  Which isn’t right either.

Manic depression to me is severe by definition- it is a disorder characterised by severe mood swings.  So when I say, “Living with severe mental illness”, that is what I refer to, rather than “I am severely manic depressive”.  You see?

The subjective “severe” tag has been clinically, yet colloquially, applied to me for a few reasons:

1) I landed myself in hospital because of it.

2) I became ill very quickly, very badly and very young.

3) I have “Bipolar I” disorder which, clinically, encompasses hypomania’s bigger, badder sister, mania. (Personally, I think that having more depressive episodes, like in bipolar II, is worse. But all the tags confuse me, so I take it on a person to person basis…)

4) I have rapid-cycling and am almost constantly in one episode or another, of varying “severity”, meaning that I’ve had far more episodes than someone with “classic” manic depression would have, and that I am harder to treat

5) I have experienced psychosis at both ends of the rainbow, and I’ve experienced it a lot

6) I have tried to top myself.

My CPN thinks I am doing well because I have insight into my condition and a willingness to be treated for it, which is a change from a lot of her patients who aren’t even aware that they’re ill.  So, by that token- comparably speaking- I am not severe at all.  I know that I am lucky and much better than a large amount of people.  What I don’t know is…well, anything about the future.  March and April and May were pretty bad for me.  I know I am somewhat dependant on medication.  But I digress.

The bit of that useless list I am interested in right now is psychosis.

So, I was wrong in thinking that every person with manic depression must have experienced psychosis.  Bipolar II is more common, so it must be more than 50% of people with bipolar disorder who haven’t experienced psychosis.  Although this confuses me as I thought people with Bipolar II would experience psychotic depression.

I may also be wrong in thinking that auditory hallucinations were the enclave of schizophrenia rather than manic depression.  I’ve been doing some reading (morbid as I am.  It’s certainly useful to be fascinated by your own mental illness) and apparently auditory hallucinations are common in manic depressive psychosis.  I think the difference is that schizophrenia has “command” hallucinations and commentary on the person’s behaviour.

I’ve had psychotic episodes quite a lot in the past decade.  The most difficult and frightening parts are delusions and visual hallucinations.

I’ve talked about psychosis a lot here but for the purposes of this post, here’s a summary:

My delusions mostly revolved around two things- paranoia and grandiosity. These are the bare bone things that happened- it would take too long to actually go into how I presented myself at how I actually came across times (rambling, confused, loud, panicked, rather…odd, in short).

The paranoid side of things has nearly always been that I’ve been convinced I am being followed, stalked, spied on, poisoned, plotted against, primed for murder, hated, ruined or unsafe.  So this has led me to doing things like barricading my doors, locking myself in the room, lashing out at strangers who I perceived to be trying to hurt me, jumping into gardens when someone is behind me, abruptly leaving my flat because I felt unsafe, thinking that there were things placed in where I live to hurt me, spitting out food that has been given to me, refusing it in the first place,  blocking up and sealing cupboards and windows, withdrawing from people who are close to me, believing that there are conspiracies against me, taking the phone out of the wall, refusing to answer doors or open post, thinking that people on the TV, radio, tube, street, wherever were talking about me and using things (letters, papers, eye movements) to signal about me or believing that I am irrevocably evil and deserved to die. I’ve also become confused between stuff I wrote/read/watched on TV and reality and thought people/places existed and they didn’t.

In short- my delusions have been one large delusion of importance.  Of course in my right mind as I am now without psychosis I know that I’m a speck on the world’s surface.

In similarly egomaniac terms were grandiose delusions.  That usually comes with mania for me.  And that lists runs thus, in short: thinking I was a genius, thinking I was chosen by God, thinking I was the bestest, smartest most beautifullest person in the world, believing that I was famous, believing that everybody loved me, believing that I was related or known to powerful people, believing that I had endless wealth and so on.

Delusions to me are worst because it means that I sometimes don’t realise in my life what was real and what was imagined, which leads to rather awkward conversation occasionally.  Likewise, people often mention to me wild or outlandish claims I have made that I have absolutely no recollection of, which is embarrassing, to say the least.

In terms of hallucinations, I have experienced auditory (hearing things) hallucinations, as well as tactile (feeling things) hallucinations but they have always troubled me less than seeing things.  I’ve scratched myself raw when I’ve thought that they were insects under my skin, and I’ve shouted at nobody to turn the music down.  I’ve lived with voices telling me to kill myself and I’ve heard people calling my name and remarking upon how either awful or brilliant I am.  And I’ve heard many, many voices all at the same time talking nonsense, on and on, which was very irritating and it makes it harder to concentrate than it already is.

But seeing things has always been the worst for me.  They come, suddenly, shockingly, and it’s terrifying.  Some things have remained- Satan in my bedroom, for example, was not one night, but many- and some were brief, but horrifying.  I’ve watched everyone around me collapse into maggots and saw my own face and body dissolve into green rot. I have sat in rooms and talked to people who were not there, had riotous, noisy arguments with nothing.  I’ve seen trees snap and fall onto me, when they were as noble and sturdy as before, seen people begin to fight in the street, when they were just talking, watched insects and rats run across my floors and legs and bed, seen brown, furry creatures crawl upon my arms, blood unfurl from my hands and eyes, people talk back to me in the mirror, seen words jumble and change into insults then change back and ridiculously believed that a lion was following me.  And that I was in the Toejam and Earl computer game.

Writing all this down makes me feel as though I am underestimating myself.  I think if I read this blog I wouldn’t want to know me.  The joy of being Googlable means that some of my more distant acquaintances now look at me in a bizarre way.

Of course I had no idea under recently that these things were in fact psychosis.  I went through through my life from my late childhood until my very late teens just believing it was who I was. It has only been very recently- within the past eighteen months after ten years of being quite crazy-that I even knew what psychosis was.

(That’s the bad things about becoming mad when you are young.  Your sense of self is so spiderwebby, it is easy to become dust.  And those around you don’t know what madness is, and those who love you don’t love you because they’re so young they’ll love someone else quickly enough.  People aren’t “mad” in their childhood or teens, even if they are.  Doctors don’t even think of it.  Becoming mad in your adult years means you lose a lot more.  I guess all I lost were all my friends and my education, which is better than my home or job or money.  But in terms of equal opportunities, I went mad when I was an adult too and lost all of those things).

A lot of people cite psychosis as a valuable experience, a creative boon.  Sometimes, I agree with that.  The grandiose self belief with psychosis led to me writing some of my best (and now lost) pieces, but the frightening side of it outweighed the wonderful side of it. Of course, there is the argument that now, because I have manic depression, I have something to fill a blog with. At least you’re never alone with your imaginary friends, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.