Paraphrasing Psychology: My Experiences with Psychosis

Kyra MacFarlane

CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNING - This post deals with my personal experiences with Psychosis which involve graphic Delusions, Hallucinations and thoughts. Disturbing content such as murder, and Persecutory thoughts are discussed below. Please approach with caution. 

          I’ve been on a journey with my mental health since I was 3 years old. I have OCD, Bipolar II (Rapid Cycling), Anxiety, and now I am dealing with Psychosis. While these things have been very hard on me, as well as on my friends and family, I have found supports – a psychiatrist, friends, helpful counselors, and my patient and loving family. I am extremely lucky, and privileged to be receiving the help that I am.

          I want to talk about Psychosis though. I have never dealt with anything as alienating as my experiences with Psychotic thought processes, and problems. I have what is termed Inserted Thoughts which is known as a Delusion (a Delusion is a persistent belief about something that is not true, it is a significant break from reality) whereby I feel the thoughts in my head are not my own. These differ from my Intrusive Thoughts that I experience with OCD. Many people have different reasons for why they believe these thoughts are not their own – some have said that they feel that they are receiving thoughts from other people’s brain, some say they believe the voices are sent to them by Satan, and there are many more stories. For me, the source of these thoughts is not exactly certain, although when I experience them I know they are not technically “foreign” or “not my own,” however they speak in a different voice(s) than the one typically used in my head (my own). They say sinister things to me, and often talk back to my own thoughts. Writing them down is surreal because as I look at them I often have no idea where these thoughts could have come from and why. They tell me things like the idea that I have murdered someone, that people are watching me and monitoring my thoughts, or are out to kill me. They often say unintelligible things that are just tangles of swear words strung together said in a man’s vicious voice. Sometimes the thoughts overlap, with whispers, and different pitches, tones, and messages.

          I have struggled with Delusions in other capacities as well: one at the forefront of my brain is my obsession with demon possession. I do not necessarily believe in possessions, so these thoughts are certainly not congruent with my belief systems/core values. I have had countless episodes with this Delusion, where I thought music was “from the devil,” people were possessed by demons and coming to kill me, and even that I might be possessed. I find myself staring into peoples’ eyes, trying to suss out if they are human or some sort of Hellish creature. It’s hard to think of something that distances me further from someone than saying that I believe that they or someone around us is possessed (sometimes accompanied by Inserted Thoughts telling me to hurt this person, and “do right by God”). This is different than some Delusions where people believe they are messiahs or have direct contact with God(s).

          I struggle with Persecutory Thoughts as well, as aforementioned with my Inserted Thoughts, I sometimes believe people are watching me with secret cameras or coming to kill me. These thoughts come from a place of Paranoia (something that is stimulated by both my Psychosis and with Anxiety and OCD) I had an episode where, under stress, I believed everyone inside of a Tim Horton’s was possessed and was going to surround me and kill me before I went to work. It is because of these thoughts/delusions/experiences that I had to quit my job after only two shifts. One day at work, I was experiencing my fear of demons, and suddenly INXS’s “The Devil Inside” played (which was horrible both because I hate INXS, and because of the obvious situation at hand). There is no such thing as a coincidence when I experience a Delusion – everything seems like it was predestined, and that people are conspiring to pull off an elaborate plan that will ultimately end in my destruction. I have struggled with these thoughts being confused with Anxious thoughts, and often feel as if, in some convoluted way, that they are Narcissistic – in that they centre on me as the focus for unknown reasons.

          I have also had experiences with Hallucinations, both Auditory and Visual. A Hallucination is where someone can see or hear something that other people cannot see or hear. I had a Visual Hallucination where I saw a man crouched in my room staring at me while I tried to sleep (I believe it was Bob from Twin Peaks). Despite bringing my mother into my room to tell me it was not real, I was not convinced that this man was not in my room. Hallucinations like these have only happened a few times since then and are often inspired by a scary movie/crime show. My Auditory Hallucinations have been both sinister, and very non-threatening in each respective instance. Once I had an Auditory Hallucination while napping that presented itself as a voice telling me to murder someone close to me, while providing graphic images of how to do so – this was chocked up to Anxiety initially, and perhaps that is all it truly was. I then saw a staticky image in my brain and heard a fuzzy sound and couldn’t move for a few minutes – this was described to me as a common experience in a disruption of a REM cycle that was experienced by people without Psychosis as well. I also had an Auditory Hallucination, whereby a voice I heard externally simply whispered the word “gay,” (I’m bisexual, and often my friends and I will discuss LGBTQ+ content with fondness) which is a very strange experience and has been hard for me to explain without me or someone else laughing at it.

          Another peculiar thing about my experiences with Psychosis is that I can pull myself out of them – something I am told happens occasionally with Bipolar Psychosis. I am thankful for my brain’s ability to tease these thoughts out as unreal/psychotic at some point after the intensity of these experiences have wavered, but in some strange way, it puts distance between me and others who experience Psychosis and have the same beliefs and thoughts pervade their minds persistently and without relent. Finding stories akin to mine has been a challenge, and I believe I am writing this for three reasons: to understand my experiences and articulate them as a writer, to offer my story as one someone may find relatable or at least interesting, and to confront my own stigma with Psychosis.

          While a lot of things are murky with my Psychosis – including a formal diagnosis, I know one thing for sure, and that is that I feel ashamed for having these thoughts, and I feel these thoughts separate me from my peers. I know that these thoughts are tethered to a nattering Anxiety process and are not at all true. In my heart I know that everyone’s experiences with mental health are so varied, and it is hard to lump them together. This seems to especially be the case with Psychosis – I have yet to read something that truly summed up my own symptoms, rather than discussing a various array of Delusions, Hallucinations, and thoughts that I found foreign albeit interesting. I keep searching the internet endlessly, hoping to find something to connect me to someone like me and so far, I have found stories about possession beliefs, brief Bipolar delusions, as well a YouTube simulation describing Paranoia that struck a chord with me.

          If there is to a point from my writing this, I think it is that our individual experiences are important, and that for me, talking about these things is incredibly important. I know that all of my support system will accept me despite my experiences, and this post is a way of being open and reaching out a hand in my time of distress. It is a means of proving to myself that I am worthy of love and care despite all that I am going through (and in perhaps a more worrying vein, it is a means of seeking reassurance; a prevalent obsession tethered to my OCD). Thank you for listening to my words, I hope each and every one of us has a place, and space where we can be heard, supported, and ultimately accepted for who we are – hiccups, blemishes, and experiences aside.       

-K MacFarlane