All About Bipolar

Posted By atorturedsoul on August 17, 2009

Psychosis: My imaginary friends

Psychosis is a common symptom of bipolar I disorder, but it is often misunderstood by those who have not experienced it firsthand.

I have bipolar I disorder with psychotic features. Over the past few years I have experienced psychosis a number of times and each time it seems to be different. I believe this is why it is often misunderstood. Even though the basic idea of psychosis is the same, it can vary in severity and in its very nature.

My first bout of psychosis began with seeing shadows which eventually began to look like seeing a person’s shadow out of the corner of my eye. It evoked paranoia and fear. As the episode progressed, I began to hear voices but they were more of a mumble and I could not understand what they were saying. If I had sought treatment at that time, I sincerely believe that this psychotic episode would not have reached the severity that it did.

Shortly after I began hearing voices, I started “blacking out”. When I say this, I do not mean that I would go blank for a period of time and not remember what happened. I mean that I would experience a version of reality that was not actually reality at all. It was an invention of my mind but I had no control over the events. I simply experienced them.

I will give you an example. I was visiting Saint Louis and I was standing on the Chain of Rocks Bridge. I was taking pictures of the Mississippi River and all of a sudden I was standing on the railing and jumped into the water. I could feel the slap of the river against my body when I hit and the cold water around me caused me to shake violently and the shock of it made me “snap out of it”. I was still standing in the same spot on the bridge and had actually taken a picture during the time I had “blacked out”. I stood there confused. I felt the water around me yet I was standing there, still dry, and trying to figure out what had just happened. I asked the others if they were ready to go and never said a word about this as I quickly walked off the bridge for fear that I would actually jump not knowing what I was doing. This was the first time that I had experienced a “hallucination” of this magnitude and I just knew that I had completely lost my mind. This type of episode evoked intense fear and panic, and even pain as I “felt” everything physically.

I had several more episodes that were similar in nature before I became suicidal. I just wanted it to end. I was tired of it and I knew that this would eventually be something that I didn’t snap out of. I was sent for an evaluation and prescribed antipsychotics. For a while, they seemed to stop but it was only a short time before the psychosis began again.

I started hearing voices again. Only this time, the voices were clear and I understood what they were saying. I had lengthy conversations and heated arguments with them. They tried to convince me that people were plotting against me and that everyone hated me. The voices became my only friends as a deep paranoia set in and I honestly felt that they were the only ones I could trust. I have told people that my only friends were in my head and they truly thought I was joking. I wasn’t. The voices were not connected to a face. They were just voices. One of them made me really angry and I wanted them to stop talking to me and that is why I asked for help again.

I have seen things that I knew to ignore. Some people believe that you don’t know you’re hallucinating when you have a psychotic episode. That isn’t always true. I have had times that I knew I was seeing or hearing things that weren’t real. The problem was that I couldn’t always tell that something was actually real. I started ignoring things and waited for someone else to say they heard or saw something before I would think anything of it. I then tried to piece it all together to figure out what was real and what was not. I never could figure it out. This is when confusion set in.

My mind has conjured up images to amuse me when I truly needed it. I sat at my cousin’s funeral listening to the service and watching the flowers on top of the casket dance and gyrate. I almost laughed out loud at their antics. Psychosis isn’t always scary. I didn’t seek help during this episode while it was amusing. I knew it wasn’t real but it helped me detach from situations that I could not handle.

That eventually changed to the other side of psychosis. I began to see things that I had an intense fear of-such as snakes. I could hear voices whispering and I would strain to hear what they were saying and I just knew that they were talking about me. I became paranoid and fearful of everything. I would look down when I walked for fear of stepping on a snake and I watched over my shoulder because I knew the “voices” were out to get me. I had one voice that became clear at the height of this episode and I knew that I had to make it stop. My father had died and before his death he had talked about “going home”. I was at the lowest of lows when it came to me. I didn’t know what to do but I knew it couldn’t go on like this and I was struggling to find a solution. I started hearing my father’s voice very clearly saying, “Come home.” I knew what he meant. I knew what the solution was. I scavenged through the house until I found enough Ativan and Buspar to make everything go away. To sum it up, I called my husband and told him to be home before the kids got here and I intended to take the pills immediately so he could not get here in time to stop me. My dad was telling me to do this. He kept saying it and I knew it would bring peace. My husband called local law enforcement and I was forced to seek help.

I have had such a wide range of psychosis that it’s hard to define psychosis itself. It’s more than what you think of as hallucinations. Sometimes you know it isn’t real, sometimes you don’t know until later, and sometimes you’re just left confused by it all. Sometimes you hear things, sometimes you smell things and sometimes you feel things. I have been lying in bed asleep and woken up by someone pulling me towards the foot of my bed. I have felt the bed drop through the floor and I have felt a snake crawl across my chest. It can be so many things.

The reason why I am sharing all of this is because I remember when I was first diagnosed with psychosis. I researched it and what I read didn’t really fit with what I was experiencing and I freaked out thinking that I had something much worse and that I had absolutely flipped my lid and would need long term hospitalization. It was only when I began reading other people’s experiences and putting them all together that I realized that the definition of psychosis wasn’t completely accurate and what I was experiencing was actually psychosis.

I hope my experience with this helps someone to recognize their own symptoms and seek help. It can be stopped. I occasionally have bouts of psychosis now but it is not as severe and it is stopped by adjustments in medication. If you can relate to any of this, you are not alone and there is help.

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Categories: About Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar 1, My Personal Experiences, Psychosis
Tags: about, all, bipolar, experience, feelings, friends, hallucinations, imaginary, Psychosis, smells, voices