What Are Delusions Like?

So, this is something a couple of people have asked me about. I definitely don’t mind questions like that.

I mean, I still feel REALLY weird that I’m just out and talking about this stuff openly.

For years, I didn’t even openly discuss this stuff with my husband. The guy that has had to sit and calmly explain to me that shadow people aren’t real and deal with me not sleeping for days until I’m more and more agitated. We just used phrases like “having a moment” or I was “having trouble with weird ideas.”

Yeah, it’s definitely weird to just be out and talking about this stuff. It’s something I spent a really long time deeply ashamed of.

Let’s be real, does anybody talk about the psych patients with psychosis symptoms when people get out here talking about “mental health awareness.” Not really. People talk about depression and anxiety and all of the very mainstream normie mental health issues.

The response to me openly admitting I have these problems has overall been pretty positive. Other writers that have known me online for years seem a bit surprised, but that’s fine. Nobody has started treating me like I’m not a real person or like my thoughts and feelings don’t matter, or dismissing everything I do. See, that’s how I was treated by the mental health industry and that’s how I was treated by my family. I didn’t want to be treated like I’m not a real person. I didn’t want people to do this thing my family did, where anything I feel is wrong because I have a mental health problem.

As weird as it is for me, knowing at any point an idea I get could be a delusion, I understand it must also be weird for the people who talk to me. I understand that people sometimes have to take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, because, well, it might be some shit I made up in my head. I have a couple of writer friends who really dealt with that whole weirdness perfectly. See I always had the ‘something is out to get me’ type of delusion. Out of left field, my delusions just up and switched genres. I got hit with the ‘loved from afar’ delusion. I didn’t recognize it as a delusion because I never had one like that before. It’s a pretty common one for people who suffer from delusions. It’s just never been in MY repertoire until now. Anyway, a couple of my writer friends managed to point out to me my perceptions were off and I was both behaving erratically and having a disproportional emotional reaction to external events, and they were able to point that out to me without making me feel like a bad person or like something was wrong with me. to be honest, I was sort of a shitty person in this situation. There is the mental health issue and then there’s just me being an asshole. The way I responded to that delusion isn’t a mental health thing; it’s just me behaving like a selfish asshole. Like crazy aside, as a married person, you get hit with the delusion that some stranger who has barely talked to you is your soulmate, the only appropriate way to handle that is to cease contact and go confess everything immediately to your partner. I did the latter but only after all my weirdness had been noticed. Then I felt guilty, cut contact and went and confessed everything. So…yeah, mentally ill, but also an asshole.

Anyway, that last one really knocked me off my feet for a minute. I’ve gotten very good at recognizing that I’m having a ‘something is out to get me’ delusion.

Now all I need is a good ‘grandiose ideas of one’s self’ and I think I get schizoaffective bingo.

(No idea if I actually have that-it’s one of many diagnoses thrown at the wall over the years).

Well….anyway, this is weird. You spend so much time trying to cover something up, then decide, ‘fuck it, this is my brand now.’ I guess there’s no going back now. People know I have a lot of problems…..awesome. Like I want to talk about and am also deeply uncomfortable talking about it.

So, what are delusions?

Are they hallucinations? No

People with delusions don’t have sensory stuff. It’s really just weird ideas. A hallucination is you see, hear, feel, or smell things that aren’t there. You don’t have that with delusions. You don’t sense anything that isn’t there.

It’s more like you see and hear everything that a normal person would, but you form conclusions based on what you see and hear that don’t make sense.

Someone asked me “Is this like the people who think the FBI is bugging their house?”

Yes. It’s exactly like that.

I’ve never had the FBI thing, but I can really relate to the people who have that one, because I’ve had very similar stuff. I’ve freaked myself out thinking I’m being followed or thinking hackers have gotten into my computer and are watching me through the camera. I’ve covered the camera and microphone of my devices with duct tape. I’ve had days I’m so freaked out i’m watching what I say, because I’m convinced hackers are listening through the computer microphone.

You don’t need a lot of evidence for your brain to create a delusion if you have that problem.

My evidence for ‘someone is following me’ was simply that I lived in a very rural area and three nights in a row, there was a car behind me for part of my drive home. It was definitely unusual to have a car behind me three nights in a row. I lived on a mountain on a dirt road. But instead of just thinking ‘how weird’ and moving on, my brain went to ‘I’m being followed.’

When my car had issues a few months later, my brain jumped to ‘whoever was following me months ago messed with my car.’

So obviously this is all absurd. But when you’re in that crazy brain moment, it feels VERY real. It’s very scary. And when people become frustrated and won’t talk to you about your delusions, it gets even scarier, because it’s like you’re trapped in this awful scary thing alone. Yeah….this was definitely an influence on my book ‘Combustion.’ I wanted to show how isolating fear is when it comes from a delusion.

What always helps me is people who talk me through the delusion and point out why it doesn’t make sense. I know Dr.Phil has done some not great things, but one thing I always liked about him is how he talks to patients with delusions. He often says, “Does that make common sense to you?”

It sounds dumb, but someone patiently pointing out that your thought process doesn’t make sense often does a LOT to snap you out of it. When people would become angry or frustrated or laugh at me, this would amp me up more.

I mainly live a totally normal life having this problem. People usually can’t tell there’s anything off about me. In fact, I worked in a professional role, a real “career” if you will, from 2018-2020. I quit this past summer, because I realized with all the problems I have, it wasn’t responsible for me to continue working in that role. I never should have gone into that field. I was working with a vulnerable population. As much as I liked it, I knew the right thing to do was quit. I went back to retail.

I’m a flooring specialist for a big box store. I was a manager for this same company years ago.

Not only do I function out in the world without issue a good deal of the time, but in certain environments, I thrive. I’m good at problem-solving and coming up with creative solutions. So many problems can come up with flooring installs. I think this is where my disjointed thought process helps me. I can quickly come up with solutions that didn’t occur to other people.

I’m great in a fast-paced environment with a lot going on. I’m good at calming down upset customers (although I get more rattled than the average person if they raise their voice or insult me).

Like, most people with delusions, you would probably never know there is an issue. I’m very good at hiding it. I assume others are too.

Other problems I have aside from the delusions are major depressive episodes, fixating/obsessive tendencies, and a lot of suicidal ideation. I fantasize about suicide a ton.

Most mental illnesses with psychosis symptoms are comorbid with major depressive episodes and thoughts of suicide.

The depression is much harder to function with than the delusions. Of course, delusions and a serious depressive episode usually go hand-in-hand.

Anyway, therapy and medication didn’t do anything for me. All of the medication made me a lot worse. My psychosis symptoms were a lot worse.

Here are the things that have actually helped me:

A purpose-everybody needs a purpose in life. For me, writing books and keeping busy has been the best way to mitigate mental illness symptoms. The only book that ever worsened my symptoms was my book ‘Incel.’ So that’s why I scrapped it. I probably should have realized that one emotionally unstable person fucking around and interacting with other emotionally unstable people was a recipe for disaster. But my other books, my time travel romances and my horror stories, they gave me a deeply fulfilling sense of purpose and gave me a positive outlet to direct a lot of my negative emotion.

Volunteering-years ago I volunteered for hospice. I did this during the time in my life when I was still on a revolving door in and out of mental hospitals. It made me focus on something outside of myself, and it lessened a lot of my symptoms, kept me feeling a lot better.

Reading-reading books is a very calming activity. Television and youtube is made to hold your attention, and can be very noisey and fast-paced and colorful, so sometimes can make you feel more agitated.

Avoiding the things I know will upset me-I’ve been alive long enough now to know MOST of the things that will cause me to have an episode. I can’t watch movies where people have hallucinations or severe mental health issues. I’d actually REALLY warn anybody with delusions not to watch the movie ‘Donnie Darko.’ I’m not a trigger warning fan, but I’ll say that movie should have a trigger warning for those with mental illnesses. Just watching that movie sent me into the worst episode of psychosis I’ve ever had. I also can’t hear about animal abuse. I can’t hear about people being starved or tortured. These topics always send me off the deep end.

And lastly, I can not deal with people talking about paranormal stuff as if it is 100% real. This one is probably because my mom spent a good chunk of my childhood carrying on about ghosts and demons, and she told me I had an attachment haunting. This is when a person, rather than a place, is haunted. I can’t know for sure, but I speculate having my primary caregiver as a kid fuck with my sense of reality on a regular basis is probably why I still struggle with delusions today.

I actually have a story about trying to shut down a conversation I knew could cause an episode, but it was an work, so I was trying to shut it down without revealing I have mental health issues.

A coworker of mine was talking about ghosts and a house she lived in that was haunted. My go to is usually, “Oh, I don’t believe in any of that stuff.”

Also, we worked with kids (can you see why I quit?) and I didn’t like seeing an adult talk about ghosts around kids, because of my own history.

She kept arguing that ghosts were real. I tried multiple times to say things like, “I don’t really like to talk about this stuff. It’s just not my thing.”

I was worried both for myself and the kids we worked with.

So, if anybody takes anything from that story: Please only talk about the paranormal with people who are comfortable talking it. You have no idea what sorts of mental health issues people might be hiding.

The shadow people delusion was triggered when I took a job writing for a paranormal blog. It was good pay and a unique job that I thought might reflect well on my professional writing portfolio. At the time, my husband was worried about me taking the job. As he should have been, because after a few weeks of researching for articles and seeing people talk about how shadow people are 100% real, I had a major episode and couldn’t sleep for several days.

That was a time when I didn’t do what I should have. I now realize I absolutely can’t be engaged in discussions about the paranormal. I always go into it feeling like I have more control than I do. Then I go off the deep end and it feels horrible.

Lastly, what has been more helpful than anything is not being afraid to cut people from my life. I cut my family off. My mom and my grandfather. This has been difficult at times. People who know nothing about the situation will sometimes pipe up with such gems as “You only have one mom!” or “forgive and forget. Life is too short to hold grudges.” It’s not holding a grudge. It’s trying to protect myself. I have been through it enough times to know that my family makes me mentally unwell. Being around them makes me feel unsafe and on edge, and being anxious or stressed is a good way to bring an episode on. Not to mention, my mom STILL to this day, maintains that I have an attachment haunting. I can’t be around that.

To wrap up, what are delusions like?

For me usually scary, although this last one was upsetting in a brand new way. They are embarrassing. You don’t want people to know you have them, because you don’t want people to think less of you. They make you feel powerless, because you can’t even trust your own perceptions.

The times that I’ve successfully staved off a delusion were when I said to myself, “This isn’t real. Stop being scared, because it’s not real.” And then I waited out the emotional part of it, while I just kept telling myself, “this isn’t real. It’s your brain tricking you. It’s not real.”