This is going to be a fun one to say the least, because one of the most interesting things about my mental health is my psychosis, it really doesn't seem to fit the bipolar group that well. Interesting fact about that is that my psychosis is actually a separate diagnosis and treated very much that way. Anyway, I wanted to get into the subject and how it affects me, mostly as recent things highlighted it for me.
Right, psychosis, think a good idea would be to clear up what that is straight away, for me psychosis is my brains wonderful way of creating delusions and hallucinations that are very hard to distinguish from reality. These come in the form of paranoid thinking, the idea that they really are out to get you. For example I once got locked into a delusion where I thought there was a low frequency being transmitted by everything that could send a signal that was meant to affect people of a certain brain pattern. I actually thought that my bipolar and psychosis were being triggered deliberately by some shadow organisation that was trying to stop people like me from being able to 'think' clearly as we had something special that was able to see through their illusions of society. I pretty much went all Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live but without the aliens..
Next on my wonderful symptoms, hallucinations, oh man are these things great, from entertaining to damn right terrifying. I get the whole package, but unlike a Sky package I couldn't opt out after 12 months. To define package, I get visual, auditory, sensory and tactile hallucinations. To break that down for anyone not overly familiar with the terms, visual (I see things), auditory, (I hear things), sensory (smell, taste)and tactile (I feel things) that are not there. Visual hallucinations vary from seeing a random cat toy rolling on the floor (no I do not own a cat) to very real and frankly disturbing demonic entities that would make Clive Barker smile with glee at the grotesque and horrifying visage. I'm going to skip to tactile and sensory here, as trust me, the auditory, that's really complicated. Right before I side track, tactile, I feel things that aren't there, one is the sensation of something crawling under my skin. Cast your mind to the film 'The Mummy' and those little borrowing scarab beetles, yep, its really that disturbing and really that real to me. I've actually tried to hack my skin open to get them out. Sensory, I hate this one, smells that appear out of nowhere, tastes that randomly occur, good example is the taste of blood while drinking a cup of tea but it can go as far as tasting something rancid while enjoying a bowl of cornflakes.
Auditory, this one is getting its own special part of this blog, because it is, by far the most annoying thing I have to deal with on a daily basis. See something I missed out in previous posts, I've always had this, my bipolar and psychosis, never remember a time without it and the voices are the reminder of that. My first memory of them was as a kid, I was coming up on 6 if I remember, but things do get screwy in terms of time for me. Anyway, back then, they spoke as one voice, one chorus if you will, telling me to do the opposite of what I wanted to do. So you can imagine, I went to do something that was fun and caused no harm, they wanted me to do something that would make me feel terrible and possibly hurt someone or something. Most of the time I was able to ignore them, I learnt that 'if your friends told you to stick your head in the oven' rule very early on, these voices fell into the 'don't trust the idiots' part of my child brain. As time went on, they got louder, but I also got smarter, I figured out I could trick them with my own voice in my own head. My inner monologue would tell them I wanted to do something bad, so they cheered on the good things. It was a complicated relationship, but it worked, it meant with a little creative thinking, some doodling and the fact I was actually a very quiet kid. The quiet kid part meant nobody bothered me much, parents, even my brother, who to be honest, was pretty damn good to me. So that was the childhood sorted, now onto teens and how things changed, for the more complicated.
I have no doubt it was my blossoming hormones and education that led to the voices changing completely, like me, as they are me, they grew and changed. But what was once a chorus, split, individual personalities developed and my constant waking torment persisted. See even though they developed into individuals, what didn't, remained as a constant noise in the background that had the most unreliable volume control ever. Imagine yourself sat in a crowded pub, no music, just the noise of people, talking. It can be as quiet as them all having a casual chat or as loud as them screaming for their favourite team to win, to the point of screaming. That is how it evolved, that noise never goes away, it never ends, I wake to it, a go to sleep to escape it. But I mentioned individual personalities, and trust me they really are individuals, I often wonder how on earth my brain came up with them as some are so alien to my normal mindset that really does feel like they are real entities haunting me.
I have seven individual voices so far, I say so far as that could change, I'm aware of this, it could go up or down but mostly its gone up. When the chorus broke, there was only three, but that was like some advanced scouting party. I won't disclose all of them, as even typing about certain ones will bring them out to play and I frankly can't deal with them right now. But I will tell you about two of them, the first one who is simply known as Frank. I called him Frank because its a name and description, he is blunt, to the point and often very critical. He is that guy who you bump into and for some reason sticks around, spouting his opinion whether you want it or not. He passed comments on every situation is pretty much the most present of all my voices. He's not all bad though, he has been known to be creative, helpful even when I'm working on ideas for projects. But there is a very thin line between helpful motivation and attempting to push me into a manic episode. The other, well they are kind of a pair, the twins as I call them and I absolutely loath this pair of high pitched mental assassins. You know the twins in the Simpsons, they are like that, finishing each others sentences, speaking in unison and always picking out flaws in either my character or things I am doing. Its a continuous assault of giggling, critical and dripping in venom comments. I can usually silence them by simply reading something nice a person has said about me or by simply challenging their logic, which oddly Frank can sometimes help with.
Now I am avoiding the rest, they disturb the hell out of me and I'm not going there yet. But as bonkers as all this sounds, truth is I'm used to it. I grew up with this, its grown with me, I have adapted and taken on new coping skills to deal with it. Yes, there are days, even just mere hours where it becomes too much and they do happen more frequently that I like to admit, but it could seriously be worse. Imagine if I just woke up one day with all of the above?
I would be in hospital or worse lets face it, not being over dramatic or making it sound life threatening, I don't have to, because it really is. So there you go, an insight into what psychosis is for me, I know I didn't go into much about how it affects everyday life but I thought that could be a post in its own right. Because I reckon some of the things I've learnt, might actually be useful for anyone who has this condition. But I'm going to stop, click publish and think about what I'm going to do tomorrow.
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