What it's like to experience a psychotic episode

I've been writing a lot about identities that are partially related to my core identity, but I had an experience today that inspired me to write a post about psychosis, which is a story I feel much more qualified to tell. If you're curious about my thoughts on why psychosis happens, I offer a potential explanation here: https://bramsfunblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/pyschosis-narratives-and-human.html. 

"Listen to this voice" "Don't listen to that
voice" "How about this one?"

This blog is not intended to offer an explanation. Instead, I wanted to report on the subjective experience as I percieved it in hopes that if you have the same thing I'll be able to convince more people that they are, in fact, psychotic ;)

It started off as a not normal day traveling in the north of England with my family. Everything was fine. I started talking to my brother about a project he was working on and gradually got more and more excited. Everywhere I looked everything just looked fucking beautiful. This is the feeling of mania- a perception that everything is amazing. Until suddenly it isn't (bam! Plot twist!)

As I continued to walk I couldn't shake the feeling that I was in a dream. Everything seemed so perfect. And I'm no idiot. I know the world's shit (just kidding, but these were my thoughts). Everything started to feel painful. The beauty of the world was crippling. It was like watching a David Lynch movie. The only way that I can try to put this into words is to imagine the feeling of being so happy it hurts. Let me tell you, it's not fun.

Thats when the delusions started. The thoughts in my head started to manifest as distinct voices which seemed to encase me. I felt pulled in too many directions at once, as thoughts projected ever more elaborate, competing claims as to what was truly beautiful. Should I be a programmer? A writer? Just a rhetorical voice in my own blog? It was impossible to focus. This was compounded by the experience of seeing some north English castle. Sartre talks about a feeling of nausea- of seeing the world for what it is and realizing that it is too much for you. I'd just call it over-stimulating. There were too many things in my head at once for the tiny computer that is my brain to handle. If my brain was a town, this is the moment when the town catches fire and the people run amuck in the streets breaking through store windows to steal over-priced TVs and other (still over-priced, but less so) supplies for the impending apocalypse.

Then the thought came that ended the mania and turned it into a full on manic-depressive episode: what if I was wrong? What if the world really is just a shitty place and everything I'm working for is for nothing? What if the Christians are right and I'm just being decieved by Satan? What if the Nihilists are right and I'm just wasting my time chasing something that doesn't exist? What if I'm right and- oh wait, no that thought never crossed my mind? You get the point.

It started as a delusion of grandeur- this unshakeable feeling of my own beauty (I was wearing an amazing pink dress at the time- can you blame me?) and an ensuing elevated perception of my own importance. "You're better than other people. Just look at you- you look damn fine. You're the savior this world needs" (just a thought- not my actual opinion, for clarification. I know I'm shit like everyone else spib). 

This thought transitioned into intense paranoia. I began to percieve a set of eyes watching me, even when there was no one there. Every person I passed was staring at me and it felt hostile, like they knew I had something beautiful and they wanted to take it from me. I imagine that this is similar to the feeling some women call "the penetrating male gaze" - it is a feeling that the eyes of those around you are cutting through you, judging you, objectifying you, and coveting what they percieve you as having. A feeling of complete dehumanization.

Ah mindfulness. Such fun. For added
difficulty, try to do it in a castle while wearing a
dress and having a psychotic break

My heart started racing. Luckily, I've done enough cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to recognize the signs. To anyone who will listen (even if you don't think you have a mental health problem), DO CBT OR MINDFULNESS. THAT SHIT IS LIFE-CHANGING. I told my family that I needed to write (journalling is the most effective way I have found for dealing with thoughts like this), so they rushed me off to the gift shop and bought me a cool little notebook and a pen. Then they did something very helpful- they let me sit by myself, listen to music, journal, and smoke a cigarette like a fucking hermit (although I think I may be the only hermit to have such a strong affinity for heavy metal; also, for clarification- the sitting by myself, not smoking the cigarette, was the hermit like aspect spib). 

We'll say this: what I wrote was not pretty at first. At this point my conscious experience was too bizarre to describe as anything but surreal. Everything had a dream-like quality to it. Time seemed to disappear- I was unable to tell whether what I was doing was occurring in the present, the past, the future, or all of them at the same time. I percieved myself as existing in an infinitely-dimensional space which I couldn't understand (the way I conceive of this space is that each dimension is some aspect of the narrative defining your life at that moment). I had the feeling of being a fugative in a world run by a tyrant, who was looking for me because he knew I knew he existed- and he doesn't take kindly to being known. "Hide. Don't let him find you. Run. Take the dress off." I laughed a little at that last thought- as if taking off the dress and streaking through a castle would draw less attention to myself; sometimes the mind is adorably stupid.

But a little voice inside me that I've trained myself to listen for told me to wait. "This feeling will pass like it always does. Don't worry. You're okay." I don't know what that voice is. In my head it is the irresistable tug of the beautiful. It can be found anywhere if you remember to look for it. That's why I designate myself as a masochist- to remind myself that beauty exists in spite of pain- sometimes the only way to get to it is to go through the pain. What a bitch beauty can be.

But the voice was right, and slowly the feeling passed and I began to reinhabit my body. I was left there, sitting in a pink dress in a castle smoking a cigarette like the junky cross-dressing prince I am, and I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation. In order to keep myself out of the psych ward the only thing I can do is to laugh. 

One of those rare movies that
resonates so deeply with my
experience that I can't bring
myself to make jokes about it.

I'd rate my experience a 6/10. It tried hard to evoke a feeling of hopelessness, but the director's poor choice of angles made it impossible for me as an audience to buy. More long Kubrik-esque angles, people! I keep saying it and it feels like no one is listening. The characters were also unrelatable. Really? A boy in a pink dress with a flower in his hair? That's not relatable. I need someone with a relatable archetype to get me to suspend disbelief as an audience. The special effects were also subpar at best. The soundtrack sounded like garbage. And don't even get me started on the setting. It needed to be set in a place where the ambiance of the surroundings would add to the mood it was trying to evoke. Why would someone waste their pathetic life making this movie? It was trying to do what "12 Monkeys" did 20 years ago, but it had nothing new to add so it's really just a stain on the cinematic history of the world. When will Hollywood learn that it needs to stop trying to recreate the wheel? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. -A disappointed critic who wishes Bram would stop trying to appear culturally relevant by dipping his fingers into domains they don't belong in like film criticism.

Yeah, it's sad that I wrote that whole fake review, but you've got to reclaim the pain somehow, right?

I've heard that this experience is very similar to having a psychedelic drug trip go wrong, so if you're desperate to experience it for yourself (highly recommend. Great fun) just take way more shrooms than a person ever should and put yourself in the same position. Don't try this at home, kids.

I hope you've enjoyed this look into what it is like to experience psychosis. This is an experience I go through every couple of weeks (and daily if I am going through a particularly rough patch in my narrative). So next time someone with a psychotic mental health condition (in a non-negative sense of the word. I am deeply hurt when people choose to label it as a "problem") complains, realize that this shit is bananas (assuming you have an extreme, irrational fear of bananas) and have some goddamn sympathy (goddamn added for emphasis, not actual anger). Mental health is one of those identities that society stigmatizes, which leads to a whole lot of unneeded suffering. So let's not do that.

Good talk.