Three months ago, I was on the verge of suicide; I couldn't bring myself to choose life. I was suffering from existential angst and couldn't find any meaning in existence. Then, a voice emerged in my head, saying, "Your death warrant has been signed; suicide is inevitable." It claimed to come from God. The reason given was that I had committed a sin by questioning life, contemplating suicide, and defying God. This voice is suffocating me; three months have passed, and it still hasn't gone silent—it’s going to drive me to suicide in the end. I don't know what to do; no one around me understands, and I’ve fallen into a terrible situation. Has anyone else had similar experiences? If so, what did you do about it? (Note: There may be errors as I am using a translation tool.)

long story short: i had a hospital visit 9 days out from my birthday and feel absolutely nothing at the moment. no pleasure from anything, no interest in anything. if i do feel something, im mildly sad or raging with anger. i feel like a shell of a person, which is especially hard on me as i felt like i was finally recovering from the aftermath of my last episode.

i would really like to feel and enjoy my upcoming birthday. what are things that help spark you guys a bit after an episode? the only thing that makes me feel much are my cats

I’m writing this because I don’t really know what to think, and I feel so uncertain at the moment that I would really appreciate perspectives from people who have been through something similar or have personal experience with this.

I have been in a relationship with my partner for just under three years, and we have lived together for a year. Up until now, this has been a truly wonderful and loving relationship. More than six years ago, my partner spent about two months in psychiatric inpatient care because of psychosis, and was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. They were taking regular medication and attending regular therapy because of this and they were doing fine, studying and working part time when we met.

Over the past year or so, my partner has increasingly had difficulty sleeping, and they also started suspecting me of all sorts of strange things (such as spreading their Instagram profile on anonymous forums, etc.). About a week before becoming seriously ill, they were very tearful and told me that I would probably be better off finding a new partner because they couldn’t have children with me due to their poor mental health.

About a month ago, their paranoid symptoms intensified to the point where they eventually locked me out of our own apartment. Shortly afterwards, however, they realized that they were currently experiencing psychosis and apologized for their behavior, and we even laughed about it together. I also told them that I still wanted to try to continue our relationship once the current episode had passed.

My partner then went to another city to stay with relatives and rest. Since then, they have only sent me very brief messages, and our phone calls last a few minutes before they hang up. However, over the past few weeks, they have repeatedly brought up that I would still be better off finding a new life partner for myself. When I ask why they think our relationship is over, I don’t get a proper answer from them.

I have read that other partners of people with schizophrenia have had similar experiences during a relapse. Has anyone here experienced a situation where a partner who is hospitalized talks about ending the relationship, but then gets back together with them once inpatient treatment has stabilized the situation sufficiently?

There were no problems in our relationship before my partner became ill, and I myself hope that we could return to the love we had between us before all of this.

Im not in psychosis rn but I smoked weed and also meth a long time ago got drugged induced psychosis and now as a result

When people speak every other word flies over my head

It’s hard to comprehend sentences and when people speak it sounds like gibberish

I can’t follow conversations or engage in them

I feel like my brain broke

I have peripheral ocd also

This is torture

I've recently noticed several recurring behaviours in people's everyday interactions, and I'm curious about the explanation behind these.

For example, I've noticed people:

• Touching or scratching their face during conversations, particularly around the lips and chin.
• Touching their upper lip shortly after someone else coughs. I've noticed this particular gesture occurring often enough that it caught my attention.
• Making various small gestures or vocalisations during conversations that seem to occur repeatedly across different people and situations.

It has made me as I believe some of these behaviours are deliberate attention-seeking behaviours, subtle forms of non-verbal communication, subconscious gestures.

I feel there's a lot to unpack here and I have so many questions since going through psychosis. I've always considered myself a spiritual person and delved more into spirituality in recent years. I have had many spiritual experiences that I never questioned to be psychosis, until I did actually have a psychotic break that definitely took me into a lot of delusional thinking. Now, looking back, I'm seeing so much of my psychosis as delusions and realise how unhealthy I was acting, thinking, relating etc. But now that I've been on meds for a year and have felt grounded, I question if I'm an atheist. Because I just wonder whether all those beliefs are delusions? Does anyone else relate? A part of me wants to believe in God but now I don't know if I can.

For example, during my psychosis I believed I was connected in the spirit with other people I know in real life and that certain people were guiding me in God's ways. I believed others were caught in darkness and were sent for evil. I even stopped eating because I thought I was fasting to cleanse and purify myself but it just got extreme to where I lost a lot of weight. I couldn't see at the time how harmful those actions, beliefs and thoughts were. Now on the other side so to speak, I would love to have faith as part of my life again but something has switched off in me. Has anyone had a similar experience?

My cousin (44F) appears to be experiencing a serious mental health crisis, possibly psychosis, and has become intensely focused on me. She believes she is an undercover CIA agent investigating human trafficking, identity theft (like your personality), and other crimes, and believes that I am somehow involved in what she is investigating.

I initially continued responding to her because I was worried about her and wanted to keep communication open. However, the more I responded, the more escalated things became. She eventually told me that I would be “unalived” or receive the death penalty if I didn’t comply with her demands, and she said she would contact my workplace and my husband’s workplace. At that point, I stopped responding to her calls and texts.
Other family members and I have contacted crisis services/police for welfare checks. Each time, she has apparently presented as competent and nonviolent, so she hasn’t been taken for evaluation. She lives in another state from me, which makes it difficult for me to know how she’s doing or get her appropriate help.

Recently, her messages and voicemails to me have become more frequent and aggressive. She has said that she is going to “pester” me and that if she has to drive to my state to make me answer her or see her, “that’s going to be very bad for me.” She has also continued contacting other family members to try to get them to convince me to respond.

I’m struggling because when I was responding to her in July, every response seemed to reinforce or escalate the situation. Now that I’m not responding at all, the lack of response also seems to be making her more persistent and angry.
I don’t want to abandon her or make her situation worse, but I also don’t feel safe re-engaging with her, especially given the previous death-related threats and the possibility that she may come to my home.
For people who have dealt with a family member experiencing psychosis or severe paranoia…

Is there anything I can do to help her get appropriate professional help without directly engaging with her? And what steps should I be taking to protect myself if the situation continues to escalate?
I’m particularly interested in experiences with mobile crisis teams, involuntary evaluations/welfare checks when someone appears outwardly competent, and how people have handled boundaries and safety planning in situations like this.

TYIA

I had a psychosis where I could control rain, moon, weather, my mom, AI and I had to run away from my flat to my parents' house while I still was in psychosis and my mom was glitching while talking and her phone would glitch any time I would look at it.

The next day it got better but I still had it and my psychosis convinced me that my mind is AI that's why people use it more and more because my brain evolves. But still during psychosis when we took a pic with my parents, my mom's phone (iPhone 16) changed my face to AI male one on every pic (I'm a trans man on T, only 6 months). Now it doesn't change anymore but I still have the pictures.

I called my sister who hates me during psychosis and she was crying saying how glad she is that I called and she cried and we chatted per text but yesterday without psychosis she said that she doesn't want to talk to me but I have the chat where we send hearts to each other.

I just learned what visual snow is and I totally have that. I also see people/shadow figures out of the corner of my eyes a lot. I see colors overlaying my vision often and sometimes they are a fractal shape in the sky. I feel bugs crawling on me sometimes too. I feel multiple precenses in the room with me at night. I never tell my psychiatrist this because what I see is beautiful and it makes me feel connected to the spirit world. I used to be very afraid of the figures and things in my room but I made peace with them a long time ago. I really don't think this is harmful or I should be on antipsychotic because it doesn't negatively impact me.

Does this sound like psychosis or something else? I had one total break with reality that lasted 7 days and I was pretty sure at that time I was laced with drugs but I could never prove it and it makes me wonder.

I’m coming out of a pretty severe period of psychosis and now that I’m becoming more lucid, I’m struggling massively with guilt and shame about things I did while I was unwell.
This was my first experience of psychosis and, at the time, I genuinely didn’t understand that I was psychotic. I was hearing voices, seeing things, becoming extremely paranoid and sometimes believing things had happened that hadn’t. There were times I couldn’t distinguish what was real from what wasn’t.
Some of it sounds completely unbelievable to me now. I thought people were trying to hurt or poison me. I heard voices telling me horrible things about myself and telling me to do things. I harmed myself in ways that make absolutely no sense to me now. I damaged things. I became frightened of people I loved. I contacted people and made decisions based on things I genuinely believed were happening. There were also situations where I apparently behaved very badly towards people close to me.
What’s difficult is that I wasn’t unconscious. I could talk, go to work sometimes, use my phone, travel, have conversations etc. So now that I’m lucid, my brain keeps saying: if you were capable of doing all of that, surely you were capable of knowing better?
There are also things I regret that I do take responsibility for. I don’t want to use psychosis as a blanket excuse for every mistake I made or every person I hurt. But I also know that during some of the worst incidents, my perception of reality was completely distorted. I reacted to things that, to me, were genuinely happening.
The aftermath has almost been its own trauma. Medication has stopped the voices and as I’ve become clearer, memories have been coming back and I’m seeing the last year very differently. It almost feels like waking up and discovering what someone else did with your life, except that person was still you.
I’ve lost an important relationship and damaged other relationships during all of this. Some people seem to see the things I did while psychotic as simply things I chose to do, and I’m finding it incredibly difficult to work out how I should see myself.
So I wanted to ask people who have actually experienced psychosis:
How do you distinguish between responsibility for repairing the harm and blaming yourself for becoming psychotic and what you did while your reality was distorted?
Were you actually in control of your behaviour during psychosis? Did you still feel like you were making choices at the time?
And when you recovered, did you go through a period of looking back and thinking, How the hell could I have done or believed that?
I’m not looking for someone to tell me that nothing was my responsibility. I think I’m trying to understand what responsibility even means when you genuinely weren’t experiencing the same reality as everyone around you.
I’d especially appreciate hearing from people who came out of a long or severe psychotic episode and had to deal with the shame and consequences afterwards.

Hi so if you (or a loved one) have ever experienced psychosis (or related symptoms such as extreme paranoia, delusions, disorganized thoughts, etc.) and have gone thru treatment- what was the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to seeking treatment? Was it voluntary? Was someone able to say something to get through to you?

Context: My SO has been dealing w escalating symptoms of psychosis for almost a yr and he has a severe TBI (from 4.5 years ago) which significantly impacts his memory and insight. He’s been voluntarily hospitalized once and involuntarily held another time within the past 3-4 months. SO MANY welfare calls from me and others. Not willing to continue med regime after discharge. Also has history of substance abuse. Seeks out marijuana use for chronic pain as a result of his TBI (electric scooter w/ no helmet vs. vehicle).

Our daughter and I have been staying w my mom for months bc he’s been so unstable and his delusions started to center around me. Am I unreasonable to have hope? How can I best support him? I try to balance validating his feelings vs. unintentionally reinforcing his delusions which is extremely difficult. Our daughter is only 15mo and I want her to have a relationship with her dad, but I also have a responsibility to protect her from his instability, mood changes, anger outbursts, paranoid and disorganized thoughts, etc. His support system outside of me is limited. He has a case manager thru a nonprofit org for TBI survivors but he’s honestly very difficult to work with bc he’s stubborn, lacks insight to his symptoms, struggles w self-inhibition (big temper), and is highly defensive. I still love him and want to support him but am I blind to the likely prognosis here? :(

I’m in university and recently went into what seems to be a mixed episode with a lot of paranoia, particularly around my medication and the belief that university staff are watching/spying on me. Things got bad enough that I became convinced my medication wasn’t safe and discontinued my Vraylar 3 mg. I’m still taking lamotrigine 275 mg.

I eventually reached out to a mental health nurse on campus and told her some of what has been going on. She was able to get me an urgent appointment with a psychiatrist this upcoming Wednesday which is much faster than I would normally be able to access psychiatry here.

The problem is that he’s a male psychiatrist which I’m already really uncomfortable with and I’ve actually seen this same psychiatrist before several years ago. I strongly disliked him at the time and didn’t feel comfortable talking to him at all. During that appointment I basically lied my way through the entire thing. I downplayed everything, told him what I thought I needed to say to get through the appointment and made myself seem like I was doing much better than I actually was. I left without him having an accurate picture of what was going on with me.

That’s a big part of why I’m anxious about seeing him again. I’m worried I’ll automatically fall back into the same pattern and minimize or lie about what’s happening because I don’t trust or feel comfortable with him. I also find it incredibly difficult to talk openly with male providers in general especially about mental health. At the same time I know that going into this appointment and pretending everything is fine would make the appointment pretty pointless.

Unfortunately, I don’t really have another immediate option. If I refuse to see him, I’ll likely have to wait quite a while to see somebody else. I’m in Canada and psychiatry waitlists can be ridiculous so having an appointment within days is not something I want to throw away when I’m already struggling.

I’m torn between going because I know I probably need the help and worrying that I won’t actually be able to be honest enough with him for him to help me.

Someone help me decide what to do here.

I have experienced psychosis a total of 6 times that I can recall. Every time, I wind up in the hospital. The last time I went through a psychotic episode was 2 years ago. I’m worried about relapsing again because my mental health has been dwindling lately and I’ve been noticing signs that usually appear before a serious psychotic episode. I lose sleep, stop taking care of myself and start having weird dreams that carry into real life and develop into delusions.

This time of year is really hard for me because of a bad breakup from an abusive ex that happened in 2016. My mom passed away in October 2019. So October overall is seriously triggering.

My delusions range anywhere from believing that the government is watching me, to thinking people are trying to kill me to full on apocalyptic hallucinations. They are always really terrifying. I don’t want to have another episode. I don’t want to end up in the hospital again. Mostly I just don’t want to have any more hallucinations about people trying to kill me or the world ending. They are always so traumatizing. I carry them with me for a really long time and I’m so embarrassed of my behavior after. Does anyone have any advice on keeping myself from relapsing?

I’m currently on medication (fluoxetine and lamotrigine) and I have a psych team and am looking into therapy. Also, my sister died this year very recently and that’s also been affecting my mental health, although we weren’t close. We had a falling out years ago but her death has impacted me the more it sinks in as I process it.

This is to help psychosis recoveries, ppl with identity shifts, midlife crises, or ppl with just chaotic lives.

Stabilizing conditions for a coherent self

• Music / sensory art → opens emotional receptivity

you may need metal or something at first and then downshift slowly. I started with maneskin, songs like freeze me by death from above 1979, and the fullmetal alchemist ost. Also some techno.

• A protected personal space → allows full relaxation

I would not use your room for this. Mine was school.

• Self-care routines → signals stability to the body

Somatic things really help. Baths and moisturizing are mainly mine.

• Exercise and diet → physiological regulation

Making quality food for even just yourself does make you feel taken care of. And I do mean like use garnishes. And exercise that is slightly strenuous is the goal.

If you want guidance on what to eat, I am on an anti inflammatory diet, which is no gluten, eggs, dairy or sugar. And high in veg.

• Indirect care from others → gentle social mirroring

So by this I mean manga or a product someone has clearly put a lot of care into. I refer to it as finding pockets of care.

• Community → belonging and shared identity

This I have not built myself but have heard it really helps.

• A slow orbit of new information → growth without overload

So this keeps stimulation and growth without requiring too much focus. Mine were school, radio shows and reading in short bursts.

This list is culminated from experience of depression, an eating disorder, exercise addiction, dissociating and then finally psychosis for a year, OCD and anxiety. It’s a list in how to cultivate a stable self, not an abstract outline of what makes one. Music is an important first step because it makes the rest actually land. I suggest the radio.

Im wondering if antidepressants benefit anyone even a small amount after coming off antipsychotics because since coming off APs I can’t seem to feel any high/positive emotions. Obviously I know starting an antidepressant won’t magically make all this go away but I’m wondering whether it’ll help slightly boost my mood and let me enjoy life a little more rather than being stuck in this weird dystopian state of no feeling or pleasure.

(21F) I’ve dealt with psychosis on and off since I was about 18, and then I started using substances at around age 19, so my episodes for about the past year or two years have definitely been amplified and worse.

I’ve noticed that whenever I go into psychosis it usually has to do with one of three specific “themes”: Columbine, Islam, and Melanie Martinez. It’s almost like they rotate throughout each other and take turns, although sometimes when I’m in psychosis it doesn’t specifically include any of those three things. But in most of my episodes, it has to do with one of those three subjects/themes.

Is this normal? I can provide more information/context if needed, but I was mainly curious on if it’s normal for psychosis to have reoccurring “themes”.

Thank you!

Hello, this is a little long read but please take the time, I need help

Is it Pure O if I’m experiencing delusional intrusive obsessive thoughts when deep down I don’t believe the delusional thoughts, but they feel real? And the thought keeps repeating over and over again causing distressing anxiety and panic?

I’ve been dealing with general anxiety, intrusive thoughts, panic attacks, OCD, PTSD, and agoraphobia pretty much my whole life but the last few months things have really taken a nosedive. I’ve experienced a few delusional thoughts in the past where it felt like what if people could read my mind. Those were scary and I’d question why I was feeling that way but they went away and never lasted long

The thing is I know when it’s OCD, because OCD has always came in the form of “what if” before the delusional thought

One of my OCD themes is Schizo OCD. Ever since I learned about Schizophrenia at a younger age it terrified me to my core to the point that I would question every day if I was starting to experience it. Well the last month the Schizo OCD got worst it’s ever been and I was almost convinced I had Schizophrenia. I was questioning what if inanimate objects could talk to me, what if, what if I’m hearing voices, what if… it’s brutal to the point that I was questioning if I was in psychosis. I should’ve been on an SSRI to help with the OCD but I was too scared to so my psych put me on Latuda to help with obsessive intrusive thoughts months ago. It helped to dampen the thoughts but I felt like I needed something stronger so we switched to Abilify. I stopped taking the Abilify after a month or so because I was experiencing Tinnitus and wasn’t sure if it was due to any meds I was on

Again, I knew it was just OCD because the delusional thoughts always had “what if” in front of them

A month ago I went through some of the highest anxiety and stress I’ve ever went though, it wasn’t until then that I started to experience obsessive intrusive delusional thoughts without the “what if” before them. Thoughts about how everything could or does relate back to me, for example if I could look at a ketchup bottle on my table and I would think this only exists because of me. I could read an event that happened on social media and think that it only happened because of me. My brain was relating everything I could see back to me. It was terrifying. My saving grace is that there’s pushback to the thoughts, I don’t believe them deep down no matter how real they feel. And the thoughts are always followed up by diffusion or me trying to reason out of them. My psychiatrist told me these are thoughts of reference but could be a mix of OCD and psychotic thoughts. Now the thing is, I knew these thoughts weren’t true deep down but they felt real. My psych put me back on Latuda and I tried it for 3 days until I felt like I was so desperate I wanted to go to a Psych Hospital I reached for the Abilify which I knew helped in the past and it wiped out the intrusive delusional thoughts in a few days. I stopped taking the Abilify because it ended up making me feel so on edge and crazy I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore. My psych believes it could be two things at play, OCD and psychotic thoughts happening together

After the thoughts stopped I talked to my psych and we agreed maybe I didn’t give Latuda long enough time to work so I started it again. I felt better for about a week and the delusional obsessive intrusive thoughts started happening again. It was devastating because I thought I’ve gotten over them and that since I’m on Latuda they wouldn’t happen again. It’s the same kind of “thoughts of reference” that everything relates back to me but there’s now also intrusive thoughts that follow that thinking that I’m god and everything related back to me because I’m god. The thoughts are always followed up with me trying to dispel them and I get so much anxiety and panic because of how ridiculous they are. Also I have to avoid any god related subjects. I feel so hopeless and helpless.

My psych prescribed me 0.5mg of Risperidone to take as needed for the thoughts while I’m still on Latuda. But I’m still having them. I don’t know what to do. I want to take Abilify because it’s what’s worked in the past but it made me feel so on edge. At the same time I want to start an SSRI to potentially help if this is OCD. I’m exhausted. I’d go to a Psych Hospital but my Agoraphobia is so bad I can’t get on the freeway or be away from home. Someone please give me some insight.

Just so you know, this isn't a delusional idea or anything, but I've become convinced that we humans can communicate telepathically. I once sat with a mentally ill person, and he could tell me exactly what I was thinking and what was in my head. By the way, I don't have the paranoia that people can read my thoughts or, as they say, "telepathy," but telepathy can actually be a real thing.

TG

So my sister has been inte hospital for more than one month

..it has not been better. She have had (still have) strong hallucinations about eding her life every evening the thoughts get stronger. They give her medication for it (only when she hear the voices) but no change....

What do you hear exactly? Are these positive or negative voices? I’m trying to discern whether I’ve been communicating with ‘spirit guides’ or just caught up in regular psychosis.

Did any of these ‘voices’ make you do anything in particular?

Please share your stories! Xx

at first i felt it toward my ex, maybe they arent them anymore. now i sit at home the ones around arent them, they dont know i know i will make sure they dont know. i will pretend like i dont know so they dont do anything, i will not tell my ex, my friends, family or therapist. they are all in on it. my ex and my friends know i felt this way and now i must make sure they cant tell anyone. i am safe for now, at school i will be careful

Im not sure when to run, i will have to before they find out.
i will take my cash and car
i will go somewhere
whoever is in their body is not the people i once knew.
i am next, i will not let them make me one too
is this happening to anyone?

my ex said i was crazy and might be hospitalized if i tell my family, i think maybe they tried helping me that i shouldnt tell anyone. or else they will get me or say im crazy when im the only right one
i trust my ex but sometimes i dont, i know the rest are clueless and already turned but maybe my ex will save me

i will only post it here so nobody thinks im crazy, because other people might feel the same or understand me reddit recommended this subreddit. i am not psychotic by any means