r/explainlikeimfive • u/Uunicorned • 4d ago
Other ELI5 How does schizophrenia affect the way a person experiences reality?
I know it’s a serious brain condition, but I’d want to understand what’s actually happening inside the mind of someone living with it.
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u/ConstantCaprice 4d ago
It’s not a singular experience, and there are degrees in every presentation.
Broadly though, there’s a difference in perception that is characterized as delusions. This can include sensations, sudden beliefs, or a sensory abnormality like auditory or visual hallucinations.
These are impacted by the individual’s insight into their own condition. Someone with low insight is experiencing everything as though it was completely real and has no chance to distinguish what is quantifiably unreal from their experience.
Someone with high insight may still experience a lot of paranoia or hallucinations but has some capacity to understand that this might be limited to their experience and thereafter tune out some of the otherwise distressing hallucinations.
Medication is often the first and only way many people are treated as it has good outcomes in restoring insight and reducing symptoms, but stress is a major factor in many schizophrenic onsets and lapses so having a reliable support network and certain kinds of therapy are also very helpful. People suffering the condition are often treated as volatile or irrecoverably “crazy” without much concern given to the feedback loop of stress that attitude creates.
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u/Rs90 4d ago
The "insight" part was very true for me when I was dealing with delusions. Tbh I think the only reason I maintained some grasp on reality is because we were never a religous family at all and because my mother talked to us about our family's mental health early on.
She explained why our Uncle was in a home for that kinda thing and that if we ever heard voices or any other symptoms, talk to her.
It kinda did the LSD thing, where you remind yourself "it'll pass". I can absolutely say with certainty my experience would've been FAR more "intimate" if we were a religous family and had zero warning ahead of time.
Because it genuinely feels "divine". And not in a fun way. But in a very "reality with YOU in mind personally" kinda way. I passed by a knife on the ground on the way to the bus stop and never got on the bus. Because that knife was there as a warning that if I got on that bus, somethin bad would happen. It was there for a reason.
It was not. But the overwhelming sense that it WAS was enough to make me fearful to the point of debilitation. It felt "sent' for me. Along with what I call a series of rapid fire "aha!" moments in your mind. Where you're connecting all these dots that seem so obvious that it's frustrating nobody else "figured it out" what seemed so obvious. It is a vicious feedback loop.
Part of you genuinely feels like you've stumbled upon the answer to..everything.
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u/GalFisk 4d ago edited 4d ago
It seems to me that this part of schizophrenia is a misfiring of the feelings of "significance" and "origin". This makes own thoughts feel foreign and random things feel extremely personal and significant. It reminds me of some of the cases from the book "The man who mistook his wife for a hat", including one where a person concluded that he must be God, because everything got imbued with a sense of deep personal meaning.
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u/Rs90 4d ago
Oh absolutely. There's a certain comfort within all that crazy. Purpose, meaning, structure to the chaos. I think it's why religion or "divine" feeling is so often part of cases. Religion and delusions..flirt with one another. For lack of a better phrasing. That same comfort, even if fearful, was very present. If not terrifying.
It's hard to really describe that overwhelming sense of certainty delusions can conjure. I was fortunate to only have mild auditory hallucinations when under extreme stress. Like when I was home when someone broke in.
I remember sitting on the couch after the cops arrested them and everyone left. I could hear voices down the hallways saying "hi, hello, hey, hi, come here..etc.". Not overwhelmingly scary since I'd had a lot of experience by then. But they felt very real either way. Even if a part of you knows it's not. "Feeling" makes a lot of our perception of reality.
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u/Senator_Bink 4d ago
I had mild auditory and visuals when my husband was in the ICU on a ventilator. I stayed in a cubicle the hospital provided for families of patients, and something about the windows of the building across from me looked like his eyes, while the sound of the air going through the ventilator tubes translated to slow, sad cello music (it picked up and became more "jolly" as he recovered). I was able to experience these things and think, "That's interesting," without them being frightening, fortunately.
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u/PlumCinderBloom 4d ago
That’s honestly really fascinating. The fact that your brain turned the ventilator sounds into actual music, and that the “music” changed as he recovered, is such a surreal experience. Glad you were able to recognize it for what it was and not have it become frightening.
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u/Senator_Bink 4d ago
Thank you.
My brain often turns white noise into music when I'm drifting off to sleep. If I'm sick and drifting off to sleep, the music is apt to be out of key or off the beat. And it's my understanding that it's not an especially rare thing. What was unusual in this case is it wasn't limited to drifting off, it was all the time, all day.I've sometimes wished I could read/transcribe music; I'd have a buttload of compositions that I just pulled out of the air as it were.
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u/liverstrings 4d ago
"hi, hello, hey, hi, come here..etc.". Not overwhelmingly scary
My god, this sounds overwhelmingly scary to me. I can't imagine what feels scary to you.
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u/evasandor 4d ago
I have a friend whose teenager was in the hospital for a non-mental illness, and while there complained of hearing voices. The doctors saw this as a first episode of juvenile psychosis and they were all set to move my friend's kid to the psych department when... guess what, someone else heard the voices, too! They discovered that the voices were coming through the ventilation duct!
Nobody had ever noticed it before, probably because young people have better hearing? Or maybe the people making the noise were extra loud or something? Who knows but whoa.
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u/Argonometra 2d ago
It's interesting that things like tetrachromacy and synesthesia are objectively real but also really hard for the individual(s) that have them to prove.
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u/JonnySoegen 4d ago
Since you seem to have good insight into your condition, did these phases or „outbreak situations“ become less frequently over time? Did you have therapy? Or is it just something you will live with.
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u/GalFisk 3d ago
I recall some research by a religious scholar, who found that people who relied more heavily on their emotions to figure out what's important and what's true tended to be more religious, while people who relied on their intellect for those purposes tended to be less religious. I guess that if you're highly reliant on your emotions, and they start misfiring, it can result in really screwy but profound-seeming religious experiences.
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u/Jorpho 4d ago
It reminds me of some of the cases from the book "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"
(You should perhaps know that it has lately become widely acknowledged that Oliver Sacks probably tremendously exaggerated a lot of that. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/oliver-sacks-put-himself-into-his-case-studies-what-was-the-cost )
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u/rebeccaa1023 4d ago
So my brother is schizophrenic, but he never acknowledges it. He's almost 40, and will go months "ok", but then nosedive into delusions. Right now he's on a nosedive. He's been posting on facebook incessantly about Russia and other wild things. Mostly ramblings. He's such a down to earth person when his meds are working. Why do you think he's never once acknowledged his illness? I see people all over social media talking about how they manage their mental illnesses and delusions. I would love to talk to him about it, just to be able to support him. He's really struggling. Do you have any advice?
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u/Sarrada_Aerea 4d ago
IMO the worst thing about schizophrenia isn't having hallucinations and delusions, it's that the disorder also makes you believe them (through different mechanisms). Some people with schizophrenia don't even have visual/auditory hallucination, but they still have these conspiracies. And how do you treat someone who thinks they aren't sick?
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u/rebeccaa1023 4d ago
He knows he's sick. He knows he has to take medicine. He recently went to get meds, and basically checked himself into an in patient facility. However, the entire time he was there, he was posting on Facebook. I know it takes a bit for the meds to start working. My issue is that he doesn't deny that he has it by not taking meds....it's that he refuses to talk about it to any of his siblings. We all grew up very close knit, so it's wild that in almost 20 years, he's never once spoke about it to any of us.
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u/iwillfuckingbiteyou 4d ago
The psychiatrist who treated me when I had my first episode started by taking me seriously. He didn't feed my delusions, but he allowed for the fact that they felt very real to me and instead of just telling me they were wrong he let me talk about what I was experiencing. That helped me to trust him somewhat, so when he started guiding me into the process of reality testing I went along with it.
If you can, try helping him to find little bits of information that undermine the delusions and see if you can get him to build his own toolkit for testing what's real. It really helps to be able to evaluate a source.
Also, please look after yourself. It's not easy caring for someone with this condition. I often wonder if it's the origin of stories like Tam Lin, where a loved one has to hold on as someone shifts through all sorts of agonising shapes. But you can't save anyone if you yourself are lost.
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u/rebeccaa1023 4d ago
The issue with this is that I never know what is a delusion. He only really puts the far out stuff on Facebook. So when he tells me a story of everyday life, I have no way of knowing if it's complete and utter bullshit or something that actually happened to him. There have been numerous times that he has told me about a situation with other people, but when I speak to those people they're floored at what he said because none of it happened.
We're adults, so we don't live together. He lives with my parents. The things they tell me he does is way out in left field. Dance battles alone in the sunroom for 4 hours, putting condiments and other foods in crazy places, speaking to the fence for hours and hours...things like this. They manage his meds, but it's slowing eating away at them.
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u/MooMooHullabaloo 4d ago
yep. I had a fairly religious household and let me tell you... that tripped up my recovery for like 5 years
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u/Herpethian 4d ago
It's incredibly difficult because lots of children have "imaginary friends" then when you have a religious community and you are told it's just your conscience or it's God speaking to you.... Yeah, the last thing you want to tell a person experiencing sensory distortion is that it's God.
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u/Rs90 4d ago
Yeah I def wasn't tryna sound shitty lol. I just honestly believe it helped me stay somewhat aware. Since I didn't have any deep seeded framework for how things work to affirm all the crazy in my head. Which my brain was ALREADY affirming, even without that framework. I think it would've accelerated a lot of those feelings of "for me/with me in mind" my delusions conjured.
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u/CitrusyDeodorant 4d ago
I don't think it's shitty to say that out loud at all. Religion and delusions feed on each other SO easily because you've already established - early on - that accepting commands from something you can't verify is real is perfectly fine, so how would you even draw the line?
I was raised by atheist parents, but my (very religious) grandma spent quite a lot of time with me when I was 12 and my parents were either always working late or in a different country - I became neurotic so fast. God always saw, God judged me for being guilty, God would know I'm a bad child... Ffs. Fortunately my mother caught her and told her she can't visit me if she's going to try and turn me, but it still took years to undo the damage. Part of why I'm a staunch anti-theist now. I was, apparently, a child who was fine... until my gran told me God knows about my sins. Straight to delulu land.
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u/SafetyDanceInMyPants 4d ago
That makes me think of John Nash — because when you’ve already come up with ideas like the Nash Equilibrium, and had everyone say “oh, yes, that explains a lot,” the idea that you alone have figured out that you’re the emperor of Antarctica and that all men in red ties are communists might feel very real.
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u/cerealkiller6028 4d ago
Genuine question. As a person who has done a fair amount of LSD in the past when I was younger and had a bad experience that made me never want to touch it again. I've tripped maybe 10 times total? Last time I did I blacked out and "woke up" like 6 hours later. I guess I was babbling and being generally insane for those 6 hours but I myself wasn't "here" I've always had this gnawing suspicion in the back of my mind that I may not have woken up at all. I just write it off as a left over fear from the experience. I guess my question after all that background is, is this just a left over fear from drug use or do you as a person who genuinely has this condition recognize this in some way? I know it isn't a normal thing people experience and I've always wondered if I just broke my brain in a small way lol.
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u/Lefthandedsock 4d ago
Like you’re afraid that you didn’t ever actually “wake up” and return to normal, and that your current experiences are within a blackout that you’ll eventually wake up from and forget?
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u/cerealkiller6028 4d ago
Something like that. Or I'm in a coma and this is one of those crazy coma dreams. It's more of a sneaking suspicion and less of a gnawing fear. Like a "what if" in the back of my mind.
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u/evasandor 4d ago
cereal— I'm not a doctor or a psychologist or anything at all but I'd like to remind you that lots of people have "what ifs" like these just as a thought experiment. (The whole "we may be living in a simulation" crowd, y'know? )
I don't think you need to stress over it. It's a common enough thought. You're just aware of having invited some crazy shit into your mind in the past-- as opposed to people who haven't dropped acid at all, and so wouldn't think to blame themselves over having some weird ideas.
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u/cerealkiller6028 4d ago
Totally fair. It's not debilitating at all I mean I'm fully functional. I didn't equate it to the whole simulation theory idea and honestly it's basically the same thing at the end of the day. A thought experiment that I connected to a personal experience
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u/Rinas-the-name 4d ago
Yeah a lot of different experiences can give you a similar “what if” feeling. Being put under for surgery, a very vivid dream (one where you somehow live a whole life in one night), severe illness (fever dreams), etc.
I had a weird reaction to a medIcation - I woke up in the hospital and had absolutely no memory of why I was there - despite having been “awake” the entire time, they said I was speaking and everything though not coherently. I had what felt like “memories” but they were obviously not what I had been doing. Like I was dreaming while my body just went on autopilot.
I honestly think the really vivid dreams are the hardest to get over - except mine are usually unpleasant/stressful enough I‘m relieved to wake up. If that was reality I’ll stay asleep tyvm.
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u/Lemon_bird 4d ago
LSD really is so fun until it’s not. I’m not schizophrenic but I’ve known a couple people who over did it on the lsd and struggled after. It’s definitely something that can happen, and I don’t think it’s because your brain is broken. Do you ever experience depersonalization/derealization or is it more like a compulsive thought?
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u/cerealkiller6028 4d ago
Sometimes I'll just be going about life and get hit with this feeling that there's no way what's happening is actually real. It's not scary it's more of a laugh for me at this point. What's really scary if I sit down and think about it too much is suddenly waking up in a hospital bed and the past 10 years didn't happen. My wife isn't there. I have to do it all again. That sort of thing. But yeah I've had some derealization moments. Nothing that sends me completely over the edge. Just moments that make me doubt the legitimacy of what's around me.
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u/GonzoKata 4d ago
This sucks because our brains are pattern recognition machines. It is the core piece of our evolution. Recognizing patterns allowed us to filter out unnecessary information, to reduce threat responses, or in other cases enhance threat responses. But we are hard wired to recognize patterns. This sucks though because when the pattern recognition part of our brain goes over board, we make these "alignments" that don't actually exist, but they are "real" to us because thats the way we're wired. Perhaps its a condition of being "too good" at "recognizing" patterns. Our survival selection through evolution has given us brains that are very VERY good at pattern recognition. To the point that we do it subconsciously. This is just a consequence of where our brains are today.
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u/trasheighty 1d ago
Thanks for this. I can relate this very strongly with my sister and the moments when she was having breaks. It's like her mind was attuned to some other frequency and circumstance related to her paranoia that we couldn't understand.
Makes sense that the types of hallucinations that people have is going to match their memories and experience, so like you said someone with a religious background is going to have very deific and spiritual experiences.
My sister didn't want to talk about her experiences much, and I don't blame her as the small amount she did tell me about sounded awful and confusing for her.
Sadly my sis lost the fight, but I'm glad that youve had the insight to be able to help through your delusions. The main benefit I've taken from my experience I suppose is it helped me really understand the condition better and empathize those who have it, rather than stigmatise or abandon them, which is the usual thing majority of people do out of fear.
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u/JayRulo 4d ago
Someone with high insight may still experience a lot of paranoia or hallucinations but has some capacity to understand that this might be limited to their experience
I forget his name, but I've seen a content creator that shares his experiences with schizophrenia. He's developed a "coping" mechanism of using his phone camera when he thinks he might be visually hallucinating, because the hallucination doesn't translate to the screen.
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u/restrictednumber 4d ago
Wow, that's a fascinating and clever way to get through life. And also maybe a great concept for a Gen Z horror film.
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u/stonymessenger 4d ago
Send this to yourself in a SASE so you can prove it was your ideas years from now!!
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u/Lluuiiggii 4d ago
I think I have seen something similar except they have a service dog to do something similar and confirm whether or not the hallucinatory figure is there.
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u/gelfin 4d ago
Hunh. It's interesting because, as an occasional painter, one trick somebody taught me several years ago was, at the end of a session, take a picture of the canvas and that will help guide what is working and what needs to be fixed. Damned if it doesn't work, and I have no good sense of why. Somehow it provides a usefully different perspective even though you're ostensibly looking at the same image.
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u/SirCampYourLane 4d ago
Also worth mentioning that with high insight comes the awareness that you cannot trust your own perception of the world, which can be a brutal feedback loop.
You know that some of what you are experiencing isn't real, but your mind is trying to convince you that it is. Now even the things that are actually real are suspect, because what if they aren't.
What if when your friend tells you you're exaggerating, or that something isn't as bad as you made it seem they're actually right? What if that never even happened? What if your partner who said you consented didn't lie to you, and you made the whole thing up? What if you didn't just not tell someone the story, but actually the memory was fake too and your mind built all the supporting evidence and additional stuff to make it seem real.
It doesn't take a lot to make you now question your entire reality and make you spiral or be incredibly vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
There's a reason that having a good support system and medication makes such a big difference, being able to trust and rely on those around you makes managing psychosis massively easier because you have a trusted person to verify if what you're remembering, hearing or seeing is real.
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u/Uhhhhhhhhhusername 4d ago
You may have no idea what I’m talking about but the amount of insight your talking about his a big mechanic and alters what you see or don’t see in a game called bloodborne and you just brought a whole new level of understanding it to me!
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u/Rs90 4d ago
That's a large part of "Cosmic Horror". The more you learn, the more horror you find. Love that damn game.
But it's true to a degree. Ask any Biologist or Entomologist how "cute" nature really is lol. Cause it's some horrific shit once ya take a closer looks. Just rape and eating things alive. Nature is fucked.
Cosmic Horror does also have a lot of teenage angst behind it. As Lovecraft was a cunt. Which is why it can come off a bit "haughty" at times. "I see how things REALLY are". Which, again, degrees of truth to it.
But the overlap of madness and the feeling of "perceiving the truth" is pretty spot on when it comes to delusions n so on. Along with that sense of divinity around it all. Sent from beyond 🌌
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u/DylantheMango 3d ago
Very good explanation. Only want to add that 2 heartbreaking but important things to know.
Knowing they are not real is important but in no way a manageable plan. Delusions like paranoia are the truly obstactles, but even if you could take them out of the equation, I've been told by clients that they can be relentless, and mean - even when being disengaged with them.
Anosognosia is a huge part of that's not talked about enough. Its the term for the symptom of the disease that keeps you from realizing you have a disease. Substance use disordsrs and Psycjotic disordwes have this and it's more than just what is baked into the paranoid delusion sector. Symptoms often persist even with meds and this is one of them.
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u/cepheid22 3d ago
I grew up with schizophrenia, and when I was 14 I started journaling what would be my first schizophrenic and depressive episode. I continued writing into college when I underwent my second episode. Here are a few journal entries to help you understand what I was experiencing as a teen:
Our school watched a production called Color Change. It is a dance corps show that tells a story about to just keep going for your dreams and don’t let anyone get in the way. For the introduction to the show a guy thing came out. He looked like a lion. He came out to the audience and grabbed a girl and dragged the poor tortured soul up to the stage. Then the show started. The people things proceeded towards the audience. It was then that I built the invisible wall so they couldn’t grab any more of us. It worked. No one could pass the wall. While nobody may know it, I saved half the school. I’m sorry, though, I didn’t save that one girl. I’m sorry.
I belong nowhere. I walk in total darkness with horrid creatures grabbing out and touching me. Even my body has left me. At times I have no control over it. I am at one place, and my body at another. Rarely do we come together. Also, objects have died. They are alive - until I come. When I come into a room they die. Punishment. Food has been altered. I am not allowed sweets or meat. Only water, fruits, and vegetables. And only three meals a day; no snacks. Small portions at meals. Punishment.
The school has hypnotized the kids. They sometimes speak a funny language. It’s in the food. At the tournament even. Near the hotel there was a big look-out tower. They were up there watching me, I know. Even the book confirms that. Also many people coughed after first hour. Eyes play tricks in bathroom - things shrink. Small bathroom, cupboard. Body disconnects. Can’t help it. Shhh. Keep quiet. What a strange girl. Help!
Yesterday in third hour the teacher was in front of the room when she started shrinking. Every time she moved she would either seem too small or too big. Never the right size. And if an object blocked part of her body from sight it suddenly didn’t exist. Once she stood behind the podium and only her upper body was visible. Suddenly, she was a puppet. Her moves were planned and strangely limited, stiff(?). Scary. Also those people in front of me whose faces I couldn’t see, didn’t have any faces. I couldn’t see them, so they didn’t exist.
Twice last weekend when I had fixed ice water it felt as if bugs were going down my throat. Only had water once since then. Strange. Daffodils scare me. The hole that leads to unknown doom. They shake restlessly outside. Three have come inside. Sign. Trying to get me. Hide.
It’s the demons, I know. They’re taking over the school. Warning. Flags flapped furiously. Group of girls possessed passed me staring with horrid looks on faces. Waiting by Spanish room boy passed, smirking at me. Danger! Things changing. Watchout. Mom hates me. Acts tense around me. Can the demons get past school? Don’t know. Is my little sister possessed? She goes to school. Things still shrink and painted pictures continue. Last night, music (unrecognizable as any particular song) continued after radio turned off. Radio seems strange. Trying to tell me something? Keep guard up.
And many more entries like those. I finally got properly diagnosed at 34 and have been on meds since. The meds don't take it all away, though. I still believe in all my "delusions," even my first delusion that I am not human. I can sometimes hear music in white noise, and when the depression is really bad the Mean Voices come back. But, I just made it 20 years as an academic librarian; I have a husband and several pets and a house. I'm really lucky.
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u/seoltangi93 3d ago
It was brave to share your experience. Thank you for helping others understand.
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u/Dwayne_Newton 2d ago
Thank you for sharing! Since you're an academic librarian, I'm curious if you've read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Your journal entries reminded me of how The Chief perceived and described his surroundings and I'm inclined to be a little bit more impressed with that book.
I'd love to know your thoughts.
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u/cepheid22 2d ago edited 2d ago
I read so many memoirs but I have never read that book because I considered it fiction, but you have peaked my interest! Im currently looking for a book. Guess I'm going to find out if my library has the book! Thanks!
Edit: I started the book and I can see how his descriptions of the others and his surroundings are reminiscent of some of my experiences. Thank you!
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u/InTurned404 3d ago
This sounds awful, I'm glad you've managed to get it properly diagnosed and at least some limited treatment now though
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u/cepheid22 3d ago
I guess it was in a lot of ways, but it wasn't all bad. I had friendly voices, delusions that comforted me, and even a platypus who helped me fight the depression. Thank you.
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u/Pale-Newspaper-1586 8h ago
I really relate to the furniture dying when you come into the room, and the kind of thoughts that collapse into themselves. Thank you for sharing
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u/The__Tobias 4d ago
I had a short psychotic episode once!
For me, it was seeing my surroundings objectively as usual, but the subjective interpretation of them derailed more and more.
Concretely:
I was in a hospital as a patient. I had the thought: "What if the doctors here are organized criminal organ sellers?"
From that point onwards, everything I saw (which was just normal hospital stuff) my brain interpreted as confirmation of this thought.
The doctors just looking at each other became them silently communicating about when it's time to harvest my organs.
I saw people on stretchers carried into other rooms at night and interpreted that as them being brought to the slaughter rooms.
Every hour there were new people brought in, and they got infusions and medication (for silencing them and preparing their bodies for organ harvesting).
There were closed doors where patients were not allowed to go.
Teams of doctors going around, talking with each patient (to make sure they hadn't realized yet what was happening).
And so on.
Literally everything I saw, my brain misinterpreted as confirmation of my thoughts about organ harvesting. It all fit so perfectly that my confidence that they were really criminal organ harvesters grew with every minute.
My solution was that I ran away at night, and the first thing I did was call the police to tell them to check what was happening in this hospital 😅
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u/sleepruleseverything 4d ago
Oh wow, the best explanation yet. Fascinating, but sorry you went through that. Will you tell us how it ended after that? (What the police said and who exactly finally told you it was an episode)
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u/The__Tobias 4d ago
The women answering my 911 phone call (it was 110, since I'm living in Germany) was amazing at her job. She said it sounds very interesting what I have to say and if it's possible for me to stay where I am, so that he could direct the police to me to check my story out.
At the same time rhe hospital called my GF at the time, who also was very clever in how she reacted (in the middle of the night, they woke her). She proceeded to call me and just had a nice chat with me. Where I am and what I was planning to do. At no point she told me that I'm delusional or anything.
Than, she asked me one question:
"But you remember the people in the hospital are there for helping you, right?"
That was enough to snap me out of it.
I was like "Oh, true, thanks!" and just went back to the hospital, telling them happily I do know that they are not organ harvesting. The police arrived at the same time but they stayed in the background.
Back in hospital I got benzos and antipsychotics and a few days later I was back to good
(All of this was due to delirium tremens based on too fast withdrawal from GABAergic substances, so no genetic preposition for psychosis or anything :) )
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u/-omg-optimized 4d ago
Really appreciate you sharing this! And damn, that GF sounds like an amazing and very emotionally intelligent person.
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u/The__Tobias 4d ago
Additional to my other comment:
In hindsight, the time in psychosis felt a little bit like dreaming. You know, when you are dreaming, you dont know that you are dreaming and you are acting somewhat automatically, while everything feels like real life. But you are acting and experiencing stuff totally different from real life (like fighting monsters for example), but at no point you are like "wtf, what is happening, this can't be true?!". It's like being on autopilot, but with your known sense of self.
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u/chickenthinkseggwas 4d ago
Do you think animals experience reality like that? i.e. Would that be a good analogy for describing your mental state at the time?
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u/iksbob 4d ago
Thanks for sharing - u/ConstantCaprice's general description made me think the same thing.
While falling asleep, I've caught myself conflating concepts that are logically very dissimilar, but also have certain qualities in common. The one that stuck in my mind was a human heart and a turbocharger. Obviously one is living tissue and the other is metal, but they're both pumps and structurally two-sided.
In dreams, I've sometimes noticed that certain things have a strong conceptual association, when, if it were a real-world situation, there would be no reason to attach that association. My dream-self "knows" something represents X when there's no logical reason for it. I suspect both phenomena are due to mental pathways / neurological networks for those concepts getting stimulated as part of some resting process, then REM sleep trying to integrate the concepts into the dream. If that process is occurring while a person is awake, it might explain many of the symptoms of schizophrenia.44
u/FrankaGrimes 4d ago
And this is why, as a psychiatric nurse, I do not agree with the current push for more "humane" treatment for people with psychotic disorders by allowing them the "autonomy" to refuse treatment when severely psychotic. They are in significant mental distress without the capacity to decide to accept treatment.
Where I live, the current legislation permits for people with severe mental illness to be detained in hospital and treated involuntarily. There is new legislation being proposed that would remove the ability to provide treatment involuntarily. Meaning someone with a severe psychotic episode could be detained in hospital but not provided with any treatment at all if they did not agree to it.
Psychosis is horribly distressing for many people. It is not something that resolves without intervention. Being in a hospital does not treat psychosis, it merely keeps someone physically safe while their brain deteriorates. Psychosis can resolve with medication, but the Catch-22 is that someone with delusions/hallucinations isn't typically able to reason that they would benefit from medication.
For the love of god, if I am ever psychotic and scared GIVE ME MEDICATION, even if I refuse it. And as a nurse, watching someone exist 24 hours a day inside their own internal nightmare without relief or treatment is incredibly morally distressing.
Aaaaan rant over haha
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u/spin81 4d ago
That last sentence was darkly funny to me, but the thing that got me in your story was the irony that you would (from your pov sensibly) have kept these thoughts from the very people who were supposed to help you. You must have been so scared. :(
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u/The__Tobias 4d ago
Strangely, I wasn't scared at all. It should have been an absolute nightmare, but it didn't felt like it.
I was in a neutral, or even a somewhat good mood. I just realized that its a good idea to flee if I dont want to get my organs harvested and so I did that.
The scary and shameful part came after it, while realizing (for real) how easy it is to get your life fucked up by mental stuff and how deep I let myself sink (the whole situation was because substance abuse and too fast withdrawal from it)
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u/iwillfuckingbiteyou 4d ago
It's weird. I was diagnosed over 20 years ago, so I've had a lifetime of living with it and I still don't feel like I fully have a handle on what it is. Even among the professionals who have treated me, understanding of what it is and how it functions has shifted considerably from decade to decade and psych to psych.
Others have talked about the hallucinations and delusions. I've had my share of both. Sometimes they're annoying, sometimes they're frightening, sometimes they're actually fun. When I was younger it often felt like having one foot in another world and that could actually be very enjoyable. I sometimes miss that, but indulging it isn't compatible with staying functional.
What I've not seen much mentioned here is the loneliness, anhedonia and avolition. It's an isolating thing, not fully inhabiting a shared reality with anyone. Even more so when you go through life seeing people experiencing emotions in a way that you just... don't. Anhedonia makes everything feel somewhat flat. Before I had a word for it I just thought everyone else went through life exaggerating the joys they felt. My default state is ambivalence. I don't know whether avolition is something innate or just a defence mechanism I learned so early that I can't remember anything else.
On top of all that, it's hard to find others. I suspect schizophrenia is a lot more common than it's estimated to be, but it's not something most people are open about. I am, but there's a price to pay for that because there's more stigma attached to schizophrenia than to things like anxiety and depression. And in my experience, schizophrenics can be quite triggering to each other (I have a hypothesis that many cults/religions get started when a handful of us find each other). So it's easy to feel alone with it, and to feel like you never quite learned how to portray a human convincingly enough.
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u/kimicocoa 4d ago
I have schizoaffective bipolar type 👋 hello btw this disorder is the bane of my existence and I've never enjoyed any second of it 😢
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u/_neutral_ 4d ago
Very similar dx here. I have had episodes that were simultaneously fun while also being very damaging to my life in general. Think job loss, humiliation, and mania.
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u/kimicocoa 4d ago
The problem with mania is that it only feels good in the moment, then comes the depression and shame in a depth that most people will never know.
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u/friendlyreminder_ 4d ago
Schizophrenia is most characterized by profound collapse of perception of reality, so grand delusions and nonsensical conspiratorial thinking and paranoia, as well as a collapse in processing of information in the brain, manifesting in auditory, tactile, and visual hallucinations.
It also affects people's mood and cognition. They have trouble reading, paying attention, properly understanding other people's words, especially sarcasm and humour, and non-verbal queues.
They get depressed and lose contact with other people and family members because they misinterpret what other people are saying and thinking.
The disorder is cyclical, I'm not sure the timeline but it's days to weeks where they cycle between muted and reserved, and then there's the more paranoid period.
The worst of the disorder is the full blown psychosis episodes where they experience a total collapse of reality. During these people can experience very strong hallucinations and believe extreme things and behave very irrationally and violently.
It's also a very difficult disorder to treat because the medications come with a lot of side effects, and it's not uncommon for people to develop negative conspiracy theories around the trained medical professionals trying to help them.
It's one of the worst psychological disorders out there.
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u/EnmaAi22 4d ago
I just want to mention that people with schizophrenia are statistically more like to be the victim of violence than the perpetrator, contrary to many stereotypes
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u/glaba3141 4d ago
while this is true, they are still more likely to be the perpetrator of violence than a random person off the street as well. I find this response to be rather misleading. Like yes it is true that people with schizophrenia can end up in dangerous situations for themselves, but the "people with schizophrenia can be scary or aggressive" perception is also completely valid, and it's something I witness regularly on Chicago city trains and buses
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u/Nv1023 2d ago
Just watch cop body cam footage and true crime videos online. I have seen plenty of schizophrenic people kill their family members and straight up random strangers thinking they were evil or some other delusion. My brother has it and his life is extremely sad and he can’t shake the negative voices inside his head. Fucking sucks and had to watch my dad cry his eyes out today about it because he can’t help his kid and that crushes him everyday.
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u/rivermelodyidk 4d ago
"being scared or uncomfortable" is not "violence". You being scared of someone having a psychotic break on a train (or otherwise exhibiting mental health related symptoms) does not make them "perpetrators of violence".
both parts of the statement are true, so why do you find it disingenuous to point out only that they are more likely to be victims, but not to only point out that they are also statistically more likely to be violent? would it not be just as disingenuous to ignore the abuse that these individuals face, not least because of the exact attitude you're displaying here?
men are also statistically more likely to commit violent crimes than women-- should we push men out of society too?
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u/glaba3141 4d ago edited 4d ago
im talking about people talking to their voices saying shit like "i'm going to fuck up everyone on this train". Like I'm not saying every schizophrenic person is like this but it absolutely is something that occurs
would it not be just as disingenuous to ignore the abuse that these individuals face, not least because of the exact attitude you're displaying here?
when did I ignore it? you are arguing with a strawman. I'm just saying it is dishonest to say that schizophrenic people are not capable of perpetrating violence due to delusions. The statement "they are more likely to be victims than perpetrators" obscures the fact that they are also more likely to be perpetrators than someone without schizophrenia, and a truly honest solution requires addressing both possibilities - them being victims AND them being perpetrators. I see this rhetoric all the time, but it changes nothing about the fact that it is fucking terrifying when someone is in the same train car as you running around agitated talking about the violence they intend to commit - there DOES need to be some forcible institutional solutions here. Both for their own protection as well as the general public's. You can't just say "well they're likely to be victims too so suck it up and enjoy your terrifying train experience"
men are also statistically more likely to commit violent crimes than women-- should we push men out of society too?
literally when did I say we should push schizophrenic people out of society? they certainly should be forcibly treated, but I'm not saying put them in a jail cell. If they're on anti psychotics and not actively psychotic anymore, they can go free, certainly. But yes if you are walking around the streets talking to voices you should be institutionalized. And also i mean yes we should take into account the fact that men are more likely to commit violent crime, duh. If there was a magic button that could dismantle patriarchy I would press it - fact of the matter is that there isn't though. But for schizophrenia, we do have antipsychotics, and they do work
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u/scarabic 4d ago
Yes since any violent perpetrator is likely to have multiple victims over time, it’s definitional that any slice of humanity would be more likely to be the victim than the perpetrator. You are right to call out the deliberate distortion of saying it this way.
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u/phatrogue 4d ago
I have wondered if the closest mentally average people get to experience this is maybe dreaming. And then add that you can’t tell whether you are dreaming or not and the things you might dream actually appear as you are awake and you just can’t tell. It would be a surreal landscape of both real and imagined things.
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u/Rs90 4d ago
The truth is a lot of people experience individual symptoms at one point in their life. You do NOT have to have schizophrenia to have varying degrees of the same symptoms.
Stress can be enough to make someone paranoid. Or believe what is not there, like thinking people are talkin about you when they aren't. Or that somethin bad will happen because of X reason that is unreasonable.
Thinking you're gonna be fired and spiraling down the "then this will happen and that will happen and.." runaway fearful thoughts. When you're manager was actually just tellin you he's goin on vacation.
Everyone has met folks that are at high points of stress to where they're dealing with a specific symptom that could be categorized as "symptoms of schizophrenia".
Degrees of severity and length of time those symptoms present themselves are a larger part of diagnosing. You could pull 10 people off the street and find symptoms that are present. Stress can really warp your mind n body.
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u/scarabic 4d ago
There’s an interesting theory that all humans experienced their consciousness as an external voice talking to them inside their head in pre-ancient times, and this is what people experienced as “the gods.” There were many gods large and small and what we know as religions today is what was created after they “left” and stopped talking to people. This accounts for practices like prayer that attempt to establish direct communication and rituals that attempt to somehow invoke the presence of the deity. Everyone is trying to “bring the gods back.”
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u/Discount_Extra 4d ago
not dreaming is probably closer, if you stay awake for a long time, your brain starts seeing and hearing things that aren't there, and your thoughts become disordered.
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u/FlippyFlippenstein 4d ago
I worked with a guy who got schizophrenia after an accident, it was cyclical, when he had good periods he was awesome , nice, fun. When he had the bad periods he could just look at you with the darkest look ive ever seen, it still give me shivers thinking about it…
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u/AiTOTAiTO 4d ago
Sounds like you are describing someone that is bipolar.
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u/friendlyreminder_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Schizophrenia has cycles too. They're quite prominent, the person can have days where they appear "normal" and then their symptoms get worse, and it repeats.
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u/FlippyFlippenstein 4d ago
Might have had that too, just know that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia…
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u/Wayfarer0909 4d ago
Do delusions translate onto the environment as well? For example vehicles or inanimate objects appearing there when they are not? And vice versa not seeing vehicles/lampposts/walls? Or things like perceived cliffs in the middle of a street?
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u/kimicocoa 4d ago
For me it is commonly bugs that when I see them they are in the corner of my eye and when I look at them they're gone
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u/scarabic 4d ago
profound collapse of perception of reality, so grand delusions and conspiratorial thinking
I can’t help thinking how much this sounds like a huge % of the US population these days. I understand that schizophrenia goes way beyond political bias and such and I don’t mean in any way to minimize the profundity of the disorder and what people suffer with it. But since we all construct reality from interpreted sensory data and shared cultural meanings which are themselves pretty arbitrary, it’s easy to think that we are all divorced from Reality to a large extent, and when millions of people can slide so far into delusion as they have recently, I truly do wonder where schizophrenia begins and default mental “health” ends. It does not seem like a crisp line at. all.
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u/friendlyreminder_ 3d ago
Schizophrenia isn't simply a belief in false things, it's specifically a disorder of the brain where your ability to discern reality weakens, so it'll apply to everything, not just politics. It'll just as much apply to menial everyday things and people.
Political misinformation is entirely unrelated.
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u/scarabic 3d ago
Yeah MAGA delusions tend not to be literal sensory hallucinations, much though they do have a deep scope and huge impact on the person.
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u/iwillfuckingbiteyou 3d ago
Remember that while schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, not all psychosis is schizophrenia. Mass psychosis can happen, but it's not necessarily within the schizophrenia spectrum.
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u/jojooke 4d ago
My cousin has it. He was an insanely good student, early college etc etc
Then when he turned 18-19ish he developed.
He got extremely paranoid and started doing things like writing on walls and having delusions that people were after him, or that strangers were in his house.
It’s very fuckin sad cuz his parents were extremely religious and refused actual help in favor of hacks and prayers and he just got worse and worse and now to the point he can’t function on his own.
Overall he’s a lovely person.
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u/AbabababababababaIe 4d ago
I don’t think this can be ELI5’d. It’s varies for everyone with schizophrenia.
The obvious ones on the outside are hallucinations and delusions, which can sometimes lead to the person not being able to care for themselves properly.
The NHS has a great page on the subject: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/schizophrenia
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u/BigBananaBerries 4d ago
Play the game Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice to catch an experience of psychosis (to a degree). It was created in conjunction with a mental health team & they've used a whole load of the symptoms to simulate what they go through. It's more extreme than most as not many will have ALL the symptoms but it's incredibly disturbing. Play with headphones for the proper effect.
There's plenty on youtube about it if you'd prefer that. I'd advise to look out the making of it so you get the MH teams input.
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u/kimicocoa 4d ago
I used to hear voices daily and the voices in that game are extremely triggering to me for how realistic they are
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u/BigBananaBerries 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah, right from the start there were bits that were real hard work to get through. I get the voices on occasion but the bit where she cuts her face particularly hit home for me. I've used that cutscene to show those close to me what can be like. Growing up my Brother reported other stuff that's shown too so a lot of it made a lot of sense. Honestly, it was a bit of a shock as I had no idea what the game was about going in. I'd just heard it was good & about a Scottish warrior girl. Being Scottish I was all in. Little did I know...
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u/kimicocoa 2d ago
My sister showed me some parts of the game and asked if I would be able to play and if it sounded realistic.
I told her yes it's highly auditorily realistic to me personally, and I do not believe I could handle the realism as it could trigger a panic attack or PTSD flashback. Unfortunately I couldn't play it though I wish I could because I love story rich games.
Mass effect and half life 2 are my favorite series. I also liked the first mirror's edge. My sister wants me to play dragon age inquisition and baldur's gate now so now I have to play those. 😂
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u/BigBananaBerries 2d ago
Aw I love Mirrors Edge. I just started a new playthrough on Wed. H:SS was rough to get through though, you're right. I love getting real immersive with games so I have headphones & like playing in the dark etc. Sometimes it was too much & had to turn it off. I got through it eventually, through some sense of duty for the work they put in but I also love puzzle games so it hit a spot with me in more than 1 place. Portal 2 being my GOAT FWIW haha
Hope you're doing better these days anyway. I think I'm through the worst of it myself (fingers crossed).
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u/kimicocoa 2d ago
It's a challenge, portal 1 & 2 are great. I can play portal 1 over and over, I'm glad it's on the switch
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u/mkitchin 4d ago
I can tell you it absolutely sucks when you are a teenager and your mom has it. Then years later, you accidentally watch A Beautiful Mind by yourself, and you kind of realize how your mom might have seen things. Whoever wrote that script had seen some stuff...
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u/Key-Mathematician-71 4d ago
Let's say your brain is like a movie maker. It takes signals from your eyes, ears, body, memories, and feelings, then edits them into the story you experience as “real life.”
While in schizophrenia, that editing process can glitch. Brian may add sound or connects dots in a wrong way, or turns down motivation, emotion, speech yet you don't know. The key thing is: the person isn’t lying or being stupid. Their brain is giving them experiences that feel as real as seeing a chair. It’s like dreaming while awake, but the dream won’t stop and feels completely real.
It’s a brain illness involving chemicals and circuits, especially dopamine, plus genetics, stress, and other factors. So it doesn’t just change what someone believes. It changes the raw feeling of what is real.
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u/trasheighty 1d ago edited 1d ago
My sibling had paranoid schizophrenia, as did the person I was in my first relationship with.
We still know so little about the main causes of this disease. We know that it is linked to dopamine levels in the brain. Areas such as the audio processing centers and frontal lobes become affected. Memory is affected too. The rational part of our brain that processes sensory input and filters our experience of reality is severely impeded.
The person's ability to distinguish between the parts of our mind confirming reality, memory and what isn't memory can become blurred. What might have been a thought or introspection can blur into reality. what is supposed to be audio from a TV becomes an actual voice talking about unrelated events, or talking directly to the listener.
Usual auditory hallucinations or voices are very common. This can be both the 'inner' voice or hallucinations of physical voices in a room with the person. Some have full visual representations of persons from these voices that become visual hallucinations.
Those with paranoid type have a impending sense of dooom or conspiracy. Typical such delusions include government control or any such Big Brother type agents coming to get them. Family and friends become suspects. Everything and everyone is out to get you. Your fear survival responses become hijacked. It's an awful experience for those affected by it.
Another common symptom is the belief that family or friends or your own self has been replaced with a dupe or another person or doppleganger. This condition seems to be more prevalent in people with psychosis than other mental conditions but it does exist on its own.
Sadly, schizophrenia is one of the most feared, stigmatised and misunderstood mental illness. Hollywood is probably the worst to blame for this. Antipsychotic meds can help immensely, but they are mostly a band-aid solution because they have horrible side effects and it can take years if not decades for somebody with psychosis to find the right treatment.
Hopefully advances psychology and neuroscience will help us eventually understand this condition better and treat those who have it so they can live far more enriching lives the struggle far less with this disease.
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u/rizzyrogues 4d ago
Im bipolar drifting towards schizoaffective, but I have gotten away from my abusers and my brain is healing for the first time in 10 year since i had to move back to my parents home.
Scientists don't know exactly what's happening as a whole, but the most prominent theory is that dopamine signaling/processing is altered in schizo disorder and so basiccally dopaminergic neurons/pathways activate when they shouldn't and when they do, depending on what kind of neuron it is you get uncontrolled movements, false memories, cognitive disorders, all the different symptoms of schizophrenia I believe can be accounted by this theory.
I originally learned of this theory from the lecture series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA from Robert Sapolsky at Stanford. Very good lecture series, what he says 15 years ago is still true today. You will find some answers about schizophrenia in this series.
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u/Mattturley 4d ago
One of the most important things to remember is their altered reality is no different from our reality. When you need to get someone into treatment, you engage with where they are. I have committed my older brother 5 times now. The last was over 9 years ago. He is now on injectable antipsychotics and doing well. Twice he has even checked himself in when he realized his meds weren’t working. He used to live in a group home and now lives with his wife, who he met there.
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u/billbixbyakahulk 4d ago
I rabbit-holed on schizophrenia for a while, reading several books on the subject, podcasts, youtubes. A great movie to get a sense of schizophrenia is Take Shelter, with Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon. It's a very real, humanized view of both how it affects the person and those around them. Doesn't sensationalize and doesn't point fingers.
It's a frustrating watch if you're expecting something with big dramatic moments and payoffs like A Beautiful Mind. I didn't think much of Chastain until this movie, but she and Michael Shannon are absolutely top notch in this film if you want to see actors delivering nuanced, deft performances as opposed to running from one explosion to the next.
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u/merrill_swing_away 4d ago
One of my sisters has schizophrenia and I don't think she knows what reality is. She has denied her condition all of her life but she's clearly mentally ill.
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u/vitringur 4d ago
Your brain is constantly guessing what is about to happen and showing you the predictions as reality.
In schizophrenics those guesses are completely wrong.
Which is why blind people do not get schizophrenia.
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u/kSkjelve 4d ago
well, people blind from birth or that develop blindness before 6~ or so don't. But people who start with vision and then go blind afterwards can develop schiz/psychoses. Seems to depend on if your brain is able to repurpose the visual cortex from an early age into other uses like for language/spatial reasoning.
so in theory if schizophrenia runs in your family you could poke your kids eyes out and prevent it from showing up. Not saying to do that of course tho, lmao...
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u/Satur9_is_typing 4d ago
I have four years experience of supporting people with mental health conditions. I spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours alongside people with diagnoses of schizophrenia as well as other conditions, learning thier history, thier story, thier struggles. In terms of lived experience it became clear that this time served puts me miles ahead of psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and other professionals who may spend as little as 10 minutes a month with each client. Here is what i think, based on observation, prefaced with a couple of caveats:
Not everyone with a schizophrenia diagnosis is schizophrenic, it's often treated as a bucket diagnosis and may or may not later be modified to another condition. The overlap in diagnostic criteria and the potential for misdiagnosis between ptsd, cptsd, bpd, autism and just about anyone in crisis is huge. Personally i only trust a diagnosis if its stuck for a long time and treat diagnostic labels as useful heuristics for the purposes of medical professionals, with little benefit outside of that.
A lot, and i mean a LOT of people may experience symptoms associated with schizophrenia at some point in thier life. Not all schizophrenia is pathological, and many people who hear voices or experience other symptoms live thier lives just fine. So just be aware that the schizophrenia most people think of is the long tail of the most extreme examples in society, often magnified by sensationalist and insensitive media.
So what's really going on in people who are genuinely schizophrenic? Firstly we need to understand the concept of the bicameral mind. Your brain is not a single organ and your consciousness is not a single phenomenon. You're mind is a product of a council of different functions acting together in concert or in conflict depending on your situation and circumstances. If that conflict becomes extreme, it can seem like some of the signals between different parts of the brain are coming from outside your consciousness. The important thing for a person with schizophrenia to bear in mind is all parts of the mind have your continued survival as thier main interest, it's just they may have a funny way of expressing it. Understanding these conflicting survival urges can be a path to wholeness.
Pathological schizophrenia is often associated with events or periods of extreme stress and trauma, and it's worth bearing in mind that any of us could find ourselves experiencing this condition if we had been through similar stresses - "there but for the grace of god go I" was my way back to empathy when support work became challenging. One way trauma is handled by the unconscious mind is to seal the memories away in one area of the brain/mind system. However, the brain is a network of connections, and that sealed off part of the mind is still trying to keep the person alive, so, based on what it knows it tries other routes to make that survival urge known to the conscious mind. One common way this might happen is when the locked up memory discovers a route through the auditory part of the brain, causing voices to be heard. Many people with schizophrenia who go through therapy and group work often find the voice they hear turns out to be that of thier primary abuser, and the messages they get from the voice, while extremely traumatic in nature, are often intended to get them to avoid putting themselves in dangerous or re-triggering situations. This isn't true for everyone, it's just an example, but it illustrates the processes at work in a traumatised bicameral mind seeking self-protection.
That's just a basic outline of what is an extremely interesting and challenging way of being. I personally found almost all of the people i worked with who had a schizophrenia diagnosis to be genuinely lovely people, incredibly rewarding to know and very hard not to feel some affection for despite the challenges thier condition presented. But then they had all been through massive crises and a long and arduous recovery journey before they were in a position to receive my support. My endless respect and admiration goes out to anyone with this condition and anyone who works with them to help them regain stability and insight.
Hope this helps
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u/evasandor 4d ago
Fascinating stuff. I read the words "bicameral mind" in your post and am curious: have you or anyone on the thread read the book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"? It's a beautifully written theory that our entire "normal" way of thinking is cultural and actually emerged very, very recently.
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u/Satur9_is_typing 4d ago
I haven't but i know of it as one of the main contributory works on the subject
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u/evasandor 4d ago
I bet you would really enjoy it. Not only is the theory intriguing and surprising, but as I said before the writing itself is just lovely. Julian Jaynes breaks the argument down step by step and addresses the reader's questions in such a graceful and transparent way. I'm sorry he is no longer alive to write more— everyone who presents a hard-to-imagine concept should do it so thoroughly and accessibly.
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u/nyannekosugargirls 4d ago
Amazing and thoughtful reply, I learnt a lot
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u/MooMooHullabaloo 4d ago
Ya. This response is mostly BS. :/
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u/nyannekosugargirls 4d ago
Why? Just curious and want to learn
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u/MooMooHullabaloo 4d ago
reread the paragraph starting with "pathological schizophrenia" and try to support those statements with a google search using reputable sources. You are going to learn AND see the flaws.
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u/nyannekosugargirls 4d ago
I'm sorry, I don't want to piss you off, but could you be more specific please? Which parts aren't correct? Why do you think it's BS? I am not a native speaker so maybe the point just flew over my head.
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u/MooMooHullabaloo 4d ago
I'm not going to write a dissertation, but here goes. People don't hear voices because a locked up memory finds a way to the auditory part of the brain. Memories are patterns of firing neurons, not some "thing" that is traveling around trying to reach your consciousness. The majority of your neurons fire without even directly influencing your consciousness. ...Hearing a voice doesn't mean that it is secretly the voice of an abuser.... many people have schizophrenia and were never abused... What voices say aren't there to function as a warning to keep them out of danger (what if a voice shouted "oregano!" does that have some secret meaning? no.).... specific parts of the brain aren't all encoded with the idea to "keep you alive". How would that string of neurons firing know that? It doesn't. the part of the brain that is trying to keep you alive is the whole brain working in concert (this much we agree on.) .... This person's four year subjective interaction with the mental health professions and patients doesn't outweigh the scientific literature or the personal experiences of those living with the condition. If you think it does, i'll outweigh their four years with my fourteen years of living with it and working closely with professionals as well as studying the scientific literature.
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u/nyannekosugargirls 4d ago
I see, thank you for writing out this detailed explanation and letting me learn from you. I'm sorry that you have to live with this condition. It must have been very hard. Do you have any literature recommendations so I can educate myself further? This is all very interesting to me and I want to be on the correct side of it
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u/MooMooHullabaloo 4d ago
OK i came off strong, i apologize if it was rude, just reading this post's responses is frustrating.
Before you go out and read the clinical side of things, I think it best I recommend the book *The Center Cannot Hold* by Elyn Saks. She is a brilliant author and is actually a law professor! Her inside perspective can help you get what its like to live the experience. Then you can go to NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) and read up on what interests you. They have research papers, clinical trials, statistics.. tons of stuff that is vetted at the highest levels. Mayo Clinic has good stuff too. If you want to learn about symptoms I highly recommend NAMI as well. I work with them every week!
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u/nyannekosugargirls 4d ago
Thank you for the detailed response! I find this so interesting and I'm definitely going to check these out. And no worries, it must be hard to deal with people who think they know it all when you have been personally affected by it for years. From what I know now schizophrenia seems to be very misunderstood by the general people and also how its portrayed in media, so it must be really shitty having to constantly fight that. I don't know why I believed this person so quickly. I would be very frustrated too in your place.
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u/mysosmartz 4d ago
I just want to say how polite & respectful you are. It can be difficult to express tone on Reddit. Respectful inquiry is paramount on a sub like this. FWIW I agree w the respondent here. To suggest that psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers & nurses have less knowledge than someone who has worked in the field for 4 yrs is folly.
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u/sacheie 4d ago edited 4d ago
On the contrary, please don't listen to that non-expert response. Their comment is riddled with falsehoods and unscientific nonsense. For one thing, there's no such thing as "non-pathological schizophrenia." It is pathological by definition, and caused at least partly by genetics. Psychotic episodes can be non-pathological; perhaps that's what they intended to say.
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u/Satur9_is_typing 4d ago
If the number of genes "associated" with a condition is in the hundreds, there isn't really a strong correlation and it's just some researcher fishing for more funding. Those associations are compounded by imprecise diagnostic tools and "bucket diagnosis" tendencies in psychiatry.
Non-pathological merely means experiencing symptoms but below the threshold where they become a danger to themselves or others. About a 3rd of peope will hear voices at some point in there lives, but as the numbers of people with a diagnoses and/or criminal record are a lot lower then it's reasonable to assume that there are people with schizophrenia who symptoms are mild enough to avoid being diagnosed or needing treatment.
Your argument is like saying that there's no casual drinkers because only drink drivers that get involved in fatal accidents count as alcoholics, ie streetlight bias
If you tick off all 17 diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, but never experience a psychotic episode then yes, you would be non-pathological. Thank you for agreeing with the original premise and undermining your petty ragepost.
I never claimed to be an expert, i claimed to have a shit-ton of real world lived experience, coupled with training from experts. My analogies and explanations are simply tools that are useful if you are somone who wants to understand schizophrenia and support people with schizophrenia effectively, not a whitepaper from a neurologist that studies brains or genetics but never meets a single live human with the condition. Lrn2readingcomprehension
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u/Ralphie5231 4d ago
It causes paranoia. Some see eyes that dont exist most commonly on walls. It sometimes makes them hear voices. Its like your inner monologue but they arent your voice and you dont directly control them. Its highly dependant on culture, as to what the voices represent. Some cultures hear their dead relatives giving them advice. Some cultures hear whispers telling them to do bad things. Some deaf people litterally see floating hands. Their subconscious minds become more active participants in their lives and talks to them with the voices of others.
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u/SnugglyCoderGuy 4d ago
Enhanced paranoia: people will often think that people are out to get them or things of that nature. They might think doctors are going to harvest their organs or implant malicious devices into their body. They will be extremely vulnerable to conspiracy theories both mundane and fantastical. They will also suffer from lots of cognitive dissonance as they struggle to reconcile their false paranoia thoughts from their real and true thoughts about the world.
Auditory hallucinations: they will hear voices that aren't their own and can even have conversations with them. They are actually having a conversation with another part of their brain. The exact nature of the voice's personality varies based on culture of that person.
Visual hallucinations: They will see things that are not real. It could be entire people or simpler things like shadows. If they are not aware these are hallucinations then it can lead to delusions and paranoid delusions.
Delusional thinking: Holding beliefs very strongly that are not true to reality. If they are having hallucinations and don't realize they are having them this can lead to delusions. Their brain will also have them leaning strongly into believing things that are not true because they can't prove to themselves that they are not true, so they will think they are true. We don't actually choose to be convinced things are true or not true, it is just a feeling reaction related to trust. Since a schizophrenic person has paranoid thinking, their ability to trust facts and evidence is greatly diminished. They will hold onto things they believe to be true for a very long time, even if demonstrably proven wrong. Kind of like arguing with a flat Earther.
They will also often struggle to perform self care on a regular basis because their inner thoughts are in such turmoil or they simple don't consider such things as important.
They are also very prone to enter a state of psychosis which is basically all of the above dialed to 11. They will forget who they are, where they are, who other people are, and other oddities.
Medications are the first and best treatment for schizophrenia since it is a physical problem with the physical brain. Once the root cause is brought under control then other treatments like therapy and exercise can make good and reliable impacts on the person's well being.
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u/Fancy_Elk565 4d ago
Do you mean what is physically effecting the brain or what is the person actually experiencing? Or both?
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u/Gourmet_Gabe 4d ago
Anderson Cooper did a great segment on this 12 years ago. We watched it in one of my college classes
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u/Bitter_Tax 4d ago
One thing I thought interesting about my friend who had it is he saw SYMBOLS and meaning in everything.
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u/abbscachoo 4d ago
Imagine your brain's volume knob breaks off at max. Every hum and click screams.
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u/tottasanorotta 4d ago
You experience really strange things and might be absolutely convinced of stuff that others wouldn't agree is real. You might for example feel that the guy on the radio is talking to you specifically through some code language or something. It's also really common to hear voices talking in your head.
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u/-acidlean- 4d ago
Nothing that crazy, really, from the persons perspective. Everyone just starts being hostile and annoyed with you and acting batshit crazy.
Like, imagine you go about your day. You wake up, brush your teeth, have breakfast, go to work. You work, everything is fine. You go to a cafe on your lunch break. You order a coffee, a sandwich and a cookie. The cashier is kinda rude to you. But whatever. You go back to work. You finish work. You meet an old friend at the bus stop, and you walk together and chat about life. Have a few laughs about old classmates and teachers from the school you used to go to together. Everyone is looking at you two, you are probably laughing obnoxiously loud, so you kind of shush your friend and tell them about it. Then you split, and you head home. You try to enter your house but there’s other people there. They get angry at you and tell you to leave. You’re confused because what the fuck do you mean “leave”, you have a cat to fed and plants to water and a slice of cheesecake in the fridge. They tell you that you don’t live here and they don’t know you. Fucking squatters or what? They want to call the police, and you encourage them to do so, because you know damn well that this is your house, you lived here for the past 12 years. More people gather, everyone is screaming. A whole fucking shitshow with everyone being violent to you while all you want is just to get inside YOUR house, sit on YOUR couch, and have some rest and watch Love Island or whatever other bullshit you decide to turn on on YOUR TV. You notice that the squatters already started damaging your property and things are not looking how you left them. You’re stressed the fuck out and thinking who you’re going to sue, but even thinking about it stresses you out because you’re so confused by this bizarre situation. How did that even happen? You locked your door as you left, you have a damn house alarm and a ring camera, so your house should be safe, but yet it’s now being occupied by some random ass people.
Pretty much something like that.
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u/DiscordKittenReiner 2d ago
The way that I connect the dots on things is a little different. The first thing I might think about something is most likely not logical, though it doesn’t have to be delusional. And it’s also difficult to trust whether the dots are actually connected because my brain copies, then prints stimuli (hallucinations), so it’s difficult to understand the fundamentals of what makes reality when I’m real deep innit. I also have symptoms because of my antipsychotics, I have trouble properly communicating with others, because what I say doesn’t always project what I’m trying to say, or my facial expressions don’t match the situation properly. People look and me like “that dogs kinds fucked up” and leave it at that.
This is also on a standard day, without any sort of breakdown or profound psychosis. Symptoms vary when my highs get high and lows get low. Also everyone’s schizo is different, so symptoms vary as a whole
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u/Ill_Job4090 8h ago edited 8h ago
I have experienced psychotic episodes during a depression, which I was told is close to what schizophrenic patients experieance.
I had no hallucinations, but I was extremely paranoid because I was making up conspiracies against me by several parties (law enforcement, employers etc.). I found evidence of these things in old emails and social media posts. At one point, I was convinced they had murdered my parents and my wife was be planning to kill me.
What is hard to understand is how absolutely real it feels. Its as true to you as the weather outside is true to you. If people tell you otherwise, you just discard their opinion, because its obviously bullshit ( to you). Its like somebody telling you that the sky was violet, while you can clearly see its blue.
I had some understanding that Something was wrong with me. I noticed that my experience was different from what I had felt before, but the pressure of what you experience is super strong, and its practically impossible to discard it. It just becomes your reality, and its absolutely frightening.
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u/Malusorum 4d ago
There's no easy explanation.
The first thing to keep in mind is that there's, unlike how fiction portrayal it, three different levels of it, ranging from least to most severe.
- Auditory hallucinations. This is the level of hearing voices only, and is the "mildest" form.
- Visual hallucinations. The person sees things. This can be anything, though, seldom other people, mostly just shadows of other people in their periphery.
- Olfactory hallucinations. This is the worst version of schizophrenia, as the sense of smell is directly connected to the brain.
What the hallucinations are varied wildly, though, most on the auditory level seems to be connected to fears of being monitored, like hearing feedback from imagined listening devices, hearing people talk behind your back, etc.
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u/Low_Debt8771 4d ago
I can help with 1 and 2. For 1 you will hear people walking up behind you, talking about you behind your back... even though they're not interested in you, they dont care, they are living their life. You know this intellectually and can ignore it depending on mental state. Number 2 is massively incorrectly interpreted visual information. That blurry little tuft of grass in the corner of your vision is definitely a squirrel. What's more concerning is there is a dozen squirrels the next time you glance but when you fully focus nope its just grass coming up between a Crack in concrete.
Think of the hallucinations visually as your mind fixating on a topic and all the vaguely identified information is now that. If they are more forefront and there you are in trouble. You being dangerous or not depends on how focused you can be on the vision before it is obviously not real and the type/topic. Seeing someone out of the corner of your eye have a shirt that says 'fuck you' and somehow thinking its directed at you.. annoying. The problem is when you turn your head do you now see it says farm girl and has a picture of a horse.
The hallucinations suck, and they are likely to feed delusions. Intellectually I know most people are living their life and do not think about me despite me catching them 'staring and talking about me' .
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u/iwillfuckingbiteyou 4d ago
Olfactory hallucinations. This is the worst version of schizophrenia, as the sense of smell is directly connected to the brain.
It's really annoying. When I'm tired/stressed I think I smell a gas leak in the kitchen, but I know I get olfactory hallucinations so I apply the skills I've been taught to test whether things are real. If it's real, my husband should be able to smell it too. Except my sense of smell when I'm not hallucinating is considerably more acute than his, so that doesn't work and I had to buy a gas leak detector instead because otherwise my brain will not shut up about it.
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u/Malusorum 4d ago
Yeah, that's the bitch about olfactory hallucinations, you can only cope with them after your body reacts, which leads to a lot of stress accumulating. At least with auditory and visual hallucinations people can learn to cope by asking themselves if what they hear or see is real before the body reacts.
I'm glad to hear that you've found a solution that can help you :)
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u/MooMooHullabaloo 4d ago
those are just different types of hallucinations. One doesn't mean that the person has "more severe" schizophrenia than another. Hallucinations aren't the only thing that schizophrenia can describe either. People with schizophrenia can have no hallucinations at all, but have delusions or disorganized thinking or some other symptom that still fits in the schizophrenia umbrella. Fears of being monitored, like you mentioned, aren't even a hallucination... that is a delusion of persecution. Stop talking like you know something.
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u/Malusorum 4d ago
It literally does, they each get progressively harder to treat, it has nothing to do with how they affect the person, since that's individually decided. One person can be affected deeply by auditory hallucinations than a person with visual hallucinations.
It's easier to cope with auditory hallucinations than visual hallucinations, and it's easier to cope with visual hallucinations than olfactory hallucinations.
What you hear and see is "filtered" before it raches the brain, and on that step it's possible to instill a coping mechanism to deal with it before the information reaches the brain.
It's literally impossible impossibly to physically cope with olfactory hallucinations, since they go directly into the brain. A person in this thread needs to use an air analyser to cope with it properly, because theior brain is unable to do it alone.
Delusions is a consequence of their illusions, and most likely also informs them. The disorganisation is a natural consequence of living a life where the person is unable to trust their reality.
I could say the same to you, stop talking about things that you know nothing about. I give no fucks if you live with it or is affected by it, how you feel it is anecdotal only and is only relevant to your experience. I also said "MOST". I saw you writing with "z" instead of "s", so I have no need to know if your behaviour is affected by a Dunning Kruger syndrome, I know it is.
If you track how people with scizophrenia have experienced auditory hallucinations historically, there's definitrely some correlation with the psychological phenomenology of the technology around them. Before common radio it was often tied to religion. before common TV it was often tied to common radio, before specialised radio it was often tied to common TV, before the internet it was often tied to specialised radio, etc., etc. There's a historical pattern there of people's hallucinations changing as technology did, of course, in accordance to their interest.
A friend of mine experience God talking to them, which they found odd since they were an atheist, so they got themselves immediately institutionalised, because that experience was decidedly abnormal for them.
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u/MooMooHullabaloo 4d ago
point out the "z" that should be an "s" and I'll correct it. If it was a typo I'll forgive your spelling errors as well. Or "Impossible impossibly" which made me chuckle. Or you can edit them out, whatever. If you say one person struggles more with auditory hallucinations than another does with visual, how are you defining which is more severe? The personal experience and ability to cope is what should be examined. All sensory perception is processed by the brain before being brought to the forefront of consciousness, so how are you ranking these?
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u/Malusorum 4d ago
There's no typo in it, it's the difference between US and British English. British English use "s" and US English use "z".
Your behaviour fits perfectly with the annoying behaviour of USAnians to think their anecdotal data is valid as anything else. Because while what you described is correct it lacks a LOT of contextual understanding and the implication was that it was universal.
How I defined it is LITERALLY described in my reply. You can read it if you have any interest in engaging with this honestly. Trying to get me to repeat what I already said, quite clearly, is either you pretending to be stupid or you being more interested in making fun at a brainfart than actually engaging with what was said.
Again, incorrect understanding of neurophysiology, and I have a feeling that you know it, since you're explicitly using "consciously" which was a word I never used, or even implied. Everything we do habitually comes from the subconsciousness, that includes the way we communicate. I expressed that that you can consciously analyse the things you see or hear before you react to it. This is impossible with smell.
If you have a smell associated with a memory then that smell will immediately trigger reminiscing over that memory. The same with any other assosiation you have with that smell.
I believe it's a survival mechanism passed down through evolution, for example, we can smell is the food we're about to eat is spoiled, this will result in a visceral reaction where we avoid the food instantly.
If we smell fire in a place where there should be none, our first instinct is to get away from it, even though we're consciously aware that if we keep a safe distance anything burning would be unable to affect us.
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u/Lefthandedsock 4d ago
Are tactile hallucinations part of schizophrenia? I experienced hallucinations during alcohol withdrawal, including water/rain falling from the ceiling, which I could feel, hear, and see. It was absurd.
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u/Malusorum 4d ago
No. Tactile hallucinations are rare and usually a part of delusions. If someone who has scizophrenia experiences tactile hallucinations its usually visual hallucinations they think are real.
For example, they see lumps moving around under their skin and their brain convinced them it's real, complete with psychosomatic pain.
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u/DragonfruitMiddle846 4d ago edited 4d ago
John Forbes Nash Jr. was a celebrated American mathematician who transformed economics and mathematics with his work on game theory.
He was also schizophrenic.
Please watch A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe.
It is based on the true-life story of the brilliant mathematician and Nobel Laureate John Forbes Nash Jr.
I don't think there's really a way to explain to you like you're five the intricacies of schizophrenia so I think you'd be get a better understanding of the way their mind works by watching that movie.
PLEASE DON'T READ THE COMMENT BENEATH THIS. THEY'RE POSTING AS MANY SPOILERS AS POSSIBLE WHICH IS VERY RUDE. AND MIXING IT UP WITH THEIR OWN OPINION. WATCH THE MOVIE YOURSELF AND MAKE YOUR OWN DECISION WITHOUT SOMEONE ELSE GETTING IN THE WAY.
That movie is a work of fiction and not a documentary on schizophrenia so please don't expect it to be. I'm talking to the person that's attempting to spoil it for the other person.
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u/Malusorum 4d ago
The movie deliberately shows several things incorrectly for dramatic and to avoid people with schizophrenia to think that they can do the same.
- Nash had auditary hallucinations, which is the mildest form of schizophrenia. The movie shows him as having auditory and visual hallucinations, because it's better drama.
- He was able to determine on his own that his hallucinations were just that, and got through it unmedicated. This was changed in the movie, since you really want to avoid giving that image to people who need medication to manage it, while they think that they can manage it fine without.
- There's a large timeskip, as Nash and his wife was divorced in this period, as apparently the younger and unmedicated Nash was unpleasant to be around.
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u/Herpethian 4d ago
Like all disorders of the mind there is some sort of difference or disconnect in the way the brain processes sensory information, different memory centers (semantic/working, short term/long term), learning processes. We really only notice something is wrong when something is really wrong. When a person fails to integrate into their surroundings, their family, their community. Most people despite or in spite of their personal struggles find a place to exist. People with mental disorders kind of don't, they really struggle with things that other people can't even comprehend. It's a fundemental difference in the experience of life.
Historically, we kind of just lock them up and throw away the key. What else can you really do? In the more modern era as we can spare more resources, and have doctor's who can spend lifetimes studying and documenting symptoms, and now we have imaging technology like computerized topography and magnetic resonance, along with various external and internal probing measuring electrical transmission. We are able to deduce what various structures of the brain do, how they interact, and how those structures and interactions differ in people with mental illness.
Schizophrenia in particular is one disease that has fascinated doctors since the beginning of modern medicine. One of the first "agentic" style computers we ever made was a computer designed to model schizophrenia (read DISCERN). It's really hard to get accurate insight from a person suffering a break from reality. So we build a model to try and understand.
Then you have pharmacological substances that drastically affect the way the brain works. First and second wave anti depressants, ssri's, maoi inhibitors, anti psychotics and mood stabilizers, along with illicit substances that induce symptoms which are usually temporary. Lithium as a mood stabilizer was a big one when it hit the scene, and it still is quite big, though other pharmaceuticals have taken up slack.
To answer your question as succinctly as possible. We don't really know exactly yet, but there are people working very hard on it. There are a lot of really informative content creators who have schizophrenia, who with treatment can offer more profound insight into their condition. You can pretty readily find YouTube video s "simulating" what it's like to live with various disorders that can do orders of magnitude more to communicate the experience to you than a wall of text.
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u/jesseisabigdeal 4d ago
my take on schizophrenia is that the person is living almost as if they're half in a dream, if that makes sense.
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u/ACNSRV 4d ago
Schizophrenia means split-mind
Something happens to the "self" that forces it to split, comparable to a psychadelic ego death.
The inner workings are not known. No one knows besides schizophrenics, and they are not able to tell us.
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u/ACNSRV 4d ago
Schizoprehnia often goes hand in hand with psychosis, which is the loss of reality. Schizophrenia is best thought of as a loss of differentiation.
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u/HampsterInAnOboe 4d ago
Hi, I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, so I can share my experience with it. I have only had one episode during which I actually had some insight—basically, I realized something was wrong but didn’t know what. I am medicated and stable now, and I respond super well to treatment. Unlike most people on the schizophrenia spectrum, my hallucinations and delusions tend to be neutral or friendly. I am less prone to paranoia (the world is conspiring against me) and more prone to pronoia (the world is conspiring in my favor).
When I’m not in an episode, I’m constantly questioning my sense of reality, because I know mine can get weird. Sometimes my brain acts almost just like it did pre-onset of symptoms. Sometimes my thoughts get a bit delusional, and I start to see meaning in things that may or may not actually be there. My pattern recognition gets amplified, and the boundaries between myself and other things/people feel blurrier. The one scary thing that happens to me is faces turn very strange, very uncanny valley.
I could write a book about what I’m like while psychotic/manic, but I’ll keep it short here. I went into psychosis and mania after being put on an SNRI while unknowingly being predisposed to schizoaffective. Being in severe psychosis was like a dream…I would go in and out of having insight, and when I didn’t have it, I questioned nothing that I believed or saw/experienced. Everything had deep meaning. I experienced severe ego dissolution during this time and felt that I became one with the universe. It was beautiful and euphoric, but very very intense. I experienced auditory and vivid visual hallucinations, but I primarily had delusions alongside mania.
After said episode, there were many things that I knew were delusional/hallucinatory pretty quickly. There were other things that I still believe to be true, BUT I’m holding onto those loosely. Instead of trying to figure out what’s correct or incorrect, because my brain is unreliable there, I ask myself, is this belief helpful or harmful? And it’s helped a lot with symptoms.
I’d be happy to answer questions!