# Front row ticket for the show of my psychotic onset



## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

Hi everybody, I'm new here. I know many of the things I'm going to write about were already tackled in many threads, so If you wish you may jump directly to my symptoms and put a tick on the symptoms you recognize as yours as well (no prizes are up for grubs unfortunately).

Basically my love story with DP/DR started in october. After a prolonged period of insomnia due to external preoccupations, I found myself detached from my life, an alien just landed on Earth.
It was ok. I thought it was a natural defensive mechanism against stress, and I decided to sit back and take some time for me. I was even ok with the fact every time I travelled I thought to be in a dream or movie, which is remarkable.
It was just afterwards that newer and worse symptoms cropped up. 
As far as I understood, some people on this forum have an unbearable fear of schizophrenia and psychosis (being sure of being psychotic is paradoxically a psychosis in itself). Basically I think I'm slowly digging my hole into psychosis, watching my self doing it while maintaining an unbearably high level of self insight. Before giving any opinion, I'd like to admit that many of the pure "thought" symptoms I have started after I read what the symptoms of schizophrenia were.
I'll post you my symptoms here, in order to know whether somebody can relate to it. I will omit more common symptoms of DP such as visual disturbances, tinnitus, lack of emotions etc.

- I started misunderstanding words, both written and oral ("Bat" for "hat", but even more complex such as, for instance, "concussion" for "passion"). I have to reread sentences many times before getting the whole sense. This happens as well when I'm listening to a conversation.
- I started seeing faces everywhere. Like a door and two windows are enough for me to depict a face on it. It happens with every possible object. Sometimes even three simple dots are enough.
- I sometimes might misinterpret a sound for a voice cry (I underline cry and not verbal speech) and viceversa.
- Thoughts get verbalized in my mind. I can almost feel my tongue moving while I think.
- Entire sentences, no matter if said by me or by others, get automatically repeated in my mind.
- Incredibly high levels of paranoia. The first thought, no matter what another persons does, is that it might be something related to me. Like, if I see somebody walking in my direction the first thought is "he will ask you something". Of course I immidiately recognize it's stupid, but still this happens to me every bloody minute.
- Patterns of the objects and lights get stuck on my cornea for ages. If I close my eyes I can still see the form of the objects present in the room for several seconds. Yesterday night I had a fast glare on a lamp. 5 minutes later, when I walked in a dark room, the after image of the light was still in my eyes.
- My bottom down reflexes are completely gone. I was on an airplane the other day watching a movie. The flight attendant started to speak and my reflex was to press pause on the pc thinking that by doing so it will be the flight attendant to shut up. It was a reflex and not a thought-through thought but still, how ridiculous is that? This sort of loose cause-effect understanding happens to me from time to time.
- It seems that there is an overlap between my imagination and reality. To make an example, I was entering a shop and in the corner of my eye there was a guy which I thought was dressed in medieval clothes. At a second glance he had normal clothes. This sort of things is starting to happen with increased frequency. If I don't look at something directly, it will be my mind to imaginatively figure out what is happening.
- speaking is becoming a nightmare. I started doing some misspelling mistakes. The thing is words seem so foreign to me. It's like speaking a foreign language. Not even mentioning the fact I hear myself with some sort of gap in terms of time between my process of thinking what to say and the actual talking. It's like talking to my grandma on the phone on the other side of the atlantic and hearing your voice back.
- sometimes I get this really weird and unbearable sensation that everything has been made by some external force. It's really hard to explain. I'm sure that if somebody among you has this there's no need in further explanation.
- Basically it's all. Yeah, and also there is an alien always following me and shouting against me. Naah, kidding.

(it's very interesting to notice that much of the symptoms listed above match with autism as well).

I don't seek reassurance here.
I would just like to know whether there's somebody who experienced this sort of things and if he/she managed to overcome it in some way (possibly without meds). I don't care about milder symptoms of DP, I might even find them an advantage in certain situations. But gosh, I want at least some of my normal thought process back.
Please don't say "if you were crazy you'd be the last to know it" because I don't possibly think it's true. Needless to be said, I don't think I'm psychotic now, I'm just pointing out that many of the symptoms I described match with the prodromal stages of schizophrenia, and if the latter is detected early, than the worse might be fended off. I went to some shrinks and they agreed it was anxiety. How stupid.
The thing is, I'm attending a very difficult master right now and if I'm not going to manage this nightmare in a month time I think I'd not possibly be able to continue to study (I'm doing simultaneous interpreting so you might grasp how difficult it is to listen and talk at the same time if you think you're psychotic). Beside this, no one of my friends had noticed anything at all odd about me. One even said he finds me more chilled out (???).

Thanks very much in advance.

(If there are any misspelling mistakes please bear in mind I'm not of English mother tongue).


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## insaticiable (Feb 23, 2010)

Due to poor concentration at the moment, I wasn't able to focus on your entire post, but I WILL say that I could definitely relate to the first symptom you mentioned which was the ''misunderstanding words'' one. I do that ALL THE TIME. It's really stupid....I'll be on Facebook, and think someone posted something, but I do a double take and realize it was someone else entirely with a similar name/spelling. Stuff like that.

And your English is perfect!


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## Chelsea (Aug 10, 2011)

i have an issue where my inner monologue is in english, while it's not my first language .. it's so frustrating


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## Aridity (Jun 12, 2011)

Pff,finally a post that exactly matches my symptoms. That's why I'm so scared to get nuts aswell. ESPECIALLY that inner voice talking with me,with everything I do.. Just like now,I'm typing and I'm hearing a voice inside my head saying it aswell. Just trying to duplicate what I'm doing.. DP Psychosis Schizphrenia it's all the fucking same,we're just getting nuts.


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## kate_edwin (Aug 9, 2009)

You don't have psychosis, all of those symptoms are very common with dissociation


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

Thanks for your answers, but what I was asking was not reassurance about being psychotic or not, but rather IF somebody among you had experienced the weirdest symptoms I posted and if he managed to overcome them actively or if they naturally faded away. Because here I'm noticing that my symptoms get worse day after day and that newer and more unpleasant symptoms crop up. Thx


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## kate_edwin (Aug 9, 2009)

Recovery doesn't seem to be dependant on how weird your symptoms seem to be, it seems to depend on 1 if your dp is the longer or shorter kind and 2 if you have a dp disorder or have dp as a symptom of another disorder


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## mcalohan (Dec 30, 2011)

Holy shit! I ain't never hear of anyone besides me that had objects and lights leave that image behind. I plat with it nonstop especially when driving. I put the image in each lane of the road I'm on. Like a geometric pattern with the leftover image. Wow! That just blew my mind man. Holy shit, so many things I thought I was alone dealing with and the people on this forum were always there. Love you guys. Thank God for this forum.

Ps you're amongst friends here.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

It has been a disappointing show since you don't sound like you are on the verge of psychosis, if you had proceeded with, "I received a message today informing me that I am the son of God and am here to collect your cyber-souls to power my spaceship" I would have been more impressed, do you do refunds?


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## Mlags45 (Apr 30, 2010)

I have pretty much all of those symptoms, except unlike you, I really do have a little alien following me around !


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## kate_edwin (Aug 9, 2009)

Having shapes or lights leave images behind is a perfectly normal usually healthy neurological left over. If you put a white circle on a black piece of paper, wih a white piece of paper next to it, state at the circle for 30 seconds and then look at the white paper you'll see a black circle. Anda similar thing happens say if you look intimate bright light, it leave an after image because of how the nerve cells in your eyes work


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

I wanted to leave out the visual after images because I knew many of you have it, and it's the one that bothers me the least.

Tonight has been a nightmare. My head seemed just on the verge of exploding. Sounds and words and thoughts in my head were so *loud* that I could almost hear them as from an external source.

Basically I'm quite convinced that these should not be regarded as symptoms of depersonalization but as of something else, therefore building an overwhelming comorbidity.

I mean, no one among you have sentences repeated in your head as a parrot. I almost starting seeing patterns in things. Everything resembles something else. It's a nightmare. It's like a really bad weed trip that is lasting way too much.

I will do refunds only once I'll donate my brain for research on cyberchondric people


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

Mlags45 said:


> I have pretty much all of those symptoms, except unlike you, I really do have a little alien following me around !


Is that a joke?


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## GrahamCracker (Jan 27, 2012)

Hey, becoming psychotic is literally THE single biggest fear rooting in my DP/DR, anxiety, depression, and everything else ailing my mind. I know it always helps to hear somebody else say this is their fear as well, so here ya go. I'm fearing this shit too man! Its like I know I am not crazy, but an evil little idea lodged inside my brain keeps coming back up as if its just trying to aggravate me, and it saying all this weird shit just to fuck with me. And the worst part is, is i buy it a lot of the time and dive head first into anxiety attacks and DR/DP. Fuuuuuuuuuuck this shit it is literally ruining my life. For the past 4 months, not letting up one bit.


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

GrahamCracker said:


> Hey, becoming psychotic is literally THE single biggest fear rooting in my DP/DR, anxiety, depression, and everything else ailing my mind. I know it always helps to hear somebody else say this is their fear as well, so here ya go. I'm fearing this shit too man! Its like I know I am not crazy, but an evil little idea lodged inside my brain keeps coming back up as if its just trying to aggravate me, and it saying all this weird shit just to fuck with me. And the worst part is, is i buy it a lot of the time and dive head first into anxiety attacks and DR/DP. Fuuuuuuuuuuck this shit it is literally ruining my life. For the past 4 months, not letting up one bit.


The things is I do really think I'm in the prodromal stage. I keep seeing faces everywhere. Literally. I can't even distract myself because if I go for walk my brain will see significance in every bloody detail. Not even mentioning the fact I can't even control my thoughts anymore; I have a 24/7 dialogue with my self in my mind, I almost feel split. It's as if there were a voice inside my mind (which I know it's me thinking) commenting stuff like "oh, here goes the bus" and shit alike. The thing is nobody notice it: everyone thinks I'm doing fine. Do you have problems sleeping? This is my worse fear. When I don't get enough sleep every bloody sound seems threatening to me. So annoying. I can't realize how am I still able to have a consistent social life. People are the only thing that keeps me away from madness.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

dextobra said:


> The things is I do really think I'm in the prodromal stage. I keep seeing faces everywhere. Literally. I can't even distract myself because if I go for walk my brain will see significance in every bloody detail. Not even mentioning the fact I can't even control my thoughts anymore; I have a 24/7 dialogue with my self in my mind, I almost feel split. It's as if there were a voice inside my mind (which I know it's me thinking) commenting stuff like "oh, here goes the bus" and shit alike. The thing is nobody notice it: everyone thinks I'm doing fine. Do you have problems sleeping? This is my worse fear. When I don't get enough sleep every bloody sound seems threatening to me. So annoying. I can't realize how am I still able to have a consistent social life. People are the only thing that keeps me away from madness.


My GP told me that schizophrenics are brought in by concerned family members, he said he has never had someone come in with a fear of going mad/developing psychosis who has actually gone on to develop it. I don't know exactly how long he's been a Doctor but he's in his mid 50s at least. I'm not saying it has never happened, nor was he, but at most it will be an incredibly rare event.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

dextobra said:


> The things is I do really think I'm in the prodromal stage.* I keep seeing faces everywhere.* Literally. I can't even distract myself because if I go for walk my brain will see significance in every bloody detail. Not even mentioning the fact I can't even control my thoughts anymore; I have a 24/7 dialogue with my self in my mind, I almost feel split. It's as if there were a voice inside my mind (which I know it's me thinking) commenting stuff like "oh, here goes the bus" and shit alike. The thing is nobody notice it: everyone thinks I'm doing fine. Do you have problems sleeping? This is my worse fear. When I don't get enough sleep every bloody sound seems threatening to me. So annoying. I can't realize how am I still able to have a consistent social life. People are the only thing that keeps me away from madness.


I can relate to that by the way. I sometimes see odd shapes, including faces, when I look at things, again I think this is just a result of our distorted perception of things around us, in the same vein as macropsia and micropsia. So either we are both going mad or neither of us is, I'd bet on the latter


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

toshibatelly said:


> My GP told me that schizophrenics are brought in by concerned family members, he said he has never had someone come in with a fear of going mad/developing psychosis who has actually gone on to develop it. I don't know exactly how long he's been a Doctor but he's in his mid 50s at least. I'm not saying it has never happened, nor was he, but at most it will be an incredibly rare event.


I believed that as well till yesterday, when I came to talk with this guy who basically started from DP/DR and then went on in developing psychosis, being fully aware his beliefs were delusional and being aware his hallucinations were not real. It scared me to death, but I think it's fair enough to share such a case story. After examining such a case, I think this was in fact an exceptional _una tantum_ where positive symptoms of psychosis were attenuated by the profound self-insight given by depersonalization.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

dextobra said:


> I believed that as well till yesterday, *when I came to talk with this guy who basically started from DP/DR and then went on in developing psychosis, *


If I were you I would steer clear of anything about psychosis, or whatever your particular fear may be. Ask anyone who has feared developing psychosis and, to a man, they will all say that they regret reading about symptoms and worst case scenarios. For now your problem is DP and, it seems, anxiety, so focus on them not on what may happen (you could be developing a brain tumour, you could have MS etcetera, the possible explanations for any given symptom are myriad, and they are more than enough to keep you worried if you dwell on them).



dextobra said:


> *
> being fully aware his beliefs were delusional and being aware his hallucinations were not real*. It scared me to death, but I think it's fair enough to share such a case story. After examining such a case, I think this was in fact an exceptional _una tantum_ where positive symptoms of psychosis were attenuated by the profound self-insight given by depersonalization.


That isn't psychosis, it is a pseudo hallucination, aka a non-psychotic hallucination, which is a symptom of certain forms of dissociation, not of psychosis. Psychotic people don't know that these unprompted perceptions are unreal, if they did then they would not be psychotic. A delusion is a 'fixed, unmovable belief', if you question it then you are not delusional.


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

toshibatelly said:


> If I were you I would steer clear of anything about psychosis, or whatever your particular fear may be. Ask anyone who has feared developing psychosis and, to a man, they will all say that they regret reading about symptoms and worst case scenarios. For now your problem is DP and, it seems, anxiety, so focus on them not on what may happen (you could be developing a brain tumour, you could have MS etcetera, the possible explanations for any given symptom are myriad, and they are more than enough to keep you worried if you dwell on them).
> 
> That isn't psychosis, it is a pseudo hallucination, aka a non-psychotic hallucination, which is a symptom of certain forms of dissociation, not of psychosis. Psychotic people don't know that these unprompted perceptions are unreal, if they did then they would not be psychotic. A delusion is a 'fixed, unmovable belief', if you question it then you are not delusional.


Not sure whether hearing external voices might count as a symptom of dissociation. Still, you're right on the first quote, even if checking & rechecking is some sort of compulsion.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

dextobra said:


> Not sure whether hearing external voices might count as a symptom of dissociation. Still, you're right on the first quote, even if checking & rechecking is some sort of compulsion.


People get bogged down in clinical nomenclature, most psychiatric disorders are just constructs thought up by psychologists to help clinical professionals deal with the various types of 'abnormal behaviour', for this reason it is easier to consider psychosis as a state in which the sufferer is anosognosic (i.e. unaware that they have any sort of problem) and out of touch with reality, if you are just the latter then you don't really belong in the same category as people who have both problems. I am not saying that hallucinations of any sort, whether the person experiencing them knows that they are not real or not, are healthy or should be ignored, I am however saying that truly psychotic people do not know that they have a problem. If there were a spectrum of psychosis I wouldn't be surprised if DP sufferers were closer to full-blown psychosis than people without DP, but we are still a lot closer to normal people than we are to schizophrenics.


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## forestx5 (Aug 29, 2008)

dextobra said:


> I believed that as well till yesterday, when I came to talk with this guy who basically started from DP/DR and then went on in developing psychosis, being fully aware his beliefs were delusional and being aware his hallucinations were not real. It scared me to death, but I think it's fair enough to share such a case story. After examining such a case, I think this was in fact an exceptional _una tantum_ where positive symptoms of psychosis were attenuated by the profound self-insight given by depersonalization.


Agnosia is a neurological term for difficulty in processing visual images and/or auditory words, though there is nothing wrong with the sense organs. Sometimes these issues can be related to underlying brain pathology. (temporal lobe epilepsy, for example). Have you ever had an EEG or MRI? BPD has a high comorbidity with TLE.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

forestx5 said:


> Agnosia is a neurological term for difficulty in processing visual images and/or auditory words, though there is nothing wrong with the sense organs. Sometimes these issues can be related to underlying brain pathology. (temporal lobe epilepsy, for example). Have you ever had an EEG or MRI? BPD has a high comorbidity with TLE.


I've noticed you mention temporal lobe epilepsy quite a lot, is it a common explanation for chronic DP or is it just that you have it?


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

forestx5 said:


> Agnosia is a neurological term for difficulty in processing visual images and/or auditory words, though there is nothing wrong with the sense organs. Sometimes these issues can be related to underlying brain pathology. (temporal lobe epilepsy, for example). Have you ever had an EEG or MRI? BPD has a high comorbidity with TLE.


By BPD you mean bipolar disorder? the only thing I'm sure about I'm not bipolar, I don't have any mood swings and neither maniac episodes. I thought about TLE in actual fact, since it has been seen as related to sensory misperceptions (e.g. things seem unreal, changes in perceptions of taste, smell etc). The things is, here in Italy is very quite difficult to have an EEG or MRI prescribed by your PG since you're supposed to be truly a desperate case. The same applies to psychiatric medication.


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## forestx5 (Aug 29, 2008)

toshibatelly said:


> I've noticed you mention temporal lobe epilepsy quite a lot, is it a common explanation for chronic DP or is it just that you have it?


No, I wouldn't say it is a common explanation. But, it could be one explanation. I'm not sure I have epilepsy. I recently had an EEG which showed significantly abnormal slow waves in my temporal lobe. I think that is a signature symptom of a history of epilesy. But the history that I am aware of is one temporal lobe epileptic seizure I had as a teen, and it was shortly after smoking cannabis for the 1st time. I read a recent abstract of a case of TLE seizure and they believed what happened in that case was so unique, that it was the 1st time it was being reported in medical literature. Well, I hate to tell them that it happened to me 40 years ago. (metamorphopsia (micropsia) during epileptic discharge). Basically that means the epileptic shock engulfed the visual pathways and caused severe distortion of vision during the discharge. (seeing things zoom away and becoming very small as if at the far end of a tunnel). It was pretty exciting stuff, but I couldn't appreciate it much because I was gasping for bits of consciousness while it was happening. When it was over, my brain was baked. I totally lost my sense of self for some time. DP and DR and all of the other stuff that people relate to. I probably have had hundreds (thousands?) of absence seizures since, but they don't bother me because they don't alter my consciousness at all. It is just like losing your train of thought, and staring off for a second or two. Been driving 40 years, and never had an accident.
But, the links section contains an article which says it is all related. (depression, anxiety and symptoms of TLE and other psych symptoms). See "The wounds that time won't heal" in the links section.
So, when I see someone present with symptoms that could be focal temporal lobe epilepsy in origin, I like to point it out. It was something I lived with for 40 years, without figuring it out. Medical people were no help at all in helping me understand what was happening. So, I had to figure it out myself and order my own diagnostics which confirmed it. If I can save someone 40 years of wandering like Moses, I'm happy to do so.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

dextobra said:


> Hi everybody, I'm new here. I know many of the things I'm going to write about were already tackled in many threads, so If you wish you may jump directly to my symptoms and put a tick on the symptoms you recognize as yours as well (no prizes are up for grubs unfortunately).
> 
> Basically my love story with DP/DR started in october. After a prolonged period of insomnia due to external preoccupations, I found myself detached from my life, an alien just landed on Earth.
> It was ok. I thought it was a natural defensive mechanism against stress, and I decided to sit back and take some time for me. I was even ok with the fact every time I travelled I thought to be in a dream or movie, which is remarkable.
> ...


Overlooked this part of the OP's post last time I replied, interestingly I believe this paradox is one the things Thomas Szasz pointed to in his seminal text when showing the flaws in psychiatry, The Myth of Mental Illness; if you have a delusion that you are mad and delusions=madness, there is a paradox.


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## dextobra (Jan 19, 2012)

toshibatelly said:


> Overlooked this part of the OP's post last time I replied, interestingly I believe this paradox is one the things Thomas Szasz pointed to in his seminal text when showing the flaws in psychiatry, The Myth of Mental Illness; if you have a delusion that you are mad and delusions=madness, there is a paradox.


Do you advise me to read it? It really seems I'm on the end of the line. Intrusive thoughts are getting so strong that I can barely function.


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## toshibatelly (Sep 13, 2011)

dextobra said:


> Do you advise me to read it? It really seems I'm on the end of the line. Intrusive thoughts are getting so strong that I can barely function.


It is definitely worth reading, but it is much more about the philosophy of mental abnormality than the practicalities of being mentally ill, or 'abnormal'.


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## Worriedsick (Oct 28, 2012)

How are you now?


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