6 ms·

Don't do it without supervision, I nearly jumped 100m because the voices in my head convinced me I'm a Star Trek captain and will be transported to my bridge mi

Don't do it without supervision, I nearly jumped 100m because the voices in my head convinced me I'm a Star Trek captain and will be transported to my bridge mid-jump. Never do anything to confirm a paranoid person's psychosis unless you have total control of the situation and a psychiatrist supervision. Never try to peace them by saying unrealistic things, you never know what's going on in their head that you just confirmed. My GF tried to reassure me by saying she will be with me in 15 minutes, but she was 100km away and I thought "okay well that makes all of this real, let's do it".

rightbyte 2y ago
I guess she was calling for help, so the strategy of postponing wasn't that bad even in retroperspective? Or do you mean you called her becouse you kinda knew you were mad and wanted her to also say it?
- seszett 2y ago
  Since she was 100 km away, it didn't make sense she was going to be there in 15 minutes by normal means, so it meant either she was lying or OP was actually going to be teleported. OP apparently chose to believe the latter, since it confirmed their current delusion. So it didn't postpone anything, maybe if she had given a realistic ETA (or just said "I'm coming, wait for me") it would have worked though. It's very difficult to know what to do in these situations though, I've been on the side of that girlfriend and you just can't have a full understand of what's going on in the head of the other person, everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > I've been on the side of that girlfriend and you just can't have a full understand of what's going on in the head of the other person, everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines. The problem here in my opinion is rather that most people are used to lie, manipulate and betray (in society this behaviour is actually euphemized via the term "white lies"). In this particular case, such a behaviour does have consequences. See the example of this thread where the girlfriend claims she will be there in 15 minutes, despite being 100 km away. Since most people are not used to being honest (or, I assume, actually never were), they give similar descriptions of their difficulties when their lies do have consequences like your "everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines".
    - seszett 2y ago
      It's a bit more complicated than just "not being used being honest". Being 100% honest and not hiding anything doesn't work either, so it's a constant balancing act between telling them the truth, reassuring them and sometimes indeed shielding from the harsh truth by avoiding from mentioning something, which I do believe is different from lying. Lying is out of question though and I think the people who resort to that do it out of laziness more than anything, or maybe well-intentioned wishful thinking in the case of the aforementioned girlfriend. But this is always harmful, not just with psychotic persons.
      - tdeck 2y ago
        It's interesting how OP conflates telling white lies with "betraying" - kinda feels like there are some issues to work through there.
        aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        > It's interesting how OP conflates telling white lies with "betraying" This statement exactly proves my point concerning how dishonest and betraying most people are.
        genrilz 2y ago
        I think what GP is saying is that white lies are not necessarily betrayal. Betrayal is when someone violates your trust somehow. [0] You can see some examples of lying in the wiktionary definition I linked. (see the last two definitions) However, both these definitions involve the lie causing some negative consequence. A white lie is specifically a lie done to spare someones feelings. It's possible that the white lie can cause negative consequences, but that is not always the case. To take a concrete example, consider the classic white lie "no, that dress doesn't make you look fat". It is possible that this could cause someone to wear an ugly dress, but the person probably looked at themselves in the mirror too, so they probably will end up choosing a dress that doesn't look awful. In this case there is no negative consequence associated with the white lie unless person wearing the dress is unable to accurately self assess. (which is something the speaker hopefully would know about the dress wearer) You could define being lied to as a violation of your trust. In particular, I think autistic people often can't pick up on social cues, and so rely more on people speaking the truth to them. However, that doesn't mean white lies are betrayal for everyone. If you in particular feel like white lies are betrayal, you might want to tell people in your life that so they know it's important to you. They won't automatically know and it isn't automatically important to them. [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/betray#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/betray#English
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    This ruins my LSD trips. Instead of enjoying the high I end up being scared that I might do something stupid that sober me will later regret.
    - naming_the_user 2y ago
      This is the reason that I've only ever done LSD once. It wasn't especially anxiety inducing for the most part and was quite fun, but I feel as if I just got lucky and that in a slightly different circumstance I could just have convinced myself that my apartment window was in fact the front door and fall out of it.
    - zmgsabst 2y ago
      Out of curiosity, what is it you imagine would go wrong?
      - upghost 2y ago
        I'm going to assume "selecting a username" :D
        DiggyJohnson 2y ago
        lmfao
      - anal_reactor 2y ago
        I don't know, I can try cooking something and actually making a fire
- throw4950sh06 2y ago
  Retrospectively, it was a total blunder - not truly hers since she couldn't be expected to act perfectly in that situation, but it's definitely something we've discussed as the TOP ONE thing to never do and always mention it to others when discussing situations like that. It didn't postpone anything. I called her because I knew I'm going mad and wanted to confirm if it's true or not. Of course I didn't word it this way, though. What she said confirmed the delusion, nearly got me killed and even though I didn't jump, I got lost in the city, hurt myself, nearly hurt others, until someone called the police few hours later.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Ok I see. It is really hard for me to relate to, the feeling of believing I am Piccard. Like do you want logical reasoning? 'I am Gandalf' 'So where is your beard?' Or just reassurence? 'I am Gandalf' 'No you are not'
    - throw4950sh06 2y ago
      You're reading into it too much. You don't think you're actually Picard or Kirk, you think the world around you is very similar to the stories, but not actually the story itself. In my case, it went like this: Whoa, my crew is telepathically beaming me instructions and we are right in the middle of a mission. Where the fuck am I? Crew, give me my command protocols. Oh, I command a starship? Sure, sorry, the heat around here, I might be hit with something, I don't remember, help me! Oh, you're going to transport me? Sure, go ahead, let me just run away from this commando waiting on the hallway using the only other exit - the window... Now it makes sense that I'm a starship captain, why would a commando be waiting there otherwise... (Your mileage may vary)
MaxikCZ 2y ago
I find this fascinating. Could you please elaborate about anything youd find relevant/interesting about how such delusions come about without being obvious delusions? I cant imagine actually believing I am Star Trek captain, but I sure can believe someone else do. I just cant imagine how that must feel/look like inside that someones head.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hedgew 2y ago
  A hallmark feature of psychosis and schizophrenia is lack of "insight", meaning that the patient can't recognize that they are having delusions, nor the fact that they are suffering from the illness. The belief that you are a Star Trek captain feels as real as knocking on wood. The illnesses simultaneously cause hallucinations that enforce delusions, and twist your belief systems so you pick up on the most insignificant details to support your delusions. Almost all patients end up believing that they are god, Star Trek captains, or stalked by a government agency, because this best explains their (hallucinatory) experiences. For example, if you hear voices in your head, the patient can't usually understand it as an illness, but has to explain it in some other way, so you end up with CIA/god/whatever beaming voices into your head.
  - shaky-carrousel 2y ago
    Seems like when you are dreaming, where the part of you that can assess if something is realistic or not is shut down.
    - zackmorris 2y ago
      I've had sleep walking episodes for most of my life since I was about 5, probably driven by sleep apnea. I've also had experiences that are as real as this waking life while meditating and especially back in my party days. The real awakening for me was when it finally clicked that we are always hallucinating everything. The mind separates our conscious awareness from the 3D world, like in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. So what we see and hear isn't what's objectively real, but what our mind interprets it to be. Even though everything is real in our subjective reality, based on the contextual state that we've built up from the sum of our experiences. Some examples of mass psychosis: * Many people don't know that their boss charges more than they're paid in wages. * Many people work administrative and loss-leader jobs and perceive their work as a cost on the organization (programmers, engineers, most people outside of sales). * Many people think that those around them are more knowledgeable and/or experienced than they are, and don't realize that their manager or boss is mostly winging it based on a probabilistic estimate of the best course of action. * Many people think that they are more knowledgeable and/or experienced than everyone around them (egocentric people working in IT/tech, doctors, lawyers, billionaires, etc). * Many people think that everyone else shares their spiritual worldview, everything from a man in the sky to we're all one in universal consciousness. * Many people think that others don't share their spiritual worldview (Christianity and Judaism may not see parents giving up their meals for their starving children in a bombed out Islamic community). How can we have civilized society, including free and fair elections, under such mass hysteria? When people have so many delusions that politicians can pit half the population against the other merely be selecting sides from a short list of wedge issues? My personal feeling is that western culture can't really endure spiritual awakening. And that we are seeing the breakdown of western society under late-stage capitalism with societal psychoses like much of the working class having to pay 50% of its income in rents. And corporate-greed-driven inflation rising unchecked without updated tax brackets for progressive taxation. And social safety nets being shredded to create a desperate working class dependent on service work while corporate profits are at an all-time high. I just wish I knew how to wake up from The Matrix, whatever all this is. The points above have concrete solutions like a national tenant union, enforcing antitrust laws, taxing unrealized stock gains the same way as property taxes on homes, etc. But those obvious solutions assume a level of lucidity that will probably never exist while the powers that be lobby the government and engage in regulatory capture while handing out million dollar checks at random to voters who selected the candidate that promises to cut rich people's taxes. All to keep most people worried about the price of groceries and immigrants stealing their jobs. But hey, I'm the delusional one. Edit: the best answer I've come up with so far, after suffering for a lifetime under self-imposed limitations driven by many of the psychoses above, was to quiet my internal monologue entirely, acknowledging each thought but not indulging it, just being consciously aware of the process of living, without attachment or expectation on outcomes.
Daub 2y ago
Prtty much echoing what you said, in this video Cecila McGough, who has schizophrenia, talks about how important it is that people don't do anything to confirm her hallucinations. https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0?si=GT6zn_Sytcfw011H https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0?si=GT6zn_Sytcfw011H
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
  Here's that YouTube link without the tracking parameter linking you to everyone who clicks it: https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0 https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0
  - Daub 2y ago
    Thanks
  - cutemonster 2y ago
    I was wondering why she wasn't looking at the camera or interviewer. Turns out the reason was that she saw an hallucination in that direction. So she looked away, she explains, in a follow up video 5 years later: (I found via the YouTube comments section) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Wzb6esnpU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Wzb6esnpU Here she's much better, and explains how she got better (in the beginning of the video)
  - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
    I like how rational she is with not talking about the hallucinations. What she describes is exactly what would happen with me (looking in the direction of the hallucination, together with the whole room).
- Abimelex 2y ago
  That's good to know, but it leaves you without many options, since all the experts also suggest not to confront them with reality. So how to interact with somebody who as a psychosis and sees a complete twisted reality?
  - 2y ago
rendx 2y ago
Very important point, thank you for raising it. Mental Health First Aid has good manuals for first aid. Here's the one for psychoses: https://www.mhfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/MHFA_Psychosis-Guidelines.pdf https://www.mhfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/MHFA_Psyc... We were shown this video in our MHFA certification class for discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7cMXce5j40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7cMXce5j40
thrw5298u49 2y ago
Without supervision? What good is that? This is a disease that breaks people. Those who would convince themselves to see such symptoms in a positive light are doing nothing but damage.
- throw4950sh06 2y ago
  Yes. What I mean is that doing it can have unintended consequences - so don't do it if you don't know what you're doing and/or not fully in control of the situation.

rightbyte 2y ago

I guess she was calling for help, so the strategy of postponing wasn't that bad even in retroperspective? Or do you mean you called her becouse you kinda knew you were mad and wanted her to also say it?

seszett 2y ago
Since she was 100 km away, it didn't make sense she was going to be there in 15 minutes by normal means, so it meant either she was lying or OP was actually going to be teleported. OP apparently chose to believe the latter, since it confirmed their current delusion. So it didn't postpone anything, maybe if she had given a realistic ETA (or just said "I'm coming, wait for me") it would have worked though. It's very difficult to know what to do in these situations though, I've been on the side of that girlfriend and you just can't have a full understand of what's going on in the head of the other person, everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > I've been on the side of that girlfriend and you just can't have a full understand of what's going on in the head of the other person, everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines. The problem here in my opinion is rather that most people are used to lie, manipulate and betray (in society this behaviour is actually euphemized via the term "white lies"). In this particular case, such a behaviour does have consequences. See the example of this thread where the girlfriend claims she will be there in 15 minutes, despite being 100 km away. Since most people are not used to being honest (or, I assume, actually never were), they give similar descriptions of their difficulties when their lies do have consequences like your "everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines".
  - seszett 2y ago
    It's a bit more complicated than just "not being used being honest". Being 100% honest and not hiding anything doesn't work either, so it's a constant balancing act between telling them the truth, reassuring them and sometimes indeed shielding from the harsh truth by avoiding from mentioning something, which I do believe is different from lying. Lying is out of question though and I think the people who resort to that do it out of laziness more than anything, or maybe well-intentioned wishful thinking in the case of the aforementioned girlfriend. But this is always harmful, not just with psychotic persons.
    - tdeck 2y ago
      It's interesting how OP conflates telling white lies with "betraying" - kinda feels like there are some issues to work through there.
      - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        > It's interesting how OP conflates telling white lies with "betraying" This statement exactly proves my point concerning how dishonest and betraying most people are.
        genrilz 2y ago
        I think what GP is saying is that white lies are not necessarily betrayal. Betrayal is when someone violates your trust somehow. [0] You can see some examples of lying in the wiktionary definition I linked. (see the last two definitions) However, both these definitions involve the lie causing some negative consequence. A white lie is specifically a lie done to spare someones feelings. It's possible that the white lie can cause negative consequences, but that is not always the case. To take a concrete example, consider the classic white lie "no, that dress doesn't make you look fat". It is possible that this could cause someone to wear an ugly dress, but the person probably looked at themselves in the mirror too, so they probably will end up choosing a dress that doesn't look awful. In this case there is no negative consequence associated with the white lie unless person wearing the dress is unable to accurately self assess. (which is something the speaker hopefully would know about the dress wearer) You could define being lied to as a violation of your trust. In particular, I think autistic people often can't pick up on social cues, and so rely more on people speaking the truth to them. However, that doesn't mean white lies are betrayal for everyone. If you in particular feel like white lies are betrayal, you might want to tell people in your life that so they know it's important to you. They won't automatically know and it isn't automatically important to them. [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/betray#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/betray#English
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  This ruins my LSD trips. Instead of enjoying the high I end up being scared that I might do something stupid that sober me will later regret.
  - naming_the_user 2y ago
    This is the reason that I've only ever done LSD once. It wasn't especially anxiety inducing for the most part and was quite fun, but I feel as if I just got lucky and that in a slightly different circumstance I could just have convinced myself that my apartment window was in fact the front door and fall out of it.
  - zmgsabst 2y ago
    Out of curiosity, what is it you imagine would go wrong?
    - upghost 2y ago
      I'm going to assume "selecting a username" :D
      - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
        lmfao
    - anal_reactor 2y ago
      I don't know, I can try cooking something and actually making a fire
throw4950sh06 2y ago
Retrospectively, it was a total blunder - not truly hers since she couldn't be expected to act perfectly in that situation, but it's definitely something we've discussed as the TOP ONE thing to never do and always mention it to others when discussing situations like that. It didn't postpone anything. I called her because I knew I'm going mad and wanted to confirm if it's true or not. Of course I didn't word it this way, though. What she said confirmed the delusion, nearly got me killed and even though I didn't jump, I got lost in the city, hurt myself, nearly hurt others, until someone called the police few hours later.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Ok I see. It is really hard for me to relate to, the feeling of believing I am Piccard. Like do you want logical reasoning? 'I am Gandalf' 'So where is your beard?' Or just reassurence? 'I am Gandalf' 'No you are not'
  - throw4950sh06 2y ago
    You're reading into it too much. You don't think you're actually Picard or Kirk, you think the world around you is very similar to the stories, but not actually the story itself. In my case, it went like this: Whoa, my crew is telepathically beaming me instructions and we are right in the middle of a mission. Where the fuck am I? Crew, give me my command protocols. Oh, I command a starship? Sure, sorry, the heat around here, I might be hit with something, I don't remember, help me! Oh, you're going to transport me? Sure, go ahead, let me just run away from this commando waiting on the hallway using the only other exit - the window... Now it makes sense that I'm a starship captain, why would a commando be waiting there otherwise... (Your mileage may vary)

MaxikCZ 2y ago

I find this fascinating. Could you please elaborate about anything youd find relevant/interesting about how such delusions come about without being obvious delusions? I cant imagine actually believing I am Star Trek captain, but I sure can believe someone else do. I just cant imagine how that must feel/look like inside that someones head.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hedgew 2y ago
A hallmark feature of psychosis and schizophrenia is lack of "insight", meaning that the patient can't recognize that they are having delusions, nor the fact that they are suffering from the illness. The belief that you are a Star Trek captain feels as real as knocking on wood. The illnesses simultaneously cause hallucinations that enforce delusions, and twist your belief systems so you pick up on the most insignificant details to support your delusions. Almost all patients end up believing that they are god, Star Trek captains, or stalked by a government agency, because this best explains their (hallucinatory) experiences. For example, if you hear voices in your head, the patient can't usually understand it as an illness, but has to explain it in some other way, so you end up with CIA/god/whatever beaming voices into your head.
- shaky-carrousel 2y ago
  Seems like when you are dreaming, where the part of you that can assess if something is realistic or not is shut down.
  - zackmorris 2y ago
    I've had sleep walking episodes for most of my life since I was about 5, probably driven by sleep apnea. I've also had experiences that are as real as this waking life while meditating and especially back in my party days. The real awakening for me was when it finally clicked that we are always hallucinating everything. The mind separates our conscious awareness from the 3D world, like in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. So what we see and hear isn't what's objectively real, but what our mind interprets it to be. Even though everything is real in our subjective reality, based on the contextual state that we've built up from the sum of our experiences. Some examples of mass psychosis: * Many people don't know that their boss charges more than they're paid in wages. * Many people work administrative and loss-leader jobs and perceive their work as a cost on the organization (programmers, engineers, most people outside of sales). * Many people think that those around them are more knowledgeable and/or experienced than they are, and don't realize that their manager or boss is mostly winging it based on a probabilistic estimate of the best course of action. * Many people think that they are more knowledgeable and/or experienced than everyone around them (egocentric people working in IT/tech, doctors, lawyers, billionaires, etc). * Many people think that everyone else shares their spiritual worldview, everything from a man in the sky to we're all one in universal consciousness. * Many people think that others don't share their spiritual worldview (Christianity and Judaism may not see parents giving up their meals for their starving children in a bombed out Islamic community). How can we have civilized society, including free and fair elections, under such mass hysteria? When people have so many delusions that politicians can pit half the population against the other merely be selecting sides from a short list of wedge issues? My personal feeling is that western culture can't really endure spiritual awakening. And that we are seeing the breakdown of western society under late-stage capitalism with societal psychoses like much of the working class having to pay 50% of its income in rents. And corporate-greed-driven inflation rising unchecked without updated tax brackets for progressive taxation. And social safety nets being shredded to create a desperate working class dependent on service work while corporate profits are at an all-time high. I just wish I knew how to wake up from The Matrix, whatever all this is. The points above have concrete solutions like a national tenant union, enforcing antitrust laws, taxing unrealized stock gains the same way as property taxes on homes, etc. But those obvious solutions assume a level of lucidity that will probably never exist while the powers that be lobby the government and engage in regulatory capture while handing out million dollar checks at random to voters who selected the candidate that promises to cut rich people's taxes. All to keep most people worried about the price of groceries and immigrants stealing their jobs. But hey, I'm the delusional one. Edit: the best answer I've come up with so far, after suffering for a lifetime under self-imposed limitations driven by many of the psychoses above, was to quiet my internal monologue entirely, acknowledging each thought but not indulging it, just being consciously aware of the process of living, without attachment or expectation on outcomes.

Daub 2y ago

Prtty much echoing what you said, in this video Cecila McGough, who has schizophrenia, talks about how important it is that people don't do anything to confirm her hallucinations. https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0?si=GT6zn_Sytcfw011H https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0?si=GT6zn_Sytcfw011H

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
Here's that YouTube link without the tracking parameter linking you to everyone who clicks it: https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0 https://youtu.be/7csXfSRXmZ0
- Daub 2y ago
  Thanks
- cutemonster 2y ago
  I was wondering why she wasn't looking at the camera or interviewer. Turns out the reason was that she saw an hallucination in that direction. So she looked away, she explains, in a follow up video 5 years later: (I found via the YouTube comments section) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Wzb6esnpU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Wzb6esnpU Here she's much better, and explains how she got better (in the beginning of the video)
- BrandoElFollito 2y ago
  I like how rational she is with not talking about the hallucinations. What she describes is exactly what would happen with me (looking in the direction of the hallucination, together with the whole room).
Abimelex 2y ago
That's good to know, but it leaves you without many options, since all the experts also suggest not to confront them with reality. So how to interact with somebody who as a psychosis and sees a complete twisted reality?
- 2y ago

rendx 2y ago

Very important point, thank you for raising it. Mental Health First Aid has good manuals for first aid. Here's the one for psychoses: https://www.mhfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/MHFA_Psychosis-Guidelines.pdf https://www.mhfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/MHFA_Psyc... We were shown this video in our MHFA certification class for discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7cMXce5j40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7cMXce5j40

thrw5298u49 2y ago

Without supervision? What good is that? This is a disease that breaks people. Those who would convince themselves to see such symptoms in a positive light are doing nothing but damage.

throw4950sh06 2y ago
Yes. What I mean is that doing it can have unintended consequences - so don't do it if you don't know what you're doing and/or not fully in control of the situation.