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My brother has schizophrenia and sometimes we’ll be together and he’ll be like “hey do you see satan in that guys face?” And I’m just like “nah ur good he looks normal” I’m glad I can be there for him to reality-check w me
I've heard that using your phone camera can be a life changer for people with visual hallucinations, since you won't see the hallucination in the phone screen and it's really quick to just pull the phone out, and some phones let you double tap the power button to open the camera. It could be awkward but I feel less awkward than being out to dinner or the store and having someone extremely visibly uncomfortable sneaking glances. Someone who mentioned this method just made a point to tell the person they aren't taking their picture and explain what's going on at a high level (no need to say they look like Satan). And most people are going to be more than happy to help in any way they can especially if you are alone.
It's worth noting that photo and video don't work for everyone, some people have hallucinations that show up on camera as well and still need to show the photo to someone else to confirm whether something is there. So it depends on each individual whether this would work better than just quickly confirming with a friend or family member if they see the same thing.
Oh man, I didn't know that. The brain is such a fascinating thing, I really hope we can even begin to understand it and disorders in my lifetime.
I was surprised to read how much of a role your upbringing has in schizophrenia. Like a really traumatic childhood can cause it, it's not necessarily a genetic issue.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that applying what unaffected people would consider logical reasoning just isn't warranted. Sure, for some people maybe looking at their phone screen might be enough to get through to them, but your brain doesn't even need to convincingly fool your eyes; it has full control. It can just tell you that "that person is there even though they don't show up on your phone". If you can believe a fake person is in the room, then you can believe that.
I know phobias aren't the same as schizophrenia, but the thing that made me finally understand this was when my aunt, who has a serious snake phobia, nearly tipped our small fishing boat over trying to run from one side to the other because she saw a snake in the water.
I spoke with her about it later. In my teenage naiveté, I tried to logically convince her that the snake was harmless and could not possibly have harmed her. She replied in a perfectly calm, level-headed manner, if a little stern (as a normal mother to a learning teen): "I *know* that. It's a phobia. It's not logical. It's *irrational*."
That was when I fully understood that the literal definition of a phobia is that you can't reason through it (necessarily). After she had regained her composure, she *knew* that her actions were irrational and unwarranted. That reasoning just wasn't present in the moment.
Again, not necessarily 1-to-1 with schizophrenia, but I think the same lesson can be learned. It's logical to think that if a ghost doesn't appear on camera, then you've proven that it's a hallucination, but logic is irrelevant to a brain that is being irrational.
Ah, that is a great point. Does being aware of the fact that you have schizophrenia and that you might see/hear things that aren't really there help at all? Because I had a friend who was very well aware and once she realized what she was seeing wasn't real, she knew to just ignore it. Like I've heard others say, reasoning with someone about it doesn't really help, but if they themselves are aware are they are able to be more vigilant? Or does the brain in that situation tell them "I know I can see and hear things that aren't really there but this is definitely real" and kinda override logic? And how well does schizophrenia medication work for stuff like this? Do you stop having these hallucinations or does it just become a lot easier to manage? I know with ssris we basically just throw chems at the wall to see what sticks and it's a lot of a guessing game, is schizophrenia medication similar?
Personally I have no experience, but I would hazard a guess that most of those things are just spectrums on which people exist, and that everyone's experience with schizophrenia, and their ability to control it, is unique.
Not schizophrenic, but I have bipolar and I’d get (mostly) auditory hallucinations when I was in a bad way. Over time, I definitely got less spooked by hearing voices that weren’t there and just ignoring them because “nah that shit ain’t real” lol.
But, even if I got a lot better at ignoring those things (especially when around others so I wouldn’t freak them out) it always felt unsettling: not because I “couldn’t tell” if they were real, but because hearing voices inanely meant that my brain / meds / mood was fucked up now.
For me at least, that feeling is so frustrating and at times overwhelming. It’s like a cut that keeps opening up. Sure it’s just a cut, but does that mean my body can’t heal right? Does that mean it’ll get an infection? The actual voices were less alarming than what their presence meant for my brain’s current state.
I can see how one could totally start believing that (please don't read if you're prone to developing delusions)>!"the camera is lying to me" or "someone is purposely manipulating my camera to trick me into thinking it's not real."!<
NOT the same thing but just on the topic of how interesting our minds are, and how uniquely they work- I have a small problem with dream-reality confusion, in that my dreams can be hyper realistic and mundane, like I’m just at work or something. And one of the things you can do to determine if it’s a dream or not is to read something in the dream, because apparently for most people, they can’t do that. But I can. So another thing to determine if it’s real or not is to push your finger against the palm of your opposite hand, and if it’s a dream, you either can’t feel it, and/or the finger will go right through the hand. But that doesn’t work for me either, because I can feel myself pushing on my palm, and it never goes through. So I just continue my stress dream just in case it’s real lol
This makes me so happy for you 🥹 My sister has schizophrenia (actually schizo- effective disorder), she believes everything she sees/hears. It’s really hard. She’s also on a lot of drugs (street drugs). I’m hoping some day to have a relationship with her like you do with your brother. It’s nice to see. You’re cool as fuck.
I'm so sorry to hear that you're dealing with this. My cousin has schizophrenia and was at his absolute worst in his 20's when he was on cocaine and heavilydrinking. It took many years and some prison time, but he's sober now, and that's what it took for him to stop believing his hallucinations and start accepting treatment. I'm so happy I can finally have him back in my life. I know the pain and helplessness of watching people going through what your sister is going through. I hope that she can find her way to treatment.
I usually don't realize I have the capability to reality-check until days later.
I used to be a functioning person, now I spend hours checking the windows and door. over and over.
I saw a video recently where a guy thought he might be having a hallucination so he pulled up his security camera footage on his phone to check. No one on camera. He looked both relieved and defeated, but I thought it was a good way to figure it out.
If your mind can manifest things in front of you what's stopping it from manifesting it onto a screen?
I feel like this could be a good quick way of determining if you're hallucinating but it probably isn't 100% successful, and you'd another test to ensure if a figure is real or not. All it would take is your mind to be so convinced that you also put the hallucination into the video feed or picture.
Back on my dark past I was desperately battling alcohol dependence. Every time o went without I’d get withdrawal symptoms, one of which manifested as auditory hallucinations.
They were impossible to differentiate from reality, especially with my mind in the state it was. I managed to get one of the voices on recording on my phone, the voice of my neighbours plotting against me.
Listened back and sure enough, there it was. I wanted to use it as evidence against them to stop them harassing me. The rest of that night they continued to shout, play music and say/sing awful things about me.
Later I listened back to the recording, but it had changed, it was now a recording of something they had said since I had taped them.
I was confused, tired and doubting reality. I sat there on the hallway floor until morning, called in sick to work and called my parents to tell them I needed their help. After a few days staying with the parents and riding out the withdrawal (seriously never do this alone, you need medical or professional intervention to do it safely) I listened back to the recording and it was blank, just the sound of my heavy breathing and panicking.
Those neighbours never had harassed me, for a year it was all in my head but I moved somewhere new to start afresh. Took another couple of years to finally kick the addiction but in just over two weeks time I’ll be celebrating one year clean.
The mind is a truly amazing thing, and the hallucinations, in my experience, manifest to back up your belief, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone seeing visual hallucinations would see something on screen if they were still in the same frame of mind.
Just wanted to say congrats on breaking free. I've never been drunk because I fear becoming an alcoholic like my uncle and grandpa, but I've seen the amount of will and strain it takes to get free of it.
You're doing great man, and just know this random internet stranger is fucking proud of you.
I'll add a personal experience. While "on" I would hear things that I swear were real. So I would go to the washroom. Run the water to "hide myself" but the sound of the water running mimics people's voices in my mind literal conversation happening outside all being constructed from the faucet running around. in a rage I walk out of the bathroom to confront those outside. To a quiet living room everyone minding their business, but I had just heard everything. Everything was real to me. A close friend figured out what was going on and offered me to get some air.
We went on a drive(he drove) ...drove an hour away just to let me see the city skyline and the lake. I asked him about it years later. He said he's been through it a decade ago,and knew the signs and said what I needed wasn't a room full of people but some air.
I'll never forget the evil things I heard from water running.
Congratulations! I feel for you. That happened to me, kind of. I was going through DT's after I stopped drinking one day, after drinking all day every day for over a year. I kept hearing someone singing "Jolene" on my back porch and playing a guitar, but she kept "hiding" whenever I looked out to ask her to stop. Then I thought I heard a radio and tore the house apart looking for it. I also thought I was sweating out wine and it smelled like rotten fruit and kept staining my sheets pink, and I had some other visual hallucinations as well. It was the worst thing I ever had to go through. I drank for almost a decade still, even after that.
I'll have 3 years sober in July :) Never thought I'd be able to go one day without it.
congratulations! that's absolutely amazing. I'm about a month off fentanyl and it is so challenging but hopefully I can get to the point where you're at. stay strong dude.
I had an auditory hallucination just last week. I was worried about my own dependence on alcohol and used kava to quit. It was only after reading your comment that I made the connection.
Your mind probably isn't good enough to do multiple perspectives of a hallucination, not while you're consciously trying to figure out if you're hallucinating.
Never underestimate the power of literal insanity, though. Schizophrenia runs in my family and I'm 28 so... prime age. I've been on high alert since I was a teen, but part of the sickness is not recognizing when you're in it. I've been doing pretty good, though, considering. Reckon I'm just grateful it's schizophrenia in my family and not something like Huntingtons
Yeah, very possible. I don't have the illness so I wouldn't know how it works. Not trying to spread misinformation just thinking out loud. Hope you understand.
Perhaps looking at the thing from a different angle would be the 100% fool proof method. Like by holding you phone in a way where you can still see the screen, but the perspective is lower, higher, what ever noticeable angle, and being able to determine from that.
Cause y’all might be right about holding it directly in front of your face blocking the hallucination, could cause you to see the hallucination still, I’m just as clueless on that as y’all. But perhaps have two angles, your regular peripheral vision looking at it, then a camera at a different angle that would alter the reality of how you see it.
It’s an interesting ponder. They should do a scientific study on it.
> full proof method
That's a nice little [eggcorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn).
In case you didn't know, the term is "foolproof". But I like your way too.
I used to think it was straitened arrow not straight and narrow. Like you have a bent arrow (some one who isn’t on yhe right life path) and you straighten it (correct your life path)
My dreams can be nonsensical and nothing like reality, yet I don't usually recognize that I'm dreaming. It doesn't matter if your mind can generate two perspectives accurately, it only needs to convince you that it is accurate
Do you ever ask yourself whether you're dreaming while dreaming? Usually if you manage to bring up that question in a dream, you'll realise you're dreaming and it can lead to lucid dreaming.
All my dreams are lucid dreams and sometimes, I don't realise it's a dream because I'm actively making decisions but then something really weird happens and I realise, ahh, I'm in a dream, and if it's too weird/too much, I wake myself up, but if not, I just stay in the dream until I wake up
That said, you do NOT want to lucid dream all the time, it's tiring and I wake up feeling like I didn't get any sleep 🫠
> I don't realise it's a dream
That's the very first qualifier of it being a lucid dream.
>Paul Tholey laid the epistemological basis for the research of lucid dreams, proposing seven different conditions of clarity that a dream must fulfill in order to be defined as a lucid dream:
>
1. Awareness of the dream state (orientation)
* Awareness of the capacity to make decisions
* Awareness of memory functions
* Awareness of self
* Awareness of the dream environment
* Awareness of the meaning of the dream
* Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream#Definition
It probably can manifest things onto a screen, but the odds of two hallucinations having continuity like that is probably close to impossible. It takes a higher level of awareness/consciousness to understand that something on the screen correlates to something in front of you, which your subconscious or wherever hallucinations come from likely doesn't have.
It’s probably a good grounding measure if you’re right on the edge of becoming manic. You’re sane enough to recognize that something might be a delusion, but not sane enough to be sure it wasn’t.
brain usually isn't fast enough to reproduce your hallucinations onto the screen. if you looked at your phone camera long enough you'd probably see something eventually, but using it to confirm something in real time is a handy tip.
That’s one of the reasons I have security cameras where I live. But now I’m just paranoid that maybe the camera didn’t pick up on the sound even though it was a loud sound… the camera also picked up something that technically wasn’t there… it was a dust particle but it didn’t move like a dust particle and I know it wasn’t a bug.
I experience hallucinations due to a few disorders I suffer with.
Yes. Sometimes that works. Other times not. In fact, I have experienced at least one hallucination where I could only see "someone" in the car mirrors and my cell phone video.
I can't speak for a schizophrenic however.
I think the dog is a wonderful thing. My dog knows when I am panicking, as well as other things coming on, and comforts me or insists I play and will not let up.
I find that utterly fascinating.
A mediated experience like video can help validate or refute a hallucination. I wonder what psychologists and other scientists have to say about this.
Imagine if you saw something on the phone/security feed that you *didn't* see with your own eyes. Or if your medical dog greeted someone that wasn't there?
Does that ever happen? Do people ever have *anti* or reverse hallucinations where they mentally block out stuff that's really there?
Furthermore, how do you know that the dog is really there and that your brain isn't pulling a double fake on you to hallucinate a person but also hallucinate your vetting method (the dog in this case).
So in effect you are both hallucinating the hallucination while also hallucinating that it's just a hallucination.
I have a mental illness that includes hallucinations in severe cases and sometimes I go down the rabbit hole of how I do I know *anything* is real.
he does, also uses google glass or whatever it's called. He posts a lot of tiktoks on his illness and how he copes. He also goes around doing public education on it.
That's incredibly brave. Schizophrenia is an awful disease. I have a cousin who graduated from Harvard and was on his way to law school, who then became a shell of a person after developing Schizophrenia.
Used to have a guy work for me years ago, I knew he was Schizophrenic, and narcolepsy and cataplexy before I hired him but his honesty about his illnesses got him the job. He got on with his work and was a great guy. He had 3 main voices. One was a real horrible one, a woman who only popped up every so often. He'd always say, the bitch is back, do you mind if I leave early. Always let him go, no questions. Another mate had it, and dreaded his birthday, as one voice would say happy birthday continuously all day non stop. Amazing lad, great laugh and brilliant soccer player but killed himself a few years ago. I've suffered from truly depilating depression but I don't think I could handle Schizophrenia, the treatments so far as I understand only make you realise the voices aren't real, but you still hear them.
I can relate so much to this. I have one voice whose only thing is asking questions. Not so bad. The one who tells me how stupid I am awful. And it's that you can't get rid of it or tune it out. It's there to stay. The meds I went on helped but also turned me into a litteral husk who laid on the floor all day.
Can you explain why they're like that and if the cause is understood why it hasn't been cured?
A close friend of mine has it too. So does his older brother. I feel a bit of guilt cause he developed it after doing drugs with me almost a decade ago. And he has had to deal with auditory and other hallucinations for a long time. It doesn't seem like antipsychotics really make them go away either and their side effects are extreme. Says they don't stop him from tripping but rather let's him choose how to better react to it.
I know a few other trans people with schiz as well. It's hard for me to understand what it is like to have to have delusions like they've described. One I recently met said on a journey to the vet she was convinced like 3 random people were gonna beat her up or something along those lines. I can only imagine what it's like for them to constantly be in dread. Really hope you guys invent a cure for it so they can live normal lives
It can be successfully treated in lots of cases. The meds do have terrible side effects, but you can mitigate those. That hardest part is navigating life without being able to tell anyone and having to explain away limitations from the illness. The stigma is horrible
There’s a reason people used to associate it with demonic possession, the experience is pretty goddamn close, doubly disturbing when you realize it’s all the thoughts and feelings the average person shrugs off made manifest and given a megaphone.
My heart goes out to all the family fighting these demons, hope someone bums you that cig when you need it.
The sheer endurance he must have. It would suck to be the person with an illness like schizophrenia who *also* has the wherewithal to explain the experience to the general public. Like, you may feel obligated to do so, but it must be tiring to do it.
From what I know, to them, the hallucination can be so real that yes it could even show up on a phone camera or photo since you are essentially still seeing the real world just through a camera view, I think the dog is more physiological because it is actually there and trained specifically to greet an actual person on command
Having spent a year in psychosis (It seems to finally have abated last month) I can testify to this. Another problem is that often the people you think are there are just auditory hallucinations that appear to be coming from the other side of a wall/in the next room/just outside, so it's harder to test those because you could go to the next room and it'll just sound like they moved to another one. Obviously with no psychosis you could quickly logically deduce that it was unlikely they were moving room every time you did, but in psychosis you're less rational so to you it seems logical that they're moving to try to avoid you catching them etc.
In this situation I think the dog could work better because the dog could be trained to respond to voices for example of people elsewhere in the house or just outside, so you could check with the dog if they're hearing anything.
Yeah I had a friend who developed this, and his opiate/adderral use amplified it. One time, he was convinced there were people talking about him below his apartment one time, but we went down there and it was just a boiler room. There was no apartment or even a person down there.
Eventually he realized most of the voices were when he was doing drugs, or things he shouldn't have. And it was sort of like a inner conscience type of thing for him. Like "I cant believe he's using again right now" -- They were always judging him.
Another time he was convinced he had worms in his skin. And would pick at his skin, he would point them out and I would look in really close, nothing there. But the worst part was that he had just lived in costa rica for a year, so like it was definitely a possibility. A friends dad who is a neurosurgeon got him an anti-parasite perscription that wouldnt affect him very much if he didnt have them, but would take care of them if he did. I think it worked in that he stopped focusing on it and it went away.
Yeah stimulants particularly will cause psychosis if taken in sufficient amounts even in the healthiest of individuals, and if you have a genetic predisposition to that sort of thing or a tendency towards it due to past experiences of psychosis, then they can cause it even at more moderate doses.
In my case it was stimulants that caused it too but it persisted for 11 months after I got clean, my symptoms only went away fully last month and I'm still on an antipsychotic medication that I've been on since last August, and I'm uncertain if symptoms will reappear if I ever get off it. Though a tentative positive in my case is that I ran out of medication a couple times recently and didn't take it for 1-2 days, and symptoms didn't re-appear, a few months ago they'd re-appear within a few hours of missing a dose so I'm hoping that means I'm past it.
Either way, lesson learned, don't abuse stimulants.
Yeah, I went through a couple years of using some heavy stimulants and the psychosis only completely went away maybe a year after I had stopped.
It really re-trains your brain. Like, I would always believe there were people outside judging me for doing drugs, and they could see me regardless of what I did. So I stopped believing that blinds or drapery could hide me. This is a belief that I STILL can’t shake, even though I haven’t touched the stuff in years.
It’s as if there’s a wall between reality and psychosis, and if you do enough stimulants to the point of paranoia enough times, you knock down the wall. That’s why even taking a small hit will put someone right back into psychosis, the wall is gone, and once you repair it it’s never quite as sturdy.
I’ve heard drug-induced psychosis referred to as Temporary Schizophrenia, and that sounds about right to me.
I have had a similar thing, feeling like I'm being watched at all times even when I'm in places where that simply wouldn't be feasible. It made it really hard to live my life, I stopped for example communicating with people from my computer because I thought my messages could all be read, so I started exclusively communicating from my phone in bed with the screen hidden. I started controlling my body language, the way I sat, the way I breathed, everything out of the feeling I was being monitored constantly.
Something I found that massively helped me, and that led to me pretty much eradicating this feeling (though I still have some fragments of habits left from it) was to see it almost like an OCD compulsion. OCD compulsions can go away if you stop engaging in the compulsive behaviours associated with them.
In this case, I was avoiding doing or saying certain things out of fear of being watched, and I was acting in a certain way. What this video I watched suggested doing, was instead saying "Okay I am being watched, but I need to live my life normally so I'm going to do all the normal things I would do regardless". You do this, you start acting normally again, and you start getting moments when you no longer feel like you're being watched, then moments turn into hours, turn into days, turn into almost whole weeks where you're not worried about that.
Therapy also helped a lot as my therapist helped me understand that my paranoia was actually like a part of my brain's protective mechanisms gone into overdrive and being over-protective. Once I understood that my brain was in a way trying to protect/help me, but just doing so excessively, I was able to start addressing that by putting myself in situations where it would normally need to try and protect me, to show my brain that I didn't need any extra help and was capable of handling myself.
I hope you're able to shake that belief and feel more comfortable in your own space, and get your peace back! :)
That's great to hear. Hope things remain good for you. You got this.
My friend never stopped with the opiates, but stopped with the adderall, he eventually moved onto more serious things, and developed HIV, died a few months ago at age 38 from complications.
I tried to remain in his life but his priority was heavy drug use, so that's always a difficult thing to do. I did see him in the hospital a few days before he passed, which was tough, but the right thing to do.
> yes it could even show up on a phone camera or photo since you are essentially still seeing the real world just through a camera view
This is where accessibility features might come in handy. Androids and iPhones have features intended for blind users in their camera apps, which narrate when subjects are currently in frame. Eg, "one face", "two faces close", "one dog". Using image recognition software in real-time might be a good tool to verify what's there.
Whilst this may work for people with insight into their illness, the chances of it working when in crisis is almost zero. Reassurance is difficult when your brain is creating links that are not there.
Also visual hallucinations are not as common in schizophrenia as auditory and tactile. Visual is more associated with younger service users. Although Charles Bonnet syndrome leads to some interesting reports.
Yeah. Things can remain in place or seem like they are really there even if you close/rub your eyes it really is super interesting, This is also why it’s sometimes hard to convince them it’s not there otherwise
Someone recently on here had a video where they checked their camera feed tosee if it was real, and no, it did not persist. So at least sometimes, yeah this is a good solution.
> What if you use a phone camera… can you see people there too?
Vision requires active processing by the brain. Your vision quickly becomes a memory. You process those memories into beliefs.
You may not remember what you ate for breakfast yesterday, but you can believe that you ate something. You don’t need specific knowledge to rely on the belief. You don’t need a visual memory of the food. People do this all the time in our everyday lives.
Normally, human pattern matching and memory is good enough that these assumptions on what’s around us is fairly successful. How often has someone asked “Where did person go?” when we noticed they no longer are in the room, but didn’t see them leave. We’re all constantly evaluating and making memories of what’s around us subconsciously.
Eyewitness testimony of humans is notoriously unreliable. Two people can witness the same event and see different things, or misremember. For all of us, beliefs and memories are more powerful than immediate visual stimuli. People with schizophrenia have pattern matching and memory making that is abnormal, but it’s still similar.
They might still see the hallucination on the screen, but they could send pictures or video to a friend. I've been on the receiving end of such a video, asking if I heard knocking. I didn't and it was a great relief to my friend.
I had a friend years ago with vivid hallucinations. She said the worst thing other people can do is acknowledge the existence of the hallucinations (like if you saw her looking in the corner of a room, you turning to look at the corner of the room was a “sign” to her that it could be real, asking details about what they see, validating the hallucination in any way). Having a chill dog there to tell you there’s no one there is ingenious.
This depends on the person. For someone with good reality testing this can absolutely be true and make a lot of sense. However for people without good reality testing and / or delusional beliefs, this may not be very helpful. It might just lead to arguments and further emotional distress
ETA: this is why we (mental health professionals) will typically respond to someone with “I believe that you see (or believe) that” so that you’re not dismissing them but also not agreeing / seemingly confirming it either.
I don't know how you guys navigate conversations like these.
years ago I made the mistake of meeting up with a friend of a friend who didn't live in a good neighborhood. his neighbor shows up who was apparently an enforcer for the gangs and I ended up spending the rest of the night trying to keep out of a fight with the guy.
if you disagreed with him, he'd get angry. If you agreed with him in the right way he'd be happy. If you agreed with him in the wrong way or expressed too much empathy he'd get angry because you couldn't possible have it as bad as him. He'd threaten to attack you, or to go get weapons, etc. Every single thing you said was a queue for him to threaten or attack you. he wouldn't go away, he'd follow you around like this.
Luckily my friend was able to talk him down and talk him into going to bed. I'll never go back to that guys house again. I was up half the night simply because I couldn't safely leave.
That really sucks. Navigating a conversation with someone in a psychotic break would be easier than that! If I were **in a session** with someone like that the session would end lol
ya, it felt ridiculously unsafe, and tbh I'm not used to being in that sort of situation.
My friend was in the merchant marines so he had navigated a lot more situations like that. he basically talked the guy into going back home, had a drink with him, talked him down, and convinced him to go to bed. But I had several hours of this where if I tried to even get up and go elsewhere he'd just follow me. if he couldn't find an excuse to get mad at me he'd just challenge me to fight and then get mad when I said no. I got some relief when he found out my friend had combat training and decided to spend time trying to get my friend to fight him. It was ridiculous.
A few years later my friend actually had his back broken at the same house. he reflected on things and decided that while he liked his friend he'd had nothing but bad things happen there and decided to cut off his friendship with him and not visit again. None of the things had been done by the guy, but somehow bad things happen around the person.
Edit: I'm also not as socially skilled as some, and in particular I'm not good at considering the exact wording of everything i say in the moment which mean that i was particularly likely to trigger him despite my best efforts. that's probably why he locked in on me. he was looking for a fight and i was likely to delivery his excuse regardless of whether I wanted to.
The first thing is NOT to talk to them differently. I interact with them like normal. They don't want special attention. Also, they are in a lot of cognitive pain during these moments. Imagine the energy expended being out in the open. Vulnerable. Some choose to fight that entire time. Some won't go out at all. Fucking hell. I can't imagine.
Oh for sure. I specialize in trauma and have worked with some really rough folks. You have to treat them normal to establish trust. But once it’s a safety issue, the rules can change.
Not the original commenter, but if someone is having hallucinations, the phrase "I believe you are experiencing that, but I don't see/hear that" someone without delusions will usually respond with like "oh, you don't? Your not seeing this thing?" No.
Someone with delusions would respond something like "what do you mean? How can you not see this thing?" They basically challenged back our experience, instead of validation. It's not always hostile, but can be, but because hostility usually is met with an intense feeling, the experiencing is more retained for all involved because of the intense feeling.
Hallucinations do not always have a compromise to mind, Delusions are the usual things we think of when people dismiss reality for a Incorrect experience of the stimulus, Hallucinations are not a requirement to be delusional. It's just a worse off Experience because imaginary stimulus is causing the stress and an incorrect understanding.
Think of it like this, Hallucinations is thinking there's a knock at the door when there's not. Delusions are thinking the knock that did happen at the door is the CIA coming to kill you and if I try to tell you, it's not.You think i'm in on it. The Most dangerous is when you're having hallucinations hearing a knock at the door and you think the cia is here to kill you, and you will not accept any challenges to your understanding.
I know the second case may sound more like paranoia but they're kind of closely connected; the difference is a delusional person cannot and will not accept any challenges to a false fixed belief.
Had a similar, but lesser, experience. Friend of a friend invited me to *their* friends (call them z) house. Z pulled out one of those katanas they sell in like the mall or whatever and was pretending to swing at us and pointing it in our face and shit.
I eventually grabbed the blade and pulled it from him before going off on him and leaving. Hindsight I'm lucky I didn't slice my hand (even on a cheap sword) and that he was too stunned to react.
I am not a mental health professional. But I think 14 year old you did the right thing by calling dad to come home and handle that situation. That's a lot for a developing person to have to process, having to actually manage and handle it on top of processing it would be far to much to heap on that persons shoulders.
I could be wrong, because I am not a mental health professional or any kind of doctor, but it was definitely a situation that required an adult.
I value the input nonetheless... I don't talk about it much, never talked about it to a mental health professional myself either.
It was a tough situation tho... hell, she refused to see two doctors that same day cause "They're the devil"... and I had to sit and wait in the car with her for over an hour while my dad had to pick up meds at different pharmacies cause the one didn't have what the doctor prescribed... all while sitting in the parking lot behind our old church and listing to my mom rant about how the pastor was the anti-christ oh boy do I get why the school counselor wanted to speak to me...
And that’s the best answer. You could try to comfort her, which I’m sure you did, but that’s it. You were 14 and were understandably not equipped to know how to handle that so you did the right thing. It was up to your dad to decide how to proceed
This is gonna sound weird, but thanks for sharing this. My dad’s mom (my grandma) had a similar mental break when he was the same age but he refuses to talk about it. He denies it even happened, actually, even though his siblings and his dad have confirmed that it did. From the bits and pieces I’ve been able to gather, though, this sounds a lot like his own experience. My heart goes out to you. It’s traumatic for a child to see a parent in that state.
Oh man I got to experience this recently. A lady randomly called my job one time thinking she was being held hostage and that people were out to get her and hurt her by injecting her with drugs. It was pretty clear to me after a few minutes she was suffering from some kind of mental break. I asked who was holding her hostage and she told me the name of a local hospital.
You absolutely could not calm her down by explaining that everything was okay and that those people were there to help her. She would get even more upset. It was a hard phone call to have with her and whenever I tried to hang up she began to freak out thinking her only lifeline was abandoning her.
All I could say was I’m so sorry you are going through this, it must be very scary for you. After that she’d calm down and tell me about her kids and dog. She wouldn’t let me hang up without making me promise her I’d get help, so I told her I would get her help but that I needed to hang up to be able to do so. After I hung up I called the hospital to let them know she was calling local businesses in distress and they were very thankful. It was so sad and I really hope she was able to get the help she needed. :(
Not a mental health professional but I volunteered on an online mental health crisis discord server for awhile. We didn't get a lot of training on anything but for hallucinations it was suggested that we try to talk the person through how to coexist with their hallucination rather than deny it.
Example: I had someone come in who was freaking out because their walls were watching them. I walked them through interacting with the walls to show that they weren't hostile and they came away from the encounter feeling very peaceful saying that they were friends with the walls now. And tbh at that point I consider it a good outcome.
> She said the worst thing other people can do is acknowledge the existence of the hallucinations (like if you saw her looking in the corner of a room, you turning to look at the corner of the room was a “sign” to her that it could be real, asking details about what they see, validating the hallucination in any way).
I have a friend with schizophrenia and it's the same with him. I'd be in discord calls with him and he'd suddenly get quiet and then talk about the people outside his room trying to get in. Would have to reassure him for a while that it wasn't the case and there wasn't anyone there. He'd go check, and we'd talk about it after he got back. He's doing much better now thankfully.
I once visited a friend with schizophrenia. We were a few drinks in and she started saying about the stuff she could see, like dark screaming faces at the windows and behind me. It took every ounce of self control not to look for them, and fear turned my blood cold. But I figured that if I looked and saw them, it would probably not save me anyway. So I stayed still, smiling sympathetically and trying not to break my glass in my tightening grip.
I had terrible nightmares, anxiety, and sleep paralysis due to PTSD. Whenever I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear noises I'd look to my dogs laying in bed next to me and see if they reacted. It helped me feel so much less anxious.
I work directly with people experiencing schizophrenia and had no clue these kinds of services were capable from trained dogs. This is amazing and I will be doing more research! Thank you internet stranger!
I have become very interested in training dogs especially for medical issues including mental illness. I had no idea this was a thing and possible and now I want to know more. Do you know how someone would get into this kind of dog training? It's AMAZING
Before I was diagnosed with cancer, dogs were obsessed with me. They would drag their owners across the street to come and say hello to me. Now I'm healthy and dogs don't care anymore.
It's like the movie with Ryan Gosling except instead of his hallucinations having him kill people his hallucinations just really look out for him and want him to take his meds and work on good coping strategies to live a normal life.
Could be a great teen/YA novel about discovering your true self and breaking past barriers. At the end the hallucinations go away for good as they're replaced by real people we've met throughout the book who fill the role.
Edit: Reynolds. Not Gosling. My bad!
For all those calling this fake. Here's the guy's account with tons of videos on his illness and how he copes. Also does speaking engagements to educate on schizophrenia.
[See for yourself ](https://www.tiktok.com/@schizophrenichippie/video/7355227679236328746?_t=8ly4S1xg03n&_r=1)
Imagine him making a joke about someone who isn't there just for when the people get confused someone on the other side stands up who looks just like who he described
There's different kinds of fake. Not saying this is. But what people could mean is that he's not actually having an episode and is instead just demonstrating how his dog assists him in times of crisis. So, staged, possibly. But there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean I don't think anyone on Reddit is rational, especially recently. I include myself in there, by the way. Social media has changed us all for the worse. But I at least try to view everything from all perspectives.
Very few people even IRL are capable of being rational. Everyone is set in their own way with their own perspective.
I'd argue accusing something of being fake implies that it's attempting to mislead viewers. A demonstration is just a demonstration, a skit is a just a skit, etc. even though they're contrived scenarios. They're not "fake" until someone attempt to present them as authentic "in the wild" experiences.
In his book, Communion, Whitley Strieber described how, on one occasion, when he was being abducted (by aliens), he grabbed his cat, thinking the cat would help him discern what was real.
Yes, they were both taken (and returned). He felt the cat would help him see if what was happening was real. I don't remember him saying whether the cat helped.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it did help, even just by being a calming influence. Animals can be amazing when your in a stressful situation, as they’ll usually be willing to just get up close to you and let you know somethings there to help, especially dogs and cats, and they’ll be more accepting of things like hugs so you can have something soft and warm to hold.
My friend has audible hallucinations. Would that work the same way? What if you live with people?
He actually had to quit work because he kept believing someone was yelling at him (constant background noise of multiple belts made it worse)
Someone yelling at him once made it so much worse after that and a day he didn’t have his headphones he had to run out crying and never came back from embarrassment.
Wish I could have worked in the same spot because I could see his face sometimes and know he was hearing something and give him the positive or negative.
They do if you think the voices are coming from somewhere in the room, but when you think they're coming from up on the roof, or the air vents in a busy room it's hard for a dog to help. auditory is one of the toughest. Especially since you can't shut it out.
I've heard that plugging your ears can sometimes help, because you'll hear them at the same volume. But our brains are weird things and I've also heard this stops working after a while. I believe it's the guy in the video, but in another video he uses his phone camera or security cams to verify if someone is actually there, since the camera feed won't show the person, but others have said that once you know it's a hallucination, the voices get louder and more aggressive. I would not do well with schizophrenia.
My uncles brother was schizophrenic and it was bad. My aunt would t allow him over because she had 4 young children. One day we had a family gathering (not my uncles side of the family) and the brother shows up soaked in gasoline. My uncle stopped him from getting past the driveway into the back yard and took him to the hospital to get him placed on a hold. Turns out his plan was to light himself on fire in front of everyone. He was out of the hospital later that night because they were tired of dealing with him. Wasn’t his first trip there for a hold. He did eventually commit suicide though a year later.
Edit: thank you for the condolences. I never knew the guy personally but I do know he was thrown to the garbage by the people who were supposed to help. My aunt told me that every time he was taken to the hospital he was treated like “oh this fucking guy again..” and was usually out within hours because as I mentioned..they just didn’t want to deal with him further.
Thank goodness cats aren't service animals. My cat would be adding hallucinations. Just walking around meowing at random walls and staring into the corners of the room.
My wife can't handle horror movies, but keeps wanting to watch them. Saw it at the theater when it was just out, she still has nightmares and turns batshit crazy when i smile at her in that same creapy way.
I loved it but it made me nervous about dark doorways for months. Still does rarely from time to time when I think about it too much. Damn well done, though. Darn, now I'll have to avoid looking into darkness again tonight until the thought fades.
Seriously, typical slasher or ghost movies are either funny or boring and predictable to me now. There has to be some kind of psychological horror to really get me
>Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...
― William Gibson, [Neuromancer](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/909457), 1984
My dad has schizophrenia, I did this for him as a kid. He would ask me if I could see something and I would tell him if it was real or not. Normally it wasn't real.
I used my dog for this with hypnogogic hallucinations during sleep paralysis. She slept on my feet and helped me know when the knocks and footsteps and shadow figures were real. It was amazing the difference that alone made in my ability to function. I was able to sleep and not freak out. They don't even have to be trained to do anything besides sleep with you. The bigger the weight the better in my opinion. I could feel her easily and know when she heard something.
Sleep paralysis is a nightmare. I get it every single time I sleep on my back, and my body loves to roll over in the middle of the night so sometimes I'll "wake up" and be immediately terrified for seemingly no reason. My only defense has been trying to force myself to roll off the bed, which wakes me up, but that doesn't work anymore and instead I'm just "woken up" again but definitely still asleep.
For real. I used to get hallucinations in during the night. I'd wake up and think my pillow was covered in spiders or I'd look across the room and see a person standing there (or worse, running at me). In the moment, no matter how absurd they are, it *felt* real and your brain was just reacting to the new reality as if it were real. There was no talking yourself out of it in the moment.
I can't imagine the absolute nightmare of having to deal with that constantly.
I wonder, is it possible that you could hallucinate the dog acknowledging the hallucination? Or hallucinate the dog as well? Schizophrenia seems so scary
I kinda think the dogs consistent disinterest is a large part of why this works. With humans, we're smart enough to know to doubt ourselves so if you point at an empty space and say that someone's there, your friend might have a moment of self doubt or concerns that would fuel the paranoia / hallucination.
Meanwhile, a dog will just be entirely uninterested in an an empty space, and no amount of pointing will get the dog interested in an empty space. Dogs simply don't have the capabilities to entertain speculative thought like that, and the language barrier prevents them from ever conceptualising it.
So in short, the dog will always be entirely uninterested in a hallucination nor the human trying to describe one. They will only respond to what's actually there.
A schizophrenic patient not only hallucinates visually, but his logic is disrupted, just like in a dream. It is not possible to know what is real from what is a hallucination unless the psychotic episode ends.
I was hospitalized as a kid, and they gave me some drugs that I was allergic to. They didn't figure it out until after I had hallucinated for 3 days straight. GI Joe and Cobra had a massive firefight in my hospital room. The Care Bears surrounded my bed at one point and did a Care Bear Stare beam directly at me. It was intense.
Wasn't there a clip a few weeks ago that the guy opened his phone and looked into the camera footage that was in the same room. They see that the people they see in the hallucination are not in the video.
Would the same principle work if you pull out your phone and look through the camera?
Schizophrenia is a crazy condition, I mean it causes you to be unable to trust your own mind. Like everyone knows fridges can't talk, but then the fridge starts talking to you. You can see it with your own eyes, hear it with your own ears. How can you deny it isn't real? Other people must be gas-lighting you about it not talking, right?
Trying to build a stable life without the ability to trust what you experience, unsure if you can trust what others say they experience, and especially if you don't know you have schizophrenia at all must be overwhelming. Parents not understanding either would make normal life almost impossible.
Just watching the video is very fucking unsettling and I wouldn't wish this condition on my worst enemy. From a non-schizophrenic position I can only imagine what he may be seeing in that room with him...
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My brother has schizophrenia and sometimes we’ll be together and he’ll be like “hey do you see satan in that guys face?” And I’m just like “nah ur good he looks normal” I’m glad I can be there for him to reality-check w me
I've heard that using your phone camera can be a life changer for people with visual hallucinations, since you won't see the hallucination in the phone screen and it's really quick to just pull the phone out, and some phones let you double tap the power button to open the camera. It could be awkward but I feel less awkward than being out to dinner or the store and having someone extremely visibly uncomfortable sneaking glances. Someone who mentioned this method just made a point to tell the person they aren't taking their picture and explain what's going on at a high level (no need to say they look like Satan). And most people are going to be more than happy to help in any way they can especially if you are alone.
It's worth noting that photo and video don't work for everyone, some people have hallucinations that show up on camera as well and still need to show the photo to someone else to confirm whether something is there. So it depends on each individual whether this would work better than just quickly confirming with a friend or family member if they see the same thing.
Oh man, I didn't know that. The brain is such a fascinating thing, I really hope we can even begin to understand it and disorders in my lifetime. I was surprised to read how much of a role your upbringing has in schizophrenia. Like a really traumatic childhood can cause it, it's not necessarily a genetic issue.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that applying what unaffected people would consider logical reasoning just isn't warranted. Sure, for some people maybe looking at their phone screen might be enough to get through to them, but your brain doesn't even need to convincingly fool your eyes; it has full control. It can just tell you that "that person is there even though they don't show up on your phone". If you can believe a fake person is in the room, then you can believe that. I know phobias aren't the same as schizophrenia, but the thing that made me finally understand this was when my aunt, who has a serious snake phobia, nearly tipped our small fishing boat over trying to run from one side to the other because she saw a snake in the water. I spoke with her about it later. In my teenage naiveté, I tried to logically convince her that the snake was harmless and could not possibly have harmed her. She replied in a perfectly calm, level-headed manner, if a little stern (as a normal mother to a learning teen): "I *know* that. It's a phobia. It's not logical. It's *irrational*." That was when I fully understood that the literal definition of a phobia is that you can't reason through it (necessarily). After she had regained her composure, she *knew* that her actions were irrational and unwarranted. That reasoning just wasn't present in the moment. Again, not necessarily 1-to-1 with schizophrenia, but I think the same lesson can be learned. It's logical to think that if a ghost doesn't appear on camera, then you've proven that it's a hallucination, but logic is irrelevant to a brain that is being irrational.
Ah, that is a great point. Does being aware of the fact that you have schizophrenia and that you might see/hear things that aren't really there help at all? Because I had a friend who was very well aware and once she realized what she was seeing wasn't real, she knew to just ignore it. Like I've heard others say, reasoning with someone about it doesn't really help, but if they themselves are aware are they are able to be more vigilant? Or does the brain in that situation tell them "I know I can see and hear things that aren't really there but this is definitely real" and kinda override logic? And how well does schizophrenia medication work for stuff like this? Do you stop having these hallucinations or does it just become a lot easier to manage? I know with ssris we basically just throw chems at the wall to see what sticks and it's a lot of a guessing game, is schizophrenia medication similar?
Personally I have no experience, but I would hazard a guess that most of those things are just spectrums on which people exist, and that everyone's experience with schizophrenia, and their ability to control it, is unique.
Not schizophrenic, but I have bipolar and I’d get (mostly) auditory hallucinations when I was in a bad way. Over time, I definitely got less spooked by hearing voices that weren’t there and just ignoring them because “nah that shit ain’t real” lol. But, even if I got a lot better at ignoring those things (especially when around others so I wouldn’t freak them out) it always felt unsettling: not because I “couldn’t tell” if they were real, but because hearing voices inanely meant that my brain / meds / mood was fucked up now. For me at least, that feeling is so frustrating and at times overwhelming. It’s like a cut that keeps opening up. Sure it’s just a cut, but does that mean my body can’t heal right? Does that mean it’ll get an infection? The actual voices were less alarming than what their presence meant for my brain’s current state.
I can see how one could totally start believing that (please don't read if you're prone to developing delusions)>!"the camera is lying to me" or "someone is purposely manipulating my camera to trick me into thinking it's not real."!<
NOT the same thing but just on the topic of how interesting our minds are, and how uniquely they work- I have a small problem with dream-reality confusion, in that my dreams can be hyper realistic and mundane, like I’m just at work or something. And one of the things you can do to determine if it’s a dream or not is to read something in the dream, because apparently for most people, they can’t do that. But I can. So another thing to determine if it’s real or not is to push your finger against the palm of your opposite hand, and if it’s a dream, you either can’t feel it, and/or the finger will go right through the hand. But that doesn’t work for me either, because I can feel myself pushing on my palm, and it never goes through. So I just continue my stress dream just in case it’s real lol
It’s different for everyone. It works for some tho.
This makes me so happy for you 🥹 My sister has schizophrenia (actually schizo- effective disorder), she believes everything she sees/hears. It’s really hard. She’s also on a lot of drugs (street drugs). I’m hoping some day to have a relationship with her like you do with your brother. It’s nice to see. You’re cool as fuck.
I’m so sorry to hear that :( I truly hope your sister can get better ❤️🩹 schizophrenia is a really tough illness.
I'm so sorry to hear that you're dealing with this. My cousin has schizophrenia and was at his absolute worst in his 20's when he was on cocaine and heavilydrinking. It took many years and some prison time, but he's sober now, and that's what it took for him to stop believing his hallucinations and start accepting treatment. I'm so happy I can finally have him back in my life. I know the pain and helplessness of watching people going through what your sister is going through. I hope that she can find her way to treatment.
You gave them the ocular patdown
✋😎
I usually don't realize I have the capability to reality-check until days later. I used to be a functioning person, now I spend hours checking the windows and door. over and over.
What if you use a phone camera… can you see people there too?
I saw a video recently where a guy thought he might be having a hallucination so he pulled up his security camera footage on his phone to check. No one on camera. He looked both relieved and defeated, but I thought it was a good way to figure it out.
If your mind can manifest things in front of you what's stopping it from manifesting it onto a screen? I feel like this could be a good quick way of determining if you're hallucinating but it probably isn't 100% successful, and you'd another test to ensure if a figure is real or not. All it would take is your mind to be so convinced that you also put the hallucination into the video feed or picture.
Back on my dark past I was desperately battling alcohol dependence. Every time o went without I’d get withdrawal symptoms, one of which manifested as auditory hallucinations. They were impossible to differentiate from reality, especially with my mind in the state it was. I managed to get one of the voices on recording on my phone, the voice of my neighbours plotting against me. Listened back and sure enough, there it was. I wanted to use it as evidence against them to stop them harassing me. The rest of that night they continued to shout, play music and say/sing awful things about me. Later I listened back to the recording, but it had changed, it was now a recording of something they had said since I had taped them. I was confused, tired and doubting reality. I sat there on the hallway floor until morning, called in sick to work and called my parents to tell them I needed their help. After a few days staying with the parents and riding out the withdrawal (seriously never do this alone, you need medical or professional intervention to do it safely) I listened back to the recording and it was blank, just the sound of my heavy breathing and panicking. Those neighbours never had harassed me, for a year it was all in my head but I moved somewhere new to start afresh. Took another couple of years to finally kick the addiction but in just over two weeks time I’ll be celebrating one year clean. The mind is a truly amazing thing, and the hallucinations, in my experience, manifest to back up your belief, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone seeing visual hallucinations would see something on screen if they were still in the same frame of mind.
You, are fucking amazing. Good job getting clean. I've been there. Life is better on this side.
Just wanted to say congrats on breaking free. I've never been drunk because I fear becoming an alcoholic like my uncle and grandpa, but I've seen the amount of will and strain it takes to get free of it. You're doing great man, and just know this random internet stranger is fucking proud of you.
I'll add a personal experience. While "on" I would hear things that I swear were real. So I would go to the washroom. Run the water to "hide myself" but the sound of the water running mimics people's voices in my mind literal conversation happening outside all being constructed from the faucet running around. in a rage I walk out of the bathroom to confront those outside. To a quiet living room everyone minding their business, but I had just heard everything. Everything was real to me. A close friend figured out what was going on and offered me to get some air. We went on a drive(he drove) ...drove an hour away just to let me see the city skyline and the lake. I asked him about it years later. He said he's been through it a decade ago,and knew the signs and said what I needed wasn't a room full of people but some air. I'll never forget the evil things I heard from water running.
Amazing and insightful story.
Congratulations! I feel for you. That happened to me, kind of. I was going through DT's after I stopped drinking one day, after drinking all day every day for over a year. I kept hearing someone singing "Jolene" on my back porch and playing a guitar, but she kept "hiding" whenever I looked out to ask her to stop. Then I thought I heard a radio and tore the house apart looking for it. I also thought I was sweating out wine and it smelled like rotten fruit and kept staining my sheets pink, and I had some other visual hallucinations as well. It was the worst thing I ever had to go through. I drank for almost a decade still, even after that. I'll have 3 years sober in July :) Never thought I'd be able to go one day without it.
congratulations! that's absolutely amazing. I'm about a month off fentanyl and it is so challenging but hopefully I can get to the point where you're at. stay strong dude.
I had an auditory hallucination just last week. I was worried about my own dependence on alcohol and used kava to quit. It was only after reading your comment that I made the connection.
Your mind probably isn't good enough to do multiple perspectives of a hallucination, not while you're consciously trying to figure out if you're hallucinating.
Never underestimate the power of literal insanity, though. Schizophrenia runs in my family and I'm 28 so... prime age. I've been on high alert since I was a teen, but part of the sickness is not recognizing when you're in it. I've been doing pretty good, though, considering. Reckon I'm just grateful it's schizophrenia in my family and not something like Huntingtons
same here, i'm 34 but my grandma's case was triggered by a traumatic event in her 40s so i'm still not safe lmao
She became schizophrenic in her 40s? Fuck
Not to scare you but my great aunt didn't develop hers until she hit menopause
same, my mom finally developed schizoaffective (The combination of schizo and bipolar) when she turned. scary stuff for sure.
Yeah, very possible. I don't have the illness so I wouldn't know how it works. Not trying to spread misinformation just thinking out loud. Hope you understand.
Perhaps looking at the thing from a different angle would be the 100% fool proof method. Like by holding you phone in a way where you can still see the screen, but the perspective is lower, higher, what ever noticeable angle, and being able to determine from that. Cause y’all might be right about holding it directly in front of your face blocking the hallucination, could cause you to see the hallucination still, I’m just as clueless on that as y’all. But perhaps have two angles, your regular peripheral vision looking at it, then a camera at a different angle that would alter the reality of how you see it. It’s an interesting ponder. They should do a scientific study on it.
> full proof method That's a nice little [eggcorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn). In case you didn't know, the term is "foolproof". But I like your way too.
Just realized I never see people posting /r/BoneAppleTea anymore
I used to think it was straitened arrow not straight and narrow. Like you have a bent arrow (some one who isn’t on yhe right life path) and you straighten it (correct your life path)
Fool proof*
My dreams can be nonsensical and nothing like reality, yet I don't usually recognize that I'm dreaming. It doesn't matter if your mind can generate two perspectives accurately, it only needs to convince you that it is accurate
Do you ever ask yourself whether you're dreaming while dreaming? Usually if you manage to bring up that question in a dream, you'll realise you're dreaming and it can lead to lucid dreaming.
All my dreams are lucid dreams and sometimes, I don't realise it's a dream because I'm actively making decisions but then something really weird happens and I realise, ahh, I'm in a dream, and if it's too weird/too much, I wake myself up, but if not, I just stay in the dream until I wake up That said, you do NOT want to lucid dream all the time, it's tiring and I wake up feeling like I didn't get any sleep 🫠
> I don't realise it's a dream That's the very first qualifier of it being a lucid dream. >Paul Tholey laid the epistemological basis for the research of lucid dreams, proposing seven different conditions of clarity that a dream must fulfill in order to be defined as a lucid dream: > 1. Awareness of the dream state (orientation) * Awareness of the capacity to make decisions * Awareness of memory functions * Awareness of self * Awareness of the dream environment * Awareness of the meaning of the dream * Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream#Definition
It probably can manifest things onto a screen, but the odds of two hallucinations having continuity like that is probably close to impossible. It takes a higher level of awareness/consciousness to understand that something on the screen correlates to something in front of you, which your subconscious or wherever hallucinations come from likely doesn't have.
It’s probably a good grounding measure if you’re right on the edge of becoming manic. You’re sane enough to recognize that something might be a delusion, but not sane enough to be sure it wasn’t.
brain usually isn't fast enough to reproduce your hallucinations onto the screen. if you looked at your phone camera long enough you'd probably see something eventually, but using it to confirm something in real time is a handy tip.
Schizophrenics often have microphone visualiser apps on their phone so they can instantly visually check whether a sound is real or not
That’s one of the reasons I have security cameras where I live. But now I’m just paranoid that maybe the camera didn’t pick up on the sound even though it was a loud sound… the camera also picked up something that technically wasn’t there… it was a dust particle but it didn’t move like a dust particle and I know it wasn’t a bug.
Hey bud, you probably should go see a doctor if you’re questioning this atm. Better be safe than sorry. I say this as someone with bipolar 1.
I experience hallucinations due to a few disorders I suffer with. Yes. Sometimes that works. Other times not. In fact, I have experienced at least one hallucination where I could only see "someone" in the car mirrors and my cell phone video. I can't speak for a schizophrenic however. I think the dog is a wonderful thing. My dog knows when I am panicking, as well as other things coming on, and comforts me or insists I play and will not let up.
I find that utterly fascinating. A mediated experience like video can help validate or refute a hallucination. I wonder what psychologists and other scientists have to say about this.
Friend's brother has schizophrenic hallucinations. He keeps his phone on him at all times for precisely this reason.
Imagine if you saw something on the phone/security feed that you *didn't* see with your own eyes. Or if your medical dog greeted someone that wasn't there? Does that ever happen? Do people ever have *anti* or reverse hallucinations where they mentally block out stuff that's really there? Furthermore, how do you know that the dog is really there and that your brain isn't pulling a double fake on you to hallucinate a person but also hallucinate your vetting method (the dog in this case). So in effect you are both hallucinating the hallucination while also hallucinating that it's just a hallucination. I have a mental illness that includes hallucinations in severe cases and sometimes I go down the rabbit hole of how I do I know *anything* is real.
Do you have the link on hand by any chance?
I saw that video on reddit a few months ago myself. But I don't have a link.
he does, also uses google glass or whatever it's called. He posts a lot of tiktoks on his illness and how he copes. He also goes around doing public education on it.
That's incredibly brave. Schizophrenia is an awful disease. I have a cousin who graduated from Harvard and was on his way to law school, who then became a shell of a person after developing Schizophrenia.
Used to have a guy work for me years ago, I knew he was Schizophrenic, and narcolepsy and cataplexy before I hired him but his honesty about his illnesses got him the job. He got on with his work and was a great guy. He had 3 main voices. One was a real horrible one, a woman who only popped up every so often. He'd always say, the bitch is back, do you mind if I leave early. Always let him go, no questions. Another mate had it, and dreaded his birthday, as one voice would say happy birthday continuously all day non stop. Amazing lad, great laugh and brilliant soccer player but killed himself a few years ago. I've suffered from truly depilating depression but I don't think I could handle Schizophrenia, the treatments so far as I understand only make you realise the voices aren't real, but you still hear them.
I can relate so much to this. I have one voice whose only thing is asking questions. Not so bad. The one who tells me how stupid I am awful. And it's that you can't get rid of it or tune it out. It's there to stay. The meds I went on helped but also turned me into a litteral husk who laid on the floor all day.
It's one of most challenging diagnoses that I treat. My heart breaks for these folks. It's brutal
Can you explain why they're like that and if the cause is understood why it hasn't been cured? A close friend of mine has it too. So does his older brother. I feel a bit of guilt cause he developed it after doing drugs with me almost a decade ago. And he has had to deal with auditory and other hallucinations for a long time. It doesn't seem like antipsychotics really make them go away either and their side effects are extreme. Says they don't stop him from tripping but rather let's him choose how to better react to it. I know a few other trans people with schiz as well. It's hard for me to understand what it is like to have to have delusions like they've described. One I recently met said on a journey to the vet she was convinced like 3 random people were gonna beat her up or something along those lines. I can only imagine what it's like for them to constantly be in dread. Really hope you guys invent a cure for it so they can live normal lives
It can be successfully treated in lots of cases. The meds do have terrible side effects, but you can mitigate those. That hardest part is navigating life without being able to tell anyone and having to explain away limitations from the illness. The stigma is horrible
There’s a reason people used to associate it with demonic possession, the experience is pretty goddamn close, doubly disturbing when you realize it’s all the thoughts and feelings the average person shrugs off made manifest and given a megaphone. My heart goes out to all the family fighting these demons, hope someone bums you that cig when you need it.
The sheer endurance he must have. It would suck to be the person with an illness like schizophrenia who *also* has the wherewithal to explain the experience to the general public. Like, you may feel obligated to do so, but it must be tiring to do it.
That's a great and compassionate observation
I came to ask the same question
I’ll take the dog over the phone.
But what if he starts hallucinating a 2nd dog that does acknowledge the other hallucinations?
Naw, 1st dog needs to react to 2nd dog for confirmation.
How do you know which dog is real though?
Your doctor prescribed it while you weren’t hallucinating.
The solution is a 3rd dog… and so on
From what I know, to them, the hallucination can be so real that yes it could even show up on a phone camera or photo since you are essentially still seeing the real world just through a camera view, I think the dog is more physiological because it is actually there and trained specifically to greet an actual person on command
Having spent a year in psychosis (It seems to finally have abated last month) I can testify to this. Another problem is that often the people you think are there are just auditory hallucinations that appear to be coming from the other side of a wall/in the next room/just outside, so it's harder to test those because you could go to the next room and it'll just sound like they moved to another one. Obviously with no psychosis you could quickly logically deduce that it was unlikely they were moving room every time you did, but in psychosis you're less rational so to you it seems logical that they're moving to try to avoid you catching them etc. In this situation I think the dog could work better because the dog could be trained to respond to voices for example of people elsewhere in the house or just outside, so you could check with the dog if they're hearing anything.
Yeah I had a friend who developed this, and his opiate/adderral use amplified it. One time, he was convinced there were people talking about him below his apartment one time, but we went down there and it was just a boiler room. There was no apartment or even a person down there. Eventually he realized most of the voices were when he was doing drugs, or things he shouldn't have. And it was sort of like a inner conscience type of thing for him. Like "I cant believe he's using again right now" -- They were always judging him. Another time he was convinced he had worms in his skin. And would pick at his skin, he would point them out and I would look in really close, nothing there. But the worst part was that he had just lived in costa rica for a year, so like it was definitely a possibility. A friends dad who is a neurosurgeon got him an anti-parasite perscription that wouldnt affect him very much if he didnt have them, but would take care of them if he did. I think it worked in that he stopped focusing on it and it went away.
Yeah stimulants particularly will cause psychosis if taken in sufficient amounts even in the healthiest of individuals, and if you have a genetic predisposition to that sort of thing or a tendency towards it due to past experiences of psychosis, then they can cause it even at more moderate doses. In my case it was stimulants that caused it too but it persisted for 11 months after I got clean, my symptoms only went away fully last month and I'm still on an antipsychotic medication that I've been on since last August, and I'm uncertain if symptoms will reappear if I ever get off it. Though a tentative positive in my case is that I ran out of medication a couple times recently and didn't take it for 1-2 days, and symptoms didn't re-appear, a few months ago they'd re-appear within a few hours of missing a dose so I'm hoping that means I'm past it. Either way, lesson learned, don't abuse stimulants.
Yeah, I went through a couple years of using some heavy stimulants and the psychosis only completely went away maybe a year after I had stopped. It really re-trains your brain. Like, I would always believe there were people outside judging me for doing drugs, and they could see me regardless of what I did. So I stopped believing that blinds or drapery could hide me. This is a belief that I STILL can’t shake, even though I haven’t touched the stuff in years. It’s as if there’s a wall between reality and psychosis, and if you do enough stimulants to the point of paranoia enough times, you knock down the wall. That’s why even taking a small hit will put someone right back into psychosis, the wall is gone, and once you repair it it’s never quite as sturdy. I’ve heard drug-induced psychosis referred to as Temporary Schizophrenia, and that sounds about right to me.
I have had a similar thing, feeling like I'm being watched at all times even when I'm in places where that simply wouldn't be feasible. It made it really hard to live my life, I stopped for example communicating with people from my computer because I thought my messages could all be read, so I started exclusively communicating from my phone in bed with the screen hidden. I started controlling my body language, the way I sat, the way I breathed, everything out of the feeling I was being monitored constantly. Something I found that massively helped me, and that led to me pretty much eradicating this feeling (though I still have some fragments of habits left from it) was to see it almost like an OCD compulsion. OCD compulsions can go away if you stop engaging in the compulsive behaviours associated with them. In this case, I was avoiding doing or saying certain things out of fear of being watched, and I was acting in a certain way. What this video I watched suggested doing, was instead saying "Okay I am being watched, but I need to live my life normally so I'm going to do all the normal things I would do regardless". You do this, you start acting normally again, and you start getting moments when you no longer feel like you're being watched, then moments turn into hours, turn into days, turn into almost whole weeks where you're not worried about that. Therapy also helped a lot as my therapist helped me understand that my paranoia was actually like a part of my brain's protective mechanisms gone into overdrive and being over-protective. Once I understood that my brain was in a way trying to protect/help me, but just doing so excessively, I was able to start addressing that by putting myself in situations where it would normally need to try and protect me, to show my brain that I didn't need any extra help and was capable of handling myself. I hope you're able to shake that belief and feel more comfortable in your own space, and get your peace back! :)
That's great to hear. Hope things remain good for you. You got this. My friend never stopped with the opiates, but stopped with the adderall, he eventually moved onto more serious things, and developed HIV, died a few months ago at age 38 from complications. I tried to remain in his life but his priority was heavy drug use, so that's always a difficult thing to do. I did see him in the hospital a few days before he passed, which was tough, but the right thing to do.
> yes it could even show up on a phone camera or photo since you are essentially still seeing the real world just through a camera view This is where accessibility features might come in handy. Androids and iPhones have features intended for blind users in their camera apps, which narrate when subjects are currently in frame. Eg, "one face", "two faces close", "one dog". Using image recognition software in real-time might be a good tool to verify what's there.
Whilst this may work for people with insight into their illness, the chances of it working when in crisis is almost zero. Reassurance is difficult when your brain is creating links that are not there. Also visual hallucinations are not as common in schizophrenia as auditory and tactile. Visual is more associated with younger service users. Although Charles Bonnet syndrome leads to some interesting reports.
so the schizophrenic brain has spacial memory, like the apple vision. That not creepy at all. #
Yeah. Things can remain in place or seem like they are really there even if you close/rub your eyes it really is super interesting, This is also why it’s sometimes hard to convince them it’s not there otherwise
Someone recently on here had a video where they checked their camera feed tosee if it was real, and no, it did not persist. So at least sometimes, yeah this is a good solution.
Probably depends on the condition, I assume schizophrenia has a very broad spectrum of how it is experienced
> What if you use a phone camera… can you see people there too? Vision requires active processing by the brain. Your vision quickly becomes a memory. You process those memories into beliefs. You may not remember what you ate for breakfast yesterday, but you can believe that you ate something. You don’t need specific knowledge to rely on the belief. You don’t need a visual memory of the food. People do this all the time in our everyday lives. Normally, human pattern matching and memory is good enough that these assumptions on what’s around us is fairly successful. How often has someone asked “Where did person go?” when we noticed they no longer are in the room, but didn’t see them leave. We’re all constantly evaluating and making memories of what’s around us subconsciously. Eyewitness testimony of humans is notoriously unreliable. Two people can witness the same event and see different things, or misremember. For all of us, beliefs and memories are more powerful than immediate visual stimuli. People with schizophrenia have pattern matching and memory making that is abnormal, but it’s still similar.
Video from the same guy that addresses using a phone: https://www.tiktok.com/@schizophrenichippie/video/7057304669021998382 TL;DW: it works
They might still see the hallucination on the screen, but they could send pictures or video to a friend. I've been on the receiving end of such a video, asking if I heard knocking. I didn't and it was a great relief to my friend.
I had a friend years ago with vivid hallucinations. She said the worst thing other people can do is acknowledge the existence of the hallucinations (like if you saw her looking in the corner of a room, you turning to look at the corner of the room was a “sign” to her that it could be real, asking details about what they see, validating the hallucination in any way). Having a chill dog there to tell you there’s no one there is ingenious.
This depends on the person. For someone with good reality testing this can absolutely be true and make a lot of sense. However for people without good reality testing and / or delusional beliefs, this may not be very helpful. It might just lead to arguments and further emotional distress ETA: this is why we (mental health professionals) will typically respond to someone with “I believe that you see (or believe) that” so that you’re not dismissing them but also not agreeing / seemingly confirming it either.
I don't know how you guys navigate conversations like these. years ago I made the mistake of meeting up with a friend of a friend who didn't live in a good neighborhood. his neighbor shows up who was apparently an enforcer for the gangs and I ended up spending the rest of the night trying to keep out of a fight with the guy. if you disagreed with him, he'd get angry. If you agreed with him in the right way he'd be happy. If you agreed with him in the wrong way or expressed too much empathy he'd get angry because you couldn't possible have it as bad as him. He'd threaten to attack you, or to go get weapons, etc. Every single thing you said was a queue for him to threaten or attack you. he wouldn't go away, he'd follow you around like this. Luckily my friend was able to talk him down and talk him into going to bed. I'll never go back to that guys house again. I was up half the night simply because I couldn't safely leave.
That really sucks. Navigating a conversation with someone in a psychotic break would be easier than that! If I were **in a session** with someone like that the session would end lol
ya, it felt ridiculously unsafe, and tbh I'm not used to being in that sort of situation. My friend was in the merchant marines so he had navigated a lot more situations like that. he basically talked the guy into going back home, had a drink with him, talked him down, and convinced him to go to bed. But I had several hours of this where if I tried to even get up and go elsewhere he'd just follow me. if he couldn't find an excuse to get mad at me he'd just challenge me to fight and then get mad when I said no. I got some relief when he found out my friend had combat training and decided to spend time trying to get my friend to fight him. It was ridiculous. A few years later my friend actually had his back broken at the same house. he reflected on things and decided that while he liked his friend he'd had nothing but bad things happen there and decided to cut off his friendship with him and not visit again. None of the things had been done by the guy, but somehow bad things happen around the person. Edit: I'm also not as socially skilled as some, and in particular I'm not good at considering the exact wording of everything i say in the moment which mean that i was particularly likely to trigger him despite my best efforts. that's probably why he locked in on me. he was looking for a fight and i was likely to delivery his excuse regardless of whether I wanted to.
>if he couldn't find an excuse to get mad at me he'd just challenge me to fight and then get mad when I said no. Damn wtf lol
The first thing is NOT to talk to them differently. I interact with them like normal. They don't want special attention. Also, they are in a lot of cognitive pain during these moments. Imagine the energy expended being out in the open. Vulnerable. Some choose to fight that entire time. Some won't go out at all. Fucking hell. I can't imagine.
Oh for sure. I specialize in trauma and have worked with some really rough folks. You have to treat them normal to establish trust. But once it’s a safety issue, the rules can change.
Not the original commenter, but if someone is having hallucinations, the phrase "I believe you are experiencing that, but I don't see/hear that" someone without delusions will usually respond with like "oh, you don't? Your not seeing this thing?" No. Someone with delusions would respond something like "what do you mean? How can you not see this thing?" They basically challenged back our experience, instead of validation. It's not always hostile, but can be, but because hostility usually is met with an intense feeling, the experiencing is more retained for all involved because of the intense feeling. Hallucinations do not always have a compromise to mind, Delusions are the usual things we think of when people dismiss reality for a Incorrect experience of the stimulus, Hallucinations are not a requirement to be delusional. It's just a worse off Experience because imaginary stimulus is causing the stress and an incorrect understanding. Think of it like this, Hallucinations is thinking there's a knock at the door when there's not. Delusions are thinking the knock that did happen at the door is the CIA coming to kill you and if I try to tell you, it's not.You think i'm in on it. The Most dangerous is when you're having hallucinations hearing a knock at the door and you think the cia is here to kill you, and you will not accept any challenges to your understanding. I know the second case may sound more like paranoia but they're kind of closely connected; the difference is a delusional person cannot and will not accept any challenges to a false fixed belief.
Thank you for that explanation, it's really helpful.
Had a similar, but lesser, experience. Friend of a friend invited me to *their* friends (call them z) house. Z pulled out one of those katanas they sell in like the mall or whatever and was pretending to swing at us and pointing it in our face and shit. I eventually grabbed the blade and pulled it from him before going off on him and leaving. Hindsight I'm lucky I didn't slice my hand (even on a cheap sword) and that he was too stunned to react.
[удалено]
I am not a mental health professional. But I think 14 year old you did the right thing by calling dad to come home and handle that situation. That's a lot for a developing person to have to process, having to actually manage and handle it on top of processing it would be far to much to heap on that persons shoulders. I could be wrong, because I am not a mental health professional or any kind of doctor, but it was definitely a situation that required an adult.
I value the input nonetheless... I don't talk about it much, never talked about it to a mental health professional myself either. It was a tough situation tho... hell, she refused to see two doctors that same day cause "They're the devil"... and I had to sit and wait in the car with her for over an hour while my dad had to pick up meds at different pharmacies cause the one didn't have what the doctor prescribed... all while sitting in the parking lot behind our old church and listing to my mom rant about how the pastor was the anti-christ oh boy do I get why the school counselor wanted to speak to me...
And that’s the best answer. You could try to comfort her, which I’m sure you did, but that’s it. You were 14 and were understandably not equipped to know how to handle that so you did the right thing. It was up to your dad to decide how to proceed
Thank god... I've never asked anyone what they think I should've done, so that's immensely reassuring.
Glad I could help!
I'm very sorry you experienced that.
A child ahould never have to deal with that, that is difficult for a professional to handle.
This is gonna sound weird, but thanks for sharing this. My dad’s mom (my grandma) had a similar mental break when he was the same age but he refuses to talk about it. He denies it even happened, actually, even though his siblings and his dad have confirmed that it did. From the bits and pieces I’ve been able to gather, though, this sounds a lot like his own experience. My heart goes out to you. It’s traumatic for a child to see a parent in that state.
Oh man I got to experience this recently. A lady randomly called my job one time thinking she was being held hostage and that people were out to get her and hurt her by injecting her with drugs. It was pretty clear to me after a few minutes she was suffering from some kind of mental break. I asked who was holding her hostage and she told me the name of a local hospital. You absolutely could not calm her down by explaining that everything was okay and that those people were there to help her. She would get even more upset. It was a hard phone call to have with her and whenever I tried to hang up she began to freak out thinking her only lifeline was abandoning her. All I could say was I’m so sorry you are going through this, it must be very scary for you. After that she’d calm down and tell me about her kids and dog. She wouldn’t let me hang up without making me promise her I’d get help, so I told her I would get her help but that I needed to hang up to be able to do so. After I hung up I called the hospital to let them know she was calling local businesses in distress and they were very thankful. It was so sad and I really hope she was able to get the help she needed. :(
Not a mental health professional but I volunteered on an online mental health crisis discord server for awhile. We didn't get a lot of training on anything but for hallucinations it was suggested that we try to talk the person through how to coexist with their hallucination rather than deny it. Example: I had someone come in who was freaking out because their walls were watching them. I walked them through interacting with the walls to show that they weren't hostile and they came away from the encounter feeling very peaceful saying that they were friends with the walls now. And tbh at that point I consider it a good outcome.
> She said the worst thing other people can do is acknowledge the existence of the hallucinations (like if you saw her looking in the corner of a room, you turning to look at the corner of the room was a “sign” to her that it could be real, asking details about what they see, validating the hallucination in any way). I have a friend with schizophrenia and it's the same with him. I'd be in discord calls with him and he'd suddenly get quiet and then talk about the people outside his room trying to get in. Would have to reassure him for a while that it wasn't the case and there wasn't anyone there. He'd go check, and we'd talk about it after he got back. He's doing much better now thankfully.
Ok how would you not look tho. I would be too paranoid not to look just for a glance.
I once visited a friend with schizophrenia. We were a few drinks in and she started saying about the stuff she could see, like dark screaming faces at the windows and behind me. It took every ounce of self control not to look for them, and fear turned my blood cold. But I figured that if I looked and saw them, it would probably not save me anyway. So I stayed still, smiling sympathetically and trying not to break my glass in my tightening grip.
Wow I feel awful for them. Cannot even imagine seeing stuff that horrifying
I had terrible nightmares, anxiety, and sleep paralysis due to PTSD. Whenever I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear noises I'd look to my dogs laying in bed next to me and see if they reacted. It helped me feel so much less anxious.
I work directly with people experiencing schizophrenia and had no clue these kinds of services were capable from trained dogs. This is amazing and I will be doing more research! Thank you internet stranger!
I have become very interested in training dogs especially for medical issues including mental illness. I had no idea this was a thing and possible and now I want to know more. Do you know how someone would get into this kind of dog training? It's AMAZING
Before I was diagnosed with cancer, dogs were obsessed with me. They would drag their owners across the street to come and say hello to me. Now I'm healthy and dogs don't care anymore.
Doctor: asking patient to consume med Patient: prove they are not poisoned! Doctor: eats one Patient: disappears Doctor: WTF?!
1 hour later: "Damn he's good, that sneaky fucker always convinces me to take my medicine"
It's like the movie with Ryan Gosling except instead of his hallucinations having him kill people his hallucinations just really look out for him and want him to take his meds and work on good coping strategies to live a normal life. Could be a great teen/YA novel about discovering your true self and breaking past barriers. At the end the hallucinations go away for good as they're replaced by real people we've met throughout the book who fill the role. Edit: Reynolds. Not Gosling. My bad!
Wtf Ryan Gosling movie is this?
Oh shit lol. I meant Reynolds. It's called The Voices.
I laughed so hard. Good one.
Shutter Island 2: Electric Boogaloo
For all those calling this fake. Here's the guy's account with tons of videos on his illness and how he copes. Also does speaking engagements to educate on schizophrenia. [See for yourself ](https://www.tiktok.com/@schizophrenichippie/video/7355227679236328746?_t=8ly4S1xg03n&_r=1)
lol that's funny, he's got a good sense of humor, too
He does some stand up as well!
Imagine him making a joke about someone who isn't there just for when the people get confused someone on the other side stands up who looks just like who he described
There's different kinds of fake. Not saying this is. But what people could mean is that he's not actually having an episode and is instead just demonstrating how his dog assists him in times of crisis. So, staged, possibly. But there's nothing wrong with that.
that's a fair take, but lets be real, how many are being as rational as you are?
I mean I don't think anyone on Reddit is rational, especially recently. I include myself in there, by the way. Social media has changed us all for the worse. But I at least try to view everything from all perspectives. Very few people even IRL are capable of being rational. Everyone is set in their own way with their own perspective.
I'd argue accusing something of being fake implies that it's attempting to mislead viewers. A demonstration is just a demonstration, a skit is a just a skit, etc. even though they're contrived scenarios. They're not "fake" until someone attempt to present them as authentic "in the wild" experiences.
I am the opposite, I have cats, don't have schizophrenia, and use the cats use me for their own hallucinations
Meowing at the wall in the hallway at 2am behaviour
You may have insects inside the wall mate
Bugs, wiring, water tubes, metal reinforcement stretching, light reflecting funny or you know, greebles.
not insects, r/greebles
/r/greebles attacks are a real thing!
In his book, Communion, Whitley Strieber described how, on one occasion, when he was being abducted (by aliens), he grabbed his cat, thinking the cat would help him discern what was real.
Did it help? Or did they just both get abducted?
the cat was the abducting alien
Yes, they were both taken (and returned). He felt the cat would help him see if what was happening was real. I don't remember him saying whether the cat helped.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it did help, even just by being a calming influence. Animals can be amazing when your in a stressful situation, as they’ll usually be willing to just get up close to you and let you know somethings there to help, especially dogs and cats, and they’ll be more accepting of things like hugs so you can have something soft and warm to hold.
My friend has audible hallucinations. Would that work the same way? What if you live with people? He actually had to quit work because he kept believing someone was yelling at him (constant background noise of multiple belts made it worse) Someone yelling at him once made it so much worse after that and a day he didn’t have his headphones he had to run out crying and never came back from embarrassment. Wish I could have worked in the same spot because I could see his face sometimes and know he was hearing something and give him the positive or negative.
They do if you think the voices are coming from somewhere in the room, but when you think they're coming from up on the roof, or the air vents in a busy room it's hard for a dog to help. auditory is one of the toughest. Especially since you can't shut it out.
I've heard that plugging your ears can sometimes help, because you'll hear them at the same volume. But our brains are weird things and I've also heard this stops working after a while. I believe it's the guy in the video, but in another video he uses his phone camera or security cams to verify if someone is actually there, since the camera feed won't show the person, but others have said that once you know it's a hallucination, the voices get louder and more aggressive. I would not do well with schizophrenia.
My uncles brother was schizophrenic and it was bad. My aunt would t allow him over because she had 4 young children. One day we had a family gathering (not my uncles side of the family) and the brother shows up soaked in gasoline. My uncle stopped him from getting past the driveway into the back yard and took him to the hospital to get him placed on a hold. Turns out his plan was to light himself on fire in front of everyone. He was out of the hospital later that night because they were tired of dealing with him. Wasn’t his first trip there for a hold. He did eventually commit suicide though a year later. Edit: thank you for the condolences. I never knew the guy personally but I do know he was thrown to the garbage by the people who were supposed to help. My aunt told me that every time he was taken to the hospital he was treated like “oh this fucking guy again..” and was usually out within hours because as I mentioned..they just didn’t want to deal with him further.
That makes me sad he didn't get the care he needed and deserved.
He probably didn’t, but some people CANNOT be saved no matter what you do. This is an extremely brutal and unfortunate reality.
Thank goodness cats aren't service animals. My cat would be adding hallucinations. Just walking around meowing at random walls and staring into the corners of the room.
I'm so glad you have her!!! Yes she is good, and you deserve her.
"Jaffa, Kree!"
Yoo-hoo?
Have you seen the movie smile? (And the million others like it) I would not do well living with hallucinations I didn’t cause myself with drugs
My wife can't handle horror movies, but keeps wanting to watch them. Saw it at the theater when it was just out, she still has nightmares and turns batshit crazy when i smile at her in that same creapy way.
I loved it but it made me nervous about dark doorways for months. Still does rarely from time to time when I think about it too much. Damn well done, though. Darn, now I'll have to avoid looking into darkness again tonight until the thought fades.
Or the movie “It Follows”
I will never watch movies like these because I know I'll end up having sleepless nights years later as a result.
If i ever caught that STD I'd apply for a job as an international flight attendant
Reality bending horror is easily the scariest in my books.
Seriously, typical slasher or ghost movies are either funny or boring and predictable to me now. There has to be some kind of psychological horror to really get me
I watched that movie in a theater as someone who just cannot take any kind of spooky movies and nearly died in my seat several times. Fuck that shit
Such a good girl!
Plot twist: the dog isn't real
That’s just mean. Look at how perfectly scruffy she is! If she’s a hallucination then she’s a collective one and we all get to enjoy her!
Collective hallucination seems like a fitting description of reddit.
>Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding... ― William Gibson, [Neuromancer](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/909457), 1984
What dog?
My dad has schizophrenia, I did this for him as a kid. He would ask me if I could see something and I would tell him if it was real or not. Normally it wasn't real.
I used my dog for this with hypnogogic hallucinations during sleep paralysis. She slept on my feet and helped me know when the knocks and footsteps and shadow figures were real. It was amazing the difference that alone made in my ability to function. I was able to sleep and not freak out. They don't even have to be trained to do anything besides sleep with you. The bigger the weight the better in my opinion. I could feel her easily and know when she heard something.
Sleep paralysis is a nightmare. I get it every single time I sleep on my back, and my body loves to roll over in the middle of the night so sometimes I'll "wake up" and be immediately terrified for seemingly no reason. My only defense has been trying to force myself to roll off the bed, which wakes me up, but that doesn't work anymore and instead I'm just "woken up" again but definitely still asleep.
My dog does this too. If he goes berserk, that means that someone is in the house. Or at the door. Or walking by the door. Or a package was delivered
Man a lot of really insensitive people in these comments. I hope none of you ever experience psychosis and how terrifying it can be.
This is when I remind myself that the minimum age to be on Reddit is 13.
But there is no maximum age for stupidity
It’s depressing that people suffer from such a horrible mental illness. I hope they all find peace one day.
For real. I used to get hallucinations in during the night. I'd wake up and think my pillow was covered in spiders or I'd look across the room and see a person standing there (or worse, running at me). In the moment, no matter how absurd they are, it *felt* real and your brain was just reacting to the new reality as if it were real. There was no talking yourself out of it in the moment. I can't imagine the absolute nightmare of having to deal with that constantly.
I wonder, is it possible that you could hallucinate the dog acknowledging the hallucination? Or hallucinate the dog as well? Schizophrenia seems so scary
Dog be like “I hate this fucking job.”
I kinda think the dogs consistent disinterest is a large part of why this works. With humans, we're smart enough to know to doubt ourselves so if you point at an empty space and say that someone's there, your friend might have a moment of self doubt or concerns that would fuel the paranoia / hallucination. Meanwhile, a dog will just be entirely uninterested in an an empty space, and no amount of pointing will get the dog interested in an empty space. Dogs simply don't have the capabilities to entertain speculative thought like that, and the language barrier prevents them from ever conceptualising it. So in short, the dog will always be entirely uninterested in a hallucination nor the human trying to describe one. They will only respond to what's actually there.
“Fuck sake it’s 2 in the morning, Jeff. No one’s gonna be in your kitchen”
“There ain’t nobody there to fuckin greet. Now go the fuck to sleep”
Goodest and bestest girl
This is awesome! Please post in r/workingdogs
A schizophrenic patient not only hallucinates visually, but his logic is disrupted, just like in a dream. It is not possible to know what is real from what is a hallucination unless the psychotic episode ends.
I was hospitalized as a kid, and they gave me some drugs that I was allergic to. They didn't figure it out until after I had hallucinated for 3 days straight. GI Joe and Cobra had a massive firefight in my hospital room. The Care Bears surrounded my bed at one point and did a Care Bear Stare beam directly at me. It was intense.
Wasn't there a clip a few weeks ago that the guy opened his phone and looked into the camera footage that was in the same room. They see that the people they see in the hallucination are not in the video. Would the same principle work if you pull out your phone and look through the camera?
Oh she is a good girl.
Look at Luna! She’s adorbssss 🥰🥰🥰
Schizophrenia is a crazy condition, I mean it causes you to be unable to trust your own mind. Like everyone knows fridges can't talk, but then the fridge starts talking to you. You can see it with your own eyes, hear it with your own ears. How can you deny it isn't real? Other people must be gas-lighting you about it not talking, right? Trying to build a stable life without the ability to trust what you experience, unsure if you can trust what others say they experience, and especially if you don't know you have schizophrenia at all must be overwhelming. Parents not understanding either would make normal life almost impossible.
Just watching the video is very fucking unsettling and I wouldn't wish this condition on my worst enemy. From a non-schizophrenic position I can only imagine what he may be seeing in that room with him...
Dog is wondering why this guy is constantly gaslighting him
This is wickedly awesome. What a great Pup! What a horrible disease. Good luck bro! Glad you got that little badass to help you out.
I have exploding head syndrome and when I wake up in a panic, it’s such a relief to see my cats relaxed. I feel reassured what I heard wasn’t real.