I got into a comment conversation with a fellow writer and decided to write an entry around it.

In my last post I had some hallucination dialogue – some back and forth between the voices, and she asked me if there was any way to distract myself from them in the moment.

And I’m going to be very direct when I say this.

No.

There is no possible way to ignore them or shrug it off.

It is impossible to ignore a delusion, and extremely, extremely difficult to ignore a hallucination.

They’re 1000% engulfing.

They take over every part of your mind and it becomes my reality.

And it is reality to me because these things and conversations really do happen to me.

My old therapist would tell me that even though my friends and coworkers did not say what I heard them say, I still can’t unhear it.

It still happened to me regardless if it was in everyone’s else’s reality or not.

The words in their voice still went into my ears.

How can I just ignore that?

The thing is that the delusion and hallucinations are real.

I really hear people talking about me all the time.

These voices sound exactly like the person they are mimicking, like my neighbors, or someone I’m familiar with.

They sound exactly the same as the person who lives in that specific apartment as I pass by.

The voices are the voices of my friends who are talking major shit about me just behind my back, in ear shot.

And if I’ve never heard a person talk, they sound like anyone and everyone familiar.

And I can’t unhear any of these voices.

I can’t unfeel any of the dread and fear and confusion.

I know they’re watching me, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. 

My heart starts beating faster, my breath gets shallower, I start sweating, it IS happening.

It’s as if I’m suddenly thrown in the middle of a random conversation and shituation but mid way through, and I’m also being stalked, hunted, watched, and judged by the same people that are talking about me, at the same time.

They are real.

It’s a delusion that I’m being followed, and the voices are a hallucination.

The conversation that the voices are having is happening.

There’s not a single shred of fucking doubt in me.

It is reality.

There isn’t a single thought that could pull me out.

In fact, every single time things happen that concrete the delusion or hallucination.

Like I’ll see someone in a hoodie ducking behind a car or something, and that just makes it that much more real, because it is real to me.

These people, these voices, are trying to hurt me.

They want me dead, today.

It doesn’t ever even cross my mind that it doesn’t make sense because they are after me.

It’s as if someone appeared out of thin air and is suddenly standing about 10-15 feet away from me, behind me or just off to the side, talking about me, watching me, and actively trying to kill me.

That’s what it always comes down to.

I’m not afraid to die, but they’ll torture and fuck that.

They don’t say that they’ll torture me anymore, but there’s not a doubt in my mind that the hallucinations are out to “get” me.

And all of them are an external voice.

It’s not a thought, or a stream of thoughts, it’s not inside at all, it’s outside of me.

That’s why I always thought it was an ability to read minds.

Because I thought I could “hear what other people were thinking” – it was always external, I just wasn’t being rational about it.

I was confused and in and out of psychosis for so many decades, that nothing clicked until about a year after I  lost everything and everyone (I was put on Paliperidone in August of 2022).

And now I’m starting over with a medicated mind and everything is so brand new to me.

I can fucking think now.

I’m way calmer and more rational.

I’m not close to being as suicidal as I have been my whole life.

And I honestly feel like I’m in my early 20’s again.

It’s like I’m picking up where my mind was last able to think rationally, around the age of 15 or so.

I remember the feeling of complete helplessness as my behaviors worsened over the last 15-20 years.

I didn’t understand why or how I was getting worse, but I knew that I was… 

Until I thought I was really just fucking fine again.

That’s when I was really quite gone and was claiming lucidity, not really knowing what that means.

Anosognosia is real, and a bitch.

When I was first told that I was dealing with psychosis was when I was in the hospital down here in Jan of 2022.

Well, I had told my last psychiatrist in Denver in the fall of 2021 and he put me on Haloperidol straight away while I waited for an appointment here.

And I remember being really confused about it.

What does psychosis even mean?

I googled it when I got out of the hospital and I was shocked at how much it made so much fucking sense for everything I’ve ever delt with.

How I was so “knowledgeable” of mental illnesses, but was completely unfamiliar with psychosis.

How did it sum up, so succinctly, what I’ve been dealing with since I was teenager?

How had I never known of this?

Was my denial running that deep?

Yes, my denial was running that deep.

100%

I mean, I guess I knew what “psychotic” means from the television and movies but I don’t kill people, I don’t even have thoughts or voices that tell me to harm anyone or anything, so it was confusing at first.

But psychosis, and schizoaffective disorder specifically, sums up every single fucking diagnosis I’ve ever had, into one.

The agony that comes with feeling out of control like that is indescribable.

It’s scary, confusing, obsessive and I was in deep denial.

When I’m in psychosis, I’m not in the drivers seat of my car..

I’m not even in the car.

It’s like I’m running after it as psychosis drives off.

But psychosis is so horribly misunderstood, it feels impossible to rid myself of the stigma.

I was that person on the street, talking nonsense to myself, muttering and speaking full conversations to myself and recording on  my phone as I yelled at the voices.

I was 1000% convinced that several of my neighbors were staging a killing of me and they were stalking and hunting me.

They would break into my apartment and put microscopic cameras and microphones all over my apartment.

I had like 50 pictures of my apartment door on my camera roll, trying to get “proof” they were breaking in, when all of the photos were the same and showed nothing out of the ordinary.

I would pace and yell to no one on the streets of downtown Denver.

I would pace for hours taking video and photos.

And the delusion and hallucination would never show up and I was convinced the voices were controlling my phone and had broken into it and were able to edit the photos and videos to make them all dissapear.

It would make the delusion concrete.

There was always a reason that the irrational was obviously rational.

I remember Bruce not wanting to come outside with me at that point even.

I only remember tiny bits and pieces of my time in Denver, and most of what I remember was on my phone as a video or photo that I watched and deleted months later. 

There are still photos and videos on my cloud that I have to go through.

And I would write udder jibberish in my journal too.

Some of it didn’t even look like my handwriting, it was totally different topics and look as the pages turned.

Like I couldn’t get into a groove, I was too gone.

It’s scary to be in psychosis.

So the next time you go to laugh at the person that’s not all there and acting strange, don’t.

They have quite literally no idea what they’re doing right now and are not behind the wheel.

I wish I hadn’t lost so many years to psychosis.

I wish I hadn’t lost as many friends.

I wish a lot of things.

But I hope you have a better understanding of how psychosis now, and I hope you never, ever have to deal with it.

– Keren