Holy shit, that’s it.

That’s part of the prodromal phase for me.

I pull away from people.

I can see it now.

People start annoying the shit out of me, for no reason.

I suddenly hate getting messages and calls, checking social media is like torture, so I shutdown, I pull away, I stop texting for weeks, even months.

Literally, one day I wake up, and things are so fucking shitty and dumb and I’m throughly annoyed at everything and I have to leave the stupid house and go out into the stupid world with stupid fucking people and everything bevomes an extremely annoying, for no real reason.

It just is.

And I want to be clear when I say things start to annoy me, they really fucking annoy me for no reason.

I even have a mood in my mood app called “annoyed at life”, I’ve had it for years now and as I look at the data, that feeling comes in clumps.

It’s more intense than waking up on the wrong side of the bed, which is similar – it’s like that feeling, but on a hefty dose of steroids.

The tiniest inconvenience will set me into a self harming spat or yelling out of pure rage at the wall or mirror.

This is part of the reason that I don’t like to look in mirrors.

But it’s like I literally get thrown into survival mode when that happens – my body is very tightly wound, every muscle is tensed and I’m extremely close to rage (not anger, more so than that).

Basically I wake up hypervigilant as fuck, and every. single. thing. has the potential to set me off against myself.

Everything is still frustrating today.

And I’m realizing that this is part of my psychosis phases.

Anger is a cover or veil for a ton of feelings, right?

Like if you’re angry, you’re probably more hurt or sad or something in you has been invalidated or something like that, rather than the anger or rage being simply by itself.

There’s an underlying cause, or trigger for anger.

Rage and/or anger are not normally not a standalone feelings.

I think the confusion from hearing people talk about me, the slow and eventual warping of the rest of reality, and the social pulling away is all in my prodromal phase, and is interpreted in me as just stand alone, unprovoked rage.

And I don’t think that’s true now.

I think the anger is just the vessel.

I think my anger is the only way I’ve ever felt with big feelings, it was the main example I had growing up.

And so the anger surfaces because it’s my go-to way of processing.

I also think that the building up of psychosis in me, the prodromal phase, though subconscious, my body can feel it before “me” and there is dissonance between my mind and body in that realm, and that’s surfacing as what I interpret as anger too.

So I’m getting hit from all sides with the feeling of anger, though I have nothing to be angry about, and have not been provoked or triggered by an outside force.

I think that anger is really just confusion and frustration with the surfacing inconsistencies in me that come with psychosis.

I think that if I can change my go-to processing emotion from anger to something like radical acceptance, or something healthier like that while lucid, maybe, just maybe, I can change how I subconsciously emote when I’m getting dipped into the prodromal phase of psychosis.

That’s all just a hypothesis, but I think I’m on the right track.

It’s slowly drifting away from the rage into a mild anger today, but I’m annoying myself at how annoying everything is still.

I’m coming out of that episode and I’m just now, another week or so past the actual episode, starting to want human connection again.

And mind you, I’m realizing all of this in hindsight now.

But I pull away for sure, absolutely.

And I get so angry with myself for no reason, or so I thought.

I just never saw any of this till this week.

And the thing is that I’ve always wondered why people will suddenly start to extremely frustrate me for no reason like that.

It’s so bizarre to suddenly see your behaviors like I’m occasionally able to.

To reflect and see myself like I can now.

I’ve never been able to do any of this.

The mood apps help a ton too, puts all of my feelings into data points for the last three years.

This is exactly why I started using it so far back.

I could never see a pattern before.

I thought I was self aware before I knew what psychosis was, life now was always unobtainable for me.

It’s mind blowing really.

Because I stopped texting people back around the end of that never ending arthritic flare not too many months back.

Around December or January or so.

Then I had that bad psychotic episode in the beginning of March, I realized it really started around January, when that arthritic flare was finally ending.

Damn, I had already pulled away by then.

I noticed yesterday on my walk I didn’t have a bunch of neighbors talking about me as I passed all the buildings.

That was so nice.

I forget what the quiet is like until it floods again.

I’m apprehensive still, post psychotic episode, I still really just want to be at home on the couch by myself.

Because my evening walk was much more torturous the last half of it.

I had taken a different route around the complex, and the “neighbors who talk about me” were commenting the whole last half of the walk, talking about how my OCD must’ve worn off and they were laughing at me calling me a fucking bitch and all that shit.

So it’s still around.

I upped my Paliperidone back to two tablets a day for now, it is what it is.

But I did good get out of the house the other day and I hung out with a good friend, so today I’m better.

And I mean, sure, I did want to talk to someone, to hang out with someone at some point within that psychosis time frame, but I didn’t want to have to communicate or be touched at all.

Besides, the wildest shit is going through my head and I know if I talk about it, the look I’ll get will be crushing.

So I just don’t.

I just shut people out and deal with it by myself, it’s the easiest way.

Besides, I never want to be touched when I’m in huge feelings.

It throws me into an overstimulation or something, it’s too much, I can’t stand it.

But I’m amazed I’m seeing these patterns unfold as I look back.

Just before that change, that pulling away I did, I had a ton of medication changes too, while still being in extreme pain.

I was on 60mg of Buspirone, taking 15mg four times a day.

Ridiculous.

Way too much.

It’s like I found medicine that works for my depression and pain, the Duloxetine, and my body started to relax when I started it in Jan, but my mind was just still SUPER amped and stressed.

My mind was trying to just survive the stress of sinking into the prodromal phase and intense, intense pain levels.

So my mind threw us into psychosis partially probably because my body was finally able to relax after five months of intense pain, while my mind was still being electrocuted and tortured in survival mode from all the stressors.

I thought it was quick, how the episode came on, but looking back it was really quite gradual and sneaky, as usual.

And then the pain that I had been in since about October of last year was debilitating by the beginning of the 2025 and that added to all of this, 100%.

I went back and looked at my old blogs and writings and the stress from my pain levels was through the roof.

And as you all know, I’m realizing that stress like that leads to psychosis for me every time.

And what’s wild is that I noticed (via writings and looking back) I was having worsening auditory hallucinations and yet I didn’t realize I was going into an episode.

It’s ridiculous how quickly I forget about the intensity of the pain I was in when it’s no longer stabbing.

If I think about it, or read about it, like I did just now, it gives me goosebumps.

Ugh.

That pain, fuck, I don’t know if my body would have been able to be in psychosis while in that much pain.

My body would have to be able to do two completely extreme things at the same time, and not implode.

That shit was intense.

Pain like that only hits every few years.

And honestly, my pain usually intensifies when I’m having mental illness symptoms anyway, so no fucking doubt it can work the other way around.

All of this – being able to look at my behaviors, is from the medication and the hard work I’ve been putting in.

Therapy is grueling and exhausting but I’ve been really able to dive into my behaviors lately.

I feel like without the mood apps and my writings, I wouldn’t be able to be so reflective.

The changes I see in the way I’m able to think are just fucking amazing to me.

I never, ever thought I’d be able to reflect and see myself like this.

It’s like I’m starting life from the beginning again.

– Keren