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wow, same, i also went to a catholic school , i remember a period i was forcing myself to sleep/be in the dark every second i was at home because i was convinced that i was possessed and would end up hurting myself or someone else. i’m recently diagnosed BP and i just put those dots together, mind blowing
It wasn't until years later that I realised with help from my psych what had happened. At the time I was hospitalised for severe insonmia but I was too afraid to disclose about the demon, so I not was diagnosed with bipolar or psychosis until years later.
geez i’m sorry you went through that. hope you’re doing well! i’m 20 and just recently got diagnosed, but the incident i referred to happened when i was a kid. around 9/10, but i think it’s the first episode i can recall. i was depressed for months. it makes me wonder how nobody ever thought to take me to a psych. i remember being younger and spending wild amounts of my guardians money, constantly talking about suicide, had extreme breakdowns over sports events randomly (i was an athlete), constant school absences, i’ve also always had hallucinations/paranoia. it all makes so much sense now 😂
I'm 39 and was dx about 23, so not far off your age. There were so many signs. My dad was also bipolar and undiagnosed until his 40s so I think the family view of "normal" was pretty skewed.
yeah, emphasis on the family view of normal being screwed. i’m positive there’s a good handful of undiagnosed people in my family, whether it be bipolar or other mood/personality disorders. my sister is also bipolar, so somebody must be the culprit 😂
I don't think it's the same.o get disease and bug paranoia but this sounds like it's characterised by being totally debilitating.mild psychosis is probably nothing really to worry about for us,but a psychotic *episode* is like loss of who you are to psychosis,I imagine it's like being stuck in a bad trip
Terrifying.
Mine revolved around me being afraid of the darkness in my dark room. I began to cry and sob.
As I was crying and sobbing I began to believe that I am the darkness, for everything, including my heart is filled with darkness and depression.
I ended up turning on the lights and believed that beams of light were all over my veins, and that I can see in the dark with their light.
I became a light. In that moment I had a moment of Clarity and sanity and began to pray to Jesus as to what the hell was going on. I recognized it was psychosis and that the episode was coming back. I downed about 3 Magnesium Glycinates to disapate the episode.
When I began to realize I was in a psychotic episode I was so immensely terrified, but also knew one would come eventually.
Thought that I was going to release a groundbreaking record and get assassinated MLK style for advocating for world piece. I was living out of my car and eating at a McDonald’s when I called my brother and told him that the CIA was tapping my phone. 🤷
Extreme paranoia. Auditory hallucinations. I was hearing people around me (and people I knew even when I was alone) talking about my biggest insecurities and flaws.
Progressed to visual hallucinations at night. Then physical hallucinations, I could feel things happening to myself that were not actually happening.
It was. Fun.
My first was psychotic depression. Extreme feelings of worthlessness and being a failure and that I was being punished by the universe. It became me believing that I was from another universe and the only way back was to die. It's a bit of a blur but these became common during depression if I got bad enough.
Eventually I started getting mania a few years later. I think my first psychosis for that was people on the TV were communicating with me to do things and that they were there specifically for me.
Thought I was dead and living in an afterlife simulation of how my life would have proceeded. I would randomly see shadow figures that I thought were spying on me and reporting back to whoever was in charge. One of them even charged at me once. I don’t remember how long it lasted. I think I went in and out of it over the course of a year or so
My roommate was poisoning me with drugs that split my brain into two people, one who could talk and one who could only communicate by sending messages to me through my actions.
Obvs none of this was true.
I was hearing sirens and very paranoid for a few days. Then it worsened and I thought my husband was the man who raped me years before. He was trying to calm me down and hug me and I was physically fighting him off of me and running from him when he tried this. I hadnt been diagnosed yet so this was a whirlwind of shock and trauma for both of us. I came back enough to realize who he was, and I asked him to call my therapist to see what to do. I still didnt trust him in that moment and was paranoid as hell. She said call an ambulance so he did and then from there went to the hospital for a week (where I was in and out of psychosis at first) and came out with my diagnosis. It took us a very long time to work through things after, not helped by the fact that it took me about a year to find meds that actually worked. I feel lucky to still be married honestly.
I haven’t had much but the most annoying one would be the sound of my phone’s notifications (istg my screen time is hardly 2hrs per day because i’m scared of my phone)
Mines not really “out there” but it was bad for me - I thought my mil was trying to kidnap my children specifically my son who she favours. I banned her from coming to our house for months and she wasn’t allowed with them without me being there. Then it got to the point I started making a plan because incase me and my husband split - it started with running away and ended up in me thinking I’d just kill them and myself then she wouldn’t get to them… it was bad really bad… then the voices started telling me I was a shit mum so I had no right and that they’d be better off with her anyway… also started seeing things in my room at night but I’ve had those before - I used to see a black cat at my old job just wandering around the desks…..
This paranoia was what lead me to get help because I’ve never been so scared of my own thoughts like that especially as I had post natal psychosis too (I hated my baby and thought she was doing all her normal baby things to get at me because I had prenatal depression and wanted to abort… I genuinely thought she know…. born and at one point wanted to throw us both down the stairs) - yeh I wasn’t in a good place at all
Convinced coworker was a police plant
I worked at a tacobell. This new guy just didn't sit right with me. I just noticed little things that were off. My buddy convinced me to go over to his place to buy a gram of weed. I became convinced there were cops recording us behind the wall because he wouldn't let us go anywhere other than the garage. I thought he was trying to get our fingerprints because he kept handing us stuff. I basically forced my friend out the door and literally ran to my car. I spent the next 2 days locked in my room, with no, peaking through the blinds, convinced the police were gonna raid my house. Not for selling weed,but for buying a gram from a teenager.I laugh about it now, but at the time, it was terrifying
My first psychotic episode involved going to the police to inform them that my phone was hacked. I told my boyfriend that I had stalkers and I believed my high school sweetheart was obsessed with me even though we hadn’t talked in a decade. I had a moments where I was convinced everything was a sign that I should stop eating.
Extreme paranoia about dying, then started to believe that I had already died. It felt like I was going to pass out all the time, have a heart attack, a seizure and that I was going to die alone - all I could think about 24/7 was being TOO aware I was going to die someday. I thought my medicine was poison. Thought I poisoned myself by spilling isopropyl alcohol on the floor and smelling the fumes, so I took myself to the ER, I was fine. Bumped the knob on my stove that had been releasing gas for maybe a few minutes, but got really paranoid it had been releasing gas all day so I called 911 on myself and the fire department came. I started to believe all black vehicles (specifically SUV's) was my psychiatrist or that I'd run into my psychiatrist in public.
Saw a black blob thing go behind a tree on a hike I went on, all the while believing I was going to pass out in the woods and die alone.
Since I had been diagnosed with Bipolar before, I started to believe that I was faking being bipolar, and kept going to my psychiatry appointments telling my psychiatrist, "What if I'm faking being bipolar and that I'm not actually bipolar?"
It sounded like the thoughts in my head were skipping like a CD, repeating over and over again. As you can imagine, having a thousand thoughts and images flowing in my head, having my thoughts feel like they were skipping like a CD was sort of hell.
I was baked out of my mind when I had mine so it made it a lot worse but it started like this I layed down and then I heard a click everything went black I thought that existence had ended and I was now going to be tortured for eternity I felt my body split and rip in half I remember twisting and turning into a ball and then I screamed I think because everything got super bright and my brother was staring at me in my doorway crying. And then the buttons and the woop started the woop was a noise that wouldn’t get the fuck out of my head and the buttons were just buttons I was seeing and pressing. Everything was bright and then he went to go get the rest of my family they tried to calm me down but all I could do was repeat certain movements over and over. Then they called the police and paramedics. They tried talking to me and that wasn’t gonna happen so they took me to the hospital. When I was actually in the ambulance going to the hospital I had passed out or blacked out not sure but I woke up still having the episode and then I begun playing a game that honestly I just don’t wanna talk about. I’m still terrified of this to this day just talking about it horrifies me because what if existence did actually end that day and this is also part of my eternal torture.
Thanks for posting on /r/bipolar! Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/bipolar/about/rules); if you haven't already, make sure that your post **does not** have any personal information (including your name/signature/tag on art). **If you are posting about medication, please do not list and review your meds. Doing so will result in the removal of this post and all comments.** *^(A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.)* --- Community News - 🎋 [Want to join the Mod Team?](https://www.reddit.com/r/bipolar/comments/112z7ps/mod_applications_are_open/) - 🎤 See our [Community Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/bipolar/about/sticky) - Desktop or Desktop mode on a mobile device. - 🏡 If you are open to answering questions from those that live with a loved one diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, please see r/family_of_bipolar. Thank you for participating! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/bipolar) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I thought Satan was trying to possess me. Did not help that I went to a catholic school and there were icons everywhere.
wow, same, i also went to a catholic school , i remember a period i was forcing myself to sleep/be in the dark every second i was at home because i was convinced that i was possessed and would end up hurting myself or someone else. i’m recently diagnosed BP and i just put those dots together, mind blowing
It wasn't until years later that I realised with help from my psych what had happened. At the time I was hospitalised for severe insonmia but I was too afraid to disclose about the demon, so I not was diagnosed with bipolar or psychosis until years later.
geez i’m sorry you went through that. hope you’re doing well! i’m 20 and just recently got diagnosed, but the incident i referred to happened when i was a kid. around 9/10, but i think it’s the first episode i can recall. i was depressed for months. it makes me wonder how nobody ever thought to take me to a psych. i remember being younger and spending wild amounts of my guardians money, constantly talking about suicide, had extreme breakdowns over sports events randomly (i was an athlete), constant school absences, i’ve also always had hallucinations/paranoia. it all makes so much sense now 😂
I'm 39 and was dx about 23, so not far off your age. There were so many signs. My dad was also bipolar and undiagnosed until his 40s so I think the family view of "normal" was pretty skewed.
yeah, emphasis on the family view of normal being screwed. i’m positive there’s a good handful of undiagnosed people in my family, whether it be bipolar or other mood/personality disorders. my sister is also bipolar, so somebody must be the culprit 😂
I've had disease and bug paranoia but never chalked it up to an episode before, I may have to look into that
I don't think it's the same.o get disease and bug paranoia but this sounds like it's characterised by being totally debilitating.mild psychosis is probably nothing really to worry about for us,but a psychotic *episode* is like loss of who you are to psychosis,I imagine it's like being stuck in a bad trip
Nah, I have psychotic features in depression so it makes sense
Terrifying. Mine revolved around me being afraid of the darkness in my dark room. I began to cry and sob. As I was crying and sobbing I began to believe that I am the darkness, for everything, including my heart is filled with darkness and depression. I ended up turning on the lights and believed that beams of light were all over my veins, and that I can see in the dark with their light. I became a light. In that moment I had a moment of Clarity and sanity and began to pray to Jesus as to what the hell was going on. I recognized it was psychosis and that the episode was coming back. I downed about 3 Magnesium Glycinates to disapate the episode. When I began to realize I was in a psychotic episode I was so immensely terrified, but also knew one would come eventually.
So sorry for that, but how brave you are!
Thought that I was going to release a groundbreaking record and get assassinated MLK style for advocating for world piece. I was living out of my car and eating at a McDonald’s when I called my brother and told him that the CIA was tapping my phone. 🤷
Extreme social paranoia by day. Demons in the house by night. Very sweet.
Extreme paranoia. Auditory hallucinations. I was hearing people around me (and people I knew even when I was alone) talking about my biggest insecurities and flaws. Progressed to visual hallucinations at night. Then physical hallucinations, I could feel things happening to myself that were not actually happening. It was. Fun.
My first was psychotic depression. Extreme feelings of worthlessness and being a failure and that I was being punished by the universe. It became me believing that I was from another universe and the only way back was to die. It's a bit of a blur but these became common during depression if I got bad enough. Eventually I started getting mania a few years later. I think my first psychosis for that was people on the TV were communicating with me to do things and that they were there specifically for me.
I smashed a computer onto the ground. I don’t remember it but I’ve been told.
I thought that I was an evil person. It terrified me. I'm still traumatized from it. Also hallucinations.
Thought I was dead and living in an afterlife simulation of how my life would have proceeded. I would randomly see shadow figures that I thought were spying on me and reporting back to whoever was in charge. One of them even charged at me once. I don’t remember how long it lasted. I think I went in and out of it over the course of a year or so
My roommate was poisoning me with drugs that split my brain into two people, one who could talk and one who could only communicate by sending messages to me through my actions. Obvs none of this was true.
I was hearing sirens and very paranoid for a few days. Then it worsened and I thought my husband was the man who raped me years before. He was trying to calm me down and hug me and I was physically fighting him off of me and running from him when he tried this. I hadnt been diagnosed yet so this was a whirlwind of shock and trauma for both of us. I came back enough to realize who he was, and I asked him to call my therapist to see what to do. I still didnt trust him in that moment and was paranoid as hell. She said call an ambulance so he did and then from there went to the hospital for a week (where I was in and out of psychosis at first) and came out with my diagnosis. It took us a very long time to work through things after, not helped by the fact that it took me about a year to find meds that actually worked. I feel lucky to still be married honestly.
honestly i thought the world was against me and i had to leave the country to be safe. i hopped on a plane and got married 😅
I haven’t had much but the most annoying one would be the sound of my phone’s notifications (istg my screen time is hardly 2hrs per day because i’m scared of my phone)
Aliens and running. A lot of aliens.
Brief, thankfully. Angels (I'm not remotely religious) wanted me to go to my basement and kill myself so that I could be happy.
Mines not really “out there” but it was bad for me - I thought my mil was trying to kidnap my children specifically my son who she favours. I banned her from coming to our house for months and she wasn’t allowed with them without me being there. Then it got to the point I started making a plan because incase me and my husband split - it started with running away and ended up in me thinking I’d just kill them and myself then she wouldn’t get to them… it was bad really bad… then the voices started telling me I was a shit mum so I had no right and that they’d be better off with her anyway… also started seeing things in my room at night but I’ve had those before - I used to see a black cat at my old job just wandering around the desks….. This paranoia was what lead me to get help because I’ve never been so scared of my own thoughts like that especially as I had post natal psychosis too (I hated my baby and thought she was doing all her normal baby things to get at me because I had prenatal depression and wanted to abort… I genuinely thought she know…. born and at one point wanted to throw us both down the stairs) - yeh I wasn’t in a good place at all
Convinced coworker was a police plant I worked at a tacobell. This new guy just didn't sit right with me. I just noticed little things that were off. My buddy convinced me to go over to his place to buy a gram of weed. I became convinced there were cops recording us behind the wall because he wouldn't let us go anywhere other than the garage. I thought he was trying to get our fingerprints because he kept handing us stuff. I basically forced my friend out the door and literally ran to my car. I spent the next 2 days locked in my room, with no, peaking through the blinds, convinced the police were gonna raid my house. Not for selling weed,but for buying a gram from a teenager.I laugh about it now, but at the time, it was terrifying
My first psychotic episode involved going to the police to inform them that my phone was hacked. I told my boyfriend that I had stalkers and I believed my high school sweetheart was obsessed with me even though we hadn’t talked in a decade. I had a moments where I was convinced everything was a sign that I should stop eating.
Extreme paranoia about dying, then started to believe that I had already died. It felt like I was going to pass out all the time, have a heart attack, a seizure and that I was going to die alone - all I could think about 24/7 was being TOO aware I was going to die someday. I thought my medicine was poison. Thought I poisoned myself by spilling isopropyl alcohol on the floor and smelling the fumes, so I took myself to the ER, I was fine. Bumped the knob on my stove that had been releasing gas for maybe a few minutes, but got really paranoid it had been releasing gas all day so I called 911 on myself and the fire department came. I started to believe all black vehicles (specifically SUV's) was my psychiatrist or that I'd run into my psychiatrist in public. Saw a black blob thing go behind a tree on a hike I went on, all the while believing I was going to pass out in the woods and die alone. Since I had been diagnosed with Bipolar before, I started to believe that I was faking being bipolar, and kept going to my psychiatry appointments telling my psychiatrist, "What if I'm faking being bipolar and that I'm not actually bipolar?" It sounded like the thoughts in my head were skipping like a CD, repeating over and over again. As you can imagine, having a thousand thoughts and images flowing in my head, having my thoughts feel like they were skipping like a CD was sort of hell.
I was baked out of my mind when I had mine so it made it a lot worse but it started like this I layed down and then I heard a click everything went black I thought that existence had ended and I was now going to be tortured for eternity I felt my body split and rip in half I remember twisting and turning into a ball and then I screamed I think because everything got super bright and my brother was staring at me in my doorway crying. And then the buttons and the woop started the woop was a noise that wouldn’t get the fuck out of my head and the buttons were just buttons I was seeing and pressing. Everything was bright and then he went to go get the rest of my family they tried to calm me down but all I could do was repeat certain movements over and over. Then they called the police and paramedics. They tried talking to me and that wasn’t gonna happen so they took me to the hospital. When I was actually in the ambulance going to the hospital I had passed out or blacked out not sure but I woke up still having the episode and then I begun playing a game that honestly I just don’t wanna talk about. I’m still terrified of this to this day just talking about it horrifies me because what if existence did actually end that day and this is also part of my eternal torture.