Can I Develop New Disorders By Not Being Careful?

[Kintsugi]

So. You know. I'm a paranoid person. And maybe this is just plain silly paranoia. I haven't slept. So maybe I'm getting all worked up over nothing.

I am wondering if I can develop new and terrifying disorders by not keeping some of my symptoms in check, such as hallucinations, dissociation/derealization, and paranoia. Like, is it possible to not be careful enough in managing these symptoms to the point where I develop a new personality disorder? Or psychosis?

Something that particularly worries me is that a couple of months ago I had my first lasting visual hallucination accompanied by a bunch of benign auditory hallucinations. What really scared me about the visual, though, was how I almost enjoyed watching it. At the very least, I was more curious than afraid. I watched it with real serenity: flashes of light near my vaulted ceiling like giant old flash bulbs interspersed with massive, gaping black holes. I remember thinking, after evaluating my physical condition for answers and finding none, that it was almost like watching fireworks.

The hallucination didn't scare me. My response did. Can these become their own problem if I don't take steps to stop them from happening again?

 

[franciemarnie]

I don't know about developing a new disorder but when I hallucinated for a couple months, the images were initially benign and my serenity in observing them had to do with my level of sleep deprivation. I was in a dreamy state with my eyes open. I first saw rainbow colored balls floating in the air. Like Disney!

But then the hallucinations became nightmare images and it was terrifying. That exacerbated my PTSD symptoms something awful. I ended up quitting my job and finally caught up on sleep. It was the only time in my life I asked someone who wasn't a professional to help and stay overnight.

Once I caught up on sleep, the hallucinations went away.

I'd be concerned with your quality of life. Nightmare images may pierce thru the dreamy fog and set in place new unpredictable experiences of trauma. I would try and figure out why you are hallucinating because they may not remain benevolent experiences.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

Hello MissAntiSunshine,

We don't share the same experiences but I have had some hypomanic episodes and had what my therapist calls a "mystical experience", one of the most memorable things in my life and yeah, I enjoyed it even if it was a little bit scary at first.

I didn't really like it when I was getting pressured to take medication for the Bipolar Disorder. But it looked like that unless I took care of it that it could get worse. I still look back on that mystical experience rather fondly and sometimes it will still effect my choice about if I take my medication or not.

I don't really expect you find what I said helpful. It isn't the same thing. I do think it can get worse and there is no guarantee wont be so unscary next time.

Take care.

 

[anonymous]

I think you're seeing fireworks because you're so tired. You need sleep. You are not developing new disorders. I was closer to schizophrenic when I was processing my childhood traumas than any other disorder, simply because I needed to talk it out with myself... who else could understand? I needed to answer myself. Once I understood my traumas my inner "monologue" became more like the id, the ego and the superego. In the end, I only have PTSD and that's bad enough, but its symptoms are different now that I understand why my family didn't protect me in childhood. Believing those memories which made that clear was painful and at times, absurd; so it was difficult to figure out what was real and what wasn't real for awhile. A few realizations regarding my mistaken (and stubborn) core beliefs firmly grounded me in logical, rational, reality.

You're okay, MAS. Don't drive yourself crazy with worry, instead ground yourself in what you know and accept it. It's not perfect. I know I don't want PTSD, especially as it comes with so much anxiety and depression; but, I can't change it. All I can do is learn to accept it so I can live with it. Same with the traumas and the choices I made in those traumas. I can't change those choices, and I'm not always sure I know what would have been a better choice at the time. Accept them, mistakes and all, and refocus on the present instead of seeking new things to worry about. No need to make it worse with worry.

 

[Kintsugi]

My terrible psychiatrist told me while I was taking a mood stabilizer once, in a highly accusatory way, that I was taking a "bipolar dose." It is the same medication my SO used to take for mania (he is really not bipolar, even though everything was conflated, he is manic). My SO has more auditory hallucinations than I do generally, and they are benign for the most part except that he, like me sometimes, can't always tell if they are real, which can be confusing.

I think I was especially unafraid of the visual hallucination because I adore hallucinogens, but this was not a hallucinogenic experience at all, nor anything like an acid "flashback."

It worries me that I could develop malevolent hallucinations, particularly auditory ones. I have only had one, the first major hallucination I have ever had, many years ago. But it was purely terrifying, and it was totally bizarre in the sense that it seemed very very real, so I didn't feel mad, and then when I realized it was in fact a hallucination that I was treating as a real threat, I felt completely insane and worried I was developing something very serious, like schizophrenia.

I did discuss my increased auditory hallucinations and visual hallucination with my SO, and he said that his usually get very frequent and strong when he is particularly ungrounded and out of touch. I had started involuntarily dissociating again (yes, unfortunately sometimes I slip into dissociation on purpose) and bouts of derealisation.

I think I'm so suddenly gripped with panic by all of this because the past time was around when I was about go see my parents again and afterward, and now that I am here again I feel myself slipping away and losing control frequently, in the sense that I tell myself not to do or say something and yet I do/say whatever it is compulsively.

I am largely out of practice being this sick as of the past year. Plus before I was not hallucinating much aside from hearing my mother call my name or hearing a ringing phone, which is so minor and has always happened.

I feel mad just writing this business out. I feel like I am in real danger of going mad, losing my grip I guess, and my paranoia over these things developing into something more menacing feels very real and immediate. I think I must just be silly and ridiculous, dwelling on these possibilities.

Maybe I'm experiencing some sort of derealisation with intermittent bouts of panicked paranoia? Things seem far away and surreal since I've been here. Like a dissonance. But my sudden fear of these hallucinations coming back and taking real hold of me seems somehow abruptly important and an imminent problem.

I don't know. Maybe I need to go back on medication. Or see my old T. Or get a new T and start over. Or a combination therein. Or maybe I just need to sleep and eat as regularly as possible.

Damn it. I am babbling like a madwoman. Not helping.

 

[Kintsugi]

In the end, I only have PTSD and that's bad enough, but its symptoms are different now that I understand why my family didn't protect me in childhood.

I am currently grappling with this myself in a more serious way than usual.

You're okay, MAS. Don't drive yourself crazy with worry, instead ground yourself in what you know and accept it.

These words are, in a way, fairly simple. Yet just reading this made me calmer. I think I really needed someone to say I am okay, since all I hear from myself since getting here is "You're not well! This is terrible!"

I think something else exacerbating my general feelings of insanity is having a bunch of weird recent and some not recent memories surfacing out of nowhere, things I didn't think I buried because they were not traumatic in themselves. But, like, I had a really abusive employer over the last year and about three weeks after I quit I just started remembering a bunch of instances of him being a total control freak or saying inappropriate things that I simply didn't have time to process or even house, seemingly, in my memory at the time they happened. I just worked so much I didn't have time to think about all the bad stuff. Ever side then I have been off kilter and remembering old memories not directly related to my trauma in the same abrupt fashion I recalled some of my traumatic memories.

Anyway, it's all coming together in a very strange way.

 

[Abstract]

I loooove what Anonymous said here.

MissAnntiSunshine, my story is different but nevertheless I relate to a lot that you discuss here. For a while now I have been constantly battling thinking I am heading in the same directions you are talking about.

Before I discuss that more I just wanted to mention a few things. I am no expert but from what I know a psychotic break is very different from being schizophrenic. Not saying that you had a psychotic break either of course. I believe most episodes of psychosis are just temporary and caused by extreme stress or sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation apparently does eventually cause a psychotic break. So if your hallucinations did by some chance get worse it would most likely just be a temporary glip. Paranoia is a such a normal part of PTSD too.

It also seems (from what I have read here and heard Anthony say as well) that more severe PTSD often includes some non trauma related hallucinations. As can mania, hypomania and BPD.

You mention a doorbell ringing and your mothers voice and it seems those could both be flashback material/trauma hallucinations and totally normal in PTSD terms.

I feel mad j

This is something that has been driving me crazy for a while and and I have only just found the courage to say it to someone else (it was on here). For me any time I try to get a T, discuss trauma or symptoms or accept PTSD my internal dialogue feels literally crazy. It feels like a part of me is out to destroy me and calls me crazy, mad, attention seeking, fabricating etc etc. A portion of the time I am convinced I have made everything up and doubt anything I say is true. I put that together with the fact that I have seen things that are not there in the past and the paranoia and speech issues and I get a possibility that I really don't like. There is a part of me that thinks this is all just denial and dissociative but it is a constant battle. I am very tired of my brain and would like to swap heads with someone please.

I had a really abusive employer over the last year and about three weeks after I quit I just started remembering a bunch of instances of him

I don't know if this is at all the same but the way you describe it here seems to be similar to something that happens to me and the work environment has been a "good" source of it.

When something unpleasant that links to stuff I don't like happens it seems I have a long term pattern of not registering it or blanking it somehow. Essentially I don't know it has happened. And then later, sometimes hours and other times a year, something will trigger it coming up and I will have a barrage of these moments hit me one after the other and they are accompanied by intense emotional states and me feeling quite crazy. All of sudden my previous reality is turned on its head.

It is probably different to what you mean but I thought I would share just in case.

Anyway. From what you describe I seriously doubt schizophrenia is something you need to be concerned about and it is probably stress and insomnia related. It's all perfectly normal reactions to those considering PTSD as a backdrop.

 

[Cwolf220]

Just a quick comment... From my experience, if you undergo a true psychotic break you will be told after the fact. You will have no idea that your perceptions are hallucinatory and will behave accordingly. Mine were intensely frightening and manic, seeing people weapons etc that did not exist. Won't waste your time with details but I involved police and had absolutely completely lost all touch with reality. It was not fun and I would never wish them on anyone. I saw all kinds of things and heard things, paranoia to an extreme. A low point(s) in my life. Hope I never return.

 

[Kintsugi]

Abstract, really glad you wrote.Yes, the minor hallucinations do seem to be linked to traumatic material (phones, mother calling me--especially the acoustics of her voice; I know where those noises are spatially oriented and it is probably some leftover sensory disintegration or something). I think it scares me more that other hallucinations are not. Like I heard an ice cream truck. And
I've heard a man's voice I don't recognize say something to me a couple times. The menacing one was what sounded like madman's hyena laughter, but it seemed to be everywhere.

Why I'm really glad you responded, though, is because, well, your own troubles hit the nail on the head in the sense that feeling crazed by hostile internal dialogue and talking about it does not help the sanity case, right? Like, I'm not going mad, the voices in my head are just calling me a liar! Yeah. It sounds bad. Probably it sounds worse, though, than it is.

It's not schizophrenia I'm really worried about (I was at the time because of my age in particular and not knowingmy biological family's history--just a history of PTSD and BPD, no worries! :D --but I have sort of gotten it in my head that my DID could get worse, not like splitting personalities but maybe something related where hallucinations begin to actually speak to me or something in a conversational manner. I know I'm probably just freaking myself out but somehow this sliding seem so possible right now. I'd really like to not develop psychosis or befriend benign voices, if it comes to that, y'know?

 

[Abstract]

if you undergo a true psychotic break you will be told after the fact

Thank you! I read something a week or so ago and it gave me the first relief I have had in ages other than something else a member said to me and it was along those lines. I will see if I can find it and read it again.

 

[Kintsugi]

So no worries, if I truly am going psychotic, I won't even know it! Actually that is sort of a relief. Thank you for sharing. I'm really sorry you had to go through that. My vet neighbor (ex-neighbor now, I guess) just had what I believe was a true psychotic break, and there was really no point in trying to talk him through it or tell him he was psychotic.

 

[Cwolf220]

Not 100% sure where your at with this... But I had several and had to basically be woken up so to speak, I was so lost and scared. Just amazing what the human mind is capable of. The cops called my family and had my poor mother explain to me that I had been hallucinating. Did not snap out of it for a while. No, you cannot reason with anyone in this state. They typically are terrified and experiencing an alter reality. It sucks. I'm a veteran myself so have some experience in this department, unfortunately...