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PuffinMuffins
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Member Since: Jun 2018
Location: Kentucky
Posts: 5
5 yr Member
Poll Oct 14, 2018 at 09:49 AM
  #1
so I've had, for quite a while now, some hallucinatory and paranoid symptoms I've been worried about. paranoid schizophrenia is prevalent in my family and I've been concerned about that. I've always had some issues and irregular thinking patterns but lately it's gotten significantly "weirder". I'll try to make this short but at the same time I don't wanna be vague lol.

I've always had a tendency toward hypervigilance and sort of "pattern recognition" in other people and events in which I kind of bizarrely link things I sometimes acknowledge to be unrelated, I recognize, only sometimes, to be "odd". I am always scanning for potential threats while at the same time really not being too worried about real threats or even realistic threats I might encounter. there's always something "worse" and "unknown" lurking somewhere, something I haven't experienced yet and that no one able to discuss really knows exists - it's just this fear that something worse than physical or emotional pain or even death exists and it's waiting for me.
this feeling has pretty recently been expanded upon in this completely jumbled up brain of mine in terms of "them" (some entity or organization more powerful and terrible than anything anyone knows, is how I describe "them"), watching me, experimenting on me, etc etc. just this nightmarish feeling of something unknown planning to do some unknown terrible things to me.

and that was exactly my thought process when I picked up on a key descriptive word a few weeks ago - nightmarish.
as a kid I used to have terrible nightmares, wake up screaming and crying, my parents would have to calm me down and explain it was just a dream because I genuinely did not know how I ended up in bed and thought the dream was real.
i remember a conversation I had with my mom once, I was maybe 5, about my sleeping - I told her I'd never slept. of course sleep he went "you sleep, you just don't remember it, it's impossible to never sleep". I argued about it and obviously it sounded like a kid being dumb, but what I really meant was I had no transitional phase, I was mid-thought one second and mentally "taken somewhere else" the next, but the dreaming almost never stopped and I was at least partially mentally present for all of it. I meant I got no rest, and i stand by it, I remember literally never being able to rest as a kid, the dreams just never stopped and I felt mentally present for all of it.

for some reason this stopped around age 10 and i literally remember up to 10 dreams within the last 16 years. at about age 20 though is when what I've now learned are hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations started increasing. prior to that it was maybe every 6 months when I experienced something like that, but it increased to maybe every month and in the last 6 months or so it's been almost every damn night. since that "nigtmarish" realization I had, I wonder if I'm experiencing something like that while awake during the day now, and perhaps that's what these feelings of paranoia and daytime hallucinations are - maybe I'm just randomly partially falling asleep and dreaming though awake and able to interact with my real surroundings?

I'll be at work or just sitting on the couch at home and randomly get really mentally fuzzy and tired and all my thoughts are slowed and I feel unusually tired - it's always when I'm not actively engaged in something stimulating - that's when it starts with little hallucinations and I formulate paranoid ideas around them, or I feel this vague "twilight zone" feeling first and then the little hallucinations creep in and fuel it. I'll hear a phone ring, try to answer it and receive no response and a coworker tells me the phone didn't ring. or I'll be sitting at home with my roommate watching TV and suddenly get this odd deva vu feeling and form this weird "this is a set up! everything looks strange, i feel strange, something fishy is going on here and everyone is in on it!" feeling.

it's only relatively recently that from that feeling I've sometimes developed some pretty specific, complex paranoid beliefs and fears ("i am currently under attack by "them", they are reading my mind through some chip in my brain and my surroundings are a facade convoluted by "them" in some mind control experiment etc etc). but I've recently noticed I only get to this point if I don't engage in something stimulating or I don't go to bed when the paranoia begins.

one thing that made me uninterested in narcolepsy as a possible cause is the fact that I misunderstood it - I thought cataplexy was necessary and I thought one literally fell asleep during periods of cataplexy. I don't randomly drop and fall asleep, but I do identify with some descriptions of mild cataplexy I've recently read about. I'm other at all sure if though is counts, but if I'm extremely angry or otherwise upset, my legs turn into jello, I have issues moving my arms and sometimes need to sit down. sometimes during these jello-limbed experiences ill trip and fall because I just can't move my legs properly, my limbs feel tingly and then heavy but numb if that makes sense. I always thought this was due to an adrenaline surge or something.

I've been too scared thus far to seek treatment because paranoid schizophrenia was the only thing I thought this could be. however - and this may elicit some "it's all the drugs you're doing that's causing this, you don't have real issues!" responses from some of you - I've done unprescribed amphetamines recreationally and they legitimately alleviate all of these suspicious, hypervigilant, hallucinatory, and delusional issues. I know amphetamines administered to schizoprehics worsen their symptoms, so I was worried about a dopamine blocker instead of a dopamine agonist like amphetamines- like a dopamine blocking antipsychotic they'd put me on if under the belief I had schizophrenia - would worsen my issues. so for this reason I haven't sought treatment. but the therapeutic effects of amphetamines on me make me wonder if what I'm really experiencing is an alleviation of symptoms due to the fact that, on amphetamines, I'm "woken up", leading me to believe my symptoms might be caused by my "not being fully awake".

maybe I'm way off on this, but that's why I'd love feedback on my issues and their possible causes and whether or not I'm potentially on the right track. I gotta say it's extremely comforting to believe this may be a possible explanation for my issues because schizophrenia scares me so much more. however if I'm way off I implore you guys to let me know lol. any feedback or things for me to read would be awesome.
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