If this treatment is “surprising”, it might point to a unskilful way of conceptualizing the disease in the first place.
I wonder how many people make things worse for themselves by worrying that they’re going crazy, which ends up feeding the cycle.
As opposed to “What can I do with this/How can I work around it?”
Giving people agency and making them know that they don’t need to own every random voice that comes into their head is nice. Even for non-psychotic folks.
In my deeper psychosis, asking myself “What can I do with this/How can I work around it?” is literally impossible. I am too busy running down the street secretly taking pictures of people who I think are agents from some unknown organization.
There are people online claiming to be harassed by groups of people hired by governments or shadow organizations. This ranges from being followed in the street or having people looking at you menacingly at the supermarket, to being subject to psychic warfare using electromagnetic weapons.
I have yet to find a case that convinces me it's not pathological paranoia.
But where it gets interesting is that these people also claim the "harassment" happens on the very forums where they discuss this topic: some posters allegedly make subtle references to info they shouldn't know about, especially because on these imageboards anonymity happens at the thread level.
After having spent enough time on these platforms, this happened to me on a few occasions: posters alluding to my geographical location, or making mentions of things I wrote in other threads with high emotional involvement. I can't tell whether I'm over-interpreting, but one thing that is certain is that these posters were LLMs. I came to that conclusion using various tricks: context-length exhaustion, talking about topics that go beyond their reasoning ability (such as anagrams), and I noticed they fail to properly understand concepts from pictures or to read text behind a link.
Conclusion: the idea of gang-stalking is not an assessment of the situation, it's the tip of a spear meant to induce pathological paranoia.
Modeling the Impact of Combat and Influence Actions on Population
Attitudes toward Forces
During the last decades, stabilization, COIN and CT operations around the world have brought to light an increased need for influence capabilities on local populations and key individuals. Today, western Forces often face non-state actors and other kind of irregular opponents, which have strong interactions with the “human environment'' and find there some support based on ethnic, political or religious affinities. Influence actions aim at altering the perception, attitudes and behaviors within the population and at hindering proinsurgent dynamics. In order to counter them and stabilize the crisis zone, one must win the so-called ‘‘heart and minds’’ of the local population. The understanding of the human terrain and its dynamics is the key for answering those new operational needs and obviously calls for a modeling and simulation effort. Our goal is to develop a simulation of the dynamics of the population in terms of attitude and behavior change and to use in training and decision aid applications.
I believe like me may be targeted, not because they want to kill or torture us, but they can use us since our outlook and actions are more easily manipulated.
I had such an interaction in real life, an attempt of an agency to use me. This interaction was seen by a friend or else I would have dismissed it.
One cannot easily dismiss these claim since there is a history oif the CIA experimenting on Schizos.
"He sat in a chair, had headphones placed upon him, and was subjected to statements, screams and noises designed to frighten. Electrodes were placed upon his body, his heart rate, body temperature and sweat level measured."
And this, a bill banning "mind control"? Psychotronic weapons? Mood management?
through the use of land-based, sea-based, or space-based systems using radiation, electromagnetic, psychotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control of such persons or populations; or
A very good friend of mine is in some kind of severe psychosis right now. She's cut off all her friends and family. While she was still talking to us, she was still so paranoid she refused to even consider seeing a doctor, even though she knew she was on some kind of "never-ending acid trip" as she called it.
But she's still taking care of herself and not a danger to herself or others, so there's nothing we can right now. My big hope is that someday she'll get perspective on this like you have now.
I had several family members experience episodes, and i have as well. In my own case it struck me as i was preparing to board a plane. Thankfully i was allowed off briefly before the takeoff. I knew that what im experiencing is so unlikely as to be impossible (eg large scale conspiracy) but could do nothing to shake it off. Eventually i found a safehouse and just hid there, letting it ride over me until it passed after a day.
Hasnt occurred since. Unfortunately, even after having experienced and successfully (in my subjective experience) navigating this, i was able to help others do the same (at least to what i would calk that).
Looking back, my friend has had some paranoid instances in the past, going back decades, usually on alcohol and drugs. So we feel like maybe it was always there, and it's possible menopause really brought it out, or stopped holding it back.
The problem is she never reconciled any of those episodes that it was her being overly paranoid. She just wrote those people out of her life and moved on. Which is what she's trying to do now to literally everyone in her life, and it's never occurring to her that the problem might be her. She thinks she's in a giant Truman Show and all her friends and family are punking her.
What works during recovery or in milder phases of psychosis might not work in its more extreme manifestations. Recognizing and respecting those limits doesn’t diminish the value of this therapy
Can I draw from this that when the psychosis gets deep enough you can sort of recognize that you’re in the state (since you’re telling people sorry) but simply cannot control it?
Is it controlled by medication? Does the medication ever fail you and return you to the state of psychosis?
You don’t get to say you’re sorry until it’s over. I got to watch myself in third person fuck up most of my relationships while I spent the whole time screaming in my head to stop.
Of course, I thought this was a normal reaction stress. I only got diagnosed a few years ago. I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal till I offhandedly mentioned it to my psychiatrist and she couldn’t prescribe antipsychotics fast enough.
For me, medication is only part of the solution. I spend a lot of time and energy, keeping track of my mood and preventing myself from spiraling into an episode. Even the medication doesn’t always work and I have to take more of it. Can’t be manic if you’re sleeping. :)
Wow, thank you for sharing your experience and feelings, that was a very interesting read. I sympathize for the paranoia – did you somehow had nice feelings from this experience, regardless of how insanely stressful it was?
> Paranoia and other psychoses felt normal to me before I learned I was bipolar.
Same with me. What helped me was years of Theravadan Buddhist Mediation. I do not recommend it, but it helped me create a mind that was separate from my delusional mind. I would easly have wild trips when I was meditating, whcih I think was from the excess serotonin released or my over sensitivity to the seritonin via the HTR5A g protein coupled receptor.
> my psychiatrist and she couldn’t prescribe antipsychotics fast enough.
> Can I draw from this that when the psychosis gets deep enough you can sort of recognize that you’re in the state (since you’re telling people sorry) but simply cannot control it?
No, it is too deep and I am fully in it. The sorry happens when I come out fo it and read the texts I sent out. :)
I did not have psychosis all the time. Mostly bipolar symptoms. Yes, meds stopped psychosis but made my life even worse. Klonopin will take me out of psychosis in about 30 minutes. See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5354128/
I can only tolerate antipsychotics because my medication mix counters a lot of the side effects.
I have an entire page of notes for my psychiatrist, listing my medication’s and their side effects, and how they interact.
I’m probably one of the few people who never wants to stop taking medication. They helped me focus my creativity. I never could’ve become an author without them.
What happens when it passes? I've never had that kind of thing, but I did find "internal family systems" therapy useful and have wondered if those extreme conditions might be extreme manifestations of the same concepts. If so, there may be a way to tame that stuff.
I say "Sorry" to a lot of people and they I try to find the trigger.
I do not think internal family systems is designed for biological triggered mood disorders, but I see where you are going here. I do not see the person that comes out in my everyday pschye.
Think of what happens to me akin to giving someone methamphetamines and trying to get them out of the high by talking about internal family systems. It just will not work.
Years ago after some terrible things happened to a friend, she was "diagnosed" by a social worker in Los Angeles as schizophrenic and prescribed (I think it was abilifi). I called bullshit, so she skipped the drugs and has never had another "episode" (because that terrible thing that happened didnt happen again!)
A friend's son was about to be diagnosed Schizophrenic after more than a few nights broken sleep due to night-horrors. Fortunately his Mum could recognise schizophrenia and she managed to get sleeping pills prescribed (with much difficulty) instead of antipsychotics and he got back to normal over a few days with a few nights good sleep.
I don't think a doctor would work off of a social workers diagnosis, but I don't know LA. I have personally talked with the Attending Dr. at two of SF's psychiatric wards and they were emphatically opposed to making any kind of schizophrenic or even bipolar diagnosis for a patient without a significant history of psychotic episodes.
i think if the main thing is “hearing voices” this kind of thing is probably a good strategy, but there are lots of other probably worse symptoms of psychosis.
You identify objective metrics, and confirm that they're objective and useful over the course of several days / weeks in a variety of different mental states. For example: "everyone thinks The Cloud™ will solve their problems, even though it never has" -> mass insanity. "Everyone thinks the sun will rise tomorrow, because it always has" -> extrapolation / inductive reasoning (probably fine).
It's helpful thinking for bipolar or depression. When I learnt I had ADHD I realised my "acute depression" was just extreme exhaustion and that there was no need to be sad - that is just my System 1 trying to explain why I can't do anything.
Basically there are a lot of useful heuristics you can get from the concept that your thoughts are only partially under your control.
A close family member of mine is schizophrenic, and, as I understand it, they've always (or, at least, for the past 5-8 years) relied on a combination of drugs and these sorts of therapies to manage their symptoms. That is to say, the drugs are helpful for helping to keep their thinking organized and reducing the frequency and severity of hallucinations/delusions, but those issues never really go away completely, and sometimes a given drug regime stops being effective for whatever reason, so it's very important to have (and to practice!) strategies for identifying when your thoughts are "right" vs "wrong," and being able to deal with the problem effectively when it's the latter.
I wonder how many people make things worse for themselves by worrying that they’re going crazy, which ends up feeding the cycle.
As opposed to “What can I do with this/How can I work around it?”
Giving people agency and making them know that they don’t need to own every random voice that comes into their head is nice. Even for non-psychotic folks.