Frustrated and delusional?

[Geister]

Well it's 4:30am and I can't sleep, woke up at 3:00 feeling anxious and just generally not right.

Feels like I'm full of energy but really tired physically at the same time if that makes any sense. Like I could do so much right now if my body wasn't so tired. I'm never sure if I'm overreacting to situations normal people handle but I can't, or if there really is something wrong with me, but then I think if I'm faking it then there's still something wrong with me because who does that, but if I'm faking it then really there isn't anything wrong with me, etc etc.

But there are other weird things that I do that are weird, I don't like having chairs or mirrors in my room, I always sleep with a cat or dog if I'm alone because I feel like somethings watching me. I'm terrified of the dark if I'm alone but I guess that's common. Yesterday I thought there was a swat team outside my door, freaked me out, I have no idea why. I wont drink anything that I haven't been able to see for the whole time, I think someones poisoned it. Sometimes I think my family is going to kill me. But the delusions come and go and some don't bother me much anymore so  maybe that's normal too? My problem is my delusions or bad moments don't last weeks usually so I always think I'm just normal but when I really look at it I think I can see hypomania or dysphoria that lasted for years.

I wish I could just have a definitive answer on what's what (or not wrong) with me so I can fix it and move on with my life. Sorry for the rant I know it doesn't make much sense and now you guys probably think I'm crazy lol.

[Kensho]

no, you make perfect sense...

i'm sure many here if not everyone here lived your experiences... be careful getting "definitive answers" because along with those answers come powerful medications... i now look at mental illness as a non-ordinary experience or better put, our own personal spiritual emergencies... i've learned that ALL mental illness is really physical in nature and once you tweak your bodies system and return it to homeostasis, your mind becomes clear again...

Buddha once said: "To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear..."

here's my story of my slide into mental illness... i'll try to make it as concise as possible but it'll probably mean alot will be missing from my story including my final diagnosis... it'll give you a little idea that you're really not alone...

i always had what some might call magical thinking as far back as i can remember... i heard my first voices when i was 10-11 but they didn't occur that often and when they did i just thought it was normal for some reason, can't explain why, it never occurred to me to say anything to my mother or father.... this lasted up to around the age of 13 i'd say, then they completely disappeared... although i now learned to hate psychiatric labels i could have probably been classified as bipolar from grade all the way through to advanced school and into my working late 20's... i was never bouncing off walls just generally always up... when i down cycled the depression was very mild and didn't last long... people enjoyed being around me, i was able to relate to anyone and i got good grades...

around the age of 33 i began thinking people were watching me and talking about me... out of the blue i returned back to christianity thinking i was an important part of Gods plan when he returned which blew my wife away because we were both showing interest buddhism at the time... i started believing i was an alien and that my people were waiting for the right time to come and get me... i felt i could feel my blood flowing through my veins... at times i would think something was inside my head although i never had a concrete idea what it might be... my bipolar episodes began to grow stronger... the depression was darker and lasted longer and the hypomania would cause me to act out inappropriately... people would openly say to me "what's your fucking problem?"...  ..."are you OK"... these comments just blew over my head... i started having cognitive, concentration and memory problems... i had intrusive thoughts that at times were very disturbing, thoughts of suicide and murder among other things... i began to alienate myself from my close friends at work and outside work... i started having olfactory, gustatory and tactile hallucinations... i would smell the ocean, popcorn and gasoline to name a few... i would taste gasoline, lemons and the taste of chocolate to name a few... i would feel bugs crawling below my skin and on the surface of my skin as well pin pricks... i also developed mild anxiety at this time... i never had visual hallucinations...

these symptoms swelled for close to two years and i was having having great difficulties at work as you could imagine and i eventually just walked in one day and said i quit without giving notice... during this whole time my wife and sister were trying to get me to see a doctor... they wanted me to see a psychiatrist many times but because of my mental state i would say no even though it was clear to me at that point that something wasn't right, i can't explain my actions... they would say OK see the family doctor, of course again i said no... i began to suspect my wife was working for the government and she was poisoning my food... we were living off my retirement plus her income... about 2-3 months later i began to hear different sounds and voices... the sounds were like tapping noises on the wall, a low sound of the wind or banging noises in the basement to name a few... i had command voices that would say things like "kill cheryl", "kill nicole" or "you don't deserve to live" and so forth... other times the voices would make comments about anything i was doing at that moment... it was quite unnerving, sometimes i would become consumed by it all... i never developed any negative symptoms...

one night cheryl and my sister sat me down and confronted me, at the end of the conversation i agreed to see the family doctor... in his office he drew some blood, i'm not sure what test he ran to be honest but he did say you need to see a psychiatrist now... i agreed and my wife made an appointment... after meeting with the psychiatrist she wrote a prescription for an anti-depressant and instructed me to see a neurologist... the meeting with the neurologist didn't go so well, i began to suspect she was a government agent and immediately lost trust in her... thank God my wife was with me to help me keep it together, she always had this ability to know something was going on... anyway, i made it through the office exam... she wrote out a prescription for an MRI scan... right away i'm asking her why i need that and she calmly explained to look for tumors or lesions... this made me feel a little better... i wasn't having a good day... MRI results were negative... next, set up an appointment for an EEG... during the EEG i began experiencing tactile and auditory hallucinations... apparently the EEG picked this up because at the end of the test the tech asked me if anything happened during the testing... i said yes and told him what it was... he began telling me he was a wiccan priest and that hallucinations were a gift and that i should try to avoid psychiatric treatment as best as i could... although i have great respect for everyone's religion for some reason something came over me and i couldn't help myself, i began laughing in his face hysterically... in retrospect i feel ashamed because i've come to believe the very same thing, he was right... that what are called mental illnesses are really spritual emergencies... he ran great risk of losing his job or credentials by advising someone with mental illness not to seek treatment...

now that the all the testing came up normal it was onto medication... during the second meeting with the psychiatrist i began to get very suspicious of her and told cheryl i didn't want her as my doctor... cheryl said OK let's find another doctor... so we found another doctor, he seemed cool, short chinese guy... he put me on zyprexa, paxil and lithium... one and a half years go by, i go through many different meds and three distinct labels bipolar 1 with psychotic, schizophreniform disorder and finally formally diagnosed with adult onset schizoaffective disorder bipolar type... say that three times fast...

i spent a long time bouncing from one med to another... went through three psychiatrists and am on my sixth psychologist(i love my current psychologist)... not too long ago i developed courage and began walking down a different path... now, i'm beginning to finally see some light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully aqll of this will be behind me one day...

well, that's my story... yeah, i left out ALOT but i hope it helps you in some way...

forgive me for the rant...

Kensho   

[Geister]

Wow you've been through a lot! I hope things are going okay for you now. Thanks for sharing your story Kensho its nice to hear people go through the same thing I am, even though I wish we didn't have to go through it at all.

I guess one of my main worries is that because the symptoms aren't present 24/7 that I'm just exaggerating or making things up. Sometimes my paranoia changes and things that used to bother me don't any more.

When I was younger, around 4 years old, that's when things got bad. I started getting night terrors, I would sleep walk, I stayed up all night and wouldn't sleep in my bed. I was terrified of seeing ghosts all the time. Anything I watched scared the hell out of me. Once I thought there was an alien growing inside of me (like off the movie Alien) and anything I ate was feeding it too so I tried not to eat very much. I was scared of scarabs in the sandbox, getting electrocuted from wires running through the floor, acid in the bath, things like that. I'm just not sure how valid they are because all those fears came from things I watched or heard, but then again if we didn't know they existed we couldn't have delusions about them in the first place.. I'm just wondering if they're normal fears or delusions. I mean you had to have learned it from somewhere first, so where's the distinction? 

I was hospitalized 3 times by the time I was 10 because I was too much for my mom to handle and she needed sleep. Problem being any time I was hospitalized I wasn't freaking out like I did at home so they thought my mom was over reacting.

Then from about 12 to 16 I was "normal". I wasn't afraid to leave the house, wasn't a hypochondriac, everything was fine. Was still a tiny bit moody but I think that was just from getting older, etc. There were times during that I'd feel like I was the worlds most awesome person, but it didn't last for weeks or anything, a couple hours max.

Now I've been diagnosed with Agoraphobia (I absolutely hate leaving the house), GAD, and sever depression though my case worker is seriously considering bipolar. On the way to the last psychologist appointment I was at my boyfriend had a cold, and I had the same symptoms, I was worried that the government was experimenting with biological warfare effects on my town. :/ But the thoughts always pass after a few hours, even though they cause anxiety and other problems while they're there.

[Dreamline]

Wow you guys have the same paranoid shit I have!!!  Sweet   LOL

When I was a baby I had abnormal moods, in grade K I was severely depressed for most of it.  Throughout grade school I was either depressed and unable to function, kids picked on me and I felt like a worthless ugly piece of shit....or I was hyper, mischievous, drew desk murals, mean to other kids...etc  I think most of the time I was more a mix of the two.  I always wonder WHY?  Why could other kids handles school and stuff but I couldn't.  How come its easy for them and nothing bothers them?  Why do I always get in trouble when I ged mad?

I remember waking up in the night (I often couldn't sleep) really terrified of something in my closet.  Sounds typical but I could see the air, its was a bunch of sparkling flowing stuff, it was prickly feeling, the volume was so high and the monster in my closet wouldn't come out if I didn't move, I stayed in the same half raised position for hours.  There were many times I'd be awake at night and stuff like that would happen and even in the day.  I started having panic attacks when I was 12, the first one happened in the cafeteria at school.  I hid under the table, its was completely humiliating and again I asked "how come this doesn't happen to other kids?"  I though I must be inferior or stupid.

When I got in College I had a few more episodes where I was even more paranoid.  I had a panic attack in this English class.  I say paranoid because I was sitting at my desk and the whole time I kept thinking the teacher was trying to fail me because I am Celtic-American.  She made a comment during a previous class about highland festivals being stupid.  I felt that at any moment she was going to make another comment like that.  I heard foot steps coming down the hallway, my heart was pounding because any minute she would say something to me and everybody would realize my life was worthless because of who I was.  I as literally covered in sweat, the person walking down the hall was going to come in the room and see me.  I can't remember the details exactly but that was one of the worse moments of my life.  I just knew that everyone in the class was against me.  I was afraid to go to any of my classes half the time.

After I dropped out of college I started working at a kennel.  I was hypomanic when I got the job.  I did a very very good job...I started getting more and more high and was manic after a while.  I got the work done super fast but as far as dealing with the public or remembering things...not.  I got really grandiose about my abilities and extreme in my sense of humor...stuff like that.  That manic episode was when I has ESP for cops (which happen in the next one too) and I drove 4 hours at 90-115 mph with a passenger trying to act cool but scared.  I dashed through traffic like a...well....maniac   I told him I had ESP and always knew where there was a cop or person who would report me.  In my defense I didn't get pulled over.  I ran off the road (on purpose) at 90mph and said "see how easy it is to recover?"  I felt totally in control, heh maybe I was   That guy NEVER asked me for a ride again.  I also lost a friend for driving like that.

Then I crashed very low and quit my job.  I rebounded from that a few months later and got heavily into weed, psychedelics, K, later into heroin etc.  I also got a full time job and I can say I was able to keep by using drugs.  I went up and down but working with dogs and doing drugs made it more bearable.  I still was manic as hell and sometimes paranoid/delusional...I though my boss was accusing me of stealing an old lady's credit card and charging thousands of dollars on it.  I felt guilty and I didn't even do it and really freaked out that day.  I quit my job during a mixed episode and becasue I was having bad back pain from an injury. 

After I quit working I gradually quit drugs but having lost my way of coping and went down hill.  I would be manic and try to start a bussness or thinking I was the messiah, spent $17,000 then several months later would crash into depression.  I'd look in the mirror and see an ugly, sickly old person with some horrible disease which I believed I had because I felt sick.  Everything was hideous, nothing was interesting, I could only lay in my bed a cry and sleep.  Even laying there my weariness pressed down on me.  My relationship with my b/f was a roller coaster...he didn't know WTF was wrong and he made it worse by distancing himself from me. 

During one of those depressions I realize "this keeps happening" and my friend and my then ex-b/f encouraged me to get help.  It took a long time to get an appointment.  After that I was in a mixed episode and attempted suicide for the 2nd time, and then finally got DX'd Bipolar.

Don't worry about making sense here, I have learned most if not all of use can relate in some way or another.
Peace,
DL

[Geister]

It's really interesting to hear everyones story, anyone else want to join in?  It's such a relief to hear others going through the same thing, makes me feel that even though I'm 'crazy' there are others who are just like me.

Yeah I've always had a hard time in school, I'm looking into getting a GED later when I can manage a workload. It's not that I dont understand the information, it's just that I look at all the work I have to do and get panic attacks and go "oh shit" and shut down. lol

So do the symptoms generally get worse over time? Is that how this disorder works? Right now most of my delusions I can figure out they're delusions and while they cause me some anxiety (aside from a select few that really bother me) they aren't too bad, are they going to get worse?

Thanks for sharing guys, it means a lot.