Emotional hallucinations and delusions of bipolar 1

[Dreamline]

For you Bipolar 1 and Schizo-effective people:

I'm partly trying to make some sense out of my hallucinations and just curious.  They manifest from my mind as a response to stress...see there's an emotional well that these come from.  I think understanding their origin would help me understand my self and my triggers.  I'm going to break them down according to episodes.

Manic:
audio-  children playing and laughing, pleasant sounds, radio voices that ramble are not understood, distant people arguing loudly
visual- animated pornographic cartoons, see sexuality in normal gestures by anyone, see the sparkley air, celebrities, people look different, aurora light show, skin melting, bright whitness, beautiful animals in my house or somewhere
tactile- electricity running through me, prickly sensations on my skin, feel like I'm in a universe of heaven
smell-  my dog has this spicey oily smell, some guys just smelled like pure sex (has nothing to do with my dog's scent LOL), everything just smelled good
delusions: I had ESP, I was the messiah and was heeling people, I was going to be famous, wealthy, never age...etc

Depressed:
audio-  creaking damaging sounds, ripping of fabric when dressing, moaning, groaning
visual-  I and other people looked ugly, old, sick, greasy
tactile- felt physically sick, my organs would squirm
smell-  food smelled off, the house smelled like no on had bathed
delusions; I was dying, I had cancer or some disease, everything was my fault somehow, I had parasites

Mixed: (really a mix of both)
audio: machines sounding angry,
visual: people look mean or watch everything I do, sneaky animals,
tactile: same as mania
smell: mix of both
delusions: mix of both

In dreams, things are often symbolic...like a car/road could symbolize a journey you are on in life.  I wonder if our hallucinations are too.  Maybe they are trying to tell us something about our lives from our spirit or deeper minds.

[Kensho]

wow, that's interesting that you were able to classify these hallucinations to specific moods like this... do you hallucinate often? i did, sometimes auditory and tactile hallucinations would last throughout the day sometimes and last for weeks without a total psychotic break occurring... i also had olfactory and gustatory hallucinations... i never had visuals though, i had alot of visual distortions, that happened alot but never actually seeing someone before me... i can't imagine what that must be like... right away i was able to pick up on the fact that your depressed hallucinations were very dark... i also see some paranoid undertones in some of your hallucinations... what separates bipolars from scizoaffectives is a bipolar will only hallucinate during mood states where a schizoaffective will hallucinate under any state... i really dig what you're doing dreamline, i have 23 notebooks written in small print over the 8 years and it would take me a long time to sift through everything... one of my sisters is a literature professor at rutgers and she read two of my notebooks from the third year when i became ill and she said she was stunned at the ideas in had i going on in my head and the way i was able to express those ideas... she wants to compile everything and include it along with the journals i've been keeping on my recovery the past nine months and put it into a book... if we can pull this off i intend to mention bpbabbles website in it... anyway, i'm falling asleep here all of a sudden...

good night...

Kensho 

[Dreamline]

I only hallucinate when a mood gets really cranked up...I forgot to mention this paranoid delusion I had when mixed (dysphoric mania).  I was working at a dog grooming shop and I was paranoid that my boss and other people thought I had stolen people's credit card numbers.  One in particular I though they were accusing me of because I though they believed I was a genius and was doing all kinds of stuff like that.  I thought protesting it was futile and would makes things worse...I panicked when my boss told me about what happened to this old lady's credit card.  Blood was surging through my body like it was my last second to live, I was shaking and sweating...she looked puzzled and I was sure she was going to call the cops.  I went outside without explanation, its all I could do.  I still feel weird about it....even thought about going over there and tell her what happened (she knows I'm bipolar and was never surprised when I told her).

[Kensho]

i would imagine it's a good thing that you're able to tell others about your illness, this way if you ever have a crisis they'll have a better idea of what's going on and can help you work your way through it... there are six people at my part time job who have been totally clued in and they look out for me constantly, the others don't know shit though and i'd like to keep it that way... as far as paranoid delusions go, they're the worst symptom in my opinion because when they happen to me i'm always highly alert which causes me to get caught up in it even further... one night, i was so deeply convinced that several of my neighbors had cameras in the front grills of their cars and that they were all watching me that i quietly slipped outside and covered the grills of their cars with plastic garbage bags and duct tape... i watched all three of them drive off to work and one of them developed an overheated engine where their car shut off... eventually they discovered the plastic bag... i watched as later that afternoon all three of the dudes discovered the bags on the remaining cars and must have called the police because two cars showed up... as i was watching all of this through shear curtains, all of a sudden they all started looking directly at me/my home and i began to lose it... i began thinking all kinds of crazy shit like the cia was going to be called in and that i was a rouge agent and the cia was finally going to discover where i had been hiding at the whole time... my wife caught on to this real quick and started asking me what i was experiencing, of course my mind was now on the cia thing and no longer the garbage bag, but my wife saw that i was looking out the window and that seemed to be my primary driver so she looked out and saw them all talking together and that they seemed to be looking at our house without me saying anything, so she asked me point blank did i know why are the police were looking at our home... all i remember telling her was there were cameras in the front end of their cars and nothing more then that and began telling her again that the cia had identified me... she was already a pro at this shit at that point and decided to go outside and find out what's going on since she knew all three of our neighbors very well... right away i'm thinking she's been working for the cia the whole time we've been together and this whole fantasy begins to unfold in my mind, that shes been poisoning me the entire time we've been together including our first date long before i became ill... that she was taping my sleep patterns for the cia and that she had planted a device in my brain which brought on my mental illness... i could go on and on... i wasn't thinking about the bags themselves only what the police represented, that they were also working for the cia... anyway, like i said, my wife knew the neighbors well from picnics in the past and such and decided to go out there... upto this point all my neighbors knew was that i suddenly became disabled and were no longer able to work and when cheryl found out why the police were there she began to put two and two together and explained my illness to them without admitting i was responsible... it was kind of a unspoken agreement that i could have possibly done it and all three of our neighbors told the police to forget it and they left... she aked me what i was thinking about but when she saw i was unable to discuss it rationally with her she put two and two together and just said it'll be OK, try not to worry about it anymore... i continued with this delusion regarding her and the cia but because she handled me with kit gloves it made it easier for me to have some trust in her... this episode lasted for about two days before the added meds chilled me the fuck out... in retrospect to all of this i seriously believe that delusions, especially the paranoid type are a form of hyper anxiety... i'm being very serious with this analysis... not only that, i believe that each mental illness is related to each other on one degree or another... like schizos and bipolars have anxiety but that someone with anxiety won't express bipolar or schizo symptoms... anxiety is lower on the chain... like you, you have mood related psychosis... the only real thing that separates you and i based on your original post is your psychosis is tied to moods where i can have them anytime, mood state or not... it helps explain why the program i'm following will work for anyone... some peoples illness will only reach to one specific level because the dysfunction of the body itself has only reached a specific degree... based on what i've learned, genetics may play a role in this but a defective gene can only set up a predisposition to a particular illness... just because you're predisposed doesn't mean you have to come down with it and if you do come down with it, you can reverse this... i'm living proof, along with well over 200,000 others so far...

Kensho 

[Dreamline]

This slightly OT and I'll get back on to it but your story reminded me of this time I was hanging out with my guitar teacher.  We smoked some PCP and I got "stuck" but he was paranoid and was trying to hang a plastic bag to cover the window.  The window looked HUGE to me at the time and to him the bag must have looked bigger.  PCP distorts spatial perceptions big time like Alice in Wonderland.  It was so fuckin hilarious when he realized what he had done and we laughed our asses off.

Anyway...I totally get what you mean about anxiety and paranoia...it is the same thing just different levels!  Like one person is overweight while another is obese and another is morbidly obese and they're all eating a high sugar diet.  When anxious, one worries about everything and is nervous....with paranoia its beyond that, you worry about more obscure things that build upon themselves.  So yes all these disorders are connected and in a sense they are all the same thing!