Second-comings, building altars, pied pipers, planetary catastrophes, demons…. Where do such ideas come from when labelled 'psychosis'? Some reflections..

Forget notions of inadequate personalities and delusions of grandeur. A crucial feature of experiences like mine is that something unfamiliar happens which require explanation,n maybe  heightened perceptions , profound... [ view full abstract ]

Forget notions of inadequate personalities and delusions of grandeur. A crucial feature of experiences like mine is that something unfamiliar happens which require explanation,n maybe  heightened perceptions , profound insight, connectedness, or, indeed, terror. This is what I want to reflect on.

Such experiences, in our culture, are relatively rare. Some people, as with hearing voices, can absorb these into their lives, but for others it may mean elation elated , followed by bewilderment. We can’t rest until we get answers , ‘Why me?’, ‘What now?

Just what these have to do with chemical imbalances remains beyond my comprehension . Our explanations  derives from our past experiences and our communal cultural knowledge.  Especially notable may be religious teachings or  archetypal folk tales, along with science fiction  or media stories because of the intensity of our initial experiences. My thinking certainly became muddled, partly because of questions I was asking myself but also through exceptional fatigue.

However, I would suggest, a lot of us are not so much out of touch with reality as finding it irrelevant . Unsurprisingly, this is difficult for people to understand us. The big questions are  how to engage with, and support, us in ways WE find meaningful. Space and time , I would maintain, are essential. What we should not be faced with are traumatic  psychiatric wards and controversial psychiatric interventions that we object to. Issues arise also in the community. We may feel pressurised to ‘recover’ rather than assisted to absorb our experiences. Despair that may follow elation at, maybe, believing all society’s wrongs will suddenly be righted – wrongs which we  may have experienced or witnessed. Many years have passed but my so- called psychosis remains poorly understood not least because current assumptions prevent pertinent questions about our thoughts being asked.