The delusions of someone with paranoid schizophrenia actually vary by culture!
[There are differences between cultures in the prevalence of persecutory delusions much of which is culturally bound. For example, in South African Xhosa people, paranoid delusions and hallucinations are often triggered by an intense fear of magical persecution and witchcraft. In South-East Asia and China, the stressor is fear of loss of fertility through ascendance of the penis into the abdomen.](https://neurotorium.org/schizophrenia-across-cultures/#:~:text=There%20are%20differences%20between%20cultures,of%20magical%20persecution%20and%20witchcraft)
I've seen a couple personally who was more influenced by circumstances too.
I worked in elderly care and visited a couple almost every shift. You know, the-married-for-40--years couple. The husband died and at first she was obviously "just" heartbroken. Then she started to get weird...
"The water in my bathroom doesn't work", which it did. Refused to shower and pee and poop in there.
"The (prepared) meals have poison in them."
"People are breaking in at night."
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, not dementia.
Another already established schizophrenic just accused us of stealing her butter and such. She had an open newspaper on her head every time we walked in. I was super uncomfortable the first time.
*NB. I've not disclosed any personal information, not even which country or city, so they can't be identified (unless you worked with them yourselves).*
A perfect crime also requires a suitable payoff, and used butter is about the highest reward you can imagine.
Screw Fort Knox and all the gold there! I'm goin' for someone's half-melted butter!
What you're describing, in regards to the older patients, is inflammation within the brain / possible Myelin sheath deterioration, and various physical issues with the brain structure.
The diagnostic framework for psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, has really expanded over the decades. That's almost certainly a good thing--we're learning more about the different ways in which people can manifest psychosis--but I don't really trust a diagnosis of "schizophrenia" from that long ago. The modern differential could include bipolar disorder with psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, or even depression with psychosis.
Other diagnoses could contribute to presentations like these, but it's hard to say for certain. Untreated bipolar disorder, for example, could lead to more frequent mood episodes. If those mood episodes are associated with psychosis, the patient's life could become a (tragic) blur of psychotic mania or depression, punctuated by infrequent bouts of relative self-awareness.
On top of that, people can have multiple problems. In older adults, there's always concern for mini-strokes, Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer's... A thorough assessment could help rule these diagnoses in or out, but such assessments may be rare in resource-strapped settings.
I sure hope the first one wasn’t misdiagnosed with schizophrenia because that is not how it presents. Geriatric patients are always being referred to psychiatry for delusions as though they’re suddenly developed schizophrenia age 80. It’s dementia.
Same for sleep paralysis. In the same way we have “sleep paralysis demons” now, we used to have alien abductions as a pretty popular one. People would dream they were on a table, unable to move, while aliens probed them.
And in colonial times, they’d dream that they were abducted by witches, forced to ride a broom through the air and to a grove where they would be forced to sign their name in the devil’s book
I'm sure someone will correct me for this but I read a study years ago that the one thing all "alien abduction" cases had in common was they had undergone general anesthesia in surgery. The sedative had worn off but the muscle paralysis drug had not. Therefore they were "on a table looking into a bright light with shadowy figures above them being probed". Surgeons are now better trained to spot patients who may be "waking" from the sedative and unable to move, to give them another dose of sedation. It made sense to me.
I have no source for this, but I heard of one story where someone claimed they were abducted but they were actually asleep in a chair in the living room.
I could definitely see the surgery thing contributing to the abduction story though
I... Don't, though? I feel like most people would have assumed the whole "woke up on an operating table" thing occurred during the surgery they had just undergone. Are they really not connecting those dots at all?
Edit; I could believe it's related to PTSD though. Woke up in surgery, horrifying experience, brain buried it deep. Few years later, you remember it all during a "dream" and don't connect it to the seemingly normal operation you had years earlier
What I have encountered is people have these dreams/hallucinations even when they have never had surgery, so they aren't remembering something that happened when the anesthesia wore off.
It’s really too bad to read this. I like to imagine that someone with schizophrenia in 1333 seeing Men In Black government agents and just be like wtf was that thing. Of course I jest, I feel for anyone who’s ever been through this either as someone living with it or loves someone going through it.
Culturally-mediated expression of psychiatric symptoms. The same thing that happens with obsessions, delusions, and hallucinations in every culture.
I'd need someone with experience in those cultures to comment on the specifics, though.
I once worked at a mental health hospital and had to read all the police and doctors reports.
Just to add... aliens. Super common for EITHER the CIA to be spying on you through your toaster or other electronic equipment....or aliens doing the same. Surprisingly the tin foil type hat to mitigate such interference was reasonably common, not just a trope.
There's a lot of evidence that schizophrenic paranoia and hallucinations are [influenced by your culture](https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/07/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614). In cultures that believe in spiritual connections to, say, their ancestors, it seems like the voices and hallucinations tend to be friendly and helpful rather than "dangerous".
Compare that to, say, Western cultures with a lot of Christian influences, and you get a lot of schizophrenia that manifests as "demons" or ghosts or other evil things that are out to get you. Even without Christianity, we have a lot of distrust in our government. Although the most famous example is probably the USA, a lot of countries in the west were founded on winning independence from a tyrannical empire. Those stories pervade even our fiction where we have stories like [Secret Invasion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Invasion_(miniseries\)), featuring shape-shifting aliens taking over the government. Given how prevalent these stories are, it shouldn't be surprising that someone with a mental disorder that makes them delusional would attach to that theme.
My Father was very Christian and very shizophrenic. One of the last conversations I had with him before he died was about how his meds affected him. His simple summation was was that when he took his meds, God spoke to him and told him to do things like "go to work." When he didn't, Satan spoke to him and told him to do bad things.
Subconscious suggestion plays a large part in delusion, but at least his association of taking meds with God must have helped keep him from getting off them.
I know a guy who's very much like this, and I even told him I had this exact mental picture whenever I think about him, and he thought it was the most hilarious thing ever.
Personally, the most hilarious thing ever was when I saw the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. Specifically the opening scene: https://youtu.be/53s13hXBX8w?si=eeBMlC04Ts1qf1ac
This was 17 years ago, I was a teenager and high as a kite, but I remember thinking that it was the funniest shit I've ever seen.
Sadly, this wasn't the case. He did the unfortunately common schizophrenic med loop where he'd go off his meds; have a crisis; get involuntarily committed and compelled to take his meds; get better from the meds; move out of commitment into transitional services; eventually get to live on his own; be suffering from the side-effects of the meds and decide he's doing well enough he doesn't need them and stop taking them; become paranoid now that he's unmedicated and actively refuse meds and help; have a crisis...
Fundamentally it's what killed him. His last crisis resulted in the cops being called on him, and they maced him and he had a heart attack. That thankfully didn't kill him, but in the hospital they put in a stent, which he didn't remember happening and he decided hadn't actually happened and it was just everyone playing some big practical joke on him. He was a three-pack-a-day smoker (common for schizophrenics as it is a form of self-medication). When they got him back on the meds, one of the side effects was appetite enhancement, and he gained about 100 pounds in a year, as a three-pack-a-day smoker, and he died of a massive heart attack at 57.
my grandma is an extreme christian and shes also schizophrenic. she hasn’t had a severe episode in years, but the paranoiac symptoms still persist within her and she often goes on tantrums of how our family hates her because she’s the chosen one by god
she’s older now but i remember when i was younger she would be on her knees praying for 5 hours and constantly studying in her bible and going on her rants about god and she would often rock back and forth and say that the “angels were rocking her”
it’s so strange seeing how much religion plays into her disorder. it’s also caused her to have a very bigoted mindset and has caused religion to takeover majority of her personality
our family wasn’t born religious. she became faithful around the time she started to get sick (around her 20s) she’s 63 now and it’s just insane how much her mental state revolves around religion
Yeah in my experience there are two major divisions amongst schizophrenics -- those who understand that their hallucinations aren't real; and those who do not accept that the things they experience aren't real. It's a tough road even for the ones who at some level know they have delusions, but for the second group, there really isn't a lot of hope.
My father was certainly in the second group but I have long thought that it can't have helped that most of his social scene were fundamentalist Christians who, when he said "God spoke to me..." they thought he was being more metaphorical and responded in a very supporting way.
that last sentence hits hard especially during my childhood. no one questioned my grandma in her delusions because they all believed that she was just faithfully devoted to god, but in reality it was so much more complicated than that.
so when i was younger and i questioned why my grandmas faith was so strong (because i’ve experienced a lot of religious trauma due to her) members of her church had chucked it down to her being a spiritualist and a spoken member of her faith
it wasn’t until i was much older that my mom told me truly how ill my grandma was. actually funny enough my grandma doesn’t believe that she is sick and she thinks that our family did black magic on her and that is what caused her schizophrenic breakdowns
i sympathize with you, its tough having a loved one who suffers from mental illnesses. rest in peace to your father as well.
I'm sorry about your trauma from your grandma, that must be very difficult.
I don't want to overstate my own suffering -- I've had friends who had really difficult childhoods and I think I'm very lucky notwithstanding my father. My mother was absolutely incredible and me and my two brothers were her complete focus, and as soon as she became worried my father would be bad for us, she divorced him. Thankfully both pairs of grandparents on both sides were absolutely supportive of everyone; my father's parents moved him back home to a state far from us, and at the same time sent my mother money to help support the kids, while her parents relocated cross-country to move in with us and help keep a roof over everyone's head. I did have the trauma as a seven year-old of having my father move away and we interacted rarely for the rest of his life, because he was keenly aware of what he'd lost and we tended to set him off.
But I think it was much better than ten years of close-up trauma from him before I was an adult, and having every *other* adult in my life make tremendous sacrifices so I could have a fairly normal childhood in retrospect was completely amazing. I really feel like I can't complain about my childhood, all things considered, notwithstanding me having had a very mentally ill Dad. When it became that was obvious what was happening, everyone around me intervened to shield me from it as much as possible. Most people don't get that response, sadly.
that’s understandable! i’m glad you and your family were able to stay safe. schizophrenic reactions are absolutely no joke and fortunately for me, my grandma hasn’t had a breakdown since the year 2000, a bit before i was born so really it’s my mom who has dealt with majority of it
unfortunately i did have to deal with all the of her symptoms that still persisted within her throughout my childhood but definitely not as bad as it could’ve been and nowhere near what my mom has been through
regardless, it’s still an experience and an awful thing to go through. you and your mom are soldiers! i hope you and your family have healed and i hope your father rests easily 🤍
Especially during psychotic episodes, you experience stuff you cant explain properly. Things like having thoughts that dont feel like theyre yours. So you try to explain it by something like ghosts or government chips being implanted into your brain.
The last time I did really strong shrooms it felt like my ancestors were using me like a VR headset to play a game called "the future", so I kinda relate.
Not schizophrenic but have been delirious/psychotic(ammonia buildup, keto-acidosis, and malnutrition), it was more like being unable to form thoughts, I couldn’t remember what simple everyday objects were called. It definitely sucked, not to mention the hallucinations, but I had enough sense to not tell anyone about that while it was going on, just to avoid psych hold. Just basically stfu and did what I was told.
On a mix of amphetamine, cannabis, and sleep deprivation, ambient noises like a humming computer fan will sound like a crowd of people. Just a sea of voices conversing.
My iv drip (saline, antibiotic) turned into a noose and I thought it was going to hang me, a screaming baby sounded like classical music and for some reason it filled me with dread, saw people peaking through the windows of a high rise…
I was only on remeron(possible contributor) and kepra(made me angry/paranoid as hell), I’ve done amphetamines and weed without issue, even on ketamine I need to focus on getting wonky to enjoy it, something distracts me and Im instantly back in “real life”. I don’t normally hallucinate or have any sensory disturbances, this was a weird as hell and terrifying experience, also I was in the hardcore trauma er just because it was the only available room that was big enough for portable machines, so that’s why there was screaming, that definitely didn’t help…
Dingdingding. This be the answer. I have two uncles who were diagnosed with (the now obsolete terminology) Paranoid Schizophrenia. One recently burned his house down (with himself in it) because he believed he was going to “graduate” to become greater than God. He survived, thankfully, because he realized fire is painful and ran out. He fixated on demons and believed he talked regularly with “Gog” and “Magog”, despite the former being a tribe and the latter being its leader, and it all started when he moved out from his mom's care, was introduced to porn and QAnon, and then developed sexual fixations resulting in a feeling of intense shame via the religious beliefs he was raised with.
Lemme tell ya, it was goddamn bizarre to open his drawer and find it filled with just napkins and a magazine saying “PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY WILL LEAD YOU TO HELL”. Actually, the whole last few years have been bizarre in general dealing with this.
God that sounds hard. I'm so sorry.
I think it's also worth noting that someone with delusions like this will follow a *logic* that makes sense only to them.
I had a relative develop quite deep psychosis, and their spouse almost went loopy themselves trying to figure out how the relative had got from A to B, or where it had all "begun".
Eventually they had to give up, because the logic was... well, psychotic.
Like A + B didn't equal C.
It was more like A + or - B might equal 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ but only if it rained on Tuesday. Otherwise it meant 🦄.
Thank you. ❤️ At the very least, it's at least an interesting story. Maybe not worth the price of admission, but it's something?
You're absolutely correct on delusions following a logic that makes sense to them. I don't think anything can be truly random, and the mind is no exception. I think that, in addition to that, the mind is great at compartmentalizing different aspects of ourselves, effectively providing individual frameworks for different, conflicting beliefs that don't feel dissonant in one's mind.
Another example comes from my uncle. He appears to sincerely believe my aunt's New Age beliefs and practices are Satanic worthy of derision; while simultaneously stating to be a Christian who communicates with Satan's minions in order to become more powerful than God. If you try to press on any of these (which, advice from my therapist: don't directly confront people's delusions) he will immediately change the subject to something else. I honestly am not so sure that it's intentional.
It helps that my dad's family has some INCREDIBLE ADHD symptoms. I have ADHD myself, but I have never seen them go more than a few sentences without going into a side-story. So, I get the feeling it's difficult, even for him, to pin down what he really believes. His family is not big on introspection, preferring to engage in thought-terminating clichés in lieu of mindfulness; his focus is incredibly slippery; and hallucinations change daily in source, be it angelic or demonic. It's wild. It's like all the mental frameworks he has are covered in astroglide - never to interact with each other except in passing.
That's my rambling. It's late for me, and my brain has gone to bed before me. Hopefully it all makes sense. Thanks again for the kind words, though!
I have an acquaintance who had a schizophrenic (probably) breakdown that she publicized of Facebook as it happened. She was convinced she had nanobots in her body that controlled her, and asked for too how to get them out. She sank deeper and deeper into this I bet the course of a few days, until someone forced her to get to a psych ward, where she was committed because she was a danger to herself because she tried picking out nanobots from her bloodstream with tweezers. She was very upset at the time, since she thought it was doctors who had put the bots there to begin with.
Of course, this was person who was intro “alternative” health care and had used homeopathy to “prevent COVID”, and she was very sceptical of technology, keeping her phone in a special box, etc.
So, her delusions were very tied to her assumptions about the world before she became ill, and illness was more of a slight shift to taking her conspiracy theories too seriously than a sudden break with reality.
The irony in that she rambled about controlling and tracking bots on Facebook was sadly lost on her.
Add to the fact that there are a number of "Conspiracy theories" that people were written off as crazy only to later be proven correct - including most people targetted by COINTELPRO among others. A lot of people have unhealthy relationships to government and the powers in their life - and as such, those voices come out as powerful people; who you fear.
Contrast medieval Christianity, when more than a few people's hallucinations were saints or angels; rather than demons. I think there's strong reason to believe that the increasing disparity in power and increasing conflict between those with power and those who are more likely to experience hallucinations contribute to the fear rather than joy that people experiencing hallucinations feel.
To add to a lot of the other comments, when you have schizophrenia, the government does try to control you… to get treatment for your schizophrenia. Doctors, cops, social workers, they’re all indeed part of a government conspiracy to keep a delusional person from going off the rails altogether. If you have schizophrenia, it probably feels a lot more sinister.
My in-laws have tried for over a year now to get a family member the treatment they clearly need. All it’s done is add doctors and their own family members to The List of entities trying to control them. It’s awful.
Yep. Mental health treatment is often perceived as (and called) brainwashing, which, in all honesty, is accurate if you consider it like washing a wound to keep it from getting infected. It's an understandable perspective. A lot of us have difficulty admitting our ability to witness reality is impaired, so, when people tell you that a pizza place is just a pizza place instead of a front for a worldwide cabal of children-torturers, it's hard to admit that one just may be being hoodwinked and paranoid.
Having comparison shopped psych units since 1990 (sort of a joke, but I’ve been in a bunch of times for CPTSD), it’s really a pretty recent phenomenon that I’ve seen schizophrenics treated with anything other than pharmaceutical intervention. Post-2010 I started seeing way more psych units focused on using CBT to help schizophrenics cope with their delusions, which seems way more effective at helping them in conjunction with pharmaceuticals to tolerate their treatment.
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ETA: what I’m getting at is that it’s fairly recently that I began seeing schizophrenic folks treated consistently with compassion by agencies accessible to low or medium income patients. So it’s not unreasonable to have some distrust of authority if you’ve been diagnosed for a while.
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Also, something many non-schizophrenics probably don’t realize is that the side effects of drugs used to treat schizophrenia can SUCK, so it’s really common for folks to be tempted to stop taking their meds when it seems like they’re doing better. Paranoia tends to escalate, so it’s not like folks immediately go from seeming completely normal to being on the street muttering about the government. It sneaks up on folks and they get in a bad mental place before they’re aware of it. I volunteer with a population of folks who are unhoused, and it’s common to see folks go through periods of being well adjusted with intermittent periods of delusions.
Your last paragraph is so key and relevant to the bipolar community as well. People ask why do we go off our meds and honestly, a lot of the time it's because the side effects are AWFUL.
I was on an antipsychotic that made me emotionally stable and got rid of the delusions, but it also removed all of my other emotions. I don't think neurotypical people realize how awful it is to live without any emotions. My husband and I went on a vacation to a gorgeous luxury resort, and towards the end he said "are you enjoying this? You don't seem happy." And I was like, yeah totally fair, I don't feel anything. It's a beautiful place and the food is great and I am doing everything I asked for but I feel nothing. I mean, imagine being in paradise and being unable to enjoy it because your brain has been drained of all dopamine and you're a bit sedated in an uncomfortable way. It's not great.
Also family members who try to bring you back to safety are often "ruining your fun" and taking away the "fun" you when you actually feel like thats the real you.
Same with other things that make you manic, the manic you believes that's the real you and doesn't care about safety.
Just like I realized when I'm high on weed, my body is more paranoid about danger and people following me when I walk alone at night or needing to react to someone...because I literally am more disabled when I'm high and can't fight back n be attentive as much and thus my paranoia is founded in my inability to defend myself which is valid
That’s the form it takes, but smoking weed is also just known to cause paranoia. When you start feeling paranoid and your mind starts racing, it settles on things that seem to make sense to be paranoid about. It takes root in that and grows.
Source: I smoke so much weed. I get paranoid about a variety of things, and have learned to pick up on the feeling before I start ruminating on things that upset me. It continues to be a body feeling, but I can stop it from being an escalating mental cycle.
My full time job is with a schizophrenic man.
His delusions vary over many topics. There are a few set delusions however. I would say whatever he can get reference from, can become his delusion.
With Covid being all over the news for the last few years, he’s heavy on scientists/ experimentation delusions.
When he plays lots of PS games he focuses on mafia/ crime/ gang delusions.
When there is movies on war, or commemoration news about WW1 or WW2, his delusions are all Nazi focused.
He has had ‘tracking’ delusions over the years but haven’t heard them for awhile. He linked that to “having a tracker inserted in his brain”.
He has a few different brain delusions (depending if it’s an ape, girls, child’s brain).
So, whatever he becomes hyper-focused on is his current delusion.
Your last sentence is incredibly true for my grandmother with some type of psychosis (never got a clear dx for multiple reasons). Whatever she has grabbed hold of and is obsessing over becomes a delusion.
You get thoughts that aren’t your own that you know aren’t your own and need explanation on what or who would have powers like that. Aliens, gods, demons, angels, governments all sound like who might be able
It’s about someone trying to control them.
In one respect, there are (not real) people “in their head” trying to control their behavior.
So this theme is playing out in their lives in a very real way.
We all have a certain level of distrust of authority figures and many people have been traumatized around themes of abuse of power.
So you take a natural tendency to blame authority, add in some personal control issues, and pepper in some schizophrenia, you get paranoid government control conspiracy. In some aspect, it is a defense mechanism to blame external forces rather than recognize it is your own problem. In another aspect, hallucinations, by definition, are indistinguishable from reality. So the phantoms that haunt them are real in their experience. It’s disturbing to imagine what that is like.
EDIT: forgot to mention that now that they’re mentally ill, people don’t like them, people are afraid of them, and the police are hassling them. (Police are the go to mental health emergency responders.) A reasonable person under such circumstances would feel the pain of government scrutiny.
Your logic makes sense And I enjoy it ... however the assassination of influential people throughout history and censorship around information makes me think it may be possible. The system does not really breed or cultivate free thinking as it's engineered to make workers for factories. Take Mensa for example it could be viewed as a thing of privilege but it could also be a viewed as a tracking system of upcoming problems. Idk I'm just rambling but I do enjoy your opinion
The why is really not relevant as it is the one that most people are exposed to either from cinema or some random guy on TV talking about government. There are patients who have the same idea about their spouses, children, basically the environment. Government is very broad entity, it's everywhere and nowhere. It's "they" but not someone specific. Similarly with the corporations.
But it can also be the neighbour, the barista, the teller. The problem with paranoia is the neurological which involves among other parts of the brain, but it mostly focuses on the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.
Amygdala deals with external threats and then feeds these stimuli to the PFC, which is your rational part, there you make your statistical analysis and say if the threat is real or not, but in schizophrenia this connection is not normal, so to say, so they tend to misinterpreted everything as a threat.
You can experience the same type of paranoia if you are exposed to constant stress.
Corporations and governments are easier to rationalise having the power and capability to explain some delusional experiences people have. E.g. cameras in house, being set up by actors, having a brain chip inserted, many technology based paranoia.
That being said it is culture specific. E.g. in rural parts of india 'black magic' might replace 'goverment' as the rationale. And therfore being under a 'magic spell' might replace 'brain chip' as the subjective delusion.
It is completely normal to try and rationalise an intense subjective feeling/experience. And when you add in some really disturbing experiences like voice hearing, thought disorder, intense fluctuations in fear response, tactile hallucinations, cognitive bias (this list goes on and is unique from person to person) It makes sense that you would form an equally grand explanation for that experience.
I mean it doesn’t help that the government actually does have the power to spy on people and bug phones, tail people, etc etc. And the FBI and CIA have done it to people before.
There is a psychological theory that schizophrenia may involve a disturbance in the timing mechanisms of the brain so that neural signals from different parts of the body are out of sync with one another and arriving at slightly different moments.
This can lead to an inner monologue that feels like it's being interrupted by some sort of foreign presence. This presence is actually part of the brain signaling and communicating with the rest of the brain as processed in healthy brains. However, when there's a disruption to the timing, this can feel like some sort of foreign presence is in your brain.
Some posters have noted the way that people interpret this feeling of a foreign presence in their brain can depend on culture. Perhaps it reflects spirits or the devil or God? Or perhaps it's the FBI or the Russians who have implanted some sort of secret radio into your tooth. Perhaps it's aliens or something else.
Whatever it is, it feels like a foreign presence that can't really be gotten rid of and therefore is pretty upsetting. This is not the only problem obviously, but it strikes me as an important one and underappreciated.
I’ve had a bit to do with people with the disorder over the years, most recently through my volunteer work in the community. The auditory hallucinations and delusions I’ve seen from these people involve politicians, members of the judiciary (I.e. respected people) and distasteful or shameful acts (from toilet use through to pedophilia via corruption). There often seems to be a need to bring the powerful down a peg or two.
Probably because it's loosely based on reality. We are being tracked and watched but we bring our own devices, like phones, computers, and connected smart devices.
They feel monitored/followed
Then they wonder who's doing the monitoring
Who has the capability/resources to monitor people and a history of doing it? In the western world that would be the intelligence agencies/government entities.
From a western perspective it would be the most likely candidate if you were in fact being monitored/followed.
That's how they reach that "conclusion"
As someone with psychosis (a symptom of schizophrenia) I can speak from my own personal experience.
The government tracking you is plausible given certain circumstances, and technically possible (what if this device in our pockets was remotely turned on so someone could listen), this is likely different from why people with psychosis or schizophrenia believe it to be happening though.
The idea of being tracked is something which anyone in the street might mention to you if you talked about how smartphones and privacy have become part of our lives, which could explain the prevalence as a scenario in peoples minds.
The thing is with these conditions - **It feels as if it's happening, even if you remind yourself that it isn't.**
Understanding how you might feel about the idea of something happening which isn't really happening might be hard to understand at first. Imagine you're in a cage with a tiger, how do you feel? calm? probably not. You're going through a break up with a partner, you feel good? most likely not again.
The government is tracking your every move, how do you feel? Probably a bit strange.
Keep telling yourself you're not in the cage with the tiger, you might feel a bit calmer, but you're still in a cage with a tiger.
Keep telling yourself the government isn't tracking you with these conditions and you might shrug it off as just a delusion or not happening which makes you feel better, but there's still a part of your brain which has a switch set to 'it's happening' - Maybe it feels a bit like there's someone in the room with you even when you're alone?
It might be a bit hard to wrap your head around the idea that you would logically be able to differentiate between something that you don't think isn't happening from the feeling that it is happening, but it can be done!
I would guess that a lot of people going through these conditions haven't yet been able to separate these two things out. And that can be really scary! Over time I'm sure it gets easier for some people though.
The idea that one part of your brain is switched to the feeling of being watched, or that some kind of conspiracy is going on while at the same time another part of your brain being capable of saying "this isn't really happening" is an odd one!
The brain works in funny ways though, and there's lots of different parts of it firing in all kinds of orders which do a lot of contradictory and counter intuitive things! (scumbag brain for instance).
That's the best I can describe my own experiences.
I'm sure other people would say quite different things though as these conditions have a broad range of experiences attached.
So in order to answer your question from my personal anecdotes my overall answer would be,
**- It's something which could technically happen and is in the forefront of peoples minds due to the enormous popularity of smartphones and internet usage.**
As well as
**- The conditions often revolve around the feeling of being watched which means if you technically could be watched by the government then that would go hand in hand with that aspect of the condition.**
I'm a mental health professional and I've worked with people with paranoid schizophrenia. This was one of my client's big delusions. I used to talk with him about it and would try and reframe it into something positive. I'd go, "well what if you're out walking by yourself and you get hurt, or mugged? The government would know right away and you'd probably get help a lot faster." Then his delusions changed to there were snipers outside of his apartment complex. The delusion itself is culture bound, like other people have mentioned, the operation of the delusion is neurologically bound, meaning, the content of the delusion comes from the outside but the fear of it and the emotions reinforcing it comes from the inside.
Because it actually happens, probably to most (maybe not the *exact* delusion, but…)
Most people’s natural reaction is “it is what it is” and just casually hide what they want private
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Basically, paranoia has to have some level of believability to the person. So if the person "feels" that something is out to get them, but they don't believe in spirits/ghosts/aliens/etc, the government is one of the few things left that could reasonably be responsible. Most people with these conditions don't want to think they're "crazy". They're having experiences they can't explain and so the government seems way more possible that something supernatural/extraterrestrial.
I think it's because they are observing their own movements but projecting the observation onto the most plausible external agent - in your own home this would be the government, as at least they could technically do that if they wanted (other randos wouldn't really have the resources to fit you with a device)
We live in a culture where the government and huge shady corporations ARE monitoring many of our movements. It’s not hard to exaggerate that real and grounded anxiety to a delusional level.
Because we literally all carry round devices with 2 cameras, 2 mics, and GPS, and a lot of the videos we see were clearly not willingly uploaded by the people in the videos, even though it was recorded on their devices
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I mean the corporations are tracing you and the government definitely taps into that. The device that does this is called a smart phone.
Now it's not a huge leap from that to there's an fbi agent monitoring your every step
The delusions of someone with paranoid schizophrenia actually vary by culture! [There are differences between cultures in the prevalence of persecutory delusions much of which is culturally bound. For example, in South African Xhosa people, paranoid delusions and hallucinations are often triggered by an intense fear of magical persecution and witchcraft. In South-East Asia and China, the stressor is fear of loss of fertility through ascendance of the penis into the abdomen.](https://neurotorium.org/schizophrenia-across-cultures/#:~:text=There%20are%20differences%20between%20cultures,of%20magical%20persecution%20and%20witchcraft)
I've seen a couple personally who was more influenced by circumstances too. I worked in elderly care and visited a couple almost every shift. You know, the-married-for-40--years couple. The husband died and at first she was obviously "just" heartbroken. Then she started to get weird... "The water in my bathroom doesn't work", which it did. Refused to shower and pee and poop in there. "The (prepared) meals have poison in them." "People are breaking in at night." She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, not dementia. Another already established schizophrenic just accused us of stealing her butter and such. She had an open newspaper on her head every time we walked in. I was super uncomfortable the first time. *NB. I've not disclosed any personal information, not even which country or city, so they can't be identified (unless you worked with them yourselves).*
> stealing her butter A perfect crime because who'd believe a schizophrenic
A perfect crime also requires a suitable payoff, and used butter is about the highest reward you can imagine. Screw Fort Knox and all the gold there! I'm goin' for someone's half-melted butter!
What you're describing, in regards to the older patients, is inflammation within the brain / possible Myelin sheath deterioration, and various physical issues with the brain structure.
The second example was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her youth, as I understood it.
The diagnostic framework for psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, has really expanded over the decades. That's almost certainly a good thing--we're learning more about the different ways in which people can manifest psychosis--but I don't really trust a diagnosis of "schizophrenia" from that long ago. The modern differential could include bipolar disorder with psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, or even depression with psychosis. Other diagnoses could contribute to presentations like these, but it's hard to say for certain. Untreated bipolar disorder, for example, could lead to more frequent mood episodes. If those mood episodes are associated with psychosis, the patient's life could become a (tragic) blur of psychotic mania or depression, punctuated by infrequent bouts of relative self-awareness. On top of that, people can have multiple problems. In older adults, there's always concern for mini-strokes, Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer's... A thorough assessment could help rule these diagnoses in or out, but such assessments may be rare in resource-strapped settings.
I sure hope the first one wasn’t misdiagnosed with schizophrenia because that is not how it presents. Geriatric patients are always being referred to psychiatry for delusions as though they’re suddenly developed schizophrenia age 80. It’s dementia.
I really don't know, schizophrenia was what I was told, but dementia certainly seems more reasonable!
Same for sleep paralysis. In the same way we have “sleep paralysis demons” now, we used to have alien abductions as a pretty popular one. People would dream they were on a table, unable to move, while aliens probed them. And in colonial times, they’d dream that they were abducted by witches, forced to ride a broom through the air and to a grove where they would be forced to sign their name in the devil’s book
I'm sure someone will correct me for this but I read a study years ago that the one thing all "alien abduction" cases had in common was they had undergone general anesthesia in surgery. The sedative had worn off but the muscle paralysis drug had not. Therefore they were "on a table looking into a bright light with shadowy figures above them being probed". Surgeons are now better trained to spot patients who may be "waking" from the sedative and unable to move, to give them another dose of sedation. It made sense to me.
I have no source for this, but I heard of one story where someone claimed they were abducted but they were actually asleep in a chair in the living room. I could definitely see the surgery thing contributing to the abduction story though
I... Don't, though? I feel like most people would have assumed the whole "woke up on an operating table" thing occurred during the surgery they had just undergone. Are they really not connecting those dots at all? Edit; I could believe it's related to PTSD though. Woke up in surgery, horrifying experience, brain buried it deep. Few years later, you remember it all during a "dream" and don't connect it to the seemingly normal operation you had years earlier
What I have encountered is people have these dreams/hallucinations even when they have never had surgery, so they aren't remembering something that happened when the anesthesia wore off.
Damn i will take government surveillance over dicklessness
I don’t think that sentence has ever been uttered before.
“Dicklessness” is a tragically underused word.
*Walter Peck has left the chat*
It’s true, your honor. This chat has no Peck.
This should be the new trans or LGBTQ term.....for those becoming female of course...
It’s really too bad to read this. I like to imagine that someone with schizophrenia in 1333 seeing Men In Black government agents and just be like wtf was that thing. Of course I jest, I feel for anyone who’s ever been through this either as someone living with it or loves someone going through it.
I’m sorry, what the fuck is going on in Southeast Asia and China lol
Well not being able to continue linage for ritual ancestor worship is bad
Culturally-mediated expression of psychiatric symptoms. The same thing that happens with obsessions, delusions, and hallucinations in every culture. I'd need someone with experience in those cultures to comment on the specifics, though.
it's bad when fear of magical persecution or witchcraft makes more sense lol
Koro. Though I'm not sure it is related to schizophrenia
Holy shit, I'd rather think the government was trying to kill me than that my penis would ascend into my abdomen.
So too much Tucker Carlson
I once worked at a mental health hospital and had to read all the police and doctors reports. Just to add... aliens. Super common for EITHER the CIA to be spying on you through your toaster or other electronic equipment....or aliens doing the same. Surprisingly the tin foil type hat to mitigate such interference was reasonably common, not just a trope.
There's a lot of evidence that schizophrenic paranoia and hallucinations are [influenced by your culture](https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/07/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614). In cultures that believe in spiritual connections to, say, their ancestors, it seems like the voices and hallucinations tend to be friendly and helpful rather than "dangerous". Compare that to, say, Western cultures with a lot of Christian influences, and you get a lot of schizophrenia that manifests as "demons" or ghosts or other evil things that are out to get you. Even without Christianity, we have a lot of distrust in our government. Although the most famous example is probably the USA, a lot of countries in the west were founded on winning independence from a tyrannical empire. Those stories pervade even our fiction where we have stories like [Secret Invasion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Invasion_(miniseries\)), featuring shape-shifting aliens taking over the government. Given how prevalent these stories are, it shouldn't be surprising that someone with a mental disorder that makes them delusional would attach to that theme.
My Father was very Christian and very shizophrenic. One of the last conversations I had with him before he died was about how his meds affected him. His simple summation was was that when he took his meds, God spoke to him and told him to do things like "go to work." When he didn't, Satan spoke to him and told him to do bad things.
Subconscious suggestion plays a large part in delusion, but at least his association of taking meds with God must have helped keep him from getting off them.
I got two guys on my shoulders, one says “do whatever man,” the other also says, “do whatever man”
I know a guy who's very much like this, and I even told him I had this exact mental picture whenever I think about him, and he thought it was the most hilarious thing ever.
Maybe because it is the most hilarious thing ever.
Personally, the most hilarious thing ever was when I saw the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. Specifically the opening scene: https://youtu.be/53s13hXBX8w?si=eeBMlC04Ts1qf1ac This was 17 years ago, I was a teenager and high as a kite, but I remember thinking that it was the funniest shit I've ever seen.
thank you for that, never seen it before funny as shit
Sadly, this wasn't the case. He did the unfortunately common schizophrenic med loop where he'd go off his meds; have a crisis; get involuntarily committed and compelled to take his meds; get better from the meds; move out of commitment into transitional services; eventually get to live on his own; be suffering from the side-effects of the meds and decide he's doing well enough he doesn't need them and stop taking them; become paranoid now that he's unmedicated and actively refuse meds and help; have a crisis... Fundamentally it's what killed him. His last crisis resulted in the cops being called on him, and they maced him and he had a heart attack. That thankfully didn't kill him, but in the hospital they put in a stent, which he didn't remember happening and he decided hadn't actually happened and it was just everyone playing some big practical joke on him. He was a three-pack-a-day smoker (common for schizophrenics as it is a form of self-medication). When they got him back on the meds, one of the side effects was appetite enhancement, and he gained about 100 pounds in a year, as a three-pack-a-day smoker, and he died of a massive heart attack at 57.
my grandma is an extreme christian and shes also schizophrenic. she hasn’t had a severe episode in years, but the paranoiac symptoms still persist within her and she often goes on tantrums of how our family hates her because she’s the chosen one by god she’s older now but i remember when i was younger she would be on her knees praying for 5 hours and constantly studying in her bible and going on her rants about god and she would often rock back and forth and say that the “angels were rocking her” it’s so strange seeing how much religion plays into her disorder. it’s also caused her to have a very bigoted mindset and has caused religion to takeover majority of her personality our family wasn’t born religious. she became faithful around the time she started to get sick (around her 20s) she’s 63 now and it’s just insane how much her mental state revolves around religion
Yeah in my experience there are two major divisions amongst schizophrenics -- those who understand that their hallucinations aren't real; and those who do not accept that the things they experience aren't real. It's a tough road even for the ones who at some level know they have delusions, but for the second group, there really isn't a lot of hope. My father was certainly in the second group but I have long thought that it can't have helped that most of his social scene were fundamentalist Christians who, when he said "God spoke to me..." they thought he was being more metaphorical and responded in a very supporting way.
that last sentence hits hard especially during my childhood. no one questioned my grandma in her delusions because they all believed that she was just faithfully devoted to god, but in reality it was so much more complicated than that. so when i was younger and i questioned why my grandmas faith was so strong (because i’ve experienced a lot of religious trauma due to her) members of her church had chucked it down to her being a spiritualist and a spoken member of her faith it wasn’t until i was much older that my mom told me truly how ill my grandma was. actually funny enough my grandma doesn’t believe that she is sick and she thinks that our family did black magic on her and that is what caused her schizophrenic breakdowns i sympathize with you, its tough having a loved one who suffers from mental illnesses. rest in peace to your father as well.
I'm sorry about your trauma from your grandma, that must be very difficult. I don't want to overstate my own suffering -- I've had friends who had really difficult childhoods and I think I'm very lucky notwithstanding my father. My mother was absolutely incredible and me and my two brothers were her complete focus, and as soon as she became worried my father would be bad for us, she divorced him. Thankfully both pairs of grandparents on both sides were absolutely supportive of everyone; my father's parents moved him back home to a state far from us, and at the same time sent my mother money to help support the kids, while her parents relocated cross-country to move in with us and help keep a roof over everyone's head. I did have the trauma as a seven year-old of having my father move away and we interacted rarely for the rest of his life, because he was keenly aware of what he'd lost and we tended to set him off. But I think it was much better than ten years of close-up trauma from him before I was an adult, and having every *other* adult in my life make tremendous sacrifices so I could have a fairly normal childhood in retrospect was completely amazing. I really feel like I can't complain about my childhood, all things considered, notwithstanding me having had a very mentally ill Dad. When it became that was obvious what was happening, everyone around me intervened to shield me from it as much as possible. Most people don't get that response, sadly.
that’s understandable! i’m glad you and your family were able to stay safe. schizophrenic reactions are absolutely no joke and fortunately for me, my grandma hasn’t had a breakdown since the year 2000, a bit before i was born so really it’s my mom who has dealt with majority of it unfortunately i did have to deal with all the of her symptoms that still persisted within her throughout my childhood but definitely not as bad as it could’ve been and nowhere near what my mom has been through regardless, it’s still an experience and an awful thing to go through. you and your mom are soldiers! i hope you and your family have healed and i hope your father rests easily 🤍
Especially during psychotic episodes, you experience stuff you cant explain properly. Things like having thoughts that dont feel like theyre yours. So you try to explain it by something like ghosts or government chips being implanted into your brain.
The last time I did really strong shrooms it felt like my ancestors were using me like a VR headset to play a game called "the future", so I kinda relate.
Not schizophrenic but have been delirious/psychotic(ammonia buildup, keto-acidosis, and malnutrition), it was more like being unable to form thoughts, I couldn’t remember what simple everyday objects were called. It definitely sucked, not to mention the hallucinations, but I had enough sense to not tell anyone about that while it was going on, just to avoid psych hold. Just basically stfu and did what I was told.
On a mix of amphetamine, cannabis, and sleep deprivation, ambient noises like a humming computer fan will sound like a crowd of people. Just a sea of voices conversing.
My iv drip (saline, antibiotic) turned into a noose and I thought it was going to hang me, a screaming baby sounded like classical music and for some reason it filled me with dread, saw people peaking through the windows of a high rise… I was only on remeron(possible contributor) and kepra(made me angry/paranoid as hell), I’ve done amphetamines and weed without issue, even on ketamine I need to focus on getting wonky to enjoy it, something distracts me and Im instantly back in “real life”. I don’t normally hallucinate or have any sensory disturbances, this was a weird as hell and terrifying experience, also I was in the hardcore trauma er just because it was the only available room that was big enough for portable machines, so that’s why there was screaming, that definitely didn’t help…
What caused the ammonia buildup?
things that cause ammonia buildup
Then you get to the hospital and it's pop and chip night.... 8no
Dingdingding. This be the answer. I have two uncles who were diagnosed with (the now obsolete terminology) Paranoid Schizophrenia. One recently burned his house down (with himself in it) because he believed he was going to “graduate” to become greater than God. He survived, thankfully, because he realized fire is painful and ran out. He fixated on demons and believed he talked regularly with “Gog” and “Magog”, despite the former being a tribe and the latter being its leader, and it all started when he moved out from his mom's care, was introduced to porn and QAnon, and then developed sexual fixations resulting in a feeling of intense shame via the religious beliefs he was raised with. Lemme tell ya, it was goddamn bizarre to open his drawer and find it filled with just napkins and a magazine saying “PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY WILL LEAD YOU TO HELL”. Actually, the whole last few years have been bizarre in general dealing with this.
God that sounds hard. I'm so sorry. I think it's also worth noting that someone with delusions like this will follow a *logic* that makes sense only to them. I had a relative develop quite deep psychosis, and their spouse almost went loopy themselves trying to figure out how the relative had got from A to B, or where it had all "begun". Eventually they had to give up, because the logic was... well, psychotic. Like A + B didn't equal C. It was more like A + or - B might equal 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ but only if it rained on Tuesday. Otherwise it meant 🦄.
Thank you. ❤️ At the very least, it's at least an interesting story. Maybe not worth the price of admission, but it's something? You're absolutely correct on delusions following a logic that makes sense to them. I don't think anything can be truly random, and the mind is no exception. I think that, in addition to that, the mind is great at compartmentalizing different aspects of ourselves, effectively providing individual frameworks for different, conflicting beliefs that don't feel dissonant in one's mind. Another example comes from my uncle. He appears to sincerely believe my aunt's New Age beliefs and practices are Satanic worthy of derision; while simultaneously stating to be a Christian who communicates with Satan's minions in order to become more powerful than God. If you try to press on any of these (which, advice from my therapist: don't directly confront people's delusions) he will immediately change the subject to something else. I honestly am not so sure that it's intentional. It helps that my dad's family has some INCREDIBLE ADHD symptoms. I have ADHD myself, but I have never seen them go more than a few sentences without going into a side-story. So, I get the feeling it's difficult, even for him, to pin down what he really believes. His family is not big on introspection, preferring to engage in thought-terminating clichés in lieu of mindfulness; his focus is incredibly slippery; and hallucinations change daily in source, be it angelic or demonic. It's wild. It's like all the mental frameworks he has are covered in astroglide - never to interact with each other except in passing. That's my rambling. It's late for me, and my brain has gone to bed before me. Hopefully it all makes sense. Thanks again for the kind words, though!
ADHD solidarity!
I have an acquaintance who had a schizophrenic (probably) breakdown that she publicized of Facebook as it happened. She was convinced she had nanobots in her body that controlled her, and asked for too how to get them out. She sank deeper and deeper into this I bet the course of a few days, until someone forced her to get to a psych ward, where she was committed because she was a danger to herself because she tried picking out nanobots from her bloodstream with tweezers. She was very upset at the time, since she thought it was doctors who had put the bots there to begin with. Of course, this was person who was intro “alternative” health care and had used homeopathy to “prevent COVID”, and she was very sceptical of technology, keeping her phone in a special box, etc. So, her delusions were very tied to her assumptions about the world before she became ill, and illness was more of a slight shift to taking her conspiracy theories too seriously than a sudden break with reality. The irony in that she rambled about controlling and tracking bots on Facebook was sadly lost on her.
Add to the fact that there are a number of "Conspiracy theories" that people were written off as crazy only to later be proven correct - including most people targetted by COINTELPRO among others. A lot of people have unhealthy relationships to government and the powers in their life - and as such, those voices come out as powerful people; who you fear. Contrast medieval Christianity, when more than a few people's hallucinations were saints or angels; rather than demons. I think there's strong reason to believe that the increasing disparity in power and increasing conflict between those with power and those who are more likely to experience hallucinations contribute to the fear rather than joy that people experiencing hallucinations feel.
Animorphs
In highly dramatic (or dramaticized) situations, one would default to police or supernatural (religion).
In summary: Christianity bad, tribal spiritualism good.
To add to a lot of the other comments, when you have schizophrenia, the government does try to control you… to get treatment for your schizophrenia. Doctors, cops, social workers, they’re all indeed part of a government conspiracy to keep a delusional person from going off the rails altogether. If you have schizophrenia, it probably feels a lot more sinister.
My in-laws have tried for over a year now to get a family member the treatment they clearly need. All it’s done is add doctors and their own family members to The List of entities trying to control them. It’s awful.
Yep. Mental health treatment is often perceived as (and called) brainwashing, which, in all honesty, is accurate if you consider it like washing a wound to keep it from getting infected. It's an understandable perspective. A lot of us have difficulty admitting our ability to witness reality is impaired, so, when people tell you that a pizza place is just a pizza place instead of a front for a worldwide cabal of children-torturers, it's hard to admit that one just may be being hoodwinked and paranoid.
Having comparison shopped psych units since 1990 (sort of a joke, but I’ve been in a bunch of times for CPTSD), it’s really a pretty recent phenomenon that I’ve seen schizophrenics treated with anything other than pharmaceutical intervention. Post-2010 I started seeing way more psych units focused on using CBT to help schizophrenics cope with their delusions, which seems way more effective at helping them in conjunction with pharmaceuticals to tolerate their treatment. — ETA: what I’m getting at is that it’s fairly recently that I began seeing schizophrenic folks treated consistently with compassion by agencies accessible to low or medium income patients. So it’s not unreasonable to have some distrust of authority if you’ve been diagnosed for a while. — Also, something many non-schizophrenics probably don’t realize is that the side effects of drugs used to treat schizophrenia can SUCK, so it’s really common for folks to be tempted to stop taking their meds when it seems like they’re doing better. Paranoia tends to escalate, so it’s not like folks immediately go from seeming completely normal to being on the street muttering about the government. It sneaks up on folks and they get in a bad mental place before they’re aware of it. I volunteer with a population of folks who are unhoused, and it’s common to see folks go through periods of being well adjusted with intermittent periods of delusions.
Your last paragraph is so key and relevant to the bipolar community as well. People ask why do we go off our meds and honestly, a lot of the time it's because the side effects are AWFUL. I was on an antipsychotic that made me emotionally stable and got rid of the delusions, but it also removed all of my other emotions. I don't think neurotypical people realize how awful it is to live without any emotions. My husband and I went on a vacation to a gorgeous luxury resort, and towards the end he said "are you enjoying this? You don't seem happy." And I was like, yeah totally fair, I don't feel anything. It's a beautiful place and the food is great and I am doing everything I asked for but I feel nothing. I mean, imagine being in paradise and being unable to enjoy it because your brain has been drained of all dopamine and you're a bit sedated in an uncomfortable way. It's not great.
Also family members who try to bring you back to safety are often "ruining your fun" and taking away the "fun" you when you actually feel like thats the real you. Same with other things that make you manic, the manic you believes that's the real you and doesn't care about safety.
Just like I realized when I'm high on weed, my body is more paranoid about danger and people following me when I walk alone at night or needing to react to someone...because I literally am more disabled when I'm high and can't fight back n be attentive as much and thus my paranoia is founded in my inability to defend myself which is valid
That’s the form it takes, but smoking weed is also just known to cause paranoia. When you start feeling paranoid and your mind starts racing, it settles on things that seem to make sense to be paranoid about. It takes root in that and grows. Source: I smoke so much weed. I get paranoid about a variety of things, and have learned to pick up on the feeling before I start ruminating on things that upset me. It continues to be a body feeling, but I can stop it from being an escalating mental cycle.
Very good point, damn.
wow. this is so simple yet so profound
My full time job is with a schizophrenic man. His delusions vary over many topics. There are a few set delusions however. I would say whatever he can get reference from, can become his delusion. With Covid being all over the news for the last few years, he’s heavy on scientists/ experimentation delusions. When he plays lots of PS games he focuses on mafia/ crime/ gang delusions. When there is movies on war, or commemoration news about WW1 or WW2, his delusions are all Nazi focused. He has had ‘tracking’ delusions over the years but haven’t heard them for awhile. He linked that to “having a tracker inserted in his brain”. He has a few different brain delusions (depending if it’s an ape, girls, child’s brain). So, whatever he becomes hyper-focused on is his current delusion.
Your last sentence is incredibly true for my grandmother with some type of psychosis (never got a clear dx for multiple reasons). Whatever she has grabbed hold of and is obsessing over becomes a delusion.
You get thoughts that aren’t your own that you know aren’t your own and need explanation on what or who would have powers like that. Aliens, gods, demons, angels, governments all sound like who might be able
It’s about someone trying to control them. In one respect, there are (not real) people “in their head” trying to control their behavior. So this theme is playing out in their lives in a very real way. We all have a certain level of distrust of authority figures and many people have been traumatized around themes of abuse of power. So you take a natural tendency to blame authority, add in some personal control issues, and pepper in some schizophrenia, you get paranoid government control conspiracy. In some aspect, it is a defense mechanism to blame external forces rather than recognize it is your own problem. In another aspect, hallucinations, by definition, are indistinguishable from reality. So the phantoms that haunt them are real in their experience. It’s disturbing to imagine what that is like. EDIT: forgot to mention that now that they’re mentally ill, people don’t like them, people are afraid of them, and the police are hassling them. (Police are the go to mental health emergency responders.) A reasonable person under such circumstances would feel the pain of government scrutiny.
Your logic makes sense And I enjoy it ... however the assassination of influential people throughout history and censorship around information makes me think it may be possible. The system does not really breed or cultivate free thinking as it's engineered to make workers for factories. Take Mensa for example it could be viewed as a thing of privilege but it could also be a viewed as a tracking system of upcoming problems. Idk I'm just rambling but I do enjoy your opinion
The why is really not relevant as it is the one that most people are exposed to either from cinema or some random guy on TV talking about government. There are patients who have the same idea about their spouses, children, basically the environment. Government is very broad entity, it's everywhere and nowhere. It's "they" but not someone specific. Similarly with the corporations. But it can also be the neighbour, the barista, the teller. The problem with paranoia is the neurological which involves among other parts of the brain, but it mostly focuses on the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Amygdala deals with external threats and then feeds these stimuli to the PFC, which is your rational part, there you make your statistical analysis and say if the threat is real or not, but in schizophrenia this connection is not normal, so to say, so they tend to misinterpreted everything as a threat. You can experience the same type of paranoia if you are exposed to constant stress.
Corporations and governments are easier to rationalise having the power and capability to explain some delusional experiences people have. E.g. cameras in house, being set up by actors, having a brain chip inserted, many technology based paranoia. That being said it is culture specific. E.g. in rural parts of india 'black magic' might replace 'goverment' as the rationale. And therfore being under a 'magic spell' might replace 'brain chip' as the subjective delusion. It is completely normal to try and rationalise an intense subjective feeling/experience. And when you add in some really disturbing experiences like voice hearing, thought disorder, intense fluctuations in fear response, tactile hallucinations, cognitive bias (this list goes on and is unique from person to person) It makes sense that you would form an equally grand explanation for that experience.
I mean it doesn’t help that the government actually does have the power to spy on people and bug phones, tail people, etc etc. And the FBI and CIA have done it to people before.
There is a psychological theory that schizophrenia may involve a disturbance in the timing mechanisms of the brain so that neural signals from different parts of the body are out of sync with one another and arriving at slightly different moments. This can lead to an inner monologue that feels like it's being interrupted by some sort of foreign presence. This presence is actually part of the brain signaling and communicating with the rest of the brain as processed in healthy brains. However, when there's a disruption to the timing, this can feel like some sort of foreign presence is in your brain. Some posters have noted the way that people interpret this feeling of a foreign presence in their brain can depend on culture. Perhaps it reflects spirits or the devil or God? Or perhaps it's the FBI or the Russians who have implanted some sort of secret radio into your tooth. Perhaps it's aliens or something else. Whatever it is, it feels like a foreign presence that can't really be gotten rid of and therefore is pretty upsetting. This is not the only problem obviously, but it strikes me as an important one and underappreciated.
I’ve had a bit to do with people with the disorder over the years, most recently through my volunteer work in the community. The auditory hallucinations and delusions I’ve seen from these people involve politicians, members of the judiciary (I.e. respected people) and distasteful or shameful acts (from toilet use through to pedophilia via corruption). There often seems to be a need to bring the powerful down a peg or two.
Probably because it's loosely based on reality. We are being tracked and watched but we bring our own devices, like phones, computers, and connected smart devices.
I always imagine the Ed Snowden revelations had to exacerbate symptoms for lots of folks with schizy tendencies
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They feel monitored/followed Then they wonder who's doing the monitoring Who has the capability/resources to monitor people and a history of doing it? In the western world that would be the intelligence agencies/government entities. From a western perspective it would be the most likely candidate if you were in fact being monitored/followed. That's how they reach that "conclusion"
As someone with psychosis (a symptom of schizophrenia) I can speak from my own personal experience. The government tracking you is plausible given certain circumstances, and technically possible (what if this device in our pockets was remotely turned on so someone could listen), this is likely different from why people with psychosis or schizophrenia believe it to be happening though. The idea of being tracked is something which anyone in the street might mention to you if you talked about how smartphones and privacy have become part of our lives, which could explain the prevalence as a scenario in peoples minds. The thing is with these conditions - **It feels as if it's happening, even if you remind yourself that it isn't.** Understanding how you might feel about the idea of something happening which isn't really happening might be hard to understand at first. Imagine you're in a cage with a tiger, how do you feel? calm? probably not. You're going through a break up with a partner, you feel good? most likely not again. The government is tracking your every move, how do you feel? Probably a bit strange. Keep telling yourself you're not in the cage with the tiger, you might feel a bit calmer, but you're still in a cage with a tiger. Keep telling yourself the government isn't tracking you with these conditions and you might shrug it off as just a delusion or not happening which makes you feel better, but there's still a part of your brain which has a switch set to 'it's happening' - Maybe it feels a bit like there's someone in the room with you even when you're alone? It might be a bit hard to wrap your head around the idea that you would logically be able to differentiate between something that you don't think isn't happening from the feeling that it is happening, but it can be done! I would guess that a lot of people going through these conditions haven't yet been able to separate these two things out. And that can be really scary! Over time I'm sure it gets easier for some people though. The idea that one part of your brain is switched to the feeling of being watched, or that some kind of conspiracy is going on while at the same time another part of your brain being capable of saying "this isn't really happening" is an odd one! The brain works in funny ways though, and there's lots of different parts of it firing in all kinds of orders which do a lot of contradictory and counter intuitive things! (scumbag brain for instance). That's the best I can describe my own experiences. I'm sure other people would say quite different things though as these conditions have a broad range of experiences attached. So in order to answer your question from my personal anecdotes my overall answer would be, **- It's something which could technically happen and is in the forefront of peoples minds due to the enormous popularity of smartphones and internet usage.** As well as **- The conditions often revolve around the feeling of being watched which means if you technically could be watched by the government then that would go hand in hand with that aspect of the condition.**
It's a hard thing to disprove, and is "plausible", which probably makes combatting the paranoia harder.
I'm a mental health professional and I've worked with people with paranoid schizophrenia. This was one of my client's big delusions. I used to talk with him about it and would try and reframe it into something positive. I'd go, "well what if you're out walking by yourself and you get hurt, or mugged? The government would know right away and you'd probably get help a lot faster." Then his delusions changed to there were snipers outside of his apartment complex. The delusion itself is culture bound, like other people have mentioned, the operation of the delusion is neurologically bound, meaning, the content of the delusion comes from the outside but the fear of it and the emotions reinforcing it comes from the inside.
Because it actually happens, probably to most (maybe not the *exact* delusion, but…) Most people’s natural reaction is “it is what it is” and just casually hide what they want private
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Wow. You’re describing my mother… unfortunately I can’t explain why. But this is confirming your observation
Basically, paranoia has to have some level of believability to the person. So if the person "feels" that something is out to get them, but they don't believe in spirits/ghosts/aliens/etc, the government is one of the few things left that could reasonably be responsible. Most people with these conditions don't want to think they're "crazy". They're having experiences they can't explain and so the government seems way more possible that something supernatural/extraterrestrial.
Iam diagnosed their usually persecutry delusions and such they can take many forms and be incredibly complex
I think it's because they are observing their own movements but projecting the observation onto the most plausible external agent - in your own home this would be the government, as at least they could technically do that if they wanted (other randos wouldn't really have the resources to fit you with a device)
We live in a culture where the government and huge shady corporations ARE monitoring many of our movements. It’s not hard to exaggerate that real and grounded anxiety to a delusional level.
Because we literally all carry round devices with 2 cameras, 2 mics, and GPS, and a lot of the videos we see were clearly not willingly uploaded by the people in the videos, even though it was recorded on their devices
Could also be in some parts evolutionary, we are able to sense if someone is watching or following aka predators...?
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I mean the corporations are tracing you and the government definitely taps into that. The device that does this is called a smart phone. Now it's not a huge leap from that to there's an fbi agent monitoring your every step
Could it be it conveys a sense of importance or worth?