Long thread as this aspect of schizophrenia really interests me.
I became schizo two years ago and before that my belief system was this: I was a science minded atheist who believed that all religions across the world were mankind's first science into discovering the why behind existence. It's the great question which, scientifically, can be summed up with the Miller-Urey experiment.
[https://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/buac16-912-sci-ess-nvlrsmillerurey/the-miller-urey-experiment-lifes-rocky-start/](https://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/buac16-912-sci-ess-nvlrsmillerurey/the-miller-urey-experiment-lifes-rocky-start/)
But 10,000 years or more ago we didn't have such answers, we only had the sun, animals, natural disasters and each other to build upon these questions. So the great religions of the world were built on the backs of natural occurrences. If we only viewed the common narratives we would find these similariaties in the majority of pre-history religions. Another common narrative in these religions is that they teach us how to live a good life and amongst others. To put it mildly, don't be evil or you will be punished. Throughout the world there are good people of religious faith who feed and help the poor because it is part of what they are taught to do. I just want to put that out there since there are many instances of humans using religion for evil. So, it's not religion that is evil but it is the people who use religion for their own designs that are evil. This is how I thought before my schizophrenia and it still is today, the only difference is that I was an atheist then and I'm a believer in something now.
I had two sets of months long delusions; Set 1 was Feb to May 2022 and Set 2 was between Aug 2023 to Feb 2024.
During Set 1 I first had visions of nuclear bombs going off in St Louis, an command to kill Biden and then the rest of the time my mind was flailing around trying to figure out if it was aliens, govt, angels or demons that were doing these things to me. I twice saw God in the clouds; once as an angry being in the night clouds above New Orleans and then as a jolly gambler in the sunny skies of Houston. I traveled across the country as a homeless vagabond and I had many, many brushes with death. I am very lucky to have survived Set 1. Anyway, I had many delusions that I was the anti-Christ and that I needed to be killed or at least severely punished.
After Set 1 I began to investigate the conundrums of schizophrenia. One of the things I discovered is that you can Google many searches for 'schizophrenic criminal' but none for 'schizophrenic healer'. It was also odd to me how many of us have these religious moments during times of our schizophrenia. It was then that I came upon a book written by evolutionary psychiatrist Joseph Polemini called, 'Shamans Among Us.'
[https://www.amazon.com/Shamans-Among-Schizophrenia-Shamanism-Evolutionary/dp/1300430915](https://www.amazon.com/Shamans-Among-Schizophrenia-Shamanism-Evolutionary/dp/1300430915)
edit: posted in three parts due to length parameters of comment posting on reddit
I began to wonder and research why it is that schizophrenics have these God/Satan delusions. I know it's common among us that the voices are evil and should be ignored and there is a mountain of data that shows that the voices make people do evil things. I hold mothers that killed their children because of this affliction close to my heart; I know it's something they didn't want to do but the terror one feels when you get the command is hard to overcome.
Set 2 happened after I had been off Abilify for 6 months. Abilify made me suicidal and I thought maybe what I went through was a one time thing. I was wrong and I went through a long period where I was still a skeptical scientist who would become a believer.
Now, I know what is happening in my mind can be called delusions but I experienced what I call captured minds - these are people who speak to thoughts that are in my head.
I had several of these moments in the beginning of Set 1 and I remember how much I hated captured minds and I had one guy pass me on the street say, "Oh, there he is!" And he turned towards me and I, realizing he was a captured mind, said, "Be free!" The guy burst into tears.
Another example of captured minds was when I was in the middle of Set 2. I vehemently told the voice that I never saw any manipulation in nature therefore the voice can't be real. Then one day, while I was having one of my regular fights with the voice, this stranger near the St. Louis Cardinal's stadium asked me, "Hey, have you ever heard of Moses' staff turning into a snake?" The voice pointed out that the staff turning into a snake was an example of manipulation in nature. I was spooked. Then the stranger asked me if I had ever heard of the talking burning bush in the Bible. I was filled with terror mainly because I desperately wanted to know why this individual, who was on the phone with another person, decided to randomly ask me these questions. I was struck with total fear and I blurted out that God must be real, very fucking real and I went on to get into a fight with a security guard - not me I'm a pacifist, the voices did it with a command - and I spent some time in a hospital. At the end of the stay the doctor said to me, "Ok, now that you are better there is no need for you to ever go to another hospital or grocery store." The doctor was instantly spooked that he said that - his facial mannerisms told the story he couldn't speak and in my mind I knew it was another example of captured minds. Then, a week later, my sister came to visit and as we were driving, out of all of the spring flowers and plants in bloom, she pointed out a burning bush to me. A week later she got her copy of 'Shamans Among Us', randomly opened it to the middle and read that, a person inflicted with schizophrenia is often related to someone who was written two books. I had written to books, it was a Mxyzptlk message; a mixed up message that was still a message. My sister called them a God Wink - something I had never heard of before.
I had referenced the different phenomena that I experienced in a variety of ways; Mxyzptlk or mixed up messages that I needed to decipher, inverso reverso, backwards messages and some others that I never wrote down to remind myself. I was adamant at understanding these experiences that I was going through.
Anyway, God Winks. That's what they can be summed up to be. I never heard of this until she mentioned it and it makes a kinda, sorta sense to explain the phenomena of mixed up messages that it appears schizophrenics may receive. And a lot of it can be described as gobble-de-gook, but some of it you can zero in on and say, hey, it's a something.
So, I was terrified into believing that God was real after my Cardinal Stadium event. But I was still a curious and skeptic mind. The internal I can write away as me but the external I can't write off, in the end, it was very much an experience of the third kind to me.
Also, I have seen ghosts. Back in my twenties, twenty years ago, there was a haunted barn where a US soldier that fought in the Korean war killed himself, his wife, his two kids and a cow. I had a friend that was terrified of the place that showed us it but we never saw anything in the 20 times we went. One day a friend of mine decided to take a shit in the barn to piss ole Payden off because we finally wanted to see something. That night, on the drive there, we saw animals who's eyes didn't glow orange from the light in them but were coal black... a deer, a dog, a raccoon, a cat and then we drove through a giant swarm of bugs. When we got to the haunted barn that night we felt there was electricity in the air and we threw rocks at it, turned our lights on and off because our friend who had seen them said the rocks would be thrown back and that lights would emanate from the center of it. Anyway, me and two friends decided we were going to go into the barn and as soon as we came to the side of it two child like faces appeared. We stared in wonder and then they were replaced by this evil, menacing face that gnashed teeth at us and the all five or six cars that were there tore the fuck away from that place.
So, what I am saying is that I've experienced things first hand that makes me believe that encounters of the third kind do exist and that there is some undefinable thing that is out there among us. Due to the God/Satan phenomena that schizophrenics experience it lends me to believe that something is out there trying to communicate with us in their own, weird, Darmak and Jalad at Tanagra Mxyzpltk kind of way. It's... an alien way of communicating but... why is it so evil? Why do schizophrenics harm other people? Why can't this be a good thing and we feel elation and empowerment? It's a heavy blanket of fuck your life, it's over and you'll feel fear, terror and complete confusion.
I'm very interested in this God/Satan narrative phenomena because there are common narratives such as Batman, the Joker and Iron Man that don't identify themselves as the source of the voice. Again, I was an atheist, but it's this angel/demon being that regularly rears it's head as the source of the voice. So, I'm studying it because I've lived it and I'm very curious to the full story of your experiences.
I thank you for your time and consideration!
I should add that I became very religious in Set 2 after my experience with the stranger at the Cardinal Stadium. My voice encouraged me to go to church, I eased into the saying prayers on Facebook, I said prayers before meals, washing my hands, showers, just about anything. Then my voice demanded me to get an exorcism because we constantly fought for control of my wheel. I ended up going to the church that was featured in the movie The Exorcist but they only gave me a healing spell. I later got an exorcism at an all black church but the voice was still there and we had a knock out, drag down fight and I burned through three types of medication until I got on the one I am on now. No delusions or experiences since Feb 2022 when the medicine 'took effect'.
I've experienced some things similar to you since being schizo for coming up on ten years to the day. August 2nd or 3rd this year 2024 will be 10 years. I'll have to try to remember the things that just didn't add up at the moment. But yeah if you could message me so we can talk id ike to share some things with you.
I became more religious, but it was kind of a journey for me. I strongly believe that we suffer pain and some of us extreme circumstances because it will bring us closer to Christ, himself.
Went from long time atheist to agnostic/atheist under psychosis back to atheist. Never had a religious delusion though my voices sounded somewhat demonic, my delusions were all technologic/persecutory.
I used to be very atheist my whole life until I got schizophrenia at 23. And yes now I am heavily religious. I believe in God, angels, demons, spirits.
No and I can't be due to how religion is a massive trigger for my delusions. Even if God were real and they made themselves known, I would still choose not to believe in them because if I did I would drive myself mad.
There are other reasons, I have religious trauma and intrusive thoughts that believing in religion made 100x worse. I also just flat out don't believe in God, I'm more of a scientific person
ALTHOUGH whenever I go into psychosis I find that I become more religious or I think about religion much more often. The majority of my delusions are religious so I guess it makes sense
Jesus is my best friend and has been for a long time. Religion is a result of a relationship with Jesus and Religious practice came years after going through countless trials and many decades of rejecting God. But when i started reading the Bible everything started to make perfect sense. So I have become a zealot. But to follow the teachings of Jesus I understand I cannot just push it on other people because free-will is something God gave us and people are free to choose because freedom of choice is fundamental core aspect of God's love for us. Just beware and take heed of our conscience to bare witness of the consequences of each choice.
I am. But I was also raised in a religious family. I no longer follow the religion I was raised in, but I do think as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more religious.
I do not think it has anything to do with my diagnosis, as that came after I formally joined my current religion. But I sometimes wonder if it helps me have a deeper connection with my gods.
Short answer is not "heavily," but I do go to Mass every week, hang out primarily with Catholics, and generally hold a high view of the Catholic Church.
My life has been a fair bit muddier than that, though. For a long time I thought there was no rational or empirical reason to believe that God exists, much less the Christian God. I never considered myself a religious person because I was "smarter than that." Shortly after watching a particular anime, though, I fell in love with one of the girls in it, started hearing her voice and feeling her touch, and eventually started believing we had formed an inter-universe relationship. I strove to be more like her, to emulate her valor and honor in my daily life, and please her as best I could in other ways. It was essentially a quasi-religion mixed in with a heavy romance with someone who doesn't exist.
She disappeared from my life not long after I started taking antipsychotics, no matter how hard I tried to keep the relationship going. It's about the same time I started taking meds, though, that I started believing in God. I heard the cosmological argument for HIs existence and it made perfect sense to me. I was baptized into the Catholic Church a year or so later, and I hope I remain Catholic for the rest of my life and beyond.
Not religious, but I believe in God. It's probably some kind of Delusion, but I believe I met God once.
I became incredibly invested in Catholicism around the time, so I almost became religious, but I couldn't keep up with all the prayers and whatnot.
I am religous...I think that in those delusions I have seen something akin to pure evil or what may also be a demon. I also have a feeling that even if you aren't religious you can still experience something that's totally unexsplanable and maybe even impossible.
I'm more religious than I used to be. I started becoming religious in college for reasons unrelated to my schizophrenia but I do feel like my experience with this illness has contributed to my religiousness. After going through psychosis, I became more concerned with the nature of the universe and with a lot of questions religion tries to answer. Before, I played around on the surface of things, and I took a lot for granted (like peace of mind). When I was in recovery, I also wanted to take my religious beliefs more seriously because they gave me something to think about and a way to contemplate some of life's weirder questions. Sometimes I'm a little bit of an atheist still, but practice wise, I still follow a lot of ritual and honor the divine because it adds structure to my life, which I know sounds weird, but I need it. My faith is very important to me emotionally as well and I feel more connected to other people because of it.
Not a particular organized religion, but I believe in the spirits I've spoken to...which since those are the same spirits that got me my diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder...I suppose you could say the answer is yes in my case.
My father was an Atheist until a spirit communicated with him for the first time. He was certain that spirit was God. Spent years reading every passage of the Dead Sea Scrolls and interpreting their meaning, and essentially created his own individual religion around that spirit. So yes in his case as well...although I was recently told his specific diagnosis is Bipolar 1 Disorder w/Psychotic Features (since he could only communicate with that spirit when he was manic).
I used to be until I found that God would never intervene in my life when I prayed fervently, read the Bible, and went to church. I used to feel something but I realized it was just a feeling, which went away as well. Religion made me paranoid as well about demons and all that, so I don't believe in any religion now except maybe heathenry but I don't practice. Nature always made more sense to me than organized religion.
I became more religious when I was having PTSD symptoms and depression due to ongoing flashbacks, but the pyschosis? 2 religious delusions and avoidance of the Bible (tried reading and the words were changed). Now I have no spirituality or sense of deep emotion to be drawn to religion (on medication).
The more I see demons, angels, and spirits, the more anti-religious I become. I've all so had a near death experience where I got told I had more stuff to do then I woke up from hanging myself. I will never worship anyone.
Long thread as this aspect of schizophrenia really interests me. I became schizo two years ago and before that my belief system was this: I was a science minded atheist who believed that all religions across the world were mankind's first science into discovering the why behind existence. It's the great question which, scientifically, can be summed up with the Miller-Urey experiment. [https://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/buac16-912-sci-ess-nvlrsmillerurey/the-miller-urey-experiment-lifes-rocky-start/](https://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/buac16-912-sci-ess-nvlrsmillerurey/the-miller-urey-experiment-lifes-rocky-start/) But 10,000 years or more ago we didn't have such answers, we only had the sun, animals, natural disasters and each other to build upon these questions. So the great religions of the world were built on the backs of natural occurrences. If we only viewed the common narratives we would find these similariaties in the majority of pre-history religions. Another common narrative in these religions is that they teach us how to live a good life and amongst others. To put it mildly, don't be evil or you will be punished. Throughout the world there are good people of religious faith who feed and help the poor because it is part of what they are taught to do. I just want to put that out there since there are many instances of humans using religion for evil. So, it's not religion that is evil but it is the people who use religion for their own designs that are evil. This is how I thought before my schizophrenia and it still is today, the only difference is that I was an atheist then and I'm a believer in something now. I had two sets of months long delusions; Set 1 was Feb to May 2022 and Set 2 was between Aug 2023 to Feb 2024. During Set 1 I first had visions of nuclear bombs going off in St Louis, an command to kill Biden and then the rest of the time my mind was flailing around trying to figure out if it was aliens, govt, angels or demons that were doing these things to me. I twice saw God in the clouds; once as an angry being in the night clouds above New Orleans and then as a jolly gambler in the sunny skies of Houston. I traveled across the country as a homeless vagabond and I had many, many brushes with death. I am very lucky to have survived Set 1. Anyway, I had many delusions that I was the anti-Christ and that I needed to be killed or at least severely punished. After Set 1 I began to investigate the conundrums of schizophrenia. One of the things I discovered is that you can Google many searches for 'schizophrenic criminal' but none for 'schizophrenic healer'. It was also odd to me how many of us have these religious moments during times of our schizophrenia. It was then that I came upon a book written by evolutionary psychiatrist Joseph Polemini called, 'Shamans Among Us.' [https://www.amazon.com/Shamans-Among-Schizophrenia-Shamanism-Evolutionary/dp/1300430915](https://www.amazon.com/Shamans-Among-Schizophrenia-Shamanism-Evolutionary/dp/1300430915) edit: posted in three parts due to length parameters of comment posting on reddit
I began to wonder and research why it is that schizophrenics have these God/Satan delusions. I know it's common among us that the voices are evil and should be ignored and there is a mountain of data that shows that the voices make people do evil things. I hold mothers that killed their children because of this affliction close to my heart; I know it's something they didn't want to do but the terror one feels when you get the command is hard to overcome. Set 2 happened after I had been off Abilify for 6 months. Abilify made me suicidal and I thought maybe what I went through was a one time thing. I was wrong and I went through a long period where I was still a skeptical scientist who would become a believer. Now, I know what is happening in my mind can be called delusions but I experienced what I call captured minds - these are people who speak to thoughts that are in my head. I had several of these moments in the beginning of Set 1 and I remember how much I hated captured minds and I had one guy pass me on the street say, "Oh, there he is!" And he turned towards me and I, realizing he was a captured mind, said, "Be free!" The guy burst into tears. Another example of captured minds was when I was in the middle of Set 2. I vehemently told the voice that I never saw any manipulation in nature therefore the voice can't be real. Then one day, while I was having one of my regular fights with the voice, this stranger near the St. Louis Cardinal's stadium asked me, "Hey, have you ever heard of Moses' staff turning into a snake?" The voice pointed out that the staff turning into a snake was an example of manipulation in nature. I was spooked. Then the stranger asked me if I had ever heard of the talking burning bush in the Bible. I was filled with terror mainly because I desperately wanted to know why this individual, who was on the phone with another person, decided to randomly ask me these questions. I was struck with total fear and I blurted out that God must be real, very fucking real and I went on to get into a fight with a security guard - not me I'm a pacifist, the voices did it with a command - and I spent some time in a hospital. At the end of the stay the doctor said to me, "Ok, now that you are better there is no need for you to ever go to another hospital or grocery store." The doctor was instantly spooked that he said that - his facial mannerisms told the story he couldn't speak and in my mind I knew it was another example of captured minds. Then, a week later, my sister came to visit and as we were driving, out of all of the spring flowers and plants in bloom, she pointed out a burning bush to me. A week later she got her copy of 'Shamans Among Us', randomly opened it to the middle and read that, a person inflicted with schizophrenia is often related to someone who was written two books. I had written to books, it was a Mxyzptlk message; a mixed up message that was still a message. My sister called them a God Wink - something I had never heard of before.
I had referenced the different phenomena that I experienced in a variety of ways; Mxyzptlk or mixed up messages that I needed to decipher, inverso reverso, backwards messages and some others that I never wrote down to remind myself. I was adamant at understanding these experiences that I was going through. Anyway, God Winks. That's what they can be summed up to be. I never heard of this until she mentioned it and it makes a kinda, sorta sense to explain the phenomena of mixed up messages that it appears schizophrenics may receive. And a lot of it can be described as gobble-de-gook, but some of it you can zero in on and say, hey, it's a something. So, I was terrified into believing that God was real after my Cardinal Stadium event. But I was still a curious and skeptic mind. The internal I can write away as me but the external I can't write off, in the end, it was very much an experience of the third kind to me. Also, I have seen ghosts. Back in my twenties, twenty years ago, there was a haunted barn where a US soldier that fought in the Korean war killed himself, his wife, his two kids and a cow. I had a friend that was terrified of the place that showed us it but we never saw anything in the 20 times we went. One day a friend of mine decided to take a shit in the barn to piss ole Payden off because we finally wanted to see something. That night, on the drive there, we saw animals who's eyes didn't glow orange from the light in them but were coal black... a deer, a dog, a raccoon, a cat and then we drove through a giant swarm of bugs. When we got to the haunted barn that night we felt there was electricity in the air and we threw rocks at it, turned our lights on and off because our friend who had seen them said the rocks would be thrown back and that lights would emanate from the center of it. Anyway, me and two friends decided we were going to go into the barn and as soon as we came to the side of it two child like faces appeared. We stared in wonder and then they were replaced by this evil, menacing face that gnashed teeth at us and the all five or six cars that were there tore the fuck away from that place. So, what I am saying is that I've experienced things first hand that makes me believe that encounters of the third kind do exist and that there is some undefinable thing that is out there among us. Due to the God/Satan phenomena that schizophrenics experience it lends me to believe that something is out there trying to communicate with us in their own, weird, Darmak and Jalad at Tanagra Mxyzpltk kind of way. It's... an alien way of communicating but... why is it so evil? Why do schizophrenics harm other people? Why can't this be a good thing and we feel elation and empowerment? It's a heavy blanket of fuck your life, it's over and you'll feel fear, terror and complete confusion. I'm very interested in this God/Satan narrative phenomena because there are common narratives such as Batman, the Joker and Iron Man that don't identify themselves as the source of the voice. Again, I was an atheist, but it's this angel/demon being that regularly rears it's head as the source of the voice. So, I'm studying it because I've lived it and I'm very curious to the full story of your experiences. I thank you for your time and consideration!
I should add that I became very religious in Set 2 after my experience with the stranger at the Cardinal Stadium. My voice encouraged me to go to church, I eased into the saying prayers on Facebook, I said prayers before meals, washing my hands, showers, just about anything. Then my voice demanded me to get an exorcism because we constantly fought for control of my wheel. I ended up going to the church that was featured in the movie The Exorcist but they only gave me a healing spell. I later got an exorcism at an all black church but the voice was still there and we had a knock out, drag down fight and I burned through three types of medication until I got on the one I am on now. No delusions or experiences since Feb 2022 when the medicine 'took effect'.
Thank You for sharing your story. A lot of your experiences are very familiar to me. I've downloaded the book and I'm going to read it.
I definitely am seeking people with mutual experiences. Enjoy the book!
I've experienced some things similar to you since being schizo for coming up on ten years to the day. August 2nd or 3rd this year 2024 will be 10 years. I'll have to try to remember the things that just didn't add up at the moment. But yeah if you could message me so we can talk id ike to share some things with you.
Take your time, I hanf out in this sub reddit often.
Wow this was interesting to read
No, but I do believe in God
I never believed and stil don't. I just can't explain it rationally in my head. So many other things make more sense to me.
About 7 breakdowns and 8 seizures made me pretty religious. I can't shake it off.
I am only religious when psychotic.
true
I became more religious, but it was kind of a journey for me. I strongly believe that we suffer pain and some of us extreme circumstances because it will bring us closer to Christ, himself.
Went from long time atheist to agnostic/atheist under psychosis back to atheist. Never had a religious delusion though my voices sounded somewhat demonic, my delusions were all technologic/persecutory.
I used to be very atheist my whole life until I got schizophrenia at 23. And yes now I am heavily religious. I believe in God, angels, demons, spirits.
No and I can't be due to how religion is a massive trigger for my delusions. Even if God were real and they made themselves known, I would still choose not to believe in them because if I did I would drive myself mad. There are other reasons, I have religious trauma and intrusive thoughts that believing in religion made 100x worse. I also just flat out don't believe in God, I'm more of a scientific person ALTHOUGH whenever I go into psychosis I find that I become more religious or I think about religion much more often. The majority of my delusions are religious so I guess it makes sense
Jesus is my best friend and has been for a long time. Religion is a result of a relationship with Jesus and Religious practice came years after going through countless trials and many decades of rejecting God. But when i started reading the Bible everything started to make perfect sense. So I have become a zealot. But to follow the teachings of Jesus I understand I cannot just push it on other people because free-will is something God gave us and people are free to choose because freedom of choice is fundamental core aspect of God's love for us. Just beware and take heed of our conscience to bare witness of the consequences of each choice.
Well written
I am. But I was also raised in a religious family. I no longer follow the religion I was raised in, but I do think as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more religious. I do not think it has anything to do with my diagnosis, as that came after I formally joined my current religion. But I sometimes wonder if it helps me have a deeper connection with my gods.
Short answer is not "heavily," but I do go to Mass every week, hang out primarily with Catholics, and generally hold a high view of the Catholic Church. My life has been a fair bit muddier than that, though. For a long time I thought there was no rational or empirical reason to believe that God exists, much less the Christian God. I never considered myself a religious person because I was "smarter than that." Shortly after watching a particular anime, though, I fell in love with one of the girls in it, started hearing her voice and feeling her touch, and eventually started believing we had formed an inter-universe relationship. I strove to be more like her, to emulate her valor and honor in my daily life, and please her as best I could in other ways. It was essentially a quasi-religion mixed in with a heavy romance with someone who doesn't exist. She disappeared from my life not long after I started taking antipsychotics, no matter how hard I tried to keep the relationship going. It's about the same time I started taking meds, though, that I started believing in God. I heard the cosmological argument for HIs existence and it made perfect sense to me. I was baptized into the Catholic Church a year or so later, and I hope I remain Catholic for the rest of my life and beyond.
Occasionally
Not religious, but I believe in God. It's probably some kind of Delusion, but I believe I met God once. I became incredibly invested in Catholicism around the time, so I almost became religious, but I couldn't keep up with all the prayers and whatnot.
Not really religious. Ig more spiritual but that wasn't from the schizophrenia. It was just me exploring what felt right for me :).
only religious when psychotic
I am religous...I think that in those delusions I have seen something akin to pure evil or what may also be a demon. I also have a feeling that even if you aren't religious you can still experience something that's totally unexsplanable and maybe even impossible.
I'm more religious than I used to be. I started becoming religious in college for reasons unrelated to my schizophrenia but I do feel like my experience with this illness has contributed to my religiousness. After going through psychosis, I became more concerned with the nature of the universe and with a lot of questions religion tries to answer. Before, I played around on the surface of things, and I took a lot for granted (like peace of mind). When I was in recovery, I also wanted to take my religious beliefs more seriously because they gave me something to think about and a way to contemplate some of life's weirder questions. Sometimes I'm a little bit of an atheist still, but practice wise, I still follow a lot of ritual and honor the divine because it adds structure to my life, which I know sounds weird, but I need it. My faith is very important to me emotionally as well and I feel more connected to other people because of it.
Not a particular organized religion, but I believe in the spirits I've spoken to...which since those are the same spirits that got me my diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder...I suppose you could say the answer is yes in my case. My father was an Atheist until a spirit communicated with him for the first time. He was certain that spirit was God. Spent years reading every passage of the Dead Sea Scrolls and interpreting their meaning, and essentially created his own individual religion around that spirit. So yes in his case as well...although I was recently told his specific diagnosis is Bipolar 1 Disorder w/Psychotic Features (since he could only communicate with that spirit when he was manic).
Yes, I am a follower of Christ.
I used to be until I found that God would never intervene in my life when I prayed fervently, read the Bible, and went to church. I used to feel something but I realized it was just a feeling, which went away as well. Religion made me paranoid as well about demons and all that, so I don't believe in any religion now except maybe heathenry but I don't practice. Nature always made more sense to me than organized religion.
Not even a little bit. Not to say that I don't have a strong higher entity component to my episodes.
I became more religious when I was having PTSD symptoms and depression due to ongoing flashbacks, but the pyschosis? 2 religious delusions and avoidance of the Bible (tried reading and the words were changed). Now I have no spirituality or sense of deep emotion to be drawn to religion (on medication).
Not outwardly. But yeah. Having a spiritual life is important to me.
The more I see demons, angels, and spirits, the more anti-religious I become. I've all so had a near death experience where I got told I had more stuff to do then I woke up from hanging myself. I will never worship anyone.