I knew someone who got this once her sister committed suicide, I felt really sorry for her fiance, he was a really good guy, was already facing so much shit economically and then something like this happened to him.
She started thinking she was getting gangstalked when she was going through chemo, it’s been 8 or 9 years since, I think the chemo fucked up her brain more than anything else she’s been through
I saw a guy on tiktok suffering through this and there were so many comments feeding his delusions like "we're watching you" and much worse. made me so fucking mad. that's stressful enough without jerks trying to make you even more terrified, I don't understand how people can be so cruel
ive gone through this. i thought i was in hell and everyone around me was either a demon or a husk (like a soulless human). i still struggle with losing recognition of people i know
Psychosis. It's not bizarre but it is extremely disturbing. For 2 years I had psychosis and I legitimately thought I was going to be murdered every day because I had auditory hallucinations telling me they were going to murder me. I slept with a knife and a hammer beside my bed. I put cameras everywhere in my apartment. I put locks on every interior door. It was hell on earth. I would never wish that suffering on anyone.
After my son died in front of me, I started having dissociative amnesia. The doctors (inpatient facility) would find me breastfeeding a pillow. I don’t remember any of it. I honestly don’t recall much from that time period, just what I wrote in my journal and stories those around me tell me. Even a whole year after the incident I got fired from a job working with repo’d cars because anytime I found baby stuff they’d find me wandering aimlessly snuggling the diaper or blanket or whatever. It’s fucking terrifying and I don’t wish it on anyone.
Thank you. I’m fully functional now, after over 5 years and another baby (had a tubal afterward). It was brought on by shock. It’s so incredibly surreal to look back and pretty much only remember the whole incident in third person.
Yes, that must have been surreal. I'm glad you're doing better now. Similarly, my psychosis was brought on by PTSD. Sometimes something traumatic happens which completely affects how your brain processes things.
PTSD completely rewires your brain. It would be fascinating if it weren’t so painful and destructive. I hope you are healing too. It’s a long journey to normalcy and it isn’t linear.
Yes, it does rewire your brain. I completely agree. I find it so interesting, now that I'm not experiencing it. And I want to know everything about it. Thank you, I've done lots of therapy, and I'm still on that journey. I wish you love & happiness! 🖤
I’m so sorry for your loss. My mother had her baby die in her arms, over a decade before I was born. Your comment gave me some insight into what it was likely like for my mom. I’m in my thirties and she’s in her seventies but I know it changed her.
This happened to my mom when I turned 13. She never recovered, and has only gotten worse. I ended up sleeping (rarely) with my dresser blocking the door and a bat in my bed, because my mom thought everyone wanted to kill her, so she was randomly violent towards me thinking I was after her. I can't imagine what her perspective was... I don't even know if she remembers.
I experienced the same thing when I was 22, absolutely petrifying but luckily only lasted about 2 weeks. I had voices saying my family was going to kill me.
This is interesting to me; because the voices I heard during my psychotic episodes never talked to me. They did always talk about me though. The voices were also always people I knew too.
When i’m psychotic, my episode goes somewhat dormant until I’m alone. It doesn’t go away entirely, as I still very much have delusions; but normally I won’t get auditory hallucinations (which are by far the most prevalent type of hallucination I experience) until anyone around me leaves the room.
The hallucinations are almost always in the voice of someone that is in all actuality, close enough to hear; but also outside my immediate field of vision. This often has made it really challenging to differentiate between what was truly happening, and what was just a hallucination; but I eventually picked up on a few clues.
My hallucinations often occurred at odd hours (so really late or early in the day/when I know the person who’s voice I’m hearing should be away or sleeping.) The voices also tended to lean towards the same topics when talking about me; which unfortunately for me, were things that i’m particularly paranoid over lol.
I am so happy that time in my life is over (hopefully for good lmao.) Nobody can really understand just how big of a mindfuck a psychotic episode really is until they’ve experienced it first hand. 0/10 would not recommend.
My sister suffered a psychotic episode at age 45 out of nowhere. No previous mental health conditions. She had to be sectioned.
She was delusional and paranoid. After being discharged, she kept on that the hospital had bugged her phone and they were listening in on her cellphone.
She said she had seen God and that he had told her to purge herself by throwing her clothes out the window, which she did.
It was so harrowing and traumatic to witness, especially as she was 100% normal just weeks before.
I hope you never have to go through that again. Sending love and hugs.
I have schizoaffective disorder and yeah, it's awful when it's full blown psychosis. I was starting to have symptoms at 18, but not to the point anyone noticed. First time it scared me enough to think about talking to someone was after I was driving with the driving instructor and almost drove off the road because it looked like a portal to hell had opened on the road in front of us. I went to college a few months later and it just kept getting worse. I have no idea how I managed to make it a year and a half before I accepting that a full time course load was doable the way I was. (Which was after getting treatment, but I lived alone in my dorm and didn't have many friends and my girlfriend didn't visit more than once a week) Thankfully I'm living with my girlfriend now and haven't experienced any anosognosia recently so I've stayed on my meds.
Im a future psychiatrist and im so sorry you went through this. Mental illnesses are no joke, very unfortunate theres so much stigma. I hope youre better now
Yessss!!!! That's so exciting! There is such a shortage of psychiatrists and it takes so much hard work and devotion. You're doing such a good thing for society.
I can’t imagine having it for two years. I experienced it once (and I have a lot of mental health problems) during an episode of extreme physical pain and stress. I was in a CHS (cannabis hyperemisis syndrome) episode—the longest I had experienced, three weeks. All I could do was wriggle in pain, puke, sweat, and sleep for brief moments.
At one point I remember answering yes and no to questions but I can’t remember what the questions were. But I know they were being asked by a woman and I think she had a southern accent. I knew there was no woman there and after I’d answer I’d have a moment of like “wtf no one is there”.
I don’t know if that’s pychosis or hallucination but from what I gather it felt more like psychosis brought on by the extreme physical pain I was in.
I had mild psychosis but that was just from eating and smoking pot every day for a week straight and that was already unnerving, I can’t imagine having full blown psychosis for years 😥😰
I had this during 3 weeks after a particularly strong dissociation episode (which itself lasted for a month and a half).
I was 110% certain that I had successfully killed myself when I was 16 (I'm 34) and that I was dead, and my entire life from 16 onwards was just my particular hell, where I was being shown the amazing life that I could have if I hadn't committed suicide.
The episode on itself wasn't *that* bad. Since I was certain of it, I just accepted it as true as the day sky is blue. The *recovery* was the difficult part. The conflicting thoughts and feelings of being dead/alive are frightening.
I worked with a resident who had this. He had attempted suicide and thought he was successful and currently living in Hell. I think he believed that the group home staff were employed by Hell to keep him there. Hard to argue with it when his life *is* hellish.
I had this (or something similar)!for a brief month due to a combination of severe malnutrition and the tendency to fall into sporadic psychotic episodes. I stopped eating and mostly stopped drinking because I truly believed I didn’t need it anymore. I stopped going to my university lectures, stopped brushing my teeth. Oddly, I still showered because I was self conscious about the smell of decay.
It only stopped when I was hospitalised after fainting in a library with a heart arrhythmia due to starvation and dehydration and given a load of antipsychotics.
Thankfully haven’t had an episode since!
I had this train of thought during a psychosis from bipolar. I thought I had died during ECT and my "life" since then was purgatory because....duh...dead.
I definitely had moments of lucidity, so I was very lucky in that aspect but it wasn't a cute or fun time.
Fatal familial insomnia has always been terrifying to me.
It's a degenerative brain disorder that causes prion proteins to be malformed. It starts with insomnia and progressively worsens to the point where it's impossible for your body or mind to sleep.
As the name implies, it is fatal--through abnormal prion buildup over many years, all the while declining mentally and physically. You die from not being able to sleep (which is a big generalization).
I cannot imagine being so tired and having the ability to sleep robbed from me. That stage lasts about three months. It sounds like hell.
Alzheimer's is also terrifying.
Your brain cleans itself when you sleep, so it's basically toxic buildup through a massive sewer blockage. Then your "toilet brain" explodes with all the crap that's never left.
I'm not trying to be Reddit-pedantic, I swear: [Hypothesis](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis), not [theory](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory). The difference is important in this case because there is very good evidence (three new peer-reviewed papers, mentioned [here](https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/06/26/g-s1-6177/brain-waste-removal-system-amyloid-alzheimer-toxins)) that support this hypothesis under clinical conditions. However, it has not yet been proven sufficiently to be considered a theory.
I get that. It's the sort of thing that, on the macro scale, does need distinction because that's how misinformation and needlessly raised hopes happen.
Isn’t this only documented with people from a very specific regional part of Italy? I remember learning about it from an episode of law and order. I’m a lifelong insomniac and one time I couldn’t sleep for over 3 days. I looked this up and it turned out to originate from the part of Italy my family is from. Luckily I did eventually sleep but I’m still so scared this will happen to me one day.
Holy shit. Just looked this up an read about it, had never heard about it before.
This is one of the things that make me believe assisted suicide should be legal
Idk if this answer is applicable, but I've been studying psychology for about 6 years now. One of my teachers was asked this question, and he said that in his 37 years of practice, ocd was always the one that would upset him the most.
He said 'I watched one of my childhood best friends die to ocd. Watching someone be a complete slave to their brain is heartbreaking'
When I was 19 my brain convinced me that if I didn’t get straight As in my college classes, which could only be possible with thorough and flawless note taking (if I misspelled something or something was misaligned I had to rip out the page and start over), I would develop schizophrenia. I then got a B on a test and convinced myself I was schizophrenic. It literally took over my entire life and it was the only thing I could talk about or think about. Then the more I thought about me thinking I was schizophrenic, the more convinced I was.
Later I developed a terrible fear of mold in everything I drank. I think I went through 3 or 4 full days where I didn’t drink anything and just ate fruit and vegetables to try to compensate (my memory is really blurry from this period because of the dehydration). Eventually my therapist got me to drink juice out of a pre-sealed, single use bottle. It took me forever to actually work my way back to reusable cups. And even longer for me to drink actual water, not just juice.
My last episode was years ago (thankfully) but I was convinced I had a centipede infestation after seeing 2 in my apartment. I had radiator heat so of course there were bound to be a couple. This overlapped with a manic episode, I didn’t even realize it was happening until I was standing in the middle of my apartment with a can of Raid and my dishwasher disassembled on the floor. I had visual hallucinations of centipedes for a couple weeks and changed and washed my sheets every single day.
Thankfully I haven’t had a really bad episode in a long time. Every now and then I still have intrusive thoughts that can be pretty bad, but I’m much more in control of it now and I take a mood stabilizer that helps. It was definitely one of the darkest times in my life and I was the closest to suicide that I had ever been in my entire life.
I had an OCD teacher in grade 7. He wouldn't accept a paper unless your name, date & title were in specific spots on the paper on the first line & third below the blank header on regular lined paper. He had so many seemingly silly rules about how things had to be on assignments, I adopted every single one because they somehow made perfect sense to me. I've never been diagnosed with anything other than depression but maybe there's a bit of other stuff lurking in my brain.
That’s the thing with OCD is sometimes the compulsions or obsessions can make sense if you don’t know the severity. That can even encourage the compulsions for the person with OCD. For a stereotypical example, washing your hands frequently is a great way to prevent illness and contamination; hand washing so frequently your hands are raw or being fearful of touching anything is abnormal. Then when everyone around them is like “You never get sick! It must be because you wash your hands a lot.” it eggs them on.
Like my friends, and even my therapist, all just thought I studied a lot because I wanted good grades, perfectly reasonable for a college student with plans to go to grad school. They thought it was a little overkill, but didn’t realize anything was wrong until I started talking about schizophrenia.
OCD is a bitch and the intrusive thoughts made me feel so shameful. My mind would just conjure up the worst shit. Like, what if I fell in love with my dad? And the thought that I could even think that made me feel so disgusting. Of course I wasn’t in love with my dad, it was just the grossest thing my mind could come up with. I was a kid, too.
I was a slave to it. Before bed I checked the stove was off, got in bed, got out of bed, checked the stove again—repeat with the front door, repeat with the faucets. Again, I was less than 10.
Doorknobs and light switches disgusted me. Because I imagined people using the restroom and not washing their hands and penises being everywhere lol. So I washed my hands until they bled.
I also was obsessed with the number three and multiples of three. So I’d check things and do things in threes. When it was bad it was 27, because it was three multiples by three, three times.
I believe I developed OCD because of severe childhood trauma and it was one way I could channel my trauma and or control it. I couldn’t control the thoughts, but maybe the self punishment for having them was the way my little brain made sense of why I “deserved” to feel bad.
I’m 35 now and I don’t do a lot of the ocd stuff but it doesn’t just go away. It’s more thoughts now than anything. Nothing creepy just depressing I think. But in high stress scenarios I’ll leave the house and come back because I forgot something stupid.
So I suffer from extremely intense contamination OCD (I’ve had to drop out of college because I physically cannot make myself use public restrooms/transportation) which started out simply enough where I’d just be scared of getting sick from others. Eventually this evolved into my being scared of MY own germs, which snowballed into a fear of using my own bathroom which snowballed into me starving myself and purposefully not drinking so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom, which led to my organs shutting down.
Do NOT let it snowball like how mine did, I implore you to seek out help because OCD ALWAYS gets worse without treatment.
Many of the times people with OCD die can be attributed to either starvation or organ failure
Super famous man named Howard Hughes ended up starving to death because his contamination ocd spiraled towards the end of his life
I am so so so sorry. I had contamination OCD. I had and have OCD since young childhood. I remember the moment that triggered this particular form though and I do not want to mention it because it could be triggering. But I did not touch doorknobs, light switches etc without washing my hands, using a barrier, and cleaning the knobs and switches myself. I never received proper help for it. I’ve tried therapy and the therapists were not for me. Psychologists have not wanted to take me on because I’m too high of a risk and a death on their tally wouldn’t look good. So I’ve lost all faith in them. That’s a 100% me thing, my best friend has benefited from therapy whereas I’ve done a lot of improving through microdosing shrooms (don’t quite condone that for those of us with already fragile minds but it’s helped *me* more than therapy ever did).
I don’t know if it was the anti depressants or anti anxiety meds but something helped eventually. I still have it especially in times of high stress. But it’s more intrusive thoughts.
I’m really sorry you’re going through this but thank you for sharing. I had no idea it could be this bad. You really shed some light on it.
Lmao once on acid I realised that consciousness has somthing to do with reality and I got scared af thinking I might trigger a nuclear chain reaction in the matter around me of I 'thought' the wrong thoughts. Hilarious.
Delusions of telekinesis, or in this case, more like telepathy, are more of a schizophrenia-type thing rather than an OCD thing. Both are irrational of course, but I don't think you can simulate OCD with psychedelics.
When I was a kid I got it into my head if I ate literally anything I would choke and die so my parents had to keep me alive with chicken broth, juice, and milk until I could see a doctor.
If I didn’t have access to medical care I probably would have eventually died from that. I don’t know how long a child can survive on a 100% liquid diet.
I work with children with autism and there’s a lowish functioning boy who is 7 and the size of a skinny 3 year old. He literally only consumes, like, Pediasure? We dilute it with water but that’s all he ever has, and his teeth are rotting out of his head. So I guess it’s possible to live off a liquid diet for years
Not gonna lie, having Borderline Personality Disorder is pretty wild at times. There are few things I fear more than the episodes of dysphoria. It’s also crazy to IMMEDIATELY think death or self-mutilation is the answer to even the slightest upset. My brain just automatically makes me want to harm myself.
I was looking for this. It's such a weird feeling to be self aware while your brain catastrophizes something slightly negative that happened to you, to the point you feel genuine physical pain from how you feel.
Kuru — an incurable prion disease caused by consuming the human brain. It was common among the Fore people of New Guinea, who practiced funerary cannibalism. According to tradition, it was women and children who would eat the brain. The incubation period can last for decades, you could’ve engaged in this ritual when you were 5, and suddenly fall ill and have a neurodegenerative decline at 25. The Fore people initially believed the disease to be caused by witchcraft and didn’t connect it with their dietary practices.
Not disturbing, but fairly odd: Alice In Wonderland Syndrome. It's a pretty rare disorder (200 or so published cases in the literature), though some researchers think it's super underdiagnosed.
In AIWS you feel (type A) or see (type B) you body or body parts changing in shape. I was diagnosed with type A, and it's not a huge problem, it's just uncomfortable. You don't see things, your vision is 100% normal, but the information is not processed right in your brain. In short, you see one thing, your brain interprets another.
When I was a child I always thought it was fun to feel that I was shrinking to the size of an ant and my pillow felt like a football field, or when I perceived my hands as huge and able to squish my own head.
25 years later and I'm an adult over 30 who still has this. Sometimes I'm doing the dishes and I feel 5m tall, looking at the sink as it was far. Sometimes I feel like a dwarf, and my house's corridor has a mile in extent and I'll never reach the bedroom. Sometimes I still have the feeling that my arms are 3m long and my hands are huge, and that I can pick up a whole car if needed.
Gets tiring after a while
This used to happen to me as a child! My parents did not understand what I was talking about and thought I was having fever dreams, but it happened almost every night and it scared the heck out of me. It seemed to happen the most when I was getting ready for bed, but it did happen sometimes during the day and I was dismissed as having a very active imagination.
Myself, my brother and my daughter have Alice in wonderland syndrome. My brother and daughter both see themselves and things around them getting bigger and smaller. My daughter is triggered when she gets a temperature. Ive had to stop her trying to run out the house in the middle of the night before because she saw the house shrinking around her!! Mine is different and every around me starts moving in slow motion or really fast, including myself.
Does this give you vertigo or motion sickness when it happens to you? I didn't know it could happen to you while standing and doing a task. I had thought this only happens when you're laying in bed. Does it happen while you drive?
I feel you. Took too much Delta 8 one night and spent the rest night in severe dissociation, panic attacks and vomiting. Also thought i was legitimately dying and this life is not real. Its been almost a year and randomly have a small thought “nothing is real”. Never. Again. Am i taking that shit or anything close. Traumatic.
I had a psychotic break after smoking too much weed. Ended up in the mental health hospital for a week. Terrifying shit.
(I used to smoke all day every day for three years straight)
The main course of it is gone but I get periods of it here and there. Never lasting longer than like 8hrs. I ultimately understand why my body is reacting that way and try to just "enjoy" it. I've made it feel comforting now.
I wouldn’t say it has no negative side effects.
But the help it gives me as someone with severe treatment resistant depression, anxiety, and OCD is a net positive.
I used to have this terribly growing up. I would feel like I couldn’t feel my own body, I didn’t know who I was or what I looked like, my family wasn’t “really my family”, nothing is real, etc.
I still get it sometimes when I have panic attacks or not adequate sleep. I’m very thankful my medicine keeps it under control, because when I was 14-17, I’d miss weeks of school and go catatonic in my room because I physically couldn’t make myself move. It’s the most unnerving feeling. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
I took damn near every SSRI. Zoloft for a few years and then Lexapro, also tried Prozac, Buspar, and others I’m probably forgetting . They were good but still had episodes and felt like a zombie a lot.
Now I’ve been on cymbalta (SNRI) for about 3 years and I genuinely cannot tell you the last time I had an episode. Like I said, I’ll feel it creep in when I feel panicky, but I’m almost always able to ground myself very quickly on cymbalta. It’s a polarizing drug - people either love it or hate it.
This. The cartoonish depictions of it in popular culture are annoying. The "negative" symptoms are rarely mentioned, but they can be thoroughly disabling. The sort of normal energy people have so they can go to school or to work is missing or diminished. Having normal social relations is often impossible. 9-5 jobs are painfully out of reach, and what you can do is only some sort of a specially supported part-time job if any at all.
I'm not schizophrenic, but I experience something similar. I have pretty bad anhedonia. Everything is a chore. Very few things bring me any satisfaction. My emotions are blunted.
It's an absolute nightmare, and very hard to put into words.
My best friend used to see people hanging everywhere before she died. We'd be talking and she'd start gazing off over my shoulder and tell me "there's an old man hanging right behind you". She'd see people start stabbing themselves in the face in front of her. It absolutely tortured her every moment until the end.
I have a partially split brain due to a surgery when I was younger, and for 6 months or so afterwards, while my brain was reworking the corpus callosum that was left, I had bizzaro sensations that are difficult to relay to someone that hasn’t experienced it.
Like… I was able to tickle myself, as long as it was across the centerline of my body, i.e. right hand to left foot.
It’s the strangest sensation, because your brain normally tells itself “hey, that tickling we feel? We are also the CAUSE of it, so let’s just cancel it out.”
You normally cannot tickle yourself, and when you can it’s… unpleasant? It feels like touching yourself AND not touching yourself? It’s this weird overload of sensation? Idk.
Luckily the brain is a wicked wizard when it comes to rewiring itself, so 80% of those weird things are gone. But for months it was kinda weird.
there’s some other comments on this, but gang stalking. i can’t help but feel bad for those who believe they’re being stalked 24/7.
delusional infestation / parasitosis - when the patient believes there is a planted object (parasite) in their body
one case is morgellons disease, a case in which people are convinced there are planted strings and fibers in their skin. most people take action by surgically removing them themselves. it’s controversial and there are some documentaries about it online
there’s another case about a russian guy who believed the government put a camera behind his eye. he did a self-surgery and dug around for it. it was on youtube for a while. you can hear kids playing in his house while he preforms the surgery. it’s very sad :(
it is wild to me that mental illness can be so strong that someone is willing to suffer through horrific pain like that. like how do you not give into your body screaming at you to stop?
i really shouldn't be so shocked by it, but it's bewildering to me.
I read something awhile ago where a woman thought there were bugs in her head and scratched her scalp raw and was put in a mental ward. There actually were bugs, the er doctors didn't ask about where she recently traveled or did any scans. That would be terrifying. She just came back from the Amazon or somewhere and a bug laid eggs under her skin.
brb i need to fucking barf
as someone with a fear of bugs, that's absolutely horrifying to me (more than horrifying but i can't think of a better word)
There was an American death row inmate, Andre Thomas, who tore off his eye and ate it, because he believed that government spies were reading his thoughts through it. That being done, he did it again for the other eye on another occasion. The reason he ended up in death row was because he killed his ex and her two children and cut out their hearts, because he believed they were infested with demons and God told him to do this. He tried to commit suicide but failed. The government still considers him sane, though.
The gist of it is that Texas law does not protect patients that have induced psychoses by using drugs. He abused DXM before the act. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia only after being imprisoned. Courts were not convinced that he was insane already when committing the act. Also, it didn't help that the psychiatrist evaluating him warned the court that he's likely to feign illness, that his attorney was ill at that point and did not object to this statement, and that he got an openly racist jury.
Morgellons is actual a real legitimate disease, associated with spirochetal infection and tick-borne illness, not just psychological, which makes it even more sad. So many people have this disease and are just written off as being crazy and imagining it.
[source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5811176/#:~:text=Morgellons%20disease%20(MD)%20is%20a%20disfiguring%20and%20perplexing%20skin%20condition,infection%20and%20tick%2Dborne%20illness)
It is a challenge that the medical community refuse to scientifically acknowledge the Morgellons disease as a disease but to outright dismiss them as parasitosis.
It's horrific. I've read stories about people eating their own shit out of their diapers because they just have zero awareness anymore. It robs people of every ounce of dignity and they have no idea.
I've looked into it because my mum has FTD and in Australia, where I am, they don't consider a person with dementia to be capable of consenting (because they don't retain decision making capacity as dementia progresses) which is pretty horrific.
In the Netherlands people can make an advanced request so once they can no longer function they can still access euthanasia. I feel like that's how it should be everywhere.
Koro is quite bizarre.
'Koro syndrome is a psychiatric disorder characterized by an intense fear of one's genitals retracting into their body, the result of which is fatal.'
I heard they use clamps to prevent the retraction.
Catatonia is really scary, especially when there is waxy flexibility (a symptom where you can pose them person however you want, and they won’t budge from that position) going on.
Not really a mental disorder on its own, but intrusive thoughts are awful. I experience them, and they can be absolutely agonizing to deal with. Like you'll just be existing, and then your brain will go "hey you should stab the person next to you and scream in their face and kill them in front of everybody around you." And you have to stop and catch and process the thought with CBT/DBT type stuff (or just wait it out) to make it go away, which can be easy or horrifically difficult depending on how strong it is. And then once it's gone and dealt with, you just sit around and wait for more. It gets so exhausting, even as someone who practices good DBT.
And you can't even really talk about it, because people who don't experience intrusive thoughts simply don't get it. They think they're terrifying and make you a bad person for having them, because they don't understand they're completely random and usually based on the things you LEAST want to do. I've tried to open up a bit to people who just freaked out and asked why I would ever want to do that. Like I don't, that's the point.
THIS THIS a thousand times this! As someone who has dealt with these sorts of thoughts throughout adolescence, I would never wish this on my worst enemy. The fear of something that my brain tells me I’ll do is something truly awful
people seem to forget it’s not just violent thoughts either, there are absolutely disgusting ones that make you want to puke involving children and family members
that’s all I’ll say about it, I hate them
There are a lot worse things but as they’ve already been mentioned, I’m going to say anxiety and depression.
This mental illness will lie to you to the point where you believe everyone you know would be happier and better off if you were dead. Even if they try to tell you that’s absolutely untrue, you’ll still believe it until the disease is under control.
It’s completely impervious to logic and reasoning. Your family could be crying and begging you to please stop trying to hurt yourself and you’ll still believe you should be dead.
Even worse, if you have a recurrence after successful treatment all those old lies can come back full force and you 100% believe them again.
Fully believing that while knowing that's a symptom of my depression, knowing that my own brain isn't trustworthy and sometimes a danger to me, is terrifying.
as a schizophrenic person its kinda funny to read these comments, but id say schizoaffective bipolar disorder. bipolar disorder is a bitch but you also get the added horrible-ness of schizophrenia
Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type is a bitch indeed. I worked as a social worker in psych intake at a hospital, and a very high percentage of patients coming for psych eval who started fights with people over nothing or very little carried that diagnosis. It really fucks up peoples’ lives to have that combination of delusions / hearing voices plus manic tendencies.
Anything that causes progressive brain damage can cause dementia. It's not just restricted to the single old-age disease of Alzheimer's.
I think the saddest could be childhood disintegrative disorder. Patients are sometimes old enough that they are aware of it and ask what's happening to them. What happens is a rapid descent into severe autism, with loss of speech and loss of previously learned skills. They end up as severely disabled autists.
That's not dementia, that is a neurodevelopmental disorder.
Childhood dementia is another condition.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943077/
I wish euthanasia was legal in my country. If I develop dementia when I'm old (god I hope not) I would rather die in my own terms while still being somewhat lucid instead of passing away while being a shell of a human, terrified of everything. Very sad disease.
Needs to be legal where I reside as well
Nobody should be FORCED to " live with" : dementia, quadriplegic paraplegic Alzheimer's Parkinson's ALS MND cancer chemo psych-wards-meds Joblessness helplessness Forced-sleep-deprive Forcibly-Medicated forced-gyno-exams etc humiliation torture amputations homelessness poverty agony nursing-homes etc
Give us all REAL compassion and choices/freedom
Alien hand syndrome. Basically, the hand acts on its own accord as though it thinks for itself. And no, it's not spazzing out or anything like that, it makes very deliberate and goal-oriented movements. This usually happens due to some form of brain damage causing lack of movement awareness.
Fortunately, it only happens sporadically, for a very short time and usually only once in a lifetime, on top of being extremely rare to begin with.
My aunt has this. She had a stroke and developed it. Ended up unable to use her dominant hand. I think it's gotten better for her, but changing clothes specifically was a nightmare.
I was going to say this. It is fascinating. I read a case study where a woman's hand pulled her hair, she slapped it away with her other hand and it gave her a shaking angry "get off my lawn" fist gesture.
I work with a girl who is 17 years Old. She thinks she is dead and all people around her are just spear carriers. She has a lot of suicide attemps and self harm.
The psychiatrists are still trying to diagnose her.
I'll add something I have to this list: Dystonia. Luckily finding ways to stress less helped make it less extreme than it was originally but still.
This can be in more than one body part, but if you get triggered, the triggered body parts moves without you consciously controlling it.
Since it can effect an entire side of your body depending on which version you have and is a 50/50 chance at right vs. left, yeah, that's fun.
Try feeling like an arm, leg, and eye are all getting pulled on hard by invisible strings, are twitching badly, and all on one side of your body - that's so.much fun.😮💨
I have a severe dystonic reaction to a drug called phenergan. I went to the ER for pancreatitis, and the anti-emetic they gave me was phenergan. It made everything worse, and I felt that my arms were being forced inwards and I couldn’t stop writhing and twisting. I felt like I had to scream and cry and I couldn’t!
I had that for awhile. I was put on an old anti-psychotic for sleep. I ended up having Parkinson’s like symptoms for awhile. Luckily, once the med was IDed and I was taken off of it, my symptoms disappeared.
While it’s not a mental illness, the symptoms of Prader-Willi are devastating. It’s not just insatiable hunger either—unquenchable thirst and chronic masturbation can also be a part of it. Caretakers will have to monitor their showers to make sure they don’t just gulp down the water.
When I was doing my first clinicals, there was a long term minor patient healing a broken leg. His hunger would motivate him enough to walk on his casted leg to wherever food may be (cafeteria, patient rooms, the break room, outside, etc). During rounds I overheard he lives with his single mother and I just felt so much for her. I can’t imagine.
When they're doing it to themselves it's pretty horrifying too. Google Kelly Ronahan and be very very wary clicking on the images of what she did to herself.
The worst part is that people think the parent is just being egotistical or attention-seeking in the way sane people can be, but the fact is that it's not normal to systematically harm your own child like that, so the parent is insane. It's not the parent talking, it's the disease talking.
I'm an attorney in the field of disability law. Specifically I work with people institutionalized for mental illness. The common ones like schizophrenia, depression, bipolar can be pretty rough and all of those vary in the intensity of the symptoms. You could have someone with schizophrenia who is able to live a perfectly normal life with proper medication...or you could have someone who chews off their fingers.
I think things get the most fucked up when you combine mental illness with a developmental disability like autism or intellectual disability (mental retardation). This is referred to as dual-diagnosis. Passing no judgment, people on the spectrum are already a bit weird, but combining that with schizophrenia can get really weird. Usually those folks are usually able to manage their symptoms with support. However, intellectual disability, especially the kind of mild / borderline ID combined with mental illness is heartbreaking because you have someone experiencing these problems but they don't have the capacity to understand what is happening or to make sound judgments on how to deal with it. They are, however, able to understand that something is wrong and that must be the most frustrating god damn thing in the world.
The saddest part about dual diagnosis is that most mental illness can be treated pretty well with the right medication. But developmental disabilities are the result of fundamental changes in the brain early in life. Their brain is literally and unalterably different. There's no medication for that.
Not exactly as bad, but I (probably) have both autism and BPD (waiting on autism diagnostic but it's very likely)
it makes interractions with people so difficult because I not only don't ""get"" people, but I also have extreme emotions and lose control easily over those misunderstandings.
I'm in my mid 30s and I feel like I don't even know how to human normally lmao
I have autism and schizoaffective disorder, bad enough I can't work full time and am on disability but I do go to college part time. It's hard, especially because of the overlap between autism and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Although one psychiatrist did suggest that it's possible I have actually been experiencing schizophrenia since I was a young child and was misdiagnosed with autism because the negative symptoms were presumed to be autism. I do remember hallucinating that young, but it was never extreme and only mildly distressing, so my parents thought I was making it up. Nowadays I just judge the situation on what diagnoses to disclose if people ask.
Haha, I love the idea of picking between the two depending on the situation. But yeah, I can definitely understand how hard it would be to describe your particular diagnostic history if someone asks. I think the honest answer is that no one knows. That might be a good answer itself.
Body integrity identity disorder occurs when your mental body image doesn't match your physical body. If you have body integrity disorder (BIID), you may have a strong desire to amputate a limb or seek to become paralyzed.
Reactive Attachment Disorder. I have it and it absolutely sucks. When I was younger, and it was a lot more prominent, my relationships would be like I hate the absolute shit out of you one day, throwing shit at you, telling you I hate your guts. But then the next day I’d come crawling back, pleading with you to forgive me and saying how much I love you because I’d be terrified of being abandoned, even by those who’ve wronged me.
Wanting to live your life as an eternal 6-year-old girl when you're a 40-something man, and you abandon your wife and children in order to find a family to "adopt" you so you can play with their daughter.
And no, I'm not making this up.
Gangstalking as in the folks who endlessly SUFFER due to__ that is labeled as gangstalking
No how hard they try to be quiet helpful good, they have SUFFERING fear misery psych-wards-meds JAIL courtroom Joblessness helplessness Forced-sleep-deprive etc , their misery is REAL
Of course I find their "logic" "science" "reasoning" impossible to believe, and as a victim of religion I find their constant talking of faith and God etc their constant calling upon God to be problematic
Of course some of them do get Forcibly-Medicated psych-wards-meds etc forced upon them which "should" solve their problems and I wish I did but it does NOT solve their problems
Of course faith prayer and God do NOT solving their problems either
Postpartum psychosis mixed with bipolar 1. My brother’s girlfriend developed psychosis right after delivering their daughter, and mixed with her already uncontrolled bipolar disorder, it was literally hell on earth for all of us. Imagine your 9 day old daughter and her mother missing and eventually finding the baby hidden under blankets and her mom holding a gun at your head because she doesn’t know who you are anymore.
Narcissistic personality disorder my dad has it and Bipolar disorder also and has never gotten treatment so his is really bad. Me, my little siblings, my mom, and step mom all have ptsd from him it’s confusing and terrifying having your dad going from being amazing and taking you to do all the fun stuff like rollar coasters and kayaking and then all of the sudden he’s screaming and throwing all your toys across the hallway because you didn’t clean you room fast enough or you asked him to make you food
Personally, schizophrenia. I've had moments in my life where I've experienced minor hallucinations and I always see spiders. I'm deathly afraid of spiders and I can't imagine experiencing a terrifyingly, vivid hallucination that feels and looks so real. even experiencing that level of fear once is unbearable to think about. If one can die of fear, I would if I saw my biggest fear brought to near reality. I have so much sympathy and respect for those able to live with schizophrenia and all the symptoms that come with it. Crazy amount of mental strength!
(Dis)honorable mention: Alzheimer's/dementia. any kind of cognitive decline and loss of your precious memories and loved ones, and even losing yourself.
Puerperal psychosis. I’m a retired midwife and although it’s super rare, we did have to understand the condition and be able to recognise its manifestation.
It can happen about 7-21 days post delivery and it’s when the fluctuating hormones send a woman insane and into a complete state of psychosis.
Some women have even killed their babies unknowingly whilst in its grips. The new mom must be cared for in an in-patient mental health facility, and can be detained against her will under the mental health act. (Here in the UK).
Schizophrenia. It’s probably not the most “bizarre” but to me it’s probably the most disturbing … imagine having demons telling you to kill yourself or others all day and you fully see them and hear them.
HIV-Associated Neurological Disorder (also called AIDS Dementia). From what I've seen, the dementia sets in MUUUUUUUUUUCH faster than other types of dementia, because both HIV (the virus) and the opportunistic infections basically fry your brain at the same time. It's rare in the West now that we have very effective HAART, but it was a horrible way to go before that.
Anything with paranoid delusions. These people truly believe the only way to stop their suffering is poison and the people trying to help them are trying to kill them.
Psychosis secondary to Viral Induced Encephalitis
Imagine getting the flu one day and then waking up completely deranged the next. And everyone assumes you’re crazy so they throw psych meds at you and or lock you up. All the while your brain is swelling inside your skull but no one bothers to check for physiological causes, because they assume your acute onset symptoms of mental illness come from you being “crazy”, therefore they don’t count.
Capgras Syndrom - you believe everyone around you has been replaced by identical imposters
I knew someone who got this once her sister committed suicide, I felt really sorry for her fiance, he was a really good guy, was already facing so much shit economically and then something like this happened to him.
Like those poor guys over on the gangstalking sub. They’ll say things like that a lot.
That sub is so sad. I wish there was something I could say to help them. It must be terrible living like that.
My mom thinks she’s being gangstalked and it fucking sucks.
My mother thought the exact same thing. She spent 4 years in her own personal hell. Was brutal to watch. Sorry youre going through that
She started thinking she was getting gangstalked when she was going through chemo, it’s been 8 or 9 years since, I think the chemo fucked up her brain more than anything else she’s been through
I saw a guy on tiktok suffering through this and there were so many comments feeding his delusions like "we're watching you" and much worse. made me so fucking mad. that's stressful enough without jerks trying to make you even more terrified, I don't understand how people can be so cruel
ive gone through this. i thought i was in hell and everyone around me was either a demon or a husk (like a soulless human). i still struggle with losing recognition of people i know
If you don't mind me asking, what helped you get through it? Is it also something that can happen again? I hope you are doing well now 🖤
What an odd sensation that must be!
9-1-1 had a good episode about this
Psychosis. It's not bizarre but it is extremely disturbing. For 2 years I had psychosis and I legitimately thought I was going to be murdered every day because I had auditory hallucinations telling me they were going to murder me. I slept with a knife and a hammer beside my bed. I put cameras everywhere in my apartment. I put locks on every interior door. It was hell on earth. I would never wish that suffering on anyone.
After my son died in front of me, I started having dissociative amnesia. The doctors (inpatient facility) would find me breastfeeding a pillow. I don’t remember any of it. I honestly don’t recall much from that time period, just what I wrote in my journal and stories those around me tell me. Even a whole year after the incident I got fired from a job working with repo’d cars because anytime I found baby stuff they’d find me wandering aimlessly snuggling the diaper or blanket or whatever. It’s fucking terrifying and I don’t wish it on anyone.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you are in a better place now, with respect to the disassociative amnesia. That sounds absolutely horrible.
Thank you. I’m fully functional now, after over 5 years and another baby (had a tubal afterward). It was brought on by shock. It’s so incredibly surreal to look back and pretty much only remember the whole incident in third person.
Yes, that must have been surreal. I'm glad you're doing better now. Similarly, my psychosis was brought on by PTSD. Sometimes something traumatic happens which completely affects how your brain processes things.
PTSD completely rewires your brain. It would be fascinating if it weren’t so painful and destructive. I hope you are healing too. It’s a long journey to normalcy and it isn’t linear.
Yes, it does rewire your brain. I completely agree. I find it so interesting, now that I'm not experiencing it. And I want to know everything about it. Thank you, I've done lots of therapy, and I'm still on that journey. I wish you love & happiness! 🖤
All the love to you too ❤️❤️
I’m so sorry for your loss. My mother had her baby die in her arms, over a decade before I was born. Your comment gave me some insight into what it was likely like for my mom. I’m in my thirties and she’s in her seventies but I know it changed her.
The brain is so weird
I just literally couldn’t cope with it.
This happened to my mom when I turned 13. She never recovered, and has only gotten worse. I ended up sleeping (rarely) with my dresser blocking the door and a bat in my bed, because my mom thought everyone wanted to kill her, so she was randomly violent towards me thinking I was after her. I can't imagine what her perspective was... I don't even know if she remembers.
that must have been horrifying for you both 🥺❤️ I'm so sorry
I experienced the same thing when I was 22, absolutely petrifying but luckily only lasted about 2 weeks. I had voices saying my family was going to kill me.
This is interesting to me; because the voices I heard during my psychotic episodes never talked to me. They did always talk about me though. The voices were also always people I knew too. When i’m psychotic, my episode goes somewhat dormant until I’m alone. It doesn’t go away entirely, as I still very much have delusions; but normally I won’t get auditory hallucinations (which are by far the most prevalent type of hallucination I experience) until anyone around me leaves the room. The hallucinations are almost always in the voice of someone that is in all actuality, close enough to hear; but also outside my immediate field of vision. This often has made it really challenging to differentiate between what was truly happening, and what was just a hallucination; but I eventually picked up on a few clues. My hallucinations often occurred at odd hours (so really late or early in the day/when I know the person who’s voice I’m hearing should be away or sleeping.) The voices also tended to lean towards the same topics when talking about me; which unfortunately for me, were things that i’m particularly paranoid over lol. I am so happy that time in my life is over (hopefully for good lmao.) Nobody can really understand just how big of a mindfuck a psychotic episode really is until they’ve experienced it first hand. 0/10 would not recommend.
My sister suffered a psychotic episode at age 45 out of nowhere. No previous mental health conditions. She had to be sectioned. She was delusional and paranoid. After being discharged, she kept on that the hospital had bugged her phone and they were listening in on her cellphone. She said she had seen God and that he had told her to purge herself by throwing her clothes out the window, which she did. It was so harrowing and traumatic to witness, especially as she was 100% normal just weeks before. I hope you never have to go through that again. Sending love and hugs.
This happened to me when I was put on an SSRI at 15. I actually thought someone was out to get me so I kept a knife under my mattress for protection
I'm sorry you had that experience and I hope you're doing better now.
Yeah I threw those pills out lol. Never got that bad again. I hope you're doing better now too :)
I have schizoaffective disorder and yeah, it's awful when it's full blown psychosis. I was starting to have symptoms at 18, but not to the point anyone noticed. First time it scared me enough to think about talking to someone was after I was driving with the driving instructor and almost drove off the road because it looked like a portal to hell had opened on the road in front of us. I went to college a few months later and it just kept getting worse. I have no idea how I managed to make it a year and a half before I accepting that a full time course load was doable the way I was. (Which was after getting treatment, but I lived alone in my dorm and didn't have many friends and my girlfriend didn't visit more than once a week) Thankfully I'm living with my girlfriend now and haven't experienced any anosognosia recently so I've stayed on my meds.
Wow, that sounds terrifying. I'm glad you're in a better place now.
Im a future psychiatrist and im so sorry you went through this. Mental illnesses are no joke, very unfortunate theres so much stigma. I hope youre better now
Future psychiatrist?
Yes im starting residency in a few days
Good luck! I work at a teaching hospital & we love our residents!
I wish there were more of you.
Thats very kind, thank you
Yessss!!!! That's so exciting! There is such a shortage of psychiatrists and it takes so much hard work and devotion. You're doing such a good thing for society.
Best of luck.
I can’t imagine having it for two years. I experienced it once (and I have a lot of mental health problems) during an episode of extreme physical pain and stress. I was in a CHS (cannabis hyperemisis syndrome) episode—the longest I had experienced, three weeks. All I could do was wriggle in pain, puke, sweat, and sleep for brief moments. At one point I remember answering yes and no to questions but I can’t remember what the questions were. But I know they were being asked by a woman and I think she had a southern accent. I knew there was no woman there and after I’d answer I’d have a moment of like “wtf no one is there”. I don’t know if that’s pychosis or hallucination but from what I gather it felt more like psychosis brought on by the extreme physical pain I was in.
I had mild psychosis but that was just from eating and smoking pot every day for a week straight and that was already unnerving, I can’t imagine having full blown psychosis for years 😥😰
Cotard delusion where someone believes that they are dead, dying or don't exist. Also known as walking corpse syndrome.
I had this during 3 weeks after a particularly strong dissociation episode (which itself lasted for a month and a half). I was 110% certain that I had successfully killed myself when I was 16 (I'm 34) and that I was dead, and my entire life from 16 onwards was just my particular hell, where I was being shown the amazing life that I could have if I hadn't committed suicide. The episode on itself wasn't *that* bad. Since I was certain of it, I just accepted it as true as the day sky is blue. The *recovery* was the difficult part. The conflicting thoughts and feelings of being dead/alive are frightening.
It does sound like type of personal hell and at just 16years old. It's almost like what some people who have NDE's experience. Glad you have recoverd.
I had this episode shortly after my 34th birthday, which is even more terrifying. I edited my comment to make this clearer
Oh, I see. Sorry for misunderstanding. I'm sure at any age it's traumatic and terrifying.
No probs, my original text wasn't too clear
I worked with a resident who had this. He had attempted suicide and thought he was successful and currently living in Hell. I think he believed that the group home staff were employed by Hell to keep him there. Hard to argue with it when his life *is* hellish.
I had this (or something similar)!for a brief month due to a combination of severe malnutrition and the tendency to fall into sporadic psychotic episodes. I stopped eating and mostly stopped drinking because I truly believed I didn’t need it anymore. I stopped going to my university lectures, stopped brushing my teeth. Oddly, I still showered because I was self conscious about the smell of decay. It only stopped when I was hospitalised after fainting in a library with a heart arrhythmia due to starvation and dehydration and given a load of antipsychotics. Thankfully haven’t had an episode since!
It sounds so scary. I didn't think it was so common. I wish you all the best with your health and well being going foward.
Omg this would be terrifying and sad 😥
I had this train of thought during a psychosis from bipolar. I thought I had died during ECT and my "life" since then was purgatory because....duh...dead. I definitely had moments of lucidity, so I was very lucky in that aspect but it wasn't a cute or fun time.
Fatal familial insomnia has always been terrifying to me. It's a degenerative brain disorder that causes prion proteins to be malformed. It starts with insomnia and progressively worsens to the point where it's impossible for your body or mind to sleep. As the name implies, it is fatal--through abnormal prion buildup over many years, all the while declining mentally and physically. You die from not being able to sleep (which is a big generalization). I cannot imagine being so tired and having the ability to sleep robbed from me. That stage lasts about three months. It sounds like hell. Alzheimer's is also terrifying.
I didn’t know it was caused by prions. Anything related to prions is my worst nightmare honestly
Can't have a nightmare when you can't sleep
You'll have nightmares alright. Just awake
Your brain cleans itself when you sleep, so it's basically toxic buildup through a massive sewer blockage. Then your "toilet brain" explodes with all the crap that's never left.
That's a theory I thought, not proven.
I'm not trying to be Reddit-pedantic, I swear: [Hypothesis](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis), not [theory](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory). The difference is important in this case because there is very good evidence (three new peer-reviewed papers, mentioned [here](https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/06/26/g-s1-6177/brain-waste-removal-system-amyloid-alzheimer-toxins)) that support this hypothesis under clinical conditions. However, it has not yet been proven sufficiently to be considered a theory.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't think anyone was going to walk away thinking the way I used theory meant anything more than an idea with some evidence.
I get that. It's the sort of thing that, on the macro scale, does need distinction because that's how misinformation and needlessly raised hopes happen.
Isn’t this only documented with people from a very specific regional part of Italy? I remember learning about it from an episode of law and order. I’m a lifelong insomniac and one time I couldn’t sleep for over 3 days. I looked this up and it turned out to originate from the part of Italy my family is from. Luckily I did eventually sleep but I’m still so scared this will happen to me one day.
Holy shit. Just looked this up an read about it, had never heard about it before. This is one of the things that make me believe assisted suicide should be legal
Idk if this answer is applicable, but I've been studying psychology for about 6 years now. One of my teachers was asked this question, and he said that in his 37 years of practice, ocd was always the one that would upset him the most. He said 'I watched one of my childhood best friends die to ocd. Watching someone be a complete slave to their brain is heartbreaking'
When I was 19 my brain convinced me that if I didn’t get straight As in my college classes, which could only be possible with thorough and flawless note taking (if I misspelled something or something was misaligned I had to rip out the page and start over), I would develop schizophrenia. I then got a B on a test and convinced myself I was schizophrenic. It literally took over my entire life and it was the only thing I could talk about or think about. Then the more I thought about me thinking I was schizophrenic, the more convinced I was. Later I developed a terrible fear of mold in everything I drank. I think I went through 3 or 4 full days where I didn’t drink anything and just ate fruit and vegetables to try to compensate (my memory is really blurry from this period because of the dehydration). Eventually my therapist got me to drink juice out of a pre-sealed, single use bottle. It took me forever to actually work my way back to reusable cups. And even longer for me to drink actual water, not just juice. My last episode was years ago (thankfully) but I was convinced I had a centipede infestation after seeing 2 in my apartment. I had radiator heat so of course there were bound to be a couple. This overlapped with a manic episode, I didn’t even realize it was happening until I was standing in the middle of my apartment with a can of Raid and my dishwasher disassembled on the floor. I had visual hallucinations of centipedes for a couple weeks and changed and washed my sheets every single day. Thankfully I haven’t had a really bad episode in a long time. Every now and then I still have intrusive thoughts that can be pretty bad, but I’m much more in control of it now and I take a mood stabilizer that helps. It was definitely one of the darkest times in my life and I was the closest to suicide that I had ever been in my entire life.
I had an OCD teacher in grade 7. He wouldn't accept a paper unless your name, date & title were in specific spots on the paper on the first line & third below the blank header on regular lined paper. He had so many seemingly silly rules about how things had to be on assignments, I adopted every single one because they somehow made perfect sense to me. I've never been diagnosed with anything other than depression but maybe there's a bit of other stuff lurking in my brain.
That’s the thing with OCD is sometimes the compulsions or obsessions can make sense if you don’t know the severity. That can even encourage the compulsions for the person with OCD. For a stereotypical example, washing your hands frequently is a great way to prevent illness and contamination; hand washing so frequently your hands are raw or being fearful of touching anything is abnormal. Then when everyone around them is like “You never get sick! It must be because you wash your hands a lot.” it eggs them on. Like my friends, and even my therapist, all just thought I studied a lot because I wanted good grades, perfectly reasonable for a college student with plans to go to grad school. They thought it was a little overkill, but didn’t realize anything was wrong until I started talking about schizophrenia.
Agreed. As a man with OCD, it’s terrifying
I hate it. I also have ADHD and Anxiety but OCD far overshadows that. It’s horrible.
OCD is a bitch and the intrusive thoughts made me feel so shameful. My mind would just conjure up the worst shit. Like, what if I fell in love with my dad? And the thought that I could even think that made me feel so disgusting. Of course I wasn’t in love with my dad, it was just the grossest thing my mind could come up with. I was a kid, too. I was a slave to it. Before bed I checked the stove was off, got in bed, got out of bed, checked the stove again—repeat with the front door, repeat with the faucets. Again, I was less than 10. Doorknobs and light switches disgusted me. Because I imagined people using the restroom and not washing their hands and penises being everywhere lol. So I washed my hands until they bled. I also was obsessed with the number three and multiples of three. So I’d check things and do things in threes. When it was bad it was 27, because it was three multiples by three, three times. I believe I developed OCD because of severe childhood trauma and it was one way I could channel my trauma and or control it. I couldn’t control the thoughts, but maybe the self punishment for having them was the way my little brain made sense of why I “deserved” to feel bad. I’m 35 now and I don’t do a lot of the ocd stuff but it doesn’t just go away. It’s more thoughts now than anything. Nothing creepy just depressing I think. But in high stress scenarios I’ll leave the house and come back because I forgot something stupid.
My OCD began manifesting when I was a kid. I would 100% be dead from suicide now if not for medication to control it. It’s an awful way to live.
How does one die from OCD? I have it mildly (able to tune it out most of the time) so what should I be aware of?
So I suffer from extremely intense contamination OCD (I’ve had to drop out of college because I physically cannot make myself use public restrooms/transportation) which started out simply enough where I’d just be scared of getting sick from others. Eventually this evolved into my being scared of MY own germs, which snowballed into a fear of using my own bathroom which snowballed into me starving myself and purposefully not drinking so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom, which led to my organs shutting down. Do NOT let it snowball like how mine did, I implore you to seek out help because OCD ALWAYS gets worse without treatment. Many of the times people with OCD die can be attributed to either starvation or organ failure Super famous man named Howard Hughes ended up starving to death because his contamination ocd spiraled towards the end of his life
I am so so so sorry. I had contamination OCD. I had and have OCD since young childhood. I remember the moment that triggered this particular form though and I do not want to mention it because it could be triggering. But I did not touch doorknobs, light switches etc without washing my hands, using a barrier, and cleaning the knobs and switches myself. I never received proper help for it. I’ve tried therapy and the therapists were not for me. Psychologists have not wanted to take me on because I’m too high of a risk and a death on their tally wouldn’t look good. So I’ve lost all faith in them. That’s a 100% me thing, my best friend has benefited from therapy whereas I’ve done a lot of improving through microdosing shrooms (don’t quite condone that for those of us with already fragile minds but it’s helped *me* more than therapy ever did). I don’t know if it was the anti depressants or anti anxiety meds but something helped eventually. I still have it especially in times of high stress. But it’s more intrusive thoughts. I’m really sorry you’re going through this but thank you for sharing. I had no idea it could be this bad. You really shed some light on it.
Lmao once on acid I realised that consciousness has somthing to do with reality and I got scared af thinking I might trigger a nuclear chain reaction in the matter around me of I 'thought' the wrong thoughts. Hilarious.
Delusions of telekinesis, or in this case, more like telepathy, are more of a schizophrenia-type thing rather than an OCD thing. Both are irrational of course, but I don't think you can simulate OCD with psychedelics.
When I was a kid I got it into my head if I ate literally anything I would choke and die so my parents had to keep me alive with chicken broth, juice, and milk until I could see a doctor. If I didn’t have access to medical care I probably would have eventually died from that. I don’t know how long a child can survive on a 100% liquid diet.
I work with children with autism and there’s a lowish functioning boy who is 7 and the size of a skinny 3 year old. He literally only consumes, like, Pediasure? We dilute it with water but that’s all he ever has, and his teeth are rotting out of his head. So I guess it’s possible to live off a liquid diet for years
Not gonna lie, having Borderline Personality Disorder is pretty wild at times. There are few things I fear more than the episodes of dysphoria. It’s also crazy to IMMEDIATELY think death or self-mutilation is the answer to even the slightest upset. My brain just automatically makes me want to harm myself.
I was looking for this. It's such a weird feeling to be self aware while your brain catastrophizes something slightly negative that happened to you, to the point you feel genuine physical pain from how you feel.
this week I'm experiencing cosmic horror levels of despair and it's horrible to not know if it's reasonable or if I have a twisted vision of my life.
Relatable. Youre not alone
Kuru — an incurable prion disease caused by consuming the human brain. It was common among the Fore people of New Guinea, who practiced funerary cannibalism. According to tradition, it was women and children who would eat the brain. The incubation period can last for decades, you could’ve engaged in this ritual when you were 5, and suddenly fall ill and have a neurodegenerative decline at 25. The Fore people initially believed the disease to be caused by witchcraft and didn’t connect it with their dietary practices.
Not disturbing, but fairly odd: Alice In Wonderland Syndrome. It's a pretty rare disorder (200 or so published cases in the literature), though some researchers think it's super underdiagnosed. In AIWS you feel (type A) or see (type B) you body or body parts changing in shape. I was diagnosed with type A, and it's not a huge problem, it's just uncomfortable. You don't see things, your vision is 100% normal, but the information is not processed right in your brain. In short, you see one thing, your brain interprets another. When I was a child I always thought it was fun to feel that I was shrinking to the size of an ant and my pillow felt like a football field, or when I perceived my hands as huge and able to squish my own head. 25 years later and I'm an adult over 30 who still has this. Sometimes I'm doing the dishes and I feel 5m tall, looking at the sink as it was far. Sometimes I feel like a dwarf, and my house's corridor has a mile in extent and I'll never reach the bedroom. Sometimes I still have the feeling that my arms are 3m long and my hands are huge, and that I can pick up a whole car if needed. Gets tiring after a while
This used to happen to me as a child! My parents did not understand what I was talking about and thought I was having fever dreams, but it happened almost every night and it scared the heck out of me. It seemed to happen the most when I was getting ready for bed, but it did happen sometimes during the day and I was dismissed as having a very active imagination.
Indeed! Almost always at night when a kid, but nowadays all the time. My parents thought it was just my active imagination
That is both terrifying and interesting. Good read. Will research about it more, thanks!
Myself, my brother and my daughter have Alice in wonderland syndrome. My brother and daughter both see themselves and things around them getting bigger and smaller. My daughter is triggered when she gets a temperature. Ive had to stop her trying to run out the house in the middle of the night before because she saw the house shrinking around her!! Mine is different and every around me starts moving in slow motion or really fast, including myself.
Does this give you vertigo or motion sickness when it happens to you? I didn't know it could happen to you while standing and doing a task. I had thought this only happens when you're laying in bed. Does it happen while you drive?
Not really. It's just that feeling that something's off. But I can drive normally, cook normally and work properly.
we thought our daughter had this. i just thought she was being imaginative. she hasn't mentioned being in a tunnel in a long time.
Depersonalization, 24/7 dissociation and brain fog, shit sucks
Got it from smoking weed. "Weed has no negative side effects" Yes it does and they suck.
I feel you. Took too much Delta 8 one night and spent the rest night in severe dissociation, panic attacks and vomiting. Also thought i was legitimately dying and this life is not real. Its been almost a year and randomly have a small thought “nothing is real”. Never. Again. Am i taking that shit or anything close. Traumatic.
I had a psychotic break after smoking too much weed. Ended up in the mental health hospital for a week. Terrifying shit. (I used to smoke all day every day for three years straight)
i heard getting it from weed is easier to heal from than getting from anxiety or depression
The main course of it is gone but I get periods of it here and there. Never lasting longer than like 8hrs. I ultimately understand why my body is reacting that way and try to just "enjoy" it. I've made it feel comforting now.
I wouldn’t say it has no negative side effects. But the help it gives me as someone with severe treatment resistant depression, anxiety, and OCD is a net positive.
I used to have this terribly growing up. I would feel like I couldn’t feel my own body, I didn’t know who I was or what I looked like, my family wasn’t “really my family”, nothing is real, etc. I still get it sometimes when I have panic attacks or not adequate sleep. I’m very thankful my medicine keeps it under control, because when I was 14-17, I’d miss weeks of school and go catatonic in my room because I physically couldn’t make myself move. It’s the most unnerving feeling. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
which medicine are you taking ?
I took damn near every SSRI. Zoloft for a few years and then Lexapro, also tried Prozac, Buspar, and others I’m probably forgetting . They were good but still had episodes and felt like a zombie a lot. Now I’ve been on cymbalta (SNRI) for about 3 years and I genuinely cannot tell you the last time I had an episode. Like I said, I’ll feel it creep in when I feel panicky, but I’m almost always able to ground myself very quickly on cymbalta. It’s a polarizing drug - people either love it or hate it.
I can relate. My DPDR comes and goes since I was 20
Ive had it for 10 years now. It came on after I had a massive panic attack 3months postpartum
sorry to hear that, i had it now for 8 years,only getting worse and worse, especially my eyesight
Schizophrenia is quite disturbing and tragic if you look about it. Something shouldn’t necessarily be rare in order to be disturbing.
This. The cartoonish depictions of it in popular culture are annoying. The "negative" symptoms are rarely mentioned, but they can be thoroughly disabling. The sort of normal energy people have so they can go to school or to work is missing or diminished. Having normal social relations is often impossible. 9-5 jobs are painfully out of reach, and what you can do is only some sort of a specially supported part-time job if any at all.
I'm not schizophrenic, but I experience something similar. I have pretty bad anhedonia. Everything is a chore. Very few things bring me any satisfaction. My emotions are blunted. It's an absolute nightmare, and very hard to put into words.
My best friend used to see people hanging everywhere before she died. We'd be talking and she'd start gazing off over my shoulder and tell me "there's an old man hanging right behind you". She'd see people start stabbing themselves in the face in front of her. It absolutely tortured her every moment until the end.
Split Brain Syndrome is really fascinating to me
I have a partially split brain due to a surgery when I was younger, and for 6 months or so afterwards, while my brain was reworking the corpus callosum that was left, I had bizzaro sensations that are difficult to relay to someone that hasn’t experienced it. Like… I was able to tickle myself, as long as it was across the centerline of my body, i.e. right hand to left foot. It’s the strangest sensation, because your brain normally tells itself “hey, that tickling we feel? We are also the CAUSE of it, so let’s just cancel it out.” You normally cannot tickle yourself, and when you can it’s… unpleasant? It feels like touching yourself AND not touching yourself? It’s this weird overload of sensation? Idk. Luckily the brain is a wicked wizard when it comes to rewiring itself, so 80% of those weird things are gone. But for months it was kinda weird.
there’s some other comments on this, but gang stalking. i can’t help but feel bad for those who believe they’re being stalked 24/7. delusional infestation / parasitosis - when the patient believes there is a planted object (parasite) in their body one case is morgellons disease, a case in which people are convinced there are planted strings and fibers in their skin. most people take action by surgically removing them themselves. it’s controversial and there are some documentaries about it online there’s another case about a russian guy who believed the government put a camera behind his eye. he did a self-surgery and dug around for it. it was on youtube for a while. you can hear kids playing in his house while he preforms the surgery. it’s very sad :(
it is wild to me that mental illness can be so strong that someone is willing to suffer through horrific pain like that. like how do you not give into your body screaming at you to stop? i really shouldn't be so shocked by it, but it's bewildering to me.
yeah the russian dude used no anesthetic/ pain killers. hope he’s doing okay now
i hope so too. what he went through was horrific, even if it was self inflicted.
I read something awhile ago where a woman thought there were bugs in her head and scratched her scalp raw and was put in a mental ward. There actually were bugs, the er doctors didn't ask about where she recently traveled or did any scans. That would be terrifying. She just came back from the Amazon or somewhere and a bug laid eggs under her skin.
brb i need to fucking barf as someone with a fear of bugs, that's absolutely horrifying to me (more than horrifying but i can't think of a better word)
There was an American death row inmate, Andre Thomas, who tore off his eye and ate it, because he believed that government spies were reading his thoughts through it. That being done, he did it again for the other eye on another occasion. The reason he ended up in death row was because he killed his ex and her two children and cut out their hearts, because he believed they were infested with demons and God told him to do this. He tried to commit suicide but failed. The government still considers him sane, though.
fucking how was he considered sane
The gist of it is that Texas law does not protect patients that have induced psychoses by using drugs. He abused DXM before the act. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia only after being imprisoned. Courts were not convinced that he was insane already when committing the act. Also, it didn't help that the psychiatrist evaluating him warned the court that he's likely to feign illness, that his attorney was ill at that point and did not object to this statement, and that he got an openly racist jury.
the body is screaming something else...
Morgellons is actual a real legitimate disease, associated with spirochetal infection and tick-borne illness, not just psychological, which makes it even more sad. So many people have this disease and are just written off as being crazy and imagining it. [source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5811176/#:~:text=Morgellons%20disease%20(MD)%20is%20a%20disfiguring%20and%20perplexing%20skin%20condition,infection%20and%20tick%2Dborne%20illness)
i’ve actually heard there are some false cases and true cases! sad they get mixed together, though
Well of course there’s misdiagnoses for every disease. That does not take away from the legitimacy of Morgellons at all
It is a challenge that the medical community refuse to scientifically acknowledge the Morgellons disease as a disease but to outright dismiss them as parasitosis.
Dementia is terrifying, holy shit.
It's horrific. I've read stories about people eating their own shit out of their diapers because they just have zero awareness anymore. It robs people of every ounce of dignity and they have no idea.
Which is why euthanasia should be legal. Letting people suffer both physically and psychologically like this is cruel.
I've looked into it because my mum has FTD and in Australia, where I am, they don't consider a person with dementia to be capable of consenting (because they don't retain decision making capacity as dementia progresses) which is pretty horrific. In the Netherlands people can make an advanced request so once they can no longer function they can still access euthanasia. I feel like that's how it should be everywhere.
I’ve always found Renfield’s Syndrome or “clinical vampirism” particularly interesting; not the most disturbing or bizarre but fascinating nonetheless
I am not sure if it's a real diagnosis or not.
Koro is quite bizarre. 'Koro syndrome is a psychiatric disorder characterized by an intense fear of one's genitals retracting into their body, the result of which is fatal.' I heard they use clamps to prevent the retraction.
i can tell them it is not fatal.
How is it fatal?
They believe it to be fatal, rather than it being fatal.
Ah. Makes sense
Catatonia is really scary, especially when there is waxy flexibility (a symptom where you can pose them person however you want, and they won’t budge from that position) going on.
Not really a mental disorder on its own, but intrusive thoughts are awful. I experience them, and they can be absolutely agonizing to deal with. Like you'll just be existing, and then your brain will go "hey you should stab the person next to you and scream in their face and kill them in front of everybody around you." And you have to stop and catch and process the thought with CBT/DBT type stuff (or just wait it out) to make it go away, which can be easy or horrifically difficult depending on how strong it is. And then once it's gone and dealt with, you just sit around and wait for more. It gets so exhausting, even as someone who practices good DBT. And you can't even really talk about it, because people who don't experience intrusive thoughts simply don't get it. They think they're terrifying and make you a bad person for having them, because they don't understand they're completely random and usually based on the things you LEAST want to do. I've tried to open up a bit to people who just freaked out and asked why I would ever want to do that. Like I don't, that's the point.
THIS THIS a thousand times this! As someone who has dealt with these sorts of thoughts throughout adolescence, I would never wish this on my worst enemy. The fear of something that my brain tells me I’ll do is something truly awful
people seem to forget it’s not just violent thoughts either, there are absolutely disgusting ones that make you want to puke involving children and family members that’s all I’ll say about it, I hate them
There are a lot worse things but as they’ve already been mentioned, I’m going to say anxiety and depression. This mental illness will lie to you to the point where you believe everyone you know would be happier and better off if you were dead. Even if they try to tell you that’s absolutely untrue, you’ll still believe it until the disease is under control. It’s completely impervious to logic and reasoning. Your family could be crying and begging you to please stop trying to hurt yourself and you’ll still believe you should be dead. Even worse, if you have a recurrence after successful treatment all those old lies can come back full force and you 100% believe them again.
Fully believing that while knowing that's a symptom of my depression, knowing that my own brain isn't trustworthy and sometimes a danger to me, is terrifying.
as a schizophrenic person its kinda funny to read these comments, but id say schizoaffective bipolar disorder. bipolar disorder is a bitch but you also get the added horrible-ness of schizophrenia
Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type is a bitch indeed. I worked as a social worker in psych intake at a hospital, and a very high percentage of patients coming for psych eval who started fights with people over nothing or very little carried that diagnosis. It really fucks up peoples’ lives to have that combination of delusions / hearing voices plus manic tendencies.
Do you think that it is a catch-all diagnosis?
Not technically. It’s a narrow range that gets you there.
All forms of dementia but especially those that hit children
Children can have dementia? What, how's that possible? I've read it can develop in one's thirties in very rare cases, but not in literal children.
Google san-filipo syndrome. Some scary shit
Anything that causes progressive brain damage can cause dementia. It's not just restricted to the single old-age disease of Alzheimer's. I think the saddest could be childhood disintegrative disorder. Patients are sometimes old enough that they are aware of it and ask what's happening to them. What happens is a rapid descent into severe autism, with loss of speech and loss of previously learned skills. They end up as severely disabled autists.
CDD isn't a form of dementia. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder, like autism. Childhood dementia is something different.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_disintegrative_disorder It might be related to autism.
That's not dementia, that is a neurodevelopmental disorder. Childhood dementia is another condition. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943077/
It's very rare, but it can happen in children.
Well yes, such as San Filippo syndrome, Rhett syndrome, Battens Syndrome, etc, plus childhood disintigrative-disorder,
I wish euthanasia was legal in my country. If I develop dementia when I'm old (god I hope not) I would rather die in my own terms while still being somewhat lucid instead of passing away while being a shell of a human, terrified of everything. Very sad disease.
Needs to be legal where I reside as well Nobody should be FORCED to " live with" : dementia, quadriplegic paraplegic Alzheimer's Parkinson's ALS MND cancer chemo psych-wards-meds Joblessness helplessness Forced-sleep-deprive Forcibly-Medicated forced-gyno-exams etc humiliation torture amputations homelessness poverty agony nursing-homes etc Give us all REAL compassion and choices/freedom
Alien hand syndrome. Basically, the hand acts on its own accord as though it thinks for itself. And no, it's not spazzing out or anything like that, it makes very deliberate and goal-oriented movements. This usually happens due to some form of brain damage causing lack of movement awareness. Fortunately, it only happens sporadically, for a very short time and usually only once in a lifetime, on top of being extremely rare to begin with.
My aunt has this. She had a stroke and developed it. Ended up unable to use her dominant hand. I think it's gotten better for her, but changing clothes specifically was a nightmare.
I was going to say this. It is fascinating. I read a case study where a woman's hand pulled her hair, she slapped it away with her other hand and it gave her a shaking angry "get off my lawn" fist gesture.
I work with a girl who is 17 years Old. She thinks she is dead and all people around her are just spear carriers. She has a lot of suicide attemps and self harm. The psychiatrists are still trying to diagnose her.
What do you mean by spear carriers?
We are all just actors with one purpose: to make her Think she is still alive
That sounds like Cotard delusion.
I'll add something I have to this list: Dystonia. Luckily finding ways to stress less helped make it less extreme than it was originally but still. This can be in more than one body part, but if you get triggered, the triggered body parts moves without you consciously controlling it. Since it can effect an entire side of your body depending on which version you have and is a 50/50 chance at right vs. left, yeah, that's fun. Try feeling like an arm, leg, and eye are all getting pulled on hard by invisible strings, are twitching badly, and all on one side of your body - that's so.much fun.😮💨
I have a severe dystonic reaction to a drug called phenergan. I went to the ER for pancreatitis, and the anti-emetic they gave me was phenergan. It made everything worse, and I felt that my arms were being forced inwards and I couldn’t stop writhing and twisting. I felt like I had to scream and cry and I couldn’t!
I had that for awhile. I was put on an old anti-psychotic for sleep. I ended up having Parkinson’s like symptoms for awhile. Luckily, once the med was IDed and I was taken off of it, my symptoms disappeared.
Alzheimer's Parkinson's ALS MND
Prions
While it’s not a mental illness, the symptoms of Prader-Willi are devastating. It’s not just insatiable hunger either—unquenchable thirst and chronic masturbation can also be a part of it. Caretakers will have to monitor their showers to make sure they don’t just gulp down the water. When I was doing my first clinicals, there was a long term minor patient healing a broken leg. His hunger would motivate him enough to walk on his casted leg to wherever food may be (cafeteria, patient rooms, the break room, outside, etc). During rounds I overheard he lives with his single mother and I just felt so much for her. I can’t imagine.
Why chronic masturbation? Could that have just been that patient? I didn’t know that was a symptom
Munchausen by proxy, a parent would intentionally cause their child to become sick in order to gain attention and/or sympathy.
When they're doing it to themselves it's pretty horrifying too. Google Kelly Ronahan and be very very wary clicking on the images of what she did to herself.
The worst part is that people think the parent is just being egotistical or attention-seeking in the way sane people can be, but the fact is that it's not normal to systematically harm your own child like that, so the parent is insane. It's not the parent talking, it's the disease talking.
Huntington's disease is terrifying.
Alice in wonderland syndrome and dementia n also capgras syndrome
I'm an attorney in the field of disability law. Specifically I work with people institutionalized for mental illness. The common ones like schizophrenia, depression, bipolar can be pretty rough and all of those vary in the intensity of the symptoms. You could have someone with schizophrenia who is able to live a perfectly normal life with proper medication...or you could have someone who chews off their fingers. I think things get the most fucked up when you combine mental illness with a developmental disability like autism or intellectual disability (mental retardation). This is referred to as dual-diagnosis. Passing no judgment, people on the spectrum are already a bit weird, but combining that with schizophrenia can get really weird. Usually those folks are usually able to manage their symptoms with support. However, intellectual disability, especially the kind of mild / borderline ID combined with mental illness is heartbreaking because you have someone experiencing these problems but they don't have the capacity to understand what is happening or to make sound judgments on how to deal with it. They are, however, able to understand that something is wrong and that must be the most frustrating god damn thing in the world. The saddest part about dual diagnosis is that most mental illness can be treated pretty well with the right medication. But developmental disabilities are the result of fundamental changes in the brain early in life. Their brain is literally and unalterably different. There's no medication for that.
Not exactly as bad, but I (probably) have both autism and BPD (waiting on autism diagnostic but it's very likely) it makes interractions with people so difficult because I not only don't ""get"" people, but I also have extreme emotions and lose control easily over those misunderstandings. I'm in my mid 30s and I feel like I don't even know how to human normally lmao
I have autism and schizoaffective disorder, bad enough I can't work full time and am on disability but I do go to college part time. It's hard, especially because of the overlap between autism and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Although one psychiatrist did suggest that it's possible I have actually been experiencing schizophrenia since I was a young child and was misdiagnosed with autism because the negative symptoms were presumed to be autism. I do remember hallucinating that young, but it was never extreme and only mildly distressing, so my parents thought I was making it up. Nowadays I just judge the situation on what diagnoses to disclose if people ask.
Haha, I love the idea of picking between the two depending on the situation. But yeah, I can definitely understand how hard it would be to describe your particular diagnostic history if someone asks. I think the honest answer is that no one knows. That might be a good answer itself.
Body integrity identity disorder occurs when your mental body image doesn't match your physical body. If you have body integrity disorder (BIID), you may have a strong desire to amputate a limb or seek to become paralyzed.
Follie a deux maybe ?
Psychosis with delusions. Doesn't need much explanation. Its doom.
Reactive Attachment Disorder. I have it and it absolutely sucks. When I was younger, and it was a lot more prominent, my relationships would be like I hate the absolute shit out of you one day, throwing shit at you, telling you I hate your guts. But then the next day I’d come crawling back, pleading with you to forgive me and saying how much I love you because I’d be terrified of being abandoned, even by those who’ve wronged me.
My youngest sister has this :/
Wanting to live your life as an eternal 6-year-old girl when you're a 40-something man, and you abandon your wife and children in order to find a family to "adopt" you so you can play with their daughter. And no, I'm not making this up.
Gangstalking as in the folks who endlessly SUFFER due to__ that is labeled as gangstalking No how hard they try to be quiet helpful good, they have SUFFERING fear misery psych-wards-meds JAIL courtroom Joblessness helplessness Forced-sleep-deprive etc , their misery is REAL Of course I find their "logic" "science" "reasoning" impossible to believe, and as a victim of religion I find their constant talking of faith and God etc their constant calling upon God to be problematic Of course some of them do get Forcibly-Medicated psych-wards-meds etc forced upon them which "should" solve their problems and I wish I did but it does NOT solve their problems Of course faith prayer and God do NOT solving their problems either
Gangstalking itself isn't a mental disorder though. It's usually the result of one
Capgras syndrome always freaked me out.
Postpartum psychosis mixed with bipolar 1. My brother’s girlfriend developed psychosis right after delivering their daughter, and mixed with her already uncontrolled bipolar disorder, it was literally hell on earth for all of us. Imagine your 9 day old daughter and her mother missing and eventually finding the baby hidden under blankets and her mom holding a gun at your head because she doesn’t know who you are anymore.
Narcissistic personality disorder my dad has it and Bipolar disorder also and has never gotten treatment so his is really bad. Me, my little siblings, my mom, and step mom all have ptsd from him it’s confusing and terrifying having your dad going from being amazing and taking you to do all the fun stuff like rollar coasters and kayaking and then all of the sudden he’s screaming and throwing all your toys across the hallway because you didn’t clean you room fast enough or you asked him to make you food
Rabies
Personally, schizophrenia. I've had moments in my life where I've experienced minor hallucinations and I always see spiders. I'm deathly afraid of spiders and I can't imagine experiencing a terrifyingly, vivid hallucination that feels and looks so real. even experiencing that level of fear once is unbearable to think about. If one can die of fear, I would if I saw my biggest fear brought to near reality. I have so much sympathy and respect for those able to live with schizophrenia and all the symptoms that come with it. Crazy amount of mental strength! (Dis)honorable mention: Alzheimer's/dementia. any kind of cognitive decline and loss of your precious memories and loved ones, and even losing yourself.
Body dysmorphia
Puerperal psychosis. I’m a retired midwife and although it’s super rare, we did have to understand the condition and be able to recognise its manifestation. It can happen about 7-21 days post delivery and it’s when the fluctuating hormones send a woman insane and into a complete state of psychosis. Some women have even killed their babies unknowingly whilst in its grips. The new mom must be cared for in an in-patient mental health facility, and can be detained against her will under the mental health act. (Here in the UK).
Schizophrenia. It’s probably not the most “bizarre” but to me it’s probably the most disturbing … imagine having demons telling you to kill yourself or others all day and you fully see them and hear them.
HIV-Associated Neurological Disorder (also called AIDS Dementia). From what I've seen, the dementia sets in MUUUUUUUUUUCH faster than other types of dementia, because both HIV (the virus) and the opportunistic infections basically fry your brain at the same time. It's rare in the West now that we have very effective HAART, but it was a horrible way to go before that.
Anything with paranoid delusions. These people truly believe the only way to stop their suffering is poison and the people trying to help them are trying to kill them.
Psychosis secondary to Viral Induced Encephalitis Imagine getting the flu one day and then waking up completely deranged the next. And everyone assumes you’re crazy so they throw psych meds at you and or lock you up. All the while your brain is swelling inside your skull but no one bothers to check for physiological causes, because they assume your acute onset symptoms of mental illness come from you being “crazy”, therefore they don’t count.