Hallucinations

A hallucination is a sensation or sensory perception that a person experiences in the absence of a relevant external stimulus. That is, a person experiences something that doesn't really exist (except in their mind).

One of the worst attributes of my illness is the presence of hallucinations. Personally, I have auditory and for lack of a better term, cerebal delusions. The hallucinations have a basic premise and they are prevalent when I am in a romantic relationship. All I want is to find someone who loves me in the same manner that I love them but I push them away unknowingly by entertaining the voices. It is not that I fear relationships, however, my voices make me fear the animal I have become at their influence.

Now, I am not in a steady relationship because of my illness. My therapist, who is one of the best I have encountered, describes my position in a relationship as being the extremely sensitive individual who falls hard. Couple my sensitivity with the bipolar disorder and a normal, healthy relationship becomes a battle zone with my hallucinations being the bullets, my heart taking the form of a gun, and my partner becoming the enemy.

Understandably, I have been unstable and persecutory in a relationship a time or two. Even though, some were unsavory characters and garden variety abusers, they deserved my abscene from their life rather than my wrath. I do not condone fighting fire with fire but that seems to be the primary motive for my voices.

"You harm her, we will make her harm you."

To the uneducated observer, I have DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) or BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) if you focus primarily on the psychotic features. However, the prominent fluctuation in my mood cycle and the inability to respond to anti-anxiety or antidepressants properly (I instantly develop mania) make any personality disorder obsolete. Also, I do not love a person one moment then hate them the next (BPD) and I do not have an unstable self image (DID). I know exactly who I am and what I believe in. Furthermore, I have one of the rarest personality types in the world: INFJ. In my opinion, my personality traits contributed greatly to my mental illness. Inevitably, my introversion and imagination became a transit system or airstrip for my "delusions" to take flight.

One of my prominent hallucinations involve my partner meeting an untimely demise and in my mind, I am painted as their savior. A recent hallucination involved an ex-lover who reconnected with me randomly. My mood instantly peaked into an anxious, paranoid state. Is he trying to get with me again? Is he pulling a sick joke? Is it really him? And the voices were no help in calming my erratic thoughts.

"Of course, he's trying to harm you again."

"He's always been a liar."

My psychosis does reflect my emotional state and can make my ex (who might have been innocently checking up on me) turn into a vindictive liar who only wants to emotionally scar me. In reality, he went back to a toxic relationship without warning so it is predictable for my delusions to characterize him as an unsavory person.

The hallucination began when I was walking to a doctor's appointment and I passed his workplace. An ambulance drove past me, headed directly to his workplace's entrance, and sat there.

Immediately, my psychosis created an intrusive hallucination. I saw him being wheeled out on a stretcher (nobody exited or entered the ambulance), covered in blood from a botched suicide attempt (he is not suicidal plus he works at a call center...did he use a paperclip?), and then in my mind, I see myself going with him on the ambulance as I cry uncontrollably. None of this happened! Four days later, it is still prominent in my memory as if the situation really did occur.

After beginning therapy, I am now able to block out my hallucinations and I am in full control of my thoughts. I have memories of situations that never happened and it is painful to come to terms with. I am writing these articles in case I forget reality and I may again. In my next post, I will discuss what it feels like to have a psychotic break.

"Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not 'yours,' not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you."

-Eckhart Tolle