Using psychosis for my benefit
So as someone who has experienced psychosis, I’ve had my share of really vivid delusions and hallucinations that at the time, are so traumatizing and feel so real. But then I get help and work through them with a therapist and I have to sit down and tell myself, none of it was real. It’s a really jarring experience because everything about them feels so convincing that they actually happened but eventually I do feel better about it because it didn’t actually happen. Like, I don’t have to focus my attention on this anymore because none of it was real.
Nobody was ever trying to kill me. The world didn’t end. I was never abducted by aliens. Demons weren’t possessing me. Those are all pretty extreme examples, but they were all things I really genuinely believed I was experiencing during the height of my psychosis. They were all really terrifying and traumatizing. And none of it was real.
I had a thought today. What if I could use this same method to convince myself that other negative memories I’ve held onto and let shape me also never happened?
For example, what if my childhood trauma was merely a delusion? What if I hallucinated my sister’s abusive father? What if he never existed?
What if the last relationship I was in which ended really badly and I was hung up and sad over this person for months was merely a delusion? Like what if I only went out with this person one time and had an incredibly vivid dream we were in a serious, long term relationship and it was so convincing I concocted a reality around it that never existed? What if I actually just barely knew the guy? (And I have had this delusion about a person I barely knew before. It was embarrassing but I fully believed I was married to someone I barely knew at one point.)
What if that job I hated and dreaded going to every day was simply a result of being in psychosis and not realizing it? Or what if this encounter I had with someone who made me feel so unsafe to the point of tears was merely a hallucination?
I just feel like, my experience with psychosis has been such a source of negative emotion and turmoil for me. But if we are truly the masters of our universe, if we are fully in control of our reality, who’s to say I can’t hack psychosis to my benefit? What if I truly can use it to my advantage by convincing myself these other negative experiences I’ve had also never existed? And then maybe like the other delusions I’ve had, they too will eventually just melt away and become little more than bad dreams.
Just a thought.