Do I cater to my (nonviolent) psychotic urges while waiting to be seen by a doctor?
Heya all!
I've been diagnosed with bipolar for some time but have also had hallucinations and strange thoughts for longer. I was fine until certain events unfolded around a decade ago, and I didn't come out the same, but I am grateful, in a sense, though that's not why I'm here.
I took antipsychotics for nearly a year but had to stop for about a month and a half due to financial issues. In the meantime, I had frequent hallucinations that I can't describe in words or pictures. As I restarted the medicines, the hallucinations went away, but the very strange thoughts came back. Now, I feel the overwhelming urges to draw protective sigils all over my body, as well as build a "new body" so that I can "return if I die". I am currently unclear with what that means.
It's my plan to see my psychiatrist again about it when money allows, but I'm wondering if it's alright to cater to those urges in the meantime, since they aren't hurting anyone else. However, I've been told that fulfilling those urges often leads to more of a downward spiral.
Thanks for any input, cheers!
@thefinalzodiac I am not an expert, but the people I've known (in real life, not at 7 Cups) who have had psychotic episodes did not know that their thoughts were strange until after the episode ended.
It seems to me that ordinary people have strange thoughts all the time, maybe creative people more than others, and because they know the thoughts are strange they don't act on them (except perhaps using them for inspiration if they are writers or artists). This makes me think that if you know a thought is strange, it is perhaps a bad idea to act on it. This line of reasoning suggests that the protective sigils might be a good idea if you're a performance artist but not otherwise.
I suppose the downward spiral you've been told about happens when you start to feel your strange thoughts are realistic. That would be psychosis. But I don't know whether acting on strange thoughts really does increase the risk of psychosis.
I Googled the question and found a research paper that might be relevant, but the technical language is very difficult and I didn't understand most of it: Acting on delusion and delusional inconsequentiality: A review
Charlie
Fair enough- I didn't really realize it was strange until I mentioned it to a friend. The thoughts are pretty realistic but one of my major symptoms is derealization, so that plays a weird part in it all. Never been much of a performance artist but I can see where you come from there, and I'll be sure to look at that paper. Thanks mate
