How can a smart, educated, capable person have delusions? How can someone experiencing psychosis be so convinced of things that aren't there? It doesn't seem possible, does it? For those of you who've experienced postpartum psychosis, or been through delusions and hallucinations, I'm sure it's extremely difficult to explain.
I just came upon this first-person account of delusions arising out of schizophrenia written by a woman named Erin Stefanidis whowas a graduate student in NEUROSCIENCE (!!), of all things. She shares in detail what it was like to argue with both herself and her doctors about whether her thoughts were rational or irrational.
"Erin, you are a scientist," they'd begin. "You are intelligent, rational. Tell me, then, how can you believe that there are rats inside your brain? They're just plain too big. Besides, how could they get in?"
They were right. About my being smart, I mean; I was, after all, a graduate student in the neuroscience program at the University of British Columbia. But how could they relate that rationality to the logic of the Deep Meaning? For it was due to the Deep Meaning that the rats had infiltrated my system and were inhabiting my brain …"
It's an amazing story. It allows me, as someone who has never experienced this, watcha womanstruggle out loud with her mind. Go read it, UNLESS you are someone who is still too close to having suffered psychosis or something near to it. The LAST thing I want you to do is take you back to that place right now …
For more on postpartum psychosis symptoms, click here.
that's….amazing.
The best way that I can describe it is that there are two parts. & BOTH make sense & you're warring with yourself that it can't be true, but deep down you KNOW it's true. & that is what is most terrifying – being coherent enough to understand how crazy the delusion is, but not being able to stop truly believing it.
Well, I can relate totally. I didn't have delusions like hers, but I had delusions and there's no stopping them once they start- especially not with rational thought like the doctor was trying. Medication gets you back and prevents them from coming again, just like medication helps prevent someone from having seizures. I don't hail myself as intelligent, but I will claim being well educated as I was working on a Ph.D before becoming pregnant, and then pregnant again and then in a phychosis. (I went through three of the buggers, but I'm out now and learning more and healing more every day.)
It's pretty much like what happened to the man in a Beautiful Mind. I totally get his character. The thing is, Hollywood glamorizes the mentally ill men and makes the women just seem pitiful, like in the Hours. And so it goes, more stigma to bust open….
@ Blair,
When you're warring with yourself, it's time to check yourself in to the hospital for a spell. That is for your safety and the safety of those around you. It's just a short time out of your life. That's what I told myself when I was warring with myself- or when I realized, as I put it, I was going in and out of reality.
This was so eye opening – I'm really glad you shared it. Her writing was so clear and it helps to understand more of why it seemed so real to her.
Unbelievable description. I used to tell my best friend that I felt like there was a rational part to my brain and an irrational part and it was like they were having a war. But, as I slipped more and more into psychosis, the rational side of me kept getting smaller and smaller as I came to believe 100% that the irrational was rational.
This is why in helping women who are experiencing postpartum psychosis I never debate their thoughts/beliefs – it is real to them and is based on what their senses have told them. This is important to understand because our senses are what we use to make sense of what is happening to us and around us.
This is also why my approach with women with postpartum psychosis is that what is happening to them (whether there be rats in their brain or otherwise)is frightening,scary or disturbing and that we need to get them help for it. To debate it is pointless.
Although a very interesting read, I can't imagine why the doctors would have tried to debate with her!
This does a great job of explaining the power of the delusions that people in a psychotic episode experience — regardless of someone's intellect, the delusions supercede all rational thought and previous life experiences.
I've forwarded this on to several people I know who I've always had difficulty understanding the concept of delusions and why it's impossible to reason with someone in that state.
Thanks for sharing.