____twoism

Anyone feel like sharing personal experiences on the topic, if it's not asking too much?
I seem to have forgotten how i dealt with the situation 10years ago and i have this lingering feeling i am on the verge of another one soon.

Thank You!

I'm afraid I don't have any experience with this but I hope things get better for you. DM me if you ever need someone to talk to.

I have severe OCD and before I was medicated I had what I would describe as episodes of psychosis, where my intrusive thoughts overwhelmed me to the extent that I couldn't think about anything else. I would just lock myself in my room curled up in the fetal position shaking with horrific images playing over and over in my head.

Thankfully medication has worked very well for me and I live a pretty normal life now.

im sorry you're going (or might go) through this
dont have any advice to offer im afraid
wish you well

SamuraiDrifter wrote:I have severe OCD and before I was medicated I had what I would describe as episodes of psychosis, where my intrusive thoughts overwhelmed me to the extent that I couldn't think about anything else. I would just lock myself in my room curled up in the fetal position shaking with horrific images playing over and over in my head.

Thankfully medication has worked very well for me and I live a pretty normal life now.

That is horrible and i know exactly what it is, how you felt.
Very similar to me but what ends up overwhelming me is the awareness of it being what it is - a psychotic episode, and the other that has the grip on reality. My way to explain you best how it feels, imagine 3 versions of the same you, one is the psychotic being, other the sane being and the third one is just there listening to both and trying to conciliate them, giving arguments to both sides validating both at the same time.
But let me also tell you that some words i've been trading with some people lately are really helping a lot and that the necessary work is being done by me. Maybe this topic was just started so i could get some help kickstart what i already knew i had to do. Which is exactly this:
Talking to people who i think matter to me about it.

Thank You!

kakanara wrote:im sorry you're going (or might go) through this
dont have any advice to offer im afraid
wish you well

Thank You! No problem. Not having any experience in this topic is surely a good thing. Hope everything is and will always be well with you.
Cheers!

Hang in there! I wish you well!

mechanismj wrote:Hang in there! I wish you well!

Thank You!
Appreciate your words.

Unfortunately I know a thing or two about these. 10 years depression, 3 yrs on meds. I've been avoiding meds for years thinking these would change me into a person I am not. And after x times of breaking down I finally gave up, do I want to change or do I want to be original miserable me all the time? The only thing I regret about my past is that I didn't get medical help earlier. Meds made an unbelievable difference. I just stopped caring and became almost complete extroverted person. I tend to say lots of things I think that I would earlier keep to myself but I just don't care any more, unless it can hurt someone else's feelings.
First meds I tried made it only worse. Second ones did the trick. Besides occasional rare side-effects, everything is in order. One thing though. These are really hard to get off from. Tried it once when I thought I didn't need them any more and with the help of a doctor slowly tapered off. It was ok for a month and then things started to get worse and worse. I guess that's how a junkie feels, I tried everything to keep my spirits up but nothing helped until I took that pill again. But again, I choose this addiction over anything shitty I lived through in the past.

As for an advice, if talking to your loved ones helps, then do it. In my case I am not doing it any more since I went through that episode multiple times with more people and I just don't want to bother anyone any more. Everyone will say you are not a burden but who wants a sad sap in their life all the time? Another thing I've learned about myself is the more time I spend away from people the better I feel. Other people seem to bring out those bad thoughts and feelings, I guess I am too empathetic.
Professional help is where it's at. Speak to a doctor or a psychologist. Someone you don't know and doesn't know you, someone who has an outsider perspective on your life. Psychotherapy is expensive and you might have to change therapists but that is normal. I've tried this a couple of times and it didn't help me in traditional sense, it just brought a new thing in my routine which occasionally refreshed things a bit.

Hang in there and PM me if you want to talk about it.

Most of you saw aspects of my mental breakdown on this forum in 2016 in the depression thread. A concussion with a long recovery caused it, so it was a medically induced breakdown caused by an accident, but still. I lost everything, had no control for almost two years, and everything has resolved now but I still have PTSD from it still and I'm still financially recovering from it. That thread was one of the only places I had where I could dump my thoughts without feeling judgement (I similarly did the same thing in the coronavirus thread in early 2020, but that was more a lot of anxiety than it was a breakdown).

Journaling and therapy helped tremendously, as did finding my support system.

Thanks Again to everyone who offered advice and openness to communicate.
Glad i opened this thread as it helped me realize what i had to/could do to have a different outcome of the situation than i had 10years ago.
I guess that when it first happened i shouldn't have dealt with it alone. It turned out OK but it could have went terribly wrong. Maybe that's why it happened again, something must have triggered it as it was unresolved. Let's just say it was just dormant for this 10 year period and now it suddenly awoke.

It's getting better now slowly and in a way im glad this is happening again as i feel the breakdown is helping me shed a lot of what i think are the worst aspects about me, as i am allowing it to happen.

Know that i too am here if ever any of you want to drop a word about anything.
Cheers!

Hang in there buddy.
Vitamin D, regular sunlight, omega complexes, 5htp, fish, excercise, rest, being around good souls will help. It helped me.

Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm not on the verge of having one these days. My only frame of reference as to what constitutes low mental health is anecdotes I read on the internet and it only leads me to convince myself that it would be narcissistic and offensive to claim I am in a similar boat. I may not be staring mortality in the face right now, but I've been seeing it walking down the streets very often, as I've been hearing so much about death in the news and now I fear the mortality of loved ones. I suppress my emotions on a daily basis and on my days off I can feel my mind going and turning into a strange brain fog, like a noise you can't make out or a voice that doesn't speak in a discernible language.

What is a mental breakdown, anyway? What constitutes as seeing things? What's it really mean to hear voices? What's it really mean to have PTSD? I don't know what's going on on the other side of things, these are just words on a screen to me and always have been. No humanity to it, and now I have to be burdened with thought that others will inevitably leave me whilst I'm so isolated with no way out.

Seriously, what the f*** is a mental breakdown, anyway?

When mental pain exceeds pain-coping resources, is how I'd characterize a mental breakdown.
Trying to cope with more mentally than you can handle, tipping the scale just enough to trigger a breakdown.

If I start piling weights on your shoulders, you will eventually collapse. If I add enough weights, no matter how much you want to remain standing, you'll topple. I try to think of mental health like that.

If you're hearing voices, I have heard of sound clearing.
The gist of it, is to get to a place with little noise pollution, settle in a quiet spot and try to clear your head completely of all thoughts.
Close your eyes. And then, wherever you are situated, focus on one sound you can hear. One only. Visualize what is making that sound, how it is being created. And listen to rhythm of it.
Keep doing this until nothing but that sound is apparent. The quieter the sound, the better.

To call it a kind of meditation, I've been talking to someone who uses this particular method.
He has a few mental health problems.
I don't ask him about it as much as I should but he always offers me advice on these subjects and how he recovered.

Edit: not sure if any of these work particularly for you rodox, everyone has different coping resources. I'm hoping to provide two I know through a friend of mine, I don't even know if any of this makes sense.

Orbited insanitarium wrote:If you're hearing voices, I have heard of sound clearing.
The gist of it, is to get to a place with little noise pollution, settle in a quiet spot and try to clear your head completely of all thoughts.
Close your eyes. And then, wherever you are situated, focus on one sound you can hear. One only. Visualize what is making that sound, how it is being created. And listen to rhythm of it.
Keep doing this until nothing but that sound is apparent. The quieter the sound, the better.

To call it a kind of meditation, I've been talking to someone who uses this particular method.
He has a few mental health problems.
I don't ask him about it as much as I should but he always offers me advice on these subjects and how he recovered.

There is something I do already that is somewhat in a similar vein, which is when I listen to rhythmic music that is very much cold, electronic, and/or abrasive, I like to visualize the music in my head sorta like the old Windows Media Player visualizations from Windows XP, focusing on individual beats and notes as different shapes/colors/effects/images. Music heavy on breakbeats or Trance music works the best in this regard.

It's somewhat of a mental catharsis since I've never been good with words nor do I have a particularly vivid imagination.

rodox_head wrote:

Orbited insanitarium wrote:If you're hearing voices, I have heard of sound clearing.
The gist of it, is to get to a place with little noise pollution, settle in a quiet spot and try to clear your head completely of all thoughts.
Close your eyes. And then, wherever you are situated, focus on one sound you can hear. One only. Visualize what is making that sound, how it is being created. And listen to rhythm of it.
Keep doing this until nothing but that sound is apparent. The quieter the sound, the better.

To call it a kind of meditation, I've been talking to someone who uses this particular method.
He has a few mental health problems.
I don't ask him about it as much as I should but he always offers me advice on these subjects and how he recovered.

There is something I do already that is somewhat in a similar vein, which is when I listen to rhythmic music that is very much cold, electronic, and/or abrasive, I like to visualize the music in my head sorta like the old Windows Media Player visualizations from Windows XP, focusing on individual beats and notes as different shapes/colors/effects/images. Music heavy on breakbeats or Trance music works the best in this regard.

It's somewhat of a mental catharsis since I've never been good with words nor do I have a particularly vivid imagination.

I'd really recommend Steven Malinkowski's channel. (Smalin)
Probably the closest we'll get to real live visual Synesthesia, your description instantly reminded me of his work. Even though it's classical.


I was wondering, even though it's a different kind of music altogether, do you see any resemblance to your own visualizations?

I'm really starting to get a feel for some hardcore breakbeats, like nanoray's work from a couple weeks back. I get that visual aspect you're describing from them.

Orbited insanitarium wrote: I'd really recommend Steven Malinkowski's channel. (Smalin)
Probably the closest we'll get to real live visual Synesthesia, your description instantly reminded me of his work. Even though it's classical.


I was wondering, even though it's a different kind of music altogether, do you see any resemblance to your own visualizations?

I'm really starting to get a feel for some hardcore breakbeats, like nanoray's work from a couple weeks back. I get that visual aspect you're describing from them.

I think the best representations I can think of would be the music video for "Mr. Kill Myself":
(MASSIVE EPILEPSY WARNING)


The old WMP visualizers :


and the video for Missing Persons' "Surrender Your Heart":


I experience ones similar to the one you've shown, but in a vertical motion a la Guitar Hero or DDR. I think the earliest instances where I found myself doing this was when I first heard "Sixtyten" and "Telephasic Workshop".