It's important for psychotic people to have a personal support system. It can consist of family. It can be made up of friends and acquaintances. They're all individuals that are vital to one's stability. Unfortunately, psychotic symptoms can make these relationships difficult if not impossible to maintain.

It's a catch 22. The very thing psychotic people need support for is the very thing that can run supportive people away. It often happens as a direct result of persecutory delusions. The people in the support system may end up getting accused of mistreating the psychotic person so frequently that they simply can't withstand the endless false accusations.

The sad and unfortunate truth that psychotic individuals have to accept is that they can't fault their supportive friends from either wanting space or having the desire to cut ties permanently. Regardless of whether or not the psychotic person is at fault, they have to accept that they weren't being very friendly toward their personal support system.

The only option psychotic people have is to give people their desired space and hope for the best.

I feel like there should be a lot more work done with how psychosis is presented in the mental health field. I think many professionals and those who are studying mental health (whether to be a therapist, psychiatrist, or some other similar profession) simply don't know how to deal with psychotic patients, because what they're shown of it in their years of studying often just isn't realistic to many actual psychotic people and/or isn't enough to encompass the diverse amount of psychosis they might see in psychotic patients. Becoming a mental health professional can take years of studying, so many days of training, and countless hoops to jump through to be considered "ready"; and yet, even with all of this, many are still completely unprepared to deal with a psychotic patient who doesn't fit a very specific, very predictable narrative.
I think it would be a lot more beneficial to the field as a whole if professionals had to take more time to study the specifics of psychosis and how to handle a variety of different psychotic scenarios or patients, as psychosis is a fairly common experience in a wide range of disorders (and even present in otherwise perfectly healthy people) and yet it seems to be very overlooked and ignored.

Does anyone else feel like psychosis completely warps their perception of time? Whenever medicated I feel like time moves normally, but when not medicated I feel like hours can go by in what feels like seconds one day and a few hours can feel like weeks the next day.

 It seems pretty standard to talk about psychosis related to external people or things, but I almost never see much talk about delusions or psychosis which affects the perception of oneself. I'm sure it must be more common than it is talked about, especially in the case of (fairly common) grandiose delusions. I wonder why it isn't as talked about, though, even in the psychosis community itself; I wonder if it's because delusions related to other people often seem more 'harmful' or externally destructive, because it could damage relationships with others or cause conflict, while identity delusions are only really harmful or conflicting for oneself.

Does anyone else with a physical disability ever have doctors blame their physical illness symptoms on their psychosis? I feel like doctors sometimes don't even look for any physical issues if you have a psychosis diagnosis, they just assume your physical issues must be a psychological problem instead. I'd frequently complain about unusual intestinal symptoms and pain issues and have it blamed on 'hallucinations', without the doctors even looking into any potential physical conditions/issues that could be causing it instead (I don't even have medically recognized hallucinations). I've also heard of this happening to others, but I wonder how common it is to be medically gaslit when having a psychotic disorder diagnosis.

Does anyone else ever feel like most mental health professionals simply don't know how to handle delusions at all when actually presented with them? I feel in my experience, most of them just don't know how to actually handle a patient actively having delusions outside of medication, even if on paper they'd know how to do this in their training.
They often seem to particularly struggle with staying neutral on the subject, frequently I've dealt with professionals that either challenge your delusions or validate them in ways that just worsens the psychosis. I've often been told my religious delusions are actually real either partially or fully, or had professionals act like my persecutory delusions are so outlandish and unrealistic that there's no way I could actually believe that.

Psychiatrists can't treat you properly if they don't know what afflicts you. They rely on you to verbalize all of your symptoms unless you're lucky enough to be witnessed in the midst of an episode. Barring that rare occurrence, this is where certain delusions can prevent treatment.

Patients can have a delusional narrative in their heads that cause them to hold back the truth from their doctor. Maybe, for example, the entities that stalk the patient have threatened to kill them should they reveal the truth of what is going on in their life. What's worse is if the entities require the patient to lie about their symptoms entirely.

The doctor has no way of knowing the difference. As far as they are concerned, they are treating the patient for the symptoms conveyed during their session. Yet they were all lies. Lies the patient was required to tell.

If "the lying delusion" is persistent and powerful enough, the patient can go years being improperly treated by their doctors. Indeed, the very sickness the patient is being treated for is the very obstacle that prevents the treatment from treating. Leaving both the doctor and the patient oblivious all the while.

It's both scary and sad to consider. Yet it is frighteningly common.

It’s something we must do at the end of each episode. After we’ve settled down. Once we've become grounded once more. We must return to those with whom we've interacted. Perhaps they thought we were on drugs. Perhaps they thought you we were natural weirdos. Either way, the schizo rep carpet walk of shame must be done.

Maybe you were running up and down the street chasing your escaped dog that had not escaped. Perhaps you attempted to enter your neighbors' property because you saw them inviting you inside. It can get as weird as thinking your neighbors invited you to sample their herb garden.

Those sorts of behaviors can not simply be swept under the rug. You must swallow your dignity and roll out that red carpet. It helps to have someone with you. Some one to vouch for the fact that you're almost always sane.

Be warned, it doesn't always go over smoothly. I've known walks of shame involving people suggesting that the schizo shouldn't be allowed to live outside of the hospital. That's an extreme example, though. Either way...

Th schizo red carpet of shame sucks. There is no other way of getting around it.

It usually won't happen from a few days of hearing voices. It takes an episode in which all or most symptoms present extremely. Hallucinations of every sense. Word salad. Delusions so deep that you've lost so far out of touch with reality such that you've forgotten what reality even is.

The people in your life won't know what to do with you. They no longer recognize you. You frighten them in all likelihood. The only person more frightened than your loved ones is yourself. In breaks of this level, you're awake in a living nightmare.

It's not forever, fortunately. Not the episode, anyway. What does stick with you is the damage done. You'll never be the same again. You'll feel as though you're brain damaged. You'll lose skills you once were adept at. You'll feel a thick fog surrounding your head that slows you down at all you endeavor.

With enough determination you can regain 99% of who you were before. Others in your life may tell you that you've made a full recovery. You won't believe it. You know better. That psychotic break did a number on you. One from which you won't bounce back.

This is a common misconception among those who talk about schizo spectrum symptoms. When your body enters a state a catatonia, you are fully capable of moving in anyway that you otherwise would. You can still feel every part of your body. So, why then, aren't catatonic patients moving?

To use a gross oversimplification, they just don't feel like it. This is not to say they are being lazy. It is to say that they have been bombarded with so much, often bothersome, stimuli that they simply choose not to acknowledge shared reality any longer.

Is food ready? Bathroom time? Is potential danger approaching them? One could fill a page with reasons why a catatonic patient really should move. It doesn't matter. Reality has done a number on them the likes of which a normal person couldn't fathom. They are not acknowledging an existence outside of their mind. Taken to an extreme, a catatonic patient will mess themselves rather than acknowledge the shared reality that is the restroom.

It's not paralysis. It's not laziness. It's the decision to not acknowledge a reality that does nothing but dish out torment whenever outward interaction is attempted. It's understandable in a sense. If every attempt to engage in shared reality resulted in torment, you'd stop attempting as well.