- Everyone, in today's video,
we are going to be talking about my experience with delusions and particularly what
my top 10 delusions are. Before we get started, I just wanna give a quick definition about what delusions are. So basically they are a fixed false belief that is not grounded in reality. (calm soothing music) So basically it's something
that a person really truly believes, but it's
kind of an irrational belief that is not grounded in reality and that really has no basis in reality. There are four most common types of delusions and these range
from persecutory delusions, to grandiose delusions, somatic delusions and erotomanic delusions. So to kind of briefly
explain what these are, grandiose delusions are when
you have an inflated perception of yourself or your ego is over inflated or that kind of thing. You think your God or whatever the grandiose delusion may be. Persecutory delusions are more along the lines of believing
that someone is out to get you or that you are being harmed in some way, persecutory in nature. Somatic delusions are when you believe that some sort of body function or part either internal or external
is abnormal in some way or it kind of goes along the lines of hypochondriaism
where you think that something is wrong with you. And lastly, eronomanic
delusions are when you believe that someone else is in
love with you or infatuated with you in some way. If you're new here, my name is Lauren and I make videos about
what it's like to live with Schizoaffective
disorder or schizophrenia. If you wanna see more videos from us make sure to subscribe. And also if you are interested in helping support the
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out our Patreon page. So before I get into my top
10 delusions that I experience I wanna kind of give a little bit of an analogy for what
delusions feel like. And so I was kind of
talking with Rob about this and we came up with the
concept of, you know everyone when you're
young, when you're a child has this kind of irrational
fear of the basement, the dark, the boogieman under your bed
or in the closet or whatnot. And you know, it can range in magnitude in terms of fully believing that there is a monster in your basement and you run up the stairs
because you think it's gonna grab your ankles or something
and fully believing that. Or sometimes it ranges to the other end where you know that there's
no monster down there you know, it's irrational, but you still believe it and
feel it within your body. You still get this anxious flood of energy that runs through you because
you believe it on some level, even if you might know
that it's irrational. And so that's kind of the range in which I have experienced
delusions anyway where sometimes I just have no idea that it's a delusional thought and it's just something I believe and something I know to be true, even if maybe it isn't true. Or sometimes it's more along the lines of I know that this is
irrational, but I still believe it and am fearful or have some
sort of reaction to it. Okay, so let's get into
my top 10 delusions. So the first one is one that
I have mentioned previously on the channel and that is around mirrors. I get a lot of paranoia,
I guess, when it comes to mirrors and I kind of spiral
into this delusional train of thought that there are
cameras in the mirrors around me. And so I've kind of
devised this little trick that I've had comments on our videos in the past saying that it
actually is a real trick but it's something that I do
kind of just to comfort myself. So I put my fingernail up to the mirror and if there's a space between my finger and the
reflection finger, then all good. There's no camera in there,
but if there's no space or if it's distorted at all, I allow myself to kind of
spiral through paranoia and delusion and just
kind of have my guard up about that mirror. And this delusion kind of
goes a little bit farther than this too, where, you
know, I just hung up a mirror in our living room the other
day with my husband Rob. And, you know, I was
part of the whole process of putting the mirror up onto the wall. So I knew there was nothing behind it. I knew there was no camera in it but still when it was up there and I was sitting in the living room, I felt really uneasy being around this new mirror
that I hadn't checked. And, you know, having delusional thought that there was a camera in there, or that someone was watching us or watching me and it was hard. And when I first moved in with Rob too, I had this delusion that he
had cameras around the house. And so I guess this delusion
kind of stems from this idea, this core idea of people watching me or people observing me that I don't know about or that I don't want to be. So my next delusion is that of more of the persecutory delusion, where I believe that
people are following me. And typically it's police
that I think are following me whether that's to arrest me or
to bring me to the hospital. I don't know. I just have this irrational
fear around this. I am constantly aware of when I'm driving, aware of what vehicles around me, if anyone seems to be following me and that kind of thing, or if I'm walking in the street I'm, try to be very
aware of my surroundings because I'm always a
little bit fearful of this. And especially when I see cop
cars driving by or whatnot I get this surge of anxiety that they are following
me, they're looking for me. And so that can be hard to deal with. And especially when I am
not taking my medications regularly, this can be a really really difficult one to manage. And sometimes it goes as
far as to be believing that there are helicopters
circling overhead and sometimes it translates
into a hallucination too where I hear and see
helicopters circling overhead too that are looking for me and are working with the
police or whatever to find me, arrest me or bring me to the hospital. The next delusion that
I experienced really quite frequently is one that
we actually did a video on which you can check out
here, my biggest delusion. And it's basically around
the idea of being in a coma. And this comes up when
I'm going to the washroom because I have this irrational belief that I am actually dreaming or so whatnot when I'm
going to the washroom. And in reality, I am laying in a bed in a coma
somewhere, peeing the bed. And it seems ridiculous. It seems silly. I think part of me knows that's irrational but then the another part of me is like that's what they want you to believe. Like it's very, it's very much a spiral a lot of these delusional thoughts. And so, it's hard to deal with this because you're always kind
of in two places at once where you're like, okay this
is what I'm experiencing now but I really believe this other line of thought that is affecting
my experience here. And it's very confusing. My next delusion is
actually what is called thought broadcasting, where I think that other people can hear my thoughts. This started very early in my experience with mental illness where I fully believed that people could hear the
thoughts that I was thinking. And so, you know, I was it was kind of funny cause
I was always very mindful of just trying to think very positive, very complementary thoughts
about people and whatnot because I didn't want
them to like catch me thinking something negative about them or something not very nice because that's not how I
wanted people to perceive me or to, you know, think of me. And so I don't know, maybe it made me a bit of a better person in terms of having more positive thoughts but that was something that I
struggled with for a long time and something that I do
still struggle with every now and then now too. The next delusion I'm going to share with you is very, very embarrassing. So sometimes I have kind
of delusion of grandeur where I believe that
people who are in my life or who I'm interacting
with are attracted to me. And this is embarrassing because I am not a conceited person. I usually don't just automatically assume that other people are attracted to me. I don't believe I'm exceptionally
good looking or anything like that to merit that kind of thought. And people don't really like give me that kind of feedback to believe that. But it's just this kind of warp
train of thought that I fall into sometimes where I'm like, they think I'm attractive. They are attracted to me. And I guess that kind of falls
into the erotomanic delusions to where you think that someone is infatuated with you or something. And so that can kind of play
a difficult role in terms of navigating relationships with people, if I think that they
are secretly, you know, lusting after me or whatever it is. Again, this is very embarrassing 'cause I don't believe
this on a regular basis but every now and then
this comes up as an issue. - [Rob] I'm lusting after you baby. - The next delusion is the
somatic delusion aspect of things where I believe
sometimes that parts of my body or bodily functions or
whatnot are things that only I am experiencing and that I don't believe that anyone else has or experiences. And so this kind of creates an
issue in terms of like shame and embarrassment when bringing
things up with my doctor or with whoever might need
to know, probably my doctor. - [Rob] I just want to
say everybody poops. - And you know, I think a
lot of people have that kind of shame wrapped up into
discussing more sensitive topics or topics that aren't generally talked about very much with their doctor, but it's kind of, it's
just kind of amplified where I believe that I am the only person
who experiences this and it makes me odd or
different in some way. A small example of this
would be that I thought that my body was so
irregular for a long time. I remember looking at myself in the mirror at a dance class once when
I was in like, you know, the leotard and tights and
whatnot when I was young, and I just thought, I
looked like a complete alien because I thought that my
body was so incredibly long and my legs were so incredibly short and I had this kind of
morphed understanding or view of my physical appearance. And so that is one of the ways that the somatic
delusion kind of manifests, but it can also be in terms of internal body functions,
external body functions, it's a wide range of delusional thought. The next delusion I wanna
talk about is kind of one that spirals out of anosognosia. Anosognosia is when you don't have insight into the fact that you have a
mental illness or an illness. And so I kind of spiral into
delusional thought around this that I don't actually have schizophrenia or sometimes the delusional
thinking takes the form of I believe that I'm
faking having schizophrenia because I don't believe that my experience of the
symptoms is really real. And I did a video explaining
this more in depth which you can check out here. My next delusion is
when I make connections that really aren't correlated
or aren't connected in any way with external
stimuli or external occurrences. And so what I mean by this is like I have some sort of thought and then I believe that
that thought precipitates some sort of action in the world. And it's not like, I
think I'm gonna pick up or I think I'm going to pick up that ball and I go and pick up the ball and that's the external action. It's more like, I think
a negative thought. And then there is a hurricane
somewhere, you know, something like that, where I believe that there's a correlation between my thoughts and
external occurrences and this kind of plays out more often in terms of like directly believing that I can will things to happen. So this happens a lot when
we're playing board games where I believe that I can
kind of will a number to come up on a dice or I can will
something to happen in the game. And that's kind of the delusional thinking at its core that my thoughts
are somehow connected to things that are happening in the world around me when really
there is no connection. My next delusion is that
Rob is cheating on me. I'm just kidding. I know he's not, but there have been times
where I knew he was cheating on me and this just kind
of made me really sad. You know, I didn't, it didn't
make me angry or anything. I just got really, really down because it didn't matter what he said to me or what I really in my heart knew. Like we're so codependent, we spend all of our time together. There's no way he could be cheating on me even if he wanted to. - [Rob] I don't want to. - So you know, infidelity
is a common delusion that people have when they're experiencing delusional thought. And so this is something that has come up for me where I in my heart just know, without a shadow of a doubt
that Rob is cheating on me even though when I come outta that thought I know without a shadow of a doubt, that he is not cheating on me Thus, the extreme dilemmas of living with delusional thought. But this is just another example of a frequent delusion
that people may have. And last but not least, this
is probably my biggest delusion in terms of how much it permeates my life. And that is just the idea that we are living in a simulation. And I know this is nothing new. I know that this is something that a lot of people bring up as
a theory and whatnot. But I think I really have a hard time with this one in terms of
spiraling into this thought that we are living in a
simulation, nothing is real. And I think that my illness
kind of plays a role in that in terms of the
constant questioning of my experience of reality and questioning kind of
everyone's experience of reality, if there's a shared reality and just questioning life kind of, and questioning our experience of life. And this idea of living in a simulation kind of helps me make sense
of everything in a way. - [Rob] we're all ponds. - So that's my list of
my top 10 delusions. I think there was 10 there,
but if you also experience some of the delusions that I've listed or if there's other delusions that you experienced frequently I would love to hear from
you in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video
or found it helpful at all please give it a thumbs up. And if you wanna see more videos like this make sure to subscribe. Also, just a quick reminder
that if you wanna help us in creating these videos please check out our Patreon page. Thank you so much again for watching and as always wishing you and
your loved ones good health. We'll see you in the next video, bye.
