Understanding Psychotic Episodes and How to Handle Them
Hi everybody. As most of you could figure, I’m a schizotype, meaning I have schizotypal PD, a psychosis spectrum disorder that is often equated to mild schizophrenia (though they are not the same thing).
On Tumblr I’ve often covered symptoms and characteristics schizotypal personality disorder that aren’t incredibly taboo, like social deficits and how I experience emotions differently. Discussing episodes is bold new territory and while this post is not another meme orchestration this is all pretty important.
What exactly are psychotic episodes?
Episodes are when psy spec individuals involuntarily disconnect from reality. In that moment, we might blow a text someone sent us way out of proportion and send a barrage of text messages in panic. We might think our bosses are mad us and freeze at work. We might see someone suspicious in our retail store and hide in the inventory room. We might misperceive neighbors taking a walk at night to be dangerous and demand people turn off the lights so they don’t see us.
Yeah, that’s what episodes are and how they often affect us. It’s not what you see in 80s horror films. We’re harmless during episodes, but they often have consequences like burning bridges or getting fired because of how confusing and uncomfortable it made the people around us.
Are they preventable?
Episodes are unavoidable, and you can’t plan for them not to happen. What you can do is make everyday lifestyle choices that leave you less psychologically prone to them on a day to day bases.
For me that includes the following:
• 8 hours of sleep
• Eating foods that are legitimately nourishing
• Religiously taking my meds when I need to
• Taking CBD daily. It helps, I’m telling you.
• Being in touch with family/friends throughout the day to keep megrounded in your life and me
• Reflecting on episodes I do have, what caused them, and what I can do to reduce the risk of the same circumstances occurring.
Can people get better and stop experiencing them someday?
Psychosis spectrum disorders are lifelong and incurable. So we live with the risk of episodes for our entire lives. With the right treatment team and lifestyle choices, they might happen less frequently, but they never do go away.
How can I get out of an episode?
Different for everyone. You kind of need to learn on your own, honestly.
How can I help a friend/loved one during an episode?
• If you’re with them, assure them that everything is okay and be comforting. They might not connect with you well, so do your best to be understanding
• If you’re not with them, consider calling them so they can hear your voice. If they don’t answer, leave an assuring voicemail that they can listen to
• If you’re texting, send a selfie or photos of your day to ground them
• Start telling them a story/life experience you had. It’s completely irrelevant to what we’re thinking, but that’s the point. It gives us something to focus our mind on
• Sometimes you really can’t help someone or get them out of it. So it just means being present and calm, may it be over call, text or in person
I hope this helps. I know the schizo spec disorders are not well understood, and I want to do what I can to make a difference in normalizing discussions about psychosis and better understanding it.
