I just spent like an hour answering an ask about schizophrenia and psychosis and how to tell the difference between spirit contact and hallucinations and it got fucking blasted into the shadow realm and idk where it went Im so mad.
Psychosis is a symptom, not a disorder itself
Schizophrenia is a specific psychotic disorder with a specific diagnostic criteria, there are nuances between Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective for example
Psychosis can occur without schizophrenia, and can occur in other conditions like Bipolar, or in substance abuse
Paranoia and delusion are common features of psychosis. These are delusions derived from mundane and meaningless occurrences that produce extreme paranoia or destructive behaviours.
Flattening affect, disorganized thoughts, derealization and dissociation, along with disinterest in anything not pertaining to the delusion are also frequently occurring in psychotic disorders.
Delusions can be fantastical or grandiose rather than paranoid, but these delusions still tend to lead to disorganized behaviour
Hallucinations can take many forms, audio hallucinations are more prevalent than visual ones.
Superstitious beliefs and benign positive affirmations are not inherently psychotic when other dysfunctional traits are absent.
There is no real factual way to distinguish what we call "clair-audience" from auditory hallucination in essence. Especially in regard to channeling, altered states, trance work, and deity work, it is sometimes implied that the spirit is going to be giving you hallucinations. These visualizations do not happen in the material world, the spirit is working with your mental interface to communicate meanings, understandings, significance, and energy to you.
Therefore, these are some ways to reliably tell if your hallucinations are mystical in nature, or psychological in nature.
1. The presence is involuntary and non compliant-- Even people who have positive hallucinations may still have them at inconvenient times. Spirits are largely subject to the law of the craft, they are vulnerable to banishments and tend not to spontaneously just manifest. If I told Lucifer to go away, he wouldn't keep talking. He doesn't just bust in and start singing loudly when I'm trying to work, if I take a spiritual break from my craft, spirits don't continue to pester me. When I want to talk to Lucifer, I have to put conscious effort and focus into it.
2. Energetic signature and understanding-- Lucifer's energy always feels like Lucifer, and his messages carry his signature. But asides from that, conversations with Lucifer work unlike mundane thoughts or conversations with other people. It is less like a conversation being held over time, but rather like downloading direct information. I will suddenly understand a 30 minute conversation in a single moment and achieve some understanding I could not have met alone. A lot of the time I don't "hear" Lucifer's voice, I more so just feel him as a sort of memory. If you know you know.
3. Am I okay? Am I tending to my needs, eating, sleeping? Am I withdrawing from others? When was the last time I showered? Am I taking care of myself? If the answer is no, these mundane things need to be addressed before anything spiritual can occur.
4. Does this presence make me feel safe? Do they give me good advice, or do they lead me into lines of thinking that I recognize as being far fetched? Do they make inappropriate comments about my body that make me feel bad? Do they violate my boundaries? Spiritual parasites can cause mental illness. This doesn't mean to say all mental illness are spiritually informed, it only means that protecting your mental health will also protect you from spiritual adversaries.
5. Can I tell the difference between my waking experiences and the astral dimension? I am also a person that dabbles often with astral projection and trance work. But my experiences with Lucifer are always understood to be astral, different than the waking material world I live in. I'm never confused as to if something I did with Lucifer was as physically real as something I did with my boyfriend. They are both real in my soul, bit I am still always able to distinguish between the two planes of reality. My sense of time is still intact, I'm never confused as to if I spent Tuesday here on earth or in some magical forest with Lucifer.
6. Am I always able to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism? I am theistic, I believe in these spirits as a literal reality. But I am also able to recognize that a burning candle may be making me feel really bad, not because there's an evil spirit in the house, but because I've been burning incense all day and my room is extremely smoky. Those could be angel numbers telling you to quit your job and start mining bitcoin. It could also just be 3:33pm. If everything MUST be your deity all the time, it may be time to take a break. Recognizing signs is great, but recognizing when things are not signs is even better. Discernment is your life line.
7. Is this presence enriching your life or taking away from it? On the complete opposite end of the spectrum in the way of fantasies rather than paranoia, my relationship and experiences with Lucifer never feel "better" than my waking ones. I don't wish I was spending my time with Lucifer rather than my friends and family. I don't wish to one day fly away with him and abandon my normal life. Lucifer has helped me improve my life and circumstances so I can live life to the fullest. He encourages me to have good relationships and cherish my time. He does not encourage me to stay inside and fantasize about a world where everything is perfect. My astral experiences exist as additions to my waking life, not a substitute of it.
The most important thing to remember is that these things are not mutually exclusive. A person with bipolar can experience hallucinations and also be a practitioner. Someone can work with spirits and have a dissociative identity disorder. What is the most important above all else is being able to distinguish between pathological hallucinations and productive mystical ones.
Someone could have hallucinations of spiders often and understand that as a hallucination. That same person could also be a god spouse and completely understand the difference between their frequent hallucinations and their conversations with their spouse.
I loathe the mentality that acts like hallucinations are an immediate game over in terms of spirituality and that people with neurodivergencies are banned from participating in spirituality, because these people are in fact among the most primed for it. What is most important is staying vigilant of one's mental health and practicing both mental and spiritual hygiene.
