hallucinations are a symptom of bipolar disorder yeah?

[retrowire]

The other night, I felt as if I were a popsicle stick pressing against my teeth.

I could feel the pressure, though I was the stick itself.

This happened while walking on my front porch last night.

What the hell lol

[irisblue]

1. has this happened before?

And when was the last time you & your mental health provider talked? with love irisblue

[retrowire]

2. back when I didnt know I had bipolar disorder

I would have rare grand hallucinations about how the world was opening up and I was being taken to my death. I'd feel immense senses of dread.

Nowadays, I'm medicated. But I just went 3 days without meds and well, symptoms started arising.

I got my meds back again though so... I'm leveling out. I'm having a good day today I think.

And I haven't talked to my doctor since he first prescribed me the meds half a year ago.

[irisblue]

5. check your PM

[retrowire]

8. wow thanks!

I can't wait to use this best buy gift card you PM'd me!

lol jk. But thank you for your words.

[Tobin S.]

3. They can be, but not everyone with the illness has them.

[retrowire]

4. ah great. lol

I wonder how far mine will go. And how far it went for my late father.

[Tobin S.]

6. I have a bipolar disorder and I suffered from hallucinations.

A few of them were visual, but most of them were auditory. I later came to realize that the voices I was hearing were actually my own thoughts that had gotten dissociated somehow and given life in the illusion that they were in my ear. It was actually all in my head. So are other hallucinations. They are a product of your own psyche.

So when you are having these hallucinations, if they return, it might be helpful to remember that it is some part of you that is creating them. The hallucinations and your reaction to them are much more manageable if you have that understanding. Where people run into a lot of trouble is by thinking that these events are somehow external to themselves.

[retrowire]

7. heres the interesting thing

I am aware that the hallucinations are my mind going awry. Sometimes they have been intense to the point that, it's no matter, I'll still feel a sense of dread.

BUT.

Regarding disassociation, I have felt that in regards to my physical body. Like I'm just a passenger in a seat watching my body pilot itself throughout the day. Weird stuff!

[FigTree]

10. Text-book dissociation.

Often develops in the wake of trauma. A thing to keep in mind because traumas can be addressed.

[FigTree]

9. The fact that you recognized them as external

indicates they are not "bona fide" hallucinations. Hallucinations feel as real as a dream can feel. And one is as helpless with these as a dreamer is about the dream.

[Tobin S.]

11. That's the way I saw it before an anti-psychotic hit my brain.

Maybe I wasn't clear in my post.

[FigTree]

12. So you mean that after you started taking medications

you began to experience hallucinations as from within? If that's the case, then, good for you, that does give you a handle on things.
Although I have no research findings to back that up, my clinical experience is that bipolar hallucinations are different from schizophrenic hallucinations. I believe they are mostly an expression of the manic reaction to the depressive pull. That would make them a little less severe than schizophrenic ones, more "workable".

[Tobin S.]

13. Yes, it was the realization that they were from within.

I no longer have hallucinations. The medication really works well for me.