braveheart
Member
I feel all the time, from one part of my mind, that anyone behind me is following me and is going to hurt me. I feel constantly under threat. Although I know in my rational mind that I'm not. Not any more. But the world still feels a hostile place. Apart from a number of 'safe' people in my life.
When I was a teenager, well, every day for nearly 10 years, I was constantly under attack and threat through bullying. They would follow me everywhere, throw things at me [including a wooden chair one maths lesson when I was 16], chase me, laugh at me, call me names, flick ink over me, thump a chalky board rubber on my back, hide my possessions... This was every day. I am not exaggerating. And it was a gang of 20 plus girls. All in my year.
Then we have my home situation. A paranoid father who had resentment against women. A depressed father who was constantly irritable and hostile and scared of the world and of other people. A father who threatened regularly to have me put in a home for bad children, put in a strait jacket, make me sleep in the shed. And also abused my mother. Domestic violence. Which I was a witness of. Threats from mum to take me to a refuge. But this, like my father's unsafe threats, was never carried out. So I felt very insecure, unsafe and under threat.
Except that I dissociated back then, and only now, as I'm learning how to feel and feel safe with all the feelings that were discouraged and attacked, I am feeling the threat in the present. Where it isn't really there.
I understand that this is a form of paranoia, but related to PTSD and hyper-vigilance. I have tried to read articles on the connection between PTSD and psychosis, as it seems there is a connection, but they are all ones you have to subscribe to to read.
My reading points to the possibility of my having what are known as 'secondary delusions'.
I know diagnosis can't be done online, but would you say that I was suffering from psychosis?
When I was a teenager, well, every day for nearly 10 years, I was constantly under attack and threat through bullying. They would follow me everywhere, throw things at me [including a wooden chair one maths lesson when I was 16], chase me, laugh at me, call me names, flick ink over me, thump a chalky board rubber on my back, hide my possessions... This was every day. I am not exaggerating. And it was a gang of 20 plus girls. All in my year.
Then we have my home situation. A paranoid father who had resentment against women. A depressed father who was constantly irritable and hostile and scared of the world and of other people. A father who threatened regularly to have me put in a home for bad children, put in a strait jacket, make me sleep in the shed. And also abused my mother. Domestic violence. Which I was a witness of. Threats from mum to take me to a refuge. But this, like my father's unsafe threats, was never carried out. So I felt very insecure, unsafe and under threat.
Except that I dissociated back then, and only now, as I'm learning how to feel and feel safe with all the feelings that were discouraged and attacked, I am feeling the threat in the present. Where it isn't really there.
I understand that this is a form of paranoia, but related to PTSD and hyper-vigilance. I have tried to read articles on the connection between PTSD and psychosis, as it seems there is a connection, but they are all ones you have to subscribe to to read.
My reading points to the possibility of my having what are known as 'secondary delusions'.
I know diagnosis can't be done online, but would you say that I was suffering from psychosis?
