Alternative Realities

Recently, having had some trouble with mania, I wrote a post saying I had to take some time off from blogging. People on WordPress were so understanding and supportive! You guys were great! Things were heading in a wrong direction but nowhere near where I was long ago…

II am reposting and editing an old post found by a fellow Wordress blogger, Ronny, on “Ronnie’s Blog.” It is very humbling to look back but also interesting in terms of the nature of reality.

Not long ago, I was being prepped for a surgery and the surgeon asked me about the medications I take. When asked why I took Thiothixene, an anti-psychotic, I told him that I was Bipolar. He said, “I think we are all Bipolar.” Maybe it was an effort to relate to me but it hit me in a “sore spot.” Everyone has moods, it is true, but being Bipolar is not just being “moody.” If we who are Bipolar have to endure the stigma of mental illness, at least allow that it is different from being “normal,” and not just some self-indulgent form of self-pity. What is Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar Disorder is a major, Axis 1, mental illness characterized by extreme highs and lows. It is a risky mental illness diagnoses because people can die from it. They suicide during a low. In Bipolar 1, the sufferer can become manic and, while manic, and even while depressed, can become psychotic. Normal people do not become psychotic except perhaps, in their dreams. Being psychotic means a major break with reality. It means entering another world that most don’t even know exists. So, no, to that surgeon, we are NOT all Bipolar.

And, yes, people have fractured views of reality.  But some views are more fractured than others.  There is another “reality” in psychosis.  What interests me is that different people who are psychotic have similar experiences, making me question the reality that we call consensual but also the one called psychotic. When I had my one and only breakdown in my 20’s, before I was properly medicated, I entered some other reality. 

In that other reality, the TV and radio gave you messages directly relevant to your life– so relevant that one began to think there was some mind-monitoring device in your TV or radio.  And the AC had a microphone that allowed you to talk to the world outside one’s window, to the people in the street, and you could play as they responded to your silly commands.  When one had the nerve to venture outside of one’s apartment, a cacaphony of  voices of people in the street told you positive or negative things.  People (I thought of them as teachers and/or psychics) did not come up to you and speak directly to you for they knew you could not handle that.  Rather they spoke loudly to one another about your behavior so you couldn’t help but overhear.  If they were pleased with your behavior at the time, the comments were your reward for “getting well.”  And it was glorious. If they are displeased, criticism came from everywhere.  Then there is nowhere to hide the shame you felt because negative feedback was coming at you from every direction.  Then life became a hell that did not disappear when you got back home, because you could still hear voices next door or in the street.  That was just one down side of this other “reality.”  Everything had self-referential meaning. I never heard actual voices– it was either hearing voices that are the normal internal monologue gone haywire so you thought it is someone else, or you were one step away from that because the voices you heard were actually real, saying real things, but not to you although you could find special personal meaning in them. There was no safe place.  No escape. No privacy.  I was working in a library at Columbia University and living alone in an apartment in New York City at the time.  How much worse would it be living in a shelter, hospital, prison or, worse, on the street where one is overwhelmed with every kind of stimuli possible!

Synchronicity was everywhere. SometImes the lessons were religious in nature. This was perhaps a lower form of altered consciousness. Life alternated between heaven and hell.  One wonders if there was some divine intervention in these states because of the ubiquitousness of synchronicity.  Was this a fractured peek at what Hindus call Maya?

My life is very different now. I have a husband I adore. I often lament to him now that I cannot see the world as a dream or Maya as spiritual writers describe and I feel so utterly unspiritual.  And yet, now many, many years ago, I lived in another reality.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12. Not what St. Paul meant but it works.

Only now can I see a little hint that “reality” IS some sort of a consensual dream that appears on our retinas and ear drums and that our mind interprets in a similar fashion… or so we think.

For sure there are different realities. But I am striving towards a higher form of consciousness and have little time left in which to do it. In looking back over the post that Ronnie “liked,” I am VERY grateful to have survived thus far out of the hell I was once in. I got help and medication. And God sent me a wonderful husband who eventually became a psychiatric social worker. I thank God for bringing him into my life. And for giving me access to the common reality in which most people dwell… but also glimpses into other realities and levels of life… and perhaps a schematic feeling for Maya.

This entry was posted on September 8, 2023. It was filed under Abstract Photography, Bipolar Disorder, Depression and Mania and was tagged with Bipolar 1, Bipolar Disorder, Fragmented reality, Hearing voices, Maya, Mental illness, Mental illness advocacy, Psychosis, Reality, Stigma, Stigma of mental illness, Synchronicity. Edit.

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September 7, 2023 | Categories: Abstract Photography, Bipolar Disorder, Depression and Mania, Maya | Tags: Bipolar 1, Bipolar Disorder, Fragmented reality, Hearing voices, Maya, Mental illness, Mental illness advocacy, Psychosis, Reality, Stigma, Stigma of mental illness, Synchronicity | 30 Comments