As someone who suffers from stress induced psychosis, I feel you. I was told for months that my symptoms were simply anxiety. I told people that I heard whispers when I went to sleep, that I woke up not knowing who I was, that I was beginning to believe that demons were following me or that I was a spirit trapped in a different body that my own, and it was all dismissed.

This narrative that we have his damaging. We draw a line between "acceptable" mental illness and "unacceptable"-- those that experience psychosis are deemed to be extreme or ultimately hopeless, but this is not the case. I am now living quite happily, and though I may eventually have another psychotic episode-- and though sometimes, yes, I do still hear music in the ambient noise of my air conditioner-- I am not broken and neither are you.

Carl Jung, one of the most prominent psychologists of our age, also suffered from psychosis. So did Oliver Sacks, a very prominent neuroscientist. So did many of my relatives, from whom I inherited it, who were very successful parents and academics.

Psychosis is not a black or white diagnosis. Everyone experiences it to some degree, whether it is believing that the government has put a chip in your brain, to believing that the US government is full of paedophilic autocrats. It is not extraordinary, it is a part of the human condition, and it is the fact of believing yourself to be so far removed from "the normal" that can create such pain when psychosis presents itself to whatever degree it may.

You are very brave for making this post. If you are able, and if you can, I would encourage you to continue to spread your message, because it is a very important one.

Those suffering psychosis need help. They should not be shunned, nor demonized-- merely assisted, as one would anyone with anxiety, depression, insomnia, or any other mental illness we have come to accept.

I hope you are doing well. I don't offer this often-- or ever-- but if you ever need someone to lend an ear, I hope you will contact me.