Experiencing Psychosis: Insight into Hallucinations and Related Symptoms

Experiencing Psychosis: Exploring Hallucinations and Other Symptoms

Rachel Star Withers, a remarkable individual living with schizophrenia, shares her experiences with psychosis and its impact on her life.

Throughout her life, Rachel has experienced hallucinations since childhood. These hallucinations range from hearing voices that seem to emanate from another room or inside the walls, to seeing distorted images in reflections such as mirrors, store windows, and carpets. One particularly unsettling incident involved her arm feeling as if it were slithering away like a snake.

Psychosis, a symptom often associated with dopamine dysfunction in the brain, can be a confusing and distorted experience. For Rachel, psychotic episodes can be triggered by white noise and can last only a few days. During these episodes, she may lose the perception of her body parts, and her thought processes can become completely confused.

Rachel distinguishes between everyday symptoms of psychosis and complete episodes, during which symptoms totally take over. In complete episodes, she describes feeling "far away." This sensation is accompanied by a constant ticking sound that seems to come from the walls or another room.

Despite these challenges, Rachel is able to recognise the early signs of an episode. One of these indicators is when she starts thinking in third person. She has learned to manage her condition, and her visual hallucinations, which are her most persistent feature, occur about 90% of the time.

It's important to note that psychosis is a symptom of several conditions, not just schizophrenia. These conditions include bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, major depression, delusional disorder, and more. It can also be caused by drug or alcohol use, head injuries, infections, brain diseases like Huntington's or Parkinson's disease, brain tumours or cysts, dementia such as in Alzheimer's disease, severe stress, anxiety, or lack of sleep.

Unfortunately, entertainment and news media often present a dramatic and distorted picture of psychosis, emphasising criminal activity and unpredictability. Rachel's story serves as a reminder that individuals living with psychosis are not defined by their condition, but by their resilience and strength in navigating their unique experiences.

Despite the lack of available search results providing information on Rachel's background, work as an entertainer, speaker, video producer, and co-host of the "Inside Schizophrenia" podcast, or details about her schizophrenia condition, her story offers a valuable insight into the lived experiences of those affected by psychosis.