Understanding Delusions

One of my false beliefs was that secret agents were spying on me because I created a revolution through music.  A college disc jockey, I spun records "left of the dial," so this delusion wasn't a stretch.  On the night I had my break, two dark figures were looking out the window of the house in back of ours, and I could see them from my window and thought they were looking at me.  This magnification of my importance in the scheme of things was perhaps telling because my grandpa was in a coma and I was powerless to bring him back to life.  I was also conducting a job search, as I had graduated college, and one recruiter was frosty to me and said, "An employer will take one look at your resume and think you're a punk rocker."

Milt Greek's wisdom, acquired from years of living with schizophrenia, resonated with me.  In his talk, he mirrored the insight of everyone I know in the field: when we choose to take meds, we can have friends, marry and do other things and have a satisfying life.  He feels his psychotic journey helped him become his best self.  We are all the better for what he went through because he is able to speak with clarity about what it's like to be a person in psychosis.  This has implications for treatment.  The audience was mostly family members who were eager to understand and make sense of what was going on in their loved one's heads.