Schizophrenia Symptoms: Imagining Alien Intervention

Alongside delusions of grandeur, paranoia, and hallucinations, the mind can play some weird tricks on you when you live with schizophrenia. You can start to believe things that aren’t true, and this usually comes by way of making connections between things that are innocuous on their own. The best way I can describe this is to say that because you’re paranoid, you may begin to believe things that are outside the scope of everyday reality. Take, for example, conspiracy theories. Because you’ve witnessed a supposed connection in something, your mind will leap to an even more obscure and skewed view of reality and so on until you believe that aliens have already come to earth and have infiltrated the democratic system. 

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I can remember a time when I would pour through Wikipedia pages about strange occurrences, noting the connections between each one. I would read for hours about information on sacred geometry, evidence of aliens coming to earth in ancient civilizations, and information on astrology and star signs as I slowly came to some skewed conclusion about all this stuff that seemed to tie everything together. I am at a loss for the exact perimeters of the conclusion I came to, but it was something about alien factions that were warring against each other, and Earth was caught in the scuffle. Further that nations on Earth were divided in their support for the different factions. I had the notion that if I could just spread the idea of balance between light and dark to the world I’d save humanity from devastation. Clearly this was delusional thinking, though at the time it seemed perfectly rational given the strangeness with which I perceived the world. 

I’ve talked before about my trip to the U.N.. This delusional thinking was the direct cause of that and, though I was still somewhat lucid, I couldn’t let these realizations or thoughts go; I couldn’t stop the paranoia and the delusions from coming no matter how much I tried. I didn’t want any of it, and I think that that’s why I’ve been so successful in recovery. I always had an inkling that I was having problems no matter how much I wanted to believe the things my mind was telling me. 

The point of this all is to say that these connections you make, if you are making them, are a function of the illness. They are not based in reality, no matter how much you want to believe that they are. They are delusions; they are a result of the connections you make amidst the paranoia and the strange thinking. It’s easy to make these connections, too, because in the moment your mind is going so fast that it holds onto everything it can get its hands on, and when you are well, or on meds. The peace of your thought processes is something that is disconcerting. You feel like you’re stupid, but you slowly grow accustomed to that feeling and realize you can still do the things you enjoy. You can still write and make art and, while it may be different, it’s still there for you to use if you need it. 

Aliens don’t exist as far as I know, and if they do they haven’t yet come to earth no matter what faux-science documentaries may have you believe. Separating your delusions from the basis of reality is a long process, and you have to be able to hold on to that basis of reality that you have found. If nothing else, just know you’re not alone in this and you’re allowed all the time you need to get better. 

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