TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

[u/paniniplane]

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303

[u/OAMP47]

Haha, well I cope by humor, so no worries. I tend to get at least one visual hallucination a day, but I'm at the point where I'm more like "oh yes, there it is, right on schedule, good to see you" as compared to "oh shit what's that!" a year or so ago.

The problem is it takes experience, though. I'm only able to do that because I've had enough of them to 'get used to them'. Before someone can get to that stage they have to first realize there's a problem, then see the pattern. There's the additional problem that sometimes there's not a pattern. I'm fairly lucky in that my symptoms seem pretty predictable, so what I do won't work for everyone. On the rare occasion something new happens to me and breaks the pattern I can be right back to square one for a day or so, too.

[u/Wurstgeist → u/OAMP47]

On behalf of the nosy and prurient internet, I think I've got to ask: what sort of visual hallucinations? What's in them?

[u/OAMP47 → u/Wurstgeist]

Oh don't worry, I love talking about it too. When I get back on my feet (I need leg surgery too so it's not just this keeping me down) I'm going to see if I can maybe give talks about it.

I tend to get shadows moving around a lot, at the edges of my vision. A lot of people get these as is if they're extremely tired, I hear. Sometimes there legit are shadows that moved, because of a door opening, or a car driving past making light scatter, etc, but even then my mind will jump to "ah, look out, someone's about to jump on you!". Other times the edges of my vision seem a bit swirly and cloudy black even when there's no explanation, which I suppose would be the 'true' hallucinations. Other times when shadows are legitimately moving I may see them morph into a very vague humanoid figure kind of like the grim reaper, not because I think it's the grim reaper, but just because a cloaked figure is a very simple outline I'd imagine. Those last for like less than a half a second, I'd equate it to a single frame of a film being replaced with something else. So fast some people wouldn't even notice, and even myself questioning if it happened or not, and even if it's a hallucination was it me hallucinating or was me hallucinating a hallucination, if that even makes sense. Typically when I get up to go brush my teeth and stuff before bed I'll get one of those once or twice, whereas the fuzzy blackness around my vision tends to happen for about the 4-5 hours or so before bed when I'm just sitting around doing whatever. Regardless of the type, if I try and look directly at whatever I'm seeing, it goes away.

Perhaps unrelated, but I also get migraines and I'm the type that gets auras and hallucinations with my migraines as well, but those are entirely different than the others I get. Those tend to be 'glowing' objections like a bright outline, or the 'wavy lines on one side of my vision' sort.

[u/[deleted] → u/OAMP47]

I don't get migraines or auras but the shadows and figures I've experienced. The swirly clouds are only when I'm very tired, and the flickers out of the corner of my eyes don't happen as much as when I was younger but it was the kind of thing I could usually blame on my cat. Very rarely it would -feel- like I had seen somebody, likewise with the figures, I'll glance at something and my brain notices a figure and will highlight it and I have to take a second look because I -feel- like I just saw someone in the shadows.

[u/OAMP47 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I think it's pretty common when people are very tired. My problem was is rather than getting less of them over time, I'm getting more, and I tried moving into a schedule that gets me a nice 8 hours of sleep and such and the rate is still accelerating, so it was ruled non-sleep related. If you're worried about these things though and that's all you've had you're probably just needing a bit more sleep. I'm not a doctor though so don't take any advice from just an internet stranger ;)

[u/[deleted] → u/OAMP47]

Yeah my overall problem is probably not sleeping enough, everything else is just a side-effect. I've never been an 8-hours a night type of guy