Kevin Nguyen3 said:Hmm, I am double-posting again. My apologies.🙄
But that isn't quite right; I never claimed that the "essence" of psychosis was merely "obsessing over unrealistic things," as you suggested.
Psychosis, in one form or another, is essentially an inability to perceive reality—or perhaps more accurately, a state where the brain can no longer (or struggles significantly to) test what is real? It is a total failure of reality testing.
Everything else that accompanies it? Well, those are just the known symptoms, the inevitable consequences of such a condition.
Take hallucinations, for instance—as mentioned above. When you, or anyone else, hears or senses (a smell, a sight... any sense at all) something that simply does not exist in the physical world.
Or consider paranoia. That deep-seated conviction—that absolute belief—in various persecutions, in the idea that someone is tracking your every move in every possible way.
In short, without listing them all now, there are many such consequences.
Regarding antipsychotics—you are correct there. They nullify all those distortions, which ultimately allows for a much more objective perspective on people, events, and circumstances.
Once you begin thinking this way, you develop a sense of self-confidence; it gives you the agency to express yourself with basic freedom, the right to say something to someone even if they might not want to hear it.
And that state of being? It can persist for a lifetime, providing a foundation that prevents the need for those terrible, recurring periods of regression.
Look, "what is reality" is a philosophy question, not a scientific one. Like, someone could be convinced a demon is out to get them without being psychotic at all. I mean, good luck trying to prove demons don't exist, right?
The actual scientific question is whether that person still possesses freedom of thought.
Because a person in a psychotic state? They don't have that freedom anymore.