Da5ch
15-09-13, 23:20
This has happened to me before, but basically sometimes I go through periods in my life where I cannot mentally picture something without the visual thought in my mind's eye being obscured by a glowing, hellish-looking haze, generally red-orange but it can also range in colors from dark red to golden-white (although the golden-white "haze" is generally pleasing and comforting to picture, even if it does make my visual thoughts too bright or blurry to be useful,) as if everything in the thought is on fire.
I notice that there are three "areas" where this vision-obscuring fire can "take over" the stuff I try to picture: I either A: see the fiery haze in most of my visual thoughts, B: close my eyes and see my immediate surroundings engulfed in fire, presumably from the mental haze taking over the image of the surrounding environment still in my residual memory (this doesn't happen much at all anymore,) or C: see the fire with my eyes open, briefly seeing everything in front of me flash red with fire for a split second every few seconds, as actual, full-on open-eye hallucinations. Thankfully B and C hardly ever happen anymore, and when they do happen it generally does not last more than a few days.
Another interesting property is it seems like generally the fire only fills a thought that I intend to think...often, if I picture something automatically in my mind's eye with no effort, like when reading, the fire will not be there, and will only fill the mental scene when I think "huh, no fire," thus "willing" the fire back into the image.
I am pretty sure I know what is causing these intrusive hallucinations. I suffer from chronic "stygiophobia" (irrational fear of Hell and damnation, as I am a non-Christian whose primal fears get triggered every time a Christian tries to convert me or threatens me with fire and brimstone, generally making my symptoms worse, so please do NOT try that on me, thanks beforehand,) and I recall that in periods of my life when this fear was more intense, I would literally hallucinate hellfire as well as demons floating around in my peripheral vision. Now it is less severe, but the fire still comes back from time to time.
Finally, I went to see a neurologist, and he said that he thinks my hallucinations could be epileptic in nature (we previously thought they were psychotic, as I am currently on the antipsychotic medication Geodon, which doesn't help nearly enough,) caused by a specific part of my brain where the images are "stored," thus when something triggers it the brain will start producing those images. I got a brain scan done last Friday, and have another one this coming Friday, so hopefully I will eventually get put on meds that can put a stop to these hallucinations once and for all. You have no idea how good it will feel to have much more control over what my visual mind pictures!
I notice that there are three "areas" where this vision-obscuring fire can "take over" the stuff I try to picture: I either A: see the fiery haze in most of my visual thoughts, B: close my eyes and see my immediate surroundings engulfed in fire, presumably from the mental haze taking over the image of the surrounding environment still in my residual memory (this doesn't happen much at all anymore,) or C: see the fire with my eyes open, briefly seeing everything in front of me flash red with fire for a split second every few seconds, as actual, full-on open-eye hallucinations. Thankfully B and C hardly ever happen anymore, and when they do happen it generally does not last more than a few days.
Another interesting property is it seems like generally the fire only fills a thought that I intend to think...often, if I picture something automatically in my mind's eye with no effort, like when reading, the fire will not be there, and will only fill the mental scene when I think "huh, no fire," thus "willing" the fire back into the image.
I am pretty sure I know what is causing these intrusive hallucinations. I suffer from chronic "stygiophobia" (irrational fear of Hell and damnation, as I am a non-Christian whose primal fears get triggered every time a Christian tries to convert me or threatens me with fire and brimstone, generally making my symptoms worse, so please do NOT try that on me, thanks beforehand,) and I recall that in periods of my life when this fear was more intense, I would literally hallucinate hellfire as well as demons floating around in my peripheral vision. Now it is less severe, but the fire still comes back from time to time.
Finally, I went to see a neurologist, and he said that he thinks my hallucinations could be epileptic in nature (we previously thought they were psychotic, as I am currently on the antipsychotic medication Geodon, which doesn't help nearly enough,) caused by a specific part of my brain where the images are "stored," thus when something triggers it the brain will start producing those images. I got a brain scan done last Friday, and have another one this coming Friday, so hopefully I will eventually get put on meds that can put a stop to these hallucinations once and for all. You have no idea how good it will feel to have much more control over what my visual mind pictures!