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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 6 of 6. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by GLYN on October 18, 2000, at 19:09:20
Since I have been suffering from anxiety and taking citalopram I have occasionaly had blurring of vision and objects do sometimes appear a little hazy or seem to even vibrate ever so slightly. Its happens when I am in a panic usually. IS this an hallucination and does it indictae something more than anxiety or is this an affect of the medication or even just adrenelin. Do psychotics actualy see whole things as real as life when they dont exist in such as a way as they would swaer they really are there or is it similar to my experiences?
Also, I sometimes get terrified I'm going crazy or even worry about silly things to an amazing extent - is this a dellusion? OR is a dellusion a complete and total conviction of something unreasonable by contemptorary standars and to what extent are cultural beleifs taken into account by the medical profession? I once knew a Christina who was convinced that demons were everywhere - this is normal for some types of CHristians and is what is taught in some churches so is this a dellusion or is it just a sub-cultural belief that is "normal" for those within that environment?
What I really mean by the last point is what is realty anyway? How can we say that we have lost touch with realty when realty is experienced so differently by different groups of people. If a person beleives something or sees a thing which others do not is this just a mark of their individuality and their own subjective perceptions of a world in which few of us agree on much.
I have both a personal and academic interest in this.
Posted by stjames on October 18, 2000, at 21:02:38
In reply to What are hallucinations?, posted by GLYN on October 18, 2000, at 19:09:20
> Since I have been suffering from anxiety and taking citalopram I have occasionaly had blurring of vision and objects do sometimes appear a little hazy or seem to even vibrate ever so slightly. Its happens when I am in a panic usually. IS this an hallucination and
James here....
No. hallucinations are things that are not there
that you hear, feel, smell, taste, or see. What you are having is not that uncommon in panic.james
Posted by R.Anne on October 18, 2000, at 22:14:43
In reply to What are hallucinations?, posted by GLYN on October 18, 2000, at 19:09:20
> Since I have been suffering from anxiety and taking citalopram I have occasionaly had blurring of vision and objects do sometimes appear a little hazy or seem to even vibrate ever so slightly. Its happens when I am in a panic usually. IS this an hallucination and does it indictae something more than anxiety or is this an affect of the medication or even just adrenelin. Do psychotics actualy see whole things as real as life when they dont exist in such as a way as they would swaer they really are there or is it similar to my experiences?
>
> Also, I sometimes get terrified I'm going crazy or even worry about silly things to an amazing extent - is this a dellusion?***
That sounds like obsessing and not a dellusion.
***OR is a dellusion a complete and total conviction of something unreasonable by contemptorary standars and to what extent are cultural beleifs taken into account by the medical profession?
***
I think that cultural beliefs are woven into some mental problems. In different cultures hallucinations and delusions can take forms that fit within the specific culture. For example, someone who is Christian may have hallucinations that he or she sees Jesus Christ while someone who is Muslim may see Ala (not sure of the spelling). I believe that the delusions would work the same way. I believe the medical community has knowledge of this.
+++I once knew a Christina who was convinced that demons were everywhere - this is normal for some types of CHristians
and is what is taught in some churches so is this a dellusion or is it just a sub-cultural belief that is "normal" for those within that environment?
***
I believe that it depends on the context. If the person saw actual demons that is not normal. If they perceived evilness as demons as in a metaphorical sense that can be more normal.
***>
> What I really mean by the last point is what is realty anyway? How can we say that we have lost touch with realty when realty is experienced so differently by different groups of people. If a person beleives something or sees a thing which others do not is this just a mark of their individuality and their own subjective perceptions of a world in which few of us agree on much.
>
> I have both a personal and academic interest in this.
***
Very interesting topic. I'm sure that illnesses or abnormalty (based on what is not the norm with most)do take on a subjective form based somewhat on the history of the person. I've heard that some dismiss it as nonsensical because they don't know how to make sense of it. But I know there are others who try to make sense of it, too. The difficult part is that when someone is hallucinating they have a hard time distinguishing it from reality and it is difficult to communicate with them and vise-versa. I'm sure there are some who have a talent to deal with such things. Those are my thoughts and I believe there is more information out there on it.
Posted by danf on October 19, 2000, at 12:49:50
In reply to Re: What are hallucinations?, posted by R.Anne on October 18, 2000, at 22:14:43
Hallucinations are errors in perception. You can hallucinate any sensory experience. They are false & do not exist.
feel bugs crawing on you that are not there. smell food cooking or 'evil' odors. you hear voices talking to you. you see things that are not there, like devils or angels or snakes, etc.
Delusions are errors of thought. You do not detect the things by your senses, but think about them. You think you are rich. You think you are god or the devil or an angel, etc. You think other people are out to do you harm, etc.
There is very little cultural adjustment needed to validate or determine either. Language differences makes for much more difficulty in evaluating both, than does cultural differences.
Many people with psychosis have both, a jumbled distorted thought pattern & a percection of things that are not there.
Posted by noa on October 19, 2000, at 16:17:03
In reply to Re: What are hallucinations?, posted by danf on October 19, 2000, at 12:49:50
Visual hallucinations in psychosis are relatively rare. Most common are auditory hallucinations.
What you are describing did not sound very much like psychotic hallucinations. But it definitely brought several things to mind (not in any particular order):
- visual trails -- a side effect of some meds
- panic symptoms
- possible siezure-like symptoms
- possible migraine-associated symptoms
My associations to these 4 things is not based on any particular knowledge, it is just based on stuff I have read here at babble over the past 15 months.
Posted by bill marin on October 21, 2000, at 9:07:32
In reply to What are hallucinations?, posted by GLYN on October 18, 2000, at 19:09:20
To me, your visual distortions sound more physiological than purely psychological. IMO, changes in blood pressure, body chemistry, etc, can probably explain the sorts of visual effects you're describing.
Otherwise, the thought-process displayed by your post reminds me of my own when I'm having a panic attack. I've heard that panic attacks usually reflect anxiety about physical phenomenon such as fainting, heart attacks, seizures -- but mine have always been extremely existential, and the personal always bleeds over into the social/universal . . . what they have in common with the more typical attacks (as I understand them) is that they center around a fear of losing a "grip" on something that "grounds" me existentially (and this can take the form of: what I believe I have a grip on is really fluid or doesn't exist at all, hence my grip is illusory). Reality is a good example. Here's an abbreviate way of the way it works for me sometimes: if reality is ultimately subjective, then I really, ultimately, have nothing significant in common with anyone else . . . if I have nothing significant in common with anyone else and yet I live in the world with others, then who I am on a day-to-day basis must be an illusion . . . and since the very ways in which I understand what it means to be a human being, a person, have been inhereted from the culture around me, I must not understand or know myself at all. So who am I? Suddenly my very sense of identity and its existence in any world at all seems to have had the rug pulled out from underneath -- and with a few more applications of such logic, I'm in a full-blown panic attack, convinced that "who I am" no longer exists and that I must be going crazy. In fact, just typing out those words raised my blood pressure significantly . . .
As for the *academic* side of your question, you raise the age-old philosophical question of solopsism and the problem of others (I could dreaming all of this, so how do I know that other people are not just figments of my imagination?). In the 20th Century, the very grounds of this dilemma were throughly debunked, refuted, and demonstrated to be the effects of utterly nonsensical (but extraordinarily subtle) confusions (Wittgenstein, IMO, did the best job of this). Again, I'm just speaking academically (if anyone out there *really* believes reality is ultimately subjective, no academic argument is going to stand in the way, just as no academic argument is capable of making an athiest out of a believer). Personally speaking, though, it comforts me to remind myself of the conclusions of those academic demonstrations. :)
Best of wishes,
Bill> Since I have been suffering from anxiety and taking citalopram I have occasionaly had blurring of vision and objects do sometimes appear a little hazy or seem to even vibrate ever so slightly. Its happens when I am in a panic usually. IS this an hallucination and does it indictae something more than anxiety or is this an affect of the medication or even just adrenelin. Do psychotics actualy see whole things as real as life when they dont exist in such as a way as they would swaer they really are there or is it similar to my experiences?
>
> Also, I sometimes get terrified I'm going crazy or even worry about silly things to an amazing extent - is this a dellusion? OR is a dellusion a complete and total conviction of something unreasonable by contemptorary standars and to what extent are cultural beleifs taken into account by the medical profession? I once knew a Christina who was convinced that demons were everywhere - this is normal for some types of CHristians and is what is taught in some churches so is this a dellusion or is it just a sub-cultural belief that is "normal" for those within that environment?
>
> What I really mean by the last point is what is realty anyway? How can we say that we have lost touch with realty when realty is experienced so differently by different groups of people. If a person beleives something or sees a thing which others do not is this just a mark of their individuality and their own subjective perceptions of a world in which few of us agree on much.
>
> I have both a personal and academic interest in this.
This is the end of the thread.
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