I tried to get a psychosis — and I succeeded.

It took me 15 to 20 years to get there.

From a young age, I’ve had a strange obsession with everything related to psychology. I was curious whether I could push my body into as many different “states” as possible — extremely unhealthy, extremely healthy, suppressing emotions, using substances, being introverted, extroverted, etc.

What follows really happened.

To be clear: it’s not like I used some trick and was secretly still myself while I was in a psychosis. I was completely gone. At one point, my brother had to pick me up off the street. Later, I was taken from home in a van because I was no longer able to take care of myself.

That was three years ago. Three years ago, I decided to start making extremely sensible choices again. Given the fact that I now have an expensive apartment of my own, a good job, and healthy relationships with the people around me, I can say the experiment succeeded.

Finding my way back up was definitely not easy.

 

How you end up in a psychosis

Falling into a psychosis is difficult, because so many different things have to come together at the same time. For me, these were the main factors:

• Suppressing my own voice. I grew up in a home where I often had to stay quiet and no one really listened to me. If you want to say something 50 times a day and you swallow your words every time, after 15 years that adds up to about 273,750 times. Your body builds up a massive amount of tension — and it has nowhere to release it.

• Suppressing emotions. When you suppress your emotions several times a day and never let them out, that tension also builds up. It’s like wanting to cry or feel terrible but no longer being able to. Your reality turns “grey,” and you stop feeling anything at all. The same happens when you suppress painful experiences.

• Suppressing sexuality. If you have a strong sexuality, pushing it down constantly also drains a huge amount of energy.

That was the foundation. The problem is: none of this is visible to others. No doctor can see that you’ve been swallowing your words all day. Especially because you only end up at the doctor when you’re already dealing with depression or an anxiety disorder — that’s the end of the line.

 

How this plays out in real life

You feel a little worse every year. And because you never address the underlying problem, you eventually end up with a psychologist. Over time, you also start using substances, because you already feel terrible — at least they make you feel better for a moment. But in the long run, of course, that doesn’t work either: things just keep getting worse, step by step.

Then the diagnoses start coming in. This was my list:

• ADHD

• Autism

• Generalized anxiety disorder (you don’t just develop that overnight)

• Depression (also takes years to grow into)

• And finally: psychosis

You end up taking a pile of medication that doesn’t help. (For some people it probably does — I’m not a doctor, just someone with firsthand experience.)

By the time you hit psychosis, you’ve got a real problem, because your body is in terrible shape. You have no idea what you’re doing anymore. You think you’re still who you used to be, and that nothing major is going on — but the people around you look at you like you’re a fallen version of yourself. Your memory stops working. You get reckless, because you don’t feel anything anymore. You can’t solve even the simplest problems, not because you’re incapable, but because you’re completely out of shape. You start thinking things are too hard for you, or you get angry that you can’t do them — but that’s not the truth. You’re just temporarily out of form.

From that point on, it gets really hard. Now you have to find your way back up on pure willpower and self-belief.

You think back to who you used to be. How did it get this far? You think: I feel terrible, but I’ll give it one more chance. And then you get to work. That was three years ago.

Only now am I back at the level I used to be. So don’t expect that after a buildup of 15 to 20 years, you’ll get out of a psychosis or depression in a day.

Take yourself seriously. Take your own feelings seriously. Take your health seriously. It is very tempting to make yourself small. It is very tempting to say things like: “I’m never afraid” or “I can handle this, I have endless stamina.” You are capable of more than you think, but take your feelings seriously.

Depressie is een staat van je hele lichaam

Als je die staat een naam geeft (depressie), dan moet je de staat waar je nu in zit ook een naam geven,.

Snappie? Maar dat doen we niet. We pakken er een paar willekeurig uit, wat het heel verwarrend maakt.

Dat kan toch geen toeval zijn?

Ik werk in een sector waar traditioneel weinig verandert (juridisch).
Een van de grootste valkuilen van deze sector is dat de mensen die er werken nooit anders naar hetzelfde kunnen kijken. Ze kunnen maar op één manier kijken en reageren.

Ik heb het vermoeden dat dit ook geldt in de medische sector. Doordat je alles al zo lang op dezelfde manier doet, is het moeilijk om anders naar hetzelfde te kijken.

 

Een psychose is een staat van het hele lichaam, niet alleen van het brein
Je hele lichaam zit in een psychose. Je brein is een onderdeel van je lichaam, en is dus ook in een slechte staat. Maar een psychose is geen ‘hersending’.

Sterker nog: het kostte mij een jaar of tien, twintig om in een psychose te komen. Wat ik ervoor moest doen? Mezelf niet uitspreken. Seksuele gevoelens wegdrukken. Emoties onderdrukken of verdoven.

Aan een psychose liggen jaren en honderden miljoenen keuzes en situaties ten grondslag. Wij als samenleving focussen ons veel te veel op wat zichtbaar is. Bijvoorbeeld:
• Psychose
• Depressie
• Angst
Maar dat zijn punten aan het einde van een lange lijn met beslissingen.

Ik nam drie jaar lang alleen maar andere beslissingen. Gezonde beslissingen. En nu heb ik geen psychose meer. Dat kan toch geen toeval zijn?

That can’t possibly be a coincidence

I work in a sector where traditionally very little changes (legal).
One of the biggest pitfalls of this sector is that the people who work in it are never able to look at the same thing differently. They can only look and respond in one way.

I suspect that this also applies to the medical sector. Because you’ve been doing everything the same way for so long, it becomes difficult to see the same thing differently.

 

A psychosis is a state of the entire body, not just the brain
Your whole body is in a psychosis. Your brain is a part of your body, and is therefore also in a poor state. But a psychosis is not a “brain thing.”

In fact, it took me ten, maybe twenty years to end up in a psychosis. What did I have to do to get there? Not speak up. Suppress sexual feelings. Numb or silence emotions.

A psychosis is rooted in years and hundreds of millions of choices and situations. As a society, we focus far too much on what is visible. For example:
• Psychosis
• Depression
• Anxiety
But those are points at the end of a long line of decisions.

For three years, I made only different decisions. Healthy decisions. And now I no longer have a psychosis. That can’t possibly be a coincidence, right?

I can’t give you all the answers, but what I do know is that there’s light at the end of the dark tunnel.
The problem with knowing things is that you don’t want to pour all your knowledge over someone, because everyone has to find their own path.
At most, you can say: yes, there is something here, there does seem to be something at the end of this long road.

Why You Sometimes Need to Take Distance from Things

Have you ever lived or worked somewhere where the atmosphere could suddenly change? Where people would suddenly start yelling, where things turned dark?

Sometimes you're on a moving train and don’t realize you’re on it, because everyone else is on it too. That’s dangerous. Sometimes you need to step off the train to see you’re going too fast.

That’s why you want healthy long-term relationships with things—like work and sports. They’re enjoyable, but you shouldn’t let them get too close all the time. Sometimes you need a certain distance. That’s healthy.