Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks a psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
Today I'm answering a viewer question from Tee.
And this is an excerpt of the question,
it's not the entire question.
Hi Dr. Marks.
A few months back I had a breakdown.
I was at work and my boss told me that
he may have to put me on leave because of the quarantine.
I got upset at him
and had a vision of him hanging from a rope.
I kept working and the next week a coworker told me
she could not find rope in stock anywhere.
I asked her why she was looking for rope
and she said we all need it for the virus.
Then my mom told me to find a piece of rope
to tie a bush up in the backyard.
Then my brother started talking to me about tying knots.
I thought they were all trying to tell me to kill my boss.
I couldn't stand it anymore so I quit my job.
Things calmed down since I've been at home,
but I still think Get these weird thoughts
from time to time.
I'm afraid I've turned into a psychopath.
I never wanted to hurt anyone before.
I don't understand why I would think these things.
Does this mean I will become a mass murderer?
Thanks Tee for your question.
So Tee, it sounds like you had a psychotic experience.
And here's how I see the progression of your breakdown.
You were probably already having some odd thoughts
when your boss mentioned taking you out of work.
And that upset you.
And since you were already not in a good place mentally,
your upset took the form of a vivid thought
of seeing him dead.
We all have primitive, unacceptable impulses.
And these are fleeting thoughts
that may pop into your mind for an instance.
Some people refer to this as your lizard brain
that thinks in a very raw,
survival of the fittest kind of terms.
But as we mature and conform to the rules of society,
we learn to suppress these thoughts
and change our thoughts to something more acceptable.
Most of the time it's an automatic process
that happens so quickly,
that you're unaware that you thought something corrupt.
Sometimes these thoughts though, come out in our dreams.
Because when you're sleeping,
you can't consciously suppress the thoughts.
So here's an example of how this could look for you.
Let's say you had already had some issues with your boss,
then he tells you that he may have to let you go.
That makes you mad, and maybe you even feel singled out.
But you don't have any violent images have him at the time.
Instead, later that night,
you dream that he died in a car accident.
That's another way that this kind of concept
can play out in your dreams,
where your dreams actually reveal your thoughts.
But when you're psychotic,
it's like your brain has these loose connections
so these primitive thoughts can become more prominent
and you become more aware of what you're actually thinking.
Because you're psychotic,
you can't block those thoughts from yourself.
What you described as other people talking about ropes
is what we call ideas of reference.
It's coincidence that they talked about the ropes,
but you read other meanings into it.
You take it to mean
that they're pushing you to harm your boss.
That's the part that makes it delusional.
It's a false conclusion.
Now here's how this is not psychopathic behavior
or evidence that you will later become a mass murderer.
Even though your thoughts were delusional,
you were still able to recognize that they are wrong,
and that the action you took was to leave your job
so that you don't hurt your boss.
Psychopathy is a psychological term that's not a diagnosis,
but describes a person's character.
It's used in psychological legal settings,
and there's tests to measure the level of psychopathy
that a person has
and these tests are usually used in legal settings
or for research purposes.
There's a lot to understanding psychopathy.
But suffice to say that psychopaths behave in a way
that they don't empathize with others' feelings.
They exploit others for their own gain,
and they have no remorse about the mean things that they do.
So in your situation,
I wouldn't expect a psychopath to quit his job,
because he's afraid he may harm his boss.
In fact, the psychopath may do something
to get someone else fired so that he can keep his job,
or steal from the company in some way.
Another important point here is that
it's not the thoughts that produce psychopathy,
it's the behavior.
So you can have these thoughts all day long,
but what matters is what you do with those thoughts.
What actions do you take?
Psychopaths don't let the feelings of others
get in the way of what they want to do.
That's for the lack of empathy comes into play.
But the most important point here
is that you really need help for your psychosis.
Psychosis is harmful to the brain,
you don't want to just stay that way
waiting for it to subside.
Sometimes it will subside on its own,
but sometimes it can escalate
and you can lose control of your reactions.
Sometimes delusions can take over
and make you do something that's harmful to yourself
like sending letters to prominent figures,
threatening them, or going to the grocery store naked,
because you believe the virus embeds in your clothes.
That kind of behavior gets you arrested.
Psychosis needs to be treated by a psychiatrist,
this is not something to address with therapy,
you wanna find a psychiatrist in your area.
There's multiple reasons you can have psychotic symptoms.
Some of these are,
schizophrenia, mania, depression, drug use,
delusional disorder, which is different from schizophrenia
and I'll make a video on that.
There's also medical illnesses
that can cause psychotic symptoms,
and this is where the psychiatrist
would figure this out with you.
For more on psychotic illnesses,
watch my psychosis playlist.
See you next time.