6 Tools I Use To Manage My Experience Of Psychosis

How i recognise psychosis and manage it in myself as an Autistic person

Psychosis is not a stranger to me. It doesn’t arrive violently like an an assault; it drifts, like a fog, slowly taking hold of my mind and creeping through the cracks of perception, dissolving certainty, blending the real with the symbolic. As an Autistic person, my experience of psychosis is neither clinical nor chaotic in the way psychiatrists insists, it is intimate, alive, and deeply intertwined with how I navigate the world.

To be Autistic in a world designed for neuronormative performance is like being out of stop with a rhythm you have no control over. Add psychosis to the equation, and suddenly that rhythm becomes a discordant symphony. My experience of psychosis is shaped by who I am; by a brain favouring depth and interconnection, by a sensory profile that transforms everyday stimuli into cacophany, and by a world that, more often than not, treats neurodivergent perception as pathology rather than state of being.

But I reject the notion that my psychosis is a simple as “illness".

I’ve written before about reclaiming madness, as in my essay “Psychosis As Transformation Versus Disorder”, and this piece continues that trajectory. I approach psychosis not as a break from reality, but as an queered relationship with reality. One where symbolic meaning, past trauma, and sensory distortions become language, one I am still learning to read.

For me, psychosis is not a detour from myself. It is an amplification of the Chaotic Self; the concept I developed to describe the constantly changing, dynamic nature of the Self and the identity we perform over it. Each psychotic episode alters my trajectory. Each vision, delusion, and moment of terror becomes an imprint in the evolving terrain of who I am.

But what helps me survive it?

What allows me to return, to keep tethered while the world bends and warps and reforms?

Recognising Psychosis in Myself: Listening for the Shift

Psychosis does not arrive all at once. It builds in layers, almost imperceptibly at first, like the air thickening before a storm. And while psychiatry tends to focus on external behaviours and clinical thresholds, I’ve come to recognise the internal shifts that signal a psychotic episode beginning to form. For me, it’s about listening to the way my world starts to reassemble itself. The way perception bends, symbols begin to speak louder than logic, and my thoughts spiral into something terrifying.

As an Autistic person, the early signs of psychosis often show up not as grand delusions or hallucinations, but as subtle changes in pattern recognition, sensory processing, and associative thinking. My monotropic mind; the deep precision focus that defines how I engage with the world begins to warp. Instead of immersion in a healthy special interest or creative pursuit, I get stuck in cognitive bias. A single thought, image, or idea becomes inescapable. I feel dragged into it, unable to think around or beyond it. I draw connections between things that cam be reasonably seen as somewhat disconnected.

The world becomes more symbolic. Objects hold double meanings. Ever interaction feels charged with hidden messages. I might see a bird on a windowsill and feel certain it’s a sign, a warning, or a message meant for me. Language becomes slippery andwords feel layered with intent, and I start to over-read everything; interpersonal relationships become frought as I invent meanings that were never intended in the words of others.

I begin to lose the ability to distinguish between what is “real” and what is a manifestation of my own mind. Because I’ve lived through psychosis before, I now know the early warning signs intimately, but often miss them until I am deeply struggling:

• My sleep becomes fragmented, but not just because of stress; it’s because I’m pulled awake by a sense of urgency, like something is unfolding just beyond the edge of consciousness.

• My sensory world intensifies. Colours feel oversaturated. Sounds seem to eminate from places they shouldn't. I feel a desperation to escape my own physical body.

• My internal monologue splinters, as if I’m not the only voice in my head anymore. At it's worst, the voices no linger reside in my head but exist beyond the boundaries of my own body.

• Time loses structure. Time dilates and constricts seemingly at random making it a challenge to manage my life.

Importantly, I do not interpret these signs as inherently dangerous. I see them as signals, indications that my system is under pressure, that my brain is processing something complex. Almost always it’s trauma resurfacing.

By recognising these signs early, I can begin to prepare. Not to stop the psychosis, because total prevention is an unmanageable goal, but to make space for it in ways that keep me safe.

And that’s where the next part of this story begins…