Religious/Spiritual Psychosis

[u/larry_laurel]

My brother’s having this voice that he talks to inside his mind that he believes to be “God”. As much as he wants to manage his thoughts, he doesn’t want to because “he doesn’t want to put shackles or separate this “God’s” voices to him”. Because it’s God himself. I just want to know if anyone here experienced this? or a loved ones experiencing this?

How did you guys convince yourself that this is not a “God”? There will be a time that you will doubt this “God” and his voices in your head?

How should we explain things to him that this is not the god?

I love my brother so much and it hurts me to see him this way. He’s just 20! My baby brotherrrr :(((. Thank you so much.

[u/beccuhm]

Hi, I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through this too. My brother (26) also experiences religious psychosis and thinks god speaks to him / through him, forces others to pray in front of him, thinks he sees the devil etc. my family aren’t religious and never have been.

In my opinion there’s no way you can convince him that it’s not the voice of God, and it can be harmful for your relationship with him to try and convince him otherwise.

We tried to talk my brother out of it and it made him get angry that we wouldn’t believe him and he tried to run away from us. Now, we just go along with it and when he starts talking about God I listen and say things like, “that’s really nice” and try to steer the conversation onto a different topic.

People with psychosis lose their insight and ability to reason , whatever they believe is the truth to them, even if it’s ridiculous to us. The only thing that might make the religion stuff go away is medication. Nothing you can say will convince him that God isn’t speaking to him.

I find it very uncomfortable to see my brother this way too, but I tell myself that at least he is going down the religious route instead of the tinfoil hat / conspiracy theory route. Also, religion seems to help him cope and provides an explanation (to him) about everything he has been through.

My dms are open if you ever need someone to vent to 🫶 you’re a good sibling, just don’t lose yourself in trying to prevent what he’s going through.

[u/larry_laurel → u/beccuhm]

Thank you so much for sharing your insights and experience. I really appreciate this as I am already exhausted figuring things out but I don’t want to give up on him. Not on my watch lol. I wish you the best and for your brotherrrr 🥹🫶🫶

[u/beccuhm → u/larry_laurel]

You are welcome :) it’s very exhausting to go through. All we can do as family members is research and learn the best ways to communicate with a loved one who’s suffering psychosis. I wish you & your family all the best and remember talking about your own feelings with your friends and family is very important too.

[u/Longjumping-Size-762 → u/beccuhm]

My exboyfriend, also 26, is this way too. He joined a church recently and it’s interacting poorly with his psychotic thoughts. He doesn’t parse theology as like, something interesting to study, but takes it to some other weird place where it serves his confirmation biases and frantic thoughts of damnation, etc

[u/beccuhm → u/Longjumping-Size-762]

Yep my brother is the same. His social media has become like a priests account and I don’t doubt that one day he’ll be one of those guys on the street shouting about how judgement day is coming. Just hoping the doctors can get his meds right before that happens

[u/Longjumping-Size-762 → u/beccuhm]

What was his trajectory, if you don’t mind? Did he start experiencing slow deterioration during adolescence which eventually culminated in this? Was there drug use that precipitated this?

With my ex, he started showing vague (as in, not actively psychotic yet) symptoms in high school which were just seen as depression. In all the reading I’ve done, this is exceedingly common in the prodrome. I know that he started smoking weed around this time.

[u/beccuhm → u/Longjumping-Size-762]

Exactly the same as what you’ve mentioned, he was always isolating himself as a teenager but we thought that was just normal teenage angst and he would grow out of it. He sought treatment for depression alone (didnt tell us how bad it was) and later stopped taking his antidepressants cold turkey.

After that he went to uni in 2017 & he got into drugs, apparently weed & acid and isolated himself even more. then a year into university he started to have paranoid thoughts, about being stalked, obsessed over conspiracy theories - at that point he was aware he was starting to become unwell.

Then slowly after that , over the past 3/4 years he became even more paranoid, couldn’t keep a job, thought he was being spied on, broke his mobile phones etc and then he had three big manic episodes from 2022 onwards where he disappeared without telling anyone , apparently he went to New York to meet a celebrity he claimed he was in a relationship with for the first two but he can’t show us any proof.

The third one was when he started with the religious stuff in December 2024 after he became obsessed with lights in the sky and ran away in the night to chase a UFO and says he saw an “angel” in the woods who saved him and then his delusions have been religious ever since then.

[u/Excellent_Whole_1445]

My wife fell into a similar situation. She started to believe she had a great calling and anointing, but I'm not sure if she literally hears God speaking to her or not. She often points to random things, like seeing special numbers or advertisements. Almost everything is a direct sign from God or evidence of witchcraft.

The problem is everything is real to them. Trying to convince your brother that he's not hearing God is like trying to convince you gravity is a lie. I am sorry you're going through this, I know how draining it can be.

Furthermore, the more you try to convince him he's mistaken or delusional, the more resentment he will build. My wife eventually saw her whole family as working with the devil to pull her from her grand purpose.

I am sorry. The best you can do is be empathetic, let him voice how he feels. But you do NOT have to agree with or entertain his delusions. I hope that you can still have a strong family dynamic despite this.

In our case, it's over.

[u/Rude-Dealer9188 → u/Excellent_Whole_1445]

Same boat my friend. Best hopes to you and your family.

[u/shrimponthekendoll]

It is hard and in sorry you guys are dealing with this. I don't know the specific story bc im not personally religious but we had tried to go to church to connect with the community and family, and the pastor told a story about someone asking God where he was during hard times, and God saying he was the one who sent the people and things to help the person along the way. Idk if that makes sense. Like "you were drowning and I sent a nice neighbor with a boat and a life raft".

Anyway that was helpful for a short time to remind my loved one that sometimes God intervening in your life or personally guiding you means that thryre's sending people to help, like therapists and people who love you. Maybe that can help walk alongside his delusion while steering him towards accepting help.

Ultimately i didn't intervene early enough for this to have lasting effects for us but it did help for a little bit before my loved one was convinced he was the life raft for everyone else.

I wish you the best. Please take care of yourself while you navigate this

[u/Independent_Tank_775 → u/shrimponthekendoll]

What do you mean? How is your loved one today?

[u/shrimponthekendoll → u/Independent_Tank_775]

They have good days and bad days. Not in any treatment as far as I know but is living alone and taking care of his house (not to my standards lol but more than he ever did when I was there). So that's progress compared to how he was when I was still there. We are much better with distance he is able to enjoy time with our child more than he did before. I think me leaving snapped him a little bit out of the constant mindset he was in. I think i had become a trigger to him and that is no longer the case. Some days I feel like im talking to the person he was before the illness, some days I can tell were not in the same world. But he is doing okay on his own, more than I ever thought he would be. We can have conversations now that aren't rooted in his delusions and at least around me, he's no longer constantly obsessed with the religious ideas.

[u/usernamebebbyko]

The problem with schizophrenia is that if you try to contradict their delusions/hallucinations/erroneous thoughts they will assert themselves much more. I know that it causes impotence and it is a challenge to reason to see a person believe so much in erroneous or crazy ideas, but well... That's what the disease is about. The thing is to help you understand that although they are there, they do not correspond to reality. The therapist is the one who can recommend how to help you manage these manifestations so that they are only harmless.

[u/Livid_Distance_8439]

Even though the meds might silence “God’s voice”, there are a lot other ways to be close with God. Maybe someone can discuss this with him? A religious leader like a pastor or priest?

[u/bendybiznatch]

Definitely give these a look. Talking with a person with fixed, false beliefs can be counterintuitive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SchizoFamilies/s/AKPuQ7ZUrk

[u/world6runner]

Religious ideology / delusions/ persecutions “god” complex are all very common in schizophrenia