Question: Have you ever experienced any of the the things you talk about in the 'my work' section?

Jack barton answered on 14 Jun 2017:

I can’t complain to have any first-hand experience of psychosis but I have had brief experiences of hallucinations so far.

I remember one evening during a very busy and exhausting time of my life I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. Almost instantaneously through the fog of my exhaustion I could see a hazy crowd of people chatting to one another seemingly unaware of me. It was almost like they were at some relaxed party that was inexplicable being held in my room. They had a shadowy but fully coloured appearance and they would only appear whenever I closed my eyes. It was a very strange experience but it didn’t scare me. In fact quite the opposite, it was almost comforting at the time and interested the psychologist in me ever since.

When I was quite young I also remember experiencing something known as sleep paralysis. This isn’t quite the unusual experiences I study for my day to day work but it does involves feelings of fear and hallucinations of a vivid and unsettling nature. Both of these experiences are things which can be brought on by a lack of sleep and this is something which has always interested me – even before I knew I wanted to do a PhD.

In fact, I would ask you this, have you ever heard your name called out and found there was no one around, or even heard your phone vibrate / ring and found that it hadn’t? Well those are two prime examples of hallucinations many of us experience from time to time. They are perfectly normal and might tell us something about how the brain produces hallucinatory experiences in general.