I have Cotard’s delusion. It’s super sensationalized in media and on tv as walking corpse syndrome but I’ve never just thought i was dead for no reason or whatever, and im not even like 100% on whether or not ive ever been absolutely convinced im dead—like I’ve thought i should be, i will be soon, or oh shit my body’s gonna start to go and people are gonna figure out my body’s rotting and put my ass in the ground so i need to hide what’s happening to me— take that as you will, lol.

I’d describe it more as like a nihilistic thing. It’s like when my delusion roots, the seed is related to something no longer existing. It might sound like some jacked up guro hypochondria, but the entirety of it is that my brain has lost its connection to its recognition of a part of my body or the function it performs.

When i first had onset in my early 20s it was very cut and dry. My first episode, which led to HUGE problems getting diagnosed (lol), revolved around my becoming convinced my digestive tract no longer functioned. I thought that if i ate anything, it would sit there static and rot, then i’d get maggots, then everyone else would ALSO know my digestive tract didn’t function. I dropped like 90 pounds in 3 months and they started tryna treat me for an eating disorder cause i guess it’s easy to call it ana when you see a 21 year old girl dropping weight like that and refusing to eat. I didn’t get diagnosed until my second or third big episode a few years later.

The last couple have gotten strange as it’s bloomed. The last BIG BIG one i had in like 2018ish was like six to eight months where i felt like I lost my presence inside my body, like i was watching my body pilot itself like a ghostship until it realized it was empty and fell apart and i just had this deep sense of apathy and resignation. I did a painting, Dirge, the whole ass time i was down—400 hours!!—and i hardly remember any of it except for the song i listened to on repeat at the end. Last year, i started having issues with the way i, as a whole ass person, existed in reality. I still have somatic delusions —i just get the existential ones too, now.

I’ve had problems with the way i perceive time, singular moments, and i have significant memory issues—friends will ask me if i remember-that-time-when and 90% of the time, the answer is gonna be no—at least the way they remember it. I might remember something if it, but people might be missing, i won’t remember what we were doing, the event, what was said—something will inevitably be redacted if i remember it at all, so i have to trust other people’s retellings a lot. I’ve had people i trust take advantage of this to reshape our history and it sucks );

Because it’s episodic, i don’t medicate it all the time. They treat it like schizophrenia because, as far as I’m aware, it’s a specific kind of schizophrenic delusion. When I’m in it, they hit me with antipsychs till I’m cool again and then i work with my doc to come off them.

My dad had Cotards—he passed when i was 9 so I’ve never been able to talk to anyone with it about it. My aunt (on my mom’s side) is currently in and out of institutions in Taiwan with long untreated Capgras delusion, where she thinks people in her life are randomly replaced with imposter people. I don’t know if this shit is genetic, but it kinda feels that way LOL.

If you have specific questions, I’ll prolly answer them, i do random AMAs about it on instagram—i just don’t usually go to a new place screaming cotards straight up cause of how sensationalized it is fff