Shades of delusion

Chelsey is adorable, funny, and generally happy. Beth trimmed her bangs today, the first time in a month. Chelsey's fairly stable in her mostly grounded, partly delusional state. We never know which side will show itself at any given moment, so we're always on our toes. Some of her comments are a hoot. She doesn't sleep enough. Beth is carrying most of the load. We're drained and weary.
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Justifying Chelsey's discharge, the doctor and nurse explained that many people with delusions get along fine in society. They said we needed to deal with the change and trust that she'd be OK. Chelsey's rejoining a mass of humanity riddled with diverse ideas about reality. Some beliefs are just further away from the norm than others. Some ideas have more support from science and society than others, but many of us harbor beliefs with little basis in verifiable, objective facts (some of which may be true, though not provable).

• There are angels, a holy ghost whispering to us, resurrection, reincarnation, etc.
• Some socks are lucky
• A god favors one football team, group, country, or race over another
• We need more of Sarah Palin

I get it, there's room for some diversity and delusion in daily life. However, some of Chelsey's beliefs and related actions require monitoring. Chelsey's innocent and sincere, and she's open to redirection when we're aware of what's going on. Still, sustained attention is critical to being aware of what could come next.

• Wearing lucky socks doesn't hurt anybody, but Chelsey could cause damage by acting on her belief that showering with clothes and clogging the drain stops time. 
• Maintaining a private belief in guardian angels won't get an employee fired, but Chelsey may have a hard time being productive while loudly insisting that she's a cyborg in need of reprogramming. 
• Acting on her recent beliefs about sexuality would cause problems.
• She says certain foods were used in evil conditioning, and the idea of eating them makes her feel sick. 
• She talks about the perfect, undetectable crime for child abuse or a murder-suicide. 
• She tries to examine electrical outlets for tampering.

Some of Chelsey's thoughts are way out there, yet they remind me that most beliefs fall on a spectrum of accuracy and functionality. Many coaching and counseling techniques are focused entirely on addressing flawed assumptions and dysfunctional self-talk. Depressed people tend to catastrophize, ruminate on shortcomings, or mistakenly interpret innocent social cues from others. Otherwise healthy people get all hung up about being too skinny/fat, or they believe they have bad luck and the world is a dangerous place. Overly optimistic people may grossly misjudge reality about likely outcomes.

What's important may be how functional our delusions are, not whether or not we have them. Do they make us happy or sad? Do they serve us or enslave us? Do they improve our relationships and sense of meaning or undermine them? Perhaps even the match to objective reality isn't what's most important in determining functionality, but the match to the subjective, socially constructed reality of those around us (well, probably not for stuff like electrical outlets and suicide). Some of Chelsey's beliefs are seriously mismatched relative to both societal norms and my understanding of "objective" reality.

On the bright side, we could focus on how much we have in common in our beliefs. Just like human DNA differs only slightly from that of chimps, I'm guessing 99.9% of Chelsey's beliefs overlap with those of the mentally healthy. Air, water, and internet are essential for life. Love is better than hate. The sun rises each day.

It's amazing how little separates the functional from the dysfunctional. Tiny changes in neurotransmitters and neuron connections nudge a few of us past an invisible tipping point on which we all probably teeter.