Transcript
Participant _22 CBS Vision explanation
I wake up to go to the bathroom and the hallway is full of flowers covering the windows, the doors, to the point where I’ve lost it because I can’t find the doorknob through all the flowers that are on the wall. It sounds lovely but it is not, I feel trapped!
They are not nice flowers; they are threatening and overpowering!
I take my hand and slide along the wall, circling along in a way that can make the flowers go away. Also, I yell – ‘Go away, go home, get out! Then I can go back to sleep.
Now – all my hallucinations come in the middle of the night. If the lights are off, then there’s a lot of them there. So, we’ve learned to sleep with the lights on, and that helps to keep the hallucinations at bay.
Participant _28 Vision explanation
When I am sitting in the lounge the interior changes because of the Charles Bonnet syndrome. Everything is different – even the doorways. The walls which were covered in patterns and false pictures all disappear.
Everywhere I turn figures are appearing, and at night it is worse. They pile into the house. When I sit with the television in front of me, I look and there’s about three rows of people sitting behind me.
They are waiting for the tv to come on – and there are people outside which is quite “frightening” – I would look round at them and they would look back at me.
I have a gas convector heater which is two meters away from where I sit in the lounge room. That’s the one thing that never seems to change, no matter what.
Once I find that, it seems to alter everything back to normal again. Which is strange, I know. It gives me a sense of control—I know that the other side of it there’s an escape.
I don’t know why I see what I am seeing. The only thing is, I lived through the second world war and I do have visions of bomb sites.
It is a self-isolating, and “frightening” experience and I remember “crying” because I can’t live like this.
Participant _39 Vision explanation
I saw a dingo at the end of my bed in the early days: a pure dingo staring with her ears pricked up.
It was just standing, looking at me: that was so potentially powerful. A dingo in my bedroom, and it just … disappeared. It was beautiful, it was a real dingo! She stood, with her gaze looking through me. Then she vanished into nothingness—this beauty, a true embodiment of nature.
Now my dog is half dingo, but she’s not alert, she’s got floppy ears. So, this one was stiff as anything looking straight at me.
How do I reset myself? I just open my eyes, I just talk, and I shout. What are you doing? I don’t think about it. I’m not scared of to visions. But at the moment when they are there, I am scared. I get a shock. I get a shock and palpitations, and I scream.
Normally I just think – oh – I see something in the doorway. So, it’s a mixture.
I’m always thinking about these things. I’m immersed in my imagination.