Twilightprincess wrote:
Normally, people say that someone is delusional as a personal attack/insult, so the person, understandably, takes it personally. It can even be used as a form of gaslighting.
If you struggle with mental illness, you may be aware of your own struggles with delusional thinking and not take it as an insult, especially if the person who made the comment was not trying to be hurtful.
Saying that someone’s thinking is delusional (based on false beliefs/obvious irrationality) is different from saying that the person is delusional.
Beyond that, if someone's experiencing delusions, someone who's outside their experience trying to convince them that their experience isn't aligned with reality is effectively engaging in similar patterns as gaslighting only with a vastly different context.
Either way, they're trying to convince another party their experience isn't correct. If one has been subjected to genuine gaslighting they may be paranoid/suspicious of anything that reminds them of gaslighting and this might become a positive feedback loop in their worst periods.
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