I (19F) have been going through the process of trying to learn psychology and understand more about myself, and now that I'm reaching adulthood, I realize that there are certain things about myself and my past that aren't exactly normal and I'm confused as to if they are signs of having some form of psychosis.

During my childhood and early teen years, I used to "see things" like people and shadow people. When I was at that young age, I would speak of these things I saw to my mother and she thought I was seeing demons. Now that I've grown up, I realized that these were visual hallucinations, and my mother feeding me religious ideas definitely didn't help appease these hallucinations. In fact, I think a big reason I didn't get better sooner was because she convinced me I was being persecuted by these evil forces.

On a less often basis, I also had sensory hallucinations (feeling like someone was touching me, like grabbing my arm) and auditorial hallucinations (hearing people scream my name). These types of hallucinations decreased significantly by the time I hit 16, but I still do have some visual hallucinations.

Something else I also had were strong delusions, and this took longer to get under control. I realized that my delusions were, in fact, delusions, when I hit 18, after having spent a couple months thinking I was trapped in some alternate universe or coma and had to kill myself to "get out". I came pretty close to killing myself before I took some basic psych classes in college and realized I could be wrong about it all.

I'm not sure if these are a sign of early psychosis or schizophrenia, I don't know much about these conditions besides media portrayals and I'm pretty sure we all know media portrayals are horrible references for any mental health condition. I'm planning on getting a therapist to discuss all of this with, but in the meanwhile, I was seeking a helpful opinion or resources if anyone here has any to give