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When we make new beginnings or start a new project, we often must begin at square one. A certain point in recovery from an acute episode of mental illness is often like this. 

What I'm calling "Square One," for someone with a psychotic disorder, is an important juncture. It is where you've emerged from a delusional/paranoid belief system and have entered a realistic belief system. Coupled with that is the tendency to become a lot calmer. It is a starting point, a new one, in which a psychiatric consumer can begin again at life. Less often, following an episode of severe psychiatric illness, a consumer could pick up from where they left off. 

It is only after you reach square one that you can hope to attain some kind of genuine success. When you are psychotic, the door is shut to any kind of progress or getting anything good. When you emerge from a psychotic state, it is like being an inhabitant of your body following being highly disconnected from your body. This perception exists because psychosis causes the mind to stop communicating with the five senses. When you are once again connected to your surroundings, you can interact with people and with the world, and some of the time at least, you can get things you want. 

(An agitated and psychotic person can usually see and hear. Yet, these senses are obscured with bizarre interpretations. Additionally, we are often unable to make sense of a person's speech. The body sense is almost completely gone, replaced with an adrenalized version almost resembling being a stick figure, rather than a good portrait.) 

Stopping psychosis doesn't happen by deciding not to be psychotic. When psychosis is severe, psychiatric intervention is needed, generally including medication--given by force if need be. If no one intervenes, the problem will get worse, and even when it doesn't result in the death of the patient, (which it can) it may eventually cause severe brain damage. This can be observed in brain imaging, showing that many people with schizophrenia have what neurologists call "enlarged ventricles." The ventricles are the empty spaces between parts of the brain. Larger empty spaces or ventricles mean less brain. 

The brain is damaged by extended periods of acute psychosis because brain cell activity is out of control. It is as though you had a Honda Civic and drove it continuously with the accelerator floored, exceeding a hundred miles an hour on the freeway. Try doing that to any car daily for long hours. The brain was not intended to be overloaded continuously without rest, for months. 

Stopping psychosis with medication and by getting other help is a journey. You are not completely in control of the journey, but you do your part. At some point, you calm down, and the realization comes about that your mind has been off the deep end. This can be both saddening and comforting. This is because the previous unchecked psychosis is quite a wild ride, and it is harrowing. On the other hand, you must let go of delusional beliefs to which you may have been deeply attached. Coming out of a state of psychotic denial can involve some level of emotional pain, but it can also bring about greater acceptance. 

I'd like to make a distinction between "being in denial" versus being psychotic. Denial is purely psychological and it is a trait of most people's intact egos. Most people, in some areas of their lives, are in denial. Non-afflicted or "normal people's" denial is a self-protection mechanism, one that allows us to function without being excessively bothered or troubled by something. 

On the other hand, the denial that comes with psychosis is out of the ballpark. It is where the brain is not capable of distinguishing basic realities from unrealities. While there are some similarities between mere denial and psychotic illusions to which we are attached, these are not the same things. The brain just isn't working properly, in the case of a psychotic person, and the primitive pleasure, pain and fear mechanisms of the brain are malfunctioning and play a part in reinforcing the problem. 

When we reach square one, we have a chance to make things better. Good things might or might not come our way. Yet without arriving at square one, and remaining disconnected from the world, nothing significantly good is likely to happen. 

Some spirituality suggests that either we are within our bodies, or not. If we are disconnected from the senses, it is equivalent to not being in the body. The five physical senses are the gateway to connecting with ourselves. This also opens the door for normal emotions. And we need our emotions. 

Getting to square one isn't a remedial thing, it is a sign of great progress. And it gives us the opportunity to do and experience great things in our lives. 

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Jack Bragen is author of "Schizophrenia: My 35-Year Battle," and "Instructions for Dealing with Schizophrenia: A Self-Help Manual."