What are the difference between illusion, hallucinations, and delusions??
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Illusions are usually trick of the brain. Your brain seeing things and interpreting them badly, or seeing something that is not entirely true. Either the brain fucking up, or other things playing trick on us.
Example are seeing face in things that don’t have them. It’s an illusion our brain play on us usually when we see three holes aligned for eyes and mouth. It leaves a strange feeling of being watched. It’s not a face, it’s not drawn to be one, but our brains makes us believe it is. Same for mirages in the desert, but for the other half. We see something but that something is not entirely true, there is an oasis but it’s not where we see it. The thing we see aren’t fake, they’re just not as we expect them.
Hallucinations is slightly different. It’s when something doesn’t exist, and our brain entirely create it. There is usually little to no basis for them, and it’s entirely our brain tricking us into believing something that doesn’t exist is there.
Example are seeing ghosts, or people tripping on drugs that see pink elephants. These are not real, have no basis on reality, yet our brain for one reason or another sees them.
Delusions are completely different. They’re not tricks on perception, but tricks in belief. A delusion basically mean that someone believe something that is false and simply refuse to see anything contradicting it. They’re usually fixed belief that one simply cannot easily drop. These are really dangerous and are either self manufactured or someone manufactured them and planted them in you to control you.
Some may say that religions or flat earth could be considered delusions in that regard. I’ll let you decide for yourself. More concrete example I can give are people that strongly believe that a star or otherwise important person that they’ve never met and may only have crossed eyes with once truly loves them. This one is usually self created and simply prevent you from seeing the truth that they most likely just looked at the crowd of people you were in. Another example are sects. They usually prey on you at a moment you’re emotionally weak and will simply sell you a delusion that will make reality easier to cope with. Like the idea that you feel sad because you own things and should give them to the sect so you’ll be liberated. The usual sects example are most often selling a delusion and most of their effort are to reinforce them to make sure you don’t break free.
TL:DR: Illusion is when you see something wrong. Hallucination is when you see something that don’t exist. Delusion is when you believe something wrong to a point it’s unhealthy.
Illusions show everyone something that isn’t really there. Hallucinations are things only you can see that aren’t really there. Delusions are thoughts in your head that aren’t really true.
Illusions – tricking your brain into seeing something that isn’t there. Optical illusions work on everyone, they’re not a sign that there’s anything wrong. An example is [this one](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Checker_shadow_illusion.svg) where it looks like squares A and B are different colours but they’re actually the exact same colour. It’s just a result of the way the brain perceives colour.
A hallucination is specific to an individual. If I’m hallucinating something, you can’t see it. That’s because it’s created entirely within the brain, and not the result of a certain image being made to trick you, or of weird optical phenomena. Note that hallucinations aren’t always visual, they can be auditory as well. I’ve had auditory hallucinations after waking up, they’re freaky but not that bad.
A delusion is a long-term consistent false belief. A common one for people with schizophrenia is that they believe that they’re being followed or watched (e.g. by a government agency) even though there’s no reason for them to believe that and nothing to suggest it’s true. A key part is that it’s actually firmly held despite evidence to the contrary. Someone just claiming to believe something weird isn’t a delusion, nor is somebody being tricked into believing something by a dishonest person. If somebody believes the Earth is flat because they think they’ve seen evidence supporting it–even if the evidence is bad, it’s still something they considered and came to using logic, albeit faulty logic, whereas a delusion in the context of mental illness is usually completely divorced from any sort of logic or evidence.
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