each experience is different.
here is my personal experience: XAH on psychotic rampage....leaving weird clues about his intentions..... I get all twisted up.....trying to guess what he might do. I enmesh all my friends and family in the retelling of what he is doing and get their frightened insights, too.
spend days trying to look into the future and what he might do.
spend days with anxiety, wringing my hands, heart palpatations, endless conversations with friends, exhaustion.
all this time, he is passed out and not thinking of this stuff at all.
he wakes up from time to time.....stirs the stink pot up a little....then retreats into his zone.
just what it was like with me.....