Welcome to /r/Schizotypal.

Hello

I am 25. I got the diagnose a month ago and i am hopefully moving out soon, but i am just wondering is it a good idea to tell my family i have schizotypal. I am on bad terms with them and probably wont talk to them again after moving out.

Any experience is appreciated?

Thanks for your time

I'm sure everyone talks to themselves to some extent, but one thing I tend to do when alone (which these days is most of the time) is to talk in great length to myself but not necessarily to myself, but as if there is someone else with me who is asking me questions and interviewing me about my life or about my problems or just my views and opinions on things.

Other times I will create elaborate fantasy scenarios in my head involving characters or alter egos (mostly relating to music since that is an interest of mine, although I am not any good at it and mostly just play guitar for myself) and I will act out the whole thing.

These "conversations" can go on for hours and I only do this when I'm alone. As someone who cannot fully express my truest self and how I perceive and experience the world to anyone it's kind of like a therapy as it's the only way I can express myself free of judgment or ridicule. Was curious to know if anyone else did something similar.

Sorry for posting this here but I can’t think or calm down in the slightest. Help. I can’t calm/ground myself in any way. I’m all over the place. Nothing makes sense. I just want a doctor to hear me, see me, and treat me like I exist although that will never happen.

There are so many stressors that are on the periphery and they’re killing me. I can’t think properly. I can’t handle any of this.

hey there. reaching out to you guys for your thoughts and experiences (therapy isnt an available option for me)

i just recently dove into StPD and the further i looked into it the more it all clicked. i felt like the few integral components to my struggles with my mental and behavioral health were starting to open to me after hiding away in the shadows of my mind and haunting over me. however, upon StPD i also found out about Avoidant Personality Disorder. i took online tests and scored scarily high in both (screenshots in replies for those curious) and am wondering about the comorbidity of the two disorders as ive seen very few people discuss it outside of how they differ from one another. if anyone has any insight i would be very grateful to hear it :)

Sometimes things like this can really bother me

does anybody here have nonsense delusions? or like strange believes? i often convince myself that i have random body part broken and often don't use those parts out of fear. Or like a really strange one: i was so convince that my temples had holes on both sides and was so afraid of touching them that i would cry if i did out of mistake. I'm asking this cause i don't wanna say any of this to therapy cuz I'm afraid of them sending me in some places or mistake it for the wrong thing... idk

Not asking for a diagnosis, thats unrealistic. It's also reddit not therapy. I talk with myself sometimes, but I'm not talking to myself at the same time. Like it's a whole different person. This only happens in private, usually when I'm upset with myself.

I heard alot of "different people" a while ago, but after I had some mental breakdown they either stopped talking, or converged into one voice. Not hallucinations. I only hear three now, Myself, my Guiltiness, and my Judgement.

I have patterns/symptoms similar to SPD, (at least, they sound similar, or the same.) I.E I often think that people dislike me, I think I'm odd, I like hanging out in not super dense places, (Parties, Homecoming, more) etc etc.

How do you all react to seeing people you know in public?

I already feel like I’m going to run into specific people I know all the time. But when I actually do it throws me SO off track.

Someone I recently semi-befriended came into my job today and I instantly froze up and became an anxious mess. Shaking, stuttering, panicked. This happens every time I see someone I know especially at my work. I become so hyper aware of all my movements and actions beyond the stress I already feel when I expect to see someone.

I think it’s because I have to mentally prepare myself to see people? This really goes for people whose perception of me I especially care about such as friends, potential friends, crushes, etc. I need to know I’m going to see them. I already get so paranoid about them seeing me out and about and about their perception of me but oh my god it’s just the worst when it actually happens.

Although interpersonal paranoia is the main feature in paranoid personality disorder, why do those with paranoid personality disorder not experience extreme social anxiety like schizotypals? Similarly, extreme social anxiety is not even found in the diagnostic criteria for most paranoid schizophrenics. Why is extreme social anxiety specific and resistant to schizotypals when looking at the paranoid spectrum?

Hi

I cant get rid of the extreme social anxiety i am suffering from. Its been like this for the last 8 years. I dont know what to do. I barely leave my house, and only go to see my psychiatrist and psychologist. Nothing is helping.

Does anyone here feel the same?

Not asking for a diagnosis but asking if anyone can point me in the direction of research/info about this.

I have looked into StPD many times in my life as I’ve always felt like it describes me almost to a T - looking at the list of symptoms/traits I check every box except “No close friends”. I experience severe social anxiety, ideas of reference and paranoid ideation but I have worked very hard to trust my friends despite this and I genuinely love spending time with them. I have a broad network of people who I care about, and who I usually believe care about me too. There’s obviously been ups and downs and it’s always a battle to fight all the symptoms. But I don’t really feel much of a desire to be alone most of the time and I’m surprisingly good at making new friends despite (or maybe because of) how weird people find me.

My current diagnoses are psychotic depression, anxiety and ADHD. When I’ve brought up StPD to my psychiatrist, she’s told me that introversion and social isolation are key to an StPD diagnosis. She had me do an O-LIFE questionnaire where I scored super super high for Unusual Experiences, Cognitive Disorganization and Impulsive Nonconformity, but I scored average to low for Introvertive Anhedonia so she ruled out StPD.

I don’t really need a different diagnosis because my medications and my therapist are helping a lot regardless, and I’ve become better at managing my symptoms over time. I’m truly just interested! I’d love to know whether my psychiatrist is right and I just have the specific comorbidities that almost make up StPD but not quite, or whether it’s possible to be an extrovert with StPD.

I'm diagnosed with schizotypal pd, but my psychiatrist started to suspect that I have schizoaffective disorder instead after I showed signs of hypomania. I have seasonal depressions and hypomanias so that looks like bipolar, but I still have a lot of "schizo" symptoms like ideas of reference, mild delusions, I hear voices in my head and so on. I can deeply relate with a lot of schizotypal experiences you guys post here. I've never had a full-blown psychosis or sth, and I have good self-criticism so I really doubt about schizoaffective diagnosis. Is it possible to have both schizotypal and bipolar? Or it is 100% schizoaffective disorder if you have psychotic symptoms and mood changes?

I often see myself as a being so utterly alone as if I’m the sole survivor of a species long gone. I have a wife that loves me but I lack some integral pieces of the human puzzle. I don’t know how to feel loved I think all I really feel at all is guilt for being this way. I became so used to turning inward to reach for comfort but it’s all a graveyard nowadays. I’m a sickly defective shell, scared of shattering, just waiting for the tide to take me away.

This happened like 3 years ago.

My father had a large amount of music in CDs. Now he discovered youtube finally decided to throw his CDs away.

One day I walked down the stairs and I see my father scratching his CDs with scissors.

I ask him what he is doing? He said he was scratching the CDs because he didnt want anyone to use them, something like "I bought all this CDs, they costed me money, I dont want someone just find them and use them for free".

He was willing to scratch like 3 boxes of CDs. He then finally saw that it was too much work, but anyway he was still "mad" to throw his CDs fully usable, he even thought to keep them.

I mean... how sad that is? Throw something you no loger use, and just because you pay for them dont want for anyone else to use them.

My father is a super neurotic and obsessive man. This is the kind of things he does that are just... weird.

To me a bad day is catastrophization leading in to paralysis. More common than not, it happens a few times a week that the environment I live in and my own body becomes completely foreign and out of control.

I think what’s different about this from NT experience is it’s caused by nothing I’m conscious of. I will get thoughts which are disturbing, I did today, but they are so normal to me they are just who I am.

I think once it hits a subtle nervous breakdown level that the behaviour I exhibit I can at least recognize as dysfunctional. The underlying network of thoughts and perturbations is unaccessible though.

A good day I forget anything is fucked up and life goes well.

Everything further away than 40 cm is a total blur, I have managed okay as a student by sitting in front of the class and squinting, the optician I went to told me that no normal glasses could fix it, and that I needed to see an eye doctor. I guess all the insomnia, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation has made me blind to the fact that I am visually impaired, I dunno how long I have been like this, but it has probably not helped with the psychological problems(writing this is a great struggle). Crazy how something like that can go unnoticed, but I think I might have been a little too good at accepting that my perception of reality sucks.

Hello

Does anyone here have gender dysphoria?

I'll try to be an adult, but there's time where I react to things in this really petty, "that was mine and someone stole it from me/I should've been told first because I'm the important one" type way - kind of just when I feel like something's been taken away from me, or might be taken or if I feel like I'm being controlled or I can't control the situation. It's this totally anomalous thing that takes over and I get overwhelmed and then I have this really stupid horrible angry reaction, which is all kind of puffed up ego and totally ridiculous, but some things just trigger it. It's really incongruous with me the rest of the time, when I'm calm I'd never be that way.

I offended find I am struggling to ask for help on issues such as my mental illness etc.

However I also seem to struggle to communicate my needs and wants such as I struggle to communicate with my parents of my needs and wants and always assume they know what I want.

I'm absolutely certain I have schizotypal but I'm 14 but I know personality disorders can't be diagnosed to people under 18, but I KNOW I have it. There's always been something wrong with me since I was 10 and I used to think it was autism or schizophrenia, but not really and when I looked into schizotypal symptons, it "clicked" for what was wrong with me. I think I have all of the symptons besides a strange appearance, because I think I can conform to what everyone else is wearing and stuff (and very socially over-aware). Plus, I can trace the cause of it from my dad's genes because he's actually schizophrenic and tried to kill my family once so I'm pretty certain I got it from him and it was probably worsened with trauma.

Sorry for the yap, just don't know what to do, because this disorder is screwing up my social life and my mind (like attempting suicide because I thought reality was a simulation), yet apparently I can't get treatment, sorry.

does anyone elses positive and negative symptoms get made extremely strong under recreational cannabis?

I notice I get very spiritual on it

Let me begin by saying that for the last 2-3 years, I have been enticed by several different personas from a niche genre of romantic fantasy and have been selectively indulging the most, personal opinion, intense and captivating pieces of original soundtracks from the said media, with the addition of a new-found appreciation of lavender, essential oils, harmonic vocalisations, the naturalesque aesthetics, and the medieval era with hints of sci-fi fantasy. My recent focus has been predominantly music-wise, with a newfound "intensity" in appreciation of choir, church-esque melodic, and specific melancholic pieces of classical.

Is it possible to have both Autism and Schizotypal disorder. What is schizotypal disorder? How is it different from Schizophrenia?

I only ask because I'm trying to understand different mental conditions and how they work. I could look a lot of this stuff up but I like hearing things from different perspectives and viewpoints so please feel free to share any information.

Did anyone try microdose risperidone, like 0.01 - 0.02 mg. I've been trying it for a few days, it increased motivation, reduced paranoia and made task initiation noticeably easier with no side effect. I get it by dividing with a thin knife.

Anyone else struggle with sensing somebody’s presence when nobody’s really there? For me it’s not even just an uneasy feeling, it’s like I can picture the person standing right there with me. All the time. I can “hear” what they would say to me if they were really there.

It doesn’t matter what I’m doing— they’re standing there, watching me, talking to me. They’re in the passenger’s seat when I’m driving, and they comment if I take a turn too sharp. They’re on my couch watching TV when I try to eat breakfast, and they give me a look if I spill cereal on myself. They’re everywhere, all the time. I have no sense of privacy.

Usually they’re people that I know in real life. I work with them or go to school with them or whatever else. Which makes it very difficult be comfortable around them when I actually see them.

I’m used to dealing with them- it’s been nine years at least- but I wonder if this is normal for anyone else? Sometimes it feels like nobody understands.

If so, what is evil to you ?