#schizoaffetive disorder

[schizopositivity]

Words that are very important to schizo-spec and psychotic people because they are the few words that accurately describe our unique and often life-changing experience:

• delusion/delusional

• hallucinate/hallucinating

• psychosis/psychotic

•schizophrenia/schizophrenic

• paranoia/paranoid

• word salad

Please don't use these words incorrectly. It does directly impact us. Yes the meaning of words evolves, but we don't have words to replace these ones. But you have words to replace these if you are using them as descriptors for something evil, unpredictable, selfish, contradictory, scared, misspeaking, etc.

[psychotic-tbh]

Does anyone else’s mental illness mess with their spiritual beliefs, and if so, how?

Not looking to be converted or debated. :0

[speakingofpsychosis]

Do you have any advice for finding the right therapist? In my experience they are not made equal, and tend to have expertises in different things. I'm worried whoever I end up seeing with be clueless about schizophrenia/schizoaffetive. In your opinion do most know enough about psychosis, or is it a specialty thing?

sometimes it needs to be a specialty thing depending on your mental state and ability to care for yourself/the severity of your symptoms, but most therapists have a very basic knowledge of schizospec disorders.

that being said, they are still very very helpful when navigating recovery and learning to deal with symptoms more successfully.

if your therapist ends up being clueless or very non-knowledgeable, you can ask them to learn WITH you, which could help others like you in the future, or you can politely try another therapist until you find one you feel comfortable with and who understands and clicks with you.

most insurance companies have sections on their website with a directory of therapists, what the specialize in, and where they’re located. definitely check that out if you don’t know where to start.

you can also google your local health department, as they normally have publicly accessible mental health/counseling centers.

[compassionatereminders]

Hi Kat, when I was 14-16 I had a psychologist/psychiatrist duo that I saw that I felt were very... diagnosis-eager. over that period of time I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, ptsd, ednos, did, schizoaffetive disorder, and bpd. I'm now 23 and i realise that I don't have / never had most of those things, I feel like depression, anxiety and ptsd are still present and I've mostly recovered from my eating disorder, but I don't have did, schizoaffetive, or bpd. I was really young at the time and going through a lot and now these diagnosis are affecting my adult life to the point where I was refused certain medication after surgery because of my 'history of psychosis' and a therapist turned me away after she viewed my file because she wasn't equipped to deal with individuals with did or schizoaffetive. I haven't had any hallucinations since I was that young (I think they were triggered by the meds they put me on!) and I don't have bpd and shouldn't have been diagnosed as a minor! I definitely never had did either. I don't know what to do and I feel so hurt. What should I do?

I think you should contact a psychiatrist and ask for a reevaluation. It seems really weird to me that supposed professionals carelessly slapped so many labels onto your case - and I think you're in your full right to ask for a second opinion since having received these incorrect diagnoses is interfering with your adult life.

[slutdge]

Hi, i just saw your post about people making fun of mental health art and stuff. I am schizoaffetive depressive type and i get really scared of some of the schizo spectrum art because the scary looking drawings trigger me. I’m not saying that i am one of those assholes making fun of the art. But sometimes i ask the creaters to put a trigger warning on their art but they get mad and attack me for it saying thats what i get for checking out the schizophrenia tag.

I think that's completely understandable and you're not a bad person for being triggered by it, I think it's reasonable to ask people to trigger tag things like that ESPECIALLY when it has to do with a disorder like schizophrenia that comes with so many triggers that can have really harsh consequences, the people that get mad at you for asking to tag triggers are fucking dicks.

[schizosupport]

Hi so I had a big panic attack related to my OCD or at least I think that was the reason but somehow sometime during that I started thinking that the devil is mad at me and now trying to force me to do his bidding and that the ocd was actually maybe him/his helpers. Anyway now I am not sure what I think but I am worried because the last time he sent beings to get me to do stuff for him I didn't do most of it and he could be mad so idk what to do. I am also diagnosed with Schizoaffetive + more.

Hello anon!!

It sounds like your OCD-related panic attack came with a side dish of psychosis, that must have been so scary, and I’m sorry that happened!!

Remember that the devil is unlikely to bother with you personally, supposing that he even exists. I don’t think he needs humans to do his bidding, and even if he did, I think the correct course of action may indeed be to ignore him.

More likely though, it’s your schizoaffective disorder acting up, and you are being delusional about this. I definitely suggest bringing it up with your treatment team if you have one!

Take care of yourself,

Cat

[the-lovely-lifee-blog1]

What I am putting up against:

•depression

•anxiety

•schizoaffetive disorder

•schizophrenia

•bipolar disorder

•lyme disease

•high functioning autism

[schizopositivity]

Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizophrenia! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizoaffective disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizoid personality disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizotypal personality disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with paranoid personality disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with delusional disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian who has ever experienced psychosis!

I love you all, happy visibility week! 🧡🤍🩷

[schizopositivity]

Yet another incredible interview from sbsk about someone with schizoaffective disorder! I relate a lot to Kevin on how making art and having pets are such helpful ways to cope with trauma and psychosis. He plays several of his own songs in this video, and the last one nearly brought me to tears. Even after all his hardships he wrote such a beautiful and inspiring song. Also TW: in this video he discusses csa, medical abuse at child psychiatric facilities, suicidal ideation, homelessness, dv, and death of loved ones. This is a pretty heavy video to watch but I think Kevin's story is worth hearing.

[schizopositivity]

have you ever talked about how your schizoaffective symptoms and osdd overlap or are different? i have the same diagnoses but my new doctor thinks it might just be one of them

No I haven't but that's a really good question. I'll explain how I got the individual diagnoses, then the overlap I experience, then how I can tell the two apart.

So for me personally I was diagnosed with OSDD first. I've been in therapy for my trauma since I was a child so therapists knew about my responses to trauma and stress for a while. I have a mix of dissociative amnesia and depersonalization/derealization, hence the OSDD diagnosis. I had these symptoms before I had my prodromal period of schizophrenia, and my reoccurring psychosis. I'm pretty sure I was diagnosed as a young teenager but it was suspected before that.

Then once I started having reoccurring and distressing psychotic symptoms, when I tried explaining it to a therapist they had me tested for DID. It turns out I don't have DID, but my psychosis in the beginning seemed to be dismissed as relating to my dissociative disorder. And I think my negative and cognitive schizophrenia symptoms were chalked up to PTSD and depression.

My psychosis escalated over a few years until I had to be admitted to a psych ward and was finally prescribed antipsychotics. At that point therapists realized I did indeed have a psychotic disorder as well, and determined it to be schizophrenia, since I have almost every symptom. (They still don't know if it's schizophrenia and MDD, or schizoaffective depressive type, but the treatment I have now is working so it doesn't really matter to me.)

So now for how my schizophrenia and OSDD overlap and interact with each other:

When I was having very intense hallucinations (before I had antipsychotics) it would sometimes get bad enough for me to fully black out, that's when the dissociative amnesia kicked in. So my memories of these experiences are having prolonged and very distressing hallucinations, then blacking out completely while still being awake and conscious, and then coming out of the blackout hours later, usually crying and hiding under a table or something. So basically my brain would react to trauma by having me totally forget a chunk of time, even though that trauma was the hallucinations that my brain created.

I would also have days of derealization/depersonalization where I would have hallucinations and delusions that enhance the dissociation, and they overlap to totally change my perception of reality.

For me the way I can tell the two disorders apart comes down to a few things: the specific symptoms, when they appear, and what kind of treatment works for it.

So with a dissociative disorder, the way it can impact you is usually very centered around yourself and your perceptions of yourself. Meanwhile the way psychosis impacts you can be limitless. It can impact how you view other people and can oftentimes feel like outside forces, not connected to yourself at all. I tend to hallucinate entire other beings outside of myself, but my dissociation seems to really only impact myself for the most part.

Also dissociative symptoms often occur during trauma, during stress or while your trauma is triggered. Meanwhile psychotic symptoms can flare up randomly, even when you are at your happiest. Sometimes my dissociation occurs as a reaction to the stress of psychosis, but in those cases the psychosis happens first.

And of course, schizophrenia has many more symptoms as a part of it that have nothing to do with psychosis, aka the negative and cognitive symptoms.

Also the treatment is different, the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia can often be treated with antipsychotics. But any dissociative disorder is most commonly treated with therapy. Like now that I take a daily antipsychotic medication my psychosis is mostly gone, but my dissociation is still around. My dissociation flared up in stressful or triggering situations, but the few hallucinations that I still get will come up totally randomly.

(Sorry this turned into a bit of a ramble, but I realized I hadn't really talked about what it's like to have both OSDD and schizophrenia.)

I think it will be important for you and your new doctor to determine if it is only one, so that your treatment can focus more on that specifically. But if you are happy with your current treatment and don't care about diagnoses that much, then you can let them know that you are content with the way things are now and maybe things don't have to change.

[schizopositivity]

im in the process of being diagnosed as schizoaffective bipolar & since then ive been dealing with a lot of internalized ableism & self-hatred because i feel like a subhuman freak. i only feel this way about myself, not other schizospec people. how can i get past the feelings of worthlessness & accept myself, mental illness & all? :(

I understand that feeling completely. I had the same belief when I was first diagnosed. I'm not gonna lie, accepting a schizo-spec diagnosis is a journey.

But you are no different from the other schizo-spec people that you do accept. You are part of our community. There are so many other people who know how it feels to have your symptoms, and also struggle to unlearn the stigma around it. You are not alone in this. It was helpful for me to find people online who proudly talk about their diagnosis, it helped me see that I wasn't uniquely strange, but part of a community of people who also felt that way. And even though stigma and sanism makes us all want to be silent about who we are, we are still part of the greater whole that is the schizo-spec community.

People with schizophrenia and schizoaffetive disorder are not outliers of the world, we (including you) are not the fuck ups that happen to be here. We are an important part of the world and what makes it what it is.

Acceptance will become easier with time. It's a diagnosis with a lot of stigma and judgment attached to it, so it only makes sense to feel like it makes you the awful things people claim we are. But if you can recognize that the stigma isn't true for every other schizo-spec person, then try to remind yourself that you are part of that, the stigma isn't true for you either. You aren't just the stereotype of "a schizoaffetive bipolar", you are a whole unique person with certain symptoms that fit you into a diagnosis that is only part of what makes you who you are.

There is nothing morally wrong, evil or bad about having a schizo-spec diagnosis, it's just a difference in how our brains work. It doesn't dictate who you are either, there are many schizo-spec people in the world, and we are all different. It's possible for someone with a schizo-spec diagnosis to be kind, happy, productive, creative, successful, fun and anything else, the possibilities are endless.

If you want more personal stories or want to talk through your feelings of your diagnosis as time goes on feel free to dm me if you're comfortable (I don't post those).

[schizopositivity]

Here's a short video I found about how recovering from psychosis in schizoaffetive disorder caused an identity crisis for this person. I really appreciated this video because I have never really heard people talk about how schizo-spec disorders and psychosis, or treatment of it, can cause you to have to form a whole new identity. I related to some parts of this a lot.

[schizopositivity]

I've been showing symptoms of Schizoaffective, including delusions..hallucinations... and alot of the depressive symptoms but I don't know what to do, I don't have access to a professional or anything, do you know any reliable sites I can check out to idk... double check facts and stuff? I'm sorry if I'm not allowed to ask this here.

Im really sorry you dont have access to a professional, especially when dealing with such serious symptoms as this.

In my opinion, I think you may have better luck focusing on coping with individual symptoms if you can only do it by yourself. Although it is very hard to find resources online for yourself and how to deal with these types of symptoms, it is possible. Try starting with the depressive symptoms (like "how to cope with negative thoughts spirals" for example), because there are far more resources online on how to cope with depressive symptoms rather than psychotic symptoms.

For more information on schizoaffetive disorder, I'd suggest websites like NAMI or PsychCentral (or any website that has the authors listed as licensed professionals and is medically reviewed, it should say so after the title of the article). Also if you want to hear people with schizoaffetive talk about their experience you can go to YouTube and search "SBSK schizoaffetive" (special books by special kids is a great channel and interviews people of all ages with different disabilities and experiences).

Sorry if this wasn't the answer you were looking for, good luck on dealing with your symptoms, I hope that you can one day get the treatment you deserve.

[schizopositivity]

My therapist diagnosed me this year with schizoaffective depressive type, its been such a huge deal for me and changed my whole perspective on myself and im very alright about it now but the thing is, i didnt expect to be diagnosed as schizo spec, so i havent done much research on it beforehand and it still alludes me to be diagnosed with something i dont understand all aspects of, like i dont know myself and its confusing. I got diagnosed but it seems so complex i dont know where to look sometimes to research more into it and i feel like im living with a stranger inside myself

Yeah that diagnosis can be hard to come to terms with. I'm proud of you for being willing to talk about it tho, because I know it's not easy. Especially when you first get diagnosed and weren't expecting it.

Schizoaffetive depressive type is a fairly new diagnosis, there isn't that much information out there specifically about it. But luckily you can find more research on schizophrenia and depression separately and learn about those on their own.

For me, my mental health team doesn't know if I have schizophrenia and depression, or schizoaffetive depressive type, so I will just research schizophrenia and depression separately.

Also the podcast "inside schizophrenia" has an episode on schizoaffetive disorder that might be helpful.

Any schizophrenia/schizoaffetive diagnosis is gonna be a lot to take in for anybody. It's hard to immediately identify with something that is so othered by society. It takes time to come to terms with. But just know that you are still the same person you were before diagnosis. And that the common stigmas and stereotypes of schizophrenia aren't usually true. It's a journey to accept this as part of who you are but it's possible. A schizophrenia/schizoaffetive diagnosis isn't the end of your life, it's the beginning of understanding yourself better.

[schizopositivity]

hey. questioning schizospec here. how do i know what i'm experiencing is bipolar disorder or schizoaffective bipolar type? /gq

The main difference is that schizoaffetive bipolar type has the entire criteria of schizophrenia as a part of it, and the entire criteria of bipolar disorder at the same time. While bipolar only had the criteria of bipolar, and sometimes includes psychotic symptoms but not all the symptoms of schizophrenia. So you would have to have enough schizophrenia symptoms for certain amounts of time (depending on the regional criteria) to have schizoaffetive bipolar type. So if you are curious you can look up groups of symptoms of schizophrenia on their own (since that would be included in schizoaffetive). More specific articles tend to break down specifics more so like looking up "schizophrenia positive symptoms" and "schizophrenia negative symptoms" and "schizophrenia cognitive symptoms". And see if you fit into that criteria. I'm personally not a huge fan of self diagnosis for things as severe as schizoaffetive disorder since most people with it benefit from treatments like medication and therapy that can only be given by licensed professionals. But I do want people to still do their own research to better find terms and vocabulary to describe their experiences.

[schizopositivity]

Have you read "The Quiet Room - a Journey Out of the Torment of Madness" by Lori Schiller? I just finished it its a really good memoir of someone w/ schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type)

I liked it a lot bc it was brutally honest about a whole lot of things. Hospitalizations and medical abuse/the generally awful parts about them, drug abuse, suicide attempts, and having to deal with the awful stigma and misinfo around the disorder. (i guess this also doubles as a trigger warning for those topics so i should also add a tw for SA and of course paranoia + unreality while im at it)

There were also chapters written by her family/friends/doctors sprinkled in there too and i really enjoyed them bc it lets it capture both how it affects the person and how it affects their family without making it seem like it's harder on the family than it is for the actual person suffering from the illness. Those chapters also didnt sugarcoat their feelings and werent afraid to say some hurtful things but i think thats a really important part of the book.

I would def recommend it as media about sz/sza. Honestly glad i read it because media about sz spec stuff can be like russian roulette sometimes but this one was honest, respectful, and refreshing about it and ended on a hopeful note abt recovery.

I haven't read it but that sounds awesome! I'll post it so other people can see it.

Sadly I am really bad at reading books :( I have two forms of dyslexia (the kind that switches letters and the kind that makes lines of text overlap so it's nearly impossible to read) and also my schizophrenia really impacts my ability to focus and retain the information that I read. Honestly just reading paragraphs like this ask is a struggle and takes me longer than most other people. And audiobooks are still difficult because of the focus and information retention thing.

That aside I am always happy to hear that schizophrenia/schizoaffetive memoirs exist. They are often buried under hundreds of books written by nonschizophrenics, so thank you for bringing this to my attention I really appreciate it.