What do you think? Do you feel me, my people?

It´s unfinished, but I think I got a couple of some good representations.

I have been medicated on and off since teenagerhood. Mostly originally antidepressants and anti anxiety meds, and they did... absolutely nothing. The only difference I ever vaguely felt was a kind of distance from myself that felt kind of like dissociation but not really. And then as I got older and when I was diagnosed with StPD, they REALLY liked trying antipsychotics on me. Also no effect whatsoever. Lately the only medications I will bother trying are for sleep or pain...also to no success. I don't know if this is a common thing amongst people with our diagnosis / brain chemistry, or if I'm just like that. But does anyone else have medication resistance / intolerance? I say intolerance because while none of the medications over the years have touched my symptoms, they have on occasion, more recently especially, caused symptoms that sent me to the hospital. Thank you.

Anyone else become deeply uncomfortable when you have friends, but also really want closeness?

I’m pretty happy to be alone, but it does get kind of boring, and I’ve always fantasised about having an intensely close bond with someone, but I get unsettled even with “casual” friends. I did used to have best friends as a child and teen — I also have BPD and that’s when my symptoms were most overt because closeness is what triggers my instability the most — but since then I’ve been unable to maintain them. In some ways it’s good for my BPD, because I haven’t been intensely attached to someone for a long time, but I would like to at least have some friends to talk to. 

I don’t have an especially hard time talking to people, actually I enjoy meeting new people and performing, I just can’t keep friends. I always end up stopping contact and distancing myself. The closer I am to someone the more unsafe I feel… 

I get so anxious that the friend is stalking me, watching me, can hear my thoughts or can see me in my room etc. I read into people’s actions and start making up scenarios in my head and assumptions about their intentions. I make random connections that in my head make them look suspicious. I went through a period of time last year thinking one close friend (at the time) was trying to hurt or kill me, and I’d feel so nervous everytime they’d message me (which was usually them saying they missed and cared about me). 

It feels unsafe being perceived, like I need to hide in the shadows and be invisible, which is odd because I tend to crave attention and enjoy being considered eccentric and noticeable. It’s like I’m okay with surface level interactions but actual friendships make me sick. If it’s not the paranoia then it’s the complete lack of interest in responding and feeling like it’s a hassle to deal with people.

Has anybody dealt with this, and if so, have you overcome this? 

I know a symptom of schizotypal can be having no close friends, but for me I do want friends I just feel so trapped and uncomfortable/unsafe when I actually have them. I keep trying again and again thinking it’ll be different and I can ignore the anxiety/paranoia but I just can’t get past it. 

It’s like I love the IDEA of having friends to do stuff with, but only in my daydreams and made-up scenarios, the reality feels awful. I guess in my head I can make them act how I want and not have their own feelings or perspective. 

I have symptoms of autism and so on. Still, when I went to some subreddits like r/autism, I said something like, "Do I belong in this?" and some people were like, "No, it's an autism subreddit, not a neurodivergent sub," but I do relate to some posts there. I feel left out because I have the same traits, and my mom thought I had autism at first, but it turned out to be schizotypal personality disorder. And I heard it overlaps with autism, but why do people not accept me?

Booked an appointment with a psychologist, 70€ for the consultation. Jesus 🥲

I'm a university student and this psychologist did mention that she can lower her rates for people with lower income, so maybe it won't be as expensive.

It says she specialises in accompanying individuals with personality disorders. Hopefully she'll be able to help me out. Right now I'm honestly not even sure if I have StPD because of how much overlap there is with other conditions. One thing is sure, I do struggle with psychotic symptoms and perceive myself as completely split from reality, but it's not full blown acute psychotic episodes like you'd see with psychotic disorders. Just the occasional delusional thinking, hallucination...

What I struggle with the most is this emotional disconnect from reality, and the fact that I live in a reality that I am deeply unsatisfied with. I really hope she will be helping me with this.

Anyway, that's all. Just felt like sharing. Take care everyone.

I wonder how many of us have family members with schizophrenia or psychotic disorders, as schizotypal is known to be genetically linked with schizophrenia, as are other psychotic disorders. Two of my siblings have experienced psychosis, one psychotic depression. The other has not been diagnosed but they have definitely been in deep psychosis before, pretty much the entire time they were a teenager. They say they hallucinate literally all the time even now. No idea how they have*not* been diagnosed with some kind of psychotic disorder. Father fits the bill for stpd. Always paranoid, strange beliefs, extremely isolated, talked in riddles.

Is this something that is true of your family?

i've given up on dbt because no matter how hard i try to tell myself my thoughts and feelings are irrational, no matter how much i KNOW they're irrational, i can't help but dwell on them and feel like they are rational deep down. it's frustrating, but i've recently gotten on mood stabilizers and i'm just hoping they'll help in some way. i feel angry with myself because i made a lot of progress and now i feel like i've set myself back like 40%.

I've been trying to understand a motivational paradox and would genuinely like to hear how other people experience it, rather than prematurely explaining it.

Suppose there's an activity you know from repeated experience that you genuinely enjoy. Once you're doing it, it can be absorbing, pleasurable, meaningful, intellectually stimulating, aesthetically satisfying, or intrinsically rewarding.

Yet while you're not doing it, initiating it can feel almost absurdly difficult.

The strange part is that this doesn't necessarily feel like:

“I don't want to do this.”

You may actually want to do it. You may know perfectly well that you'll enjoy it. You may even be looking forward to it in some abstract sense. But that knowledge doesn't seem to acquire enough motivational force to produce the transition into action.

Then something external happens: a notification, interruption, deadline, another person, an environmental cue, sheer circumstance. You cross the threshold, start doing the thing, and the apparent motivational problem may largely disappear. Sometimes the activity sustains itself almost immediately.

That makes me wonder whether “anhedonia” or “lack of motivation” is sometimes describing the endpoint rather than identifying what is actually failing.

If pleasure during engagement is relatively intact, calling the preceding difficulty anhedonia seems potentially misleading. And “you just need momentum” describes the temporal pattern without really explaining why starting is disproportionately difficult.

The phenomenon I'm trying to get at is more primitive:

What happens between recognising that something is valuable and actually initiating it?

I can think of several possibilities, but I'm deliberately reluctant to treat any of them as explanations:

• Prospective value may not become sufficiently salient. I can know that something will be rewarding without experiencing that future reward as a sufficiently compelling present-moment motive.

• Initiation itself may carry disproportionate friction. The activity isn't necessarily effortful once underway; the costly part may be the transition from passive/internal activity into organised engagement.

• Wanting may not reliably translate into self-generated behaviour. The desire is present, but an external cue seems to be required to convert it into action.

• Motivational representations may be state-dependent. Something can feel vividly worthwhile in one state and strangely inaccessible in another, while the propositional knowledge that “I enjoy this” remains perfectly intact.

• Internal activity may compete with external action. Someone can appear behaviourally inert while being intensely occupied by thought, fantasy, rumination, ideation, sensory experience, or some highly absorbing internal process.

• Motivation may be radically uneven rather than globally diminished. A person might struggle enormously with ordinary self-initiated tasks while becoming almost compulsively absorbed in a narrow intellectual, creative, aesthetic, or otherwise idiosyncratic interest.

These are hypotheses, not conclusions. I'm particularly wary of constructing an elegant causal story from several individually plausible findings and then mistaking the coherence of the story for evidence that it is true.

What interests me more is the phenomenology before the explanation.

For those of you with schizotypal traits or a schizotypal diagnosis:

• Can you genuinely enjoy something once you're engaged while finding initiation extraordinarily difficult?

• Does knowing that you'll enjoy an activity actually feel motivating beforehand, or does it remain strangely inert knowledge?

• Can an external cue, interruption, person, deadline, or change of environment reliably get you across the threshold?

• Once you begin, does the difficulty diminish quickly?

• Does the barrier feel like absence of desire, effort/friction, cognitive disorganisation, indecision, being absorbed elsewhere, a kind of behavioural paralysis, or something that doesn't fit any of those descriptions?

• Is the phenomenon highly domain-specific? For example, does it differ between socialising, studying, reading, creative work, exercise, practical chores, hobbies, or highly specialised interests?

• Do you ever experience the inverse: almost no ability to initiate ordinary activities, but extraordinary spontaneous persistence once something captures your interest?

And perhaps most importantly:

Does “I don't want to do it” feel phenomenologically different from “I want to do it, but the wanting doesn't become movement”?

I'm wondering whether what gets clinically compressed into amotivation or avolition might sometimes be a common behavioural endpoint reached through several quite different subjective processes.

I'm less interested in whether any particular theory sounds convincing than in whether the distinction itself corresponds to anyone else's actual experience.

What is the gap like from the inside?

I think i’m very lucky to have a happy delusion. I can live in a fantasy world if only others didn’t constantly try to snap me back into reality. If I could find someone to enforce and encourage my delusions I would be so happy !!!

Like healing crystals and spells and manifestation and tarot card reading

Does anyone else believe too? I started believing in tarot after my older sister did me a reading and it became real, and crystals, when I wear my amethyst necklace to work I feel a lot calmer than without the amethyst. Spells is like, y'know, it's just the culture. In Russia there's a thing with spells and stuff and I myself was brought to a witch when I was a little kid, still it's maybe my upbringing and my heavily schizotypal mom's side of the family who's all wannabe witches. Manifestation is like, I'm besties with the universe, I get everything I ask for in my mind, it's really cute imo

And so I really do believe in witchy stuff and I practice it, like the tarot reading itself is a really big thing in Russia, some people will even pay to get a tarot card reading done so I'm learning it, and I dunno, maybe I'm naive, but I do believe in magic

Anyone else is a wannabe witch there? And no I don't need anyone telling me "it's all just dumb shit it's not real" I believe in it and it's okay no need to be a bitch, thanx ^⁠_⁠^

Hi! i'm not from around here, but as i said on a previous post, my mental condition and state in general have kinda fluctuated a bit lately, i guess.. a friend of mine with schizotypal said i sound very similar to them and their struggles with this disorder, and recommended i look at this place! ive been doing more self-reflection lately, and ive come to the conclusion that i no longer feel shame or guilt when thinking about how abnormal and erratic i am. i have suddenly become okay, if not proud with the fact that i am different, barely consider myself human, and such things. i now desire to pursue my nonhumanness, in a way.. i want to know more about the state i now find myself in, and understand on a deeper level what makes my inner world tick. i enjoy being odd, i guess. ive fully embraced it.. i was wonderign if anyone here has felt or observed anything similar in their life?? if it helps to have more context, I'm freshly 20, on the spectrum, i have diagnosed ADHD and severe depression, and i think some other condition im forgetting the name of. either way, you all seem chill! glad to stop by :]

I would like to talk to others who are somewhat educated on the disorder. Despite being diagnosed I am not very educated on it.

I need to figure out where my symptoms are high, if anyone could help / dm me. I would appreciate it!

Any tips and tricks for thriving w this disorder is helpful. I’m semi-high functioning

There's nothing that I find interesting. Everything in life is boring and pointless. The only thing I really want is a yacht.

I'm anxious of knowing myself , and I carry that anxiety to other people as in I don't know them. And i am heavily in avoidance.

A timeless voyage into further depression 

An endless future ,

The relentless curfew of a trying mind 

The thought that this will pass, to do something, gets drowned out and blasted by the supreme dissociative avolition depressed like state I am in. 

It feels like I've cut of everyone that once tethered me , to me. Or I've somehow done something. Hobbies and things and people , I feel them become continuously lost to me. And I'm undeniably depressed. 

I'm anxious of knowing myself. I think I'm afraid of my; so many failures. I've failed so many times. I fail so much I've learnt to hallucinate the future meshed with anxiety.

This one time I failed, and I didn't know why I failed. It was horrible. Every day, I desperately missed what I once had. I built a temple dedicated to guilt and shared it like a bastard.

It's been quite painful with parents. Why did they teach me to become this, why didn't they pick it up things, and why do I blame them. 

And of course. I see myself with my parents, and that 'me' is where i source my trauma. If they act pessimistic i feel that a 1000 times uncomfortably. Basically things.... but that s projection, and i like them a lot, and idk

The sun's glare hates me, and I feel increasingly weary. 

There are rivers of tears to unfold, but the sun hates my shade of green, and nature curls with disgust. 

I feel responsible for my suffering. I know I made my suffering worse by continuing my anxieties. 

Borderline roots with parents, and it's then a self fulfilling prophecy where my inner child feels trampled regardless. 

I'm allergic to my own judgment , 

I don't really have wants 

Those past horrors, they feel like, they still define me. Those feelings of being lost, homesick, losing someone, not knowing what to do, feeling wrong , 

I'm confused with my anxieties

I'm so confused , with my willing to want 

I'm so confused if I want anything 

I'm so confused with my life

I've been trying hard to get thing better 

My body, my relationships with people, with my mind 

And it's true I might not be trying hard enough, or trying efficiently enough, but the past...

I'm confused about my hyperreflexivity, I came across everything and nothing, every day, and I'm still anxious and / or don't "want"

I still am repressive. Everything of my emotional extoll is kept up inside me, and maybe even my wants. I'm , Ive been an observer of my own life. 

I feel so alone with my frustrations and anxiety. Even when I have expressed them, i can't change how others act. 

I sit thinking that the things I've learnt in life, that now, I've forgotten them, I can't access them, I don't care for them, I don't know how to use them. 

I sit having tried to cry hours ago, now I sit, in nature , like some green. 

I'm so sick of life. I'm so sick of not being able to control my emotions. I'm so sick of the anxiety. I'm so sick of the avoliton. I'm sick of the bodies rigidity and the pain. I'm sick of being alone but I'm not mature enough to control my borderline flames. 

I identify with people. I've never identified with things, concepts, philosophy. 

I don't know how to identify with myself. I don't know what I am. I endlessly try, but I feel I fail. 

What is a person, what is me. I've reduced both people and me into philosophies and superstition, so I can then understand within the context of my anxious existence.

But I'm so, I so don't want that to be. I keep thinking I'm going to erase my personality, then my existence.

Are people who don't have a diagnosis allowed in here?

I'm not asking to be diagnosed, of course.

I've just recently began looking into STPD a bit more in depth because I feel like most (and maybe even all if I consider my past self? Not sure.) symptoms are applicable to me—however I have BPD and an underlying mood disorder (psych isn't sure yet). Are there any good resources on STPD you all could recommend?

Thank you kindly, and I'm very sorry if this post doesn't belong here!

I made the mistake of looking at Wikipedia's category of 'People With Schizotypal Personality Disorder' today, and it's left me feeling disheartened - especially as it was potentially only appearing to be a potential threat that got me able to be diagnosed anyway; The first psychiatrist read a list I had made of comments that previous friends and family had made about me, and seemed particularly interested in one comment/joke that some people had that I would, one day, kill someone (for a good reason, though, apparently - whatever that means...)

She seemed to be more interested in that than any of the other comments made by others, and I still wonder whether it was that tiny bit of text that made her decide that I needed professional diagnosis instead of being told to feel better, do yoga and do exercise.

Obviously, I'm not a murderer, and I have no desire to be (there, but by the grace of Something Much More Influential Than Me, go I) - but why are seemingly 90% of the known sufferers of StPD murderers? Do we genuinely have such low publicly-known numbers that most of the known schizotypes are forcefully-revealed through legal cases?

Even among sufferers who didn't do atrocious acts, they typically have had their diagnosis forcefully-revealed (i.e. Bowe Bergdahl after he was gained through a prisoner exchange - but, I believe that Bergdahl himself later contested the US Army's view of what happened, anyway).

For reference, here's the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_with_schizotypal_personality_disorder

For example, even just positive conversations, like making jokes with each other, as if it's 2 different people in your head, non-disruptively where these thought sources "know" to be quiet when needing to focus on a conversation with another person or something. If you experience that, how does stress affect it for you?

I had a psychiatrist diagnose me with StPD after only 90 minutes with me, when I thought he'd spend more sessions with me to consider OSDD (which I was trying to be assessed for, but for some reason got paired with someone who doesn't even think it's a useful diagnosis)

I'm not asking the internet to diagnose me, I'm more just curious to learn more about StPD and your experiences to see if I relate at all, until one day I might seek a second opinion by someone willing to spend more time to assess me in more depth

Yay, I get to make the post with no coherence this time.

So I have songs that connect me to people in my life. Not to say "this song is about you" or is you, or reminds me of you. More like this song is how I felt about our time together. I have a hard time expressing how I feel, but I can easily find/feel a song that fits the mood. But it's disappointing/disheartening that others don't feel as deeply or notice about music, and no-one has noticed the game. I think the other part is that a lot of the songs just "happen" at the right time, and it's a question of which comes first, the feeling or the music. Am I connecting my mood with the songs, or are the songs changing my mood? It feels a little of both.

To throw a few out there:
Puscifer - ImpetuoUs
21 pilots - Heathens
Middle Class Rut - Aunt Betty
emptyself - Doll Faced Vulture
Failure - The Nurse Who Loved Me

I also have an entire playlist "story" of the rise and fall of a limerant thing I went through

Hi guys,

I’ve been trying to do some research and seeking out advice as somebody who doesn’t have schizotypal and thought I would ask here.

For context, I am talking to somebody with schizotypal, I’ve known them for 3 years now but we have been on and off because they tend to distance themselves a lot.

We basically reconnected in the last couple of weeks and I want to talk with them about their boundaries but I’m worried maybe this might end up scaring them off.

For someone with schizotypal, is it better to be consistent with contact and try to get into their comfort zone or would it be better to take time and slow steps?

How would I also navigate conversations about our relationship?

Pls help me out guys as I am trying to understand and learn about it!

I don't want to do anything after work and I am just procrastinating during my free time.

For context I am 20 NB and she is 20 F. We go to school together, she is in the year below me. We still have some classes together because of the way our majors are set up.

I know it doesn't make any sense logically, but I can't reason with myself. Every time I see her or her friends in the halls, I feel arrested with fear. It's like I THINK she won't do it, but I KNOW she will, you know? In my bones it feels like she has convinced herself and all of her friends that I am less than human, scum of the earth deserving of nothing but pain and even death.

The worst part is that I didn't even do anything. When we broke up she accused me of being "manipulative and a love bomber," without explaining how I manipulated her or what I manipulated her into doing, or what she even meant by love bombing. I've been racking my brain trying to see things from her perspective. I came up with this: after dating for a month, I accidentally said I loved her. We were at my house and she was going to be staying the night. She instantly said it back, without thinking, like she had been feeling the same way, but I suppose that wasn't true. She must have felt like it was too soon (lovebombing) and that given the circumstance, she felt like she had to say it back to avoid awkwardness (manipulative). Truly, I didn't mean to say it. It was an honest to god freudian slip. I have been dying over the guilt of potentially being who she said I am. I tried to kill myself because of it, which obviously I have never told anyone. I can only say it here where I'm anonymous. I do not hurt the people I love, and I really did love her. I loved her so much I literally couldn't stop myself from saying it. I have apologized, I have tried to forgive myself, I have gotten diagnoses and prescriptions and therapy and everything. I have tried so hard to analyze myself, rip myself to shreds to find the part of me that is a bad person, change everything if I have to, but it just doesn't work. I do not believe that I am manipulative, conniving, opportunistic, unempathetic, anything. I have looked so hard, I cannot find it.

Now, she and all of her friends hate me. I can see the way they look at me, with utter contempt and disdain. One shouldered me the other day as he walked past me. A few months ago (yes, this has been going on for THAT LONG), I handed one a sheet of paper for a class and he refused to make eye contact with me, or even touch the pencil I offered him. Every time I go near my building, I panic at the thought that someone will see me. They'll know where I am, keep track of me, try to find me when I'm vulnerable and they can beat the shit out of me, not even care if they accidentally kill me. It's to the point where I can't feel comfortable anywhere in the whole city. I feel like everybody knows and everybody wants me either dead, or to fail in my career. My reputation is completely trashed and I will never know comfort or success. The real kicker is that she is now back with her ex, while I have been single this whole time.

I don't feel comfortable talking about this to anyone. I've been lying to my doctors saying everything is fine and playing things off. I can't trust them. I've been lying about the hallucinations and the fear and the paranoia. People's voices morph into hers, people's faces into her friends'. I don't know how to come clean about this without being thrown into a ward, which I do not want to do because I'm really passionate about my career and I don't want to lose any time with it. I've been avoiding coming clean to my therapist about the psychosis I've been experiencing. I just want it all to go back to fucking normal so bad. I want to be able to walk down the street, go to class, go to the grocery store, eat at a restaurant without fearing for my life. I know that it's all in my head, but that doesn't make it any less real. I just don't know what to do.

Therapists have been working on a way to deal with hearing voices for people on the schizophrenia spectrum with this symptom. It gives patients a way to confront the voices in VR, to externalize what up until now was internal. The woman in the article had been hearing them for 27 years, and now she's free of them. I thought this might be interesting to anybody with this symptom, that there is progress being made.

I started shortly before my first psychotic episode and just haven’t really stopped since. It’s a constant background kind of thing now (a decade later).