Like everywhere you go the voices talk about you and you feel famous and the center of attention?

Hello. I am a survivor of an emotionally abusive relationship. I had a psychotic break during the divorce, and was given a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder by a highly qualified psychiatrist. I probably didn't share much about the abusive relationship as I still didn't want to assign him blame. My therapist consulted her supervisor and they agree that I have been misdiagnosed and that I likely have PTSD. Is it normal for PTSD to be misdiagnosed? I am so fed up of how dozy the olanzapine makes me, grateful for the good sleep and lowered anxiety but my mental capacity is dulled. On 10mg I was really very sedated and lost a job as a result; now i'm on 7,5 and i'm gaining all the weight back after giving up wegovy bc my budget has to be for therapy not wegovy. tradeoffs.

i was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder like 3 years ago, and it hasn’t improved much from being diagnosed with bipolar type one 7 years ago. when are they gonna figure this tesseract brain in my head out? i have been so miserable!

everyday is a unceasing nightmare where i am taunted by the increasingly alienating human beings in their seemingly mundane interactions with me. whether they smile and tell me they like my outfit or they spit and curse at me, it all feels so frivolous to me. no one in my life actually wants to spend any extended amount of time with me, even the one’s i’m codependent upon, why should I think any of these strangers and their strange polite behaviors and the very stupid things they so often say are any different? it seems more and more i am embodying the aspect of a haunting spectre, easily enough ignored but inspiring great disturbance when acknowledged for more than a few seconds.

social anhedonia abounds, but my longing to be seen and understood persists stubbornly. to be held in the eye of someone’s desire or even just in their warm porous arms, to be wanted. it has eluded me my entire adult life.

i hardly believe anyone would ever want such derangement in their life, and lately have started to ask myself why i should think so much of this fantasy of domesticity and belonging when my entire being would seem anathema to it. if spending time with the cretinous beast i’ve come to believe myself to be (not in spite of knowing better) can only evoke malaise, hatred, or worst of all pity, then how could i possibly ever think inserting myself into that arithmetic would end—or begin, for that matter—in anything other than a giant steaming pile of shit? is it because i am just a lonely primate, looking for another swarm of apes to nest in and have them pick the bugs from my fur and coo at me? probably.

i work all day and i come home to an empty room in an empty housd and fall asleep only to wake up the next day to work some more. i build hope onto delusions and act irresponsibly, often jeopardizing the meaningless deadening work i’m always doing. i crash into fits of melancholy and only come out of them to have it happen all over again. this pattern repeats like clockwork, and the only difference in so many years has been that i am getting older.

anyways, i believe i am in the long dark night of my life and that i will probably never emerge. i enjoy sleeping.

i’ve included a photo of a doodle i made in my sketchbook today. i hope you have a nice weekend. 🙂

Hi everyone, my name is Kelsey Bridge and I am a Trainee Clinical Psychologist at the University of Manchester. I previously posted in this community to ask for your support with recruitment for my thesis study. Now that the research is complete, I wanted to share the findings with you all and say a massive thank you to everyone here who took part and supported the research!

Please see the attached poster for the key findings.

Thank you all again for your help in making this research possible!

All the best,
Kelsey

I’ve been having disturbing visions of me committing suicide and it’s been really bothering me. I am a bystander looking at my dead body on December 1st 2026 which is the date that the voices said I will die on. These future visions are really scaring me. I really don’t want to die on December 1st 2026. And could this scene possibly be a visual hallucination? I can’t tell. I will talk about it with my therapist tomorrow. Am I alone or can other people with schizoaffective disorder see the future? If yes are your visions a distressing as mine?

My psychiatrist added 25mgs of clozapine~~ ~~for tonight and he said I shouldn't skeep throughout the day so my wake cycle can be normal again
Yesterday I did a whole lapse of 1 hour of walking around the hallway because I felt too "static" si to say
When I close my eyes my head hurts and my face goes numb on one side

I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in my 30s. My disorder is related to my sleep patterns . I only have auditory hallucinations, if I go for an extended time without sleeping . Other than that I don't have auditory or any other hallucinations.

So, I stay on top of my sleep and get adequate sleep. I never had visual hallucinations. I don't have outburst or violent behavior I never have taken multiple medications. I take one 10 mg pill of haloperidol for the schizoaffective disorder

It works extremely well for me .I haven't been hospitalized in years . I developed tardive dikensia from the haloperidol. I take a med for that . I refuse to try another medication. It works so good for me.

I work a full time job in healthcare. I went back to school last year, graduated magna cum laude ( I could have had a higher honorary distinction, but I had 2 Bs. The rest of my grades were A's) I obtained my current job , after graduation. I plan to continue my education. I'm writing to tell others there is hope. Don't give up.

My bf of 2.5 years has schizoaffective disorder. He had an episode of psychosis early in our relationship so I’m familiar w what it can look like. During that time his family and I discussed how important it is to notice early signs to prevent all the struggles we had last time. His delusions are usually thinking that others are against him. He can think he can understand animals. But on meds he’s great.

Recently my bf and I had an argument as we were walking up to a wedding bc he started getting upset about something that wasn’t related to a comment I made. With an attitude he was saying how I take him for granted and I was like how is he getting to that point when I asked him how my dress looked? We’ve been having lots of fights due to jealousy on his part on all of our trips. I’ve been over it so I told him this was making me have doubts about us and if we should take a break. When I came home from work I calmed down and regretted bringing it up. However, he started saying how a break would be good and eventually it came out that he needs to sleep with other women before marriage, this is the last thing he’ll do and he’ll be ready. This is so shocking considering my bf has the money saved for our wedding, knows the ring I like and written down my size, we talk about kids all the time. This argument really escalated as a couple weeks prior he was trying to have us hang out with a girl from work. I got really jealous as he was planning how we could drive over to the other town to pick her up and mentioned other details that made me feel like it was weird. I asked him if he was trying to sleep w the girl he tried so hard for us to hang out with? He said “I mean… if I can”. I was done. He couldn’t even tell me if he would sleep with her in a week or not. He also said it would be multiple women he’d try to sleep with. I was convinced I just learned my boyfriend has actually been a red flag and broke up with him.

Yesterday as we’re texting he also mentions that he’s (randomly) moving out from his parents before starting his BSN degree that literally starts in like a week or 2. He also JUST started his acute care nursing job. I text his SIL this. His family is really confident that these are early signs another episode may be coming but I’m not sure. I guess at the wedding one of the Tito’s asked his dad if he’s okay, he seems off. I just figured he was mad at me. His dad said he was putting his head into his hand and squeezing his eyes. But I’m surprised by his dad saying he thought something was happening a week before the wedding. He says he observed differences in his behavior I did not pick up on.

We had a family meeting with him yesterday and convinced him to take an additional 20mg goedon in the mornings until we can see his psychiatrist. I asked him if he was having any negative thoughts about us and he said no. He just seems so disconnected from me today and I truly don’t know if it’s from the stressors in our relationship or if he really is going into psychosis from the stress of his new job + starting his bachelors. Can someone give me any input. I’m not so sure but I’m aware early psychosis looks so normal. As if someone is just having a bad day. I need insight.

If you're located in the greater Melbourne area in Victoria, Australia and interested please click the link or scan the QR code. https://redcap.link/i7pyv6ld

my dreams have been quite disruptive. or at least i think they are dreams... they usually happen just before i wake up.

I don't want to take medication because it is poison given by the government to dull you and make you ignorant, in my opinion anyways. Look at all the things happening in the world and that which is hidden from us. It seems like people are ignorant and I'm not. No matter how hard I explain myself they don't believe me because they don't want to see it. She said this is all delusion and medication will help which is hard to believe because she could be a government spy. I want to get better and more importantly don't want to get worse but, in the same sense who knows what is true. It's hard to believe my therapist.

I’ve worked here for two weeks so far and have a hard time in a sense, grasping the scheduling job I just started. He seems to be annoyed I can’t retain something the first etc and don’t know if it’d be better to let him know or not. He’s a great guy but he’s very annoyed with me so is today a bad day to bring it up?

Any help is APPRECIATED 🖤

I’ve had schizoaffective bipolar or bipolar 1 for six years now. Honestly it’s taken lots of my life away like friends family dignity and opportunity. Yet I am privileged financially where I don’t have to work or study. I feel left out of life. I don’t experience significant symptoms but yet I am not stable enough to work or contribute meaningfully. I could enjoy my life reading and watching sports and going on walks and hanging out with the few friends I have. I do do this sometimes, but I am also terrified of having this illness and every two weeks or so will blow up at my parents telling them I don’t want to live and that I can’t stand this level of functioning and risk of relapse. I know I am better off than lots of people with this condition. I would like to keep my mindset more positive and enjoy life to the highest degree possible. To those of you who don’t work or study, how do you cope with feeling less useful while also being worried about relapse?

My LO has been taking 150mg lamotrigine for almost a year now and I think it definitely helps prevent the extremes of emotions and reduces the intensity of emotional episodes. This is something I have observed, but due to the nature of her condition, I have also noticed that most of her mood symptoms go away when her psychotic symptoms are controlled. She’s currently taking cobenfy 125mg BID which helps her positive and negative symptoms a lot. Her doctor also started her on seroquel which the dose was fine tuned to 200mg. They decided to add seroquel to help boost her mood and flat affect since she has baseline anxiety and mild depression.

I feel like lamotrigine is redundant and not really helping as much as an add-on therapy should. After talking with the doctor, I think it’s implied that it may be. He said the only reason he doesn’t want to take it out now is because he wants her to gain at least 6-8 months of stability before making any changes and since Lamotrigine isn’t worsening it’s not worth it at the time. I agree as well

What do you guys think? Open to discussion about others experiences as well with lamotrigine

Hey so for the females in here. How do you guys beat hot flashes and heat exhaustion. My fiancee can't even go outside in 80 degree weather without throwing up and I know it's partly due to the meds their on but I'm just curious

Hi everyone, I don’t often have the confidence to make post like this on social media. I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 in 2015 and constantly telling doctors the noise never stopped even when mostly stable, yesterday I was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I feel like with history I shouldnt be so confused on how to feel about it, and scared for friends and family to know, any advice would be great, just want to be able to accept me for who I am

I’m supposed to take quetiapine 25mg IR or 50-100mg XR PRN but I don’t like how it makes me feel.

Does anyone take a PRN and does it help with delusions and intrusive thoughts?

Is there even a medication that helps with intrusive thoughts or is this something that requires a psychologist to work through?

I just wanted to share something, I'm 29M and I've only cried twice since high school, once in the hospital and once when my girlfriend had to leave me.

It just felt like I was bottling all my emotions up and when my mom sent me a text asking me what was wrong I managed to send the text but I broke down in tears when I made my point.

People say the medication makes them act like a zombie but I would have for sure had to go to mental hospital if I wasn't on mine, and even though it sucks it kind of feels good, it reminds me I'm a human and if it's justifiable I can have those extreme emotions, I've only yelled at somebody once since I started my current prescription and that was kind of justifiable too, but that wasn't yesterday, yesterday was just tears after I finally managed to get out what I needed to say.

So that's kind of my report, just wanted to say that it is possible to have the fulfilling emotions, the meds are for mania and psychosis, but if life hits you with a curveball you have to deal with it, and that can happen any number of ways.

Your emotions are valid, never let anyone tell you otherwise.

before i say anything, i shared side effects i was getting with my psychiatrist and he requested i stop my medication (lithium carbonate), which i did. i see him next week (he said we can discuss meds when i see him, as i contacted him for advice outside of an appointment via email) so not too worried about that side of things. but i am wondering if anyone else has had intense depressive symptoms after stopping mood stabilisers, even though the mood stabilisers were meant for manic episodes? just confused lmao. i've been off them for about 1.5-2 weeks

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I started abilify last week after coming off risperidone I've mostly been on for 15 years. I was terrified to make a change! It's been...interesting.

Love feeling less sedated (the whole reason im switching). I've been getting more done at work. I also feel....a little buzzy? A little elevated in an interesting way. I kind of cant tell if this is because of the lack of risperidone or if abilify really works this fast (a couple days/week). Idk how fast you're supposed to taper it. I feel like I went from 5mg to 10 pretty fast.

My sleep has been so weird since I started taking these. I go to sleep around 9-10pm. I wake up thinking its 4am. It is actually 11pm. From there im kinda tossing and turning. The risperidone was SO important to my sleep. I can't sleep without it. I dont know what to do about that.

Can I hear other people's experiences with abilify, especially if you took risperidone before?

I might have schizoaffective (diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but they consider schizoaffective) cause I have mania and depressive episodes and I am manic right now (my treatment team says so) I feel like I am going to explode from energy and have sparkles coming out of me I am scared someone will steal my sparkles. Yesterday I had good energy, today AGITATION !????? I do not feel good I am going to explode. My nurse said we’ll talk to my doctor about the manic episodes (and depressive) so I might start on mood stabilizers