Is this schizophrenia?

Is this schizophrenia or just schizotypal personality disorder? My symtoms:

1) I sometimes hear internal (nonacoustic) voices, which usually say some sort of random nonsense which often relates in some how or other to how I feel.

2) I am predisposed to seek connections in seemingly coincidental information, attributing them to my own subconscious thought processes.

3) I often feel like the entire world is a dream of my own, a manifestation of my subconscious which I could control through patient introspection and extreme willpower. In fact everything would be own choice, and other people would have chosen to be in the same world as I.

4) I sometimes (once to several times per month) have bouts of catatonia, both excitatory and stupor types. At one time I don't or barely move whatsoever, at others I engage in random spastic or repetitive movements which can often seem quite childish or silly. I never try to resist the catatonia when it comes, because it brings comfort and allows me to dissociate from myself and my feelings. It brings about feelings of depersonalization. Sometimes I grimace or burst into laughter during these episodes. They last for one to several hours when they happen.

5) My behavior is eccentric and bizarre. On the streets I feel urged to climb or jump on everything as a little child would, although I'm 19.

6) My emotions are often very visual, tactile or even gustatory, assuming the form of an abstract artwork. When I'm depressed I sometimes have the feeling as of grazed or cut flesh, when I'm hypomanic I feel like etheric energies are shooting forth from and into my body, after a manic episode I feel like I'm in a landfill, etc. I also infrequently have synesthesia.

7) My emotions are odd. I rarely have feelings about things that happen in the past or future. When I do, it's because I've planned something, which brings about intense anxieties. Most of my feelings are about the current.

8 ) Things sometimes seem very large, small, lurid, or otherwise strange in some way. Objects seem to have a spirit which I can perceive when looking at them. I can even influence their spirits by giving them kind thoughts, because of course their "spirits" are actually segments of my own mind which have split of from my ego. It sometimes gives me a deep sense of connection with the world around me, but never or very rarely with people.

9) I'm extremely disorganized and have a lot of difficulties with time. This makes me very irresponsible. I have a lot of difficulty remembering appointments, and I often lose things. Time is almost nonexistant to me.

10) I've isolated myself from the outside world. I have one friend I see often. When I don't hear of someone for a while, I think they've come to loathe me.

11) I'm rather paranoid of people. When someone walks me by on the street or down the stairs I somehow feel nervous, for no reason I can explain. I'm sometimes afraid cars will run me over even though I have right of way and I'm very much noticeable. When I'm sitting close to someone I don't know I'm afraid what they'll think of me, and I'm afraid every tiniest change in my expression or stance will give away my own feelings or thoughts. This makes me very self-conscious about every tiniest movement in my facial muscles. I'm afraid to look at people and deliberately look away from them. When I do accidentally look close to them I'm afraid they'll wonder why. Being in the presence of someone I don't know makes me nervous, even if it's just someone working on a wall outside the window (my curtains are shut in my room right now because of that). When I go in a cafe or restaurant I'm often afraid people will notice me and take on an immediate enmity towards me in some form or other. Quite frequently, at the merest thing that happens I imagine having to defend myself against people who would physically or verbally attack me, and these sometimes follow me in my nightly dreams. When boisterous passersby look at me I'm afraid they'll accost me. I am extremely, phobically sensitive to people's judgments and criticisms.

12) I'm hypersensitive to noise. It makes me very jumpy, even if it's not loud.

13) My thoughts sometimes have strange patterns. These are hard to describe, as they're not really verbal, but rather somehow made of visualizations and other imagined sensations. Sometimes they're a complete chaos. And sometimes, I have dreamlike, psychedelic impressions which escape any attempt of description and the memory of which disappears as soon as the impression came.

14) I smile little, and unless I'm drunk, I almost never cry. I think I've wept spontaneously only three times in three years except when I was drunk or using an antidepressant. For the rest, I sometimes tried to force myself to cry in order to unleash my emotions, but it never really worked.

15) Whether hypomanic or depressed, I feel very little pleasure in activities such as exercise or food. I am also completely celibate.

I don't actually see these symptoms as a problem at all, on the contrary. In fact I'd like many of these symptoms to grow more intense. I'm just sort of curious if I could call it schizophrenia (all the more because I'm about to get benefits for whatever condition exactly I'm having).

Most of these don't sound like schizophrenic symptoms to me. The only two that might be, to an extent, are no. 1 (voices) and no. 2 (associations). I hear non-acoustic voices (internal thoughts that speak to me) as well, but I think most schizophrenics that hear voices hear them acoustically. Perhaps those two symptoms of yours could be considered prodromal?

OP, this sounds a lot like me. I'm still waiting on my first post to be approved in the brief psychotic forum but the symptoms you describe are uncannily similar to me.

The difference is that I want them to stop. Today they seem more intense than ever and all I want is for my mind to be free and at ease. Especially the whole 'spiritual thing'. I honestly think I'm going through some sort of manic episode. Because my ordinary life is like a milder version of the way I'm feeling now - I'm feeling that everything I think is so relevant and logically/mathematically profound and that its all adding up to a sublime, unbelievable and bizarre truth.

Let me know how you get on. I feel that if I could maintain some sort of socialibility and repel the fear that grips me with this sometimes that I'll be able to live an ordinary life.

Irishguy wrote:OP, this sounds a lot like me. I'm still waiting on my first post to be approved in the brief psychotic forum but the symptoms you describe are uncannily similar to me.

The difference is that I want them to stop. Today they seem more intense than ever and all I want is for my mind to be free and at ease. Especially the whole 'spiritual thing'. I honestly think I'm going through some sort of manic episode. Because my ordinary life is like a milder version of the way I'm feeling now - I'm feeling that everything I think is so relevant and logically/mathematically profound and that its all adding up to a sublime, unbelievable and bizarre truth.

Let me know how you get on. I feel that if I could maintain some sort of socialibility and repel the fear that grips me with this sometimes that I'll be able to live an ordinary life.

As for that, a helpful advice Philo (who is also suffering from schizophrenia) gave me recently is to just sit in a bar: post271415.html#p271415

I know what you're talking about. The feeling you call the "spiritual thing" was quite prominent for me last fall. My mind twisted itself in all kinds of passages into infinities. At some point, it gave me a full-blown panic attack — that was when I was watching Vanilla Sky, which seemed so unspeakably applicable to how I felt and thought that it seemed absolutely impossible I wasn't dreaming. Everything in the movie clicked so precisely with my ideas that it seemed to speak specifically to me, as if it was a manifestation of my own thoughts and was being made at that very moment as I was watching it, to speak at me. I was half anticipating that it would address me, or if it would not, then something else in my environment would — perhaps an apparition. I was expecting any moment that now I had found proof that left no doubt that I was the entire universe in which I was living, that I was my own God, any moment now my entire reality would break down and, because I could not forget the proof I had found, it would fall away forever, irrevocably. I was waiting in anxiety for something to happen that would decisively settle that matter, making my entire reality break down altogether. Everything suddenly seemed to become a subliminal message from sent into my unconscious mind that was the world around me, a message from divinity.
Then, when I felt I had proof that I created my own world, I decided it was time to test my hypothesis (for I rationally realized that it was no more than that, knowing that correlations can be deluding). Therefore, as I had lived my entire life in loneliness, I decided to try as hard as I could to find my soulmate, and to commit myself entirely to this. I took this extremely seriously: I would give up everything in trying to do so. To convince my subconscious into making the choice of changing my life in this way, I did far more than trying dealing with any possible emotional problems I had that might make my subconscious refrain from doing so; I made the decision to commit suicide should I fail to do so before a certain date. Since I did not want to die, this would, I believed, frighten my subconscious into giving me what I wanted. In january, I had slipped into total nihilism, and did in effect try to kill myself.
I think that at this point, I had almost certainly developed a full-blown delusional psychosis, though ever since I haven't suffered from it.

Okay, I looked at the list once again, more carefully, and I concede that the following numbers coincide with my experience: 10 isolation 13 thoughts in strange patterns 15 lack of activity and celibacy. As a whole though, your situation is a lot more varied than a schizophrenic's, and you lack the hallmark persecutory symptoms and delusions of paranoid schizophrenia. However, I lack delusions as well, yet I'm diagnosed as sz.

I'm pretty drunk, but I will say this:

1) I feel grounded by fear. Although I cannot relate to the feelings of loosing control and being suicidal I can completely understand how I could possibly end up that way. After all, I feel every thought process I have (Which is a constant, evolving sorta-controllable monstrosity) leads me to rejecting the said process.

2) i have only felt like this (Where I feel like I could be loosing control) for a whole day. My thoughts tell me that it will pass, but I'm not so sure.

3) I worry about everything, from delusions of grandeur to delusions of insanity. Everything has a world of meaning, from the crease in my jeans to the reflection of my dogs in the sunlight whilst lying on the ground concentrating on her eyes. But that has only lasted for ONE day. Before this I feel like I have been acting, behaving and fearing this way, except on a totally subconsious level. Now I fear that I'm in sort of communication with my subconscious. Its scaring the hell out of me.

4) Whatever it is, its testament ot he beauty of the human mind. I feel so creative and artistic. I was always a big reader but right now I feel like I could put Joyce to shame. Which immediatily makes me deny the delusions of grandeur. Which terrifies me.

5) What should I do? Do you reccomend me talking to my parents about it? I'm from a good family, living at home and I'm only 20 years old. I'm scared. Could they pack me off to a mental instituion and ruin my life over just one day's worth of mania?

I think you need to switch focus from psychotic disorder spectrum to anxiety disorder spectrum. Everything you describe fits with anxiety a little bit better - particularly severe generalized social anxiety/avoidant personality disorder.

You've got the extreme self-consciousness, isolating, avoiding, some dissociation and depersonalization, going on (that's anxiety), plus the jumpiness, plus the concentration problems. I think the catatonia you're describing sounds like the sort of auto-hypnotic feeling you can get with dissociation. Or maybe leaden paralysis if you've got some atypical depression going on - but my bet is on dissociation. Schizophrenic catatonia is pretty rare now and typical of really severe long-term untreated illness, which you don't sound like you have. Most obviously, you're very upfront about your flat-out fear of others - which is not the paranoid type exactly, that's the socially anxious type.

Your desire to "get worse" fits with that too - given the level of fear and distress you're experiencing, you're understandably trying to withdraw into your own internal world to be safe, to be yourself, and to relieve the distress. That extreme withdrawal into an internal world and internal experience is typical of severe and chronic social anxiety - particularly in people who are very bright and have rich and sustaining inner lives and imaginations. And that's one of the few groups of people who might even welcome a psychotic disorder for various reasons. It's an explanation, it's an expiation, it's an allowance to follow internal cues and feelings and to withdraw into the self. Basically when the internal world is the only "safe" place - the desire to just totally withdraw into it (as psychosis is sometimes perceived) can be quite alluring.

I know social anxiety gets a very bad rap as a "nonillness" illness. Ignore it. What you're dealing with are serious symptoms. Plus you're describing some depression on top of it.

You probably know the standard treatment - CBT, exposure, reducing the isolation, maybe meds. You need to do all of that - so you don't *have* to hide so much.

But I think also, you need to listen to that part of you that wants to be psychotic. It's very important - it's telling you something about how you want to be in the world - how much you want to be yourself, to be safe, to be free to be the eccentric, to be free of others' judgement - a lot of incredibly important things. If it's something you need to pursue and play with - than do - but ALSO pursue getting out there in the world more at the same time - so you can do both and freely choose how you want to be - not be driven inside because you have no other choice.

Of course nobody can say for sure that it's not an incipient psychotic disorder. The early symptoms are nonspecific, can include isolation, depression, social anxiety, and odd thinking and perceptual experiences. I'm skeptical that that's what you're experiencing - but we'll know for sure in another few years.

But I do know from what you're saying that you do have serious social anxiety, and that whatever happens - you need to deal with that period.

Hey, thanks for the post. These racing thoughts really get to me but I'm beginning to think it was just an anxiety episode I had yesterday (I convinced myself I was going mad, growing afraid of the consequences and didn't know what to do) but just by stopping and breathing properly and spending time with people it doesn't seem to get too bad. I just feel that if I can just 'forget' the way I was yesterday that the fear would go away, because its the fear that is scaring the hell out of me. Sometimes I feel like my thoughts are beginning to distory and so I stop and try to relax.

Is there anyway of dealing with this so my subconscious can handle it without my conscious mind being aware? Thats a bit strange, I know, but I'm terrified of becoming that way again.

Those are very helpful, bright and interesting insights, Amanda, and I agree with you except for one thing: I don't withdraw from people because I'm afraid of them. Fear can be overcome. I withdraw from them because they bore me, because they don't understand me, because they cannot connect with me.

Even if I could love them more than I love being alone, they would not in the least love me back. No-one will deny that there are few who can endure someone who has gone through so much. No-one can take my episodes of depression, my catatonia, my disorganization, the scars on my arms. They can't grasp my intensity, much less endure it.

I do have frank paranoid feelings, actually, though that's the one symptom I'd want to get off. However, due to my extensive background of psycho-education, my deep sessions of meditation and my keen introspection and intrapersonal and emotional intelligence, I am able to control those feelings so that, intense as they are, they do not turn into delusions. I think this is a rare ability: the daydreams in which I am fighting people have become quite frequent and vivid, and always elicit immense feelings of anger, but when I catch myself in the process of these daydreams, I quell them. In fact, I should go even further and reconcile in my daydreams with the people I am fighting with; I'll try to do that.

I sometimes think I have more trouble with grandiloquent delusions, though I am unable to say if they're delusions. I certainly often have extremely high ambitions.

Irishguy wrote:I'm pretty drunk [...]

I'm not sure putting a poison into your brain while you're slipping into mental illness will help...