schizotypal symptoms during depression

Hey, I'm recovering from a major depressive episode over the course of a couple of years in which I experienced some of the schizotypal symptoms I've read about. I was paranoid to the core, experienced a full helping of magical thinking, and insulated myself from any social contact, all on a persistent/continuous basis.

Examples:
-I was afraid to make eye contact with people because of fears they can read into my soul, know exactly what I had for breakfast and even whether I did my homework.
-I imagined that when people were laughing around me, they were secretly laughing at me.
-Whenever I walked into a room I imagined all the people staring at me and judging me.
-If I stood out in any way, I could "sense" that I was revealing information about myself.
-I always assumed people were talking behind my back.
-I had the impression I was controlling people by planting unconscious suggestions in their minds, or that I could reinterpret their reality for them just by telling them certain things.
-Experienced several hallucinations that obscured my entire field of vision, while walking outdoors.
-Derealization.
-Inappropriate emotional responses. Flat effect.
-Avoidance of everyone, including family members.

Thing is, most of these symptoms are gone now that I'm well on the road to recovery and living a less stressful life. So I'm not sure what the heck it was that I ever had. I don't think it was just depression, but schizotypal disorder doesn't just diminish on its own without help (or does it?).

Another thing is that I've been previously diagnosed with epilepsy. Also, recalling my years beforehand, I was pretty eccentric; I remember not fitting in; I'd concentrate more on ideas tangential to some main issue. I distinctly remember having speech problems, where I my brain would shut down and not allow me to finish talking, even though I knew what I needed to say I still couldn't connect it to speech, I'd stop dumbfounded in the middle of a sentence on a regular basis. I was afraid of people and experienced a mild form of magical thinking. All that is still true of me now, but to a lesser degree.

Whatever it is, I don't want to self-diagnose. But maybe some of you nice people could shed some light on it.

I'm not sure what you are asking with your post, but I will go with my guess.

eli wrote:I don't think it was just depression, but schizotypal disorder doesn't just diminish on its own without help (or does it?).

"Schizotypal-like" symptoms are common in depression; depression can even lead to effects going as far as psychosis. But for it to constitude Schizotypal Personality Disorder, it has to be your baseline. Those schizotypal characteristics have to be with you all the time, no matter how you feel, though it tends to get worse when depressed or anxious. It has to be part of your "core". Otherwise that is just depression with an extreme sense of detachement, which is very common during depression.

Wow I can really relate to some of the things you're talking about.
I have been searching around for anyone else who's had a similar experience as mine but I haven't yet found anyone whom I can really truly relate to when it comes to my illness or disorder.

1.) I was afraid of making eye contact because I felt like anyone I made eye contact with would get my "disease" and they would be cursed and they would begin to behave immaturely. After making eye contact with someone, I would always convince myself that they no longer had the ability to be mature and they were just acting like a child.

2.) I felt like people were laughing at me or at least talking behind my back.

3.) I always felt that my thoughts were going to slip out of my head and people were going to know how I truly felt about them. I was always scared that they can just see all my negative thoughts and any feelings I had.

4.) I felt like everyone was looking at me when I walked into class and that they were almost like glaring at me.

5.) I felt like once I started talking to someone they would become kind of like my servant. Like, I felt like everytime I started talking to someone they automatically begin to look up to me and do whatever I say and try hard to please me.

6.) I had a hard time being around my friends, being around my family even. I did not want to or felt I could talk to anyone so I stayed away from people as much as I could. Also, because I didn't want to keep infecting people by making eye contact with them.

7.) Lastly, I would like laugh really hard at little things that people would think is not that funny or feel really scared or sad when the situation wasn't even that bad. I guess it was kind of mixed/wrong emotions at wrong times.

8.) There were many more just little strange thoughts that I had about almost everything and I could write a whole essay filled with the strange things I thought, though I don't even remember all of them anymore.

So, anyone, much of this has improved. I kept fearing I had this illness or that but my improvement has knocked out many illnesses I was afraid of having such as avoidant personality disorder or paranoid personality disorder etc.
One thing I know FOR SURE I had was depression. I had an absolutely terribly severe case of depression.

How did you start getting better? I noticed changes with the help of medicine. So far, I'm really happy how far I've come but I still need to get a bit further to feel almost completely comfortable.