I just joined the forum and wanted to make an intro post early on. I’m a male in my 30’s who just found out what schizoaffective is, years after I was given the diagnosis. It was never explained and I feel I was led to believe that it was another type of bipolar (which I have). I have a history of severe PTSD and thought that the hallucinations and delusions I’ve had were caused by this. I began to wonder about whether or not I could have schizophrenia only a couple weeks or so ago, when my wife mentioned that seeing hidden messages in numbers and ceiling tiles was not good. I’ve only recently started seeing a new therapist who, when I mentioned my fear, reassured me that schizophrenia is not the end of the world.
I recently began my own research on what it means to be schizoaffective, and it seems that if you have schizoaffective disorder you also have schizophrenia. Can anyone verify this? I began to read about schizophrenia, and something amazing happened. It all fit. Every little piece that never seemed to have a place had found one. An enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders. I finally understood myself.
Now that I know this is not just PTSD, I can begin to make changes that can best enhance my overall chances of success. And that includes reaching out to others who have dealt with this sort of thing, then to do the same for others in time.
But will this peaceful acceptance change unexpectedly to anger, fear, or panic? It doesn’t feel like it will, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to talking with those that I will.
Schizoaffective disorder, is a stand alone diagnosis, with its own code in the DSM5 -295.70
It is supposed to be a separate disorder similar to schizophrenia. I personally do not believe it to be a distinct illness, but a combination of illnesses merged together - schizophrenia and bipolar or major depression.
When you have schizoaffective, you have schizophrenia really, with a combined mood disorder
it did for me. When I received my diagnosis of schizophrenia I was in shock, but accepted it. Then I denied it, then again accepted and denied it over and over again.
That’s kind of what I am afraid of. I’ve been doing a lot of journaling about how I feel about it, kind of with the hope that I can go back (if needed) and read that I realized this wasn’t going to destroy my life. Trying to find some significant way to remind myself that it’s all ok when it doesn’t seem like it is.
Is this cycle of acceptance and denial continual? Are you able to find ways to deal with the emotions?
That’s helpful. Thanks. Years ago when I tried to research schizoaffective, nothing about it made sense to me. I really wish I would have been able to understand it then. It may have made certain times easier, but then again, it might not have made any difference at all.
This is where a complicated situation becomes even moreso. I’ve really been getting into the realm of metaphysics over the last few years, and have learned how to see and hear things in that realm. One example would be auras. I see energy fields around people, plants and animals, and magnetic fields. I do not believe that this ability is a hallucination or anything other than just me being able to see auras. But it gets more complicated…
I’ve also learned how to communicate with other entities through thought. Again here, in most situations I am reasonably certain that this is real communication. I know when a spider is in the room long before I can see it. It’s a gift that I have really embraced. But, I also have to keep in mind that it IS possible that I have created this feeling.
My main issue right now is that I no longer know what is real concerning my gifts and communications. My own reality is not the same as anyone else’s. And this makes trying to determine whether something is authentic or not very challenging. I’m sure some things I experience are not real, but I know many are. It’s challenging to determine though.
dont get too hung up about diagnosis from what i understand bipolar and schizophrenia are sister and brother illnesses and lots of symptoms in people overlap and intermingle. your still you at the end of the day.
They, i don’t know who, showed up when i was eighteen and ripped me apart.
Almost everything i have seen has been seen by shaman and others.
They have even shocked me and burned me while someone appeared visually.
Have accurately predicted things, told me where to find things, and just the other day cracked a joke using the time when i didn’t know what time it was.
When they showed up on halloween they mentioned a few things, like resurrection, the control of the weather, souls living in things, shapeshifting, and told me i would be tortured forever(a little scary, might even make you paranoid).
The first thing that i saw was an alien, minutes after i had my mind blasted apart with all of this horrendous ■■■■ i saw it, during that time i also smelled sulfur and began looking at the clock at the same times over and over again, it was three at first and over time it was 333, 222, 111, 444, 555, 616, 911, 1111. This has happened so very much.
And of course i saw a satyr during my second psychosis as well, i didn’t know it at the time but shaman see them often, all that i knew is that i wasn’t alone and they were hurting me badly.
This will sound odd, but after about 1/2 a second of sadness I was really excited about it. I knew near nothing about sz (schizophrenia) but I knew that I was sick and I have great faith in pdocs (psychologists) because my Mom took me to an educational pdoc when I was little and it was really fun. I got a little stuffed bunny and we read about a duck . I didn’t know how hard sz is to treat (I am categorized as sza (schizoaffective) now combining my depression and sz into one neat little package.
Besides having never seen sz or sza, combined with the fact that I didn’t know how hard it was to treat (for some people only as it turns out. I respond really well to meds. Might be partially a placebo effect) but I felt like getting diagnosed with sz and depression was like getting diagnosed with mersa. It can hurt you and maybe even kill you if you leave it alone, but if you take your medicine and monitor it you can be ok and live a good life.
Schizoaffective is either taken as more severe or less severe. It depends on who you talk to and their perspectives of it. The thing with schizoaffective is that I assume their perspective is that a person can swing one way or the other very rapidly. They dont tell us this but it is what it is. And I’ve been told we have a better prognosis than schizophrenia. It’s not neurodegenerative but I’m still unsure about what the labels mean. I’ve gotten better over time so it could be a sign that it’s a better diagnosis. My first label was paranoid schizophrenia, my other doctor wanted to change it to bipolar. So there was a compromise and they just slapped schizoaffective down. Think of it as bipolar with psychotic features. It’s essentially the same thing.
You know something else I’ve noticed? Most people with this label are adults who had major breakdowns when they were teenagers and are now in their 20’s. I know a bunch of people with schizoaffective disorder in their mid 20’s now. We’re just a generation whose been affected by a lot of hardships. Other commonalities are having home life instability.
They need to update the label to something that doesn’t sound so shitty and confusing. How about just call it a hyper-stress disorder…because honestly it’s usually caused by stress and imbalance. Mine was brought out by extreme stress.
That’s good advice. I’m really not stressing out about it too much (at least right now), but rather looking at it as an opportunity to finally start doing things that will help me overall and not just with my PTSD.
I feel like knowing may help me avoid some of the manic, obsessive phases where I think that everything has some deep and secret meaning that I must uncover before it vanishes forever. I’m not naive enough to think that somehow now the world will finally make sense. I just have a different perspective now of who I am and what makes me so unique. And maybe that will be useful to me when I need it to be.
Thank you for your reply. You have all made me feel at home here, and I don’t have that feeling very often.
This is very similar to how I feel. Thank you for sharing with me. Just knowing has changed my entire outlook on life quickly. It’s kind of like being introduced to a brother I never knew I had, but that I had regular contact with. And now we can be a family.
. I didn’t know how hard sz is to treat (I am categorized as sza (schizoaffective) now combining my depression and sz into one neat little package.