Schizophrenia without delusions and hallucinations?

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1

Is it possible to only have a thought disorder? Ive never had fixed delusions or hallucinations before. I have ocd and some other things but the way i can describe my thought process is like there’s too many things going on in my mind at once and the way that I form thoughts is completely messed up and abnormal. It’s gotten to the point where I have to talk to myself out loud to form some kind of thought or idea completely without it getting cut off. I was reading about the types of thought disorder symptoms and it seems like I have alot of them.

Is this possible?

2

It is very possible. My thoughts are always jumbled unless i think out loud or do something music related. Sometimes you can’t hold onto thoughts and you just have to let them flow and they will pass.

3

It doesn’t sound like schizophrenia. Have you seen a doc?

4

Yeah, they say it doesn’t sound like schizophrenia. But I just keep coming back to the fact that the idea of having a thought disorder and symptoms of it hit home quite well. When I take ssri’s I sometimes get manic when my dopamine levels are too high as well. Is this a sign of anything? Bipolar?

Sometimes I won’t be able to think in my head at all too. I used to take stimulants for probably around 3 years daily to get rid of this brain fog but have since discontinued them because they made my OCD worse.

5

When I was first developing awareness of my disorder I didn’t think I had delusions or hallucinations either. That’s because I didn’t have full insight and didn’t see my beliefs as delusions and thought my hallucinations were something everyone experienced. So be mindful of that.

Otherwise if you really don’t have any of those other things, it could be anxiety, or maybe even mania if you get the other things of mania with it.

6

Yeah, I mean I’ve had worried about developing Sz before and I know for a fact I’ve never hallucinated or had delusions. I thought I did but what I described to my psych he said was all anxiety based. The only thing that concerns me is the thinking disorder which really checks off alot of symptoms.

7

Yes! Cognitive deficits are the main thing I hate about this disease because it’s the one thing that never goes away for periods of time. I go without delusions and often without hallucinations but the Cognitive symptoms alone are enough to impair someone to the point of disability on their own.

Well I also have pre-existing mood disorder so that might have something to do with it. Sza isn’t the same as Sz alone I often forget.

8

I’ve read that bipolar can have issues like this too, same with anxiety and depression as well.

9

I have sz without delusions and paranoia. The reason i call my illness sz is cause i cant go off the pills cause i wount be normal without pills.

10

Oh also attention deficit disorder maybe

11

Does add and adhd produce similar cognitive symptoms to SZ?

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Can cause racing thoughts or constantly losing your train of thought. When you said your thoughts tend to cut the other off it made me think of that.

It would help if you gave an example of your thought process? Like stream of consciousness?

Like with psychotic thought disorder, the thoughts tend to make no sense whatsoever. It’s not just there being a lot of thoughts, in fact many with sz may experience poverty of thought. It’s that the thoughts are nonsensical, for example thinking “the raven ate my lunch I had a hunch went to brunch” “broken bones are no fun” “what I wouldn’t do for a walk in the rain to gain the pain of being slain”. It’s like you’ve lost control over them and have no idea what’s going on. Or some thoughts may be very repetitive.

13

I have a thought disorder apparently even though I’m smarter than at least 70% of people. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. The term gets thrown around a lot like I have a defect or problem. There’s no evidence I have one.

I have delusions though but no hallucinations. I have cognitive decline and negative symptoms. I also had really painful dissociation.

My delusions are hard to overcome. I guess you can call them fixed beliefs. I sometimes have unbearable anxiety.

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You can have disorganized speech and negative symptoms and have schizophrenia.

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It’s hard to describe my thoughts. Ill give you an example:

say I’m reading something, I’ll try to read it word by word and it’s like my brain doesn’t piece together the information, like something is blocking it from making since in my head. It will be like I’m reading the words but my mind is running much faster than my eyes so my mind just automatically brings up other connections to the words I see. Sort of like what I’m reading in my head and thinking with it gets finished faster in my head than what it should be externally. It’s very distracting. I thought it was adhd or add but I don’t know. When I look at song names I’ll instantly hear the song in my head too, it’s like a radio station. Like I could be looking at a Playlist of music and every song I see will play in my head for a little snippet until I stop looking at them, then my mind will continue to play whatever song from the last song name I’ve seen.

Sometimes when I’m falling asleep and waking up I have like random words (as you described) just kind of going on and on, keep in mind I’m not fully awake but I’m partially awake and constantly aware of what is going on. It sounds like muffled talking as what I can make it out to.

When I’m trying to focus on something it’s very hard because my OCD is so severe and I have constant intrusive thoughts and voices (not external) causing me to be unable to stop doing rituals. I noticed that when I drink this tends to go away. It makes it hard to live daily life.

When I’m talking to people and trying to tell a story I always seem to have a hard time doing that as well, sort of as my mind just blanks. I’ve read that this is called thought blocking but from what I know this isnt totally uncommon for the general population. It can be a symptom of anxiety, depression, bipolar, brain fog.

My brain makes all kinds of weird connections from my memories to external stimuli too, so like say I see the word “bread”, it will automatically bring up some random thought related to it because there’s some connection it thinks.

In social situations I’m not totally withdrawn either, I still have friends but often times when I’m talking to them and hanging around them I’ll just feel tired and out of it causing me to just say much less and pay much less attention to what they are saying.

The last couple of months I feel like my working memory has gotten alot worse too, I have a hard time remembering daily tasks and things I’ve done throughout the day.

By the way, the voices I’m talking about in my head are like auditory memories. I’ll remember someone saying something and hear them talking in my head in their voice. I know that’s actually quite common though and nothing to be worried about.

I’ll respond with even more information when you reply too.

16

That’s very interesting and you’re right it really could be a symptom of soooo many different things it’s hard to say. I’ve never heard of a thought disorder existing on its own and not being symptomatic of some larger issue so I can’t say for sure. However with this alone, without the existence of positive symptoms at all, you wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

It almost sounds like instead of thinking of something and getting a mental image like most do, you get the auditory version of that instead.

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17

According to the DSM 5 you need to have 2 / 5 symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech, grossly disorganised or catatonic behaviour and negative symptoms. Of the two symptoms, one of them must be either delusions, hallucinations or disorganised speech. In active phase the symptoms must be present for at least one month (full blown psychosis) with some symptoms persisting for at least 6 months when being treated. Symptoms must cause significant disturbance in one out of 3 key areas: work or employment, interpersonal relationships or self care.

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18

The symptoms definitely don’t cause any of those problems you’ve mentioned but the OCD does way more.

The thought issues I’m having just interfere with daily life.

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OCD is still pretty disabling. I had issues with it for a short time and I remember how it dominated my life. Thought issues can be present with anxiety or depression. Usually people have issues with memory or concentration. Even if you don’t have Schizophrenia, you can still have thought issues and still struggle through life.

20

I definitely have never had any positive symptoms before. The last year my brain just feels like on some sort of weird level. I don’t know if this is the effect of severe OCD, bipolar, and adhd mixed in one, or if this is an organic issue.

The thing is when I used to take stimulants for my so called “add” the fog and troubles thinking really did go away until the meds wore off. I’ve always had a hard time thinking in my head without being disorganized and to be honest my family noticed when I was a baby I was very colicky. I don’t know what that has to do with anything. But it could be some sort of weird neurological issue that’s gone under the radar. Thing is my main issue is ocd and it started to get severe the last couple years. This was when I stopped taking vyvanse and stimulants, and had also switched from medication to medication

I’ve also been on abilify before and I noticed when I was on it i had a much easier time thinking clearly but the problem was just I had too many side effects. I was put on it for ocd.

I’ve been on SSRIs and they brought out mania. I noticed my symptoms of this thought disorder seem to be worse while on SSRIs too. I don’t know what the issue is with that either. Is there some connection to dopamine?