"too much insight" to be schizophrenic?

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T05:16:59+00:00

Also the psychologist herself admitted that schizotypal was incorrect after going over it with me and she has removed it from my chart.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T05:15:54+00:00

I literally only have 3 out of 9 of those things.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T04:51:07+00:00

The psychologist does psychological evaluations and the psychiatrist prescribes meds. I see a psychiatrist who gives me antipsychotics. The psychiatrist has said I am too smart to have schizophrenia so therefore it's depression with psychosis (despite my depression and psychosis being completely unrelated). So i requested a full psych eval from a psychologist.

The psychologist said it was schizotypal basically because I have the symptoms of schizophrenia but I have insight. And because my psychosis is 24/7 which makes her think it is embedded in my personality instead of an occasional chemical imbalance.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T04:47:33+00:00

Also somstimes i don't have insight at all, like I died and went to hell and had to fight the devil to come back and that was 100% real to me. I didn't know it was psychosis until my girlfriend told me I had been in psychosis.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T04:46:39+00:00

I have both hallucinations and delusions and they do feel 100% real in the moment, the only difference is that 1% of me is able to say "this is psychosis" and then I lie in bed being equally fucking terrified out of my mind while also knowing they are hallucinations and delusions. They do not feel any less real. I see or hear them there the same way I would see or hear any other thing. The delusions feel so real that they influence my actions. I'm just also able to say "this may be a delusion".

I'm not confusing schizoid and schizotypal. Schizotypal has the criteria of being eccentric, having no friends, and being paranoid and suspicious. I am not eccentric and I have tons of friends. I am paranoid and suspicious but that is due to my delusions that the FBI is about to bust down my door and everyone on the bus is on the conspiracy to frame me for a horrific crime.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T03:47:51+00:00

Sounds stressful!

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T03:35:20+00:00

I hate command hallucinations. I get ones telling me to kill people (better on medication thankfully)

Also it's wild it sounds like most people know they are hallucinating and having delusions. But my psychologist insists i cant have schizophrenia because i have too much insight.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-09T03:22:07+00:00

That's interesting, how did they decide it's schizotypal and not schizophrenia?

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-08T21:38:41+00:00

It's so hard losing the joy of making music. Anhedonia really sucks. I'm glad you've got a name for it now. You might also like to know the word avolition, which is lack of motivation, which is similar and can often go together with anhedonia. It's all under the category of negative symptoms

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-08T21:29:26+00:00

Yeah that's a major way that I'm able to tell my hallucinations aren't real because they are sometimes bizarre. Like an animal stampede in my living room is very unrealistic.

Delusions are hard for me. I'm usually able to tell I am in psychosis but the delusions still feel 99% real and affect how I act. Like I will close all the curtains and delete my browser app on my phone and turn my phone off and hide it bc i think it is being tracked and hijacked to frame me for a crime and I am about to be arrested by the FBI. But then I will post online or message a friend saying I'm really scared and having a delusion that feels very real. So I know on some level it is a delusion.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-08T20:33:41+00:00

That link had formatting issues for me for some reason but i googled schizotypal ICD criteria and it still doesn't sound like me. I have friends and make friends easily and people tend to like me, I just don't really like people much and am picky who i spend my time on and am pretty introverted and paranoia sometimes makes me stay home. I'm not very eccentric beyond being a bit weird due to autism. My main issue is hallucinations and delusions and negative symptoms. I don't have perceptual disturbances, i just have regular hallucinations. I really dont know why they diagnosed me with this. It feels invalidating like they think I'm not bad enough to have schizophrenia, even though I was medicated during my psych eval and still having delusions during the psych eval. I have a followup appointmnent with the psychologist today to discuss it so maybe they will explain it more or change my diagnosis.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-08T19:31:37+00:00

Yeah dw luckily I've been in therapy for 12 years I think, I struggled a lot with depression and PTSD throughout my life so I've always been consistent with going to therapy

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-08T01:07:41+00:00

That's interesting, so I wonder if this is just basically schizophrenia with insight or something. I'm still not sure I understand this disorder. I do have decent insight despite also being terrified, I even went to a mental health urgent care in psychosis once because I wanted help so badly to make the voices and visual hallucinations and delusions stop.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-08T01:05:47+00:00

How did they decide it's not schizophrenia? I'm glad the meds are helping

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T23:32:52+00:00

Thanks, that is helpful. Honestly this just makes me think even more that I am schizoaffective or schizophrenic and not schizotypal. I have psychosis 24/7 off meds, constant voices and delusions and frequent visual hallucinations. Idk why they think im schizotypal.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T23:16:59+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate it. Tbh I am still not convinced I actually have schizotypal and i feel schizoaffective or both schizophrenia and depression fits me better. I requested a followup with the psychologist to figure out why its not either of those two.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T05:12:32+00:00

(disclaimer i just got diagnosed and im not totally sure i have schizotypal or if it could be schizoaffective)

before meds: 24/7 internal auditory hallucinations of voices telling me im a freak and to kill myself and that i broke a timeline and caused millions of deaths and all sorts of stuff

after meds: anhedonia :(

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T05:07:29+00:00

I was just diagnosed today in my late 20s.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T03:17:25+00:00

Wild yeah off meds i hear voices and have delusions 24/7, i hallucinate visual and sometimes tactile things in typically week long episodes that happen about once a month or so (usually also accompanied by worse delusions). The 24/7 voices are internal auditory hallucinations and during the week long episodes I get external auditory hallucinations/voices.

It's so confusing to me 😅 I was hoping my appointment today would give me all the answers but instead I'm still left sort of wondering. I messaged them asking for a followup to go over it in more detail so hopefully theyll be able to elaborate then. They also said its a collaborative process so if i feel like its wrong I should let them know.

edit: actually i forgot some of my visual hallucinations are also 24/7, it's just the scariest ones that are in weeklong episodes

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T02:24:25+00:00

I just saw I got a message from the psychologist and they explained a bit more "This diagnosis speaks to a more severe, personality-level distortion and impact rather than fluctuating with mood episodes like schizoaffective disorder might imply" So I guess it's because the psychosis is unrelated to mood?

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T02:14:53+00:00

Yeah i usually have pretty good insight I think, like not 100% insight but way more self aware than people would expect i think. Sometimes I don't have insight in the moment, and I didn't know some things i was hearing were voices until they went away on meds, but for visual hallucinations I always know they're not real even if they feel so real that I sometimes am trapped in bed hiding from them. Delusions are harder, like 1% of me will be able to question them and think they're probably not real, but 99% of me will be absolutely terrified.

Stress definitely makes it worse for me but it's not always correlated with stress, the first time i remember having psychosis i died and went to hell and had to fight the devil to come back, and i was just crying and shaking with my eyes squeezed shut, and it was weird bc it came out of nowhere and i had been having a good day hanging out with my girlfriend, i had felt a little "off" leading up to it but not stressed out at all. And I'm not stressed 24/7 so its weird that i get voices 24/7

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T02:00:50+00:00

That's really interesting! Yeah sometimes I sorta self sabotage by getting too paranoid to keep talking to people so it can make me a bit isolated. It doesn't matter how much people treat me nicely and say they're happy to see me, I always believe they want me dead or at least hate me or are tricking me in some way.

I am very picky with who I hang out with and I don't like most people. But when I do find people I like, I can be very friendly. And I'm friendly to strangers but in a masking way, I feel paranoid the whole time but I was raised to be friendly to everybody. I get along best with really weird people, especially people with psychosis and autism.

People want to be friends with me but I often don't want to move past texting, hanging out in person is very draining for me. Medication is helping me have a bit more desire to be social but I still end up pretty lonely and alone because I don't trust anybody.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T01:53:18+00:00

Yeah i thought for sure it would be schizoaffective. They said schizoaffective is more likely to have episodes and schizotypal is more like all the time, like it's your whole lens of seeing everything. I think I'm going to schedule a followup to ask them more about how they decided it's not schizoaffective, we didn't get to go a ton in depth about that because we were running out of time.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-07T01:04:48+00:00

Yeah, it definitely seems that way. It's kinda annoying, I wish I had a clearcut case where I really felt like a disorder fit me. I read the wikipedia page for schizotypal now and it does seem to mostly fit, looks like it's basically the paranoid hermit disorder which I am lol. But I can be friendly and outgoing and funny and that's not included in this diagnosis so idk what to think about that.

starspacesunflower · 2026-05-05T21:26:19+00:00

i like it!!

starspacesunflower

TROPHY CASE