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Originally Posted by volatile
I've had to do this alone for years because of horrible experiences in the health system.
Iwas dxed with Schizoaffective bipolar which I'm positive is a misdiagnoses (that's another story tho) But anyway, outside of my normal paranoid ideas I have these.. " mini episodes" where I kind of lose touch with myself in reality and I don't know who I am. I mean literally... I panic because I think I might be someone else. I know it sounds completely stupid but idk what it is. I'll think I might possibly be someone in a tv show or a movie or book, sometimes I think I'm a friend or even a man and that especially causes me to panic. I try to tell myself it's not that way and I am ME but then I think who am I? I have to ask people to tell me what my name is or desperately reach out to someone just so I know for sure. When I look in the mirror I have no connection with the person that I see. I mean I really feel dead like I am a ghost like I am in purgatory to suffer for ever. I really am convinced sometimes that I am actually dead.
This happened to me just the other day for a couple hours and I realized maybe this isn't a normal psychosis because I don't feel delusional, I just feel completely empty and I have no connection with myself in reality. If that makes sense. It's like I'm dissociating from myself to the point I don't even know for sure who or what or where I am and I become scared. Everything is just empty information when I'm in these episodes. It's like I have no feed back and I'm grasping at straws.
Idk what this is. maybe i am dissociating maybe i am just psychotic idk.
I just want someone to talk to me about this that might know what it is like.
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I cant give you a diagnosis (tell you what this is) only your treatment providers can do that....
psychosis does not havwe to be accompanied by delusions. the two symptoms can stand on their own...some people with schizoaffective disorder just have delusions, others just have psychosis, others have a mixture of both. plus being psychotic or delusional are not the only diagnostic criteria for schizo affective disorder.. theres more to that diagnostic, theres like 5 different criteria and two different types of schizo affective disorder...those that have a bipolar type and those that have a depressive type....
that said I can tell you one of the major differences in psychosis and switching into an alter (some locations call this dissociating) is how you perceive your self during these as you call them "mini episodes"
with psychosis the person believes ...they not their alter... is someone else. that someone else can be someone famous, someone on tv, someone in the movies, in books...
with dissociating the person believes they are their self and their alter is someone different. that someone different can be anything, anyone.
now examples....
psychosis would be like one time when my meds were totally out of whack and it caused me to have psychosis... that psychotic episode caused me to believe I was a wolf. it was me still but I felt ...I...was an owl.
when I would dissociate I would switch into one of my animalistic alters.. Ill use the same animal to show you the distinction....
I would get troggered by something then I would dissociate...and the alter owl would come out. I was not the owl. owl was not me. we were two very different individuals functioning completely on our own. I did not think/perceive myself to be owl... i was amanda and owl was owl.
see the distinction....in psychosis the person believes/thinks and perceives ........their self .....to be someone else.
where as with dissociation the person still believes/perceives ....their self to be their self.... and ......someone else..... is the other person. the sense of reality remains intact. theres no confusion over who is who, and no forgetting who you are. you are you and the alter is the alter real firm boundary so to speak.
Again Im not trying to diagnose you, just show you the difference between psychosis and dissociation...
my suggestion if this keeps bothering you contact your treatment provider.. they can explain to you why you are diagnosed the way you are and go more into detail about the differences between psychosis and dissociation, the difference between believing ...you are someone different vs you being you and a completely different identity taking over.