Question to help understand...

I was wondering if when diagnosed with schizoaffective bipolar I is there a period of feeling normal and having others who know how you really are say your normal then usual? I mean do symptoms ever slow down and feel like they sort of but not completely disapper.

I guess I am still trying to deal with this diagnose. Just want to learn from others what they experince. Not read medical explantions of illness.

Thanks in advance to all that respond.

I'm feeling almost completely normal now, although got bad insomnia, since some of my meds got messed up over the bank holiday weekend. Sometimes when I feel so normal, I find myself wondering if I imagined the whole thing, if really I'm just a normal person who got duped into thinking herself ill, somehow.

In the past I've relapsed, even within the past couple of weeks. But when I feel like this, I feel like I want to come off the meds completely...

I'll just have to be careful and watch myself.

I think I will never feel normal or reach normal for longer then one day. Not even sure I would want to feel normal.

You know, that's true... what is normal anyway?

I used to feel the same way! wow this site is neat.. There is points were i feel as if im not even in a real world, or people around me are fake.. and then completely sane out of nowhere. that is the exact reason im not on meds now is because my sypmtoms seem so random at times and then when im sane enough to do something i convince myself im not sick enough to go to the hospital for help.. dont let your mind fool you good luck

Mokie,
Of course normal is a relatively difficult state to maintain even for those who aren't mentally ill. And this dx is one of the most difficult to treat and severe of all mental illness. We are combining the two worst dx in the world. Before the modern atypical antipsychotics most SAs were permanent inpatients. My normal days/nights are few and far between(~7 days/month). At least there is cognitive therapy to use for the intrusive thoughts. I can tell when I am going into a psychotic episode by the olfactory hallucinations that begin it. It is kind of like having a seizure disorder that you can't tell when it will strike. Between times you are manic or depressed and even both in the same day. Usually it takes me a few days to go from/to manic/depressed though. ANYONE: Let me know if you have strange smells or flashes in your peripheral vision before a psychotic break please. It is specific to SAs.

I didn't realise it was specific to SA's. Yes, I get olfactory hallucinations, I've never timed them precisely though, but often they seem to come before some kind of episode. Smells range from excrement, Body Odour, food cooking, urine, floral smells (lavendar or roses) the smell of old books, and the smell of the incense they use in Catholic churches. Some of these smells I'm aware of as hallucinations... what are the chances after all that Catholic incense being used outside of a church, after all? But the dirty smells, sewage for example, could be real, and it embarasses me when I ask, and nobody else has smelled a thing, while I'm practically gagging.

I'm not sure what you mean by flashes, but I see glimpses of people all the time, or animals. (This is why I can't drive.) They can last for less than a second to a few minutes. Peripheral people, out of the corner of my eye, flit in and out so quickly.

Grandma, just to ask... where did you find that olfactory hallucinations are are specific to Schizoaffectives? I know it appears in other conditions... epilepsy, as you mention, and I have heard other mental illnesses.

I get olfactory hallucinations as well. I thought they are more related to tumors. I don't have a tumor though and have schizoaffective disorder.

To my knowledge, I don't have schizoaffective disorder, but I do have BP I with psychotic features. [I feel kind of at home within certain threads here. ]
However, I do get flashes before things start going downhill for me. Random shadows exist for just a second before I can do any further investigation, a flash of light from a light source that isn't actually there... That's usually when the voices or other auditory hallucinations start kicking in. Always seems to be late at night, when I can't get to sleep at a good hour. :P
I've had olfactory hallucinations a couple of times, myself. Once or twice maybe during an episode. It happened the first time after I had a 3 day long migraine & evidently it's a part of what's called "migraine aura"... This was well before I was dx'd, but I was hallucinating very badly. Who'd have thunk it would be a reoccuring theme in the future? Haha
For me, I haven't had but a day or two in the month where I feel totally normal for a few years, but I'm not undergoing any treatment. Perhaps with better coping strategies & some mediction, I'd be feeling a lot more normal, though I know for a fact I'd run the risk of going off of my medication for a little excitement... Normal is overrated, yes, but perhaps instead of risking your mental health you could do something truly fun & enriching with your newly-clear mind.

I saw your comment "What is normal anyway"? I can't help it. An old friend of mine who now teaches at a very large university in Texas told me 20 years ago or more about the word normal. "Normal is a statistical term and not a state of being." And if you put some thought into that, you realize that what the majority considers be normal behavior is what society deems OK. The problem with that is that our society changes over the course of time so what might now be normal may not be normal later or what might not be normal now may very well be very normal later. A rule of majority that is what it takes for something (act, behavior, attitude) to be considered normal. Just a thought.........

Greetings -
I have the same diagnosis, and I can thank this site for it. I never knew what was going on with me. I even suspected paranormal activity! but it was happening too often and I noticed that after I had a long lasting mood swing (about 5 days or so), when that subsided the hallucinations and hearing things started up again. I just got over a rage-filled week and after finally calming down, I started seeing things out of the corner of my eye - flashes, shadows, people. And the knocking on the door, crashes, bangs, voices. It seems when one disorder stops another begins. I know this may sound weird but after 20 years of never really fitting in to any one category I was relieved when I saw others going thru the same thing (on this site especially). At least I know I'm not alone!

I understand the feeling of relief when you finally get a diagnoses. It's not that I'm wishing the same thing on anyone, just it's a weight lifted when you finally understand that what you're going through has a name, and there are possible treatments. It makes the world a little less scary. And let's face it, for us the world can indeed be a terrifying place.