[Biteplate]

Does anyone else with Schizoaffective dissociate a lot? I tend to almost live in other "worlds" a lot. I will live other lives in my mind. I'm curious how common this is with Schizoaffective.

[lazlo]

my psychologist used the terms
de-realization
de-personalization

to describe as if living in a dream. As if nothing is real.
I've had this symptom as long as schizoaffective since age 14

Dissociation is usually going along with trauma like bad childhood or war
or something like that.

[Biteplate]

Oooh ok, I think you are using the correct terms.

But I have had that feeling forever too. It never seems to go away.

[neodoering]

Originally Posted by Biteplate

Does anyone else with Schizoaffective dissociate a lot? I tend to almost live in other "worlds" a lot. I will live other lives in my mind. I'm curious how common this is with Schizoaffective.

I have an ongoing dissociation that is sort of a delusion: everyone in the world is fake except me. Everyone is just an actor, whose lines are handed out from a central source, whose purpose is to keep me trapped in a horrible mental illness for the rest of my life. These people are causing the mental illness by punching my buttons constantly. They know my hopes and dreams; they know my scares and demons; they take advantage of this knowledge to attack me and keep me ill. While I'm experiencing this delusion I am dissociated from myself and the people around me, since we're all just saying our lines and not being our true selves. Their job is to torment; my job is to suffer. This can go on for hours at a time.

[*Laurie*]

Check out Depersonalization Community

[childofchaos831]

Depersonalization - state in which one's thoughts and feelings seem unreal or not to belong to oneself, or in which one loses all sense of identity

Derealization - a feeling that one's surroundings are not real, especially as a symptom of mental disturbance

Dissociation - separation of normally related mental processes, resulting in one group functioning independently from the rest, leading in extreme cases to disorders such as multiple personality

(Definitions from Google)

I am diagnosed as Schizoaffective Bipolar type, and Dissociative Identity Disorder, among other things.

So, sometimes these can look similar.

I have these "stories" as I call them, in my head, that are not related to the DID at all. They are more, idk, comforting, like what I wish life had been... sometimes, tho, they begin to feel more real than actual reality. To me, that is part of psychosis.

Whereas, the dissociation is my outside functioning is "dissociated" from my inside functioning. To the outside world, I am normal, going about my day with ease. However, "I" have no idea what is going on. One of my insiders is usually in control during these times. This is on the extreme end tho. On a more normal end of dissociation is something like getting off work, getting in your car, and then you are home, but don't remember the drive. You've done it so many times, that you went on "autopilot" and got lost in your thoughts. It can be scary, but not necessarily clinical. It happens to most people.

I don't know if this helps, my brain is a little weird right now, been struggling and having a hard time lately... ask anything and I can try to answer...

[amandalouise]

here in the USA dissociation is a normal reaction to a positive or negative trigger....

example think about a time when someone said something you did not like (the trigger) what was your reaction to what they said (anger)

dissociation is like that. something happens (trigger) to make a person feel spaced out, numb, foggy minded, disconnected but reality remains intact.

examples of normal dissociation.... tonight I was looking out the window at the street light. it looked so nice and calming to me. I started feeling a bit numb and spaced out, i could see my hand on the window glass, I knew it was my hand, but I just could not feel it from the mental point of view.

A person does not have to have been abused or traumatized to have dissociation problems in their life.

dissociation happens to every human being many times a day in their daily life and is completely normal. it becomes abnormal and a dissociative disorder when it fits the diagnostic criteria for a dissociative disorder here in america. you can read more about these these dissociative disorders in my link at the bottom of my post.

to answer your question I do not have schizoaffective disorder but I know many with it that do also have dissociation problems of all levels from the normal to the abnormal, some even have been dual diagnosed with both a dissociative disorder and a schizophrenic type disorder.

[Biteplate]

Childof chaos, I have stories or as I call them worlds playing all the time in my head. At one point it was so bad I could not tell the difference between the worlds and reality.