Here we discuss some differences between schizophrenia and OCD. A commenter asks if I have schizophrenia.
Isn’t blunted emotions and weird, chaotic or intrusive thoughts more on the schizophrenia side of things?
I don’t have schizophrenia. A lot of OCD’ers complain that their emotions seem dead. Anyway, I don’t have the dead emotions of a schizophrenic. I have “constricted affect.”
What you see in a schizophrenic is totally different. Also, in schizophrenia, there is a lot more going on than weird, chaotic and intrusive thoughts, and anyway, in schiz, the thoughts are willed and wanted and not intrusive in general. For instance, schiz don’t try to stop their thoughts (typical of intrusive thoughts). They just accept them all of their normal thoughts.
I actually had a type of OCD called Schiz OCD for a bit. I was convinced that I had schizophrenia. One guy I saw thought I might have it. I argued with him, and he said, “All I know is you are way too electric right now.”
I called up a bunch of therapists on the phone when I was going seriously nuts and told them exactly what was happening. They all said, “It’s not schizophrenia. It looks like OCD, but it’s gotten way, way worse.” One guy said, “Look! If you were going psychotic, you wouldn’t be calling me up right now.”
I finally went to a doc and he got together with a psychiatrist and they discussed whether or not I was psychotic. They said, “No way! Forget it! They only delusion you have is that you’re psychotic!”
Unfortunately, when OCD gets really bad, they look psychotic. I run into OCD’ers all the time who have a psychotic dx and who have even been hospitalized as a danger to themselves or others with a psychotic dx on dismissal. I argued with all of them that they are not psychotic. The problem is in figuring out the difference between the delusions of psychosis and the obsessions of OCD, which unfortunately look similar sometimes. I can always tell, but clinicians can’t.
Anyway, we had big long arguments with me and this therapists, me saying I was schizophrenic and he saying I was not.
When I got really bad, things got really really weird. I sensed a presence in the world, and evil presence, like the Devil or something, and it seemed like it wanted me to do bad things. I didn’t do any bad things.
The people in the TV seemed really real and it seemed like they could walk out of the TV into the room. The newscasters especially seemed like they were talking right to me. I knew they weren’t, but it was pretty weird.
My thoughts were coming in loudspeakers and often they came in colors too. Typically the colors were faded like faded red or faded light green. Often the thoughts repeated over and over like strobe lights. Colors in the environment got a lot brighter (I still get this one sometimes.)
All of this stuff went right away with an SSRI, which proves it wasn’t psychosis. In psychosis, you need an antipsychotic.
It’s been 21 years since that madness went on, and it hasn’t come back, but I am always afraid it will.
I don’t have schizophrenia. The therapists have already beaten that one to death.
Alpha Unit
jacobbauthumley
“When I got really bad, things got really really weird. I sensed a presence in the world, and evil presence, like the Devil or something, and it seemed like it wanted me to do bad things. I didn’t do any bad things.”
What exactly triggered these things? I mean drug psychosis can temporarily make you have schizophrenic symptoms. You’ll hear tweakers say things similar to that described above.
“The people in the TV seemed really real and it seemed like they could walk out of the TV into the room. The newscasters especially seemed like they were talking right to me. I knew they weren’t, but it was pretty weird.”
I got like that before. You should try having the one where it looks like everyone in the world is looking at you. Fasting and stimulants are ill advised combinations. I still get ESP shit that kind of messes with my head watching my mind seem prophetically to manifest what the environment begins to offer. It’s like watching collective consciousness or my minds own activated psychic perception.
“My thoughts were coming in loudspeakers and often they came in colors too. Typically the colors were faded like faded red or faded light green. Often the thoughts repeated over and over like strobe lights. Colors in the environment got a lot brighter (I still get this one sometimes.)”
Lmao, Robert who dosed you? The long term color enhancement is very common to psychedelic users. Thinking in colors i have heard from psychedelic users before.
“My thoughts were coming in loudspeakers”
You sure it wasn’t G-D?
I am not sure. I was working at a job, and my Mom always thought that someone dosed me on the job. I was so fucked up and nuts that I left my apartment and moved back home to my parents.
I have taken psychedelics like 40 times, I and still have bright colors possibly from psychedelics.
It was not a schizophrenic experience or a psychosis. The clinicians all just said it was OCD, but it had gotten a whole lot worse.
You probably got super dosed with something. I don’t know why someone at your work would be that big of a dick. I mean mental breakdowns have to be triggered by something right? Unless their is something repressed that occurred before the situation you are forgetting.
As long as you don’t believe the hallucinations to be real or can describe them objectively you don’t have psychosis by clinicians standards, they assume you are just having psychosomatic obsessions.
Psychedelics are usually serotonin antagonists and given that SSRI’s did work at ending the trip, it’s an indication.
The question is, which one of your co workers hated you? lol.
Robert, Since you seem to be obsessed with using the linguistically incorrect term, “Bigfoots”, instead of the more elegant phrase, “The Bigfoot”, perhaps whatever it is, is still hanging out like a “Sleeper Cell”, looking for the opportunity to compel you to “go Postal”. Kind of like a seemingly insignificant symptom that is directly connected to a much large problem. I have my fingers crossed for you getting a good grip on “The Bigfoot”, before everything hits the fan, ie Ketchum DNA paper. Alternatively, here is another plural form that I know for a fact that The Bigfoot like: “Bigfoot Buddies”. Just insert that phrase whenever you get the urge to imitate the BFRO, and you will be good to go.
Bigfoots is a perfectly acceptable term to use.
jameson7 is right, you seem to be too aware of your mental state of be psychotic. Psychosis is when you hallucinate and lose your grip on your sense of reality.
I had to deal with severe episodes of depression in my college days that lasted days, weeks and on a couple of occasions, months. At times, I’d be ‘immersed’ in periods of elevated confidence and creativity. It was only when I lived in Edinburgh, that my Psych professor recommended me to take a trip to an NHS psychiatrist who diagnosed me with Bipolar 2. The diagnosis had me more worried than anything else, I wondered if I’d go off the edge to full blown mania or even hallucinatory schizophrenia. It is ironic, people who are most likely to be schizophrenic are also the most ‘accepting’ of their normality and less likely to think they have a problem. The ones who worry the most are the ones who are in the more ‘normal’ side of the psychological bell curve.
I don’t think you have anything to be afraid of. Psychological disorders are your biggest worry in your 20s, and with good therapy, they usually mellow out once you cross your mid-20s or 30s. If your writing is any indicator, you don’t have any symptoms, which I have often observed among schizophrenics. If possible, dial down on the SSRIs. I took them in the past, it kills your sex drive more than anything else.
Another good article
my brain wants me to think I have schizophrenia. I think I’m OCD. My brain lies to me though and tells me that I am hearing things when I am not. It also insists on questioning everything I actually do see and hear, making me doubt my own senses. I also often think I am being watched or followed. There is never anything there. I’m just very timid and often look over my shoulder. Once, while on a walk, my brain tried to convince me that there was a person watching me. It was a tree. Even though I could clearly see that it was a tree, my brain kept telling me it was actually a demon. I eventually became confused and hurried home, shooting nervous glancing behind me every so often to make sure that the tree was still a tree. I also “hear voices” in my head narrating my every move, thought, and emotion. They also often have conversations with one another. I am aware that they are all my own thoughts, but I cannot stop them! I have been afraid to discuss my symptoms because even though I know I’m not psychotic, I’m scared my therapist might not!
Tricks, tricks, tricks! My brain is a bully.
Have you ever heard of someone with schiz OCD becoming psychotic? I imagine that if your brain keeps trying to convince you that you are hallucinating, the lines between real and unreal may become blury.