New Diagnosis

Hey there!

I wrote earlier on that my doctors were considering changing my diagnosis from Schizotypal disorder to Schizophrenia.
Well, I had a conversation with a special doctor and my contact at OPUS (place of treatment for people with psychotic disorders) where the doctor asked me a bunch of questions about symptoms and stuff and he then officially diagnosed me with schizophrenia because my symptoms match schizophrenia better than schizotypal disorder. He said he was surprised my diagnosis hadn’t been changed earlier on.

I feel like it doesn’t make that big of a difference for me if I am dignosed with schizophrenia or schizotypal disorder. It doesn’t change anything in how I perceive myself or my identity.
I am more concerned with what other people might think of me. I am afraid that people I know will be sceptical. That they might think I am making it up because I don’t seem sick. Of course I don’t have to tell anyone that I have schizophrenia, but I want to be able to tell people without experiencing this fear of judgment. I don’t want to care about what people think of me… but right now I do.
One thing I find challenging is that my depersonalization and derealization gets worse with this new diagnosis. When I experience these things I feel like everyone are actors (including myself) and that we are all pretending that I am sick. We all know that there is nothing wrong with me, but we pretend there is.
I feel like I am lying to everyone, and making them think I have schizophrenia for attention. I feel awful. I hate it. When I talk about my symptoms and say out loud “I have schizophrenia”, it feels like a straight up lie. I honestly don’t know if I am speaking the truth or not in those moments.

I hope things will get better soon.

Thank you for reading!

What is my diagnosis?

About half a year ago I shared on here that I had been diagnosed with schizotypal disorder. Well, now that diagnosis may change.
I had a talk with my contact and the chief physician at Opus Ballerup before christmas and they started talking about revisiting my diagnosis since they thought I might be closer to a schizophrenia diagnosis than schizotypal. Since I have tactile hallucinations almost every day and some paranoia and thought broadcasting they thought it might be something more than “just” schizotypal disorder.
I am already skeptic around my schizotypal diagnosis, so changing that to schizophrenia would just further my skepticism even more, i think. I feel like I am not sick enough to be labeled as schizophrenic. But as my contact said, schizophrenia is a spectrum disorder, every case is different and the severity of every patient is different. I might just have a mild case of schizophrenia.
We’ll see.

Diagnosis

So yesterday my new contact person at OPUS (a 2 year program for people between the ages of 18-35 with psychotic disorders) confirmed that I have been diagnosed with schizotypal disorder.

When I first heard it mentioned a couple of weeks ago I was very doubtfull, I didn’t feel like any of the symptoms fit with me and it just didn’t feel right, but during my meeting with my Contact we went through the symptoms and I can now better understand why I got that diagnosis.

I still feel doubtful. I have a constant feeling inside that every symptom is made up in my head, that I have convinced myself that I am suffering from this and am deliberately making myself seem sick in some twisted search for attention. It feels like there is another me inside that is feeding me these thoughts and feelings and things to say to make people believe I am sick, but I don’t know how to stop it, and I don’t know how to tell the difference between my own thoughts and feelings and the ones that come from the other me. It is very distressing since I don’t feel I can trust my own thoughts and never know when a thought is true and when it is made up. It is making me distrustful of myself and others since I also have a feeling that everyone else knows that I am making it up and they are just playing along all the while hating me for it and laughing at me behind my back, rolling their eyes everytime I turn my back to them.

I suspect that this is just another symptom of the disorder. It isn’t pleasant.

I will meet my contact again next week together with a doctor, who will perform a medical exam.

I don’t really know what more is to come, I am just trying to get used to the idea of having this diagnosis.

I am sharing this here because I’ve been having trouble finding any stories online of people with the same disorder so I hope that this might provide someone else with what I have been looking for.

   Schizotypal Disorder as defined by the ICD-10:

“A disorder characterized by eccentric behaviour and anomalies of thinking and affect which resemble those seen in schizophrenia, though no definite and characteristic schizophrenic anomalies occur at any stage. The symptoms may include a cold or inappropriate affect; anhedonia; odd or eccentric behaviour; a tendency to social withdrawal; paranoid or bizarre ideas not amounting to true delusions; obsessive ruminations; thought disorder and perceptual disturbances; occasional transient quasi-psychotic episodes with intense illusions, auditory or other hallucinations, and delusion-like ideas, usually occurring without external provocation. There is no definite onset and evolution and course are usually those of a personality disorder.”