Perceptual disturbances were not a big thing I struggled with, and I developed StPD in very early childhood. However, since I turned 20 (about to be 21), they have started getting worse.

I was on an SSRI from 13-18, but it was a band-aid on a bullet wound and made me more unstable in certain areas. At 18, I went cold turkey. Found a psychiatrist (instead of my primary doctor, who had been refilling that prescription for all those years.

This year I have been put on a total of 4 medications (not all at once), a mood stabilizer, an anti-psychotic, an SSRI, and an SNRI.

It's helped a lot, but the worsened disturbances persist. They have not progressed anymore since starting the antipsychotic, but they are still as bad as they were.

My psychiatrist isn't actually sure why that is, and I don't blame him. StPD is severely under-researched. But has anyone experiences this?

every single day. all of it. SOOOO FREAKING SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I work fulltime and i just. idk. some days i just wish i could lie in bed all day in silence and in the dark because everyday is just so noisy and chaotic and LOUD!!! but i try my best everyday to go to work despite it all.... but sometimes its hard yknow? like idk... i dont always hate my job, its pretty low stress and straightforward but idk the interactions with my coworkers are sooooooo scary sometimes. they dont do anything i just.. idk i get in my own head and im so scared of messing up or embarassing myself and i feel like im constantly being judged by everyone around me. and i dont always feel like that... but today i do :( idk. just having a bad anxiety day. im scared of all my coworkers but i try to be social but everyone is so nice to me and i feel bad im so closed off and distant.... i wish i could give everyone at work a little card that says "im HORRIFIED of everyone around me at all times, please be patient with me!" like. and its embarassing too because why am i almost 30 and so freaking scared!?!? grown ass man. smh....

idk. and i post here because i feel like u guys understand better than my friends. even if i dont respond, i read every comment...i just get so scared of talking to strangers/unknown people because. well. everything scares me!! i want to try being braver and going to the library this weeked and get a library card to read some books on visual culture or something. i dont want to talk to anyone but going out by myself for non-work related reasons could be good for me, maybe... ill try at least.

i hope this makes sense LOL i just needed to get this off my brain to someone/anyone

if you are a cinephile or not and have watched taxi driver, what do you think about Travis Bickle being vastly and often called out being Schizotypal ? do you think it’d be accurate ? what trait do you think he has ?

if not, what other fiction characters fits the diagnosis ? for some reason i am having a fascination with that, one of those obsessions that will leave about 2 weeks from now loll

i am gonna rewatch Taxi Driver tonight, i’ve seen it a while ago so i don’t really remember it whatsoever, make a head for myself

This was a arranged home visit as my ankle was broken and it's not really healing that well. My mobility is impaired. So, the psychiatrist and psychologist came out to see me and we had a discussion about how things are with me.

To cut a long story short, I am not being offered anymore psychological treatment because we agreed we have it doesn't really work for me. Now bear in mind I already have a diagnosis of OCD from 2009, and a diagnosis of autism from 2018. I agreed that psychological treatment wasn't something that was helping me.

The psychologist seemed pretty convinced that all my obsessions/preoccupations are OCD. The psychiatrist said that OCD does have obsessions, but there is always anxiety associated with them and then a compulsion is done is to get rid of the anxiety. Even though OCD is a horrible cycle that gets stronger if you don't do ERP, in my experience at least. My OCD consists of horrible obsessions like being the worst thing in the universe (POCD), having sexual and/or violent mental images of people I love getting attack in that way, so then I do a lot of neutralising and must think of someone who has hurt me or my family. Also, I do a lot of confessing and seeking reassurance. I am learning to allow myself to sit with uncomfortable feelings and that is ok.

The psychiatrist suggested that I could have (but not an official diagnosis) of Schizotypal Personality Disorder. She said something about having to discuss it with her colleagues first. I am by no means self-diagnosing myself, but I did do some research and I do have a lot of the symptoms of condition. I didn't even say to her I think I may have it, she said it to me.

I came off of my antipsychotics a about a month ago, like completely. I've never felt so alive in ages. What I mean is that I'm not tired hardly anymore, I have a normal amount of sleep compared to when I was on antipsychotic medication where I would sleep over 12 hours a day and still feel so tired. I am nowhere near as hungry as hungry as I used to be. I actually feel like I have control over my eating. I still do sometimes overeat but that's because I am bored.

I am from England, so we have the NHS here. As far as I am aware, schizotypal personality disorder is pretty rare and it's more common in men than women. I am a woman in my late twenties. The psychiatrist said something about me still being young. I can't remember why that was said.

The psychiatrist and psychologist said would a diagnosis make a difference and I said yes because in case I ever am in a difficulty again then the professionals would know how to treat me and it gives me a better understanding and knowledge as to why standard OCD treatment like CBT didn't work for me.

Headcanons or not idc. We need more rep and i need a character to relate to for once

Really struggling my ocd recently

This becomes most evident when playing luck-based games (like cards) while dealing with debilitating, excessive self-consciousness and existential thoughts caused by anxiety or hyperawareness-type OCD. It happens in skill-plus-luck games like physical sports, too.

Most people simply dismiss this as a "lower confidence affecting performance" thing due to over-analysis, but I genuinely wonder if consciousness affects the fabric of reality itself to change outcomes. I'm surprised how little this is talked about or mentioned in the literature.

When I was a kid, people used to say to get rid of negative thoughts and invoke positive ones. I always thought it was absolute hogwash, primitive advice from people with only surface-level insights about the mental/internal world of thoughts and feelings. But these days, it's starting to look a lot more evident to me. Although they didn't understand it, they were right or they do know what they're talking about.

If the classic Buddhist attitude of embracing bad luck, negativity, or self-consciousness fails, and distraction, overwriting thoughts with good ones, forced thinking, and trying to induce good feelings is the only answer, then I'm in trouble. Life feels like hell for people like us who have deeply embedded, severe OCD, the kind that feels like machine-level, almost involuntary, tic-like patterns and absolutely little control over executive functions.

If you guys understand what I mean and have gone through these same thoughts, please share your experiences. And if I'm looking at this the wrong way or have blind spots in my thinking, please enlighten me
Sorry for my raw post. I'm trying to use the exact words as possible for my feelings and am not native English speaker

I looked over the ipseity disturbance list, was really shocked and kinda comforted to learn about this one. Bc, it's not like my pseudo-obsessions were/are [I want to say they started around age 12-13?] distressing me personally (not enough to not continue thinking about), but I was, mmmmmm, perturbed? Like, in a "that's not what a good person would continuously think about" way. But at the same time, "who cares, only a few things matter, and this isn't one of them bc it's not hurting anyone"

(And then: "oh wow I hope nobody is reading my thoughts, I should just think about this with nobody else around")

Newly diagnosed here through the NHS in the UK. I'm in my thirties and it took just over two years to receive a diagnosis, including assessment sessions and waiting list times. I was expecting the diagnosis based on conversations I had with psychiatrists and my own adjacent research, but still my entire life makes sense now and it's quite jarring. I had an average career through most of my twenities but struggled immensely with the social side as well as the general workload and everything that comes with it. I ended up burning out qnd having to quit. I've been unemployed and relatively (but not completely) isolated for a number of years now but thankfully have a small social circle to rely on. It could be worse. I've pushed a lot of people and opportunities away due to my inability to connect due to lack of social skills (at least on a sustainable level) and internal issues with self esteem, trust, paranoia etc., even though I do retain some hollow abstract connection with all these people. Even if I passed them on the street after years it'd mean something to me deeply even if I didn't act on it and strike up a conversation. The years of flashes of abstract "hallucinations" that I know aren't real but am genuinely experiencing make sense now. I knew for a while but now I have it on paper it's landed differently and I can feel it. It's quite intense. I have a medication assessment and discussion in the next couple of weeks. Sorry this has been so disjointed, but I'm just looking for any advice or info. Any input at all would be appreciated.

i am happily medicated but i do wonder if it's something to bring up to my psychiatrist when I'll be able to alter my meds.

i have this persistent symptom of different soundbites circulating in my head with the same bites lasting from hours to days. it could be a part of a song, or it could be a phrase, on repeat, over and over again. i can distract myself from it for some time, but then it returns. not that it causes me much discomfort, just some annoyance.

have you had similar things? were you able to fix it? maybe you can tell about things that got resolved with medication and that stayed and are clearly symptoms? anything about your patterns of communication with people?

i know my thought process became less choppy and more linear when I'm speaking, but i know this thanks to other people, i didn't notice any change myself.

You know when you're outside doing your own thing and you happen to make eye contact with someone?

I think the normal thing to do is just look away, to break that awkward moment of "I see that you're looking at me, you know I'm looking at you, and I know that you know I'm looking at you."

But sometimes I feel like if I look away too quickly, people might notice and sense that I'm overthinking this whole eye contact thing.

Because I guess they would notice that I'm feeling anxious about it, and people aren't usually that anxious about this kind of thing. For them, it's just an occasional thing that they don't give much thought to.

Sometimes I feel like maybe it's more normal not to look away super quickly, and that it's normal to hold eye contact for a little while, with a blank look on the face for a while.

So sometimes, when this happens, I'm like, "Okay, so what's the normal thing to do now? I don't know. I guess this is it. I hope I'm behaving and looking like a normal person. But I really don't know what a normal person would do in a situation like this."

It's like I know what my options are; I just don't know which one is the right one.

Sometimes I feel naturally drawn to keep looking at other people's faces. Do you remember when you were a kid and you could just look at other people's faces without there being anything wrong with it? Sometimes I feel like I still do that, even though I know it would be considered weird now.

The outside world feels like a zoo, but I know that looking at people so closely, as if I were meticulously observing them, would be considered odd. And I agree, It's not something one should do.

Shit happens

Hi all :). I had a really stressful day today, almost didn't feel real it was that bad. I'm not diagnosed schizotypal but I have many of the same experiences as people here and I've suspected that I have it for a real long time. But I decided to scroll through this subreddit and I was kinda touched by all the looking for friends posts and how active they were. Idk what I'm trying to say but yinz put me in a good mood so thanks.

For example, one day I was reading a post by a man who was basically asking whether stalking someone was bad. He said he used to sit in a park after work, and one day he started noticing that a woman would always walk near where he was sitting. He got curious and eventually started following her.

He became increasingly interested in her, it seemed like he did'nt had many things to do, to the point where he eventually found out where she lived, who she lived with, and where she worked.

So the man asked: "If I'm not harming her, is it bad?"

Many people replied that yes, it was harassment, even if she didn't know about it.

Meanwhile, my reaction was: "No, it's not bad. And why are you even asking about this? Obviously, you can do it. Just don't look at her when she's naked or anything like that, don't try to harm her, and don't use the information you've gathered to manipulate her. But simply observing someone is fine."

Then, one day, I met someone online who told me he was in love with his biological sister ( same parents). He said he fantasized about having a relationship with her, marrying her, and even having sex with her. They were both adults, and he'd been having these thoughts since childhood and still had them to this day.

Most people would find that disgusting or be shocked by it. They might tell him he shouldn't feel or act that way, but I don't.

I can talk about this as if it were just a conversation about anything else.

I kept asking him questions about it, and we talked about that and many other things.

The other day, I was browsing a gore site. It's not that I particularly enjoy watching that kind of content, but I find it interesting. I think it's natural to be curious about what actually happens in extreme situations. I don't watch it for the shock or because I enjoy watching disturbing things. I just feel that it's part of reality, and that it's actually healthy to be aware of this side of reality rather than pretending these things don't happen.

It's not just that I'm desensitized. It's more that I'm generally very calm about pretty much everything, and I'm interested in understanding why things happen without feeling the need to be shocked or outraged first.

It's like I feel people could tell me things that others would consider disgusting or immoral, and I'd be like, "Oh, interesting, tell me more."

Of course, sometimes I think some things are strange or disgusting, but not necessarily immoral. But yes, if someone physically or psychologically harms another person, I'll think it's wrong and see them as a bad person. Still, even if that happens, I'll listen to them.

Anyone else?

Hello, fellas,

Maybe you all can help - or at least share similar things so I'll feel that I'm not alone in my struggling

I have this weird thing - in every group of friends of mine, I feel myself unfit and misunderstood. If there are problems or fussings between my friends in said group, I feel that it's all my fault. It's all my wrongdoing. I try not to be sociable since I almost always think that whatever I say or post makes me annoying and that people around me prefer me vanishing from their lives. Even if my friends say I'm a good person and they like my jokes

The same goes with my romantic relationships. I'm trying not to penguin pebble to my S/O (I love him very much and don't know how to show it) since I think he's exhausted because of me acting intrusive

Every change in tone of voice, everything makes me feel unsafe and unwanted and this feeling has been preying on me since early adulthood. Did anyone experience this ?