u/Extension-Yam-7343

I’ve been on 21mg for about 5 weeks, I’ve had some minor improvements and no bad side effects. however, for the past 3ish weeks, I’ve had random singular palpitations maybe three-four times a night when it gets close to the time to take my dose again.

it feels like an electrical pulse throughout my whole body, I even feel it in my teeth?? Has anyone experienced this? I don’t think it’s harmful but it’s certainly weird…

I’m someone who benefits a lot from therapy “homework” and worksheets/work books instead of aimlessly processing things and getting stuck in my head. I’ve only been able to find workbooks for schizophrenia, do you guys have any recommendations?

I started it almost a week ago, the only bad *immediate* side effects I got were a very bad migraine and extreme sleepiness, but only the first two days. I haven’t had any adverse reactions since, but I was wondering what other people’s experiences with it have been?

I started it almost a week ago, the only bad *immediate* side effects I got were a very bad migraine and extreme sleepiness, but only the first two days. I haven’t had any adverse reactions since, but I was wondering what other people’s experiences with it have been?

This year I have finally been started being treated for StPD rather than my old misdiagnosis. I was started with a mood stabilizer (Lamictal 200mg), which was working pretty good. It is just a band-aid on a bullet wound though.

I was put on adderall for a few weeks to help with executive dysfunction and struggle to focus - psychiatrist is unsure if it is brought on by ADHD or just StPD. The adderall worked great... but made me extra paranoid and have full hallucinations.

He took me off adderall, I wanted to try a non-stimulant adhd med. He wanted to treat the symptoms he found more serious than the issue of focus. However I am a full time college student with a full time job and my struggle with motivation and focus interferes with my life and mental health and worsens other issues because of the stress and guilt it puts on me.

So as of 4 weeks ago I have been on an antipsychotic (Latuda 20mg), but the initial side effects have been kicking me in the brain. Extreme sleepiness and lethargy. Consequently this has meant my usual lack of motivation and struggle to focus has been horrible and I have been very emotional.

I do not condone what I chose to do in response to this - however I was desperate and I did make sure there were no drug interactions. I was prescribed klonopin (immediate release anxiety meds) a year ago under a primary doctor (not my psychiatrist or my current primary doctor) and still have some and have used them sparingly. I have found myself needing them since starting latuda but was trying to avoid using them because I did not mention them to my psychiatrist (and I honestly forgot I had them). These past few days I absolutely had to because of the anxiety and emotional vulnerability. On top of this, because of the effects of the Latuda, I had fallen behind in school and work and decided trying an Adderall on my current meds was less of a risk to me than failing a class/getting in trouble at work.

It seems by doing this I accidentally made a close to perfect combo(?) and I felt a little bit like a normal person for once.

I don't want to spring a request on my doctor to add an IR anxiety med and an adhd non-stimulant med at the same time on top of just starting an antipsychotic.

However, I know many people with StPD have a combo of medications and maybe this won't seem weird to ask??

Does anyone take a similar combo of mood stabilizer + antipsychotic + anxiety med + adhd med?

I don't like the idea of starting all of them officially at once but I've taken the lamictal, latuda, klonopin, and adderall combo for 3 days in a row and it has worked well for me. I am scared I won't make it through the inital side effects of Latuda if I don't do this. AND I'm scared if i express my struggle with the inital side effects he'll take me off antipsychotics which I have been wanting/needing for years.

I’m quite literally crying on the bathroom floor currently because I have been hungry and thirsty all day but my roommate (who is usually gone or sleeping since she works night) has been up and doing things in the kitchen/living room all day and is now watching TV on the couch in the living room.

I’m so hungry and I need water and need to do laundry but I can’t physically make myself do it. Im crying out of hunger and thirst but also out of embarrassment and frustration.

I have lived with this roommate for over a year now and I still can’t function in a shared living space.

I thought by the time I was an adult, I would be mature and be able to handle my symptoms. But I still haven't, and they almost seem worse just because of the context of me being almost 21, still being under this burden.

I work full-time at a small company owned by a family member, which is the only reason I haven't been fired a billion times yet. I am not good with my coworkers or the customers; I come off as rude, absent-minded, and strange. I can't even do something as simple as say "good morning" or sit in a chair correctly. My office is a mess. It has a strict organization system, but the system is overflowing because I'm always too stuck in my head to work fast enough to have time to put things away. I don't usually look presentable. I wear formal clothes - slacks and nice polos or johnny-collars, and dress shoes - which people find odd, since we live in south ga and no one dresses like that. My weight is inconsistent because I go through long-term cycles of eating normally and having a non-existent appetite, so my clothes are always ill-fitting during times of weight loss. I'm always late because I sleep so heavily that no amount of alarms can wake me up if I am dreaming. I set 10 alarms on my phone, 10 on my alexa, 2 on my Echodot, and play a classical music playlist that plays loud, annoying pop music at the time I wake up. My mind will only wake up if it wants to. Sometimes I wake up, and my alarms have been silenced even though I have no memory of doing so.

I am also a full-time student in college. I have always been complimented for my intelligence. It is the one thing about myself that I feel confident about. But I can't go to class without headphones, I do half my classes online, so I can still work, but even just the 2-3 in-person classes a semester are hard for me.

As a kid, I didn't care what the other students thought of me. But now I am embarrassed to be a 20-year-old who is plugging his ears with his fingers, snapping pencils in half, or putting on a set of big, clunky, noise-cancelling headphones in a room with fewer than 25 students.

I, an adult, had to approach my professor, who has a doctorate in the field I want to go into, if I had to participate in the group activities or if I could do it by myself, and was embarrassingly turned down.

I'll skip class just because I don't want to exist in a public setting that day. My grades suffer because of this. Well, that and the fact that I can't focus and get stuck in my head. I have the ability to get straight As, but these two factors make me earn Bs in some classes.

I am terrified of going into public places and try to completely avoid places like the movie theatre, the mall, big grocery/department stores, places with a lot of kids, etc.

I've had 20 and a half years to pull myself together, but I'm still in the same place. Will it ever get easier?

Will I ever even finish school and fulfill my dream? How will they take me seriously in my career field when I am unstable, awkward, and withdrawn?

My parents don't care about me, so if my roommate (the one friend I have) and I ever part ways, I will be left by myself. I won't be able to live alone with a stranger. And I'd go mad if I lived alone, as much as I like my space, the silence of an empty home calls out to me when I am alone, and it feels like it wants to devour me.

I'm not even talking about the billion other symptoms I have to deal with, I just mean the ones that impact my external functioning the most.

Please tell me it gets better.

I've been on a mood stabilizer, Lamictal, since February to keep my reactivity minimal which has helped some. I was then put on adderall to see if it would help get me out of being stuck in my head and be more tethered to the real world. It only took two weeks of 15mg to make me start having full on hallucinations and extreme paranoia even though it really helped me 😭😭😭

He took me off and I returned to my usual "sticky thoughts" and drifting and reality disconnection. It sucks. I was feeling actually motivated to do things and didn't feel stuck in mud.

Then a week and 3 days ago he put me on an antipsychotic, Latuda, which he wanted to try eventually but didn't want to put me on something for mood, focus, and an antipsychotic all at once obviously. Mood was most important. And after that was focus because im a new adult and its been extremely hard to focus on work and college classes without frequently burning out and symptoms worsening.

So he skipped the focus treatment entirely and went to antipsychotics.

The issue is that the antipsychotic makes me EXTREMELY tired, and im on a very low dose. My brain fog is worse than ever, im so behind at work and in school 😭

Ive been having like 2 redbulls a day, even if it goes away it won't help the focus aspect. And is it even possible to be on an focus medicine that doesn't counteract an antipsychotic?

Does anyone also have ADHD (he doesn't know if i do or not, but i already struggle with daytime sleepiness and symptoms that mimick the "deficit disorder" part of ADHD) have a medication blend that works for them????

I have never been good with natural expressions. I do have a sense of humor and like to make jokes and laugh - although many people find my own humor to be too dark or obscure. However, besides that, I have to steal others' movements. I have none of my own.

I feel like I'm an amalgamation of stolen parts and not a real person - but that's beside the point.

Overall, I steal many expressions and body language from favorite fictional characters on TV/Movies since you can see their motions clearly and tie it to what they're feeling and thinking based on the context of the scene.

When communicating with specific people, I mirror their own body language and expressions in order to try to communicate with them better, to express myself in a way that they would understand, since they make those motions themselves?

I do it involuntarily after a point. But people still say my face is "broken".

This may even be one of the reasons people find me strange; I didn't even think about that until writing this out.

I live in the South in America, so there aren't a lot of in-person options for me, but I've been looking at some of these online therapy sites, and nearly none of them have "personality disorders" as an area of care, let alone StPD. There aren't even options for schizophrenia??

I have been burned too many times throughout my life by therapists who lack knowledge of my issues to want to try out a million therapists who don't specify they can help me.

OVERVIEW (can skip if wanted):

I don't have the *most* severe schizotypal traits. I have mostly negative symptoms (flat affect, struggle to feel positive emotions, anhedonia, painfully impaired social skills to the point I'm assumed to be autistic and was misdiagnosed with Asperger's as a kid, etc.).

My other symptoms exist but aren't the most extreme; for example, I have ruminations and fixations on beliefs but can usually rationally tamp them down until the next time they resurface. Very "Must have been the wind" type thing. And I struggle greatly with self-disturbance/depersonalization/derealization, which manifests as a consistent belief of not being in reality. I don't know what constitutes a belief, but I consistently feel like I'm clearly not supposed to be here. Maybe it's a scientific explanation - like my brain is just not wired to handle this world. Or maybe it's because I was supposed to be, or even from, somewhere else. I usually rely on factual evidence when making decisions and approaching things to try to keep myself from slipping that line from belief to delusion. Because even if I'm not here, or not supposed to be here, you can still use the rules of this reality to semi-function. If that makes sense.

You get up, go to work/class/both, you need to eat and sleep and use the bathroom, you have to talk to people sometimes, get some hobbies so you won't be bored. And most of all - You can't question it. Because when my brain suddenly isn't busy with work or classes or whatever else, I remember extreme unsettledness that nothing is real. Maybe it is actually real, scientifically speaking. But it isn't to me. There are rules to this game. You don't pay attention to the things that appear in the corner of your eye, you don't pay attention to the strange noises that no one else heard or that have no logical source. You don't look at your environment for too long, things will start to look strange. You can't sit in complete silence, your mind will start taking over.

Things like that - just a general summation of those symptoms for me.

I did have a period of full-blown psychosis as a kid during a time a lot of traumatic events were happening, and although I try to push those old beliefs down - of being from another world, of being another creature, of being an angel cast down to hell and the wings ripped from his back, from having some sort of malicious purpose or mission that I have no details on, and especially try to push down the thoughts of being punished by God or - the opposite - getting saved by getting sucked into the alternate reality I made up.

STRANGE OBSESSION PART:

There are a lot of other things I could speak about - but the one I wanted to ask is something I haven't really seen described as something people with Schizotypal OD struggle with. Some people say they struggle with rumination, etc, or have OCD like thinking?

But I was literally misdiagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder (so a psychopath) because of my strange hobbies and obsessions.

They aren't intrusive thoughts; they are interests I have had since I was a kid that I actually enjoy. And I don't enjoy them much. I won't get too descriptive, for many reasons, but they mostly revolve around death, infliction of pain, anatomy, strange erotic fixations despite *not* wanting physical intimacy with self or others, etc., etc.

I am considered at risk for homicide/violent behavior/assault DESPITE the fact I said I would never act out on desires for a plethora of reasons. The idea I would actually do something like that is insane to me because I would risk having to go to jail, having my whole life disrupted, and actually have to figure out how to physically do those things. Which is just too much drama and effort and dealing with real people and reality.

Some of these interests have physical/external manifestations that I keep private, but they would only be considered odd or weird, maybe slightly disturbing, interests/hobbies versus the real thing.

But besides, the fantasies and worlds in my head are much better than reality.

Am I alone in this? Is there maybe something else- a disorder or issue it's connected to that I should look into?

My new psychiatrist - the one who diagnosed me - is very helpful compared to all the others I dealt with throughout my childhood. But I haven't told him about these things because of my past experiences.

Some psychiatrists have borderline threatened to report me - You can't report people for thoughts??? They'd say stuff like "Are you scared I'll tell people this?" Well, I wasn't because of HIPPA, but I sure am now.

One straight up said I might be possessed by demons. I live in the south, but that still should be something that should get her license stripped.

If anyone had a name or explanation for this I could use to start the conversation with, that would be very helpful.

No one has ever prescribed me an antipsychotic (to be fair, I was only recently diagnosed and was misdiagnosed in childhood with autism, OCD, and temporary psychosis), and only ever given anti-depressants, which semi-helped, so I stayed on them through my teen years since my mom wouldn't let me take anything else. I got off those at 18 (I'm almost 21) and felt like myself again, but old issues came back pretty quickly. I was handling them okay until I added full-time college to my full-time job and started being constantly stressed.

I sought psychiatric help, which took a very long time to find a competent one, but I felt I should only ask about them in a worst-case scenario.

My new psychiatrist agreed we should explore lighter medications first, so for a first tentative step, he put me on Lamictal in hopes it would help with the persistent irritation and anger and general struggle with emotional reactivity.

It barely did anything besides make conversing with people a little less irritating, but my emotional reactivity and anger persist.

THE PROBLEM: He recently put me on 15mg extended-release Adderall to see if it would get me out of my head and sort of "quiet" things, and help me focus on things.

It did actually feel like being slightly sedated and calm (which I took as a sign that it wasn't affecting me as it would usually affect someone who doesn't have ADHD). After getting over the physical symptoms (nausea, dry mouth, racing pulse), I was able to start taking it daily about two and a half weeks ago.

The first thing I noticed was that issues I *already* had became more frequent, not worse just more frequent. Like, sometimes I struggle with speaking clearly, but it became more frequent. I also have always had a small level of perceptual disturbances, but I have never had full-blown hallucinations except when I had a full-blown psychotic state from ages 11-13.

My perceptual disturbances became more frequent, but not worse. They just happened every time I took Adderall, even when I was only taking it every now and then because of the nausea etc.

But ever since taking it daily, they have gotten a little worse. Instead of objects looking strange or seeing them in the wrong locations or the wrong for a few moments, I started having more frequent more severe ones that usually only happen every now and then. I've been hearing things, but not voices, just simple things like a phone ringing, the laundry machine jingle, or a door shutting when none of those happened. Visual disturbances that are usually quite harmless have become more disturbing; shadows move and look like people out of the side of my eye. I have become more paranoid, maybe because of the increased visual illusions, or maybe separately. I usually struggle with feeling like being watched or hunted, especially at night. But I've started sleeping with a baseball bat in my bed and pulling the sheets over my head and holding my cat close to me, even though she hates it. Sometimes I'll stare down the hall at the door to my office and be frozen because I'm convinced something is about to appear in the doorway.

I have also been irritable and emotional for no reason.

I have stayed on the Adderall because I was hoping the effects would go away. Maybe they still will? I just want to be able to keep this state of mind that doesn't get me stuck in there to the point of being unproductive. But it just seems to be bringing my internal thoughts into the external world.

Today was the LAST STRAW. I don't care what will happen if I go cold turkey; my next appointment is in a week anyway, and I am still shaking from what happened, and it was hours ago. I've barely been able to speak, and what I have said doesn't make any sense.

My friend and I live with another roommate. We're not very fond of her, so we made the extra bedroom into an office that we use instead of the living room. We heard a car door shut, so we went to check the window to see if it was her, because if so, we were going to leave the kitchen/living room area we were in, making tea. The living room blinds are half closed, so I had to bend down to see. From my angle, I couldn't see the two people's faces, just like the torso down. I did not know my friend was behind me and was looking too. So I said, "Ugh, she brought her friend or somebody with her without telling us." She gave me a weird look and said, "Really?" I assumed it was because she did not look with me and was also frustrated to learn this.

We "escaped" to the office, and she said, "Maybe it was her mom you saw? She did say she might be coming over later?"

I said no and told her they had matching clothes, black leggings and pink shirts, and they must have come from a party or baby shower or something that would have matching clothes as an element. We heard her come in, and she was loud as usual as she greeted her dogs but we didn't hear another person. After a while I mentioned it was really weird that we didn't hear her friend and her talking.

My friend looked at me and said, "I only saw one person."

I started saying "No there were-" But shut up, because I realized that she must have been right, why would there be someone wearing her exact outfit that wasn't talking with our roommate.

I have known my friend for a long time, she's the only friend I've ever had, but she knows nothing about my struggles besides the fact that they are complicated and too private for me to share.

I felt her staring at me for a long time, and I made an excuse to leave the room. I went to our roommate's door and heard nothing. The fear started creeping in. It became obvious when we continued to hear nothing for two hours until her mom showed up, who greeted the roommate, no friend. My friend also left the room to say hi, and there was no evidence of the person I saw ever being there.

I took a kolonopin so i wouldn't start breaking down and spiraling, but I'm still shaking. Not only does my friend know I saw someone who wasn't there, but she knows I was badly shaken, which clearly implies it was a serious situation.

I only figured it out because she was with me, I have no idea what else I could have seen that wasn't there.

I want to ask to sleep in her room because I'm terrified, but I have work in the morning and don't want to wake her up at 6am, and I also don't want to sleep on the floor.

I don't want to go back to the way I was before taking Adderall, because it's the only thing that has actually kept my mind focused and quiet. But this is clearly worse, and I have no idea if this will have permanent consequences, or if the only thing that will help is an antipsychotic, since clearly antidepressants, antianxiety meds, and mood stabilizers have been just a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. And apparently, stimulants treat the wound but cause another one.

It's so hard to explain myself to psychiatrists without sounding like I'm making stuff up because I have no words for what I feel. I did recently find the term "self-disturbance", which I think is just a way to say nothing feels real, and everything feels wrong, uncanny, and I always just feel "off", even when I'm not in a bad mental state.

QUESTION I NEED ANSWERED: Is there anyone who has struggled to explain themselves to their psychiatrist or find the correct meds, but found a way to express themselves accurately? Or maybe anyone who can calm my fear about antipsychotics or tell me that I shouldn't even ask for them because the side effects won't be worth treating my symptoms that, when at baseline, are not symptoms of full-blown psychosis?

And are there any self-soothing things I can do to make it through the week? And will going cold turkey on the Adderall possibly add to my instability?

I will take any help I can get, please.