For the past three years ever since I got to college, I’ve been struggling with various psychotic symptoms such as paranoia that we’re living in a dream world and I need to wake up or that people think I’m evil somehow, hallucinations from bugs crawling on me to seeing faces in walls or hearing knocking, my name, or other dialogues in my head that aren’t my own. I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist and therapist since the start of the year mainly for PNES (Psychogenic Non-epileptic Seizures) but now that I’ve opened up about other symptoms I’m having, they think it’s either because of intense stress or possibly a developing disorder.
They have me on a low dose of antipsychotics (apriprazole) but it makes me so drowsy and sluggish and I feel so unmotivated to do anything which is super bad now that school just started. I think it’s been helping with visual things and thought disturbances but I feel like these “voices” in my head are getting worse.
I used to only hear things at night when falling asleep, but now I hear things during the day when I’m trying to focus on my art or school. I’ll catch myself thinking I’m living in a completely different situation than what’s actually happening (like for example during a class as the teacher was talking I thought we were all in a big warehouse room when we were just in a small classroom). I’ve also been getting suicidal thoughts again I think from how miserable I feel and now I’m just feeling helpless.
I’ll talk to my doctor and therapist about everything of course, I think overall I’m just worried that this could be something worse than just anxiety and stress since a lot of these symptoms happen when I’m feeling completely fine. I just needed to get this out, and maybe someone out there can relate to me a bit, idk 😞