Diagnosed with Psychosis - I don’t believe it’s true and think something else is wrong

[Artastic55]

Recently I was diagnosed with psychosis (2-3 months ago) and I’ve been reading a lot about psychosis and other people’s experiences and I believe something else is wrong, or this disgnosis was incorrect; Could I have a different mental illness? I’m just not sure that’s it.

Looking at the symptoms, I don’t hallucinate anymore, I used to hear voices in my head which were eradicated after a while. I’m a little delusional and often believe strange things related to my paranoia (e.g people laughing behind me must be laughing at me, or people hearing my thoughts). I do have strange mood swings which sometimes leave me emotionless and angry, often making it seem like I am a different person (which I’ve referred to as ‘it’ or ‘it mode’). I don’t believe there are other symptoms I have also a note that I’ve been on two medications seperatly for seperate time periods treating my illness.

I’m unaware of other mental illnesses that may contribute to this but I do have instrusive thoughts related to my OCD which I also believe may be a misdiagnoses. Although I’m obsessed with harming other people and my own mental health, and often a compulsion I do is research mental illness to see what may be wrong. There are no compulsions for the harming thankfully other than a trick I use from my psychologist called ‘dropping anchor’

i also want to talk briefly about how I dissociate from myself. I often change into this weird state where I feel no emotion and often am hostile and defensive, when I have no reason usually to be like so. It’s often triggered of a night and when it happens I often end up posting here about sone thing like tonight.

i know it’s brief and it’d be better if you’d know me, but i want your advice on what you may thing could be an issue or if you believe my diagnoses may still apply to me even though you may or may not be qualified. I won’t take it as a real diagnoses or whatever because I know it has to be done professionally and in person and all.

thanks for reading and any replies or feedback is welcome. I also didn’t proofread this because I’m lazy. sorry...

[romantic_thi3f]

Hey Artastic55,

Hm, this sounds like a tricky situation. I'm glad that you're here and posting about it even though I don't think we can be of much help! Even if we were doctors and psychologists, it wouldn't be okay for us to talk about your diagnosis specifically or suggest other things - we can't get a full picture of what's going on for you and how intense it's been. Even if we just randomly suggested other mental illnesses, would that even help? My guess is that it would just be more confusing!

What I can do though is talk about how you got the diagnosis, and how you believe it's wrong.

Not sure if you're familiar with the DSM but it's the Diagnostic Manual for Psychiatric Disorders - when someone diagnoses you with a mental illness, that's the guidelines they get it from. At the end of the day, the DSM is a guideline. I can go and see one psychiatrist and be diagnosed with y and see another and be diagnosed with z - because even though they are both psychiatrists; they're just interpreting me and my stuff in different ways.

What happened when you got diagnosed? Have you ever talked to them about how you don't think it adds up for you? Ideally they should (or can) tell you more about how they came to that conclusion and be able to let you know what's going on.

The other thing that might be important to know is that you may just find that you are managing your psychosis and so it's not as intense? Brief Psychotic Disorder lasts between 1 and 30 days (according to BMJ) - so perhaps that could be why?

Hope this helps somewhat 🙂