my experiences with psychosis and schizoaffective

hellooo. my name's tobeef (or toby if you're really interested). i've been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder for the majority of my life, and up until my medical diagnosis i've had strange experiences. some i remember very clearly and some i don't remember at all and only heard through close family.

i would like to explain first and foremost the difference between schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia, otherwise you may look it up. basically the difference between the two is subtle but defining.schizophrenia is components of psychosis that can be many different things, audio hallucinations, visual hallucinations, paranoia, etc. schizoaffective is different because it's more mood based. it has traits of bipolar which can affect the psychosis, or may not. put simply, schizoaffective disorder is psychosis with traits of mood swings, like depressive or manic episodes. however it's different for everyone and should be looked at as if a spectrum.

now onto my experieces.

i can recall two stories from my childhood of when i experienced my psychosis. i was about five or six, watching tv in the living room with my parents and two of my siblings. we were watching the news and all of a sudden i ran off to my room screaming and crying out of nowhere. when my mum came to check on me i was in the hallway curled into a ball sobbing hysterically. my mu asked what happened, and all i could say through my sobs was "the news people were talking to me." my mum asked what they said, and i replied after a while, "they want to hurt me," apparently the news people had turned to me and stared at me for a while, then repeated that they were going to butcher my family and make me watch. it's something that i recall and still get chills thinking about it. there's another story but i won't go into my detail, as it wasn't as traumatizing and it just involved shadow people following the car my dad was driving.

now that i'm older i still get these experiences, however they're much less frequent and vivid, as i'm on hefty medication to keep it somewhat tame. my most recent experience was i was laying in bed next to my partner and i suddenly became very aware or my breathing. my paranoia was telling me there were people standing around me, surrounding the bed. i tried to focus my eyes, and there were multiple shadow people "staring" at me, many of them just peering over the foot of the bed. i was (obviously) freaking out, but i tried to remind myself that no one was there.

anyways, i'd love to hear about anything you've experienced relating to this, or maybe just tell me your thoughts?