My girlfriend and I have been together for 2 years. Overall her schizoaffective symtpoms are mild such as a flattish demeanor but even that goes away at times. There are times however she gets very paranoid, but she’s been able to realize that she was paranoid instantly or at least rather quickly.
This time is different. Lately I’ve been noticing a distance from her where she’s been quiet. It’s part of flat affect at times so I didn’t think much of it. However when we were talking last night she started talking in ways that were very confusing and odd. She had very long delays between responses and said stuff like “if we didn’t hang out, I thought that you would kill me…” even though I have never been violent or threatened violence or anything like that, or just talking in a way that was rather disorganized – jumping around in topic and that sort of thing. That’s when I realized that she may be having an episode.
I suggested she start lithium again, to which she agreed. I know she should be on it, but she was having a twitching side effect she didn’t like so she went off of it, and she was doing really well for several months. Now though I see things could get worse if she doesn’t take it. She hasn’t been getting much sleep these past few days because we recently made drastic changes to our sleep schedule, and things have been a bit stressful, so I’m guessing that may have been the catalyst for this.
I’m just wondering if anyone has any advice for how to go about this. I always try to be respectful of what she’s saying and never accuse her of being paranoid but the paranoia has gotten rather intense. She seems to be obsessed with the them of “proving” our commitment to one another. She brings up this theme at seemingly random times, when we weren’t talking about it, as if it was a natural extension of what we were talking about.