The same thing happened to me, yes, I find the term extremely derogatory. I have bipolar ( or am bipolarish) and maybe even something called schizotypy but something in my brain is very protective from developing true psychosis. When you have bipolar just one little whiff of this schizotypy trait gets you a schizoaffective diagnosis. They will exaggerate to make the criteria. I saw in one record the psy put down- seems to be responding to internal stimuli. That means hearing voices or seeing things. I most certainly wasn't. Another doctor put down " constricted" affect even though I was making intense hand gestures and emotionally pleaded to the point that the room went silent for a moment.

What really gets me is that my bipolar is on the very low end and nowhere near what a lot of bipolar tales entail. I recently visited the psychic subreddit out of curiosity and there's all kinds of people talking about seeing and hearing things- yet somebody WHO DOESN'T is a schizoaffective.

I currently have to cash pay a psychiatrist who promised me a bipolar only- won't change diagnosis. I had to restart lithium, because I never recovered from being on it for 3 years.

One thing interesting I found out is if you look up ICD-10 simple schizophrenia that might explain all the B.S schizoaffective diagnoses. Simple schizophrenia is said to be very " rare " - just like schizoaffective yet every other person who didn't go to college & is in the system has the diagnosis. Simple schizophrenia is basically just a person who isn't pleasing everybody enough and not doing what they want.