Is this a typical experience with psychosis?

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My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, and I do have the regular symptoms like depression, mania, mood swings, bad decision making in mood episodes, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and all of that. I'm pretty well medicated right now, and mostly everything has been under control for a while now.

There is, however, a different experience I've had since middle school, that's only gotten worse with time, and not better with medication. I have episodes where I go into a dissociative state, and I get strong visions of me doing random, dangerous things, like crashing a car, or beating someone with an object, or stabbing myself, or running away from home. These visions come with a persistent urge to act on the vision, even though I feel no emotional need to do anything in the visions. It's just there. The other day, it happened while I was on a walk, so I came home, broke a glass in my bathtub, and tried to stab myself with it. I didn't stop myself; I did jam it onto my leg, but it failed to penetrate my skin. It only scraped off some flesh. I tried stabbing myself 15 times. I bled, but I did not actually succeed at stabbing.

The odd thing is, after I snap out of these states, I feel like I didn't even do what I just did; like it wasn't even me; like I watched myself or someone else do what I just did 5 minutes ago. I feel calm and normal afterward.

I talked to my psychologist about it, and she's one of those people that believes finding out how to deal with the problem is more important than finding out why the problem happens, but I think they're both important because I find great security in knowing why I am a certain way, and what it's called. Kind of like in the movie Over the Hedge when the animals were afraid of the hedge; when they named it, some of them felt less afraid.

Is this typical of people with psychosis, or could there be something else?

Hey, My diagnosis is Schitzoaffective-bipolar type too, and I can relate a lot to what you said. I go into states very similar how you explained, wanting to hurt myself or others and just walking out of the room or house. My psychiatrist and counseller think it is part of my diagnosis. I;m just newly on medications so I don't know if it will go away with the meds or not... i really hope it does. maybe talk to your psychiatrist about changing medication to counteract these sypmtoms, thats all I can think of. best of luck to you