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First off, a little bit about me; I am a 31 year old human male from an unimportant small town in rural Pennsylvania. I like computer games, cheap beer, and good bread. Preferably all of them at once. Almost three years ago I checked myself in to a psychiatric facility and about a year later got diagnosed with a big list of problems, mostly minor things. There were, however, some major ones. As the title says, the biggest ones are borderline disorder and PTSD. I also have a history of major depression, some substance abuse, and am the former owner of a nasty, nasty temper. These days I'm mostly better after a crap load of counselling and some help. There were also some happy pills along the way. And some Buddhism. Really, I think my religion has helped a lot. Currently I'm an unemployed, single college student working on a BFA in art and a BS in computer science with a minor in mathematics. I'm also an honors student despite looking about as non-honors student as is possible. I tried to do a thread like this in the past but it got hijacked within a day. I let that one die but there seemed to be some interest and I think talking about these issues will help me. Aside from that, there are some very common misconceptions about mental illness in general. There are also some nasty stigmas that get attached to those that have suffered any sort of mental illness that are totally unfair. Not every person that has issues is at risk of going on a shooting rampage and not every mentally ill person is dangerous to be around, especially if they get help. In my case I can be a danger to myself but not to others. So just what is borderline disorder? Well, here is a Wikipedia page that has some good stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder So now for some non-clinical, personal description. The short of it is that when you're dealing with BPD your emotions are on a hair trigger and are downright explosive. They can also be hard to regulate or contain once poo poo gets out of control. This is part of where it leads to issues in other areas of life. People with BPD can be unstable and unpredictable. I can think of a lot of cases where I've gone from mellow to so depressed I couldn't move practically instantly. Other times I've gone from calm to screaming and furious with little warning. While most people have emotions that look more like a sine wave it gets more square with BPD. There aren't in betweens. There is no "eh, I'm kind of meh today" there is either life is good and everything is wonderful or gently caress everything I hate this world somebody kill me gently caress. The only "in between" is just kind of being here and live like hey man, I'm just kind of living, you know? In my case it was mostly mellow or severely depressed. Sometimes something can trigger it but other times I'd have That One Thing that pushed me over the edge. It could be something extremely minor that I'd normally just shrug off completely. Other times I'd just kind of...turn off. Depersonalization is a truly bizarre thing. It was like my personality turned off but my body kept working. There were times I was basically a machine. The worst periods I just flat out don't remember but friends and coworkers would notice that I didn't interact much. I had no desire for social contact. I was never happy or sad. I just kind of...was. I ate when hungry, poo poo when I had to, slept some hours every night and played computer games. It's strange to think about. It doesn't seem strange while it's going on. I really can't tell you what brought that on or what ended it. The longest period was about 18 months where my life was extremely routine. I was very mechanical. Some of that was working two jobs and I remember going through a period where I'd get up, work both jobs, come home and drink a lot, sleep a few hours, then do it again. I scheduled one day off of both jobs every week and would spend that day sleeping like 16 hours then doing laundry. OK, so what about PTSD? More Wikipedia because it is awesome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder Wikipedia that is, not PTSD. That sucks. Anyway, the first thing that inflicted me with that lovely set of letters was childhood trauma. I won't talk about that. Don't even ask. No, never. I rarely speak about such things and have decided to take much of it to the grave. Some things I have never told anybody and never will. The next step was an abusive relationship. I was love shy and terrified of women all through high school to the point that I went solo to all the school dances and only had dates to proms because other people arranged them for me or I got asked. After that I got with a woman I met doing a musical locally that turned out to be a horrible, possessive monster. Once again, she expressed interest in me so I figured it was unlikely I'd ever find anybody else and said "OK." Of course I didn't know her all that well at that point but she seemed OK and was attractive. As time went by she got continually worse and was quite possibly the most jealous, insecure, and manipulative person I've ever met. A few years later I got myself a stalker which also did not help. I recently got out of another not exactly pleasant relationship and lately have found myself completely incapable of talking to women I don't know. My brain just shuts off. There was a case where a woman was actively hitting on me and I just walked away from her. I didn't even acknowledge that she was interested in me. Didn't accept, didn't reject, just...left. This sort of thing can gently caress up somebody very badly in ways that aren't even readily apparent. Of course in that case there's also the issue of "oh by the way, I'm literally crazy." Makes a person less desirable and I can't really judge people for that. Crazy can be hard to deal with and some people just can't handle it. Being poor as hell for most of my life also hasn't helped much. There were some OK times but there were a lot of other times where I'd be making a choice between paying rent on time or eating. I've also never lived in the same building for more than two and a half years. The average is much less than that. Part of that time during adulthood was crashing on couches or renting rooms in basements. I remember sleeping in unheated rooms as a child during PA winters. That was not pleasant. It turns out I'm actually a pretty good computer science programmy guy so hopefully that will be a thing of the past before long. On the other hand it has come in handy that I get rather panicky about money and the only debt I have is for this college thing. I've gotten exceptionally good at keeping my lifestyle within my means and can even live on next to nothing. I also learned that making fried rice is cheap as hell and eating a lot of vegetable fried rice with sriracha actually isn't so bad. It's pretty great, actually. Other issues I have are fairly standard for PTSD. I don't sleep well. Sometimes I oversleep and feel drained, other times I can't sleep or can't stay awake. I formerly had severe nightmare problems but those are mostly gone. They crop up from time to time but it's rare. Otherwise my dreams are just really loving weird and the nightmares were exceptionally nuts. Those, incidentally, were one of the things that indicated PTSD in that the nightmares actually had very consistent themes. Otherwise I have a history of flashbacks which again are not nearly as bad as they were. You should go back to therapy, you know that right? Yes, I probably should. I haven't yet. I probably will soon but the free therapy place I went to is in a different county so I can't go there for free therapy anymore. I don't know if there is one here and haven't really checked. I'm not a hideous, suicidal wreck and my grades are not suffering so other than some problem drinking I'm mostly OK at the moment. Key word being "mostly." Please don't tell me I should be getting therapy still because I know I should. What do you think I should do if I have similar problems? Go get help. Seriously. Help is out there. There are people whose entire job is helping crazy people be less crazy. This is their job; it's what they went to school for and what they do 40 hours a week. Almost all of them have the job they do because they genuinely want to help people get better. They can help you. I guarantee they've had worse than you. I can't say it enough; go get help. It isn't a sign of weakness and anybody that will judge you for getting the help can get hosed. I made the mistake of getting help way later than I should have. Don't do that. Things you could maybe ask about? Being a crazy, poor guy being a decade older than the majority of the rest of the college students. Tales of social isolation and feeling totally alone even in a crowd. A brief stint as an MRA, why it happened, and why it was brief. Really very exceptionally bad luck with relationships. What being really, really poor and threatened with homelessness does to your habits. How people treat the crazy and why they should not. Dreams. Really, really crazy dreams. I once had a dream that I went hunting with Vladimir Putin and we bagged a walrus the size of a house. Growing up around evangelicals that make Jerry Falwell look like a tolerant communist. Seriously, these people acted like the central message of what Jesus taught was "hate absolutely everything as hard as you loving can." I don't celebrate my birthday and have not for over a decade. None of my friends actually know when it is. Some have a vague idea of the time of year, a few know the month. Nobody knows the date. More details about how borderline affects emotions, I guess? Some of these things might not exactly seem related but they all affect it or are affected by it.
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Oct 9, 2014 13:39
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Birthday parties are fun! Why not celebrate it with friends? To contribute slightly, I haven't spent a year straight living in any one place since I finished undergrad, so I sort of "have to" tell people when my birthday is if I don't want to spend it alone or with the awkward "oh you should have said something!" atmosphere.
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Oct 10, 2014 19:21
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Could you go into more detail about your substance abuse issues?
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Oct 10, 2014 21:29
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Mortley posted:Birthday parties are fun! Why not celebrate it with friends? Too many bad memories, too few friends. That sort of thing. Ytlaya posted:Could you go into more detail about your substance abuse issues? Yeah, I can do that, though I don't have any crazy "literally sucked dick for cocaine" stories or anything. Compared to some things I've seen posted here my stories are actually fairly mundane. I've never missed rent because I blew it all on drugs or anything and I never developed an appetite for controlled substances. Or, specifically, none that were controlled at the time. I was trying to think of a way to make this interesting but I'll do the best I can as I couldn't think of much. Anyway, the issues started when I was relatively early in my working life. I've spent several years doing things like telemarketing and restaurant work and anybody that knows those two worlds knows that drugs are everywhere. If you picked a random person odds were they smoked, drank, did drugs, or all of the above. These are stressful jobs that suck. You get yelled at constantly and blamed for poo poo that isn't your fault because you're the one standing there talking. Meanwhile the job security is absolute balls, the pay is often garbage, and you know you can't do it forever. These are jobs that lead to bad habits. During that period when I was working one, the other, or both I picked up an appetite for ephedrine. It hadn't come off the market yet (it has restrictions on it now but isn't quite illegal but you can't get it over the counter) so it was stupidly easy to get. poo poo was everywhere and convenience stores had it in pills right there at the register. Part of it was just raw insomnia. Sometimes I'd be so tired I just couldn't function on caffeine and sugar alone. Meanwhile, when you're already on ten hours, haven't eaten much because you haven't had time, and agreed to pick up four or five more hours because you need to make rent drugs start looking really friendly. Aside from that in those worlds it's perfectly normal. There were some of us that made munching on chocolate covered espresso beans by the package or taking a pill full of ephedrine kind of a pre-shift ritual. In other cases I'd keep it handy in case I needed to be on for a very long time or, if I failed at sleeping the night before, would just take one. Other times I'd realize there was no way I'd be sleeping at all so I'd take ephedrine to keep myself up for anywhere from 24 hours to 72. Sometimes I'd literally work an entire weekend solid without sleeping. I got a reputation especially in the restaurant world for being a damned machine that just wouldn't stop. Twelve, fourteen, eighteen hours in and I'd still be chugging. Punishment and sleep deprivation on that level isn't healthy in the first place but ephedrine literally killed some people who took crap loads of it and is also an ingredient for meth, apparently. I quit doing it when the laws changed and it got harder to get. I realized what path I was heading down and just didn't go looking for it. The rest of it was just drunkenness, really. I don't have flashbacks if I've been drinking and, for better or for worse, being drunk can help me forget. I've never gone full blown alcoholic (yet, anyway) in that I realize when I'm flirting with problem drinking and quit. At the moment I had a nasty bout of depression over the summer that led to about five weeks of being drunk literally every day. So far in October I've drank a grand total of six beers for my alcohol consumption. I keep it under control most of the time but when I get very down I can start hitting the sauce pretty hard. Possibly the worst of it was when I was doing two jobs, in the depths of depression, averaging four hours of sleep a night, and was dealing with mild depersonalization. If I wasn't working or sleeping I was drinking and I drank a lot. It's also problematic in that I have an unnaturally high tolerance for somebody my size and apparently alcoholism runs down one side of my family. Sometimes I consider putting down booze for good but really, most of the time (like 80% of the drinking I do) is having a glass of port with dinner or at the end of the day just because I think port tastes absolutely fantastic. That isn't even enough to affect me, really. Port wine is just one of my favorite flavors ever. Which is, of course, why mental illness, depression especially, can lead to drinking problems. It's only a temporary solution sure but sometimes it's the only solution. It works in the short term and trust me, when it's been a very bad week and you have no other solace it's time to hit the bottle. You know it's a bad idea but it, at the very least, helps one cope. I was especially prone to that before I got help. I don't drink nearly as much as I used to, I no longer smoke, and I haven't touched any stimulant heavier than caffeine in years. Still, I never did touch hard drugs. Aside from watching several people come to a job to fund their drug habit then burn out and crash within a year or two (sometimes less) I have a few relatives that had their lives utterly destroyed by hard drugs. I had contact with that crowd for a time but managed to keep myself out of it. I saw the results and what it could do to people and how fast it did it and stayed the hell away. One thing I've always found kind of odd about myself is that I fairly easily get addicted to things but find it easier to quit when I need to. Smoking really comes to mind; when I quit I just finished the pack of cigarettes I had at the time, didn't buy any more, and that was that. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 03:06
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ToxicSlurpee posted:How people treat the crazy and why they should not. Hi ToxicSlurpee! I would appreciate it if you made a post about what I've quoted from your original post in this thread.
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Oct 13, 2014 01:24
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