The Disorders and Character Flaws Thread

[Sansa Stark]

Originally Posted by s_k

Paloma, I'm back .
It's 4:39am already so I probably could give you a better reply at a different time, but here goes


I'm glad to hear that


So you knew all the time that you were heading in a totally wrong direction, but couldn't do anything about it, really? That sounds like an awful way to live your life.

I never really realised how I acted was strange until my ex insisted to me that it was ****ed up. Sometimes I would notice that the way I felt at certain times was wrong (usually during depressive episodes). When I had manic episodes they'd get to the point where I had absolutely no forethought and did everything on impulse, it was very frightening to witness. It felt like my body was possessed almost, and I couldn't do anything about it. Mania caused me to be a real *******. I cheated on all my boyfriends besides my current one because I would obsess when I was depressed, then ages later once I became manic I would **** someone else, to hurt them because I'd figure they hurt me, so it was okay to do the same. I didn't give a **** about the consequences either. I would always hurt the people I cared about most. It sucked.

Originally Posted by s_k

When you're really down and out it's sometimes quite hard to see what is actually caused (or solved) by the meds you're taking. I guess you probably didn't have proper (or enough) guidance from a psychiatrist at that time?
Glad you're still here, Paloma


I'm having a hard time understanding what your ex fiancee exactly did for you. I tried translating 'conned', but Google translate seems to come op with a lot of nonsense. I suppose he sort of forced you? Please explain .

He did sort of force me really, he told me he would leave me if I didnt get medicated. he was actually bluffing, he told me he'd never leave me (he did eventually)

Originally Posted by s_k

I must say that the symptoms you describe here sort of remind me of the symptoms you get when you suffer from borderline. Have they ever tested you for that?

No, they haven't, but a lot of the symptoms of both overlap, but I don't have problems with interpersonal relationships and my mood swings last for up to weeks, most mood swings people with borderline get aren't nearly as long. And I don't have any identity issues, at all. My personality is very distinct and i've always been certain on who I am as a person.

Originally Posted by s_k

I again get the idea you didn't have the proper help whilst taking the medicines. It almost seams as if they just provided you with them and then let you figure everything else out by yourself. Weren't you warned about the risks/side effects these medicins could have on your behaviour?

I didn't have the proper help at all. I never had follow up therapy and no one monitored me to see how they'd take. My mother didn't take me to hospital to get checked out until I started shaking so much I couldn't even walk right.
I was not warned of the risks, the hospital that gave me the drugs was supposed to tell my parents, because at the time I was a minor.

Originally Posted by s_k

I just wonder, what eventualy made you decide to take your meds?
And how are you now? I mean, you told me your bi-polarity doesn't effect your life that much anymore, but as far as I can see all these things you have been through have happened pretty recently. It really took a turn for the better all of a sudden, didn't it?

I didn't take the meds I have now, despite the fact I had the right ones, because of the drug addiction I developed trying to level myself out. The meds made the opiates not work for me anymore, and I was too afraid to try the meds,, because opiates made me feel level. I had no idea if it would work with the meds. I eventually started to take my meds when I got put into rehab for a large drug binge during the summer. I ended up embarassing myself during the binge and acted worse than my most manic of episodes. I didn't want to live like that anymore, so I thought I may as well try the damn things.

Originally Posted by s_k

We have a famous soccerplayer here who once said "every downside has it's upside and the other way around". And he's probably right. You can always find a good thing coming from a bad thing and good things happening to you always have some sort of downside.
I can't think of any mental disorder that doesn't come with a positive site.
You have a very creative thinking process (I can see that in your pictures, indeed), I (and that really has to do with my sort of Autism) have a very strong feeling of justice and I'm quite good with languages. I also have a lot of eye (and ear, in my case) for detail. Which could be very convenient now and then.

Still I'm not sure if, had I been given the choice, I would really want to live this life. It's not easy . But I must admit there's some upsides to every disorder. And I'm glad you are able to see yours. I hope you will exploit them

Thanks!

[Dirty]

Originally Posted by Paloma

I cheated on all my boyfriends besides my current one

Wow, does your boyfriend know that you've cheated multiple times on different guys? That's one of the worst qualities to have in a partner.


I can't focus at all. It's like I can never just focus on one sole thing. I can never just sit down and do something.

I also have a way of always leading myself into self destructive situations. Like I know deep down that it's a bad decision, but I do it anyways. I'll end up doing things or making decisions that cause me to panic or worry later. Sometimes it's like I don't know any other way.

At times I just get real anxious or panicked. Used to never happen, but just in this past year I'll be in public around a lot of people and this paranoia creeps in. Like it would feel like there is someone in this mass of people just watching my every little move. So I started second guessing the smallest of things and becoming anxious. Haven't been feeling this way as much lately though.

[ThePhanastasio]

I'm really not a huge fan of the psychiatric community. I guess I could just rephrase that to say that I'm not a fan of the community in my particular city, but because of my experiences with them, I'm pretty wary of psychiatrists in general.

There's only one major psychiatric practice in my area, and it features half a dozen psychiatrists, in-patient and out-patient facilities, a plethora of therapists, halfway houses, and things like that. They've got quite a reputation for misdiagnosis and for ****ing people up.

I have one friend who has finally been correctly diagnosed and treated for having nothing more than ADHD and Seasonal Affective Disorder. The doctors here diagnosed him as having Histrionic Personality Disorder and suggested that he might be autistic. It wasn't until he graduated high school that he was properly diagnosed and treated for his actual illness, and he's still pretty messed up from having to go through high school thinking that something else was wrong with him when it wasn't.

Yet another friend was misdiagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder (and medicated as such) when it wasn't realized until her senior year of high school that she actually had Aspergers. As can be imagined, the medicinal treatment for Borderline was not helpful for Aspergers.

My own personal experience started in my freshman year of high school. I had been having highs and lows which lasted for weeks at a time since seventh grade, but finally, my freshman year, I had an extremely bad episode. It featured really high energy, racing thoughts, and auditory hallucinations. I was irritable, paranoid, and completely out of it.

My mother had me take a week off school to go to the psychiatrist and get treated / stabilized, and I was diagnosed after three days of meeting with the therapist - an Indian gentleman who looked a great deal like George Jefferson aside from the fact that he was Indian - I was diagnosed as being paranoid schizophrenic, and was immediately placed on 30MG of Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic.

30MG is, from what I understand now, the highest dose of Zyprexa which can be given, and I later found out that it's not to be given to patients under the age of 18 because of medical risks associated with the drug. A typical starter dose, however, was 5MG a day.

I went through two years of high school pretty much zombified, suffering from crippling depression in addition to the numbness and was finally hospitalized after what was believed to be a suicide attempt - to be honest, I'm not even sure what I was doing.

After that, they significantly lowered the dose of my medication and put me on some sort of anti-depressant along with the anti-psychotic. I can't remember the name of the anti-depressant, because I stopped taking both of the drugs shortly thereafter, and refused to go back to the psychiatrist. I felt like things had only gotten worse, and my family agreed, but tried to get me to at least take the anti-depressant.

I was completely terrified and confused, so I was irrational. I refused completely, and my two years as a zombie had hurt my family too much for them to want to see me like that again, so they didn't make me go back.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college and the few years following that - I began abusing copious amounts of substances, which I've actually mentioned previously in the Confessions thread, and don't really want to go into right now. I was set to self-destruct, my moods were horrible...sometimes, I'd be up and almost euphoric...really social and bubbly. Other times, I'd be up, but reckless. This is when most of the substance abuse / sexual deviance / etc. occurred. In these times, I was also often paranoid...I'd think that people could read my mind during particularly bad episodes, think that private correspondence had been intercepted and read by other people, think that people were talking negatively about me when they so much as glanced in my direction during conversation, and on one occasion, that I'd actually died and had created everything around me as an afterlife for myself to cope with the trauma of being dead. I also had really horrible periods of deep depression in which I couldn't even motivate myself to get out of bed, answer my phone, or anything like that.

I finally went back to therapy, thinking that since I was completely unable to function as a normal human being at that point that being zombified even would be ideal, and they observed me and took some more tests.

Finally, they informed me that I wasn't schizophrenic - I just had an extremely bad case of Bipolar I. Rapid cycling. My manic states often had psychotic characteristics, but I wasn't schizophrenic. At this point, I was prescribed a mood stabilizer and anti-depressant.

I was, however, (understandably I think) still wary about psychiatry after what I'd been through. I stopped going to the psychiatrist, and stopped taking my medicine again...I should probably mention that all of this went down while I was in a very serious relationship with a girl. Eventually, she decided that she couldn't deal with it and it wasn't her problem to deal with, and we broke up. That's about when I really stopped taking my medicine...

My mother is trying to get me to go back to the psychiatrist, but I have several issues at present. 1) I no longer have health insurance. 2) I'm scared to ****ing death of psychiatrists now. 3) I feel like I lose my identity entirely when I'm medicated; I can't write, do what I feel is efficient theatre character development, or get as excited about music most of the time. 4) I still don't like to think that I'm ****ed up or defective. That's how psychiatrists make me feel.

With that said...I'm probably going back anyway in the New Year. If, for nothing else, just to make sure that my most recent diagnosis as Bipolar I stands, and see if there's anything they can do to help me without making me into someone else entirely.

[Scarlett O'Hara]

I got a 17 on the test. I think I have some kind of mental disorder, I've already had deppresion and I have bouts of obsessive compulsiveness, zombie-like-stateness. I feel like my mind is going strange places a lot of the time I can be highly emotional to being normal and practical thinking. I am constantly fantasizing about what kind of life I want and feel like everything is more difficult for me due to my emotions and sensitivity. Do you guys have any idea what might be controlling this?

I am also very creative and get stuck in moods where I just sit and type for hours because my imagination never stops. That is why I write and want to write a novel. Being addicted to codeine has been an ongoing struggle and I feel like their is so much of me to come.

[Dirty]

Not sure this is really the right place, but is anyone else colorblind here?

I don't know colors. Like if someone was sitting here and pointed to nearly anything in my room and ask me the color, I wouldn't know. I don't see just black and whites, I just can't differentiate between certain colors. Here are colors that look similar to me and I don't know which are which most of the time.

Orange, brown, and greens I have trouble with

and blue, purple, pinks i have trouble with.

Like this forum layout, I'm not sure what color it is. Blue I think.

Also on red lights, it's tricky at night when they are blinking because the yellow and the red lights look the same so i just look to see if the blinking light is the middle light or not.

[jackhammer]

I scored 23 on that test whatever it was supposed to achieve.

Other stuff:
Partially blind in left eye so I only use one eye to see.
I can bend my big toes to 90 degree angles.

I am a pessimist but not depressive. People often relate them together which is ridiculous. My justification? if you prepare for the worst and expect it then you are fully prepared for it and if something good happens then it's a very welcome bonus.

[FaSho]

Agree: 2,4,5,6,12,16,22,23,26,39,41,43: 1 point
Disagree: 10,14,25,29,30,37,38,49,50: 1 point
Score: 21

What does this even mean?

[s_k]

I did explain what it meant along with the link man

[FaSho]

Oh sorry, I just clicked it and didn't bother to read your post. I understand now. Pretty interesting stuff; my answers seemed primarily normal and yet I'm almost on the bubble.

[s_k]

Well the bubble isn't round. You can be in with a rather low score or out with a rather high score.
If you're anywhere above 30 you can be pretty sure there's something wrong.
I guess that when you're above 20 and you have your doubts, you might want to look in that direction. But don't think too much of this test when you don't have any problems with your personality .

The least I can say is that you score 'above average'