Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 2

Waves_and_Smiles · 28 November 2015 at 8:47PM

Hahaha, Bob the bathroom monster! I agree, you do have to laugh. I have a rather black humour about my mental health, it keeps me going. I am with you on the wallpaper. The house I used to live in had wallpaper in every room and I had ripped it down or painted over it within 2 weeks. I also avoid heavily patterned furnishings and clothes for the same reason, all sorts of strange things live in patterns! It sounds as if you have a great friend there! One of the funniest things I remember from a friend was when I first told him about my MPD and he asked if he could talk to my others. I said of course you can, they hear you anyway. He then lent forward and began shouting Hello down my ear and then wondered why I collapsed in hysterical laughter. That so wasn't necessary but was also incredibly cute!

As you say the feeling that you are dead is often related to depersonalisation, I have felt that on occasion when it has been very triggered. Mine has never lasted for as long as yours though, it must be awful. I am surprised you manage to get out of bed and are able to function at all. It is a testament to you that you can do so, you must have a lot of strength and determination. Don't forget that about yourself, it's a very good quality to have.

whitewing · 28 November 2015 at 8:53PM

Wassy,

Happy, happy birthday to you! I assume Lucy et al share the birthday too so Happy Birthday to all your Others too.

Which made me wonder how many Others we have in the thread in total. (I don't have any).

Glad you got your train, WaS and your socks and other requests!

Lexbubbles,

Hello. I have a pd too. So, according to my mh person, you'll grow out of it! That did make me cross. But actually, I am a lot better, most of the time.

Your curtains comment made me think. I have some vague understanding of this because in the echoes of my mind I can remember being worried about the prospect of similar experiences. I wonder if it is linked to hypervigilance, as that seems to be when I get worried about it. I don't see faces but start to avoid looking at things like that.

I wonder if you could request a copy of your medical records through official channels to see what is actually on there. (I warn you that it may be upsetting). Then maybe take them to a mental health charity charity or advocate and get them to help you review them and decide what you would like to do next (as they should know what is realistic). In particular, get someone to define what 'treatment resistant' means - JM, do you have any comments on that? Can treatment resistant people become treatment ready? - and establish whether you really are treatment resistant or whether it is a communication issue partly caused by the pd.

lexbubbles · 28 November 2015 at 9:09PM

The bathroom ceiling has that sort of... spiky plaster? If you know what I mean? And there's a bit of black mold forming a pattern (it's right above the bath and I don't have a ladder so) out of which was birthed... Bob. Ordinarily the things I see in patterns are one-offs (I won't see the exact same thing next day) but nope looks like Bob is here to stay although taking a bath is an experience

When I told S about the delusions of being dead/coma dream/simulation he said that I must be real because he could see me. I then pointed out that this was based on the whole assumption that he is actually real/alive and his response was the nicest thing. He said "well then whatever form of reality this is we exist in it together so you still matter"

(contrast with a psych: "that's just absurd don't be ridiculous")

That's hilarious about your friend asking to speak to your alters (do you prefer the term others? I know other people with DID who do/don't like the term) and yelling in your ear. S has "met" whatever version of me exists when I go into dissociative amnesia but didn't entirely realise at first until I messaged him hours later like "did you... come over? Because if you did I don't remember". We've just taken to calling it alternate-me because, again, at what point does dissociative amnesia become DID? It's a really blurred line and I have absolutely 0 memories of it other than what people tell me if there happen to be people present at all. Alternate-me doesn't seem to like normal-me much though, since normally that's when suicide attempts happen (alternate-me is also really bad at it) It's almost like I just "blackout" instead of getting panic attacks when I'm stressed. So. Pfft. Who knows.

The truly "hilarious" thing is the amnesia was what that last psych thought was epilepsy. Honestly. You couldn't make it up.

S gets panic attacks and sometimes I joke with him like "have you tried dissociation? Possible side effects include walking into oncoming traffic, but you're not going to remember it anyway". My humour is black like my soul.

I don't know if I have strength and determination or if I'm existing through sheer force of hatred at this point :rotfl:. Salt is a preservative, so I'm gonna live forever

Speaking of class quotes from friends, my old carer L:
"You know, it's really something that people think you're mostly sane. Last week you lost your cucumber on the way home and sat on the kitchen floor and cried for 30 minutes about it"

(100% true story. That actually happened. It fell out of my trolley on the way back from ASDA and it was apparently the most devastating thing ever to happen to a person ever)

Not-so-class quotes from MH professionals:
"It's a wonder you're not jacked up on coke on a street corner at this point" um... thanks? I guess?

lexbubbles · 28 November 2015 at 9:22PM

whitewing wrote: »

Hello. I have a pd too. So, according to my mh person, you'll grow out of it! That did make me cross. But actually, I am a lot better, most of the time.

CLUSTER B SQUAD (unless you're cluster A or C in which case... uh... this is awkward)

I've actually gotten worse as I got older. Mostly because more personality disorders developed/crawled out of the woodwork/worsened from being 'traits' to full blown and I show no signs of slowin' down the crazy train.

Your curtains comment made me think. I have some vague understanding of this because in the echoes of my mind I can remember being worried about the prospect of similar experiences. I wonder if it is linked to hypervigilance, as that seems to be when I get worried about it. I don't see faces but start to avoid looking at things like that.

Honestly I dunno. I've always put it down to hallucinations since, unlike shapes-in-clouds, other people are unable to see it when pointed out and again it's a thing that's been happening since I was very young (I don't remember a time when it didn't, honestly) so I just chuck it in the big box labelled "miscellaneous psychoses"

I wonder if you could request a copy of your medical records through official channels to see what is actually on there. (I warn you that it may be upsetting). Then maybe take them to a mental health charity charity or advocate and get them to help you review them and decide what you would like to do next (as they should know what is realistic).

No idea. I know that in later hosp. visits my file was... significantly thinner and all GPs I've had since then only have partial records so if the full undeleted backup version does still exist somewhere I have no idea how to access it. I know fine well what should be on there because a doctor left my file unattended once and I had a read through whilst they were out of the room (which is how I know I saw a psych when I was 5. I don't actually remember that and my family never brought it up until I was like HEY WHY DID YOU SEND ME TO A CHILD PSYCH IN 1995)

In particular, get someone to define what 'treatment resistant' means - JM, do you have any comments on that? Can treatment resistant people become treatment ready? - and establish whether you really are treatment resistant or whether it is a communication issue partly caused by the pd.

I'm not 100% sure what they personally mean by treatment resistant. I know I'm resistant to drug-therapy because I've had basically every drug going and none of them do diddly squat (I'm also resistant to, like, painkillers and stuff so it's just an overall "high tolerance for everything" thing). I got super bad insomnia during my A-levels and went through every sleeping pill going and none of them worked. My brain is just super not keen on responding to any sort of drug.

As for treatment-resistant therapy wise, well, I only managed to get access to any kind of talk therapy once and that was only CBT from a not-that-great practitioner of it so we got nowhere in the 6 weeks I was allocated (huge surprise)

But then MH professionals have also labelled me alexithymic (which, in a wonderful coincidence, is very close to being my actual name and is very apt) which I would say is true since I'm never able to really explain how I'm feeling or why. My whole life I've started crying to have people ask what's wrong and have to respond with "I don't know" and then they get mad about it like I'm hiding something. But I don't. I actually don't know. It's just a thing that happens sometimes.

I can label certain emotions like anger and frustration because I gradually learned to recognise them in other people so it's like "oh this looks like what I've seen angry people do so I must be angry" but I still couldn't really tell you for definite a) that's what's happening or b) the reasoning. But anything more nuanced I'm completely at a loss and I don't have emotional responses to external stimuli at all (as in, things happening to other people which should reasonably make a person feel an emotion)

So, y'know, not exactly a golden candidate for talk therapy either.

elona · 28 November 2015 at 9:31PM

Sometimes black humour is the only thing that keeps you going.

I spent over ten years trying to tell gp and other specialists that I felt exhausted and down because I was ill- not ill because I was depressed etc. Eventually I had another thyroid test and surprise -
I was underthyroid. The irony is that a month after I had the first thyroid tests the system of measurement changed. So just because of the timing I was not diagnosed and spent years thinking it was my fault somehow and just kept plodding on.

To be fair my GPs now are great and when I did have MH problems after losing DH, severe health problems of DD etc. I did get help with counselling and Citolopram. The poor guy didn't get a word in edgeways but it did help. I felt telling him what had happened was like a Greek Tragedy without the music!:o

Gentle hugs to all

Wellyboots6 · 28 November 2015 at 9:42PM

Just googled alexithymia as I had never heard of it, but it makes so much sense! I tried to tell my cpn that I struggled with identifying emotions and feelings but he just thought I was being awkward. Would be interesting to hear more about it.

Birdie, can you pm me please, it won't let me message you for some reason!

Someone give me a kick up the bum to go and make chutney please, I currently have wine

lexbubbles · 28 November 2015 at 9:46PM

Wellyboots6 wrote: »

Just googled alexithymia as I had never heard of it, but it makes so much sense! I tried to tell my cpn that I struggled with identifying emotions and feelings but he just thought I was being awkward. Would be interesting to hear more about it.

Right? It's really hard to do any sort of counselling or therapy if you're just like *shrug* the whole time and then you get labelled as 'difficult'

EDIT: there's an online "test" about it here: http://www.alexithymia.us/test-alex.html

Obviously not meant to replace input from trained professionals yada yada disclaimer blah

Someone give me a kick up the bum to go and make chutney please, I currently have wine

Go make chutney or I'll drink all your wine :rotfl:

System · 28 November 2015 at 9:54PM

codemonkey wrote: »

Meant to respond to MU earlier. My anxiety has also been bad recently and as a fellow public transport user, I understand the problem.

Panic attacks work this way: When you get anxious you start to breathe faster and shallower to prepare your body for flight. If flight never happens, your body starts to freak out about lack of oxygen in the cells. This means you breathe faster, which means less oxygen, more panic and the breathlessness/heart racing/sweating/fainting as your body tries to recover. I'm not explaining very well but that is the general idea. I am trying to practice breathinb techniques to cut this off as soon as I can - you can find these in the internet but the usual rule is breathe out for longer than you breathe in. It's difficult when you reach
a full scale panic though so its important to learn the early signs. I carry my tension in my shoulders and when they're up around my ears, I know it's time to take action.

Another thing I have done is shift my working hours so I don't have to be on the really busy trains - I've found if you can avoid rush hour, it makes it much more pleasant. Would work be open to changing your hours to accommodate this?

Other than that, maybe doing some exercise that encourages relaxation would be a good thing - like yoga or tai chi. I used to feel amazing after yoga classes (the 15 minutes of just lying and breathing afterwards is wonderful) and it really toned me up. Really need to find another class - I didn't like the teacher in the last one - she kept shoving blocks under me but I just take time to get into a stretch and what she was doing made me hurt my back. I think she is more used to advanced students.

Normally i can calm myself down, its just i;ve had 2 episodes recently where i completely lost control and they haven;t been that bad for several years. Work have already adjusted my hours so i'm on a later shift, but unfortunately i work in a shopping centre so the trams are busy most of the time 9especially now in the run up to christmas). I've tried alternating my route and breaking up the journey by getting a tram and a train, but i'm still getting pangs of anxiety everytime i'm on public transport (not great for getting to and from work, or the 2 buses i get to Swain's). Today i took one look at the huge crowd of people waiting for a tram and said "nope!" and waited for a train instead.

I should probably see my doctor anyway regarding the anxiety, i haven;t cooked a meal at home in over a year because of anxiety surrounding housemates (especially twatmate)

which sucks as i;d love to cook i just can;t get past the overwhelming anxiety that comes with sharing a house with 3 strangers.

System · 28 November 2015 at 9:57PM

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WaS!!!!!! :j:beer::T:D

whitewing · 28 November 2015 at 10:01PM

I got 133 on your test, lex.

You show high alexithymic traits.

I am surprised it is so high as I thought I'd got a lot better after therapy.

Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 2

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