[teejai]

It i is now widely accepted that cognitive problems are the most problematic in schizophrenia spectrum illnesses though they garner far less attention from the media than the more florid delusions and hallucinations.
It is also being shown that cognitive difficulties can occur with some with mood disorders to a lesser degree.

What is the situation with PDS though.? Although i am dxed with PD NOS my symptoms are seen to fall mainly in the emotionally unstable/borderline area and i have cognitive difficulties that fall in the executive functioning/critical thinking/visuospatial areas.

Often when i admit to having such difficulties i get looked at in a dismissive and puzzled way as though to say 'But you are intelligent and articulate so you can't possibly have such difficulties' or it's dismissed as
'You're just anxious'.
Very few consider that having cognitive problems may in itself exacerbate an already present tendency to being anxiety prone and that once in an anxious state due to those cognitive problems the anxiety may well increase those problems.
I have anxiety and i have cognitive problems as far as i can see they interact and effect each other. It is not a one directional thing ie
Not thinking well-------------> Cause= anxiety.
Especially as cognitive difficulties preceded the anxiety/social phobia by several years( 9-10 versus 14-15 when they started to overtly manifest themselves(

[pachyderm]

I also have cognitive problems; they are part of the difficulty that causes me great trouble. In my case I see them as a kind of dissociation: that is, the associations or connections between my thoughts get cut. This is a way that I think I developed as a child in order not to recognize what I was thinking, because if I accidentally expressed what I was actually thinking as a child I stood a good chance of getting severely punished. So it is connected to anxiety also.

It is very hard for me to work and try to get my thoughts connected, and when I succeed in doing that to some extent, it always gets destroyed again, and I fall back into a kind of frightened mindlessness. I can give "conventional" responses to people, but never anything "genuine," and people think everything is OK with me and cannot hear when I say it is not. It is something that the mental health professionals that I know do not "get" (or want to get) -- even though Freud wrote about mental censorship of this kind many years ago. People for the most part seem to prefer the "conventional" over the real.

[Perna]

Other people can't get what we can't/don't express or exhibit. One of my therapists admitted he didn't think I had any problems until after seeing me for a year! My good/best/"real" T was still surprised when my odd little pockets of non-information showed up and showed areas I was really naive that a child would know. We finally figured out most of my "experience" in life came from reading and books are not "experience". One can read and respond to what one reads but that's still not the real experience. So I'm quite knowledgeable about things, but what's actually going on with me is a whole different story.

[pachyderm]

> Other people can't get what we can't/don't express or exhibit.

To me, this is just another example of blaming the patient. IT IS NOT TRUE that people cannot get anything from you when you are unable to express things well in words. SOME people CAN get a lot out of observing all your actions, whether they are expressed well in words or not. I have been able to do that myself in the past when just observing people, so I know it can be done.

My thinking is affected by how the people I am in contact with react to me. Sometimes their reactions calm and reassure me and my thinking improves. Sometimes just the opposite happens. When I am confused, my present therapist does not know how to deal with it. He says so, and shows it in other ways. That affects me -- it increases my panic and the impairment of my thinking. Not all people are necessarily like that. THEY ARE NOT.

I give up. No one can see what I am talking about.

[Perna]

Yes, I agree, calmness is very helpful, Pachy, that's why I did so well, my therapist was always calm and soothing to my churned upitness! But that's not to say she knew "what" the confused thinking was about or how to straighten out the thinking. Calmness only helps that incident, didn't, for me, help the thinking.

I was telling my T about my husband and how helpful he was/is because he'll make matter-of-fact comments like, "I don't hear any nouns" (when he has no idea what the subject is I'm talking about) and that helps me know I need to stop and think about what I'm saying, get it straight in my head first and then speak in whole thoughts/sentences. I get going too fast and too many thoughts ricocheting around like ping pong balls. His words ground me and I can stop and start over slower. My T asked could she borrow that comment of my husband's :-)

[teejai]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
pachyderm said:
>

My thinking is affected by how the people I am in contact with react to me. /quote]

Ditto pachyderm. When i get stressed out by the way people including mh professionals react to me ie invalidating/trivialising etc then there is often a descent into cognitive meltdown where it's hard to order my thoughts and i'm ranting and raving in a hysterically scatter gun fashion.

[pachyderm]

"When i get stressed out by the way people including mh professionals react to me ie invalidating/trivialising etc then there is often a descent into cognitive meltdown where it's hard to order my thoughts and i'm ranting and raving in a hysterically scatter gun fashion."

And then they invalidate you even more.

[teejai]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
pachyderm said:
"When i get stressed out by the way people including mh professionals react to me ie invalidating/trivialising etc then there is often a descent into cognitive meltdown where it's hard to order my thoughts and i'm ranting and raving in a hysterically scatter gun fashion."

And then they invalidate you even more.

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So true pachyderm .I'm sensing you have personal experience of what i said.

[pachyderm]

> I'm sensing you have personal experience of what i said.

Yes.

I think it is an example of what people do who are obliged to treat disorders that they do not understand. The temptation is to blame the sufferer rather than admit inability to cope with the disorder. The mental health profession is characterized today by not understanding the causes of the problems they face, as witnessed by all the different kinds of treatment and theories of what causes disorders such as schizophrenia. I mean, there is a big difference between seeing cause as a disturbance in the brain systems that enable one to love and obtain affection, because of problems in that area stemming from childhood experience, or seeing it as due to some virus carried by felines.

I think the state of mental health understanding today has some similarities to the state of understanding of physical disorders of 150 or more years ago. Bloodletting, anyone, for all manner of ailments?

[teejai]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
pachyderm said:

I think the state of mental health understanding today has some similarities to the state of understanding of physical disorders of 150 or more years ago. Bloodletting, anyone, for all manner of ailments?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Talking of old fashioned remedies

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/0...l_therapy.html

[Robert31]

In the last 4 or 5 yrs I have had cognitive deficeits that no one can explain. I have had 70+ ect treatments and no one knows what damage this may have caused. I have had to give up my license because of this. I have had neuropsycological testing done by several hospitals and they have shown cognitive dysfunction in several areas but no explanation as to why they are there or how they came to be.