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SnappingRope
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Default May 09, 2020 at 01:53 PM
  #1
Hi all. New to the site. Sorry to dive right in and ask for help, but I'm pretty low and could use some advice.

I've been seeing my psychiatrist for years, and I like him, but I'm lately doubting his diagnosis. He's convinced of childhood PTSD, but there's nothing I remember from childhood that qualifies as traumatic. I understand how trauma can make it impossible to remember things, especially childhood trauma, but it's impossibly hard to believe I have PTSD when there's no trauma I can point to.


Had so many 'diagnoses' throughout the years I don't know what to believe. I'm afraid I have schizophrenia to be honest. I've had so many odd experiences it would be impossible to list even a fraction, but here are some off the top of my head. If you have PTSD and you've had similar experiences, please let me know:

- Hallucinations - visual, aural, tactile, and olfactory

- I can't shake the idea that the government is out to get me. It doesn't matter how illogical it seems, a big part of me just believes it. These thoughts are constant. I sometimes start to think 'they' (I don't know who they are so I'm just forced to call them 'they') have turned my friends and especially my psychiatrist against me. Just the other day I accused a friend of working for the government.

- I have the feeling like my mind works different to other people, and that I have something important to share with the world.

- I avoid socializing to the extent that I've talked to three people face to face in over six months, and one was my psychiatrist. I live alone and hardly leave the house except to get groceries. Don't really feel a need to socialize except on rare occasions when I get lonely. Spent 18months straight without talking to another human face to face once, and have been extremely isolated for over a decade.

- When I lay down to try to sleep my heart starts racing fast and there's no way I can get to sleep without sedating medication. I don't have nightmares or anything, so this seems odd.

- I hesitate to say this, but I feel like I can read people's minds, and like they can read mine. It's not just a delusion - if we talked for just a little while I'd know what you're thinking, and I'd be able to feel you inside my head.

- I feel like the most terrifying and indescribable insanity is stalking me, and I need to keep moving forwards always. I can't linger. If I'm walking and I realize I've reached a dead end I look everywhere for a way to proceed without having to turn back.

- I've never had a routine. I hardly shower or shave and haven't combed my hair in years. I don't care what I look like.

Possible trigger:


- Depression is pretty common.

- Emotionally blunted, or emotionally extreme. I often feel nothing, like I'm totally disconnected from all reality. Other times I can have a panic attack about nothing - once I was walking along and thought 'I haven't brushed my teeth' and had panic surge even though I almost never brush my teeth.

- There's a deep pain inside me so huge it feels like it would kill me to face it.

- I sometimes realize I don't know where I am or how I got there.

- People say I don't have linear thought patterns, but they make perfect sense to me. When I write things I have to constantly edit so I make sense.

- I don't have any sense of self, and life is meaningless.

- No motivation, and no desires. There's literally nothing I want out of life except to know what's wrong with me. I've nearly given up on that front.

- I feel as if there are no boundaries between the rest of the world and me: you and me and the mountains and trees are all the same thing.

- I don't know anything concrete about myself, and all I can do is make endless hypotheses about what is wrong. I generate them all the time, and momentarily think they explain 'everything'. Then I half-discard that one and make a new one.

- I'm not bipolar, but sometimes I don't need sleep. Just this week I went 36hrs awake, 12 asleep, 40 awake, 5 asleep, 39 awake, 5 asleep, 29 awake... All I get is a headache in the front and have to take something to help me sleep or it gets too painful to go on. I'm tired all the time, but there's just a part that won't even consider sleep. If people ask me what I do with my time I honestly don't know the answer.

- Dissociation in different forms.

- Inability to maintain a goal. If I can't finish it in a sitting I won't ever come back to it.

- Lack of enjoyment - nothing I do is fulfilling.

- Lack of trust - I don't let anyone in.

- Have never had any desire for a relationship.

- It takes a lot of effort to communicate, and I'm not very good at it.

- Planning and decision-making are so hard they make me want to cry.

- Inability to handle stress.

- Sensitive to noise/light. Feel like the noise of a busy road is suffocating me, for instance.

- People say they can't read me. My facial expression is pretty flat.

- I cry about nothing, literally nothing I can identify. I sometimes laugh about things that aren't funny also, or about nothing at all.

- talk to myself all the time, and to some...thing. Don't know how to explain it. It's like a voice, but not. It communicates the words instantly and I understand what it says as if it spoke to me, but it didn't. All I can think is that it's some part of me split off from the rest so that it seems unfamiliar to me, or something. We grate on each other's nerves a lot and sometimes I just want to yell for it to shut up.

- I lose the meanings of words sometimes. Really common words even.

- When i recall an event there is no 'me' recalling the thing, but I am reliving it as a present-tense experience.

- Sometimes images materialize in my head that become so real they yank me suddenly from this reality into that one at a terrifying speed. There's nothing scary about the images, just scary because they become more real than reality and I can feel a split from reality emerging.

- I generally lack imagination. Not creativity or problem solving, but pure fantasy-like imagination.

- I've lost my sense of humour, and don't laugh/smile when people expect me to.

- I seem to get detached from the emotions of memories - I can talk about awful past experiences without the slightest emotion. I know the things happened, and that it was painful or hard at an intellectual level, but it may as well have happened to someone else. At other times though I can't even begin to think about the same things without overwhelm. There's no in-between.

- I don't have split personalities, but I keep having these experiences where 'I' become someone else. I remember being really energized and excited, thinking "I'm finally free! I've got to make the most of this." and I frantically looked around for something to do before I got, I don't know, locked back away? When it happens the 'me' that emerges feels way more real than this me. A really present sort of feeling as if the world is concrete rather than half abstract like it usually is.

- I feel like my consciousness is up above my head, and when I remember things it's not from inside my head but from a third person vantage. I have to put in effort to bring my consciousness down into my body, and then I feel tiny, like a child or something (I'm six foot one in reality).

There are hundreds of other things, but that's all I can think of right now (have a headache from so much typing). Does this sound like PTSD to any of you that have it? Or any health professionals on here?

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long post.

Last edited by bluekoi; May 10, 2020 at 11:58 AM.. Reason: Add trigger icon. Apply trigger code. Remove method of attempted suicide.
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Smile May 10, 2020 at 02:05 PM
  #2
Hello SnappingRope: Thank you for sharing your concern here on PC. I see this is your first post here on PC. Welcome to Psych Central.

We here on PC cannot offer mental health diagnoses. Plus I'm not a mental health professional. (Most of us, here on PC, are not.) So I can't offer anything in the way of suggestions regarding what your correct diagnosis might be. (Perhaps other PC members may have had some similar experiences they can share.)

You mentioned PTSD as well as schizophrenia. So here are links to 2 articles by our host Dr. John Grohol, Psy.D., from Psych Central's archives, on these subjects:

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Psych Central

Schizophrenia Guide: Symptoms, Treatment & More | Psych Central

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

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Default Jun 09, 2020 at 03:27 AM
  #3
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skeezyks View Post
Hello SnappingRope: Thank you for sharing your concern here on PC. I see this is your first post here on PC. Welcome to Psych Central.

We here on PC cannot offer mental health diagnoses. Plus I'm not a mental health professional. (Most of us, here on PC, are not.) So I can't offer anything in the way of suggestions regarding what your correct diagnosis might be. (Perhaps other PC members may have had some similar experiences they can share.)

You mentioned PTSD as well as schizophrenia. So here are links to 2 articles by our host Dr. John Grohol, Psy.D., from Psych Central's archives, on these subjects:

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Psych Central

Schizophrenia Guide: Symptoms, Treatment & More | Psych Central

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.
Good post, I agree with the above. I am also not a mental health professional and so cannot offer a mental health diagnosis.

Thank you for sharing your concern here on pc. There are different forums where you can post and most people on pc are very supportive and understanding.


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Default Jun 10, 2020 at 12:50 AM
  #4
Is there anyone at all that you trust? I have felt similar things to you, namely, that people are out to get me and can read my mind and that I can sometimes read their minds, but all that led to was a ton of isolation and loneliness, to tell you the truth. It might help to tell someone you trust about all these things you've been experiencing. At least they'd be there to listen and perhaps it would lessen the burden of all that stuff on you...
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