Messages

Bella:
That would be fine. No one ever PMed me on the OOTF boards, but please send away and I'll figure it out. 

Bella:

It is some kind of coping mechanism. I woke up tense and anxious this morning because of stuff my kids were doing. I contemplated trying to have some quiet and trying to collect myself that way, but I reached for my phone instead.

I still feel the same underneath, but it takes some of the edge off, if that makes sense. Maybe this is what people with drinking or drug problems do. I don’t know.

I lived with an alcoholic roommate once and tried on heavy drinking for a year or so. I rarely drink anything alcoholic now, that was a phase. People always talk about getting stressed and wanting a drink. Even then I didn’t get it. I never feel upset or stressed and start craving a drink.

I do crave escape, but escape is a moving target for me. It’s the thing I’ve been obsessed with lately—whatever that is. If I’m playing video games it’s the game. It’s all I want to do in any free time, but eventually it just wears out. I just don’t want it anymore. I want whatever the new thing is.

Some of these interests rotate in and out. I might want to play video games again in 6 months or a year. It’s frustrating because I have no control over what my focal obsession is, or when it’s time is up.

When I’m not doing whatever it is I’m thinking about it. If I’m posting on message boards a lot I’m composing a reply to a thread I just read in my head while I’m doing something else. If I’ve been reading I’m contemplating what I read and I might grab my phone to google some idea that occurs to me.

I don’t know. Please let me know if any of that sounds familiar. I never know precisely what causes anything. If there are commonalities it’d be good to know.

I’ve been on the OOTF message boards for about a month. I’ve posted several threads about various issues I have and started long conversations.

I posted about that experience expecting the same thing and got crickets.

As far as ADHD if you’ve been tested for it then I wouldn’t worry about it. My T and I have been working on whether or not I’ll get an actual diagnosis of CPTSD. My T is not familiar with it, so I’ve been educating both of us.

Anyway... he told me the differential diagnostics are especially difficult. I have depression and ADHD and symptoms of both overlap with CPTSD. So CPTSD can cause ADHD like symptoms.

Medication has changed and helped with a LOT for me, but it hasn’t made a dent in that. I’m the same way with food. I want lots of one kind of food or the same meal every day for a week and then I’m just done and on to something else. With food it rotates more, but I don’t have any greater control over it.

I cannot concentrate on reading anything else but stuff about CPTSD. I can read the same articles over and over again. I think it is classical avoidance behaviour. When I read I don't need to feel anything or think about anything stressful, even though I read about CPTSD. To me, it's also a form of intellectualization, which is a coping mechanism. As long as I can read factual information, l'm ok.

"It's like some unconscious self in me wants me to stay spaced out as much as possible." This also feels very familiar to me. In this spaced out state, it's very difficult to get anything done. In a sense it is comfortable, cause one don't have to face difficult feelings, the demands and expectations of family, and everyday life in general. But in the longer run it is debilitating, and very destructive.

I've definitely been obsessively reading about CPTSD. It is a distraction. It should perhaps be more upsetting or something, but I really resonate with your idea about intellectualizing as a defense.

It's hard for me to differentiate though. If I'm not reading about CPTSD I'm probably reading the news on my phone. I'm always doing something on my phone.

I also have to personally consider my ADHD. Part of that involves hyper-focus. I'm always turning the world around me in and out as I focus on anything. I can't multitask. It's not so much all or nothing, as all or everything.

Again, what you said about spacing out is relevant to me. But again, it's tuning out everything else and that's hyper-focus for me. Part of that state also involves not getting anything else done. That's a classic element of ADHD though. Without medication it's very difficult for me to get out of that state at all.

I have been thinking a lot about whether I dissociate. I'm beginning to think I might, but it could also be a lack of focus. Without medication I struggle to read because I (guess it would literally be defined as dissociation) get distracted and read half a page while thinking of something else and have to start over.

If it's a textbook and not interesting I find it impossible to get through a single page without doing that. If it's something fascinating I probably only do it once every 5 pages or so.

But with medication I barely do it at all. If I do do it I notice right away. I won't just wake up to discover I'm at the bottom of a page and didn't register anything. I can kind of watch myself doing it instead.

I have actually discovered an ability to turn it on and off since my medication. I was reading a book to my daughter aloud a few months ago when I realized that as long as she didn't interrupt (which she loves to do now) that I could read an entire book aloud without paying any attention to it.

Tonight I also did an experiment. I ate McDonald's which I used to love when I was a teenager. I don't like it very much now (my kids love it). I decided to focus on what it was like to eat the same food as a teenager and just stared off while I was eating. The food tasted much better, but once my kids talked or made too much noise I'd lose it and the food wouldn't taste very good again.

I just thought I could do that and I could. I figured if I can have bad experiences  materialize unbidden then I can bring good ones up at will.

I used to be the person that remembered everyone else that didn't remember me, but not as much anymore.

I can remember startling people with details from conversations we'd had years earlier. "I know that thing about you because you told me" Or maybe I was just adjacent to your conversation that was mostly with someone else.

I used to never, ever forget a face.

As I've aged I've lost a lot of this. I think a lot of it is probably natural aging. I'm not sure, but I'd at least like to think that.

I used to have an amazing memory, now I think it's just average. My father in his 70's has a memory like what mine used to be, but I think his is way above average.

I wonder if facial recognition is just a lack of practice. When I did know everyone and remember all of their names was in school days. You saw the same people every day and heard their names more.

I tend to stay away from people more as an adult and maybe that dulls your facial recognition skills, just like any other skill you don't use.

Now I still recognize people, but it can take me 20 minutes to figure out why I recognize them and where from.

I've always been terrible with names. Often you get a name while shaking hands and I hate shaking hands. It's always too full of adrenaline and I feel like I'm shaking too hard or too soft.

Meeting new people is just all around stressful so I think the shock of the meeting just drowns out the name.

Also, personally I don't remember things I hear as well as what I see. If I saw a name in writing I'd remember it. 

Hi,

I don't like introductions, but I want to be respectful of everyone here.

I'm in my early 40's. I've been in therapy for about a year now. It's something I avoided as an adult (along with a lot of other things) because it wasn't optional when I was a kid and it wasn't really about ME.

My T diagnosed me with ADHD about a month into therapy and I got on medication and it made a HUGE difference for me. I've had depression and been (mostly) successfully medicated for that for 20+ years. I have about one bad day a month where I'm clearly depressed. When that happens I recognize it and it's always better when I wake up the next day.

About 6 months ago I started to have episodes of a different kind of depression that lasted days on end. I kept talking about it and trying to explain it and eventually discussion meandered to my family.

I wrote 20 pages of memories and notes and thoughts about bad things that had happened from aged 0-20 and gave them to my T. The next session he said that it sounded like my mother had BPD.

I finally got brave and asked my emotionally repressed, but otherwise mentally healthy dad for answers to all the questions I'd been avoiding asking for 40 years. That filled in worse details than anything I remembered and gave me proof enough that yes, my mom has BPD.

I joined OOTF and have been posting there a lot. People kept mentioning C-PTSD in responses, so I started reading. I don't have a diagnosis yet, but I'm working with my T. I'm in the U.S. and it's not really recognized, so I'm having to educate both of us at the same time.

Everything I've read about it really fits with the issues I've always struggled with. The idea of emotional flashbacks alone explained a LOT. I'd been trying fruitlessly to get to the bottom of those as well. Since I've been digging into things I think I've had a couple of more traditional flashbacks as well.

I know minimization is a thing, but I am still worried reading other people's stories that mine isn't really that bad and I'm convincing myself of something. The NPD's sound so much scarier than the BPD's.

My parents divorced when I was 5. I'm an only child and BPDm got primary custody. My dad tried and tried to get more custody of me, but it was the 80's and the judge said "a child belongs with his mother." Never mind the fact that she'd been hospitalized the year before after she made a suicide attempt while she was alone with 4 year old me.

I was enmeshed and parentified from age 0 to 17 or so. My mom is a "waif" type BPD and she's been sick with something or other my whole life. When I was a kid whatever she got herself diagnosed with she'd get me diagnosed with next. It wasn't just different diagnoses, it was different types of medicine, eastern, western, whatever else.

She's always seeking the next big "cure" and I got pumped full of all kinds of crazy ideas and medications as a kid. She had me in therapy for years, but that consisted of her telling the therapist everything that she was dealing with in raising me.

From the time I was born she'd rage at me at random. That kept up until I was a teenager and learned to rage back. At this point I just glaze over while she complains at me. I yawn compulsively in her presence. I'm her golden child and she doesn't have anyone else left, so she knows better than to rage at me anymore.

When I left home I disavowed any and all childhood diagnoses and decided never to go to a therapist again. That was a mistake.

When I had my own kids a few years ago I started having issues I couldn't deal with and ended up in therapy. That childhood ADD diagnosis would have been worth holding onto, and I could have learned about her BPD and everything else 25 years ago, but I'm here now.

I have a wonderful wife and two very young kids. I'm a stay at home dad. Since all this I worry desperately about what I may have already done to my own kids. We live a fairly comfortable life, but I don't really have much of any friends anymore. We're also very burnt out because we have no other childcare—except my BPD mom when she's willing.

I'm kind of obsessed with all of my own mental health stuff right now and trying to remember and learn about the past. I want answers and I want to fix everything all at once right now.

I get fascinated with things and devote all of my spare time and mental energy to them. I think of that as a problem, if for no other reason than it's what I've watched BPDm do my entire life. I think some of that behavior is the ADHD, which I obviously also inherited from her.

I'm trying to become more accepting of myself, so I kind of don't know if that's a bad trait or not. It's so fundamental as a through-line of all of my behavior that I don't know that I could change it if I decided I should.

I'm at least aware of it as a pattern in my life. BPDm changes her focus and beliefs regularly and all previous contradictory beliefs just cease to exist.

I know I struggle with boundaries when it comes to other people's problems and the compulsion to help them. I've read the warnings and will try not to do that here. Please anyone warn me if I overstep any boundaries. You will not offend me.