Thread Topic: I don't know what's real anymore.
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solidface
Joined: Nov 10, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-19 09:13:44 |
| I feel like my mind is unravelling. I've felt this way before but this feels different, like I could really go off the deep end. I've been getting more and more irritable and, as a result, isolating myself more and more. I practically barricade myself in my bedroom at night. One night last week, I actually pushed the dresser in front of the door. The thoughts I used to have that scared me now just make me laugh hysterically. No one I know believes that this is happening, maybe because I know I can't really tell anyone the full extent of what's happening but my family and the one 'close' friend I have just see depression and social anxiety. I've tried going to therapy but I always find myself antagonizing the therapists, lying to them or talking in circles because they all seem like idiots. I end up breaking up with them after a month or two the same way I break up with friends and lovers. I don't know what to do. I keep feeling the urge to go out by myself at night on foot but I don't let myself because I don't know what kind of trouble I might get into. There are times when I feel like I could take on a pack of hungry coyotes but other times I can't walk into the supermarket without tearing up. I've been unemployed for over two years, living with my family and pretty much being a ghost. I've had a couple job interviews, for low skill stuff like bagging and counter help but I always seem to say something wrong or give off an awkward or threatening vibe when I'm trying so hard to be normal. Things haven't been right since I was in fourth grade. I was awkward and shy and had an abnormally developed vocabulary and then, on top of that, went through puberty before the majority of the other kids. I started acting out because I felt alienated but I was acting out against the teacher because I felt less intimidated by adults than by people my own age. The teacher recommended that I be screened for conduct disorder but somehow, my parents managed to stop it before I could be diagnosed. Whenever it's come up with my mom since, she's been really defensive and said they did that for my own good and that she's sure the teacher was wrong but I've always wondered if she and my dad secretly fear for their safety. After that, the teacher had my handwriting analyzed because she said it was inconsistent, which it was. I had a different script for every answer on every worksheet but the psychologist ruled I was just overly creative. I've been insubordinate in some way with almost every authority figure I've come in contact with since but for some reason, I've never been fired or arrested. I've been pulled over for excessive speeding on at least half a dozen occasions and never gotten more than a written warning. I don't know if any of this means anything but does anyone relate to what I'm saying? | |
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Unanswered Thread: What do i DO? posted by Visirium 1 min. ago |
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voldo
Joined: Nov 15, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-19 10:15:52 |
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what does the inconsistant handwriting mean? have you ever heard of metaphysical nihilism? I'd suggest you look it up. what I've concluded is that just like the complex characters I can create in my mind, I and the entire existance of matter is the imagination of an imaginary creature that doesn't exist but can imagine. remember, imagination doesn't actually exist. I'm being serious here. don't think I'm just being funny. |
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banana
Joined: Nov 19, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-19 19:44:20 |
| Wait -that could be me. I know it could. Just right now though my life seems normal except for the fact that no one can look me in the eye and think I am completely normal...really though, if no one thought I was abnormal, I wouldn't have any trouble living life with a placid smile thinking oh how wonderful it is to be alive. But no, life is all a shambles and why? well I used to blame other people for judging me. Then I realized I could change, but then I was stretching that thought because reality hits you that there's no way you can do a 360 and still be yourself. I think you might be feeling more willing to act on impulse -to do the unusual or the usual at unusual times- which I try to suppress. But what is there to suppress really when the person you are is unsuppressable. I wish people weren't so nice sometimes, but then if they weren't I think I wouldn't want to even be near people. No, people are nice, but actually they're just ignorant of who I am until they find out...they give the benefit of the doubt. Honestly, I don't know if two crazies can help each other, but you know I don't have much of anyone left to talk to...all the people I thought were too 'nice' to look at my bad side are all now like cold strangers. I can't even stand being near them because of the way they act now, but maybe its me. Sometimes I feel that I might be causing people in my life to think like me and act like me and that drives me even crazier because I see them as wonderful but I just can't connect with them on any level and I think well maybe I'll leave them alone. I ignore them so they can be free to live their own lives, but only, they can't or don't completely ignore me. They watch me silently but they don't say anything. I live life like its a scripted role: the quiet reserved person who isn't too bothered with people or with things that happen. Someone who just goes with the flow. The problem is I'm not that easy-going, but that is my ideal (well sort of in the scheme of things). I know I should deal with life better than this, and now I've found that being passive is now my default. But inside I still feel all caught up with conflicting feelings of what I am doing, what I could do, and if I'm going to do it. The default is set at no, zero, never, forget it...the thing is I don't want to have to try to get people to like me, it's like we could might as well be from different planets, and that's how I prefer it. I actually prefer not relying on my surroundings to affect how I feel but they do and I try to come up with a way to think about myself so that I don't end up being all depressed...now I'm just a little bit, but like they say, you only need a little yeast to work its way through the dough. But I just want to accept the fact that my life is limited by who I am, but I can accept myself, the only problem is how I can handle the way people act toward me. Sometimes I just want to hide, be alone...read and reflect on books and sing songs...Maybe the real me really needs to feel loved and whatever, but as it is, I am fine with living having done something useful with my life, not depending on people...but even that is not a possibility without its consequences..who knows, I might feel differently over time. No one ever tells you how to live (well except the pastors and parents, teachers) and even then, you call the shots. I could do a lot of stupid things in my life, but somehow I'm hoping that I can live a happy solitary life without feeling bad about people. You have to give love in order to receive right? Well for every axiom out there, I probably have a manipulated version of it that fits how I think. I really twist things a lot, but I also know that I can't change this kind of natural reaction I have in social situations. I was this way since I was little too but you know, I just haven't grown up to be a happy confident person. I think I am weak but not because I am helpless but that even when I get really self-analyzing, I can't make it all better. I can only try to understand myself and find a way to understand others in a way that I don't hurt them but by ignoring them I do, so basically I just want to not care. But why do we, as humans, care so much? We know something's not right with ourselves, and this can be ascertained by the fact that we are depressed...but that something is so vague while life is so bleak that we just want to numb it all. I'd have to say that I do try to numb it all but in that way, I feel pain too, because of the lack of other emotions I am able to genuinely feel. I wish I could help but then I'm needy too even when I know its selfish to put myself before others...in the mean time, all my relationships are crumbling from the shaky foundation they stood on. What are relationships even founded on? Accepting one another as they are...but what if no one does...for who I am? and could I stand that person if they started to remind me of myself. In a way, I am self-loathing, and I really wish I didn't have to fn' go to school just because its a fn' waste of my time because teachers bore me and kids ignore me because I don't even put them in the spectrum of my reality so the conclusion is: I give every good reason to hate me and am here trying to find someone who can help me realize that I wasn't born this way. I know this life you live for the best, but I just can't get beyond my personality to do what would make me liked etc. I really can't anymore. But like I said, I can't stand people because of how they make me feel about myself. | |
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solidface
Joined: Nov 10, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-20 00:00:56 |
| I relate to a lot of what you say, banana. It's not that I don't like people. People are good but I don't the way other people make me feel about myself and I find it frustrating that I can't communicate about it with people. When I try, even if I really believe people are listening, I still don't think they're hearing me and vice versa because there's this disconnect. You can use any kind of language you want to talk about a mental or emotional state but if the person you're talking to has no reference point to draw on, it's essentially pointless. It seems as if people tend to read my anxiety and depression as stemming from isolation but as far as I can feel, it all stems from other peoples' expectations and the conflict I experience over not caring if I meet those expectations. That's the thing that most mystifies me. On the one hand, I don't feel the desire or really have the ability to cultivate close relationships but on the other hand, it bothers me that I'm constantly disappointing people that care or want to. When it comes to making friends or having relationships, it's like driving down a road with the other person in the passenger seat and the road just suddenly ends and I'm over a cliff. The car drops with whomever in it and I just float on as if I were still on the road until I'm suddenly back in the same car on the same road with a different person, maybe or maybe not anticipating the same result. When I say I feel like a ghost, I really mean it. I used to get depressed but I don't even any more. I just feel numb, irritated or amused. Thankfully, my funny bone does not seem to be broken but I do think you're right about impulse control. I think my impulses have started to outgrow my capacity for restraint. I used to have self control about what I ate, (which helped keep my head in check more than most prescription happy doctors would ever want to hear about) but I realized when I was food shopping tonight that I don't care half so much as I used to, about anything really but when I have a moment where I do suddenly care, I'm practically paralyzed because I feel clueless and it overwhelms me. Most of the time I think I couldn't have been born this way that it's just the result of bad situations that took me off course in life but when I look back and keeping looking back, I really have been this way as long as I can remember. I think most of the bad situations came my way because of how I am, which just kept complicating it further and bringing it to light more and more but I don't even know what difference it makes, if any. | |
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solidface
Joined: Nov 10, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-20 00:01:42 |
| Voldo, I've never been sure of what the handwriting analysis was for. I think the teacher was still trying to build a case for conduct disorder but I think they were also checking to making sure I wasn't dissociative. | |
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banana
Joined: Nov 19, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-20 12:51:00 |
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This is getting to be kind of weird...a place to say all the things I want but I don't feel better. You know what makes a lot of good books good? Its that there's a message about life as characters live it. So what makes life good? Its how the individuals live it. I wonder if its just a waste of time to bawl about how lacking I am in everything and just continue to live in a private world where no one can possibly understand. That part about how people don't have something to 'reference' your feelings to their own experiences is very interesting...like the reason we don't connect is because we live in two different realities. Was life meant to be something where the weak bawl about their suffering and their bondage to their own life. I'd like to think that what connects me with people is the fact that we're both human, but that's not enough to connect. Maybe that book The Lord of the Flies is really accurate in painting a portrait of what would happen if society were stranded on an island...that we'd divide and argue and eventually end up killing in cold blood... eww a gruesome picture that is. I think we should also think about what influences we have in our lives. The mainstream culture is literally hardwiring us to grow up trying to measure up and those who have less have more insecurities. School, grades, sports what have you... I rejected that desire to acknowledge the word popular and to start learning social skills, until much later....but its like kind of screwy in that I end up with too many insecurities to even try to have stable relationships. Then also, the rules of socializing are so complex it seems like a maze of twists and turns. But the biggest question is: do you like yourself as you are...do you ever consider the feelings of others before you do something? Is it that we don't love our selves enough, or that we love ourselves too much to consider other people's feelings? |
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solidface
Joined: Nov 10, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-20 19:05:03 |
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I try to consider other peoples' feelings before I act. I frequently won't act on impulse out of consideration for others but if something is really important to me, I might let that override consideration for others. I think that's how most 'normal' people operate and these days, our culture certainly isn't advocating selflessness over self indulgence, which I'm not saying is just but it does seem as if morality is shifting towards a more solitary, artificially connected existence for everyone, which on one level, suits me but on another level, raises concern. I do think I love myself in a healthy way as much or possibly more of the time than the average person. I tend to view myself as being seperate from society in certain ways, not at all better but different in certain ways. Not being tuned into the mainstream has it's advantages, autonomy being one. I don't think that being antisocial or asocial necessarily makes us any weaker than people who need to be social. It's arguable that rejecting society requires or at least indicates an individual strength or perhaps a skills set that socially dependent people don't characteristically possess. Being seen as weak or pathetic by society may be due to society's short sightedness, the same way I may hypothetically view socially engaged people as being the intellectual equivalent of sheep, which could just as easily be a short sighted view on my part. I don't like being chastized for not meeting social expectation, particuarly for not wanting to occupy my time with activities that seem silly and/or pointless for the sake of interacting with other people. I don't care much for that kind of social life but I do try to be considerate in how I explain this to people who value that because it's easy enough to hurt someone's feelings without meaning to. Going back to that disconnect, I don't know if it's so much about living in a different reality as perhaps a fundamental ideological difference. As my emotional responses tend not to follow the usual patterns, it's not easy to gauge how someone might respond based on how I might respond and quite often, things don't come out of my mouth at the tone, intensity and volume intended. (Does anyone have this problem? It has caused me some real trouble.) It definitely works both ways but if there's anything I've learned many times over and know from both sides, no one likes to hear that what they like or believe is stupid. I don't want people to treat my lifestyle choices insenstively any more than other people want to hear me put down their enjoyment of social clubs, dating or competitive sports but it seems there are times when people take my disinterest as personal rejection, so perhaps it's a no win situation. The one thing that I can think of that separates a good book from real life is that most good books find resolution and as you say, banana, offer a message. While I do think that part of living a good life is that we offer a message to the world through how we live, I don't think most people find resolution in life. All I want for my own life is to learn how to coexist with society without compromising my autonomy. I do not want to cultivate superfluous friendships or pay lip service to the sensibilities of people I don't care about. It doesn't matter to me what people make of that. People can call me an anarchist or a polite sociopath (both things people have actually called me) or whatever they want but I am who I am and I've already spent too much of my life apologizing for it. I don't want to cower in the corner and whine about being a victim any more than I want to be locked into a dead end job, a passionless marriage or financially indebted to a miopic, institutionalized education. I don't think I am a victim but I am frustrated by certain aspects of life and it's difficult to find people to talk to about it. It really does make me feel better, and quite honestly, stronger to know that I'm not the only person who is going through these things because feeling alone in this is what makes people feel like victims and give into some of the awful thoughts our minds can conjure. |
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haart
Joined: Oct 17, '09
Status: New User |
2009-11-22 20:42:53 |
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I can entirely relate to what you've written. You sound articulate and clever, but trapped, which is the way I feel. I've been tested and analysed since I was eight. Everyone seems all to eager to slap a diagnonsence on me and usher me back into the herd, forcing me to conform, to fake normality. I can't do that. I have a genius IQ. I spent my childhood tearing the jaws off live rabbits and mutilating dead birds I found. I lie compulsivly, to the extent that I feel like I'm living in a set, with a script in hand and an audience clinging to my every word. I manipulate psychologists and "participate" in their ridiculous pseudoscience therapies. And then turn around and stun them all, totally "uncured". I also conceal myself away in my room, cutting just to feel something. My psychiatrist assures me that I would never kill anyone, despite my homicidal thoughts. Sometimes that gives me even more imperative to shock the world. Ultimately, its not so bad to be a pariah. I'd rather be in exile than trapped in my own termination, slowly expiring with the rest of the herd. I've spent long enough torturing myself, I'm (almost) ready to embrace my insanity, my completely disturbing atypicality. It gives us a third eye, the ability to observe humanity from the outside. We're not trapped in the demise of a species, we're at the fringe. We are, in a twisted and sometimes uncomfortable way, special. |
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solidface
Joined: Nov 10, '09
Status: Junior User |
2009-11-25 21:54:12 |
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I'm getting more and more comfortable with how I am. I've always felt, especially as an adult that I'm living on the fringe of society, of humanity and my life choices have always reflected that. I was told, or my parents were told that I tested at genius levels in some areas when I was 10 but at 16 or 17, I tested just above average. I don't know if the tests are bogus or if I just stopped caring. I've definitely learned more of my own accord in the years since than public school ever wanted to teach me. I was actually popular in high school to a certain extent. I had been a pariah up til then, maybe because I really was smarter than some kids in some ways (I'm trying to be diplomatic) but in high school, I was on the war path. I got sick of being pushed around by ignorant people just because I was different, so I did exactly what they wanted me to do on one level, was to play the role of what they thought I was, a queer boy who wanted to be a woman but instead of doing that quietly, (as I had always been shy and quiet,) I took on two roles those particular guys hated and feared most, an unapologetic queer and a feminist. I wore the most bizarre clothing I could dig up from local thrift shops, not caring whether it fit or if it was mens' or womens', changed my hair color every month (it's called dazzle camouflage, look it up) and never once got beaten up. Still, it astounds me because I was so aggro but I think I just scared and confused them so much they didn't know what to do. It was the perfect defense/revenge because that's exactly what they had been doing to me since first grade. I don't think I stopped to realize that I'm not transgendered for another two years. I had been branded a sissy so early on, I never had been allowed to form an identity as a boy but by the time I was 20, I was able to stop and breathe and get a better sense of who I actually am. Without the framework of constant support from one side and constant abuse from the other side, I felt kind of weightless or maybe just groundless. I started having episodes of instensely aggressive behavior, more verbal than physical, maybe because the abuse I'd been dealt had always been more verbal than physical. I got into unstable relationships with really unhealthy people, started using drugs and eventually shut myself off from friends. I moved to a city thousands of miles from where I grew up to try to start over but immediately found I couldn't function well enough to get a job, let alone keep one, so I started hustling to pay my expenses and living in hotels. Eventually, I got into a trade school but it was an intense program with a lot of rules and expectations and I couldn't hold it together. After a few breakdowns, I quit school and was almost on the street. I got into the adult industry, first as a stage performer and then in films. I quickly learned the adult industry is full of people with substance abuse problems, personality disorders and personal histories very similar to mine, so I fit in well sometimes but was never really accepted because the other strippers thought I used too many big words. The theater where I performed was the only home I had at that time but eventually, I was just worn down and my family persuaded me to come back. In the month or so before I returned home, my aggressive behavior began to escalate again. I was getting into fights, which I had never done before, ruining what few real friendships I had managed to cultivate and compulsively seeking out anonymous sex. After I returned home and was instantly cut off from all this overstimulation, I went through a long period of withdrawal. It was ugly. I said, yelled, screamed horrible things at my family. I behaved inappropriately at holidays and friends' parties. I hit a deer with my car on purpose, though I didn't realize until afterwards that I did it on purpose. It was as if the person everyone remembered and wanted me to be had never existed in my mind. It's taken years of being constantly reminded for me to assemble some sort of facsimile facade to appease people but I'm so over it. I don't care if my family, friends or anyone else knows what's wrong with me. I want them to be scared. I want them to know about the things I've done and am still doing. I've hidden it all so well but it hasn't done me or them any good. I keep disappointing them and they think I'm just lazy. Maybe if they're really scared of me they'll stop loving me long enough to let me get some real help. |
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haart
Joined: Oct 17, '09
Status: Junior User |
2009-11-25 22:12:50 |
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well I hope help is possible for you. I'm at the uneasy stage of just accepting this as who I am. I don't give a f--- what the disorder is called by white-coated, sanctimoneous s---s, I call it haart syndrome :) I'm remain of the unproven and unfounded and possibly ridiculous belief that it all works out in the end. |
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solidface
Joined: Nov 10, '09
Status: Junior User |
2009-11-25 23:21:12 |
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Reading back what I just wrote, it's questionable what, if anything, could really help me at this point but I haven't killed any people, including myself, so I guess that's one small victory over impulse. I don't think it really matters what doctors want to call whatever this is. So much of diagnosis is politics, especially with ASPD. It's just another way that society has of sorting people as if we were socks and no matter how good the manufacturing process is, no two socks are exactly alike. I just hope for you, haart, that you can do better for yourself than I have. As difficult as it is, coming to terms with this at a young age is so much better in the long run. Having ambition and holding to it while developing social skills is also imperative. Business is a good direction to go in. I know if I was in better shape mentally and able to let go of the last shreds of my conscience, I could make a figurative killing in business. I'm sure you could, too, if you wanted. Whatever you do, set the bar high because you're capable. Once you know what it is, don't lose sight of it. The more money you make, the more freedom and choices you have and the less it matters how you are or how others perceive you. At the same time, if you're working constantly, it gives your life structure and justifies the lack of personal relationships. If there's one thing that's my downfall over and over, it's having too little money and too much time. Be all that you can be. Be the exact opposite of me. |
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Unanswered Thread: My results posted by lucky13 13 hours ago |
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