|
Jul 28, 2015, 09:42 PM
|
 |
|
|
Member Since: Mar 2015
Location: US
Posts: 92
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by WibblyWobbly
1. I have never experienced anything like that due to bipolar. My crying spells are quiet when I'm depressed. When I'm manic and crying, generally someone is getting screamed at pretty violently. I did have similar experiences with PTSD because I was so skittish. I don't think that 1 (non-psychotic) breakdown can be enough to diagnose a lifelong disorder.
I'm reading between the lines that your friends/family/roommates thought the situation was abnormal, either that you needed help or were attention-seeking. If you would normally trust their judgment, that might indicate that your reaction to the "trigger" was unwarranted and you might want to focus on that with your therapist next session. If you're worried about time, just cut out a lot of the details and prepare a few key points. For me it's like a formula: x resulted in y and the whole thing made me feel z.
2. Google "coping skills" to get huge lists of ideas. You would probably benefit from mindfulness techniques like progressive muscle relaxation. Most of the rest are distraction-type skills, like walk your dog, write a poem, watch a movie, go for a run, etc. Personally, what coping skills I use depends on what type of episode I'm starting or having.
|
Possible trigger:
I think that there was reasonable warrant for some reaction given the circumstances. If I had been left alone to cry (it was actually a very controlled set of squeals. This was better than the alternative of crying out at the top of my lungs, because that is what my body wanted to do), I would have recovered in about 15 minutes. I guess I didn't explain the "crying" well. It was not normal in any sense. The sensation was uncontrollable. I could not get it to go away. If I tried to control it without letting out any sound, I think my body would have gone into shock or I would have to dig my nails into my arm to stun myself with pain, and even if I did that, I don't know if the sensation would go away without letting out a sound. The fastest way that I have found to get rid of the sensation when I get it is to breath deeply and then wail loudly multiple times until it goes away. I usually only do this when I know that I can without negative repercussions. Otherwise, I do the best I can to contain it. Sometimes that involves me banging my head on the wall repeatedly, or singing. This is not a normal thing.
The "trigger" was someone yelling at me to stop defending myself when the other person told me that they don't know how my significant other can stand being with me. I felt powerless, and like I had no worth in their eyes. Like I was not worth respecting, not worth being treated as a person, like I was expected to be a slave/servant to them, like they didn't care about how I felt or even view me as nothing more than a nuisance that they would rather see dead. These were family members, so... (My family has issues.)
I was hoping to find someone to relate to, or that has gone through the same thing. I don't care about a diagnosis. I just want to overcome this.
It happened a few times before, as to why I was able to give a time estimate for recovery. It did happen pretty bad once before, though, I didn't hyper-ventilate. It was with a friend/roommate. We are still friends btw. The person was kind of arguing with me about a dish that I burnt something in, and was soaking for a while because I couldn't scrub it off. At one point, my friend was lecturing me about something to do with the dish, and as he continued, I felt more and more like I was going to burst. I remember trying to hold it in for as long as I could. I was trying my hardest to remain silent and calm, but after a while, I couldn't anymore, and I remember screaming "Stop," "Stop," at the top of my lungs, while holding the dish in question (I was in the middle of scrubbing it), I had the urge to throw the dish out of my hands and remember my arms going up and down with the dish a couple times, and then, I darted into my bedroom and slammed the door shut after I threw the dish on a soft couch so that it didn't break. I continued to wail for a long time. My bf was there at the time and tried to help, but anything that he said or did made it worse. He couldn't even cuddle me. I screamed at him to just leave me alone a couple of times during the episode, too, and started banging my head on a pillar because it helped me feel better. I ended up moving out of the apartment I was sharing with the friends and in with my bf to prevent us from getting evicted (the neighbors complained about the noise, though not until a week after, probably because they overheard my bf making fun of their car when he didn't know it was theirs). The episodes stopped for a while after I moved in with my bf. Now he is gone, and they are happening again. (We are still together, just long distance). I think that I probably had fewer problems when we were together in person because he made me feel safe. I felt threatened by the neighbors and awful living conditions of the apartment in the first bad episode, and in the second, I felt threatened by my family member that was yelling at me, and it didn't help that there were no rooms with a door I could lock to hide in. I haven't even thought about that dish episode for a long time. I was probably blocking the memory due to the embarrassment.
I can't google "coping skills" if I don't know what it is that I am coping with.  I really just want to know what it is that is happening to me.
|