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Old Mar 15, 2016, 05:46 PM
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Khione Khione is offline
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Member Since: Apr 2014
Location: UK
Posts: 125
Quote:
Originally Posted by Icare dixit View Post
Yes you understood correctly. I tried to be succinct in describing the probabilities I would assign to any of the possible combinations and each separately, given what you described. BPD is very likely, I think. Quite possibly BP as well. Just BPD with unipolar depression I find unlikely, but it could be. Impulsivity and the extent you lose control (could someone stop you, without getting physical: strong persuasion) might be decisive in determining which combination.

Your anxiety may be caused by psychotic symptoms. Would be interesting, because your efforts to relieve yourself of anxiety can quickly become far more fruitful/productive with the right treatment.

It's not the online tests that are the problem. That is valuable information. However, it is not enough to describe only symptoms using an N-point scale.

History, described using things like energy/sleep, activity and self-control, failure, missed chances and the causes of feelings of guilt, is pivotal.

Chances are, if you have had multiple periods of mania of different severity, you'll miss at least half or all of them.

Chronic problems are also relevant: bad memory, distractibility due to associations between thoughts/ideas with varying intensity, but always at least somewhat present.

Let someone else also describe some of these behaviours. Psychiatrists sometimes (wrongly) assume that if you have insight, even if only afterwards, you can't have been psychotic. Psychiatrists are crazy, without insight, ever: ask any non-psychiatric medical professional. It's just that they are between us and some of the pills that can be very useful and sometimes really necessary.

OCD could be, but many anxiety disorders kinda overlap: it doesn't always really matter much which you are diagnosed with.

Edit:
But to further answer your question: it could be just BDP with normal/subsyndromal obsessions that everyone might have, but the reason behind them may be BPD-specific.
My boyfriend would be willing to speak to the psychiatrist, my mum would also say something. Can bipolar or BPD show in childhood? My mum has always believed me to have mental health issues to my behaviour from a very young age. We've grown distant in the last few years so she doesn't know much now, but would the psychiatrist be interested in the early childhood/growing up history from my mum's point of view as well as my boyfriend's (and my own) descriptions of recent history? I'm guessing it'd be helpful.

My impulsivity, I am able to control the thoughts to an extent. But I believe that if I suddenly decided to act on them - I have no way of knowing right now, sat at my laptop, whether I'd be able to control them myself - I know for a fact that physical restraint would be the only thing that could stop me. I have a feeling that if I acted on an impulsive thought (a dangerous one), my emotions would be so unstable and my anger would come out massively if anyone tried to stop me doing said thing. So I fear I'd end up hurting someone as well as myself. I tend to avoid situations where impulsive thoughts come up - I don't make myself any home-cooked food that involves chopping or cutting things up.. I don't leave the house without someone with me because numerous times I've almost jumped into the middle of the road because I thought it'd be a good idea (I wanted to see if there was an afterlife???) I don't even know. It scares me. I don't even have a drivers license yet because of the impulsive thoughts I have.

As for the other things you listed, memory is horrendous. I don't sleep at all when I'm in my happy period, I can survive on less than 4 hours sleep and feel perfectly fine. Other times, like last year, I slept at 9pm woke at 6am, went back to sleep at 7am, woke again at 1pm and then slept again at 5pm until 7pm and so on. I was getting about 17 hours of sleep every day and still feeling horrifically tired when I was awake. Eating is on the same scale - eat nothing and think I can lose a stone in two days just from not eating because I want to buy a new dress for a party that doesn't exist, to eating everything whenever I'm awake.

It's stressful. I am currently in a more stable period, I'm verging on depressed and I feel like I'm going downhill again and I have a feeling this time is going to be pretty bad, hence why I'm posting this and trying to get as much help from professionals as possible.
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"That's the thing about anxiety - it limits your experiences so the only stories you have to tell are the 'I went mad' ones."
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