I was a scared kid.

I have to admit it. I was a scared kid. I was smarter than I needed to be in my circumstances. In the 4th grade I was told I had an IQ of 146. When they told me this, they acted like they expected me to confess to having stolen it from a classmate. I would have gladly given it back. My mom was the master of the surprise attack. One of my earliest memories is of my mom dressing me for the cold and snow in my grandma's backyard. I was probably 4 years old. I was in a snowsuit with mittens and boots etc. She put me out on the porch. The first part of the yard was concrete which slowly angled down to a drain which was clogged. It made a pond of a foot and a half of water covered with ice.Naturally, I went straight to it and fell through the ice. I got myself out and went back to the kitchen door and knocked. My mom let me in and slowly removed all the wet clothing she had just taken 15 minutes to put on me, and when she was done she turned angry and picked me up by my arm and slapped my *** for all she was worth. It took me by complete surprise. She was probably angry thinking I could have drown and it would have been her fault. She did this to me gain one time my older brother and I were placed in the tub together. I immediately peed in the water and laughed about it. Up by the arm for a surprise *** spanking. I was probably 3 years old. Then one night we were sitting on the couch watching TV. I was in my pjs. The dog was on the couch and my pecker came out of my pjs. The dog started licking me. I said "look what the dog is doing!" That was a mistake. More *** whipping. The next morning, my grandma who lived upstairs demanded to know what all the excitement was about last night. What was I supposed to tell her? My dad had a different approach. He went out and bought a razer strop to beat us. (I had 3 bros). I hate to say this because he died of tobacco related illness, but he would wheeze out after 7 or so hits with that strop and I was thankful for that. My earliest thoughts of suicide were around age 7. My grandma told my mom she thought there was something wrong with me because I never let her buy me anything. I felt I was a burden on my family. My dad had 4 healthy handsome and intelligent sons, but he never wanted any. I think my early psychiatric stresses led to a powerful temporal lobe seizure at age 17. At age 56 I had an EEG which showed significant pathology in my temporal lobe. An epileptologist said I was disabled. Disabled at age 56 by an event which occurred when I was 17. What happened in between I could probably write a book about. When I began this thread, I was going to mention that I was claustrophobic as a kid. If you held me down and piled on, I would panic. I didn't like tunnels or heights. My worst nightmare was of drowning. I've worked on that stuff as an adult. I've actually crawled through tunnels 30 meters long no wider in circumference than a trash can, with someone in front of and behind me. It gives me the chills just to think about it, but I did it.

Thanks for sharing your journey with us

I wonder if claustrophobia and epilepsy ard related. I cant even watch movies about caves. Not where it gets tight.

I had undiagnosed epilepsy in the form of Jacksonian marches all my life until about age 50, when my psychiatrist put me on Topamax. I just called them "my shiver" but it was random and involuntary, however mild.

I wondered the same. I was premature by at least a month. That is a contributing factor for epilepsy. My mother had a couple of late term miscarriages after my birth. I think her and my dad were DNA incompatible. He couldn't give her the daughter she sought. lol He was scarred by growing up during the great depression. He had a level 8 crane man's job at the mill. He had to give that up for a level 3 job because he blacked out a couple of times, and couldn't pass a physical to keep it. That extra money meant a lot to him. He didn't drink much, but if he had a few at a wedding, he would end up pasty under the table. My mom would say "he knows he isn't supposed to do that." So, he had neurological issues the family didn't discuss. He's gone, but he now has a granddaughter who was born with STXBP1, and a grandson with juvenile epilepsy. And then there is me. lol My main seizure at 17 was anything but mild. I seized on intervals of 5 seconds for about 3 minutes. That's a lot of epileptic discharges. When the arcing and sparking was over, my temporal lobe was fried. My post ictal psychosis period was at least 5 months and it segued into an affective disorder of recurrent major depression. I was never the same, really. Not that I was much to begin with.

That last line was my dad's joke, six months after his stroke. He announced it at a family dinner. I about died laughing, but my mother and brother had their sticks so far up their butts...

Btw, i do not do well with alcohol, and neither did my maternal grandfather, whose huge square head i inherited.

My previous GP was like, why did you tell me you have epilepsy? I should report that you cant drive.