[UpDownAround]

It bugs me that there is no statute of limitations on exhibited behavior for diagnosis. I was in a session with my t yesterday and she was asking me questions about childhood through teens. This is 40+ years ago. In my teens I indulged a lot of my impulses, engaged in a lot of risky behavior (much of it criminal in nature, but not violent) and did a *lot* of drugs. She is scribbling furiously. Same thing happened with pdoc when she asked similar "way back" questions.

In the recent past, I feel like I am barely if even type 2. I am not kidding myself into thinking I am magically cured (BTDT). When I have stopped meds, people noticed and not in a good way. I go into the tank, but I can always make myself grind stuff out even if I am not enjoying life. And even when I couldn't feel much worse about my life, I still have the instinct to protect it; no SH or SI with one exception when I was very young and in a lot of trouble. I took something that I thought would poison me. That I was wrong is beside the point. So okay, yes that happened. But I was an adolescent. So "have you ever" gets checked as if I was thinking about it last week.

On the mania end of the spectrum, I have not completely lost touch with reality except with drugs involved way back in the day. Admittedly, the drugs in question should not have had as profound an effect and the incidents stand out in my mind because it freaked my friends out when I was tripping and they had more moderate euphoria (the expected high). But still it was a very long time ago and there were drugs involved. But scribble, scribble, scribble "hmmm"...

Recent manic episodes have been much milder. I have delusions sometimes, the most common being that I can cure any illness in my body with my mind and if I can keep from dying from other than natural causes then I will be immortal. But I know that no one will believe me and it usually doesn't last very long. Sometimes I see auras even though I don't believe in them or don't believe that what is being detected is meaningful. Kinda odd, that one.

I do still get impulses that would shock a lot of people or at least they would say so. I wonder how widespread odd urges that are never indulged are. Anyway, I get urges having to do with destruction/vandalism, theft and sneaking around naked. I have not indulged any of them in decades, but I indulged all of them as a teen. Scribble, scribble, scribble...

I doubt I am alone in this. Maybe we don't get cured, but it seems like we should get some credit for getting somewhat better.

While I am ranting, stigma sucks. I can reveal all this here with some reasonable expectation of anonymity and I can tell t and pdoc. But I don't dare tell anyone else all of it; not even people very close to me.

[Shazerac]

I agree it's you 100%. I'm in my sixties now. I did a lot af crazy things in my teens and early twenties. Some of of it normal rebellion, some was drug related, many reasons. But that was decades ago.

Even many "Normal" people did crazy that things in their youth.

I've been sort of pushing back with Pdocs for years now. I ask them if something that happened 40 years ago is really that relevent. Also when my doc starts scribbling I flat out ask her what she's writing. I play dumb and ask" if you're writing that down it must seem important to you, please explain this to me so I can understand."

[Sunflower123]

I hear and understand you. It's very frustrating. My therapist keeps trying to talk to me about a traumatic incident that happened 30 years ago that I've already worked through. It has nothing to do with my illness today.

I just started with this therapist a few weeks ago and there was lots of scribbling so I understand.

[Wild Coyote]

Interesting. My pdoc is my therapist. While we have worked together for many years and he has a very thick file on me, he has never scribbled any notes within our sessions. This has been the case since the very beginning.
It was the same with the 2 pdocs/therapists I'd seen prior to him.

It would feel uncomfortable to me to have a therapist scribbling away within our sessions together.


WC

[UpDownAround]

Scribbling notes is actually one of the best ways to capture information:
This Is Why You Should Take Notes By Hand Instead Of With A Laptop

Your pdoc may have the rare gift of being able to capture the info accurately afterwards, but most people can't do that. I have not seen a doctor or pdoc that didn't capture information one way or another (usually electronic) while we were talking. I have had some therapists not take notes, but they were not trying to develop a plan to help me like my current one is. My pdoc does use a computer, so I was generalizing when I said the same thing happened with her. She also asked about the old stuff and captured it, but not by scribbling like the t does.

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. The best way to avoid repeating mistakes is to fully understand why we made the ones we made. It sounds like you've moved past and beyond what happened long ago. I'm very happy for you. I'm still learning about myself and examining my past sometimes helps me make more sense of my present. I don't want to have past events used against me in anyway, but for me they are relevant. My PDOC and therapists have not scribbled much while I've been in session fortunately. I would find it distracting and always need to ask what they are writing.

Have you let them know you don't feel your past is relevant? Have they helped you understand why you have these untypical urges? Have you ever visited a nudist colony? Perhaps that is where your tribe of like minded peeps resides? I'm glad you don't indulge in destructive urges and I hope you continue to do as well as you have these 40+ years.

[UpDownAround]

No on the nudist colony; doing it where allowed is not a part of the "untypical urge". And I don't think trying to satisfy any of these urges with a watered down version would be a good idea; it would be more like accepting than rejecting and I want to reject them. I want to not have the urges instead of resisting and resisting. And why are social taboos rules I have to remember instead of things that bother me? I don't expect an answer; it is just more of my untypical thinking. It bothers me that I upset people by violating them; I am not unfeeling by a long stretch.

[UpDownAround]

Something else interesting for old versus new. I took the 50 question test to determine AQ ("on the spectrum" rating from 1 - 50) twice. Once is how I am today with some learned behaviors for social situations and I got a 30 which is the high end of the "normal" range. I took it a second time answering like I would have in 1980, right before an older woman where I worked took it upon herself to educate me in many different ways including social graces. My 1980 self scored a 35.

EDIT - and in case you are wondering, the t had a field day with questions about the older woman. My teenage years had not been sex and drugs and rock 'n roll; just drugs and rock 'n roll. She fixed that, but also taught me how to be in a relationship. The years that followed would likely have been very different without that experience. So I do get why the t asked a lot about it.