[elizabethmarie~]

I've been feeling kind of odd lately. I've been having some mental issues and I want to figure out what's going on.
So I'm going to explain all my symptoms/ possible things related to it.
I have already been diagnosed with depression.
I have been struggling with migraines for quite some time now, about four years. It's actually the same amount of time I've struggled with depression.
I am only a teenager.
I use to take Wellbutrin daily, but I stopped out of choice. I just didn't want to be on medication.
When I was younger I'd have moments where I forgot who my family was and who I was. It was like I was looking in on my life from somebody else's perspective.
This stopped occutring and only reoccurred recently, a few months ago before I began exhibiting these strange new symptoms. It was for only half a second and I couldn't recognize my boyfriend.
I've been getting into a lot of fights with my boyfriend and that's where the symptoms really start to show.
I go insane. I yell loudly, scratch myself till I bleed, and then I proceed to tell him I hate him and horrible things.
I can't remember these situations and all I know is from what he tells me.
He tells me I seem to be splitting into three different people, who I am,
and then I think I am depression itself, and then I act like a childhood version of myself thinking I am little kid.
Beside these attacks of insanity, I am completely normal in my general life, aside from my depression. I have been doing a lot better with depression, though. I am not completely depression free but my boyfriend helps a lot. There are just moments where I lose it completely.
Can someone explain to me what this might be?
And oh, I was sexually abused around the age of 13 but I already had been displaying symptoms of depression prior to that.
And in an mri I have shown high brain activity in both lobes..
I used to have a therapist and a psychiatrist but I am no longer seeing those and I'd like to know someone's opinion.

[Elysium]

I'm sorry you're experiencing these things. These type of things are very distressing.

In my opinion, it's really difficult to say whether this is a psychological issue or a medical issue. The symptoms you state can be related to both. You said that you had a CT done; have you discussed these symptoms with a medical doctor? I suggest going back to your MD and letting them know of these symptoms. Perhaps an MRI is in order to rule out any medical issues.

From a psychological standpoint, the symptoms could fit under the dissociative spectrum and the fact that you have a trauma history backs that up a bit. I would also suggest following up with a Mental Health Practitioner who works with Trauma and Dissociation to explore if these symptoms are related to past trauma issues.

First and foremost, get a medical evaluation. It's important to rule out medical stuff as well as exploring any psychological component.

I'm glad that you posted here. This is a great place to get support and plenty of us here have experienced similar symptoms as you have discussed. I hope you post again if you find it helpful.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by elizabethmarie~

I've been feeling kind of odd lately. I've been having some mental issues and I want to figure out what's going on.
So I'm going to explain all my symptoms/ possible things related to it.
I have already been diagnosed with depression.
I have been struggling with migraines for quite some time now, about four years. It's actually the same amount of time I've struggled with depression.
I am only a teenager.
I use to take Wellbutrin daily, but I stopped out of choice. I just didn't want to be on medication.
When I was younger I'd have moments where I forgot who my family was and who I was. It was like I was looking in on my life from somebody else's perspective.
This stopped occutring and only reoccurred recently, a few months ago before I began exhibiting these strange new symptoms. It was for only half a second and I couldn't recognize my boyfriend.
I've been getting into a lot of fights with my boyfriend and that's where the symptoms really start to show.
I go insane. I yell loudly, scratch myself till I bleed, and then I proceed to tell him I hate him and horrible things.
I can't remember these situations and all I know is from what he tells me.
He tells me I seem to be splitting into three different people, who I am,
and then I think I am depression itself, and then I act like a childhood version of myself thinking I am little kid.
Beside these attacks of insanity, I am completely normal in my general life, aside from my depression. I have been doing a lot better with depression, though. I am not completely depression free but my boyfriend helps a lot. There are just moments where I lose it completely.
Can someone explain to me what this might be?
And oh, I was sexually abused around the age of 13 but I already had been displaying symptoms of depression prior to that.
And in an mri I have shown high brain activity in both lobes..
I used to have a therapist and a psychiatrist but I am no longer seeing those and I'd like to know someone's opinion.

Elizabeth we cant tell you what your problems are. we cant tell you if you have any mental disorders. the only way you can find out whats happening to you is by going back into therapy and back to seeing a psychiatrist that can do diagnostic testing.

you are a teen ager so Im going to try and explain to you the dissociative disorders in a way that you hopefully will understand.

there are 6 of them -

depersonalization - thats when you feel kind of spacey, like you are moving in slow motion, not feeling anything, just feeling numb, not feeling like you are all there. the world around you feels far away and sped up.

Derealization - thats when you feel ok but it seems like the world around you is not real, like its going too fast or going too slow. like the world and people are strange to you. kind of like that feeling you get just getting over the flu, you feel ok but everything else feels different to you. you recognize everything you just dont feel like you fit in with how the world seems to you. we therapists call this feeling - feeling like you are disconnected from everything outside yourself.

Dissociative amnesia - have you ever seen these movies, soap operas and cartoons where someone gets hit over the head or in an accident, then they dont remember anything? dissociative amnesia is the same way only its a mental problem.

there are 4 kinds of these - the first one is called local dissociative amnesia you go through a traumatic situation and then you dont remember anything about that situation, what lead up to that situation or what happened shortly after it. this kind of memory loss sticks with you until you get treated for it. the way it works is that for example (using a fake situaiton here) if you were sexually abused on valentines day then every year as valentines day comes closer you have more and more times with having trouble remembering things, then you dont remember valentines day at all, then a few days later you are back to normal. it doesnt get better. it just keeps happening for your whole life until you get treatment for it. thats one kind.

the second kind of dissociative amnesia called selective dissociative amnesia thats where you only remember little bits and pieces of a traumatic event. its like remembering the day you were sexually abused and maybe something the abuser said but nothing else.

the third kind of dissociative amnesia is called generalized dissociative amnesia. thats when because of some trauma you forget your whole life and people you knew before the trauma. its like sort of waking up one day and for the rest of your life not knowing who your parents are, not remembering you go to this school and not remembering these are your friends. this sticks with you for your whole life.

the 4th kind of dissociative amnesia is not remembering things but it centers around one set group. like one day not remembering all your past and present memories about your mother.

Dissociative Fugue - thats leaving your life, family, friends behind and moving somewhere else. when you get there you build a whole new life as someone else. the kicker to this one is that you dont realize or even know you are doing this. just one day you sort of wake up and find yourself living in some strange place and people calling you by a strange name you never knew of.

Dissociative Identity Disorder - to explain this one think about your home you live in. you know how you have different rooms in your home. well people have different parts of their self inside that all work together to make up who that person is. just like all the rooms in the home is connected by the outside walls. each of the rooms in the house belong to each family member and shared by the whole family. example you can move around your home to go into the kitchen, the bathroom your room. its all open to you. a normal person has all these different parts to them - feelings, memories, their emotions what you like, dislike what your position in your family is. it all makes up who you are and what type of person you are.

With DID all things that make up who you are ends up mentally splitting off from all the other parts that make up the person. anger goes here, happiness there, memories about this over here, memories of that over there. its still one body outside but now everything that makes up that person is now divided and if those parts of a person stay divided they start acting like they have their own lives. Anger decided to dress is say yellow polka dots, eats only peanut butter and celery, swears and never combs her hair. Happiness wears red hearts, loves bagels, and roller blading, memories of grandpa reside over here and wears smelly gym clothes, will eat anything but never showers. most times when these parts of a person split off and decides to live a life of their own they name their self, usually the name represents some sort of key to who that part is and what that part represents. all this parts separating, and parts living on their own happens without the awareness of the person who owns the body. what causes all this splitting / dividing of parts is some sort of trauma happens before you are 5 yrs old. and you live this way your whole childhood losing track of things like not remembering people, places, things, important events. then when you are an adult these parts of you that are all divided up cant work so good anymore so things get worse when you are an adult until you finally go to therapy and work on things that will help all the parts begin working together again.

theres one more Dissociative Disorder called Dissociative Disorders Not Otherwise Specified. this is where you have some of the symptoms of two or more of the above dissociative disorders but not enough for a psychiatrist to say you have this dissociative disorder or that dissociative disorder. you are a mixture of some or all of them.

that said - normal people do go through times when they have memory problems and other problems that look like dissociative disorders. people with depression and other mental disorders also have times where they have problems that are part of the dissociative disorders or look like a dissociative disorder.

I also know medications, stress, age, medical problems, mental problems all kinds of things, can also look like and cause the same symptoms that fit dissociative disorders.

the only way to find out if you have one of these dissociative disorders is by going back to therapy and back to a psychiatrist. there are special tests that you can take that will tell you and your doctors if you have a dissociative disorder or not.

I suffer from migraines and depression. Have you had an EEG conducted by a neurologist? This shows any abnormalities in your brain waves. I have slowing and spiking in both my temporal lobes and the thinking is that with these abnormalities comes strange phenomenons, especially from the temporal lobe region. Migraine/Seizure/Depression all overlap. Have you seen a neurologist to rule out anything neurological causing this?

According to my shrink, loss of awareness can be dissociative in nature or even just another abnormality of my temporal lobes. Welbutrin will lower the threshold of seizures and so I can't be on this drug. Seizure disorder has never been ruled out in my case but a seizure aura can also produce symptoms similar to what you are experiencing. The difference between a seizure aura and other phenomenons is that seizure auras come on suddenly and with great intensity. Also, migraine auras can be similar to this, especially atypical auras which is what I have. I would also recommend a neuro-psychiatrist to work with your neurologist in finding a drug that will help dampen down these things you are experiencing.

I understand how overwhelming this can be, especially at your tender young age. You are lucky your boyfriend is being supportive. My family of origin never accepted my differences and it turned into abuse from them, so I learned to seek out help from outside sources, such as a therapist or a doctor. Please know that it is the finely tuned individuals that are sensitive to all this and you have a gift others don't have. You are special It takes an incredibly creative and strong individual to experience what you are going through and I have to mention here you are also a survivor Glad you posted here and have given all of us the opportunity to be with you through all this. Keep up the good work elizabethmarie !!

[PurpleFlyingMonkeys]

Hi Elizabeth. I'm sorry you're so confused and depressed right now. I know it can be very hard to understand and very unsettling to hear that your body acted out in a way completely opposite of anything you would normally do. The loss of time and not knowing where you go or what you do when the blackouts start, it's all a scary thing to go through alone. I'm off meds, no pdoc or t at the moment and that is by choice. I've already gotten all of the DX's I've already tried all the meds and learned the techniques to coping with this and feel it's time to move on my own path.

However, when you are first discovering that there is something going on inside, something that doesn't fit right and you're left confused and alone, a therapist and talking to the doctor is the best thing you can do. They know most of what you are experiencing and can help you to find out why and how to cope.

When it comes to dissasociative disorders, it depends on the pdoc. Make sure that you have one you can trust because we have seen too many t's and pdocs tell us before even hearing a word out of our mouth that the DID does not exist. Find one you can trust and you can start working to find the root of your memory problem and you can start learning skills to live with it or fix it whichever the case may be.

[jwabf]

"I used to have a therapist and a psychiatrist but I am no longer seeing those" this causes me a lot of concern. Elizabethmarie, I am glad you have reached out here on line but as amandlouise has so eloquently stated, there are lots of possibile diagnoses and you need professionals to help you sort it all out. I hope your parent(s) are supportive and I hope you have the opportunity to get mental health care. At the very least you need to see your general doc. And your boyfriend sounds very supportive but you cannot assume his interpretation of your behavior is accurate. Like you he is not a professional in mental health, and all the love in the world is not enough to make a proper diagnosis. Hopefully he will be able to support you and maybe accompany you to the doctor's office.

Good luck and take care.

[mokie]

I have been wondering myself on exactly what I may have and sometimes still experince. I don't think I have ever shared this to pdoc or T in the past. I think I may to new T next visit but wanted some kind of insight to what others may think. I am not wanting a diagnose just some insight if I should bring it up or not.

derealiztion - I can be in the car while with family and I feel like I am in some kinda of bubble that surrounds the car from the outside. I can see and recognize things outside but yet the don't seem real, kind like looking through those 3-d glasses when I was a child.

dissociative amenisa - I have the hardest time trying to remember a period of my childhood that involved my father, we were so close as little but after fifth grade I can't remember. I do remember after eighth grade. There are also parts of my early twenties till just recent that I can't remember but parts and pieces.

I also had episodes like elizabethmarie of going through changes from acting like a child, then very calm and collected to losing control of myself. This is also kinda a blurr I mostly remember the child and losing control. I also remember I did not want to be touched by anyone in this state.

Any help would be appreciated. I am just now accepting I am schizoaffective with BP I. Is this maybe part of it or different. I just want info as to where to go.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by mokie

I have been wondering myself on exactly what I may have and sometimes still experince. I don't think I have ever shared this to pdoc or T in the past. I think I may to new T next visit but wanted some kind of insight to what others may think. I am not wanting a diagnose just some insight if I should bring it up or not.

derealiztion - I can be in the car while with family and I feel like I am in some kinda of bubble that surrounds the car from the outside. I can see and recognize things outside but yet the don't seem real, kind like looking through those 3-d glasses when I was a child.

dissociative amenisa - I have the hardest time trying to remember a period of my childhood that involved my father, we were so close as little but after fifth grade I can't remember. I do remember after eighth grade. There are also parts of my early twenties till just recent that I can't remember but parts and pieces.

I also had episodes like elizabethmarie of going through changes from acting like a child, then very calm and collected to losing control of myself. This is also kinda a blurr I mostly remember the child and losing control. I also remember I did not want to be touched by anyone in this state.

Any help would be appreciated. I am just now accepting I am schizoaffective with BP I. Is this maybe part of it or different. I just want info as to where to go.

yes these things you are experiencing can be part of schizoaffective and with BP. having dissociative symptoms like this is not exclusive to dissociative disorders. So talk with your treatment providers. they will explain how your symptoms fit in with how and why they diagnosed you the way they did.