The Fear of Getting Help

Here's an interesting problem: What happens if your smart enough to know the "right" answers on a neuropsychiatric exam and thus skew your own readings?

I was a hyper-intelligent kid (IQ 5 points below super-genius and reading before I ever got to school) with an eidetic memory. But I grew up in an abusive home, so it was twisted in with a whole lot of repressed memories which I didn't get back until I was a teen and my abuser was dead and out of reach. This was probably why my psyche finally said it was okay to think about it since some of the stuff he did made me wish I could resurrect him just to kill him myself. And that's not an exaggeration. He didn't just hurt me, he hirt my mom, by siblings and also a couple of my nieces. And that's just the ones I know for sure.

So, you have me, this messed up little girl who gets burned severely (and dies for about a minute from shock) at age 7. While in the hospital, my best friend's house gets struck by lightning and burns down. So my little peanut decided thunder means lightning, lightning means fire, fire means pain and terror. So then thunder is pain, terror and PANIC. I started having severe freako fits in school every time it thundered and that's often in SE Texas. So into therapy I go. Here's the problem: For a really hyper-aware kid, it's entirely too easy to figure out what someone wants to hear and manipulate them. By the time I was done it had become a game to manipulate him and see just how much BS I could make him believe. I got over my panic attacks basically by just one day telling myself to quit being such a wuss and get over it. And I did.

I did the same when I was a pre-teen alcoholic and teen pill popper and pot head. I had tried to slash my wrists at thirteen. Weird things happened that day which I won't talk about. I woke up one day after all of that, looked in the mirror and went "Holy crap, I'm becoming my Dad!" And that made me straighten myself up a LOT. No therapy, no rehab, no support. I just did it. And anyone who didn't change with me to get clean got drop kicked out of my life for the sake of my own sanity.

Then the brain swelling happened. They were giving me tests out the yayas. Most of the cognitive tests came up in the low side of "normal" which was a major drop from before. No more eidetic memory. No more languages learned. No more super skill at anything. In fact, for a long while, I was having what they called fugue states off and on where I just froze in mid-movement and stayed that way sometimes for up to an hour. I would also have periods where I could remember where I lived and other such things I'd known for decades. Part of what they gave my were neuropsychological tests. It actually made me laugh and I was getting looks from the workers going by the room because I was giggling uncontrollably about halfway through. I was laughing because you have to be totally stupid to tell the truth on some of those questions if you want to stay free. So, yeah, I kind of fudged a little on a lot of it, knowing my real answers on things like "Have you ever thought, in detail, of what it would feel like to kill someone?" might possibly end me up as Mayor of Crazy Town, population 1. Or at the very least pumped full of a bunch of drugs I didn't want since I was trying to stay as clean of that kind of thing as possible.

I've never trusted mental health people much. I've never felt the need for them much. But right now I'm starting to recognize that a lot of my old coping mechanisms have ceased to be effective and I might be forced into doing that which I have never done: seek outside myself for help with my own mental health. I've always been a very no-nonsense kind of person. When I recognize I'm out of control somehow, I pinpoint what's causing it and alter things to eliminate the issue. But these days, it's becoming a herculean task. Yet, I can't seem to force myself to seek professional help. Maybe the fear is irrational, but every creative person I know who has been on psychiatric drugs has stopped taking them because they said they killed their creativity entirely. My creativity is all I have left and I am loathe to lose it. It's the only thing that holds me together some days. So yeah, I'm pretty fearful of mucking about with it.

Besides, I'm still smart enough to ascertain what they want to hear and deliver it without even blinking weird. It's almost reflexive to not tell them the truth of what's in my head. I know that if they were privy to all of what I really think, they'd lock me up and throw that key far away. And that makes me wonder if that cognizance and ability fall on the side of sanity or mentally deranged.

I don't see any diagnoses, other than "insomnia" listed in your about me. So what I am gathering is you don't have a diagnoses yet. Well, you probably are dealing with "trama issues" and are at a point where you might be experiencing some difficulty with that. None of us here can diagnose you. I can't blame you for having "trust" issues, I had them myself, but I am finally working with a therapist that I can "trust" and I don't take any medication. I don't want to be "null" either as I am also "very creative".

So, are you in your late teens now? That is typically the age when someone with a troubled history can feel challenged and not know what to do about it. If you have some trama issues coming up the anger is pretty normal, however, you do "not" have to "fuel" it or even give into the fact that you have "trust concerns" either.

Actually answering the questionaires is not about "knowing what is considered normal", it is about being "honest" so you can see your troubled areas that you may need help in "resolving". Needing help in resolving a "history of abuse" has nothing to do with how intelligent you are either. Abuse in our childhoods effects us in ways we may not realize, but sorting through our "subconscious" minds to the areas where we may have developed troubled thinking patterns helps us understand ourselves better and "remap" our minds into healthier thinking patterns.

The fact that you experience insomnia may be due to how you are now struggling with being able to sort through your day to day experiences at night so you actually get rest and are ready to add more information each day. Your days could actually be full of unresolve that even in sleep you are not sure how to resolve, that is basically what began to happen with me, I have PTSD myself. I would have to say, now that I look back, I simply had too much unresolve every day, I was very angry alot too, and I just couldn't have any restful sleep, infact, I often had bad dreams and my brain was just restless because the PTSD was causing too much confusion.

There are some tests you can take here, have you tried them? I think you deserve to finally get the opportunity to work through whatever you are challenged with so you can get on with your life, have the life you deserve, inspite of the abuse you lived through in your past.

Open Eyes

I am very good at manipulation and also have a complete fear of being over medicated or "locked" away. I sent my therapist a packet of all the information T needed including thoughts of homicide. It's easier to not be manipulative on paper because it can be just a list. I also write all the ways I manipulated the session and the truth to anything I didn't answer.