Posted by garnet71 on June 27, 2009, at 6:41:09
In reply to Re: med to prevent instability?, posted by morganpmiller on June 27, 2009, at 1:42:41
No, I like hearing the different views. I don't have OCD. I have some OCD symptoms, but not full blown OCD. I have symptoms of other disorders too, but I don't see any one thing that characterizes my beahvioral pattern except the anxiety-which often causes the symptoms you both mentioned. BTW-I'm a she.
Well the reasons I was fearing psychosis was 1) build up from tremendous pressure yet I had been stable for so long and mood has been good; suddenly, that changed as a reaction to feeling buried childhood emotions that were so intense my potential to deal with such emotions was uncertain and 2) My grandmother and sister had psychotic breaks, from schitzophrenia and bipolar respectively and later 3) I read you can get a temporary psychosis from transference reactions in psychodynamic therapy (if it only emerges out of transference it is -according to the few papers I read-considered a transference psychosis and not a true psychosis.) When i talked to my doctor on the phone and felt strong transference, w/in an hour visuals that appeared to derive from my unconscious popped in my head, and I had never noticed this before; since this was new, I had to understand it and my thoughts were diverging in an attempt to make sense of it all. And others here said that happens from psychodynamics, so I have less fears about a true psychosis but still some fears of a transference psychosis. I don't know a lot about this stuff at all, but I do realize the analytic theories are sooo different than other psychology. Anxiety is not anxiety but explained in many other ways==something i don't know enough about to quite understand, yet.
I fully appreciate how opinions come from personal experience, education, and knowledge obtained and experienced by others; we all do that-that helps build our beliefs and how we come to understand such things shapes our identity to a certain extent.
I"m interested in both the DSM view and the analytic view. For example, what the DSM attributes to PTSD, the analytic view (and again just from a few things I've read so I"m not certain) seems to think PTSD is a manifestation or change caused by trauma that represents an underlying or post-trauma developed borderline behavioral pattern (as opposed to a neurotic behavioral pattern though many have elements of both underlying patterns). I've also started to wonder about disassociation, which also goes w/borderline and PTSD especially with people with traumatic childhoods and of course other trauma.
There are also the theories I read about how childhood abuse permanently changes the brain, nothing new of course, that leads to having anxiety the rest of one's life so wondering how that factors in.
So in reassessing my past, I realize that I became a completely different person after a bad relationship with a narcissist. That's when I got PTSD symptoms. Despite years of childhood problems, I felt fully intact, stable, confident, pretty secure, independent, good reasoning and judgment w/o manifestations of anxiety or depression. I didn't have 'bad' relationships, dated/casual and some semi long-term that just dissolved slowly with no uncomfortable emotions; focused most on career and raising my child, along with self improvement. I had some dysnfunction, like drinking too much, but dysnfunctional behavior was few and far between. I really didn't know any different from growing up that way; yet, when I was a teen and started working and was allowed out of the house/free to interact with other people for the first time, I came to realize my family was so dysnfunctional and how 'normal' people lived, thus gradually moved away from dysnfunctional behaviors. This all changed when I was about 30 after entering a relationship with N. With N, childhood trauma came out. I felt soul raped, like most of us who had experienced this type of relationship, and changed into a different person. My past Ts attributed this to PTSD, yet the psychodynamic view seems to be, in my opinion, an emergence of a borderline behavioral pattern. It felt like N was envious of my spirit and strength and confidence; that he wanted from me what he didn't have and somehow sucked my spirit out of me and attributed it to himself. It's actually not uncomomon for those in such relationships to feel this way, so I've learned from talking to many others. There are plenty of women who've experiernced these feelings who did not have bad childhoods, mental illness; many who are educated professional, etc.--they are from all walks of life. Almost everyone's 'story' I've read about their dynamics with a N sounds the same as mine, feeling soul raped, feeling like a completely different person, regardless of their prior emotional health or underlying patterns. Sometimes those predisopositiioned to a healthy emotional make up are the one's that leave the relations;hip sooner, but not always.
So I've felt permanently altered and damaged, and wonder if I'll ever get my 'self' back. I am not the same person I was before I was 30, and am unsure if I'll ever get back to who I was before. I think therapy will be the only thing that helps, it doesn't seem like I have the ability to do it on my own at this point. I'm just confused as to whether I had some kind of dissassociation that lasted till I was 30 and this is the 'real' me that came back as a result of experiencing emotional trauma, or if the real me was the person before I was 30 and I permanently changed.
Either I've permanently changed at 30 from relationship with N, or I was always like this and came out of some sort of dissassociation at the age of 30.
I don't know if I am the old me or the new me. That's really the difficult part--yearning for my old self, the person who I thought i was. It's really intense I've come to all these realizations, insights from just a couple days of therapy. It's just difficult to understand or make a judgement as to what's going on, so I really appreciate the input from both of you.
As for stability, maybe I shouldn't pursue therapy until I finish school. However, I don't see there ever being a 'good' time to deal with all this; either way, it will be difficult. SSRIs, although they work for anxiety for sure, have an adverse effect on my dopamine, but that's something I'll have to talk to this doctor about. I definitely don't want to take this xanax like this, it seems like it's causing a bit of depression and making me tired.
poster:garnet71
thread:903272
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090620/msgs/903437.html