Peculiarities of a troubled mind.

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I’m not sure if I know myself. I just sense that people aren’t completely comfortable around me. I also lack a type of mental spontaneity that other’s seem to have. I don’t react immediately to jokes and such and I have trouble following when there’s more than one person talking at a time.

To be honest I don’t put much effort into socialization when it revolves around small talk. I tend to jump into conversations late. I don’t bother to say much of anything until something of interest to me comes up. I feel this is breaking social protocol but it’s the only way for me.

On the diagnosis issue has your psychiatrist brought up depersonalization disorder? Maybe I’m way off base, or perhaps you already know but are trying to look for a root cause. Sorry if I’m not much help. It’s late and I’m tired.

My psychiatrist hasn't brought up any disorder. It seems that he doesn't believe in assigning people disorders, and focuses on a more tailored approach. This seems a little strange because, to my mind, traditionally psychiatry involves placing people in categories. For him to not do so either means that I have an entirely unique mind; never encountered before and completely unexplainable, or that he just silently attributes any symptoms he sees to disorders, without telling me. He does seem to have become fixated on a single topic, however. Apparently aspects of my personality are extremely young. Whereas the issues I go through are encountered by normal people at a young age, I am only encountering them now. The fact that those around me have already "matured" past this point, just makes it much more difficult. Apparently, many of my emotions are almost infantile; while my intellect is developed. This disparity between aspects of my personality; infantile parts and very mature parts is a fixation for him. I am really not sure where he is going, but he seems to have some sort of unfathomable aim for me. While I don't understand his aim, he seems like an incredibly wise and perceptive man.

On the subject of depersonalization disorder, I will agree that it seems to be somewhat applicable. I'll put it on the list, so to speak. I'll have quite a payload to drop on my unsuspecting psychiatrist. Although I don't suffer the extreme of feeling that life is a movie; unreal, that I am just going through motions, and that I am disconnected from my body and environment, perhaps my brain has depersonalized in more subtle ways. Certainly I have trouble relating myself to my memories of my past, although I do remember events clearly. I do feel that I am a brand new person; starting from the middle of a timeline, with a strange past that doesn't seem to fit. My personality has changed immensely. The root cause of depersonalization can be anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and clinical depression.....
This disorder would be but one aspect of my problems, however.

You have not been unhelpful. Thankyou.

Hey, I'm 16 and I can relate to most of what you're saying, I've always been an obsessive person since I can remember, and rubbed certain materials on my skin becuase they irritated me.
I think you should go for a diagnosis so you can feel more secure about who you are etc.
Good luck mate

Maybe he doesn’t bring up specific labels because he feels the need to completely digest all the information you’re reporting before jumping to conclusions. I would think that bringing up labels to patients typically introduces bias since there’s a tendency for patients to latch onto labels prematurely. When people think they have something they may unconsciously try to affirm that they fit the label. You seem like quite an objective person but he may just be following the standard protocol.

There’s also the issue that depersonalization is often a symptom of something else rather than an intrinsic disorder. A psychiatrist might only bring up the term to give reassurance to a patient who’s extremely distressed by those particular symptoms.

On the issue of maturity I feel similar. I’m 28 and I still feel that I’m constantly changing emotionally and personally. I spend so much time online that the personality that I see in myself while communicating on the internet is miles ahead of who I am in person. I feel like I’ve never gone through the trouble to build an identity for myself in real life whereas most people encounter this compulsion in their adolescence. I’ve been a nobody all my life, a keen observer but never a full participant, generally a very secretive person.

Diagnosis......revealed!

Upon showing my psychiatrist my posts on these boards and the subsequent replies to those posts, I convinced him to give me a "label". Asperger's, he said, was most definately not what I have, although some of the traits are outwardly similar. Instead, his diagnosis; reluctantly given, was of a different nature. While he was somewhat disinclined to mention the term, given the negative connotations that are most often attributed to it, he told me that, if I was to be given a label, it would be Borderline- Personality Disorder. Try as I might not to let a label define me, my mood instantly soured, as I unconsciously processed the information.

Well, my good people, the cat is out of the bag; clawing around feverishly as it seeks to rend those who would comfort it.

Have some information. I think it fits rather well with my entire life up to this point.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publicat ... rder.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline ... y_disorder

Suddenly, upon researching the topic, everything fits. My entire life seems to make some sort of sense. As much sense as a semi-psychotic condition can make, in any case. My cormobid conditions are depression, anxiety disorders, and probably lack of a soul and some sort of dark covenant with evil itself.

Undoubtedly, the disorder does not explain absolutely everything that I think and feel, or why I am extremely obsessive, but that is because I am a unique person, and not a walking psychiatric condition.

Yours,

Simon

Last edited by NotSoApe on 27 Nov 2008, 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You seem to have a lack of psychic containment that is consistent with trauma or abuse by a primary parental figure. The lack of psychic boundaries can be induced in an Asperger person who is traumatized by sociopathic abuse (I have experienced something like that) or the abuse of a normal child can create autistic-like cognitive spaces and behaviors in a child who does not have an autistic neurology. The way of explaining the latter is that the trauma creates a need for the child to create an isolated autistic "retreat" within himself or herself. So what appears to be autism can be induced in a normal child by trauma. Because you have not listed some of the other traits of Asperger Syndrome, it is hard to say whether autism came first and a trauma caused a subsequent psychic distress or whether a trauma caused you, as a child, to develop a synthetic "autistic retreat" from your environment.

In some ways, your description sounds more like a Borderline Personality Disorder than autism, because of your inchoate psychic status and the disorientation of your cognitive function. However, for yet another layer of complexity, Asperger people can, in my opinion, develop temporary features of Borderline Personality Disorder in response to stress or distress, simply because we have inchoate social psychological foundations for our egos. So it is really hard for me to get a feel, from what you have written, whether you might have AS.

It is a little surprising to hear your psychiatrist is a "non-medication" type person. That's unusual and means that he or she has some kind of diagnostic or treatment plan. You might want to show him/her your writing here, explain you were less able to communicate during sessions, and let him/her do their thing for a while. I'd love a shrink who wasn't a drug pusher.

I apologize for my very, very late reply - I read your reply and meant to reply to it earlier but other things intervened.

I agree. My past does not feel like it had any basis in reality at all. Then again, an hour ago may not feel like it had much basis in reality either, nor what is actually going on now, which I gather is quite different from what you are experiencing.

This is interesting.

I can't say I think my personality has radically changed so much as that my "real" personality is sort of buried under a layer of ... I don't know what. At the core I think I am still very much the same person I was as a child, though perhaps life felt more "real" then; I don't know. I don't know at what age one gains the capacity to feel that something is real or not real.

I feel exactly the same way. Mind you, it might not be nearly as rare for me, but then it sounds to me as though you are more severely depressed right now than I am. At times it has been rare to nonexistent for prolonged periods of time though, when I have been severely depressed and thus in agony virtually every waking hour.

I certainly understand the reluctance to self-diagnose - what made me wonder was more your statement that you had decided that you didn't have it, which is more than merely being reluctant to say you do have it.

Things like detecting sarcasm in speech aren't particularly a problem for me either - perhaps occasionally, but it is not a major problem for me. I think I am as good as the average person when it comes to understanding people's speech. I am probably worse than average with non-verbal cues, though. I dislike eye contact but probably not as severely as some other people.

I would suggest that you do not put too much stock the fact that there are a few traits that don't manifest themselves in you at all - I think this is the case for everyone on the spectrum. There is really no "perfect" autistic person or at least if there are such people, they are awfully few.

This is more or less the same for me - my psychiatrist has, as far as I can remember, never given me a specific diagnosis.

This whole matter is something that we are only starting to talk about and it is something I would like to discuss with him in the future, though I feel a bit odd "asking" for a diagnosis. (The person who diagnosed me with Asperger's wasn't my psychiatrist, though my psychiatrist does not seem to have contested that at all. The old thread I linked to in my earlier post explains more of that.)

Anyway, good luck and I am interested to hear more as you are one of the few people I've come across whose story seems rather like mine.