Hidden trauma or benign tumor: how to know?

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Are there accurate and reliable ways for professionals to dig out hidden trauma, and is there anything approximating demon possession in scientific psychology?

I feel like there's something inside me that's carefully encased to prevent it from spreading but that contributes to my personality issues and flat affect. A protective mechanism. It's like my real self can't come out because of this.

I wonder if a benign tumor or aneurism from child that hasn't grown in 21 years, much. Is this possible? What sorts of things contribute to this feeling besides tumors and trauma? I know I had something, but I suspect either something organic or something worse than what I was aware of (very early sexual abuse).

Asking a medical-health professional would be more helpful.

Anyone here could only speculate.

If you had an aneurism or a tumor you would know it. Those are serious health conditions that can not remain dormant and hidden.

And demon possessions is not accepted in scientific psychology. That's a religious or paranormal issue.

Can't an aneurism be dormant though? I do have NLD.

I guess trauma can look like demon possession? I have a feeling that my parents are hiding something from me in addition to what I already know about sexual abuse.

I can understand your feeling. I once had very similar feelings even for years that there must be something in my childhood I don't know about. Later on I found out that a childhood friend had died and I didn't know that as a child and I think it was that.
Years later noone thought about telling me, because years had passed. But it didn't cause me any trauma and never did.

I'm very carefull with "hidden traumas". You can search so long until you find something what's not even there. This phenomenon is actually very common. Some psychiatrists even claim that "hidden traumas" don't exist.

Sometimes even the feeling of being "different" can cause feelings like that, that there might be something hidden.

Even a benign tumor would cause serious symptoms and yeah I'm pretty sure an aneurism can't stay hidden.

So there are a lot of people who believe in demon possession, and I guess I was just saying its not accepted as fact within the field of practicing psychology.

What types of symptoms are making you think its paranormal or a serious health condition...?

Just the feeling that my blunted affect and troubles engaging with the world are caused by a foreign object inside my head. Or possibly that they are just psychologically blocked. I can definitely feel something blocking my emotional expression -- which causes my blunted affect. I don't feel like it's a neurological/Asperger's thing at all.

I had a CT scan to look for a concussion in 2011, but it was done in China. I don't know if they would have looked for tumors or not.

If you had a tumor, it should have shown up on the scan. And you would have some pretty serious symptoms to go along with it. Physical and neurological but probably not psychological. You could google brain tumor symptoms in case I'm wrong.

Sometimes I feel blocked because I can't even begin to keep up socially. Between my special interests and trying to work, it leaves not much time or energy to figure stuff out and develop relationships. So because of that I often feel a big block. Like there is all this social stuff and relationships that other people know and do all the time, and I have no idea how. I also have trouble with emotional reciprocity and have a flat affect.

But it sounds like you're thinking its much more than that...?

I felt blocked my entire early childhood, because I couldn't say a word, even if I wanted to.
No trauma, no tumor, just autism.

Now that I think about it more, it feels like a psychological thing blocking my emotional expression, not something organic or neurological. When I try to focus on the reason for my blunted affect, it's literally emotionally painful.

Maybe this is the trauma? It doesn't seem severe enough, so I would really feel weak if this turned out to be the source of my childhood trauma.

I also experienced what I still can't decide is severe child abuse or necessary but unconventional training that allowed me to escape the fate of most troubled children to grow up to be a top student at a top law school with an awesome upcoming job in a potentially lucrative "revolving door" government agency. Among the things that happened, my mother or father would tell me to do something, which I couldn't comprehend, maybe because of NLD, so they would whack me with a stick every few seconds until I figured it out, even if it took hours. Maybe, if I was autistic, this taught me social cues and theory of mind. My Dad was also unpredictable and explosive, due to our family's money troubles. And he knocked kids around and spanked us with sticks when we screwed up or he got mad. It left marks and bruises but nothing permanent. He also never went to work, so he was around all the time and hard to hide from. So I was kind of nervous all the time.

I remember getting spanked 40 times in one day. Usually, it was more like 10 when I was young and down to 2-3 when I was 6-8. Then, once a month by age 12 and never after age 13.

Did these things cure me of autism, or are they the source of serious psychological trauma? I don't know whether to love or hate my parents, for this and other reasons.

your childhood sounds similar to mine in that i lived with constant anxiety between my home situation and the bullies at school. i was a nervous wreck and had daily panic attacks until i was well into my 20s, which then started up again when i went back to school later on. with stressful and unpredictable childhood, it might be there are feelings that need to come up at some point. you might be protecting yourself from not experiencing them so that you can do what you need to do right now. i guess that's possible.

It is possible to have an aneurysm and not know it. But you wouldn't 'feel like there's something inside you' from that. You'd either have headaches, or no sign at all.

What you're experiencing does not sound at all like a neurological issue. Instead, it sounds like either dissociation or a psychotic disorder (such as something on the schizophrenia spectrum).

Check out this article.

Tumors would show up on a CT scan whether they were looking for them or not. I've seen CT scans of people with tumors. There's a visible 'lump' of abnormal tissue. I'm not trained in reading CT scans, and even I could spot a tumor on one pretty easily.

If you had a CT scan, and they didn't find a tumor, then you didn't have a tumor.

And even if you do have a tumor or aneurysm, it would be a completely separate problem from this feeling you're having. If you read accounts by people who've had brain tumors or aneurysms, they never describe a feeling like that. Instead, they describe things like headaches, blurred vision, balance problems, memory problems, slurred speech - typical neurological symptoms.

A few years back I was really depressed and actually unaware of how bad I was,things did not feel right in the strangest most distorted way,I was sure I had a brain tumor.No one could feel that weird and not have a tumor was my reasoning.But it is a very common delusion among severely depressed people,I went back on anti-depressants and slowly got better.
If it had been a tumor I had decided to just die,I felt to bad to fight it.But there was the weirdest sensation,like barely being attached to your body,and it was so hard to talk or even listen to anyone,I hope to never feel that way again.

This might be also interesting for you:

"Earlier theorists proposed a personality disorder with a combination of features from borderline personality disorder and avoidant personality disorder, called "avoidant-borderline mixed personality" (AvPD/BPD)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidant_p ... rder#Other

That's very interesting. I definitely have some avoidant traits.