#when like every other bipolar person I know has confirmed they experience the same reactions

[scamallach-1]

The fact I can’t take any cough medicines or any antihistamines or any corticosteroids ever without it triggering 12+ hours of psychotic bipolar hell pisses me off to no end. Ragweed is making me severely sick right now and I cannot do anything about it. It’s so painful and I can’t breathe. I may have to go to the hospital tomorrow if my shallow breathing/wheezing worsens anymore than it has, I’ve felt faint all day

:(

Just turmeric broths, teas, and Vicks rub and this time the allergy attack is so bad nothing is bringing relief. I haven’t slept much all week, which is my norm being a chronic insomniac, however its really putting me in the pits.

[wiltedeyesandtwistedlies]

What are the inattentive symptoms of ADHD?

Before I answer, it’s important to acknowledge that not everyone experiences ADHD the same way. I came up with this list through hours of extensive research, but I still explained each one based on how I experience them personally, because I wanted it to be an honest and accurate resource.

Now, I experience every inattentive symptom of ADHD severely. As well as most hyperactive type symptoms, but not nearly as severely. Hence why my explanations are on the severe side. So if you don’t experience every one of these, or you don’t experience them exactly like this, that doesn’t mean you don’t have ADHD.

Most Commonly Known Symptoms:

Inattentive ADHD is pretty much the same thing as hyperactive ADHD but with less hyperactive tendencies. So technically these symptoms apply to both, but ADHD has a few more that won’t be listed here.

• Inability to focus on disinteresting or unengaging tasks even if you need or even want to – As if your brain physically won’t let you. Because that’s exactly what’s happening. There is no, “Just do it because you have to.”

For real. Imagine a video came where you’ve reached the end of the map and there’s that invisible barrier to keep you from going any farther. But all the other players are passing it just fine. They look at you like you’re crazy and can’t believe that you can’t get through. But it’s literally IMPOSSIBLE.

Now apply that to easy individual movements or tasks like plugging in your charger right next to you or washing a few bowls.

• Focusing WAY too much on this single thing whether you like it or not. It’s called “hyperfixating” and it’s both the most exhilarating experience in the world and the most soul crushing. You can watch/do nothing else, consume nothing else, think of nothing else. It’s exciting and invigorating. But as soon as there is no more material/info about it to devour, existence is gray and meaningless. The adrenaline rush and laser focus are like nothing else, but the crash is just as intense.

• Inability to divert attention to something different when you're already focused on something else. (More of a product of the two above, really)

• Inability to organize or maintain a neat system. It’s not that we don’t have a system (because we do, and if it’s altered in the most miniscule way we will know and we will be furious) but that our systems tend to be more about ease of access. It looks messy, but everything is just easily reachable instead of tucked away in drawers or hidden in organizer bins.

“Out of sight, out of mind.” As soon as we can’t see it, or we get used to it and it becomes a background visual (like background noise but for your eyes), it no longer exists. Until we see it again we have never seen it before either.

• Emotions are forceful and kinda scary. Lacking the ability to regulate emotions means violently strong feelings. They can sweep you away and leave you stranded in an uncomfortable predicament. Major highs and lows as well as strong grudges and emotionally based actions.

• Distractability: There’s this stereotype that all people with ADHD are hyper airheads who cut off mid sentence to shout random shit like “SQUIRREL!” whenever they see something remotely interesting. They’re super excited about it and HAVE to let everyone know, no matter what they were doing before. It’s kind of the “cutesie” version that the media portrays a lot. Most ADHDers don’t actually fit this stereotype.

However, stereotypes are often based on true characteristics, even if they have been twisted into a sick joke or a cruel portrayal.

NOTE: There is nothing wrong with this form of ADHD. It just sucks that if you don’t match this stereotype, no one really believes you have ADHD. Also that so many people use it to insult and bully people with ADHD, even if that isn’t how they display their symptoms.

Lesser Known Symptoms:

Basically if these are #relateable, you probably have ADHD.

• Unable to conceptualize time in any way. Will this take two minutes? Three hours? No one knows! You thought this would take a half hour at most and it’s taken three! How?? This was a five-minute task and you’ve just realized you zoned out. It felt like two seconds but it was two hours!

• There is only Now and Not Now. Again, it’s a time thing. The future always seems so far away that it's almost like it doesn't exist. "Time is a construct" is something I often say because I have no sense of time passing, having past, or will pass. People describe me as "living in the present.” But that’s only because I forget that there is a future or that time is moving. I just don't think about it at all and when I try to it's impossible to understand and it feels made up.

• Sensitive to any form of rejection, actual or perceived. A friend texts you back, but they don’t sound nearly as enthusiastic as usual. You immediately tear your message apart to try to find what upset them and how you can make it up to them. Because surely that’s what that nontypical period means? You want to curl up in a hole and never come out, never face the horrible thing you’ve done to a treasured friend. Intense fear and sorrow mingle into all consuming guilt. The kind that makes you wish you’d never met them, just so they wouldn’t have to be hurt by you now. All because they added a period.

Everyone with some form of an anxiety disorder will recognize this. But it’s also a very common ADHD experience. This is in part because anxiety is SUPER likely to be comorbid with ADHD. But we also have Rejection Sensative Dysphoria. Which basically means we’re ridiculously sensitive to the slightest possibility of the barest chance that we maybe might receive a sliver of perceived ambiguous rejection. To the point where we cut off good relationships for seemingly no reason because we’re too afraid to even speak to them again, much less explain our emotions that we know are irrational but can’t help. The guilt and regret are too agonizing, the fear to face them too much.

• Reading is AWFUL. We’ve already established that attention is not your friend. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to read blocks of boring text. The information could be good, it could be fun even. But if the format is too uniform and plain, it’s impossible to get past the first few sentences. You just keep rereading the same line over and over, realizing every time that you zoned out halfway across. It’s infuriating and very sad. It also makes studying an absolute nightmare.

Many people actually don’t have this experience. They hyperfocus on their reading or their schoolwork so it isn’t a problem. I was the same way until college and now I can’t even read a little recipe card without zoning out. But it’s a very common experience nevertheless so I listed it anyway.

• Ringing ears, hearing electricity. This is one I just heard about. I haven’t been able to actually research this one, but it’s interesting and every ADHDer I know has confirmed it so I’m adding it. ‘Cause I’ve had constant ringing since I was old enough to talk. And I’ve always been able to hear power lines, household appliances, wires inside the walls, all those varying vibrating hums and crackling pops. It’s one of the weird quirks that “run in the family.” Just like Tinnitus and all ADHD symptoms. Apparently, MANY people with ADHD have similar experiences.

• Negative stimming. Things that negatively stimulate your senses. After encountering a certain stim, you feel it physically. It causes a sensation that hurts, in a way. It shouldn’t, logically. But your body’s reaction is to pain. This includes foods you can’t eat because the texture is wrong. Clothing you can’t wear because you can easily breath but no you really can’t because the collar sits wrong against your throat. Sounds that make your spine stiffen or skin crawl. Bright lights or colors that don’t affect anyone else but make your head ache.

Stims and sensitivity can affect any and all senses. A certain smell, agitating fabrics, an unbelievably smooth stone, specific tastes and food textures, certain color combinations, particular sounds/pitches/volumes, et cetera.

• Positive stimming. The other side of the sensory coin. Things that are exceptionally pleasant to your senses/stimulate you positively. For example, the way light shines through a transparent bright blue gem. Watching the light catch and twist so fluidly when you move it takes your breath away. There’s a euphoric feeling to it, and you can’t look away. It’s too pleasing. It’s like a deep satisfaction you can physically feel throughout your whole body, emanating from deep within your chest. You never want to stop that feeling.

Personally, it feels like my chest is somehow much deeper than it actually is. And at the farthest, deepest part is where that satisfaction settles. Nothing else can ever reach that hidden, impossibly deep cavity. It’s so amazing, I never want it to stop. It can feel like that endless pit is starved, and the stim is the first sustenance it’s ever had so it never what’s to let it go.

• Forgetting supposedly unforgettable things. Like where the fuck I parked my car. Also what my car looks like. It’s blue right? It has a hatch. I accidently memorized the license plate (complicated story) but I can’t tell you what model it is?? Is it even in this parking lot? I’ve never parked anywhere else but my memory is obviously garbage so now I need to check every parking lot just in case.

End Note:

It’s important to know that ADHD has many symptoms that overlap with other nuerodivergencies such as autism or ASD. Executive dysfunction can be caused by a number of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Emotional regulation problems can look just like Bipolar disorder and vice versus.

My point is, every symptom could actually be something else. It’s really easy to be misdiagnosed because they all have such similar symptoms. I know someone who thought they had ADHD for years, but it was actually a mix of severe depression and anxiety that fucked with their working memory (as both depression and anxiety do). Someone else I know was diagnosed with manic depression and thought they might be bipolar, but it was undiagnosed ADD the whole time.

[inanawesomewave]

AND HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL?

It’s been a very long time since I posted and for that I can only apologise, I’m extremely, abnormally, infinitely pregnant (okay, I’m 39 weeks) and I’ve spent this past few months hibernating, and recovering from a bipolar depression that, thankyou alexithymia, I didn’t notice I was having until it went away and I no longer had any thoughts of ending my life. But, I’m back now, happily alive and happy to be alive, and as I’m in these final days of pregnancy, I’m thinking about oxytocin. When you’re ridiculously pregnant you think of all the ways you can induce labour (hint: none of them work). I’ve tried it all, castor oil, clary sage, red raspberry leaf tea, evening primrose, sex, long walks, whatever. And I started thinking today about how the only thing that is proven to work, is oxytocin, and how when it is released, it can make your body think you are breastfeeding and you begin to have contractions now that the baby knows it’s okay to come out and get fed. That’s because oxytocin is a hormone that promotes love, bonding, sociability, friendship. They call it the hormone of love, lust and labour. And I realised, as I was looking up all the ways I could release oxytocin myself at home, that I don’t have a good relationship to it. At all. 

I first realised maybe there was something a little off with my oxytocin during my last pregnancy, and in the first few months of breastfeeding my son. I would pump milk or my son would latch on, and within seconds I felt horrendously depressed and anxious, as if the release of oxytocin triggered a panic response in me. They playfully call this “Sad Nipple Syndrome”, many people confuse it for a repressed memory of sexual abuse, but really, it’s related to a phenomenon known as Depressive Milk Ejection Reflex and is believed to be because of a rapid, brief reduction of dopamine immediately before milk let-down, but I wonder if for me it has more to do with oxytocin.

Now I’m not trying to martyr myself when I say this, because largely, I find breastfeeding very rewarding, not to mention practical, and money-saving, and it’s my favourite time of the evening -- when my son is cuddling me, watching his bedtime shows, and nursing. And I’m not battling through some horrendous feeling in order to do that, and really, I’d mostly got used to it. But just recently, near the end of the pregnancy I’m having now, I’m experiencing that familiar sense of dread, anxiety, depression and need to escape when he latches on, and I felt it the other night when I was expressing, and I felt it recently after (hehe) an orgasm. I mean, when it comes to dopamine, I’m fucked. I’m bipolar and I take, to be exact about the dosage, a metric ton of quetiapine (Seroquel) every day just to keep on an even keel, which is an antipsychotic which means its sole purpose is to tell my dopamine to shut the fuck up for five seconds. I’m used to having my dopamine function in swells and droughts. But oxytocin, fucking hell. I have antisocial personality disorder. It makes sense that something about the bonding hormone makes me feel uneasy, or even unwell, like I need to escape the situation. I’ve always said, something about myself and my disorder that I kind of despise, is how I have this bizarre drive to fight my way out of any and all groups I find myself in. Groups of friends, colleagues, schoolmates, peers of any kind, I will try with all my might to be part of the group, then when I realise how cynical I am about that, I will try to at least appear to be part of the group for Machiavellian reasons, and then when I begin hating myself because the pretence is too exhausting, I will find myself subconsciously picking the group apart. My lack of empathy becomes hostile, and if anything, the most toxic trait I exhibit in these situations is to break the group up entirely. If I can’t have it, nobody can. It was worse when I was younger: at school, I’d lie about things one friend said about the other and watch arguments happen, delighting in the collapse of that friendship circle. I’d tell one the other stole from them, I’d tell the other that everyone is saying she spread a harmful rumour. I’ve even gone so far as to frame a person for theft just to watch the fallout. I did that when I was about 8, I did it again when I was 10. I did it a third time in my teens. It was kind of my MO. I’m not proud of that spiteful need to isolate people from loving interaction just because I was so afraid of it. Okay, I’m a little proud of pulling it off. The ease with which you could snap apart even close bonds confirmed everything I loved and hated about how I saw the world: sociability is a lie and empathy is a cool trick to use against people. Even as an adult, whilst not maliciously and actively trying to hurt people any more, I have found reasons to leave groups under a black cloud. I was a poet once, and I hated all my contemporaries except for a few. I used the people I hated the most, got where I wanted to be, and fucked off forever because the game got boring. I did the same when I was a musician. When I was a student. When I was doing both my undergraduate degrees. My God, my need to be antisocial is so strong, it’s ruining my careers.

Now, we all know that research on ASPD is quite scant. They don’t really want to know much about us except for the fact we prefer bitter tasting things, or that people want to fuck us, or that we dig easily accessible rap music. What is out there about us is mostly inconclusive, or the conclusions drawn are highly subjective -- I featured one on this blog a long time ago for example that said we are more likely to use expressive, emotive and loaded language when talking about our life experiences, and the researchers used their personal judgements to conclude that this was further evidence of our heartlessness, which was fucking hilarious. Heaven forfend we might be seen as humans for five seconds. Anyway, today when searching around to see if there’s any chemical link to ASPD and oxytocin, I found this. If you don’t have access to it, that’s fine, it was a study from last year that looked into this very relationship, to see if oxytocin treatment could improve outcomes for antisocial people both with and without diagnosis. The research itself was more an inquiry into an aggregate of 36 previously done studies (because to actually do new research would cost money that needs to be spent on finding out if we ever yawn or if our eyes look weird or if we give a shit if someone jumps up behind us dead scary like and says “boo” or some shit). Results again were inconclusive, but something interested was noted: oxytocin was largely associated with a reduction in criminal/amoral/antisocial behaviour, but in some, had an opposite effect - that is to say, antisocials sometimes respond to oxytocin with hostility toward their loved ones. 

So why is that? Well, there aren’t any answers right now and “further high quality, large sample-size studies are required” (so, let’s not all hold our breath at once), but do I have a theory? You bet I do! 

We know that personality disorders, especially cluster-b, come from neglect and trauma. We can theorise that antisocials have a lack of empathy because we weren’t taught it, or maybe we had emotionally manipulative parents that would prey upon our empathy and later use it to harm us so we learned to be cynical of it, maybe we had to learn how to fake empathy toward our abusive parents so they’d stop beating the shit out of us for five seconds, maybe we learned the language of violence and aggression because it was the language we were taught at home, and maybe we fought our way out of social groups because we were taught not to have friends, or our parents only really loved us when we reflected their own hateful, selfish and volatile traits back to them, so we learned not only that love was pointless, but actively rejecting it was favourable. There are lots of reasons why a person might develop antisocial personality disorder. So surely it makes sense, that if we learn these antisocial behaviours, we also learn to be antisocial to a chemical process in our bodies that is imploring us to be the exact opposite? Doesn’t it make sense that if we feel love, bonding, connection, our instinct is to panic and fight it? To feel sad, to want to cry? And if we don’t know how to cry or connect to that part of ourselves because we never learned emotional intelligence, doesn’t it make sense we���d then convert that feeling into something else, something immediate and easy? Like anger? Like rage? Antisocial people experience everything in primaries: blue, red, yellow. Generic bad, rage, and generic good. When we need to access a secondary or tertiary emotion (something orange like homesickness? Or something even magenta like... fucking... humiliation?), we have to channel it back into one of those primary colours, something we can understand. So, generic good, generic bad, and red red rage are all we have. Oxytocin? Bonding? Who knows where that belongs. Could be any of the three. And let’s be honest, this isn’t restricted purely to antisocial personality disorder. Narcissists respond to love and bonding with a push-back, so do borderlines and histrionics. It all comes out different, but it all comes from the same place: don’t you fucking dare love me. The only person in my life I feel that immediate, unwavering bond with, is my son. Maybe that’s why I’ve been able to breastfeed him despite the sadness and panic of it all, because the initial reaction to the oxytocin is the hurdle and not the reward, and after that I can get to it properly, to look at him and feel intense love, empathy and joy. Maybe it’s evolutionary, the truth of it is when it comes to my children, I don’t care what the mechanism is that makes me love them the way I do or how it ties into my disorder. But how I feel about friends, lovers, and other family members is up for scrutiny, my own scrutiny at that. 

So as I sit here wondering why it’s hard for me to experience oxytocin, I wonder how the rest of you feel. Do you have a good relationship to it? What does it do for your empathy? When you perform a good deed, do you feel warm and fuzzy, or is it a logical step for you? How do you access love? Is it a decision, or a gut instinct? And for christ’s sake, when you have sex, are you doing it to grab hold of the oxytocin, or fight it off? 

[selfharmer-problems]

I have been emotionally abused by both parents and after a while I began to think I has bipolar and my mum said it was hormones and me being a drama queen. that was all like a year ago, I still cut- trying to stop. I'm going counselling now and more recently I began to think that I may have bpd. How do I tell someone without getting the same reaction?? X

It’s important to know that psychs/counselors won’t respond to things like that in the way that your parents are. most of them are understanding and want you to be honest about your experiences. When I went to see my psych, I told her “I’m pretty sure I had borderline” and she was just kind of like, “okay” and as I continued to see her she was kind of like, “yup” and shes told me that she confirmed my diagnoses but we usually don’t even talk about it much because we just focus on things that are problems which might stem from borderline or whatever, but the focus isn’t typically on the diagnosis but sometimes the diagnosis and talking about your history of trauma or whatever might explain what is going on, but counselors are there to teach you about how to handle what is going on. It’s really frustrating to have your parents discount you and gaslight you like that and can make you second guess yourself and make you scared to talk to other people about things that your parents responded negatively to. So from a starting point you could tell your general practitioner, who could help you manage meds (unless they feel the need to refer you to a psychiatrist, for example if they have tried to switch around your meds and its not working) and they could refer you to therapists. Therapists can have different qualifications, licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs), psychologists, and psychiatrists can confirm diagnoses if that is what you are looking for. However, it does take some time of talking to you to confirm it and determine if it is something else. If your parents are still cover your insurance, especially if you live in the US, you might need to talk to them about wanting to see your doctor. I’m not quite sure how confidentiality and insurance works in places with socialized medicine, but if you’re on your own plan you’re in the clear. If you’re using your parents insurance you might need to talk to them about it, especially considering that it is going to show up on statements and such, even if you take the steps to basically steal your insurance information. If you can’t afford that, or can’t work that out, I would recommend trying to find a community mental health center and getting an appointment with an LCSW, there might be a waiting list, but they tend to be a little cheaper and work on sliding scale and also tend to have a good understanding of how environment and biology and all those other things impact mental health (I’m studying to be a social worker so I might be biased). But yeah an LCSW would be able to confirm your diagnosis for much cheaper, but I would recommend not necessarily focusing on it. You can tell your therapist “I think I have bpd” and they’ll probably be like, “okay” or even ask about what symptoms you have or what makes you think that you have it. But keep in mind that it might take some time for them to confirm it and it relies a lot on you being able to disclose your history of symptoms and trauma, and they’re typically trained not to discuss diagnoses with clients (because clients can become focused on diagnosis and stop treatment after reaching a diagnosis, its also related to problems of identifying with your mental illness which can make it hard to address problematic behaviors, you’ve probably seen the people on this website like, “well I can harass my partner and be mad at them for going out without me because I have bpd” that’s an example of people “hanging their hats” on their diagnosis and not moving forward in growing in strength and resilience and learning less harmful coping mechanisms. But ya know, after years and years of being emotionally abused you start to think that the way that your parents respond to situations and what you say is how everyone is going to respond because you don’t really know anything else. Therapists are taught to never be dismissive, gaslight, or discount what you are saying. because the way that you interpret and experience the world is key to understanding you as a unique person with unique experiences and problems that can be worked on. They want to hear what you think about yourself and your situation. I think that if you told your counselor about this that they would interpret it as the way that you see your experiences and would also give you some credit by adding it to the things to watch out for. people talk a lot of shit on self diagnosis but every single self diagnosis I’ve given to my therapists has been confirmed, whereas doctors and parents misdiagnosed me for years. If they don’t confirm it they might be able to talk about why and their other theories. sometimes therapists and psychs can be tentative about diagnosing people with personality disorders while they are young and their personalities are still developing, however, recognizing if someone is going down the path of developing a personality disorder is important too, because many of us start showing symptoms in adolescence and then those symptoms continue into adulthood, but a lot of pain could be avoided by addressing those problems earlier. - Adrienne