My 'issues'

A few more facts. Years later, I got into an argument with my mother in a room. There was nothing traumatic in it, but I did feel like I was losing my mind and having a meltdown. Since that point, I can't step foot in the room. I shield my eyes with my forearm if the door needs to be closed and I freak out when I see in there. It has been about 15 years since I last stepped foot in that room.

In my first few years of high school, I sat by myself at recesses. Then some kids (finally) invited me to play basketball with them. I played the sport religiously, but whenever they weren't playing I'd stand alone at the courts. Some times I tried to motivate myself to go to the library or something, but I could hardly budge a muscle in my legs. I felt emotionally paralyzed from doing anything spontaneous. The only thing that could get me to operate my legs was the bell.

I can no longer stand the sound of the bouncing ball in basketball and haven't played it for 20 years. I did try once but I had to stop the ball from bouncing and the other noises were too much. I left that behind with my old life.

I have more personal details that I can't go into.

One time I came within sight of that person and had to get away. I felt like a puppet on strings and walked into traffic, causing a bus to slam on its breaks. Unlike my hypnosis incident, I was in control but I didn't feel in total control (in control, but not quite total) of my legs which had to keep moving. A common experience I get is the widening of my eyes. It is shared between all experiences of apparent dissociation, especially the hypnosis, which might suggest it is part of the same continuum.

I have been diagnosed as BPD. There are arguments about the relationship between BPD and PTSD. I always thought C-PTSD was distinct from BPD, but I have since read some stuff that there have been attempts to classify BPD as C-PTSD, not incorporate it into C-PTSD. I tried asking this question of a PTSD forum but found the response rude and dismissive, and the administrator altered my post to omit what I felt were core details. In fact, the one response I got was that I do not meet the criteria of C-PTSD and that my diagnosis of BPD must be correct but in 2 PDF files I just got up they are talking about C-PTSD as an alternate diagnosis for BPD. There is a known thing in medicine (and it seems psychiatry as well) that if you tell people what you have been diagnosed with, they stop looking for potential alternate explanations. I have read of quite a few people who were diagnosed as BPD who got their diagnosis changed to C-PTSD after a very long time, yet according to the one response I got (before my post was deleted by admin because I talked of self-harm) this is not the case... it doesn't happen.

One issue I have with the BPD diagnosis is that I do not have a need to remain attached to people. In contrast, I choose to shut out people from my past life. I did use self-harm to try and remain attached to people in youth because I was disconnected from society and kept feeling like I had no other choice because my life had a deadline, like a time bomb (your life is over on xx:xx on the xx/xx/xx). I do not classify this as a time period where I experienced the range of symptoms I now experience. I now have intense aversions. I now react to sounds with self-harm. My predominant method of self-harming involves the banging of the head (an autistic characteristic; the reaction to sounds is punching the face, as it is more sustainable than cutting, and cutting was getting too severe, but I also bang my head into a wall when I get stressed). I never felt before like I was being erased from existence. I certainly never experienced my body hijacked by a program. If you asked me what I thought of hypnosis, I probably would have thought it was fake until that day when I experienced being relegated to a mere passenger in the vehicle that is my body (some amnesia was in there as well, I don't remember getting up or back to where I was, I was back right where I started in the same seated posture... it was as if I had dreamt it but the things that followed showed it had happened).

If I have BPD, I think it is likely a second thing overlaps, and I have since read a study saying PTSD overlaps with 58% of BPD people. I am pretty sure someday people will find that trauma is much more complicated than we now see it. It wasn't too long ago that we used to classify PTSD as solely a war condition. Now we have branched it out to all kinds of traumas. Why is it so wrong to suggest we are missing people? More stress prone people may have more internalized concepts of trauma, especially when they have no support (and even the complete opposite of support sometimes). If I was abused as a child, I've blocked it out (it doesn't seem to cause PTSD-like triggers). A lot of my past was impenetrable to me, like another life, but I have no reason to believe my recollection is any different to anyone elses. I will never subject myself to hypnotic therapy to bring any potential thing out, because I happen to believe with good cause that hypnosis (inserting anothers instructions in a person) is a cause for dissociative identity disorder (the last thing I need!). And besides, there is some private stuff in my head and no one has a right to invade it and false memories can be planted there by hypnotic suggestion anyway. If I had a classical trauma in my past, I may never know it.

(Bear in mind that my self-harm was extreme in ways apparently administrators don't like me mentioning so I can't go into a full colour description of that here, it does not involve just bruising, I was drenched in blood several times a day and self-harming sessions were almost continual for an average of 3 hours a day for the first 4 months; the sensitivities I was experiencing and the complete disregard by others may have been their own repeated emotional trauma?)

If it can be argued paranoid personality disorder is more likely than BPD to be linked with trauma, then maybe both conditions are traumatic conditions. I have also NEVER used illicit drugs (as that would be social), in case you think reading this that my experience may be in part triggered by such activity. Is it possible that my overdose on venlafaxine might have triggered a chemistry change in my brain that enhanced my sensitivity to sights and sounds?

I can't travel on a bus alone for the first many trips. I don't know why. One theory I have is that the mind just becomes chaotic and stressed and I lose track of what I'm looking for. My mind just gives up thinking about it. I get into a panic and stop nowhere near the place where I'm suppose to (say 5 minutes into a 20 minute trip). Because I can't travel freely, can barely speak in public (feel overwhelmed catching a taxi knowing I'd have to give instructions about where to go, also needed to write to my counsellor for the first few months before I could start to do more than nod my head), can't talk on the telephone, I shake too much to reproduce my signature, and have never known physical external friendship, I have a high level of dependence. One thing I have read for C-PTSD is that a level of dependence might be related to retriggering stressors without an external outlet, and I not only have dependence in childhood but it continued in adulthood with absolutely no help from society.

I guess this is where some women get to start poking their fingers and laugh at me calling me derogatory terms like a 'manchild'? I guess I should take solace in the fact that I'm far smarter than them.