Existetial despair? My story: a brief summary.

[QuickTwist]

My depression had nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the way I thought about things. Deeply introspective thoughts of pride and self worth compounded by bad experiences of not being accepted. I felt everything was pointless. There was no meaning to anything. I hated those around me, and they either had pity on me (which I also hated given my hugely independent nature) or hated me back. Of course looking back on it now I can see that there were some really cool individuals who did try to take the time to understand me, but I was evaluating thing in a pessimistic outlook and I couldn't see this.

Later in life, I would guess sophomore year or high school, my depression was now not the only thing I had to worry about. My depression, coupled with more bad circumstances, started to transform to schizoid type thinking. I had completely lost touch with reality and I had no way of getting back: like the under current slowly carrying me out to sea no matter how hard I struggled not to be. The hatred had subsided but I now felt apathy like you wouldn't believe. The only thing that kept me somewhat sane was wrestling (the sport). I loved it. It was intense, it was difficult, and it made me think. I would constantly be going over scenarios in my head and what I would do and how much effort it would take. I got really good at the double leg takedown which takes a lot of balls considering the energy to reward ratio but that is neither here nor there.

When I graduated from high school is when my schizoid thoughts became full blown schizophrenia in the form of schizoaffective disorder. I had extreme mood swings, racing thoughts and an irrational over analytical thought process. If you have seen 'A Beautiful Mind' or know the life story of John Nash it is exactly like that only I didn't have hallucinations of imaginary friends. (John Nash is said to be INTP so you might want to look into that if you really like being an INTP and haven't done so yet.) The Schizoaffective disorder type I have is pretty much a combination between bipolar and schizophrenia.

Right now I am doing very well and have exceeded almost everyone's expectations of what level of stress I can handle without loosing it. This too has been a challenge I enjoy: to improve my health from a mental standpoint. I still have the occasional paranoid thought here and there but it is nothing I can't handle. The silver lining to all this is that it has made me very emotionally stable (which sounds like an oxymoron) because I have worked so hard to improve my mental health. Another part that really helps is medication. I get an anti-psychotic shot every 2 weeks but have gone for about a week overdue with no symptoms at all (this is rare).

Why am I telling you this? Because some of you may have to deal with me for a long long time. I also like telling the story and am not ashamed that I have a mental illness. People need to be aware that mental illness is a medical problem just like a fractured ankle or broken rib.

Feel free to ask me any question you want in this thread and I will try to give a good answer.

 

[BigApplePi]

I wish you well, but have always been curious about this.

I get an anti-psychotic shot every 2 weeks but have gone for about a week overdue with no symptoms at all (this is rare).

Feel free to ask me any question you want in this thread and I will try to give a good answer.

If you go for a while with no symptoms, why couldn't you be building up just below the threshold? Then if the shot is right for you (according to professionals) and you don't take it and the psychosis pops up, you will be short of reason because of the psychosis to tell you to take the shot. So why not take the shot even wo symptoms just to be sure?

The same reasoning could be applied to:

I don't need a flu shot because I don't have the flu.
I don't need my umbrella because it's not raining.

 

[cheese]

Is that you in your avatar?

 

[Solitaire U.]

So why not take the shot even wo symptoms just to be sure?

Side effects of these meds can be rather brutal, IME.

 

[QuickTwist]

I wish you well, but have always been curious about this.
If you go for a while with no symptoms, why couldn't you be building up just below the threshold? Then if the shot is right for you (according to professionals) and you don't take it and the psychosis pops up, you will be short of reason because of the psychosis to tell you to take the shot. So why not take the shot even wo symptoms just to be sure?

The same reasoning could be applied to:

I don't need a flu shot because I don't have the flu.
I don't need my umbrella because it's not raining.

I lost track of time, mistakes happen, a lot when you have a mantle illness. Haven't missed a dose since.

Is that you in your avatar?

haha...

 

[BigApplePi]

Is that you in your avatar?

We know he never took up boxing ... afeared to get hit in the jaw.

 

[QuickTwist]

What do you mean?

 

[Pizzabeak]

Don't know what to tell ya, sorry man.

 

[Duxwing]

I'm glad to see that you've largely overcome your problems, and your story taught me that one should not overlook budding problems (e.g., self esteem, acceptance) lest they snowball into something awful.

Now stay on your meds!

-Duxwing

 

[QuickTwist]

Yeah, it sucks I and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but sometimes life gets in the way of life.

I definitely plan to stay on my meds. I will always have problems though.

Personally I can only remember 2 times I got hit in the jaw. One was by an elbow. I hit my elbow one time too. Both accidents.

 

[Brontosaurie]

cheesy as it sounds, you make much more sense to me now. also that was a beautifully written post and i must say you come through here.

 

[QuickTwist]

Side effects of these meds can be rather brutal, IME.

I have been very fortunate. I have virtually no side effects from medications.

cheesy as it sounds, you make much more sense to me now. also that was a beautifully written post and i must say you come through here.

I'm glad I could shed some light on the subject. The problem with me telling this story is that it can backfire and people avoid me like the plague. I figured this was a good place to tell the story because people here tend to understand better than your average Joe. I don't usually share this story unless I am committed.

http://youtu.be/JvEPQySaduw

This pretty much sums it up minus the anxiety and a couple of other things.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

My depression had nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the way I thought about things.

Later in life, I would guess sophomore year or high school, my depression was now not the only thing I had to worry about. My depression, coupled with more bad circumstances, started to transform to schizoid type thinking.

When I graduated from high school is when my schizoid thoughts became full blown schizophrenia in the form of schizoaffective disorder. I had extreme mood swings, racing thoughts and an irrational over analytical thought process.

Ditto. For me it started when I was 14. It led me to be expelled twice and spend 14 months in a... mental rehabilitation-like program... that was headed by a horrifically impersonal medicator-will-fix-all-your-problems-without-ever-physically-seeing-you-with-their-eyeballs and reeked of an insurance fraud ponzi scheme, but that's a different matter.

If you have seen 'A Beautiful Mind' or know the life story of John Nash it is exactly like that only I didn't have hallucinations of imaginary friends. (John Nash is said to be INTP so you might want to look into that if you really like being an INTP and haven't done so yet.)

I wonder if a certain type of individual is prone to thinking in terms of game theory? Naturally prone to understanding those terms?

Right now I am doing very well and have exceeded almost everyone's expectations of what level of stress I can handle without loosing it.

I think you're lucky in the sense that you were diagnosed at a younger age.

The silver lining to all this is that it has made me very emotionally stable (which sounds like an oxymoron) because I have worked so hard to improve my mental health.

This I agree with strongly. I may not be able to control when emotions appear and at what intensity, but I can direct exactly where they go like a goddamned wizard.

Another part that really helps is medication. I get an anti-psychotic shot every 2 weeks but have gone for about a week overdue with no symptoms at all (this is rare).

I refuse prescribed medication (perhaps you do also, which is why you get the injection), perhaps because it's been pushed on me time and time again without any investigation of the cause of what it was supposed to be treating. I sometimes wonder what additional effects they may have caused.

This is something I've kept relatively private for some time, but I think it's time to release it. I also have the schizoaffective biopolar type diagnosis. Here is the quantitative portion of my psychological evaluation.

This is the quote that allowed me to do this:

I also like telling the story and am not ashamed that I have a mental illness. People need to be aware that mental illness is a medical problem just like a fractured ankle or broken rib.

I believe it highlights a source of the pain I've experienced.

Spoiler

I have a bachelors in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology, which I love tremendously. I was in graduate school for Ecology at a large and fairly prestigious university, but I became very manic, delusional, and paranoid halfway through and stopped going to class. I lived in my office for 4 months, sleeping on the floor, and did not leave that room until after dark when the building was empty. I'd become full blown psychotic, and bombarded with suicidal thoughts and urges. I'd catch myself hallucinating, find myself unaware of the position of my own body in physical space. I was drowning in fear. I was afraid to buy food, use the restroom, or talk to anyone; afraid of everyone but my students, ironically. My desk still contains about 30lbs of paperwork that was never passed back.

My advisor had suggested that I drop my courses and take a semester off, but it took me 2 months to turn in the paperwork. I just found it that difficult to talk to my professors to get them to sign their name. The anxiety was tremendous, and I distracted myself from it by theorizing. I turned it in after the official deadline, meaning it would need to go through an appeal process to be approved. It was accompanied by letters from myself, my advisor, my professors, and my psychiatrist explaining what I was going through. It was denied.

I still have that e-mail, explaining how I wasn't good enough for their bureaucratic procedures. Thinking about it is one of the few things that makes me angry. I don't think they considered it on a medical basis, I believe they wanted me off campus at all costs because of my diagnosis and a misunderstanding of its meaning and outlook. I feel that I fit a certain stereotype. Several shootings had occurred recently at the time, both involving shooters in their early 20s with schizo-prefix tendencies, James Holmes and Adam Lanza.

My free tuition, teaching stipend, research grants, health insurance... all disappeared with that email. My advisor left to take another job. Even talking about it now like this depresses me. I failed a large number of people who put themselves on the line for me. Parents, professors, advisors, students, volunteer co-workers, fellow researchers. For an extrovert like me, an ENTP, this is perhaps the ultimate form of self-disappointment; the collapse of my entire structure, my entire... habitat. I lost my will.

I've just sort of been festering ever since, living mostly with my grandmother because my mom insists that I'm making it all up. How could her brilliant son not succeed? I haven't had a good relationship with her for a long time, and this made it worse.

What helped/happened since.

Spoiler

I discovered Dabrowski's positive disintegration.

My approach to life has sense been to stop pushing boundaries and, rather, sit back, become comfortable, and 1. Enable others to accomplish the broader things I'd like to see done before I die 2. Maintain my interests more as hobbies than as a career. Research and self-guided learning fill my spare time, they aren't required of me by some higher figure or institution.

I fell in love with teaching while I was in grad school, so I'm in the process of becoming certified to teach middle and high school, but I'm at least 18 months away from that goal. I know I can be a damn good teacher.

In the mean time, I've got a lot of free time on my hands and a strong dislike for having a boss. I've taken up trading stocks, buying at estate sales, and selling things online and at the local flea market (the latter two are tax free...). And of course hunting, fishing, and a lot of theorizing in general.

After much research (peer-reviewed, scientific) I started using cannabis and harmala. The former has been shown empirically to increase neurogenesis in the HPA axis, the portion of the brain responsible for fear and an important player in paranoia as well as PTSD. The latter is a partial and very safe and inexpensive MAOI that works well as an antidepressant. I occasionally use L-dopa when I'm in a mixed episode and both in a low mood and unable to concentrate.

 

[QuickTwist]

I can tell I am much more introverted than you. For one I don't feel such an impulse to engage with the outside world. I hardly said a word during school from 7th grade to high school. That being said, I have had my obsessive tendency patterns and got into poker and other things like video games where I will try to improve on a certain strategy over and over and over until I feel it is perfect. Only thing is I completely disregard the game I am playing when I see the end in sight or can tell how it will pan out.

I was never diagnosed with PTSD that I am aware of although I have thought there was a chance I might have it. Its really hard to give a correct diagnosis to people that have such a complex dilemma.

Any idea what the true cause is? I'm sure a number of things have to be in place so a commonality is needed.

It seems like you have/had it worse than me, although some of my hallucinations/delusions were far too real and truly horrific. I already had an overactive imagination so I thought of the most horrific things and thought they were going to happen to me.

[Edit] I took a quick look at the link. Basically what I got from it was what doesn't kill you makes you stronger put simply of course.

Honestly I don't know what I think about this theory. Hard to tell if there is any validity in it or not. Who can say? My opinion is that hardship has the potential to build character and if you struggle it can change you for sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean for the better. I like to think about homeless people in this regard. No doubt that they have seen some pretty tough times if they are a veteran. But does that really give them something I don't have? I don't like to think so but who am I to say? Its difficult enough to know yourself let alone know yourslef and what you've struggled though and how that changed you and compare that to really knowing someone else and what they have been though and how that has changed them and separate the difference between yourself and them and analyze whether you ended up having a more valued experience because of pain or, shall we say, loss?

IDK, I'm still grappling with the idea. I suppose it makes sense but given what I am prone to believing that isn't saying much.

Truth is I don't know who had/has it worse. Probably you but still I find a sense of accomplishment in that fact that I have had to work to get where I am today in getting over some obstacles. Having people who can somewhat support you and attempt to understand what you are going through is a tremendous help as well.

We both have had bad circumstances thrown in our way but how we ended up handling it are far different it seems. I try to focus on the positive things in life and that does help. Hope for one. Also I have no idea what I would be like without medication. I don't know how you do it. I would still be a crazed lunatic without meds.

I mean to say that we are both the same and both different at the same time. I think you get what I'm saying, right?

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0SKm2uoKX4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8gY0IT0CuA

Whoopsie, i originally posted the wrong version of the second video.
Corrected.

 

[QuickTwist]

Sorry, this comp I use for INTPf doesn't have the ability to play sound. In high school I was the definition of the strong silent type; and ripped as hell. Missed state by 1 match both junior and senior year. And thats all there is to say about that.

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

I think physical exercise is a good way of coping with depression.
It helps re-balancing the brain chemistry.

The second video says "Don't lose your [inner] Dinosaur!".