Hi, I'm brand new to the forum, but figured I might as well jump into it.
Er, this is long.
I feel I both know damn well what's wrong 'wrong with me' as well as at a complete loss to how it 'should' be labelled. (well "incoherently overcomplicated and a mindfuck" is kinda succinct?)
I feel I'm approaching an age where if I don't get some career stuff sorted it's going to get exponentially harder to get on top of it, and that that is actually quite a big deal beyond materialistic concerns ... as without it I'll struggle to facilitate activities to keep friendships going / make new ones last, in a close sense. ...Like I want to be able to keep & make close friends, not just acquaintances, or just be friends with people because we both find ourselves "trapped" in life. If you know what I mean.
Drifting slowly away from friends I've had for a decade, although plenty of people have reemerged in life despite years of disconnect, so you never know I guess. A lot of close friends I've made in the past few years are either very situational or I feel like I'm so far behind them. & I worry the good friends my age will also drift away if I don't get my shit together.
& to be honest, the biggest mental health thing that interferes with me getting on top of career concerns ... is pretty much just *~*anxiety*~*
But my uh, diagnostic/presentation history is ... complicated.
Like eighteen (18) mental health diagnoses long (and another four that were questioned), albeit the overwhelming majority were diagnosed as a teen, and the vast majority were later removed before I was an adult.
Primary diagnosis in teens only ever oscillated between Depression/Dysthymia & Generalised Anxiety. Diagnosed with Schizotypal, Borderline, and Histrionic as a teen. BPD was one of the many diagnoses removed before I was an adult (I did years of ACT, CBT, DBT, and so on as a teen).
Would have been nice if I were informed of the more complicated diagnoses as a teen, or had psychosis or dissociation explained, but the past is in the past. Anyhow
Years later as an adult when I sought professional help for mental health again, I "presented as Schizoaffective", diagnosed with a dissociative disorder when I needed a diagnosis to put to paper. Was diagnosed with Schizophreniform. The concluded diagnosis was C-PtSD.
A medically qualified friend (not treating me), who doesn’t think there’s a difference between BPD & C/PtSD, just thinks I have ADHD & Bipolar with past PtSD.
I basically don't function without antipsychotics (they help me with more than just sleep), mood stabilisers & antidepressants, and occasionally anxiolytics when life really gets messy. Focus and speak normally on stimulants (pretty much the only time that I speak normally, without bouncing around topics erratically or hyper-fixating).
With the general self-care routines, medication regime (anxiolytics and stimulants are both rare), and the dance to balance work/social/rest, I manage or avoid: psychosis, hypomania, depression, or extended/extensive dissociation. ...It's a fulltime job, but it's one I'm okay at, at last.
So like ... it's been a hell of a journey. That said, generally it feels like the universe is conspiring for me, not against me. And it's felt like that for quite a long time now.
But, the lifelong experience, and having both been and dealt with "impossible people", sometimes leaves me feeling so disconnected from people, but able to "get" pretty much anyone. People aren't bad. Some of us are just more ...messed up than others. Some are more ambitious/compassionate/curious than others, and people show/do things in different ways. People and reality are complex aha
Getting to the crux of it is, knowing how I got here, and what was/is my responsibility, how I made life harder, and so on;
I'm still here, with an inordinate amount of anxiety which flares up in some really key contexts that it along with excessively high schizotypy and sheer exasperation, makes it really difficult to get from where I am to where I want to be, in part because I know it is a large jump, but one that can be reasonably made, and can't exactly be broken down smaller (hard to explain without totally shedding anonymity), leaves me maybe looking like I don't have a sense of direction. And a good part of that *look* is that I'm deprioritising quite a bit of more shareable fun stuff - time, energy, and money are commodities.
The reason I care how it looks to some, is pretty much down to that I don’t want people to just decide that I’m a lost cause and move on. But that concern probably adds to the anxiety when I need to do things to advance career / stabilise material concerns, because it adds more pressure to it.
So yeah, that’s pretty much the “Something’s not right”.
I think the easiest solution before I make the career jump that I’m aiming for, is to just find something a bit more casually fun and shareable that I can fit in my juggling act.
The constant introspection, “am I being too clinically-odd / emotionally-or-stylistically theatrical / etc. etc”, contributes to the anxiety and interferes with socialising, but they aren’t baseless (StPD / HPD … a confusing achievement in ignorance). And I really do need to be careful of them in work settings. I mean even when I’m hypomanic in social settings, that can generally be managed (these days).
Um yeah, thanks for reading, and an especially big thank you to anyone that read all of this.
I know I’m not the only one that feels like managing their mental health to be a full-time job.
Regardless, I hope you all have a good week.
~quiescentGT
