Disorder stuff.....

[Chad is Dead]

I've been told I have social anxiety disorder, clinical depression, and bipolar disorder and theres a possibility that I might be psychotic. I don't feel like I'm crazy but was just wondering if anyone on here had any experience witht these problems........please pm me or go ahead and post it....I just want to know if I should trust the doctors and what now.

[V8 Beast]

Raises hand...

 

Social anxiety... check

I hate crowds of people, and go into fight or flight mode at random times when I feel uncomfortable (part of the reason I forced myself to go out two to three times a week last year).

 

Clinical depression... used to have it

The depression thing had 1 million factors involved, but I got over that by training myself to think positive. Learning not to let your mind think negative thoughts is one of the hardest things to learn.

 

Bipolar disorder... check

Still havnt found a way to get past this one. Anger management councelling has helped me to stop breaking things. Although it took 4 different therapists before I found one that could tell me things I didnt already know.

 

Psychotic... probably but I'm too good at bullshitting for anyone to truly ever find out . I do my best to stay away from conflict because I lose the ability to control myself. My entire body goes numb, I start crying, then I come to later on but cant remember anything that happened. That scares the mess out of me!!

[Dr. Pomade]

There's no longer such thing as a "social anxiety disorder," as it's the colloquial term used for the more technically accurate diagnostic term of Social Phobia. There are also several other disorders in which anxiety in social situations is or can be a key feature, including Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia and Avoidant Personality Disorder.

 

"Clinical depression" is a colloquial term for Major Depressive Disorder. A Major Depressive Disorder is characterized by a number of symptoms (e.g., a depressed mood, anhedonia, concentration problems, appetite disturbance, insomnia, thoughts of death or dying, feelings of hopelessness or helplessness, excessive guilty, indecisiveness) that persist for two weeks or longer and cause clinically significant distress or impairment.

 

"Bipolar Disorder" is an incomplete diagnostic term. Technically, there are two types of Bipolar Disorder: Bipolar I Disorder and Bipolar II Disorder. I'll save you the boring differentiation between the two, and instead focus on Bipolar I Disorder, which tends to be the most often cited/discussed of the two. Bipolar I Disorder is the term used for the colloquial "manic-depression," and, in its most traditional form, it is characterized by recurrent episodes of mania and recurrent episodes of major depression. An episode of major depression is defined by symptoms mentioned previously with respect to a Major Depressive Disorder. Mania is a pathological mood state characterized by expansive and/or irritable mood, excessive energy, psychomotor agitation, a decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, grandiosity, pressured speech, distractibility, inattentiveness, and feelings of euphoria that typically spans for three to seven days and causes clinically significant impairment and/or distress.

 

Psychosis is arguably the most severe form of psychiatric illness. Briefly, psychosis is evident when an individual has lost touch with reality. The more common symptoms of psychosis are hallucinations (e.g., seeing and hearing things that aren't there), delusions (e.g., fixed false beliefs, such as the notion that you're Jesus Christ), and gross disorganization of speech and behavior (e.g., word salad). I'd be a little worried if my doctor was telling me I was psychotic.

 

EDIT: Hope this helps. Not sure what exactly you wanted to know, so I just kind of threw this out there.

[MrMeanGreen]

John, what the fuck do you know about any of this? You Googled this shit.

 

Speaking of, you must have a psychosis. You are Jesus, right?

[copperhead]

There's no longer such thing as a "social anxiety disorder," as it's the colloquial term used for the more technically accurate diagnostic term of Social Phobia. There are also several other disorders in which anxiety in social situations is or can be a key feature, including Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia and Avoidant Personality Disorder.

 

Think you could go into more detail about this part? I've had issues with crowds and being around people I don't know throughout my life, and I'd like to learn more about it.

[TheHaze]

Think you could go into more detail about this part? I've had issues with crowds and being around people I don't know throughout my life, and I'd like to learn more about it.

+1

[thorne]

Its hard man, I know I live with Bipolar II with Rapid Cycling every day. There are allot of things that can help. It took me 3 years to find a medication that helped stablize me out with out some bad effects.

 

It's something I've learned to live with and anyone on the board or IRL that knows me knows the changes that I've made and how much of a diffrent person I've become since I took control of my life.

 

 

There are times I get so upset or angry that I just wanna destroy things and its the control to stop from going off on someone on CR or wanting to just give up completely that takes allot to learn.

 

If your truly having issues and just need to talk I've been threw allot. I'm not going into to much detail but trust me I've been down a long road.

[sol740]

You guys don't know the history of psychiatry !!! Glib ... stop .. glib ... don't be so ...

[87GT]

I is depressed. Cries.

[Tractor]

I know I got this one, social anxiety, seems a lot of people in my family have it. Lots of lefties too, and I bet now days if I was a kid in school they'd label me with some form of autism. Actually social anxiety disorder is a symptom of autism anyway. Schools have begun to realize that the people they used to label ADHD, and "learning disabled" just have different wiring in their brains and learn in different ways. They understand things in different ways and make the population diverse. Most of these people used to end up in technical fields such as auto repair or welding because they got sent to the local trade school due to their "different" way of learning. Hopefully the system has learned they shouldn't be told they aren't worth teaching like they did in the late 70's through the mid 90's.

 

I'm sure I'm nuts too, but thats just my hillbilly coming out:-)

 

Evan

[Dr. Pomade]

Think you could go into more detail about this part? I've had issues with crowds and being around people I don't know throughout my life, and I'd like to learn more about it.

 

Social Phobia (or the colloquial "social anxiety disorder") involves avoidance of (or dislike of) social situations in which the individual perceives himself or herself to be subject of possible scrutiny. It is the possibility of scrutiny (i.e., negative appraisal from others) that provokes the anxiety reaction in the individual with a Social Phobia.

 

Social Phobia has an exceptional amount of overlap with Avoidant Personality Disorder. In fact, many experts in the field contend that they are, in essence, the same disorder (i.e., they could be plotted on, say, the same continuum of psychopathology), with the Avoidant Personality Disorder representing a more pervasive, generalized, and severe form of Social Phobia. Notably, those who are diagnosed with an Avoidant Personality Disorder are often diagnosed with a Social Phobia, and vice versa. My clinical approach to this topic goes kind of like this: if you tell me that you've always been phobic of social situations because you don't like the idea of people scrutinizing you or thinking of you negatively, and you tell me that you've been that way since your childhood, and you tell me that it's never really went away (i.e., it has persisted across your lifespan), then I'm likely to diagnose you with an Avoidant Personality Disorder; but if you tell me that you weren't like that as a child, and it more recently developed (i.e., during, say, college or your early adulthood), then I'm likely to go with the Social Phobia diagnosis. All in all, though, this tends to be very academic (i.e., "splitting hairs"), and the take home message should be that the two disorders are essentially the same and both involve being really anxious because you don't like the notion of others' scrutinizing you.

 

So, let's say your dislike or anxiousness with respect to being around others has nothing to do with notions that they may not like you. Okay, well, we can effectively rule out both the Social Phobia and Avoidant Personality Disorder diagnoses. Instead, two other disorders, Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia and Agoraphobia Without History of Panic Disorder, become applicable. You may notice that the common word among both those diagnoses is "Agoraphobia," which, literally translated from its Latin roots, means "fear of the marketplace," but, more clinically, means a fear of being placed in situations in which escape may be difficult or the individual fears experiencing panic-like symptomatology. Panic-like symptomatology is related to autonomic nervous system arousal and involves what you'd think would happen in the event of autonomic (or sympathetic) nervous system overload: sweating, trembling, a fear of impending doom, a feeling of being suffocated, hyperventilation, numbness in the extremities, and so forth. So, people that have agoraphobia get really worked up (i.e., they get "panicky") in certain situations that involve being around peoples or in particular places.

 

There's a continuum on which you can place panic-like symptomatology. On one end, there's very little panic-like symptomatology, or none. On the other end, there are full blown panic attacks, where the person absolutely freaks out, thinks they are dying or having a heart attack, and is completely off the charts with respect to autonomic nervous system arousal. If you have panic attacks and, as a result of your panic attacks, you avoid going out in public because you don't want to have a panic attack in, say, the grocery store with a bunch of people around, then you have a Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia. If, though, you don't have panic attacks, but still get worked up in certain situations (e.g., in elevators, on planes, in waiting rooms, in crowded places), then you have Agoraphobia Without History of Panic Disorder. (You may notice that they key difference is the presence of panic attacks - if you have full blown panic attacks, then you win the prize of a Panic Disorder diagnosis; if you don't, then you don't qualify, and instead get put in the Agoraphobia Without History of Panic Disorder line.) Remember, in order to be a true disorder, the symptomatology must cause either clinically significant distress or impairment. In other words, sometimes you can have some traits or aspects of a particular disorder, but fall below the threshold necessary to establish the actual diagnosis because your symptoms are not severe enough to cause significant distress or significant impairment.

 

Hope that helped. Let me know if it didn't or you'd like me to expatiate on something else.

[Tractor]

Just being in a job were I end up walking in to customer offices all day long, introducing myself, and making an attempt at being professional while I listen to them and repair their copy machines has helped a lot with social anxiety for me. Also being the team lead doesn't hurt either since I end up doing a lot of talking when we're in a group. I've learned to relax and just be my usual silly self.

 

Evan

[99BlownYellowGT]

So is there a medicine that can help out with this stuff. Without having crazy side effects or being addictive?

[Chad is Dead]

Its hard man, I know I live with Bipolar II with Rapid Cycling every day. There are allot of things that can help. It took me 3 years to find a medication that helped stablize me out with out some bad effects.

 

It's something I've learned to live with and anyone on the board or IRL that knows me knows the changes that I've made and how much of a diffrent person I've become since I took control of my life.

 

 

There are times I get so upset or angry that I just wanna destroy things and its the control to stop from going off on someone on CR or wanting to just give up completely that takes allot to learn.

 

If your truly having issues and just need to talk I've been threw allot. I'm not going into to much detail but trust me I've been down a long road.

 

 

Ya I have a big problem w/ destroying things, as well as myself at times. I've broke my ps2, a fan, a clock, alarm clock, xbox in fits of rage. Hell, I even ran through 2 wooden stopped signs one night and fucked up the front of my car and popped a tire. Also I'll check in w/ the self mutilation like cutting wrists, arms, and chest, punching myself in the face until I had 2 black eyes and a huge bump on my forehead, and putting ciggaretes out on myself. I just want to thank everyone on here that know where I'm coming from. It's nice knowing your not alone.

[Guest Hal]

Social anxiety and clinical depression went hand it hand for me. Both are gone so, that is nice.

 

My dad is rapid cycling bipolar. In two years we still haven't been able to find something that works to make him right again. Constant affairs, spending everything we have, etc...

 

He is also psychotic. He saw people climbing up the library to get him on day.

 

 

If you are engaging in self-mutilation and other similar things, you need to get some more intensive help.

[Kevin R.]

 

 

If you are engaging in self-mutilation and other similar things, you need to get some more intensive help.

 

i.e. burning yourself with cigarettes

 

Go talk to somebody man, seriously.

[copperhead]

Doc, thanks a bunch for the info. The first couple paragraph's more or less describe me well. As for panic attacks, I can remember experiencing that once, and it was fairly mild, so I don't think that part really applies to me. I think I'm starting to work my way out of all of this though.

 

The Agoraphobia part really strikes home, as I tend to find myself, when entering a place, paying attention to the layout of where I'm at and figuring out how to get out quickly if I need to. I don't notice myself doing it quite so much these days, so I'm either not doing it so much, or rather, it's simply become a reflex, I'm not sure.

 

I've always had trouble with speaking in social situations, although becoming friends with people that are much more outgoing and easy to talk to has helped with that, but I'm still not quite there. It's never really been a problem with work, but I'm familiar with the people I work with.

 

Thanks again for taking the time to type all of that up. I'm sure there are others that suffer from these problems on here.