Hellooooo

[stephoodle]

I seem to have done an incredibly rude thing and posted somewhere else on the forum before introducing myself. Poop.

I've only just started listening to the podcast (heard it recommended on I Should Be Writing, and also saw there was an episode with Marc Maron and I'd just picked up the WTF podcast a few weeks ago). I can tell, though, that I will continue through the old episodes obsessively, as I am wont to do with most interesting media thingies I find. Thingie is a technical term.

I'm 29 (will be 30 in February...), an American, but I've lived in Britain for the last three years. Married for slightly longer than three years (husband and I got married a bit earlier than we'd planned so we could stop doing the long distance thing, and thankfully it's worked out well).

I'm an only child. My mom was bipolar (sadly undiagnosed until about 6 months before she died in 2005), and my dad drank (drinks?) too much and yelled a lot (you could say he was verbally abusive, I guess). He had been hit as a kid, so thought that he was doing okay since he didn't hit me it was okay (except one slap one time, and he was distraught over it). He hadn't realized that yelling and being so enraged could be damaging to a kid. Meanwhile, my mom was trying to play me against him, and it all just went to crap when I was in high school. I was really sheltered, and didn't have a lot of friends. I find it really difficult to connect to people genuinely. I pretty much always feel false, which makes me wonder if I'm a psychopath. But surely I'm too emotional for that? Just detached then, I suppose. I have mood swings and do experience manic episodes when I'm really hyper and talk way too quickly, and much more intense depressive episodes. But I've not been diagnosed as bipolar myself, and though one doctor has said it's likely I have it, another was pretty sure I didn't. And being on the NHS, it's not really all that likely that I'd get to see an actual psychiatrist any time in the near future, if at all. (Which weirds me out, as when I was on Kaiser in the States, I could call the psych department directly and go from there! But I guess that's public versus private healthcare for you; both have there positives and negatives.)

I'm finding it really hard to talk about stuff here, and like I haven't had it so bad so why should I be having such a hard time with life? Sure, my dad was horrible to live with, and my mother was controlling and manipulative, I've been through a divorce that was more like a breakup with paperwork, and I have about six of my close relatives die within the span of two years a while back. But I wasn't beaten or raped or molested or abandoned... there's part of me that's constantly telling myself to suck it up, and that everyone else seems to be getting along just fine, so maybe I'm just overly lazy and apathetic and that I'm making it all up. Doesn't help that some doctors here make me feel the same way.

But then I realize that I've avoided leaving the house unless I had no way to get out of it for months at a time (I've had times that it's taken me a good half hour of getting ready and walking towards and away from the door before I made it outside just to go to get milk or something), or I have insomnia AGAIN, or I've picked at my skin and my scalp enough to make it bleed and never heal, or I feel like stabbing myself in the face or peeling away my face or cutting my fingers of with shears or doing some other form of harm (even though I never do any of that, nor do I want to and will not ever do those things, but I always picture it in my mind so clearly and clinically... does anyone else do that?), etc. etc. etc.

Augh, sorry, verbal diarrhea. I am embarrassed that I've just had to look up the correct spelling of "diarrhea" in order to make the red squiggly line go away, even though I seem to be okay with it being under "augh" as that's not a real word. I'll shut up now.

So, uh, hello! And sorry I said so much here. I just started typing and it all fell out. And that's not even the half of it, heh.

[manuel_moe_g]

Hello, stephoodle, welcome to the forum!

there's part of me that's constantly telling myself to suck it up, and that everyone else seems to be getting along just fine, so maybe I'm just overly lazy and apathetic and that I'm making it all up. Doesn't help that some doctors here make me feel the same way.

Please don't think that. You deserve better.

Time and working on yourself really does improve things. No bolt out of the blue needs to happen to save you, it is a reliable process available to you now - unfortunately sometimes there are setbacks and it does require patience with yourself.

We here are all cheering for you, and your greatest today and tomorrow! Cheers!

[tangerine]

Hey steph, sounds to me like you are very off-balance in terms of your energy centres / chakras. Are you familiar with this? If you are ever down in London gimme a shout on 07895105028 (my website is www.kajsapalsson.com). I'm not promoting myself here, I'd be happy to help you for free. I just can't put in writing how I would like to help you, sounds more like an energy job to me! Would be interesting to meet and see what we can do!

Tang xxx

[stephoodle]

Thanks Tang. It's not really my kind of thing, but I'll give it a think.

[tangerine]

I've worked on a lot of people who didn't consider it their kind of "thing" but who were very surprised... Just sayin'