*Trigger Warning*
“She is quite shy and inhibited in social situations and may avoid others for fear of being hurt. She is likely to have very few friends and to be thought of as distant and hard to get to know. She is quiet and submissive, and she lacks self-confidence in dealing with other people. She is timid and unlikely to be interested in dating.” The above was written about me by a woman who knew me for all of 3 hours, the majority of which was spent testing my IQ, memory and mental and emotional disabilities. Somehow in 3 sentences, this stranger laid out what I had known for years but had never been able to explain to people. What she didn’t understand is that it is not that I am uninterested in having friends or dating, it’s that it is emotionally and physiologically impossible for me to do so. You may think I am overreacting but I am not. When I try to go out and do things and make friends or God forbid, go on a date, I end up either having a panic attack or crying in my apartment about how no one could ever love me. So what the hell is wrong with me? Because if someone could name what’s wrong, then they could validate me and tell me that they are proud of me for working so hard to overcome all of that social anxiety because they know just how hard it can be. But no one will because frankly, who even gives a shit about me. Furthermore, the patient is currently experiencing brief but intense episodes of sadness and anxiousness that can easily interfere with her already underdeveloped social judgment and social problem solving skills which is consistent with diagnostic criteria for ANXIETY DISORDER, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED [NOS] So not only do I have shitty social skills, I also have such bad anxiety and depression that I can’t even really try to overcome the social awkwardness because of all the panic attacks beforehand. In a world connected by internet and phones and public transit, I am an island on my own yelling for help but not speaking the same language as anyone else. I am lonely and sad and anxious and I hate myself for being so broken in so many different ways. Even while driven by poor coping skills and weak social judgment, her behavior and conversations are characterized by immaturity, avoidance of responsibility and seeming disregard for social rules. The patient carries a documented pattern of threatening and intimidating behavior or aggressive responding to others in situations in which she perceives psychological risk. Her profile is therefore further consistent with diagnostic criteria for DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR DISORDER, NOS; The patient also displays difficulty concentrating on what people say, even when they are speaking directly to her. Organizational skills are also problematic for the patient, as she simply cannot get things in order when she has to complete a task that requires organization. And ultimately the patient is hindered by tasks that require a lot of thought as she often avoids or delays getting started entirely. These symptomology are expressed in the diagnosis ATTENTION-DEFICIT-HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER, COMBINED TYPE. … The diagnosis of me took 30 pages. I am so fucked up it took 30 pages just to explain everything wrong with me and how I should be “appropriately handled and cared for.” I am broken and sad and everyone around me says labels don’t define who we are but this is me, my entire life boiled down to 30 pages written by a woman who knew me for 3 hours. I am an adult and I am in classes and working full time and I am supposed to be the one who has a grip on things and I’ve been doing really well at pretending, so well that no one knows how bad off I am. I need someone to talk to, to hug me and in all of those pages nowhere did she write “treatment plan: lots of hugs, snuggles, hot chocolate, movies, and time with family and friends.” But then again that would require I have any friends or family in the area and maybe I do but that social anxiety makes me feel like I have to be perfect and like I would be an inconvenience on anyone I tried to reach out to and so instead I stay quiet and die on the inside because I am still too afraid to die on the outside. I am not feeling so much like a -Survivor
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A SurvivorA couple of stories and experiences from one of the many survivors of self mutilation, suicide attempts, and mental disorders and illnesses. Archives
February 2017
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