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View Full Version : Mental health - is there a link here?



Amii
04-14-2010, 05:52 PM
Hi guys, I'd like your opinions on this please - as many as possible :)
It's a bit long-winded, sorry about that!

So I was just chatting to a GP (not my own, but the lady whose children I babysit is a GP so I was talking to her) and basically I explained to her about a series of symptoms I've been experiencing for the past three years (I remember very clearly when it began).

When I'd finished, she told me she thinks I have OCD (which I had concluded myself previously but wanted her opinion). I then went into more detail and told her a bit more, and then I asked her if I was her patient, what she would say. She said "You have a very strong anxiety problem with OCD tendencies as a secondary issue". So she's basically telling me I have anxiety which has triggered OCD.

We then talked about a specific trauma I'd experienced that I have recently began to suspect triggered this. When I was 12, someone (online.. ugh) threatened to kill themselves if I left them alone. It took me a good few years to not think about it every day, since I never heard from this person again so I never knew if they did commit suicide or not.
I also told her about a much earlier (one-off) time that I'd had a panic feeling that I associate with a compulsion that I can't carry out - someone in my school bringing a dead kitten in to class with them and pushing it into my face. When I got home I showered twice and had to throw my clothes straight into the laundry and I felt contaminated and no amount of washing got rid of that feeling.

Anyway, I've believed these two events triggered my condition, but my condition was silenced for a few years by the following...

Then we moved on to the subject of how I knew I'd been having these symptoms for three years. I knew it had started when I was 15 because I remember my first panic attack over one of my obsessions happening the week before prom. I told her that around that time I had hit my head multiple times on the pavement in one night and after that I noticed the obsessions/compulsions and anxiety coming in thick and fast, and very very sudden. I only very recently started to suspect there was a link between the two, because before I had thought this:

All my life I was painting and drawing every single day. In high school, on top of this I played music in a couple of bands and sang, I attended drama club frequently and I wrote short stories constantly.
When I finished year 11 everything stopped abruptly. I only occasionally did any writing.

No less than a month after this occurred was another obsessive panic attack. It lasted a week, and then faded away. Then came the head bumping incident, after which the anxiety/obsessive/compulsive stuff began very abruptly, and on a wide range of topics. I should point out that I did not make a connection between the two at the time, so the only thing I continued with was my writing and I even began to find that less fun. In hindsight, I see a big link.

My symptoms have not wavered in the three years since they began.

I think being on a high raw diet recently has given me some insight and I am wondering whether I am right in drawing a connection to the decline in creative expression, and developing these symptoms. The head bumping, also.

I would really love to hear your thoughts on this. I don't care if you're not a doctor, just your opinion would be very interesting. Thanks and love to you all! :)

luckitri
04-18-2010, 03:14 AM
You are making absolute perfect sense to me! If a bang on the head can cause epilepsy it certainly could cause what you have experienced imho. The psychiatrist said that my inability to walk was because I was a nut case. Fortunately I found a GP who sent me to a neurologist. Now I can walk again. If I had listened to that psychiatrist I would be wheelchair bound so I think that SHE was the nutcase. Neuropsychologists can help you figure out part of the picture as well.

We have been raised to think that our lives are the product of our personal choices but the more I learn about these type of things - I really wonder if that is so true. For example I know an old almost homeless, crippled, poor old woman who is dying and has to live in extremely miserably situation whose children hate her and will not help her, stating that once she was young and beautiful, multi-lingual and had the opportunity to make a good life for herself. They say she blew it and she made their life hard so they are very condemning. I see something totally different and I do not believe that she had the opportunities because she has some problems that there were no names and diagnosis for in her childhood which is when most people's problems get diagnosed. She also did not go to school because of a combination of her learning disability and being an illegal alien so she never even had a basic education. But our current cultural bent is to believe that the sky is the limit for everyone regardless of their physical inheritance, their place of birth, or their life experience and so we condemn those who do not overcome adversity. So anyways, I urge you to pursue this in hopes of regaining your former self because nobody else will do it for you. Recovery can take a long time and you need to learn what path to take.

Rawcstacy
04-18-2010, 06:00 AM
But our current cultural bent is to believe that the sky is the limit for everyone regardless of their physical inheritance, their place of birth, or their life experience and so we condemn those who do not overcome adversity.

How so true luckitri, how true.