News from ArtfullyAwesome

Feeling intensely guilty for warming up a cup of coffee in the microwave. Because your brain told you not to or else you’ll be making some promise you can’t keep. Except you don’t know what that promise is…. And you don’t know how you’ll be breaking it…

I wash my hands 30 times in a row every time I wash my hands, usually 10 times a day. That's at least 300 washes a day. You can imagine what kind of havoc this wreaks on my life.

Your poor skin. I have eczema and sensitive skin to begin with. Then I do the hand washing thing too and I feel like my skin is slowly dying. I hope yours isn’t that bad. I’ve started to try and limit to 2-4 washes. But if I screw that up then I can easily start doing more and more until I’m doing like 16 or 20.

Yep. My mom forced me on Lexapro as a teen and I hated it but she said I’ve never been better. It hurt and it still hurts now. I stopped taking it and then restarted during my current relationship. Then I stopped again 🙃and when I asked my bf if he thought it helped and made me better he said yea, a little. It hurts that I have to change myself and be “less” to make everyone around me happy. I just wanna be me. I don’t like meds or the way I am on them. But I also feel selfish not taking them if my meds make everyone else in my life happier. I wish I wasn’t so bad as myself.

This sounds similar to something I could’ve wrote. I was on lexapro for a while, it’s horrible stuff and made me worse. After that I was put on a couple other things. They didn’t have as drastic as an impact as lexapro, but I hated the way they made me feel. And it’s not like they always worked. And I could swear that when crap hit the fan and I had a bad break they would make it worse. But my mom always says that I was better when I was on meds. Or “you weren’t quite this bad on meds.” She’s still trying to get me to go back on them. Sometimes I wonder if I should, if maybe she’s right. But I just hated them. And I’m afraid to give up those strong emotions that I’ve lived with my whole life. And the meds may have made me feel a little more numb, but I could still feel the depression and the despair and the emptiness. So what good are they. I’m a little confused by the whole experience I guess. Not sure how to think about it.

I know. 💔 like maybe we’re outwardly less hard to “deal with” on it but like you said the empty despair is still there. So how does that help us? All that’s left is to dull my positive emotions too. And I can’t live like that. The insane happiness and excitement I get is the only way I can survive the lows that come along. And the lows don’t go away on the lexapro, they just get quieter as not to “disturb” anyone around me with any emotions.

I enjoy the really high highs as well. I hate to dampen them. And even things like anger, it’s scary when it doesn’t feel the same way you’re familiar with. I found it made me feel almost.. light headed when my emotions tried to react but were dampened out. And I always felt like I had cotton stuffed between my ears. And a lot of those meds have the potential to cause bad health affects if you take them for a long time. And I watch what happens to other people who take them and their body gets used to the dose their on so the doctors just keep upping their dosage or constantly switching them to other things. I don’t really want that

It’s unfair to scare people away from taking medication for OCD when Luvox (Fluvoxamine) is known to be among the best treatments for OCD, besides ERP. My OCD was so bad, there was no way I could do the therapy without being medicated. I had to try twelve different kinds of meds over a period of years, and also experienced severe anhedonia (the loss of all pleasure) for years. Are you sure the anhedonia is actually from taking Prozac? Are there studies? Mine was from the OCD itself along with deep and lasting depression. OCD is chronic and cyclical, and though it can be treated it, it cannot be cured. Luvox and Klonopin was a miracle for me. I’ve read that ERP works best for those with compulsions; I have “Pure O.” Everyone is different in symptoms and in what treatment works best for them. I’m sorry you are going through this—I’ve been there.

Many psych meds, especially ones used to treat mood disorders like Prozac, have unsavory side effects, especially when taken for long periods of time. Emotional blunting (anhedonia) is something that is very common with almost all of them. And yes, there are studies out there. I’ve experienced it myself back when I was still willing to trust psych meds. It’s bad, especially when you have a couple disorders that have anhedonia as a symptom. The meds make it more frequent. Some meds come with horrific health effects when taken for long amounts of time that are irreversible or take a long time to reverse. I was recently forced to try an antipsychotic that caused me to have tremors so bad it was very difficult to sign paperwork. Apparently if you don’t stop taking them right away the tremor can become permanent. It’s a good thing I went off it. And guess what it also came with it? That fuzzy, unpleasant blunting effect. I guess you can’t have wild fits of emotional dysregulation if you can hardly feel anything but cotton in your head, right? Except you can still feel. You can still feel depression and despair. And the blunting adds to it. So good for the people who can take meds without issues. But some of us can’t, like myself.

This sounds horrifying. First of all, intrusive thoughts can get rather publicly incorrect/ immoral. You don’t want people thinking these thoughts are your own and judging you for them. Secondly, no privacy.

You can't feel your brain - so, whatever you're feeling here will be something else. Possibly tiny muscular tension.

Interesting take. You’re probably right. What I was thinking is that ocd is also thought to be caused by a miscommunication between several parts of your brain that deal with task initiation and reward. In a healthy person, when a task is initiated, the neurons between these parts would form a circuit ending in the reward system being triggered when the task is completed. However, in a person with ocd, the circuit can’t be completed when the task is done and it causes a stress response (anxiety) and the mind tries to reason it and spins far fetched tails of why you should be afraid and do a compulsion until the brain finally ends its circuit and you feel “right”. So I just had a hypothesis that maybe I was sensing this “short circuiting”. Though It’s very possible it’s just the stress combined with the paranoia symptoms from one of my other mental illnesses.

Your hypothesis about the mechanisms of OCD may be correct - no-one knows the cause of OCD, and I think a dopamine theory, and abnormal neurotransmitter level is a theory that I've seen in the literature. Outside of the symptom though - maybe a noticable drop in mood, or an inappropiate behavioural response - sensing this physically would be unlikely.

Thanks for the nerdy conversation, I don’t get those very often ;)

The emotional reactivity to the smallest of things. I find myself having to process most situations emotionally before responding or reacting to them. "Did they say this because they hate me or is it just constructive criticism?" "Are they being sarcastic or are they insulting me?" "Did she forget to text me because she's busy or is she mad at me for something I did/said?" It's exhausting having to argue with myself constantly. Just give me the rational thought to begin with, it'd be so much easier.

I question myself like this all the time and didn’t even realize it was part of my bpd until you said it. I almost always try to understand people’s motives behind everything. Their actions, what they say, how they say it, why they do things, when they do them, ect, ect. Even if they’re not interacting with me directly I might try to figure out their motives. Though it doesn’t always mean I’ll mention it to them. But sometimes I do. If you talk to me long enough, I’ll even start doing it mid conversation. For example if someone tells me they go somewhere often, I might say “do you go there because you like it? Or do you not want to go home right away?”

I just recently bought this one!

Does it work? Is it heavy enough?

i used to have one of those, I remember it was like a big dog lol. at least personally, i do remember that it did help i think just having a big weighted thing and just being close to it and around it can definitely help with anxiety. i think it would be nice to consider

Thank you

I'm getting to the point where I'm constantly counting and I can't do anything on an odd number... or an even number

I hate that! I hate the no way out situations. The damned if I do, damned if I don’t’s. they’re so stupid! And stressful

I can recognize the very beginning of the signs by late childhood. But I wasn’t exactly disordered by then, I was just a little awkward and sometimes a bit too much to handle. I think the potential for bpd is set in childhood but take root later. It wasn’t until the summer in between 7th and 8th grade that I started to shift drastically. I wasn’t full blown bpd yet. But I began to be hit with greater instability and social issues. (This is also when my ocd started to take over too) It steadily grew worse throughout high school, really exploding my last two years. I’ve experienced another massive shift lately at age 23. After years of telling therapists there was something wrong with me more than depression, I’ve finally gotten my bpd diagnosis. Makes me wonder when it finally stops growing. Though I can’t say as though I’m surprised it got worse again. I know a little about psychology and knew that there was potential for it to get worse in my 20s. But had hoped it wouldn’t.

not diagnosed but i do have some traits do to say (a little ritual when i lock the house) have to have things in a specific order (water jugs on left at work). makes me feel like a freak tbh when i get so worked up about things not being in their place

I get intrusive thoughts really bad, and ofc, engage in all kinds of compulsions in response to them. I have a few rituals too. I think I’ve even gone into fits of transient psychosis when it’s gotten really bad, especially when my bpd gets involved as well and heightens my anxiety and frustrations. But I can really only theorize on that so far because I haven’t had a chance to mention it to my therapist or anyone yet.

I've had rage since I was a teenager.. Most of the time it's manageable.. Other times I'm like a Tasmanian Devil... It's like it's not even me when I rage... like I'm having an outer body experience where I watch myself destroy everything around me.

Wow, I rage like that too sometimes. It usually requires a distinct trigger though. I.e disappointment or arguments or anything else that can be upsetting. I believe it started for me a little sooner than my teenage years

Lol I say that to my partner , “I feel like u don’t care to see me” and he’s like not everything revolves around u , plans change sometimes and u have to accept it and I’m just like no !!!!fuck u 😂 so I feel you

I think people don’t understand that the intense emotions we feel aren’t only negative ones. That when they tell us we’re going to do something we get -really- excited over it. And we revolve our entire day around it. Our thought patterns and everything. We might even organize our day around it “I’m going to do all these things in this specific order so that I’ll be ready for this evening.” And then when they hit us with “sorry. It’s not happening.” It brings all that to a slamming halt. And all that really high excitement turns into really low lows in a hurry.

Here’s another one. Ever get triggered because someone spontaneously asks you to do something for them? Like if you come downstairs and your mom asks you to feed the cat but that’s not what you came downstairs for. So then you get bothered. But if she had let you know like an hour ago that she wanted you to feed the cat today then you wouldn’t have reacted so harshly to it, it’s just the fact that you hadn’t planned for it and now it’s just ruining you.

Welcome to the club! I rarely have friends because I retain relationships about as well as a fork holds soup. Been this way for a long time. I make really good friends with people, but drop them like hot cakes

BPD is very complex and hard to understand.

Unfortunately my parents don’t even seem to be willing to put in research. Nor do they want to learn from anything I tell them, rather they’d assume that I’m full of bs. My mother especially would rather see me as a brat

everyone shows support for the mentally ill people until they start showing the bad symptoms.

They’re ok with being your friend or your “supportive” parent when you seem mild with garden- variety depression. They say it’s alright and they don’t mind if you’re a little abnormal when they think you’re just going to be a little under the weather sometimes or be afraid to go to large parties.

I feel this sometimes. But maybe in an updated asylum without the antiquated “treatments” and generally more human treatment. Aside from the issue of hurting myself and others, I often feel like I just can’t make it in the world. I can’t keep a job between my less than desirable behaviors and the crippling depression and despair that comes along with being forced into a strict neurotypical environment. And the slow melting away of sanity from the intense boredom of an endless 9-5. Sometimes I feel it would be so much better for my mental health to be put in someone else’s care, like in a mental health facility. But ofc I would want to be able to have personal items and generally things you’re not allowed to have in a psych ward so I can feel at least a little human.

28M. Tried telling a nurse once that I might have BPD. She just looked at me crooked and told me no. Haven't talked about it with healthcare professionals after that.

23f. Every therapist I’ve suggested bpd to shot me down. It took a serious suicide attempt and a stay at the mental hospital to finally get that diagnosis. But my current therapist still isn’t convinced I have it, guess that battle still isn’t over. It’s like people are afraid to admit anyone actually has it.

This isn’t dumb! Thank you so much for sharing this with us. BPD causes us to have all kinds of confusing feelings, so it totally makes sense why you’re dealing with this.

Thank you :)

I engage in many forms of self harm, sometimes intentionally and others impulsively. Head hitting is definitely one of the common ones in my roster. I think I’ve given myself mild concussions a few times. A few weeks ago I hit my head so hard (multiple times too) that I had a slight tremble for days. Always makes the back of my neck hurt too. You’re definitely not the only one who does it. I think it’s quite common among us, actually.