Posted by CherC68 on July 24, 2003, at 17:17:30
In reply to Re: personal thoughts » CherC68, posted by zinya on July 24, 2003, at 15:15:47
Dear Zinya,
I hope that you can understand this - I just went through and answered the best way I could and its a bit jumbled, like most of my thoughts in my head.
My parents used to always watched Johnny Carson and that night I could hear him on the TV and I layed there in bed when the panic attack happened and could hear the TV in the living room getting louder and louder and the noises getting faster and faster and that being chased feeling was inside me and it was horrible. Yes, even at 4 I remember it like it was yesterday.
We lived in Roseland at the time in an 2 story apartment and my brother Jack was two years old. I'm the oldest. When I was 13 my mother had another baby (my baby or so I thought) Danny.
Until I was 14 I had a split between my two front teeth and I used to suck my thumb to hide it, the split eventually grew together. When I was 12 I had a tonsilectomy because since I was a baby I had tonsilitis a few times a year and my tonsils were rotted. Because of the high fevers I endured for the first 12 years of my life and constant sore throat, I didn't brush my teeth when I was sick and that would usually be at least a week in bed a few times a year.
So, I had a lot of cavities and I hated the dentist so much that I thought if I brushed my teeth several times a day I wouldn't get them. After the tri-geminal neuralgia I had I upped the brushing so I would never have to go to the dentist again, but...I also used brushing my teeth as a form of weight loss, you know - who eats right after brushing their teeth?
As far as the hyper-adrenalin thing, I have no clue - my internist was a new doctor and the only thing I told him was that I was having panic attacks and that I thought I was having a heart attack and my hands were killing me and that I was feeling down because of it. I had the stress test, the EMG of my hands and he prescribed the Zoloft and then a month later the Effexor. He knows nothing about the adrenalin thing or the Borderline Personality.
I was told when I was little that I had a high case of adrenalin. My strength - lifting and my pain tolerance is more than most people and a doctor explained to my mother that my body made more adrenalin than most people. My mother witnessed me get into a fist fight with a grown up woman when I was only 11 when this lady grabbed me and tried to strike me I woooped her butt. My father seen me get into a fight
with a high school kid that was supposedly a brown belt in front of a karate studio once and I kicked his butt too (I was only in 7th grade)!
I'm not proud that I'm "tough" - I've taken some beatings, but....you can only get picked on so much and take so much crap before you fight back. And, where I lived, you had to fight or die trying. I also could lift more weight than most of the guys in my grade and my leg power was extreme. The feeling of adrenalin rushing through my body could come over a dirty look a mean comment to me. I've never gotten angy because things didn't go my way, only if someone was mean to another person and then finally if someone was mean to me.I have to learned to control my temper and try to never show it because if I get too much adrenalin flowing in my body I am afraid of permanently hurting someone.
I was told I had Borderline Personality and I had to go to a group therapy meeting and I showed up in a room with a bunch of people sitting a circle. I didn't know anyone then the shrink came in called my name and dropped three different boxes with medications for me on the table in front of everyone. One was buspar - the other two I cannot remember the name of now - but I was so humiliated - I picked up the meds looked at them then I got up and walked out and told the shrink he was an a**hole and get scre**** and dropped the meds on the ground and never looked back.
I was dating a chiropractor (well to me he was a proctologist) at the time and he made fun of me being "borderline personality" - I never chased guys or threatened them with harm to myself or stalked them - i just didn't trust them and without trust got tired of them and gave them the boot quick. I told him the names of the meds and he told me one was an antipsycotic - and joked some more but I don't remember the name of it now.
The reason I started to go through the pamphlets on it was maybe to see if there was an alternate treatment besides meds. I do know that sexual assault can contribute to BPD, but...am now just starting to really look into what Borderline Personality really is.
Some of the things look a lot like manic depressive to me, so I don't know, and until I start therapy, etc. I won't know.
As far as my father goes, he goes in to the clinic at 11:00 and they will be taking pictures of his prostate and then he will have a biopsy. Seems my mother doesn't really want to get into the details about it - I guess like me - trying not to think about it. He's going to be 65 and works manual labor at a plant and my mother doesn't work. He has been working 6-7 days a week for a few months now and when he was 60 years old he worked 65 weeks straight (7 days a week) without a day off except two weeks vacations. Manual labor doesn't make much money and to survive, he had not much choice but to take any and all overtime especially since he had seniority.
I feel so bad, because he hasn't had much breaks in his life, no vacations except one when we were really little we went to wisconsin, but...he just works, makes money, eats, sleeps and work. He cannot retire yet because when he retires my mother will be left with no health insurance. She's been trying for a year now to get a job, but since she's 58 and hasn't worked since I was 8, nobody will hire her.
I think my unworthy feelings are part borderline and part the fact that many people feel this way. I don't think unworthy feelings has a name or a disease or an imbalance. I honestly think everyone is messed up in their own way and there is no normal person and when I think that way - sometimes it helps me get through the day. I just have to remember that I'm okay, and that this is life and I need to get used to the ups which aren't much and all the downs.
Well hands are clamboring for ice and husband is on his way home from work.
Again, Zinya & everyone thank you for listening (bet you all can't wait till I get a therapist so I can lay this crap on him/her).
Love,
Cher
poster:CherC68
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030723/msgs/244953.html