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May 17, 2022 at 8:13 pm #400560AnonymousGuest
How are you, Javier?
anita
May 19, 2022 at 5:49 am #400674HoneyBlossomParticipantHi Javier,
If you are reading this, I am a mother if young man in his 30s. My life was difficult, but no matter anything my son did I love him more than anyone in the world. I think your mother is probably grateful th as t she has had the opportunity to spend time with you despite the circumstances.
May 30, 2022 at 9:34 am #401509JavierParticipantIt is very difficult for me to post this.
I have been laying low due to the fact that I have given up on myself. I was reluctant to post anything because I don’t want my negative energy to spoil this forum. I have been lucky to have you all in my life, showering me with love and caring.
But, for the last 2-3months, I’ve been really working on myself and tried all therapies available(ACT, CBT, DBT, Logotherapy, MCT, Mindfulness. I’ve been exercising, socializing, spent time with my help group, my sponsors, and my therapist.
I have read all books recommended, read all self-help books available, and done all work sessions available. Been in and out of counselling. Tried different therapists, gone to church, tried meditations and attended mass.
I’ve worked on my inner child, worked on my fears, worked on rumination, worked on my broken relationship, my broken mind and negative thoughts.
But at the end of the day, I have realized that I’m not made for this world. My mind is numb, everything is black, no happiness, no relief, no smile, everything is and looks bleak. Some people are just not made for living in this world. I’m not going to survive and live for long, I’m not suicidal, and not going to end anything. I’m tired, tired and scared of living. I have no future and my past is just full of regrets and pain. It’s my fault and my responsibility. I can’t blame anyone except myself. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere and not with anyone. My life is unlived, everything I have done has not been in line with my values. I have failed at every corner and in everything. But, it is what it is, I’m just empty, with no desire, no passion left. Maybe it’s anhedonia or just resignation. I feel nothing. I have to thank you all, for all the love and caring, the concern and kind words. I have nothing but respect and love for this forum. Keep up the good work, there are people who need your love and caring.
I fight every day for my mother, my brothers, my nieces, my family and my friends. They might have all left me, but in my heart, they are still a part of me.
May 30, 2022 at 6:19 pm #401518AnonymousGuestDear Javier:
You started your thread more than a year ago, on May 8, 2021 with: “I’m shattered, heartbroken and I’ve failed miserably in life”
You shared a lot about your health in your original post and onward: “I’ve been diagnosed with Covid… My health has deteriorated immensely… Waking up to anxiety attacks, gasping for air and in full panic mode… I have panic attacks, I’m depressed all the time… My life is a disaster… the feeling of getting choked, the shivering, the sleep paralysis, the feeling of dying every morning have increased my Somniphobia… I’m struggling with burning lungs, exhaustion, fever, tiredness and fatigue, palpitation, brain fog, muscle pain, and chest pain… I want to cry, but I am empty of tears. I want to scream my lungs out to alleviate all my hurt and pain, but I have no voice left…
“struggling with my health. The only thing that diminished is the laryngospasm… I’m struggling with intense migraine and half my hair has fallen out… I’ve been struggling with my health… I’ve just came back from the hospital, as I got rashes all over my body. I experienced a high fever and my body was on fire. I was rushed to the hospital as my body was covered with vesticular rashes… According to my doctor, it’s COVID-related (May 17, 2021)… I’m still struggling with getting sleep at night. At the most I sleep 2 hours before I wake up all stressed out and hyperventilating…
“I called my neighbor and he is taking me to the Psych ward (May 21, 2021).. . They are doing a full check up and diagnostic scan of my entire body.. On Thursday, they will do a chemical imbalance check of the brain to determine if I have excessive or insufficient chemicals (neurotransmitters)”, June 1, 2021 –
– THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “CHEMICAL IMBALANCE CHECK OF THE BRAIN”. THERE IS NO WAY TO MEASURE NEUROTRANSMITTERS IN THE BRAIN. The chemical imbalance theory is.. theory.
On June 6, 2021, you shared about the supposed results of the non-existing measurements of your neurotransmitters: “My Serotonin and Dopamine levels were really low, while Neuroepnipherine and Glutamate were off the chart…. I have Anemia and am at a high risk for Diabetes… I have inflamation in my liver”-
– In that post one can see that you inserted text from an online medical source.
August 2, 2021 and onward: “I’ve been back and forth at the hospital and the psych ward. I had a failed suicide attempt by drug overdose and have been under a high-risk surveillence… I have given up, I won’t make it. This is the end for me… I was laying on the floor, lost and defeated, with total emptiness, shattered into a thousand pieces…. “Due to my OD, I’m suffering from neurological complications and my left arm is paralyzed (January 2, 2022)… My nerves are damaged, hopefully I will be able to get 10%- 15% functionality… My mind is numb. Everything is black, no happiness, no relief, no smile, everything is and looks bleak (May 30, 2022).
very well mind. com, on Munchausen Syndrome, renamed Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self (FDIS): “Munchausen Syndrome is a mental disorder in which a person routinely acts as if they have a true physical or mental health issue even though they are not really sick. A person with this condition will deliberately create, complain of, or exaggerate symptoms of an illness that does not really exist… People with Munchausen Syndrome can be extremely manipulative since the main symptom of this disorder requires deception and dishonesty… personality disorders are common in people with Munchausen Syndrome.
“Treatment: Although people with Munchausen Syndrome may actively obtain treatment for the numerous disorders they create, they typically don’t want to admit to and seek treatment for the actual syndrome”.
anita
June 2, 2022 at 7:09 am #401592AnonymousGuestDear Javier:
This post and the next are a result of hours of study. The reason I am posting this is because I hope that it will help you, if only a bit.
On Dec 4, 2021, almost 6 months ago, I submitted a post to you about chronic emptiness based on what you shared May- Dec 4, 2021: “I’m depressed all the time, and feel empty and lost… I feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world… I’m empty, completely empty inside… I’m dead inside and completely empty… The emptiness will never disappear or go away, which I know that for sure… I’ve always felt empty… I felt empty when I was 6, in my teens, in my 20s-30s and 40s. And I’m afraid I’ll be feeling this way until my last breath… (a) profound vacuum inside… I have struggled with this intense, chronic emptiness since I was a kid. It feels more and more like depression is a symptom of emptiness”.
In my Dec 4 post, I quoted from a couple of studies on chronic emptiness and borderline personality disorder (you wrote on May 20, 2021: “I am afraid I have… severe personality disorder”). In one of the studies, it said that bpd participants in the study distinguished between chronic emptiness and depression, experiencing the two differently, as two related, but separate experiences. This is congruent with what you said (see the paragraph above): “depression is a symptom of emptiness“. You portrayed this chronic emptiness as something greater than depression, something that leads to depression.
Back to the studies: “Chronic feelings of emptiness were experienced as a feeling of disconnection from both self and others, and a sense of numbness and nothingness“. This fits with what you shared back in May 2021: “I feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world”.
The way I see this chronic emptiness is that it is an extreme, intense lack of connection to others, which is devastating to a human and to any other highly social animal. It is tied to a disconnection with self: “I feel disconnected from… my feelings and my thoughts, and sometimes it feels like I am completely disconnected from my soul“, you wrote, and it is tied to a feeling of deadness, nothingness and numbness: “I am dead inside… the feeling of nothingness… utter numbness… the feeling of my mind is numb… I feel nothing“.
It is the extreme nature of the disconnection from others and within the self that leads to this feeling of chronic emptiness, an experience more intense than depression, or perhaps it can be said that this chronic emptiness is a more acute form of depression.
On May 12, 2021, you shared this about your childhood and your present feelings about it: “My father left us when I was 5 years old. I have only bad memories, as he was a firm believer in discipline. My siblings and I were physically punished by our ‘father’ every time we were guilty of some wrongdoing. I still remember I used to wet myself when I knew I was in for a beating… From (when) I was 6-7 years old till I was 16 years old, (mother) was in a relationship. My mother loved him, and she was genuinely happy. He was the love of her life… he was married and had kids. My mother was ‘the other’ woman and labeled as ‘homewrecker’. As time went by, and I got in my teens. I realized he will never leave his wife and kids. So, I started to act out, I was showing my ‘bad’ sides and stopped talking to my mother. Eventually, after some time, she had to choose, and she ended the relationship. It broke my mother into ‘thousand’ pieces. It killed her, and I haven’t seen her happy since. I hate myself for that… I took away my mother’s happiness and ‘killed’ her. I can see the pain in her eyes, I hate myself so much for ruining her life” –
– you put quotation marks around father (“father”) because you were not connected to him in any positive, intimate father-son way. But you were connected to your mother: she was the number 1 person in your life… only she had another person being her number 1. When this man was in her life- she was happy, when he was gone- she was extremely unhappy.
Before you were 5, you suffered in the hands of a violent father. A year after he left, you had TEN very long years of watching another man occupy your mother’s mind and heart. How lonely, how hurt and angry does it make a boy feel? And as the boy matures and enters puberty, knowing that his mother is having sex with this man in the same home where you lived… a man who occupied not only her mind and heart, but also her body… how did that feel, day in and day out, night after night, for what felt like eternity?
Instead of having a healthy childhood and adolescence life, focusing on your interests, your friends… your life was about your mother’s 10-years affair with a married man, a man with another wife and a family elsewhere, exposed to the drama of your mother’s affair: their conversations, their arguments, what other people said… that whole drama.
And all along, who sees and hears you: the hurt, the anger, the loneliness, the jealousy, the emotional torture of having this man being your mother’s number 1 while you went unnoticed, unseen, unheard? Who cared to see, hear… notice the drama in your own mind and heart?
I will continue in the next post.
anita
June 2, 2022 at 7:17 am #401593AnonymousGuest*Hopefully this will be a clean version of the above:
Dear Javier:
This post and the next are a result of hours of study. The reason I am posting this is because I hope that it will help you, if only a bit.
On Dec 4, 2021, almost 6 months ago, I submitted a post to you about chronic emptiness based on what you shared May- Dec 4, 2021: “I’m depressed all the time, and feel empty and lost… I feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world… I’m empty, completely empty inside… I’m dead inside and completely empty… The emptiness will never disappear or go away, which I know that for sure… I’ve always felt empty… I felt empty when I was 6, in my teens, in my 20s-30s and 40s. And I’m afraid I’ll be feeling this way until my last breath… (a) profound vacuum inside… I have struggled with this intense, chronic emptiness since I was a kid. It feels more and more like depression is a symptom of emptiness”.
In my Dec 4 post, I quoted from a couple of studies on chronic emptiness and borderline personality disorder (you wrote on May 20, 2021: “I am afraid I have… severe personality disorder”). In one of the studies, it said that bpd participants in the study distinguished between chronic emptiness and depression, experiencing the two differently, as two related, but separate experiences. This is congruent with what you said (see the paragraph above): “depression is a symptom of emptiness“. You portrayed this chronic emptiness as something greater than depression, something that leads to depression.
Back to the studies: “Chronic feelings of emptiness were experienced as a feeling of disconnection from both self and others, and a sense of numbness and nothingness“. This fits with what you shared back in May 2021: “I feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world”.
The way I see this chronic emptiness is that it is an extreme, intense lack of connection to others, which is devastating to a human and to any other highly social animal. It is tied to a disconnection with self: “I feel disconnected from… my feelings and my thoughts, and sometimes it feels like I am completely disconnected from my soul“, you wrote, and it is tied to a feeling of deadness, nothingness and numbness: “I am dead inside… the feeling of nothingness… utter numbness… the feeling of my mind is numb… I feel nothing“.
It is the extreme nature of the disconnection from others and within the self that leads to this feeling of chronic emptiness, an experience more intense than depression, or perhaps it can be said that this chronic emptiness is a more acute form of depression.
On May 12, 2021, you shared this about your childhood and your present feelings about it: “My father left us when I was 5 years old. I have only bad memories, as he was a firm believer in discipline. My siblings and I were physically punished by our ‘father’ every time we were guilty of some wrongdoing. I still remember I used to wet myself when I knew I was in for a beating… From (when) I was 6-7 years old till I was 16 years old, (mother) was in a relationship. My mother loved him, and she was genuinely happy. He was the love of her life… he was married and had kids. My mother was ‘the other’ woman and labeled as ‘homewrecker’. As time went by, and I got in my teens. I realized he will never leave his wife and kids. So, I started to act out, I was showing my ‘bad’ sides and stopped talking to my mother. Eventually, after some time, she had to choose, and she ended the relationship. It broke my mother into ‘thousand’ pieces. It killed her, and I haven’t seen her happy since. I hate myself for that… I took away my mother’s happiness and ‘killed’ her. I can see the pain in her eyes, I hate myself so much for ruining her life” –
– you put quotation marks around father (“father”) because you were not connected to him in any positive, intimate father-son way. But you were connected to your mother: she was the number 1 person in your life… only she had another person being her number 1. When this man was in her life- she was happy, when he was gone- she was extremely unhappy.
Before you were 5, you suffered in the hands of a violent father. A year after he left, you had TEN very long years of watching another man occupy your mother’s mind and heart. How lonely, how hurt and angry does it make a boy feel? And as the boy matures and enters puberty, knowing that his mother is having sex with this man in the same home where you lived… a man who occupied not only her mind and heart, but also her body… how did that feel, day in and day out, night after night, for what felt like eternity?
Instead of having a healthy childhood and adolescence life, focusing on your interests, your friends… your life was about your mother’s 10-years affair with a married man, a man with another wife and a family elsewhere, exposed to the drama of your mother’s affair: their conversations, their arguments, what other people said… that whole drama.
And all along, who sees and hears you: the hurt, the anger, the loneliness, the jealousy, the emotional torture of having this man being your mother’s number 1 while you went unnoticed, unseen, unheard? Who cared to see, hear… notice the drama in your own mind and heart?
I will continue in the next post.
anita
June 2, 2022 at 11:27 am #401603AnonymousGuestDear Javier:
It sickens a child to not be seen, to not be heard, to not be known. All that emotional turmoil inside and none of it is noticed, none of it is addressed… it is as if the child is invisible, as if the child is not there. I think that it is this ongoing, long-term invisibility that is behind the disconnection with self. A child needs at least one other person to mirror the child, so that the child can see a reflection of himself and say: oh, here I am, this is me!
“I feel detached, from both my body and my sense of self. I feel alienated from their own reflection, I don’t recognize and feel any connection with myself” (May 21, 2021)
Without the mirror, the child is lost in emptiness, desperate to find his mirror, find his HERE I AM moment.
The child notices along the way that in he vast desert of his mother’s inattentiveness, there are the occasional oases: when he is physically sick, his mother notices his physical symptoms: she hears him when he coughs and she attends to him; she sees him when he has a rash and she checks his temperature and puts ointment on his skin. He likes her attention. It feels good to be attended to… it feels good to be sick. It feels more than good, it feels euphoric.
Next, the child figures: I will make myself sick, or I will pretend that I am sick and she’ll pay attention to me!
Fast forward, the now adult seeks that euphoric feeling in the same ways, it becomes like an addiction:
May 2021: “gasping for air… getting choked, the shivering… burning lungs, exhaustion, fever… muscle pain and chest pain… chronic pain… even 1 mile of walking is out of reach…rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing, and sweating… I’m struggling with intense migraine and half my hair has fallen out…lack of appetite… I tried to go for a short walk outside, but I didn’t even manage to take two steps.. . Every breath is painful, every heartbeat hurts… I’m struggling with heart palpitations… I woke up hyperventilating… I’ve got rashes all over my body. I experienced a high fever and my body is on fire. I was rushed to the hospital… I called my neighbor and he is taking me to the psych ward. Please pray for me!”
June 2021: “They are doing a full health check and a diagnostic scan of my entire body including heart, kidney, liver, lung to assess my current health status… They will do a chemical imbalance check of the brain..”
August 2021: “I have been back and forth at the hospital and the psych ward. I had a failed suicide attempt by drug overdose… Due to my OD, my liver is damaged and is not functioning well. In addition, I got severe sepsis… my whole body is now poisoned… I just called my psychiatrist and are going to be hospitalized. This time I reached for help before I did anything stupid.. Due to my liver, I have jaundice and have lost a lot of weight”.
September 2020: “I’m tired and have no energy left… My body, mind and heart are weak… I won’t survive this for long”.
November 2021: “I just came back from a 6 weeks stay at the psych ward… I tried ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy) with limited success”.
January 2022: “Due to my OD, I’m struggling with neurological complications and my left arm is paralyzed… I’m getting physio for my left arm. My nerves are damaged, hopefully, I will be able to get 10-15% functionality”.
And the above are only the physical complaints, there are many more psychological-physical complaints such as panic attacks, insomnia and much more.
* You use lots of medical/ other rarely used terms to point to what you suffer from, some terms I didn’t read before (the first on the list is not recognizable by my computer), as well as names of therapy: Somniphobia (fear of sleep), Laryngospasm, anticipatory anxiety, CBT, cognitive processing therapy, sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic therapy, and so much more.
* You claim that none of the therapies helped you: “no treatment is working. I tried ACT, CBT, and DBT, but none of them is working” (Aug 24, 2021)
* You claim what is impossible to believe: that you had a brain chemical imbalance test done and you reported the results of the test- THERE IS NO SUCH TEST.
You claim what seems to be very improbable, for examples, on May 31, 2021, you wrote that following an emergency hospitalization, you were put through “three psychological evaluations… The first I had lasted for almost 3Hrs, with extensive breaks, as I was very confused, and had several breakdown, and was struggling with brain fog.. (the evaluator) pointed out several things that I need to address, such as Gerascophobia (fear of aging), Thanatophobia (fear of dying and losing a loved one), Athazogarophobia (fear of forgetting), PTSD, codependency, and lack of self worth… due to my mental condition and my struggle with addiction, they are reluctant to prescribe me any SSRI” –
– it is very, very unlikely that a professional or anyone in a hospital 1) will put a suicidal, confused patient who keeps breaking down through hours- long intensive evaluations (breaks or not), 2) proceed to tell the confused, brain fogged patient all these many terms that hardly anyone had ever heard of, expecting the patient to comprehend these terms (which he does), 3) diagnosing the patient on the spot, and with such unheard of terms, including the non-medical term codependence, 4) being reluctant to prescribe him with an SSRI upon an emergency! I would think that the first line of treatment upon an emergency hospitalization in a psych ward would be some drug or combination of drugs.
On Aug 24, 2021, you wrote about another hospitalization: “At the psych ward, we worked intensely to figure out my anxiety and depression triggers” – that can’t be what’s done to a suicidal patient upon an emergency hospitalization in the psych ward: put him through an intense work of any kind! And what emergency hospitals staff has the time to focus on intense insight work with one patient…???
* Repeatedly, you share that while you are typing a post, you suffer from hyperventilating and panic, while your typing, your grammar, your organized thinking evident in your posts show calmness. One example among so many: in June 1, 2021, you wrote: “At the moment I am confused and disoriented… I have this choking sensation all the time, it feels like I have anxiety attacks every other minute”- a 2 paragraph post, perfect grammar and organization.
– a third post will follow sometime.
anita
June 3, 2022 at 10:54 am #401642AnonymousGuestDear Javier:
The word Factitious means False, Fake. Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self (FDIS)- aka Munchausen Syndrome- is about these behaviors: (1) presenting False information to medical doctors, other health care professionals, family, friends, members in support groups for various illnesses.. and to members reading your thread right here, (2) presenting false information knowingly and intentionally, aka lying, (3) doing so not for practical or financial motivations, but for reasons not clear to the person who feels compelled to do what he/ she does.
There are two factitious disorders: FDIS and Factitious Disorder Imposed on Other (FDIO)- aka Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (the Other is a person’s child or other dependent). The #1-3 I listed above are true to both disorders.
A person fitting the FDIS diagnosis does the following: 1) Exaggerate their symptoms, 2) Make up symptoms that do not exist, 3) Fake symptoms, ex., acting as if one is having a seizure, 4) Create symptoms by ingesting pills, injecting bacteria, milk, gasoline, fecal matter, etc. into one’s blood, and/ or burn or cut oneself, 5) Tamper with medical instruments, ex., heating a thermometer so to show evidence of non-existing fever, 6) Contaminate medical specimens, ex., adding something to one’s urine sample before giving it to analysis, 7) Alter medical documents, ex., printing symptoms and diseases into a medical document.
A person fitting the FDIS diagnosis seeks medical attention from various doctors and medical facilities, resulting in multiple diagnostic tests, procedures, treatments and hospitalizations. Again, not for a practical or financial motive such as acquiring false evidence for a false lawsuit, but because a person is compelled to do what he/ she does.
The American DSM-4 presented three kinds of FDIS: one where a person complains primarily about physical symptoms, a second where the complaints are primarily about psychological symptoms, and a third was about both kinds of symptoms. The current DSM-5 corrected the topic of symptoms, stating that to be diagnosed with FDIS, the symptoms the person complains about need to be primarily physical. The World Health Organization’s ICD-10 does not differentiate between FDIS symptoms the person complains about, “either physical or psychological”, it states.
You, Javier, presented many physical and many psychological symptoms on your thread (internet). I don’t know if your FDIS is limited to the internet or if it is true to your real-life as well. I suspect the latter because what you shared over the months fits very well to what I read about FDIS, including, but not limited to “extensive knowledge of .. medical terminology, as well as the textbook descriptions of illnesses” (Cleveland clinic. org), but there is no way for me to know for sure.
Cleveland clinic. org: “What is Munchausen Syndrome by Internet?… If you have Munchausen Syndrome by internet, you might do the following: * Say you have symptoms that are far more severe than anyone else’s, * Claim to have nearly died and had a miraculous recovery, * Paste information copied from a health website into your posts, * Contradict yourself, * Lie about what hospital you attend, what medicines you take, etc. * Claim to have something dramatic going on in your life, repeatedly”.
The damage a person fitting a factitious disorder creates is not only to themselves (reporting exaggerated or false symptoms to doctors and therefore receiving harmful treatments and going through unnecessary dangerous procedures, ingesting and injecting harmful substances, etc., but also to (1) medical doctors who are manipulated to harm patients (going against their “First do no harm” oath) and who therefore risk malpractice lawsuits, (2) people whose participation in a support group for a particular illness is valid, find out that a trusted member was there lying all along, feeling betrayed and used as a result, (3) members reading this very thread, members who empathetically responded to you ending up feeling manipulated and used.
Your repeated thank-you-s and expressions of appreciation to responding members were manipulative, aimed at keeping members motivated to keep being the audience to your lies. I knew for sure that you were manipulative ever since you reported having had a medical test (and results of a test) that does not exist, but I replied to you further, here and there, because I knew then and I know now that you are truly suffering, only not from what you falsely reported to be suffering from.
I think that you went through years of being unseen, unheard- for way too long. It created an intense thirst to be seen and heard, and you stumbled upon a way to do it: FDIS aka Munchausen Syndrome on-the-internet, and likely, I think- in real life. I want to encourage you somehow to find a different way to be seen and heard (or read, when it comes to the internet): share only about your true hurts and pains, loneliness and despair, you will make yourself believable this way. Plus, your true hurts and pains do not need to be magnified into failed internal organs, physical paralysis, etc.: hey are significant enough as they truly are.
anita
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