Edit: Please know that I am reading and appreciating every one of your responses. Even if I do not reply to you, I appreciate your time and want the best for you all. Thank you, guys.
I’ve always been the “crazy one” in any given scenario. I have been this way my whole life. Even as a child I was crazy. I would get upset and cry loudly for hours but my siblings would not. I caused problems at home for my family, especially for my mom who didn’t know what to do with me. I did this as an older child, not normal toddler tantrum age. I was old enough to “know better”. I did it my whole childhood.
For the most part in life, I have been able to be a productive member of society. The issues I would cause were limited to my home life and I mostly kept to myself. I sometimes cause issues by being a crazy person to my online friends, but at least that never spilled over into the “real world”.
But now in my 30s I am causing such issues at work. I asked for some psych meds to be prescribed to me in March and have been taking them ever since. Doesn’t seem to do anything.
I seem to get more frequent and strong negative emotions than the general population. I have difficulty controlling these, especially when I feel like someone is being mean or unfair to me or others. I think I am genetically predisposed to be this way, as my dad was a crazy person when I was growing up (but he has always been nice to me…he was only abusive to my mom). He had “episodes” too the same way I do, except his were malicious to others in nature. My older brother also has claimed to have bipolar disorder which supposedly has a genetic component.
I have spoken to mental health professionals and have been assessed for various things. I do not have bipolar disorder, autism, or OCD per mental health professionals. I tried to bring up keywords like “emotional dysregulation” to them. There seems to be no good explanation for why I am insane. I have wondered if maybe I have borderline personality disorder but have not inquired to be assessed for that one. I do not seem to exhibit the “risk taking” behaviors that are core to borderline personality disorder though.
I get frustrated that I am always the only one who is crazy and no one else is like me.
But I know there are other crazy people out there. Please, tell me your stories. How do you deal with life? How do you deal with always being different than others and feeling negative things more strongly? How do you handle things? How do you handle being and feeling alone in the way that you are? How do you handle the emotional frustration?
If this is inappropriate for here, I apologize. I just want to hear how others have managed to handle life despite this isolating “disability”. I want to hear your stories. I want to gain wisdom from all of you. Thank you.
This really grind my gears. Children aren’t crazy. Even if a child is old enough to know better, you clearly weren’t old enough to know how to DO better.
This is something that has to be taught, and you can’t teach every child the same way. Siblings have different needs and different challenges from each other, you can point to what works for one sibling and blame the other child because the same method doesn’t work for them. It’s tye adults job to figure out how to train and teach each child in a a way that they can grasp. Set easy challenges and guide them to succeed each one. Set them up for success, not demand the impossible.
Now as an adult, this is something you have to teach yourself and your inner child, since the previous adults in your life didn’t manage to do so.
If you want a diagnosis and think it could help, ask about ADHD and borderline and other personality disorders. And if you have researched thoroughly (not just social media) and feel like a diagnosis fits you even when a doctor has written it off, get a second opinion. Doctors make mistakes, especially with adult patients who may present atypically and have therefore gone undiagnosed their whole life.
Regardless of a diagnosis, this is your responsibility to manage. You can look into different therapies even without a diagnosis; anger management and DBT springs to mind. Practice mindfulness/meditation every day, work out at least three days a week. Pay attention to your emotional state, remove yourself from situations before you explode. Talk to people after to explain why you removed yourself and to clear the air and be honest about your feelings and about what you felt was unfair. Try to be open to their side and accept a little unfairness even if people are trying their best, because life is unfair and it probably evens out in the end.
Figure out if certain situations/stimulations make you more easily irritated (for me it’s eating poorly, lack of water, having socks, watch, and bra on for too long, and hair in my face or in too tight ponytail, or being uncomfortably warm for no reason like not while exercising or outside in summer or by a fire, generally in the evening, or drinking with certain people).
Figure out what you need to reset after becoming overstimulated by such irritants (for me it’s depending on what I can do and what type of overstimulated I am, but around 10 minutes in a quiet room with my eyes closed, laying down with legs raised on a pillow or against a wall, or running/hastily walking up and down a set of stairs for a few minutes, or wiping my face+neck+chest+arms with cold water on a towel, or digging my fingers straight into the earth and looking at the bugs and mosses and plants living there and getting dirt under my nails).
Write stuff, in general. Keep a notepad nearby and write down what you want to say and how you want to respond (what would be your ideal response, not your emotional reaction) when something triggers you, so you know you have options and can bring it up later when you’ve calmed down. Then do bring it up again. Don’t be afraid of conflict when you are calm, that way your rage becomes your only outlet for conflict handling. If you practice standing up for yourself and other in a mature way, you don’t need the emotional state to “defend” you.
I dunno, there are as many tools and methods as there are people. By figuring yourself out you can figure out whatever works for you. It’s trial and error. A therapist can help with suggestions if you get stuck, and working more structured towards your goals, but you need to do the work and the figuring out and the trialing, and you can start doing it today on your own.
Thank you for this. I appreciate all comments here. But this really resonated with me for some reason. As a child, I would sometimes remove myself from a situation when I was upset. But I would get in trouble for that too because I was “storming off” and “making a scene” by just wanting to go outside and walk around.
I am thankful that now, as an adult, when I get upset at work sometimes I walk away. I go to the break room for a bit, grab a drink of water, go use the bathroom for a minute, etc. I do that and no one tells me that it’s wrong. I read about how online people talk about how going for a walk when you are feeling heated to be a normal and healthy coping mechanism. As a child and a young adult, my family treated me like it was wrong. The only acceptable reaction in that environment was to sit there totally stone faced and nonreactive, and I have not ever been able to do that. I am thankful that I am allowed to walk away now and I don’t get in trouble for it.
I never thought I exhibited ADHD symptoms really. I do have anxious/fidgety mannerisms and some of that includes anxious swearing like someone with Tourette’s lol. But that’s about it. Borderline is always something I had wondered. I do have what I would think are some borderline traits (particularly emotional dysregulation and wild mood mood swings), but I don’t seem to meet enough of the criteria to totally fit the diagnosis. I have also had some online friends caution me that getting a borderline diagnosis on your record could cause problems down the line.
Anyway, sorry for my rambling. Hoping the best for you.