Post a random truth (about yourself)

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When I was in elementary school I caught pin-worms. I could feel them squirming around in my anus which itched like hell. I caught them because I used to put my fingers in my mouth a lot and never washed my hands.

^
Ewwwww, yucky, I have had those before! It is a gross feeling.
I must have been in the fourth grade.

I have not put my fingers in my mouth since.

I useta have a compulsion to peel skin tags off my chronically chapped lips until they bled.

My lips were badly chapped at the beginning of the year, but they are healing now.

^^^glad to hear they are healing

random truth about myself: i have just discovered that i did not want to hear about pinworms in anuses today.

and i'm still grumpy about yesterday.

my time working in hospitals taught me that there are many, MANY worse things.....

I used to legitimately believe I was being abducted by aliens from around eleven to thirteen. I would deliberately force myself to stay wake throughout the night rather than risk falling asleep, when I thought they'd come for me. It terrified me, and to an extent still does. I still hate the dark. I suppose now I can see it was a product of the extreme anxiety I occasionally still get today - this sudden tightness in the throat and the paranoia; the night always made it much worse and my imagination goes wild. Having also suffered sleep paralysis, (which some uneducated types actually allege is a form of possession!) I guess my anxiety attached itself to being in a vulnerable state like sleeping.

That's happened to me around a similar age. I think it started when I was 10 or 11 and stopped when I was 21. I wouldn't sleep because I was worried aliens were coming for me and that I was being abducted in my sleep. I also had the sleep paralysis around age 16-21, except I didn't realize it was sleep paralysis at the time and thought what I was seeing was real and that aliens or demons were paralyzing me. I ended up getting diagnosed with a psychotic disorder because of it.

That's really bad. I've previously tried describing sleep paralysis to my doctors and they've not even recognised the term! (Seriously guys, this is why we have the internet!) I feel it has to be some extreme form of the more common sleep-based phenonmena like hypnagogia (where you hear voices or thoughts 'jump out' when falling asleep).
But sleep paralysis was bloody terrifying. I remember it felt like being suffocated whilst helplessly watching or hearing something really malign creep up on you. It's very interesting you've also noted to have stopped experiencing it after some years - the same happened to me, I had what I fervently hope was my last episode years ago, and it hasn't returned.

It's ridiculous how little some psychologists know about sleep disorders and autism. It wasn't until last year that I went to a new therapist who suggested I might have autism and referred me to see an autism specialist, and it turned out I have autism.

The sleep paralysis was very scary. I also experienced the suffocating feeling you described. Sometimes it felt like I was being drowned in water. Sometimes it felt like the "entities" were grabbing my chest. I remember waking up to seeing "shadow people," and running out of my room scared and screaming. I guess the symptoms (gradually) went away because I left my parents house. There was a lot of family stress and trauma growing up. I had also left high school too.

When I was 18 I had a meltdown and ended up being committed to a psychiatric hospitable where I was diagnosed with "axis I" schizoaffective disorder with "schizotypal and borderline personality traits" as an "axis II." They ended up putting me on a ton of quetiapine and lorazepam (as needed). The meds turned me into an unproductive zombie, and I was on them for years until my insurance changed and I stopped seeing the doc that was prescribing them.

I guess they came to that conclusion because of the negative symptoms associated with schizophrenia (which are also symptoms of autism), plus "delusions" of alien abductions and "hallucinations", social withdrawal, unkempt look ect.

It's so worrying when you find out how at odds and otherwise inconclusive doctors / psychiatrists are over a patient's symptoms. During the times where my sleep paralysis was the worse, I was a former regular of the 'Experience Project' forums (site's gone massively downhill, sadly), and was amazed and confused by the responses I received when I spoke for the first time about my sleep paralysis. People were telling me I was evil and experiencing the paranormal. :/ Even now I think there is not enough said about hallucinogenic experiences, and the real truth: how common it is. My mother had strange hallucinations as a child, interestingly enough, which brings into question the genetic lottery.
Ah, it just seems people are very wary about discussing these things, because society must still be telling us all it's a personal admission to insanity.

I'm lazy, messy and procrastinate a lot.

mee too!

Gah, the amount of times I got worms as a child, my parents were continually worming me. But I was semi-feral, and hung out in a wilderness preserve creek system with a pack of dogs. And that's not even a joke.
I also should have been dead over a decade ago, so now I have no idea what to do with the fact that I'm still alive and there isn't any particularly outstandingly obvious reason that I shouldn't continue to be so.

I hate the game Monopoly, so I always try to bankrupt myself as soon as possible.