NOTE: See tl;dr section at bottom for summary.
I was reading this and though some of the facts are off, it does seem interesting and the main point is certainly valid:
http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di ... TEXT02.pdf
This seems somewhat relevant to me because I had a major psychotic episode at age 14, from which I seemed to recover fully. This article, and what the doctor I went to for my second opinion on bipolar disorder (where the diagnosis was removed) said, that he believed that my psychosis may have been largely psychological in origin.
First, considering a lot of the crap I went through, I'm grateful to not have to have dealt with sexual abuse. That seems like it mess with your mind far more than what I've dealt with.
From my first memories, I remember just kinda moving from thing to thing. I remember riding my sister's tricycle and tumbling down a hill, landing on a fire ant's nest, resulting in my right leg getting stung by a bunch of fire ants. I remember the white hot pain of the stinging. I remember my mum then taking me and putting me in the bath and seeing all the dead ants float up. At the time I first entered school, I don't remember paying much attention to other people, and just kinda did my own thing. But as I went through school, I quickly became aware of being different, and feeling bad about it. I remember a sense of choking as I thought about that. In early Kindergarten, I remember one girl who seemed mad at me all the time.
I remember the bell ringing at the end of the day at school in early Kindergarten one day and just running out of the classroom and the school ending up on the street and then being brought back to school by a woman in her car. I remember having to wait for a really late bus to come which took forever to take me home. I remember after that being put in a different school and I think I felt kinda bitter about what had happened. I went to at least a couple schools. I remember having my first cross-gender feelings in this period, where I got into my mother's lipstick with my sister and when my mum reproached me for it, warning me about what my dad would think, I became very ashamed.
Then in the summer between Kindergarten and 1st grade, I remember moving and then moving again, as my dad had different military assignments. I went to a brand new school in 1st grade. I remember getting really angry and tearing up my schoolbook and then having to go around and pick up litter off the school grounds. I remember being really really mad at my parents at one time and wanting to go live with my teacher, and I even packed up my clothes to do it. But then schools were closed because of flooding and I couldn't carry it out. Later in elementary school, I was painfully aware of being different, in special ed away from the normal kids, a reject even among the special ed kids, wanting to be mainstreamed, and during times this was attempted falling flat on my face. I had recurrent fantasies of changing sex.
I was frequently bullied, even used as a "physical scapegoat by aggressive peers" at times, as noted in the school records. I was called gay, fag, queer, sissy, ret*d, dork, geek, nerd, four-eyes, etc. I was frequently set up and humiliated by my peers. Nevertheless, even so, I did find joy in life for the most part. I remember hating my parents early on (like up to age 7 or so), with a sense no one gave a s**t about me and was tired of me and saw me as a useless piece of s**t. This got somewhat better as I got older, though. Even so, I remember always being at the bad end of everything; any conflict I had with anyone I would always lose and every problem was caused by me, which caused me to hate myself. I remember at age 8 or 9, reading about sex changes for the first time and knowing that's what I wanted. There was something animal in me that seemed to need it. I was told I had ADHD, but not about my PDD-NOS diagnosis, and so I saw myself as that messed up ADHD kid who always got in trouble and hardly ever got along with anybody.
In middle school, I decided to try to find a girlfriend. I was legitimately attracted to the girls, but also I had other motives, like wanting to move up the social ladder and having a rock solid argument against being gay: "You see? I have a girlfriend! Therefore, I am not gay!" I tried the Steve Urkel approach of persistence,--and yes, Steve Urkel was a model for me in this--but it just ended up being seen as harassment and stalking and I got into a lot of trouble. I also became increasingly isolated during this time, and had lots of conflicts with my peers. I felt constantly under attack and that I had to be on guard. I ended up getting expelled in 8th grade and was hospitalized for the first time the night I was expelled, when my dad confronted me about the expulsion and feeling really bad about all the crap that had just taken place and not in the mood to deal with my dad about it I went into a rage. I was discharged after a week and a half and went to a special school following that. I had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome then, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I actually started functioning better while at the special school. The summer after the 8th grade year, it looked like I was about to go to a normal high school and indeed I had been admitted to my normal high school; unfortunately, I had also become psychotic during this time period, though I was still living in both my delusional world and the real world and keeping them separate. The two worlds collided the day after I was admitted to my normal high school and I ended up hospitalized.
I spent more than 6 months in the hospital in residential treatment. This was where my life actually turned around. I was told about my Asperger syndrome diagnosis and people began to work with me in a compassionate manner, even with the crap I did while I was psychotic. I ended up feeling a lot more secure and like I could do something, even with some of the staff members telling me I was probably going to have to live in a halfway house for the rest of my life, wouldn't be able to drive, etc. I got released from the hospital finally and ended up going to my normal high school within a year, fully mainstreamed, and I was successful! I didn't fall flat on my face this time, though I still had problems. Also, I began to identify more with my Asperger's diagnosis, which I found incredibly helpful. I went off the meds on my own and I still succeeded anyway. I noticed a major improvement in my emotional, social, and educational functioning. I was also bullied much less.
Fast forward to my early 20s, where I was strongly contemplating transsexual transition. I began seeing all the barriers, and how in other countries the barriers weren't as bad because of public funding, but I had to be in a country where they didn't do that. During my 20s, my thinking became increasingly negative again and I started increasingly feeling like others were piling on, that when it came to an effort to transition, I was going to meet hardship, opposition, and s**t all the way. Still, I was determined at the same time. My thinking briefly became more positive in my mid-20s, as I moved closer to actually transitioning, and things went well when I went full-time. But after coming back from multiple trips to electrolysis I was tired and exhausted and I saw how far away I was from getting sex reassignment surgery. I began to feel stuck, abandoned, alone, helpless, and panicked, and then raged repeatedly. I was hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder for that, which didn't make much sense to me. I felt like the mental health professionals there weren't really interested in my history. Since I couldn't get surgery yet, I was placed with the men, which made me angry. I began to go back to suppressing my transsexual issues and wavered a lot, thinking it was all f*****g hopeless anyway, so f**k it all and throw everything down! Issues with medication like akathisia would lead to another hospitalization and a desire to blind myself would lead to another. Eventually, the transsexual issues reemerged with full force, and I became more assertive in the past couple months after my last hospitalization, when I started smelling a lot of BS coming from my psychiatrist's diagnostic practices. I went for a second opinion with someone who actually seemed to care about my history and said I was dealing with autism spectrum disorder, gender dysphoria, and anxiety, but not bipolar disorder. I seemed to now be on a clearer path of what I wanted to do, but I feel completely constrained by the world.
I feel angry, isolated, abandoned, with perpetually unmet needs, when it comes to sex reassignment surgery, and I wonder if such feelings would lead to another psychotic episode. I notice when the emotional storm gets really bad, I feel my outside locking up and I want to hide from the outside world, because I feel exposed. I want to get away from the peeping holes in my skin. I wonder if this matches this here:
Quote:
One specific example is the side-effect emotional decline [sic] that is similar to the prodrome and the prepsychotic symptom where a patient, because of the inner chaos, becomes more and more introverted and is seen from the outside as more emotionally diminished.
I know my therapist has once seen me catatonic and even wrote "catatonia" in the notes, and I seem to enter the catatonic state when I am having difficulty with my emotions.
EDIT: tl;dr: Combination of bullying, self-hate, and gender dysphoria may have contributed to onset of psychosis at age of 14. Improvement in social conditions helped with recovery, it seems. Now with increasing problems, I wonder if I am going back to psychosis.
18 Nov 2013, 4:10 am
I was so underweight and could not eat much in the hospital at first,the food was bad but I let them know of my requirements.I made friends with a few of the nurses and felt a little bit of community.
