Has anyone else always been the "crazy one" for their whole life? How have you been able to deal with this? Both mentally and your actions in the real world.
Has anyone else always been the "crazy one" for their whole life? How have you been able to deal with this? Both mentally and your actions in the real world.
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.
I hear you. Emotional dysregulation is hard and children in abusive homes often struggle with it. It can effect how we see the world and how people see us. Best thing you can do is take ownership and start working on it with counselling.
Knowing you are different (i.e. "atypical") is the first step to resolving it. Perhaps you do react more strongly than others. If you are open to learning, practice, and change, you can work towards being better (and being happier).
When your emotions react strongly, do not do the thing your body wants to do. Stop, walk away from the situation, and allow your emotions to settle. Don't dwell on it and reignite your emotions. Then, take some time to answer:
- Who/What made you react?
- Why did you react?
- How could it have been prevented?
Finally, consider this: If your answer was "They did this" or "They caused me to act out", imagine what you would answer if the roles were switched.
Emotions cloud our judgements. It is important to NOT react on them, and instead reflect on them when we have returned to a neutral state.
I don’t have much wisdom to provide. I’ve felt like something was wrong with me for a number of years now. I would experience things differently, or at least that is what I was told, than reality. Things like being slighted by friends, being excluded, being left behind. They tell me it’s all in my head, but even today, I’m not so sure.
I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 a few years ago, after an involuntary stay at an inpatient facility. For the years leading up to the diagnosis, doctors just kept proscribing random antidepressants in increasing dosages that did not help. With one doctor, it got to the point where they were suggesting that ECT might be what I needed.
The Bipolar 2 diagnosis helped make sense of many of the symptoms that I have. While things have improved, they have not really gotten better. I’m lucky that I have my son, who lives with me. Without him, I’d be alone. The few friends I have live an hours drive away, and I am not close with them anymore. We rarely speak. I’ve pushed plenty of people away.
I can’t help but feel that I am the problem.
My son and I went to Pride yesterday, and I held back tears a few times, seeing groups of friends celebrating. I don’t know what that’s like, not anymore.
Yeah, I feel like the “crazy” person in almost any situation I am in.
I was old enough to "know better".
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.
It's crazy how people hold children to far higher standards than they hold themselves or other adults.
No adult would be happy with the conditions we put on children and their lack of autonomy, and on top of everything we expect them to be in a perfectly pleasant mood all the time?? Everyone has feelings. It's not a bad thing to let people around you know you have them, it means you're human - but your feelings should not run you, and should not be a reason to hurt or scare or threaten or destroy yourself, others or things.
There is plenty of overlap in symptoms and issues for a lot of diagnoses, like adhd/autism or borderline/adhd or borderline/ptsd or ocd/ptsd or hyperhidrosis and all of the above...
That's why it's important to not only find one that fits, but rule out the other ones as well, to make sure there isn't one that fits even better. And it gets even more complex with the possibility of having multiple diagnoses, and it becoming more complex the longer the person has gone undiagnosed and with atypical symptoms due to learned masking behaviours or self medication, or gotten secondary issues like anxiety due to the undiagnosed ones.
I went through a plethora of wrongful diagnoses before I got the one that actually suits me, and where the treatment is helping instead of harming. It can take time to figure yourself out... but it's a really interesting journey!
I have struggled hard with this throughout my whole life — and probably always will to an extent lol. But what has brought the most meaningful change for me has been learning to accept my challenging emotions as part of who I am.
It surprised me to realize a great deal of the chaos I was always kicking up was largely due to my own resistance towards experiencing my emotions. I found DBT extremely helpful as well, offering me tools for being present with my emotions — as well as techniques for determining the actual reason for the emotion.
One of the most useful things I heard was “every behaviour meets a need”. So regardless of where it’s coming from or why, it’s still a valid need and you will address it one way or another. The more tools I have, the more choice I have, and the more choice I have makes all of it so much easier (and even fun) to manage.
I have been in therapy for 10 years. Long road but I needed to take it this way to learn to be okay with myself and begin to trust others. I started going mainly because of a very bad temper and tendency to pick fights.
The first four years I spent talking about nothing in particular and gradually opening up to my therapist. Only kept going because I still felt like something was wrong.
Today I am much better, but it isn't magic. It's real work. I have struggled through it for a decade now and don't think I could have gotten here had I not stuck with it.
Lots of THC, dash of denial, plenty of movies/TV, shopping, and tasty food
Growing up never knew about the issues adults were facing and now as an adult get to take those same adults from childhood for their monthly shot at the low income mental health facility becoming a huge circle that will have to broke eventually
Buckle up because this ride is only getting bumpier
I’ve never met a “normal” person in my life. We are all crazy, just in different ways. It’s about understanding and managing it in order to appear “normal”. For some people, it’s meds. Others, obsessive hobbies or work. It’s about understanding what makes you crazy and addressing it. I don’t have all the answers, but you are far from alone in being “crazy”. In fact, you’d be crazy if you were the only normal person.
I often feel strong negative emotions and hear criticism and blame where there is none.
Therapy, meditation, and especially EMDR really helped me to help regulate how I responsed and processed my emotions.
It's been a long journey for me, good luck with yours.