Act Acting » Career Acting » Self analysis (behavioural traits)

Self analysis (behavioural traits)

Question:

      Difficulty handling criticism/perceived rejection       Bouts of accute anger       Over the top reactions       Irritability and anxiety       Insecure and paranoid       Doing negative things to attract attention.       Desperately need  mh team/pdoc to be there for meand yet mistrust/’hate’ them       Have a hate you/need you history of participation on forums ie dramatically flouncing off in a ‘I hate you all i am never going to come back here’ manner only to experience a feeling of loss when i am not there.       A lot of self destructiveness almost us if there is a proverbial war zone constanlty in my head.       It has f**ked with my quality of life  and i need help with it but wonder if there is any help .Maybe i’m just a sick dysdfunctional f**k.

Response:

Or maybe you’re a bipolar person.  This sounds pretty typical. Irritability, insecurity, poor impulse control.  When your emotions give you false cues, it can be hard to not feel insecure and irritable.  Think about it – when we are going through life, on a regular basis we start to feel angry. A normal person who gets angry has a reason.  So we look around for a reason, and can generally find one if we look hard enough.  Maybe it’s our partner, who is saying things that *could* be interpreted as negative, if we’re of a mind. Or a co-worker, who is trying to advance her career at our expense.  Or a boss, who is selfishly promoting his interests instead of our own.  Mind you, these people aren’t really doing what we think they are, but we have very real feelings of anger, and must find a reason for it.  That’s just human nature – we believe that there must be a reason for our emotions. That’s simply logical.  The problem is that for bipolar people, there is No Reason for our anger.  It’s caused by chemical reactions in our brain, not outside stimuli.   So, when we react to the anger, we appear to be acting irrationally.  In our minds, it is quite logical:  Person A hurt us.  We respond to Person A.  But to this person, the response is inappropriate, because they know they didn’t do anything to hurt us. I really believe that the critical step to really learning to cope with being bipolar is recognizing that this happens, and learning to objectively analyze our emotions.  And the first step to that  is learning to not respond immediately to our emotions.   Stop automatically trusting your emotions.  If you feel like someone has hurt you, don’t react to that feeling.  First, take a step back and review the situation, giving them the benefit of the doubt.  Assume that they didn’t intentionally try to hurt you, and that your emotions are causing you to overreact.  Consider their past behavior, motives, and personality.  If you can, ask a trusted friend to assess the situation.  Sometimes it will become obvious that what the person did is so blatant that they were being hurtful.  Then you can decide rationally how to respond, if the action requires a response.  But most of the time, you’ll find that your emotional feelings were causing you to misinterpret something that was said.  At first, this process is hard, and painful (it’s hard to admit that my feelings aren’t valid, even when I know they often aren’t).  But it gets easier.  And your life will get better when you don’t have to live with the repercussions of impulsive behavior triggered by irrational feelings. Remember – bipolarity effects our feelings, not our ability to think.  We are as rational as non-bipolar people.  It’s just that we are trying to rationally respond to emotions that are not "real", in the sense that they are not caused by outside stimuli.  Since people can’t see what we’re responding to, they may thing we are responding irrationally, but we aren’t. And we can control our responses, even if we can’t control the emotions. All people, bipolar and not, have to learn at an early age to control how they respond to their emotions.  When someone makes a non bipolar person angry, that person has a choice of how to deal with that anger.  When we are angry, we can choose how to deal with that anger. Diane

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –       Difficulty handling criticism/perceived rejection       Bouts of accute anger       Over the top reactions       Irritability and anxiety       Insecure and paranoid       Doing negative things to attract attention.       Desperately need  mh team/pdoc to be there for meand yet mistrust/’hate’ them       Have a hate you/need you history of participation on forums ie dramatically flouncing off in a ‘I hate you all i am never going to come back here’ manner only to experience a feeling of loss when i am not there.       A lot of self destructiveness almost us if there is a proverbial war zone constanlty in my head.       It has f**ked with my quality of life  and i need help with it but wonder if there is any help .Maybe i’m just a sick dysdfunctional f**k.

Response:

Actually, reading this again, I’m not sure that we’re not simply taking a different definition of "rational".  I mean rational in the most basic sense – that means that a person has an ability to tell the difference between right and wrong, and take some action, however small, toward the the right direction.  I think maybe you are thinking that I meant rational in the sense of "able to think clearly".  If so, then you are right.  During a bad mood episode, we are often not able to think clearly.   During the worst mood episode I’ve ever had (just before I was diagnosed), all I was able to think of was calling my health plan to get help, because I knew I was going to kill myself.  I was not "rational" in the sense that I could think clearly, but I was "rational", in the sense that I knew that killing myself would be a bad thing, and I needed help. Diane

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I usually agree with you Diane, except on this point.  Some of us, when manic/hypomanic, do have our ability to think compromised.  We do become irrational and we do experience things that in reality are not there. This cannot be controlled by us and needs intervention.  I would love to be able to control my suicidal fixations when manic.  I’d love to be able to stop the fear that I will swallow a whole bottle of pills.  I’d love all of that to be able to be willed away by my conscious effort but it does not happen. It needs medical intervention…quickly.  All the mindfullness in the world will not create reason until the illness is dealt with.  Once the symptoms are quelled and relieved then mindfullness can again come into play. c

Response:

It has f**ked with my quality of life  and i need help with it but wonder if there is any help .Maybe i’m just a sick dysdfunctional f**k.

Firemonkey: Gee….your list sounds a lot like mine, with some variations, of course. I’ve been firmly in the "sick dysfuntional" category myself and somehow I don’t think you and I are that unusual. Here’s my advice….and I’ve actually used this my own self: 1.  Get the med combo that’s best for you.  Hard to do, but priority one. 2. Consider counseling/therapy/support group to help learn those oh so valuable coping skills that so many of us seem to have missed somewhere out there. Probably because we’ve had to cope with so much more than the "average" person. 3.  Most important in my opinion.  Try to be easier with yourself.  hard to develop self acceptance, but a little of it goes a long was and a little is something to build on.  It takes some, but not all of the pain decrease. As Bill Clinton would say, "I feel your pain," Mainly cause I’ve been there and often still am. Best wishes, Maggie

Response:

Collen & Diane: I think, as usual, you have both provided very thoughtful posts on this topic. Unfortunately, at least in my experience and that of my BP relatives, sometimes we’ve acted in ways others have perceived as "really weird." And some people remember it amd have fprmed negative opinions of us. And…..there are some peple out there who, for whatever reason, findit easy to spot vulnerable, unstable people and we can become very easy targets. This whole mental health thing can make life a whole lot more difficult in our social interactions. It sucks, but it’s often a big factor. Maggie

Response:

3.  Most important in my opinion.  Try to be easier with yourself.  hard to develop self acceptance, but a little of it goes a long was and a little is something to build on.  It takes some, but not all of the pain decrease.

Imho your right,this is very important to us. I have met a lot of

Response:

This is a very profound thought, actually. All my life I’ve felt like a victim.  It never occurred to me that my emotional instability was attracting problems.  Funny – now that I’m medicated, I don’t feel so much like a victim anymore.  A good thing.  :-) Diane

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – And…..there are some peple out there who, for whatever reason, findit easy to spot vulnerable, unstable people and we can become very easy targets. This whole mental health thing can make life a whole lot more difficult in our social interactions. It sucks, but it’s often a big factor. Maggie

Response:

Or borderline personality disorder which IMO sound more in conjuntion with the symptoms listed.  It’s the "I hate you don’t leave me" thing that caught my eye. continued… <snip  (Diana’s post…I forgot to leave her name on it.) Remember – bipolarity effects our feelings, not our ability to think.  We are as rational as non-bipolar people.  It’s just that we are trying to rationally respond to emotions that are not "real", in the sense that they are not caused by outside stimuli.  Since people can’t see what we’re responding to, they may thing we are responding irrationally, but we aren’t. And we can control our responses, even if we can’t control the emotions. All people, bipolar and not, have to learn at an early age to control how they respond to their emotions.  When someone makes a non bipolar person angry, that person has a choice of how to deal with that anger.  When we are angry, we can choose how to deal with that anger. Diane

I usually agree with you Diane, except on this point.  Some of us, when manic/hypomanic, do have our ability to think compromised.  We do become irrational and we do experience things that in reality are not there.  This cannot be controlled by us and needs intervention.  I would love to be able to control my suicidal fixations when manic.  I’d love to be able to stop the fear that I will swallow a whole bottle of pills.  I’d love all of that to be able to be willed away by my conscious effort but it does not happen. It needs medical intervention…quickly.  All the mindfullness in the world will not create reason until the illness is dealt with.  Once the symptoms are quelled and relieved then mindfullness can again come into play. c

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –       Difficulty handling criticism/perceived rejection       Bouts of accute anger       Over the top reactions       Irritability and anxiety       Insecure and paranoid       Doing negative things to attract attention.       Desperately need  mh team/pdoc to be there for meand yet mistrust/’hate’ them       Have a hate you/need you history of participation on forums ie dramatically flouncing off in a ‘I hate you all i am never going to come back here’ manner only to experience a feeling of loss when i am not there.       A lot of self destructiveness almost us if there is a proverbial war zone constanlty in my head.       It has f**ked with my quality of life  and i need help with it but wonder if there is any help .Maybe i’m just a sick dysdfunctional f**k.

Actually, as written it sounds quite a bit like borderline personality disorder. MC

Response:

Yeah.  What Colleen said.  Before I was medicated I had irrational delusions of persecution. Since I am medicated, the worst behavior I have is quarterly trying to get off my medications because I feel ‘normal.’  It only takes a few days before those old feelings return. Val in Boise

| Or borderline personality disorder which IMO sound more in conjuntion with | the symptoms listed.  It’s the "I hate you don’t leave me" thing that caught | my eye. continued… | | <snip  (Diana’s post…I forgot to leave her name on it.) | | Remember – bipolarity effects our feelings, not our ability to think. We | are as rational as non-bipolar people.  It’s just that we are trying to | rationally respond to emotions that are not "real", in the sense that they | are not caused by outside stimuli.  Since people can’t see what we’re | responding to, they may thing we are responding irrationally, but we | aren’t. | And we can control our responses, even if we can’t control the emotions. | All people, bipolar and not, have to learn at an early age to control how | they respond to their emotions.  When someone makes a non bipolar person | angry, that person has a choice of how to deal with that anger.  When we | are | angry, we can choose how to deal with that anger. | | Diane | | I usually agree with you Diane, except on this point.  Some of us, when | manic/hypomanic, do have our ability to think compromised.  We do become | irrational and we do experience things that in reality are not there. This | cannot be controlled by us and needs intervention.  I would love to be able | to control my suicidal fixations when manic.  I’d love to be able to stop | the fear that I will swallow a whole bottle of pills.  I’d love all of that | to be able to be willed away by my conscious effort but it does not happen. | It needs medical intervention…quickly.  All the mindfullness in the world | will not create reason until the illness is dealt with.  Once the symptoms | are quelled and relieved then mindfullness can again come into play. | c | | |

Response:

I agree that the person could have a personality disorder, but I think that the "I hate you don’t leave me" reaction is simply an expression of frustration/anger/confusion due to mixed states.  I also recognize that in the case of manic psychosis, a bipolar person might not be rational and able to make decisions.  I guess I don’t think about that much, since I’m type II and I have never had a psychotic episode.  In all honesty, I’m not sure I really understand psychoses, since I’ve never experienced them.  I’ve learned through the years that I can’t really understand mental illnesses unless I’ve experienced some variation of them first hand. But short of psychoses, I have to respectfully disagree that we lose our rationality when we are manic/hypomanic.  We may be so overwhelmed by emotions that it is very hard to think clearly, and rational thought seems impossible, but our brains don’t turn off when we have extreme mood episodes.  For example, you have had multiple urges to take a bottle of pills.  But you didn’t.  Why not?  Because your rational mind told you that it wouldn’t be a good thing to do, no matter how strongly your emotional mind felt otherwise.  You controlled your behaviour with an effort of will. You can’t make the urge/fear go away.  But you can focus your mind on hanging on until the fear goes away on it’s own, or calling for help, or doing whatever it is that you do to prevent hurting yourself.  I am NOT suggesting that we can "turn off" the emotions.  We can’t do that any more than an epileptic could turn off a seizure by concious effort.  We can’t will intense emotions away or make ourselves happy when we’re depressed by simply thinking good thoughts.  And anybody who says otherwise doesn’t really understand the concept of mood disorder.  But we can control our *responses* to those emotions.  If we can do that effectively enough, then we can lead fairly normal lives. Diane

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Or borderline personality disorder which IMO sound more in conjuntion with the symptoms listed.  It’s the "I hate you don’t leave me" thing that caught my eye. continued… <snip  (Diana’s post…I forgot to leave her name on it.) Remember – bipolarity effects our feelings, not our ability to think. We are as rational as non-bipolar people.  It’s just that we are trying to rationally respond to emotions that are not "real", in the sense that they are not caused by outside stimuli.  Since people can’t see what we’re responding to, they may thing we are responding irrationally, but we aren’t. And we can control our responses, even if we can’t control the emotions. All people, bipolar and not, have to learn at an early age to control how they respond to their emotions.  When someone makes a non bipolar person angry, that person has a choice of how to deal with that anger.  When we are angry, we can choose how to deal with that anger. Diane I usually agree with you Diane, except on this point.  Some of us, when manic/hypomanic, do have our ability to think compromised.  We do become irrational and we do experience things that in reality are not there. This cannot be controlled by us and needs intervention.  I would love to be able to control my suicidal fixations when manic.  I’d love to be able to stop the fear that I will swallow a whole bottle of pills.  I’d love all of that to be able to be willed away by my conscious effort but it does not happen. It needs medical intervention…quickly.  All the mindfullness in the world will not create reason until the illness is dealt with.  Once the symptoms are quelled and relieved then mindfullness can again come into play. c

Response:

Related Posts

Leave a Reply