Catatonia

So, I am not diagnosed but I know that I have DID.

The thing with me is that my abusers knew that I had a dissociative disorder since I was in seventh grade and they used that knowledge to further exploit me. I believe that I had it since kindergarten. I remember dissociating at 5 years old and not remembering past the indication that there would be an assault.

They campaigned and solicited people to participate in 'brainwashing' me. So every single person that I've ever been friends with, dated, or worked with, was informed about my disorder and given advice on how to take advantage of me. Including doctors, dentists, administrators, employers and law enforcement.

I stopped working because my employers were intentionally triggering my trauma in an effort to get me to live with the main abusers and be financially dependent on them. But I ended up in a homeless shelter. My main abusers tried to make me live with them but my system completely shut down so that I couldn't be bossed around and they kicked me out. By shut down I mean that I was having catatonic episodes where I couldn't move or speak for 3-8 hours. I didn't know about my DID at that time and the doctors mocked me when I said that I was dissociating and that I needed help. Therapists weren't helpful either. No one explained that it was catatonia, they just stared at me when I described what was happening and sent me back to the shelter with no medication or anything.

I was being sex trafficked for three decades and my city has widespread knowledge about it. My friends and coworkers would tell my alters about the abuse. My abusers would tell my alters that I was fake or that I was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. My alters didn't believe them so people would describe the abusive situations to me but with names or locations changed. So many people knew about the trafficking but did nothing to stop it. Most people facilitated or supported the trafficking because they wanted to exert control over me. My alters that endured the abuse is still holding onto the most traumatic memories. I've been piecing things together for the past two years, isolating myself from all humans.

I feel like a monster that nobody would ever understand. I'm still in shock but I'm getting better. I'm having less catatonic episodes, since I've been isolating, but I want to know more about integration. I want to be normal however, I feel like I'll probably always be like this. Is this a lifelong disorder? Are there any people who successfully integrate?

I was lost, asleep, caught in a nightmare, until Professor Andrews rescued me. His treatment was new, radical and no-one else had thought of it, let alone tried it. I was the first successful guinea pig - all the others had 'died' or remained unchanged but I was saved. The current was too strong, too weak or the condition of the others was too far gone. After the series of shocks, I started to remember who I was, who I'd been before and then I was slowly able to communicate this to others. "My name is Charles Ward," I said, stumblingly.

"I used to live in Acacia Avenue, Fulham. I was married with two children, until the illness took me. My family - God no! Were my first victims (I would have cried, had it been physically possible but my condition stopped me).

"It's alright old man. Steady on. It's perfectly understandable. The horrors of your previous life," said the professor.

He was the only one who treated me with kindness. The others in the establishment called me a monster and didn't trust me.

"Once one of them, always one of them," they intoned behind my back.

"You just can't trust them - I wouldn't turn my back on him for a second."

I was still a monster, a misfit to them and would revert to type, given half a chance. Maybe they were right - how could I tell? I could be fine one minute and slide back into bad habits in an instant - who knows? Even the professor can't be sure, which is why I'm monitored so thoroughly. The cameras pan me. Eyes follow my every move. If it wasn't for the recovered memories of who I was, I might become paranoid.

My beautiful daughters! My wife! How could I do this horrible thing to them? I was a monster alright. A creature not to be trusted. I was an addict of human flesh and the professor had saved me.

They give me insulin and feed me nutrients, intravenously because they say I cannot digest food normally yet. Apparently all the dead flesh is returning to life and I am becoming 'human' again. They say the return to conscious awareness is the first stage and that they might be winning this war, if they can turn me back to normality. The professor believes that consciousness is what keeps the animal urges under control and stops me - us in fact, from being condemned to a life of mindless cannibalism, eternally. I hope he is right. He further believes (and the evidence seems to suggest it, strongly) that once you've captured the mind and got it in thrall, the body will follow. He says, like criminals and addicts, it's a question of reprogramming the being. I really hope he is right.

The guards wanted their revenge on me - not for my crimes against my own flesh and blood but for those they had lost to 'my kind.' It gave them a sense of closure and of power, to beat the hell out of me. It made little to me as I felt nothing and was broken already, in mind and spirit, and as the professor said the body just followed down the mineshaft of terror.

I am not alone here. The others are chained and locked in cells because they have been known to gnaw off their own hands and pull off their own feet, to try to escape - such is the effect of their deep hunger. They look at me with pleading eyes - like animals that cannot communicate in any other way. I turn my back on them, glad to no longer be one of their number, sad that they are still trapped in this lifestyle and ashamed that I cannot help these lab rats.

Talking of lab rats, the urge is returning in me. It started with surreptitiously swallowed insects, then rodents, birds if I can catch them and once a hedgehog. Oh yes, as they learned to trust me, they let me out into the grounds - at first supervised, then quite freely. By this time Andrews had moved on. I was no longer his favourite 'pet,' just an old project that he let others monitor. I was still fenced in. I still had cameras aimed at me but by this time I was considered mostly harmless. The smell of rotting flash that was me, had subsided with time and the effects of various treatments. On top of that people had become acclimatised to my odour. I was the grenade that hadn't gone off.

Now, like a prisoner of war, I searched for a weak point - the spot where the searchlights or cameras missed and I dug.

I had known I was starting to revert when the Parkinson's like symptoms started to reappear and I found it hard to kick start my body into normal, human motion. I hid the shuffling gait as best as I could, the creeping catatonia but I knew the condition was returning and that there was no point fighting it.

I saw my people wandering in large, distant herds. I heard the sound of gunfire and explosions as the humans culled them. I longed to join them. I wanted to forget the normality I'd been a part of in the past and rejoined here: The bright light effect of coming out of a cinema into daylight, the noise, the smells, the sensitivity of touch and above all 'taste.' I wanted to forget all of these plus the memories of what I'd done to others, who trusted me to be at least 'human.' The wounds of these half remembered crimes against what I was, was just too much to bear. I wanted to slip back into the opulent dark of unknowing. To be without that sharpness of conscience and consciousness, was all I longed for. I wanted to forget, big time and tonight my opportunity came. I scrambled under the wire and got away, joining my brothers and sisters of the flesh. At first they sniffed me, like some new animal but then realised I was still the same underneath. Soon the zombie army marched on, with me in its midst. Sorry professor but I must remain true to my calling as you do yours. You didn't sin against what you were but for me there is no going back and no desire to. Even now the language centre is going and with it my mind.

"Ugh, snarl, grunt."

I apologize upfront if I will be a little bit off topic, but I will try to come up with the questions.

So I was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder around the age of 3 when I didn’t even speak. Maybe it was too early (?)

Then I started to attend preschool and school in special education, and around seven years old, I started to speak fluently in two languages. Though I still had development delay, I was not good and still not good with math. At that point my diagnosis changed to Autism (since PDD did not exist anymore). Not sure if that was right…

Overall I enjoyed school (even though I was bullied by “normal” kids, which is not unusual and I forgive them), including middle school, but high school was too stressful for me, since I was transferred to the best school in the district against my will and without my friends from middle school. At some point my mental condition got really bad, and I ended up with Catatonia at age 15, which is easy to diagnose correctly since I could not move. At that point I started to receive mental health medications (never had them before). My parents fought the district and I was transferred to a “normal” school (still in special ed), which I enjoyed very much.

My mental situation was changing from time to time and I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. My psychiatrist claims that all my conditions can be explained by either Autism or Bipolar. I have no reason to disagree, even though "Forensic" Psychology is one of my restricted interests and I can easily come up with many different diagnoses.

I had several surgeries, including kidney removal at age of two. Recently I had another tumor in my spine, which was removed a couple of weeks ago. As a result I developed a severe bipolar crisis. I cannot sleep since I have nightmares and hear voices. My normal medications do not help anymore. My psychiatrist is trying to find a new combination.

Do you think this can cause personality disorder?

Hi, my name is cornwoman1. I've been diagnosed with

#MightyTogether #BipolarDisorder #PTSD #Anxiety , catatonia, diabetes, hypertension, TMJ, c-spine injury, Acquired Brain Injury, thyroid cancer, multiple myeloma, asthma, chronic bronchitis, GERD, duodenal ulcer, chronic pain

I don’t want to die but I would really prefer if the earth could swallow me.
I have been fighting with an agency to give me consistent and appropriate services. Etc etc
But today they explicitly stated I was “choosing” not to go to a homeless shelter. They also pointed out that I missed one of their (unscheduled) calls and implied I wasn’t trying hard enough to answer
Them: “you really need to make sure you’re watching your phone.”
Me: “I am- but like I told you, I am actively experiencing long periods of catatonia and dissociation. I cannot just snap out of it.” This is a client rights officer at a mental health agency.

I feel so alone. I feel like the life I’m fighting for isn’t worth it: everyone has moved on with their lives. My shattered life is all over the place in full view of my batterers and biggest critics. I feel stupid for trying. And I feel like maybe I’m not trying hard enough. All I do all day long is repeat all of the things I have tried to people on the phone and it’s becoming so hard to keep trying.
I have had conversations with my service providers about how staying in a shelter would be inappropriate given my #ChronicMigraines and #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder
I believe I am at an increased safety risk because of the medicine i am prescribed to manage my #Anxiety and #ADHD , as well as my severely debilitating symptoms of both migraines and cptsd. I spend most of my mornings curled up from nausea, I don’t eat much and I cannot sleep. I am so physically weak, lightheaded, chronically disoriented, I cannot do anything to feel better right now and there isn’t any immediate tangible help being offered. There is another agency who is tagging in now but it just feels like it’s too late.
And I’m worried that maybe I’m not trying hard enough to find a place. And it seems that people want to help until they hear how bad it all is and suddenly it becomes my fault somehow. Like missing that call. Nevermind the agency went literal months without talking to me despite me repeatedly telling them I’m not safe.
I don’t know. I’m so tired and I’m so scared. I don’t feel human.
#CheckInWithMe

Trying to reach out to people who understand what I go through.
I know that catatonia is pretty common but I'm interested to learn how it affects you in comparison to other people and their experience of it. #Catatonia #MentalHealth #SchizophreniaSpectrumPsychoticDisorders #Awareness #Experiences

"You should have her committed today," she said as though I'd left the room. Her thick German accent nearly plastering the words on Jim's face. "She is obviously faking it. She was fine out in the waiting room and now she can't move?" She was right, I was closest to normal, waiting to see her, huddled on my fiance's arm in the cushioned leather chairs. It was actually an "okay" moment but so were they all before the dystonia hit and I became a breathing statue. Like a scene straight out of The House of Wax, the 1985 version, I felt and heard everything but could not respond. The hospital called it #Dystonia mixed with #Catatonia , I called it one of the scariest summers of my life. Now I can and will be the first to admit that I have problems and, like most of the world, I deal with #Anxiety and #Depression . I have in fact attempted suicide more than once and found myself severely depressed in the months leading up to that terrible appointment. But I deal and have always dealt with my mental illness and more often than not, I'm happy. It's apart of me, but not all of me. I guess I should back up some, so that it makes a little more sense.

I can remember the moment my eye began to twitch. It was a weekday morning and the sun was bleeding through the blinds. I could smell coffee wafting through the halls and fried eggs. And the low hum of fluorescent bulbs pairing nicely with the office chatter. But I couldn't concentrate or wouldn't concentrate at least for the benefit of my sanity. Instead I observed the sunlight dripping off the plastic blades like liquid gold, spilling onto the brown hair of my supervisor. Her desk sitting inches from mine in all the glory of that window. I wanted to be out in that sun drinking it up.  Just the stillness of a morning sun and I to share a moment. I wanted the grass between my fingers and the chill that collected on the blades from the night before.

Hiking across the campus in the shoes of a student with unrealized unreachable dreams. There was a thrill to living on the campus grounds and out of the supervision of parents. Suddenly you stepped down on the thoroughfare, sugary soda in one hand, bag on back. A long day's trek brings you to a cloud dust of a city, although not really, it's actually quite breathtaking. Passing eyes wandering toward your unfamiliar gaze as you tip your hat to everyone. "'Mornin,' I spoke. The silent folk nod or smile, but some simply ride on. The city was small comparably to the standards of Knox-Wood, a seedy town not two hours ride. I clutched onto my parcel and walked into the West Salloon, an all girls inn. After bidding my kinfolk good-bye I head out to reap the benefits of the wild west. Or otherwise known as, spending three to four years in the art program, rooming with my little sister, panicking everyday and fighting the urge to cry every second. It brought a whole new layer to the nighttime sadness that I'd feel from time to time as the sun slowly sank off and out of my life.