Something is missing from my mind

DX'd - Other
1

My mother has been out of town all week for business, like she is most weeks, and will be back home sometime this evening. It’s been weeks since I have showered or changed my clothes, and it occurred to me this morning that I smell pretty terrible. When I notice that, and I know she is coming home, it gives me just enough motivation to shower, because I don’t want to be offensive with my smell. I think it’s rude to subject other people to your body odor and whatnot, so if I can help (if I have it in my awareness) I try not to.

I’m always wearing this thick knitted hat. I’ve been wearing knitted and beanie hats since I was a teenager, because it hides my greasy hair when I’ve not been showering. I had a job some years ago where the dress code didn’t allow hats, but I wore one anyway, for this reason, and nobody questioned it. In retrospect maybe they could tell something was wrong with me, and it made them too nervous to confront me over my hat. I have no idea.

So I took my hat off, and I found several mats in my hair. I’ve never experienced this before. I have very fine, straight hair. But I found 9 of them, in different sizes. There is no way I could have brushed these out, they felt and looked impossible to even exist they were so tight and crazy and hard. So I took the kitchen shears and cut them out. Now my clumps of matted hair are in the bathroom trash can.

I don’t really know what is wrong with me. I’ve had professionals think I have depression, but I don’t feel sad, I don’t cry. I don’t feel anything, I just don’t think of things. I don’t mean for these things to happen. It reminded me of an old roommate from years ago and now I’m thinking about it. I stopped showering and stopped noticing things. My room that I rented filled with trash. The smell came through the vents. I didn’t notice any of it or think about any of it until my roommate was yelling at me about it and wanting me to move out. I never meant to bother them and never meant for it to happen, it just never was in my awareness, I was just trying to work and keep my job.

Even while I’m cutting these mats out of my hair, I know that I should feel something about it, but I just don’t. I don’t care what my hair looks like. But I think I’m supposed to. I think most women would be freaking out if they had mats in their hair like this. My only concern is hiding the cut-off hair so my mother doesn’t see it and get mad. I think I will put it outside in the garden or something.

Sorry to whine/vent this has just never happened before and I feel a bit in shock or something, I don’t know. I’ve always had long periods of being bad at self-care ever since I was a younger teenager, but I’ve never had mats in my hair. I feel like I should be upset. Maybe I am but I can’t feel it. I don’t know it’s weird.

I don’t understand how this all happens. It’s like I’m very depressed but don’t get sad and never cry. I’m sometimes worried this part of me can’t be fixed. I know meds and therapy and things can take away what shouldn’t be there, like sadness or anxiety. But I don’t know what adds things that should be there but are not. I don’t even know what’s missing that makes 10 days go by but feel like 1 day, and then suddenly I have cavities and hobo hair.

2

I think learning to take care of myself has been the thoughest lesson.

If you really want it you can do it, ask for help to your mother and your brother if you trust them enough for that.

It’s important to take care of ourselves, not because of our appearance to the outside, although that’s also a bit important if we want to be social and things like that, but because it’s us, it’s you and you should love yourself, that includes taking good care of your health, and not letting yourself deteriorate.

3

Sounds like negative symptoms to me, but I am not a doctor. I know I have a problem with self care too. That is why I want to get a job. I am hoping it will force me to shower and dress up and take better care of myself to avoid offending people with body odor and stuff like that. I noticed that when I used to work I showered and brushed my teeth everyday, unless I wasn’t working. Now that I don’t work I can go almost two weeks before my wife forces me to shower. My office is always a mess too. I just can’t seem to keep it clean.

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4

My problem seems to be the opposite, I get much worse whenever I get a job. I think it’s because stress makes it worse. I feel like if I could keep my stress from happening, then I could hold down a job better.

I don’t think I can. I live with my mother and she never acts like she notices anything, I can’t get my sense of reality from her. Years ago she used to remind me to shower, but now she just ignores it, I think.

I only have 5 more days until I get to see the psychiatrist. I hope she can figure out what is wrong.

Nothing makes any sense to me. I experience psychosis but I know it’s psychosis, I have insight. I seem to act like I have severe depression, but I never feel sad or cry. I feel like nothing fits me.

5

Can I ask you why you think it’s psychosis?

6

Most of the time I think it could be BPD type psychosis, like just paranoid delusion things. Because my paranoid delusions tend to be brief, lasting only hours to days at a time before I realize. Or they seem to be triggered by situations, like at my last job where everything started to get crazier and crazier until nothing made sense at all. That seems like probably borderline PD or something.

But sometimes I also see things that I know have to be my mind screwing up, like people’s faces changing and not looking right. Or I hear people or music. Or the entities that live inside my mind start communicating with me or flooding my mind with images. But most of the time I know to ignore it, I know it’s just something wrong with me. It’s only when my anxiety is very high and I’m sleep-deprived that I have panic attacks where I think it’s demons, but then once I finally get some sleep, I come back to my senses.

The internet says it could also be a brain tumor. Because sometimes I smell things that aren’t there like gas from the stove, but nobody else smells it. Or maybe everyone is lying to me. My family can be ■■■■■■ up like that sometimes. I don’t know.

It’s like it’s not psychosis because I know it’s not real, so it can’t be, but then I don’t know what it is. I’m afraid that because it doesn’t make sense, my doctor won’t believe me. But if I try to lie to get help, there’s no point because I won’t get the right help. I don’t know what to do. I feel like cutting all my hair off but I know I shouldn’t because my mother would be furious.

7

You should print this out and hand it to your pdoc when you see him. Don’t lie, because that doesn’t get you anywhere, just in situations you don’t want to be.

It could be a lot of things, so I don’t diagnose yourself too it’s not good for you to diagnose yourself over the internet, you have no medical degree. And even those with medical degrees sometimes make mistakes.

You don’t seem to crave attention like borderlines, seems more like schizotypal to be honest, but again, I’m not a doctor, just giving an opinion.

I would believe in depression with psychotic features from what I understand about you from the forum too. Even if you don’t cry, that doesn’t mean much.

Just wait for the pdoc appointment and let the doctor tell you what he thinks.

And yeah, don’t cut your hair.

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8

Okay, thank you. I am going to go ahead and take a shower. Maybe that will calm me down. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I’ve been this way since I was 15 when it happened the first time. I’ve seen multiple professionals and still don’t know what’s wrong. I’m afraid I’ll never figure it out. I feel like it’s very important that I can figure it out because if I can’t figure it out then I think it’s demons and I get worse. I just go so many days or weeks or months and I don’t think about things, and then something like this happens like finding mats in my hair and it’s like suddenly reality is screaming in my face just like my old roommate. But I don’t do it on purpose, I never meant for it happen. Okay I’m going to go take my shower.

9

It’s not demons. Those don’t exist no matter what they tell me. It’s a nice story to explain some not so nice things but it’s human made, so we can fear something that is not human when in fact is very human.

It’s a different way to experience reality, but it’s a way. A lot of people, including me, fall for the trap of the demons and the shadows and the dark and the light, and there’s only one way out of it, pure factuality.

There’s no evidence, they don’t exist. That simple.

10

Thank you, you actually answered a question I’ve had for a long while which is whether or not it is possible for someone with very straight hair to develop matted well…dreads basically. Just something I wondered about from my memories or…erm…delusions as my family would say.