The Automatic Suppression of My Self

Because most, if not all, notions of mental illness has been suppressed within me (by myself and/or others) through the rejection of those notions or the reasoning out of my behaviours as a slight variation of normalcy, I've turned out to be largely naïve to identifying those symptoms within me today and maybe even intolerant of, or averse to, identifying with those symptoms.

Only this year have I more closely aligned with identifying that I have OCD, but clearly, by my language, not fully comfortable with it. It's my most simple mental disorder that I can be convinced of its truth, because I still actively and consciously practice those symptoms in my day-to-day living and because it can be o b s e r v e d. AND I DON'T EVEN WANNA START TALKING ABOUT AUTISM AND HOW PEOPLE HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT HOW PEOPLE ARE JUST CALLING THEMSELVES AUTISTIC BECAUSE IT WAS TRENDY (the fast facts is that it contributes to invalidation of one's feelings about themselves blah blah blah we all know the story). My autism awareness timeline was about 2018/2019-present. Crazy stuff.

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I've recently begun questioning whether I may be afflicted with borderline personality disorder (BPD). So, of course, I read some articles about it online to quickly define it, then read the section on it in the DSM-5 manual (here's the link to a PDF for you crazy kittens) for further identification (page 663-666 if you wanna read it too). Lo and behold, I feel like I can identify with the diagnostics criteria. The not-everything-has-to-be-a-mental-illness crowd is seething right nyeow.

The primary issue I have is the acknowledgement, or confirmation, of these behaviours that align with having BPD. I've spent so much of my life not questioning how I acted (positive! being yourself is good) that I cannot distinguish my symptoms with confidence or that I am strongly in denial of such symptoms existing within me in the first place (negative! I don't know my own self, identity, and/or image). The same goes for autism and adhd.

> How do you prove something if it occurs (seemingly) internally?

This is where I start to break down more of my confidence: I cannot be aware of these symptoms, because if I were, I should be able to fix(?) it myself.

> How can I be aware of these problems about my internal mechanisms and still be a victim to them?

Okay, wait, I think I just refuted this in my head via OCD and my very obviously perceivable rituals; the difference being that I don't consider myself a victim to my rituals, but let's be real, I kind of am LMAO (but also, I don't fully see them as something to be fixed). I literally cannot ignore my compulsions. Oopsies. Regardless, I am not recording myself and viewing the footage. I am not writing out every thought that passes through my mind.

> How do people know?

> How do people know to go out there and tell someone (e.g., a psychiatrist) and happen to say the right things about themselves and have the sufficient evidence about themselves to convince the psychiatrist of this illness?

> What am I supposed to say to others?

OCD is easy because I have my rituals.

> What am I picking out from my life to prove this? Is it enough? Should it be recurring? Should I fall victim to it (and again, how can I point it out and still fall victim to it?)?

> How do I satisfy "Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment", for instance?

It's never enough to just say it and believe it. No one's gonna believe me. My mind has been trained to not be aware of these things and to blank out and to say, "I don't know." Additionally, it's like, embarrassing and difficult to bring up any specific form of evidence, because I have to lay out the foundations of the conversation and situation and involved parties so that it makes sense, so that I can prove to the listener of what I want them to believe and that, in and of itself, just makes it feel so much more artificial. The more it is verbalized, the sillier it feels. Yeah, I check the corners of the room before checking the locks on the door. Funny, isn't it? What, should I say "Yes, I often imagine my friends consciously deciding to exclude me from activities and are plotting to cut me off"? What!!!

Thankfully, to my benefit(?), I have incriminating textual evidence related to these malicious thoughts in my Notes app during a rather dark arc in my university life. Furthermore, there are sprinkles of chatlogs wherein I express similar discontent, fear, and insecurity related to the subject matter under a guise of analysis, so maybe "A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation" fits more than I realize.

My family has recently started bringing up how I have a lot of gray hairs for someone my age and that, comparatively, my parents didn't get gray hairs until much later and my siblings don't have gray hairs now (or that many to begin with). They follow up this question with, "Are you stressed? What are you stressed about?" I brush off the question, shrug, or say, "I don't know" or "I guess". What was I stressed about? Have I ever made myself aware that I feel stressed? Am I ever aware when I am currently stressed? With all these notions of autistic meltdowns, anxiety attacks, nervous breakdowns, etc., how many have I ever experienced in my entire life and didn't even know? I can't even answer that question, because I never paid attention and I wouldn't even have been able to identify that I experienced those as I experienced them. Who am I to compare my experience in life with?

How do others believe something about you that they cannot see? That you experience alone in your mind? If I couldn't distinguish when I had a breakdown, did I ever have one? Sometimes, I'm happy for, or jealous of, people who are aware of these things about themselves. For years, I've felt I had a sound mind for "not having any symptoms", but rather, I just couldn't identify them, I couldn't point them out, and therefore, I could not verbalize to anyone that I was experiencing something.

Too bad. Lack of accommodations, I guess. I was just livin' my life! Not my fault. Now, I'm putting in mild efforts to understand who I am and how I act and how I feel and how I experience.

Anyways, I don't need to prove to anyone of anything here. Please, don't analyze me. It will just continue to be something I think about from time-to-time as I understand myself more. Plus, going through all the diagnostics criteria and saying, "Hey, everybody, this one is me, too!" falls in the same vein of vanity, artifice, and doing-it-to-show-off, which is not my intent. I apologize for any gaps in reasoning; I'm a bit lazy, also it's 3am, my eyes forking hurt!!!

Can I say "I'm messed up" without undoing that fact for saying the very statement? I think I wrote a blog post about this once: it's like people saying they're funny, which lends itself to supporting the notion that they are not funny! Funny people wouldn't need to state they're funny! Therefore, is it valid for a person to say they're mentally ill? On what grounds do I speak? I'm not diagnosed! Well,,, look at me! I wish I could transfer my experiences to other people via Bluetooth and maybe overload their mind upon the realization that I function on an inherently different level than they do. I sometimes wonder that, if my consciousness did switch with someone, whether they'd be driven to some form of insanity or hospitalization, maybe then I'll be wholly convinced that I am Messed Up™. Until then, I know only of myself.