I Believe I Have DPD (Dependent Personality Disorder)

By zoef1976

Experience Project ~ I have lost so many friends through being clingy, dependent, avoiding arguments for fear of losing friends, taking a lot of stick from people including allowing myself to be used, I just cant help it, as soon as someone is nice to me, I want them to be my best friend, I want to see them every day, I text as soon as i have their number etc. 

I am married to a wonderful man who i can truly say, loves me back, this i dont doubt ( well i do, i ask him every day if he still loves me!) I could never argue with him, I am very submissive, but I do know I am respected.

Someone I was very close to has basically turned on me and said she cant handle me as I am too clingy, and I am hurting so much (there's a lot more to it though) and I am trying so hard to be strong and keep my distance for both our sakes but I am really struggling so much, I want to get out of this cycle, and I'm fed up of being lonely.

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Climbing Up From Rock Bottom: I Have Schizoaffective Disorder

by ClosertoFine

Experience Project~ I began having mental health issues (mainly depression and an eating disorder) when I was fourteen but I was not diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder until I was 19.  It was at 19 that I began to experience severe paranoia.  Shortly after that the voices began.  I tried to ignore them.  I tried to go on with my life but I was overwhelmed.  I ended up overdosing on my antidepressant at age 20.  For me that was rock bottom.  

When I woke up in the emergency room with tubes and monitors everywhere I was not happy to have lived through the overdose.  I was angry.  I spent a few days on the cardiac floor then was admitted to a short term psychiatric unit with a 24 hour "velcro" sitter (aka someone who's job it was to watch me 24/7).  I had the sitter because I still wanted to die and was attempting to hurt myself even while on the locked psych unit.  After 72 hours on the psych unit I tried to demand to be released.  The psychiatrist took me to court and had me declared incompetent and I was placed on probate status and remanded to the hospital.  So I ended up spending about 2 months on the unit that normally does not hold anyone for more than 7 days.  For quite a while of that I was absolutely out of control.  I wanted to hurt myself so badly that I spent quite a bit of time in isolation, under sedation, or in restraints.  

Eventually the psychiatrist sat me down and basically told me that the direction I was going was right to long term placement in a state run facility.  I just remember that hit me really hard because I had gone from being a really high achiever who was "destined for great things" to being considered for the state hospital.  I knew in my heart that I could put the pieces back together and I think he knew that too.  I just had to work with my illness and with the treatment team instead of fighting everything.  I sat there that morning and wrote a mission statement for my life (I'll have to find that and post it here sometime).  And then began the babysteps back to the real world.  It wasnt an immediate miraculous turn around.  It was a gradual improvement.  It was me fighting myself and fighting my demons.  

Eventually I improved enough to get rid of my sitter.  That was a big deal for me.  Then after having been there more than 2 months I improved enough that the court allowed me to be transferred to a private longer term type of hospital that was out of state.  When I was discharged from the short term unit I cried.  Those people had saved my life and I knew it.  My dad accompanied me when I flew to the hospital that was out of state.  The particular part of the facility that I was accepted into was a Women's Treatment Program.  It was a house on the grounds of a very well known hospital.  The house was open and as long as we attended treatment sessions we could come and go as we pleased.  I was supposed to be there 6 weeks.  I ended up only staying 11 days but during those days I was able to get used to not being locked up again.  I spent a large amount of the time riding the public transit system into the city and just kind of walking around and being a young woman out in the city again.  After 11 days I decided that I was not benefiting from the program and that my being there was not necessary.  I called my parents and the airline and a cab and flew home.  

The court then put me on community probate where they required that I report to a local mental health clinic a certain number of times per week.  At the same time I was trying to decide what to do with my life.  I put in an application to college.  As months went by things got better.  Eventually I was released from probate and was then considered a voluntary patient again. 

Much to my surprise the college that I had applied to accepted me.  Against my treatment team's advice I decided to begin school on a full time basis and move into the dorms.  It turned out to be an excellent choice for me.  I ended up changing my whole treatment team upon moving to school and that has worked out well.  I'm going into my third year of undergrad as a psychology major.  I have been dean's list every semester.  My meds are not completely stable (I've been through 25+ meds in countless combinations) but I have learned to function even when things are "off". 

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I Battle Histrionic Personality Disorder

By frozenFire6767

Experience Project~ Alrighty...  I was just recently diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and narcissistic and histrionic.. However you spell it. What I battle with most is being alone because eventually I'll find your weaknesses pretty quickly I'll know all your secrets and then if you hurt me once I will make you feel like you want to die ill make you feel like nothing. I have the wonderful capability of manipulation and I manipulate people to get what I want and I can change myself whoever I'm around I can be exactly who they want me to be. The biggest part I struggle with is that borderline personality disorder we somehow do not have this capability to find value in ourselves or love ourselves. So for me I try to find it through men and after many failed relationships, i'm in my late 20s and I've been married three times. Always with men who are either sociopaths emotionally abusive or physically abusive... I ever wonder will I ever love myself just because I love myself. Will this Always be impossible for me to do? When I love someone I love them hard and deep and fast but if they don't show me affection all the time don't text me withhold sex for me I will immediately go into the biggest depression and not be able to get out of it for weeks. Then I'll hurt them I will hurt them for not loving me and not accepting me and I will ruin them and run them into the ground without a care. Sometimes I feel bad about it later other times I don't. I can tell people exactly what they do not want to hear and I push their buttons and I like seeing them hurt and going over the edge and breaking. Yet on the other hand I can be the best friend that you've ever had I'll pick you up at 2 o'clock in the morning I'll listen to you whine and cry and I may not actually give a **** but I pretend to.... Yet I get so mad when you actually don't love me and I cry a lot. I Enjoy pain a lot which I think is really weird I have over 25 tattoos a **** ton of piercings and it's still not enough pain.... I graduated college I had amazing jobs that pay a lot but I never stick with them and I was finding excuse to quit I just wonder if I'm ever going to actually get my life together or is this the path that I'm going to keep taking over and over again for the rest my life... Yet through all of this I just want attention either good or bad I just want you to know that I am there and for some reason I care about what you think about me so much yet at the same time I don't give two *****

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This Is Me... I Have Schizotypal Personality Disorder

by CasperAdair

Experience Project~ 
This Is Me... 
I have schizophrenia.
I discovered this about a year ago.
It scared me. It terrifies me to this day.
It sucks. Not knowing if something is real, if a feeling is truly yours.
A while ago, I was convinced my parents could read everything I was thinking. I am still convinced now, but people tell me they can't. How hard I try to believe them. But something in my head tells me they can and do and I argue with it trying to change my mind and fail every time. 
I know they can't. But again, I cannot be too sure of that. 
I have this thing, when I talk to people I literally get light headed and come close to passing out. (Trying to get over that.. time to grow up)
A man told me to kill myself and get it over with. I came so close. Until I discovered this man did not exist.

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I Have Trichotillomania

I Am More Than Just Trichotillomania 

by h0pelessh0pe

Experience Project~ She touches her hair in a certain way. It’s very particular, very deliberate. Almost as if she is searching for one specific strand. But she’s only half conscious about what she’s doing. Found. Beautiful, fingers glide and caress and twirl. The flirting becomes violent, like a drunken man whose moves are rough and brash. Eradicated. The fingers move on, and more strands are stolen from their roots. In the emptiness, the gratifying yet anxious churning that follows, she becomes fully aware. And in that lingering moment, a little part of her dies, too. This is not the first time. It is not the second, or the third, or the tenth. It is not the last either.

People talk about failure as a way to grow from mistakes or disappointments, determined to work harder to avoid repeats of such incidents. What if failure came the same exact way, over and over again? You guys know exactly what I'm talking about—that’s the beauty of posting my story here, because so many people understand. You don’t just feel sorry, you actually know what it’s like. And for those feeling desperate, I know what you’re going through.

At this point in my life, I have struggled with trichotillomania for almost eight years now. Only aware that it was a mental and neurobiological disorder for one year, I spent the other seven heavy with the burden of believing I was a vain freak unhealthily obsessed with hair. In the sixth grade, I became “the girl with the bandana,” every single day of that year unfailingly sporting a style I secretly despised, because I didn’t even have enough hair to “naturally” hide a loss I couldn’t explain. I did not understand why I pulled; I hated myself for being unable to stop. Trich affected aspects of my lifestyle more than I realized, things I did to hide are more than I can share now, since I am still walking down memory lane, picking up the pieces of me that have been tainted by my…condition.

Last November, when I finally came across an article about trichotillomania, my world flipped upside down. I cried for days, shaking under seven years of guilt, confusion, loneliness. Partially in denial, I didn’t want to be labeled as “diseased” either. But as each bitter tear burst forth, I began to feel somewhat relieved. I began to understand.

Failure is not a label. The pulling, the urges, the constant, recurring failure do not define me. Hair does not define me. Failure is meant to shape, to strengthen, but it does not make us who we are. The key to growth is accepting our imperfections and issues, and knowing that the condition is not all that we are. We ought to love ourselves for whatever array of problems we have, to realize where our identity truly needs to be placed. Failure will be inevitable—in any form— but it’s a matter of how we perceive it; we are made up of how we react to such uncontrollable events, not by the experiences themselves.

Since learning what was “wrong” with me and recognizing what it means, I haven’t magically stopped. Oh, I only wish it were that easy. I have had some major relapses even soon after learning about trich. Even now, the reality is that I’ve just pulled a few hairs before typing this, and a good fourth of my head is in tufts. But my emotional relationship with the disorder has transformed. Initially I was afraid of the truth, but really, it has set me free because I allowed truth to be a blessing. The key to trichotillomania is not about settling with fact that there is no cure to the urges; neither is it about the treatment of hair loss. True healing is about the perception and the acceptance. Perhaps this is how we ought to live our lives: how we ought to treat ourselves and others, and how we deal with problems we cannot avoid.

I know we are all stronger, we are all more than just a disorder. You know what else comes with acceptance? Sharing. Not just here, where I'm anonymous, but with your closest friends, family, or mentors. If you want to break down the walls that trich has built in your life, do it first by letting people in; hiding this secret in shame is still allowing it to control your life.

Support is key – to have a community that loves you for your struggles, even when they can’t entirely understand what you’re going through, love is a force to be reckoned with. And that’s what I hope to do, with this newly gained knowledge about myself and the fact that there are others like me. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and while God did NOT give me this form of suffering, I know he has allowed it to shape me in to a person that can help others with trichotillomania. Perhaps one day I can offer more when I’ve actually conquered it, but for now, I hope what sharing I have done has been able to provide encouragement or solace.

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I Have Bulimia

My Survivor Story

by smc924

Experience Project~ Do you know what the first thing I remember about my 28th birthday is?  I s*** my pants.  Way to welcome in the 28th year.  I was walking to work and just couldn’t get there fast enough.  This was the second of three times this would happen to me over the course of the year.  Though I suppose having taken sixty five stool softeners and  ten laxatives the night before played a role in it, but I had to, right?  Everyone wants to look thin on their birthday and Jon was taking me to dinner,  plus I had a piece of chocolate cake the night before.


I look back on that day and see how far I have come.  Granted I’ve put on 35lbs possibly more, I wouldn’t know I’ve given my scale away, but it will come off healthily and permanently.  I can’t say the desire to be thin has gone away, but I can say my “Life without Ed”  is truly fab.

I’ve been heavier since I was a little girl.  Maybe eight years old.  I remember at five walking around singing about myself in full confidence “I’m the prettiest girl on campus,” somewhere along the way that confidence turned to shame. I think the comments from my family started to come when I was around nine.  In all honesty, I maybe just had a little baby fat, but  by 10 I was already doing Richard Simmons Deal a Meal which evolved into a strictly liquid diet during the daytime for me, only having dinner with parents over the course of four months.  By twelve I had decided to become a vegetarian faking a strong anticruelty bravado to cover up an insecure little girl trying to do whatever she could to lose weight..

 I remember comments from Grandma, My Grandpa, and my aunts about my weight. I felt like I was a disappointment and embarrassment to my parents and that maybe they would love me as much as my brother and sister if I could lose some weight and people would stop commenting to them about it. In retrospect I think perhaps these  were some of the first voices of eating disorder or ED that I heard.

The years that followed contained periods of starvation and binging to make up for emotions associated with moving far from my friends and being an awkward little girl with a deep Pennsylvania accent thrust to the eighth grade of a school with kids who acted very cruel.  In high school, I did make a good friend, her name was Tabatha. Tabatha however was possibly the most self conscious person  I have ever met.  She is  tall and very thin but refused to wear sleeveless shirts because she thought her arms were fat.  She gave looks for outfits she didn’t like, and while being a true friend, fed into my insecurities. 

At fifteen I purged for the first time.  I had eaten a box of candy after a particularly rough day at school.  I remember sticking my fingers down my throat, the pain in the upheaval, and the relief once my body was rid of the poison I had just fed it.  I began purging daily.  I received so many compliments as my body shrunk in front everyone.  My friends and I would go to Friendlies for Sundaes a couple times a week.  I would get a house salad, with honey mustard dressing while they would have Peanutbutter cup sundaes.  I would always purge my salad.     Things cooled down in the summer and I returned to normal eating habits, and gained back most of what I lost. 

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