Other "did you ever think it could be conversion disorder?"

[ExitLight]

So today, I talked about Conversion Disorder with my cousin, and she proposed that I research it and see if it fits anything. I have many people in my family who have dealt with mental health and are educated about it through experience and schooling. She informed me that my brother has told her things about his childhood that are... I don't know, I wanna say "heavy," but that's the word I use to say "f*cked up" lightly. She didn't go too far into it at all, respectably. And recently, I confided in another family member about my own possible trauma. I hope she's continued to respect the confidentiality that my brother received from my cousin today. I immediately started having one of the "episodes" where I shut down, and dissociate while talking about my brother and possible childhood traumas and stressors. Like my mom, and the way we were raised. More specifically, the way my brother realized that communication is a necessity that we did not have growing up in our household. We didn't even get to the shit I really have wanted to talk about, and that's okay. I'm not ready to talk about that with her yet. But even with something this small in comparison to the mountain I need to tackle, I felt that my limbs went numb. My hearing dissipated, and my vision started to go simultaneously blurry and white. I'm aware of what things trigger me.

I crave validation, and I don't want to be validated when I say I feel like my father and my brother have molested me throughout my life, and my way of coping was forgetting just about everything that happened; not just the trauma, but the vast majority of my childhood. I for some reason don't want to be right about it because I truly doubt myself when I experience flashbacks. I dismiss them as not real, or made up. I've had other flashbacks that feel just as real, yet are not about anything regarding sexual abuse. I don't want to be having flashbacks about these things happening only to discover that these horrible things could have happened.
I'm very f*cking smart, intelligent, and intuitive. I take an unusually long time to understand things, but when I finally understand something, I feel like I understand it very deeply.
Memory loss is a huge problem area for me. I am aware of that, and I'm starting to understand that traumas may be affecting me in ways that I have been too stubborn to admit before.
Conversion Disorder may be a contributing factor to this. I may have only seen it flare up so severely these past few years because of my awareness of mental health in general, but only after a Traumatic Brain Injury. I attempted suicide in 2013, and I ended up getting a Subdural Hemotoma(spelling?) at the base of my neck; around my spinal cord and temporal lobe. I bled so bad that I, from what people who visited had told me, was a shell or zombie for 3 days straight. There was no surgery performed, but the affects of the concussion proved to have an effect after taste, smell, and other senses definitely were affected.

Today, I felt validated in the way my cousin talked about my brother. She has been a huge help to my family, especially me and my brother. I feel wrong for feeling suspicious, and feeling like she may have an idea of what's going on more than I am aware. It's been proven that she knows what she's talking about well before I may understand why she does the things she does, or says the things she says, or helps the way she helps. She functions well in her family dynamic, she helps many people, and she is unmediated for her own bipolar disorder. My family, even though they are toxic, they can be helpful sometimes. Actually, a lot of the time. It's a weird line to toe for me because I recognize where certain family members may tend to act a certain way in regards to behaviors they've developed during their own traumas.

My cousin, although she is very intelligent and good at managing people and situations in order to help, she can be oblivious and naive to what information she actually sends to others through her body language, what she says, how she says it, and the thing she assumes to be true.

I am aware that I can have a filter of suspicion placed over my perception. That filter is especially high due to recent stressors. I can be extremely naive to how confusing I sound when I try to explain around concepts that I'm not ready to fully open up about.

We are both control freaks, hahaha. We're very alike. We surprise each other with out levels of understanding because we can both be super stubborn, and super understanding.

I felt like there was an elephant in the room that neither of us wanted to admit was there, and we both knew full well that it was there. And I feel that we both knew the other knew the same thing. I hate feeling that way. I feel uncomfortable when it happens. I feel like I can only be right OR wrong, and by default, the other person is whichever I'm not. I feel like there is no way to be black and white about a situation with this much grey area.

I suggest to look into Conversion Disorder if not to understand a personal struggle more clearly, but maybe to understand what a loved one may be going through who may feel the same disconnect between psychological and physical problems. Whichever way, I feel like it's good information to have. It's in the newest handbook I believe. The diagnosis has a lot of controversy around it, but I feel it has legitimacy.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I suggest to look into Conversion Disorder if not to understand a personal struggle more clearly, but maybe to understand what a loved one may be going through who may feel the same disconnect between psychological and physical problems. Whichever way, I feel like it's good information to have. It's in the newest handbook I believe. The diagnosis has a lot of controversy around it, but I feel it has legitimacy.

Personally, I am fully aware that trauma, mental health issues, emotions, etc can cause physical medically unexplained issues. I have had and still have a ton! I am the walking example of it.

I had a PNES - A Psychogenic nonepileptic seizure - meaning a seizure not caused by the brain and in my case, said to be caused by emotional, mental, stress issues as there is zero medical evidence as to why it happened to date and it happened in 2012.. I had an MRI, a CAT Scan, EKG, EEG, and many other tests and the doctors found no medical cause for the one and only seizure I had.

I have an off and on severe, head on lap sitting up, looking like a heroin addict, exhaustion and no doctor knows why. Over the years I haven seen about 10 doctors/specialists and have had an uncountable amount of tests and they found nothing.

And still have so many other medically unexplained physical issues. It's frustrating to not have an answer as to why it's happening and how to fix it.

Conversation Disorder:

Conversion disorder - Mayo Clinic

In my opinion, most know or at least "get" once advised, that mental, emotional, issues can cause physical problems. I think its why "died from a broken heart" became a popiuar phrase. Most know of the physical ache when in true emotional pain. I suppose, when we are speaking about loosing sight and hearing, it is severe enough to give it it's own disorder but I feel the APA is becoming a bit picky. But just my opinion.

 

[anthony]

I suggest to look into Conversion Disorder if not to understand a personal struggle more clearly, but maybe to understand what a loved one may be going through who may feel the same disconnect between psychological and physical problems.

I am curious as to how you feel conversion disorder is relevant to you?

I assume you have read the criterion and associated elements for diagnosis from the DSM 5?

What are the motor symptoms you experience?

Then you have criterion C: the symptom or deficit is not better explained by another medical condition or mental disorder.

Too often people skip this. If your history is traumatic abuse, and your result is symptoms of somatic nature, yet are more aligned with PTSD as the primary diagnostic category, then criterion C applies, ruling out this disorder for PTSD.

Absolutely you could have a comorbid diagnosis. Anxiety, depressive, personality and neurological disorders are often present / comorbid with conversion disorder. Substance and psychosis disorders are typically not comorbid.

It gets very dangerous when people start reading diagnoses, considering more than half of the symptoms within the book coexist across multiple, similar disorders. The majority of diagnoses have the above criterion C or similar statement. It usually comes down to historical context and presenting symptoms.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I agree. I completely missed that this is researched self diagnosed and was focused on "I wanna let people know'.

Self diagnosis of anything is super dangerous, most especially mental disorders. All of these things you list can be explained without a full disorder (the reason of my first reply) or it can be explained by different disorders. Many mental disorders are treated completely different ways. If you self diagnose one and go down that ally but you actually have another (or it is somatic issues stiming from yet a diffetent diagnosis) then you will go down the wrong ally.

It also leaves possible medical issues untreated.

I say forget about the cousin and find a therapist.

 

[ExitLight]

I say forget about the cousin and find a therapist.

I think there's a layer I haven't explained.
I grew up in a controlling household that revolved around me having a mental illness. I was constantly hovered over and kind of that "What the f*ck is wrong with her? Fix her" child. All of that hovering seemed to almost completely stop sometime during my teenage years. My mom became very depressed.

Ever since then, I have been on my own in a sense. I still have my family, I still have their "support" but the extent it goes is to "call this number, if you don't you're just lazy" in the face of a huge mental illness problem, that yes, is diagnosed. But we need to get one thing clear here. So many people self-diagnose and are correct or damn near close enough. The tone you are writing with tells me that you don't know the extent of my problems - and I don't expect you to.
I don't have a job, I don't have insurance, I cannot work enough hours to be qualified for insurance, and at 22 years old I physically, and mentally have been unable to support myself without either. I've been job hopping since I was 18 years old. The waiting list for disability is 18 months to even have a hearing - people I know with terminal brain cancer have been denied three years in a row. I've had doctors here and there, but considering the type of trauma that would lead to these types of symptoms, and furthermore, the lack of explanation for any of these symptoms; my life is hectic in a nutshell.

If you've ever heard the phrase "slipped through the cracks?" That's me.
So when I post on here, I need an outlet to get it out. I don't want to be met with:

I agree. I completely missed that this is researched self diagnosed and was focused on "I wanna let people know'.

Because to me, that's rude.
Because to me, you're reiterating it in such a way that it is easily interpreted as something negative. Assuming people are self diagnosing is super dangerous, most especially with people who are not equipped to pay for therapists on their own.

But ya know what, after getting that out, I had a lot of self progress this past week or so, and part of that was being able to post in a forum that allows me to express myself.

@anthony: For a PTSD website I feel like a lot of the users here are quick to judge and underestimate. After writing all of that shit above, forgive me if I'm a little irritated in my responses.
I have motor skills that are affected, especially ones that mimic a lyme disease episode. Lyme disease has been ruled out. My fingers go haywire, twitching etc. Looking like a nervous problem, and MS was debated at one time.
I currently have a slew of diagnoses, and it would not surprise me in the least if after, assuming I can afford a therapist, find a like minded one, create a doctor patient relationship that's worthwhile, then open up about "the juicy" stuff, after all that is said in done, again it would not surprise me if I had something along the lines of PTSD and Conversion Disorder. Most of my physical issues like "almost" seizures, "almost" catatonic states, "almost" lyme disease like episodes, "almost" blood pressure drops, and all of these symptoms that have an affect after the cause, there's been such problem finding a "cause" in a sense.

I wanted to vent about a shitty day and I feel like I'm barraged with basically, I don't know...
This doesn't feel like a place to be open about this type of stuff I'm starting to feel.
"Self diagnosis is dangerous" People are already assuming I'm self diagnosing rather than looking at options while trying to discuss, and open up conversation about things that are usually taboo. And I see why it's taboo now. MY cousin was the one who brought the disorder up to me, and I'm just trying to f*cking vent, and furthermore, allow people to look it up for themselves to hopefully come to an informed decision with either their family, support, or therapist whatever, not to self diagnose - but to just... f*cking talk about it.

Sitting here thinking to myself "Why did I open up?"
I'll just go doodle about it next time f*ck.

 

[anthony]

but to just... f*cking talk about it.

We are talking about it. You are responsible for how you feel, not another. How you read, how you interpret, how your respond, are your decisions and actions. I advise you to maybe think through these actions before responding to what is, a conversation, as you requested.

What people say online is here nor there. You say a little, you leave a lot out, people start assuming and having to go fishing for information. I didn't say you self diagnosed, I simply asked further questions. You said your cousin asked you to look into it. So I'm reading along here with you, as are others.

You need to calm down please, as your responses border trolling -- post topic, get inflamed, then flame. Super not required.

We work through things by discussing, by understanding, by accepting that everyone has their own point of view, their own method of digging for answers. They may not align with our own methods, but all they require is an answer, not a diatribe.

So... if you want to keep talking about it with me, no probs here. If not, just say the word. I'm super good either way. But I will not engage further if you can't control your mood response.