Calling 2thinkers.

[_Jersey Girl]

Just a little wiki on PSTD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder

You can also look for information regarding PSTD and OCD (the hoarding) as they co-occur.

I don't want you to self-diagnosis. I think you should read up on this and discuss it with Dr. SS to see if it fits your situation.

[_JonasS]

Just a quick note to say I hope you're feeling a bit better, pirate. I've been thinking about you all week. If I were in Hull I would give you a big hug (and a reading list---can't help it, I'm a teacher!).

I hope you didn't worry about me. I will be ok. Feeling emotion can be a good thing for someone like me, even if it causes confusion.

In my course we get a free elective and earlier this year I chose Biology, however, I recieved an email from the secretary and she told me it clashes with my labs so I had to change. I couldn't decide what to choose so I decided what I wanted to achieve this year and made my choice based on that. I want to improve my English, so I made 3 choices. My first choice is Advanced Learning General English, which is pretty much upper crust English that isn't used in today's generation (I would have to pass a test to get into the class so I don't think they will want me to join their class. It's some IELTS test). My second choice was American Biography, which will involve reading and my third choice was Biblical Languages (Greek/Latin).

I hope to get into the first but trust that whetever I get into will be beneficial.

You can still give me a book list if you like.

I'm going to start commenting now.

I totally understand. All of my brothers have issues. But at the time growing up, we were all too busy just trying to survive. When my dad was out we spent time together enjoying the freshness before he came back in.

I love the phrasing you used in the part that I underlined. "The freshness" ...of anxiety and uncertainty lifted off the family. Freedom.

That's the only way I could think to describe how it felt.

But after we left it was like the problems came with us. My oldest brother chose to stay behind. He didn't want to take sides. But things didn't turn out how we had hoped.

Maybe the thought of change frightened him.

I think it was more that he didn't want to take sides. He would never take anyones side and would always try to keep the peace with my dad. My dad threw a pigeon basked at my mum's head one day and then slapped her about. My brother would have been abou 18 and he sat there emotionless. I cried. I was so angry I wanted to go hit my dad but I knew it would only make things worse. My brother was old enough and big enough to protect my mum and he didn't. One time, my brother and I went to visit my dad for New Year, not long after we ran away. We shouldn't have visited, I don't even know how it came about, but he had a restraining order at the time. He threatened to kidnap us and all sorts. It was a scary time. My mum told me on the phone not to go anywhere with my dad and not to go in the car with him, but he wanted me to go to Tesco with him and so I said I don't really want to which made him more angry and my brother went on at me about how I should have gone and I said how my mum told me not to and he said it doesn't matter, if he asks again, just go. So I did. The scary thing about my dad was that he turned red and his eyes turned black, you could see the anger in his face come and go and he was like a time bomb. You just didn't know when he was going to explode and if he were driving, he would just drive into something or off the peer. It was scary. My dad didn't tear the tickets like he threatened. And he was driving us back to glasgo so we could get the bus back to England. The car was silent except for the music playing and he was just staring on the road, you could see he was not happy. And this song came on by Natasha Beddingfield, it went, "I'm a bomb, can you hear me tick, be aware if you turn me on, there is no safety switch". I wanted to turn it off, but knew he would notice. It was the scariest 3 minutes of the whole week there.

My brothers became somewhat like my dad.

He was their role model.

Things are a lot better now, but can be difficult at times. My dad found us and we ran away again then lots of things happened which resulted in my dad getting a restraining order following his trying to kill us stunt. SO for a long while we lived in fear because he threatened to come get us. But when it was over my brother began abusing us and when he left my other brother took off where he left off then there was a point where my other brothers girlfriend was causing serious troubles (she beats my brother and neglects her children, totally not right in the head) then my little brother was off on one again, then he went to stay with my dad until he learned that what we said about my dad was true. He was young and never saw much and my dad didn't treat him the same as he did us. So he had to see for himself. Then he came back with respect. Every now and then he can't control his anger but he is much much better now.

Your brothers learned the behavior from your Dad. As negative as it seems, he was their role model who taught them powerful lessons on how to behave and how to express anger as men. They have to travel their own journey, Nicky. Hopefully they will end up in a place where they realize that the behavior doesn't work to bring them satisfaction. They will likely lose their relationships as your Dad lost his.

So all m brothers have anger problems, whereas I am the quiet one. But only because I was dissociated quite heavily. Problems never meant anything to me. I seemed to survive everything and anything,

Your ability to "shut down" and detach is what made you survive. I can only imagine how often you needed to do this in just one day or one week. When under great stress, a "flight or fight" instinct kicks in. You self protected by mentally leaving the situation and you did it over and over again. Think about the things you wrote here and the things that you wrote to me privately. Print it out and underline all of the stressors that you see. In each of those instances (and all of the instances that you haven't written down) you removed yourself by detaching. What I hoped that you would see in writing these things down and viewing them from an "afteward" perspective is that your development was interrupted repeatedly during your early years. Your inability to concentrate for long periods is connected to that. Your uneasiness in social situations is connected to that. Your "randomness" is connected to that. It is what has made you be who you are.

I also wanted you to consider what you're doing right now in your life, the goals you have shared with us on 2think and realize, Nicky, that you are one who is emerging from the past and moving forward with great strength and courage. You are intelligent, strong and driven to learn.

I want you to look into post traumatic stress disorder with your Dr. Shiny Shoes. :-)

I have already looked at PTDS. We have talked about DID. So far we have discovered: dual personalities; ...hmm... There was 3 other points but I can't for the life of me think of them. I like how you call my Dr Dr Shiny Shoes too. :) He has shiny shoes and they are often a good source of distraction for me, since the big plant was taken from the room. Last time I was there I cried and there was no tissues. The funny thing is, I used the tissues once as a distraction and he asked me if I was worried that I might cry in here and I said I doubt I will, I'd be more likely to laugh. But I guess I did.

I'm not a therapist, but I think you display all the symptoms of that disorder and I think that if you were to be diagnosed with it (or whatever determination is made) that you could recognize that you lived through a war, Nicky, and that you survived it. And that since you had the personal power to develop coping strategies back then in order to survive it, that you have it in you to intentionally develop new coping strategies that will help you to secure your future. :-)

Intentionality means everything to you and your future. You can intentionally choose portions of yourself and your life to work on. For example, the key to your future success and survival is your studies at Uni. With help from Dr. Shiny Shoes, you can sort out the areas of your life and yourself that you feel are not fully developed. Once you identify those, you can separate those out along with ways to develop them. Start small...think big!

but was able to understand everything people felt and why people acted the way they did. i could understand why my brother wanted to hurt me. And I respected that. even though he may not have been just in his desires, I knew he had a lot of anger in him. So I didn't have a problem with anything for a long while. It was coming to Uni tat everything really changed. I did begin getting anxiety before when my older brother was abusing us. Which escaladed. But I have alwasy had this need to keep things to myself. I am also a hoarder. I fear throwing out paper and usually have to challenge myself then tell myself that I am proud of myself and make myself feel good about it, otherwise I will feel bad. I also have to tear everything before I put it in a bin bag otherwise I will try to get it back out at a later time if I haven't put it out with the trash.

That's not a huge deal. I hope you've shared it with Dr. Shiny Shoes because it is an important symptom.

Sometimes I don't recall anything. But it's like a fague, the memory comes back now and then. Like Dissociative Amnesia, but fague like. Does that make sense?

I think the need to be private has got worse. My brother gives me very little privacy and for a long time I had no privacy whatso ever. I don't even have a bedroom door on hinges. I sit it in place and that's it. My brother liked to attack my door when he was angry.

Take a photo of your door and take it to the local hardware store that sells hinges. Show it to the clerks and ask them to get you what type of hinges you need and the type of screw driver that you need to install them. Then GO DO IT and get yourself a door, hon. :-) You can find "do it yourself" videos on You Tube. Try the videos by "Eric Stromer" for installing doors.

The hinges are still in tact and so is part of the door lol. I need a new door. I don't live there always and I go back to Hull on Saturday coming.

It would seem more people have crappy lives than I thought.

Yes, they do and you can emerge from crap and move forward. You already are.

Love you,
Jersey

Love you too. Sometimes I think everything is ok and other times I don't, it is incredibly poopy. I will answer your 2think question here because this name isn't my name.

Abusive men goes back in my family as many generations as we are aware of. My great grandad was supposidly a peodophile. I am not sure exactly which of my grandparent's were off, because I have heard stories but am not sure. I know that they are much quieter now and show no signs of abnormality and my uncle seems fine. My Aunt is typical of where she comes from, no mental illnesses from my understanding, and my other aunt, I don't know much about her other than I was her double when I was younger. My dad's cousin told me how my dad would drown mice in barrells of water when he was a kid and enjoy it. I don't know much other than that. I know that my dad's sister stabbed my dad with a fork and they all laughed or something like that. I don't know how bad it was. My dad is a psychopath. He physically changes, his eyes become dilated (is that the one where they get bigger), his pupils become so big, you can't see his iris. My dad was reffered to a Psyciatrist but he didn't go. My mum thinks that means he is confirmed to have a psychotic problem which I don't doubt, but I have a psychiatrist(refered from counselling) and I don't think I have a psychosis. My mum has a fragmented personality, but her fragments aren't too far apart. I do not believe my grandparents were alcoholics, but there was rumours that my grandma would take all of my grandads money and spend it. There is apparently abuse there, but I don't know how. And the siblings being tret differently. So it is possible that my dad had just became like how he was brought up, but it is so hard for me to see tht in my grandad because he is very quiet. There is mental health problems on my mum's side too. My grandad and uncles are schizophrenic, due to upbringing and one uncle is a psychopath. My grandma (now dead) wasn't nice. My mum and her sisters were given away, her sisters to a childrens home and my mum to family friends. It is all very complicated. So I worry that if I have sons, regardless of their upbringing, they could have problems in their genes. My family has the addictive gene apparently. But I really don't want to be feeling sorry for my dad. He has tried to kill us several times and all that bull. In the summer last year I made a decision that I didn't need him in my life and that he wasn't going to effect me anymore, and it helped. Although he wasn't really in my life anyway, making a firm decision consciously really helped. Because he was affecting me, he was sending messages that hurt me. I haven't heard from him since and to be frank, I am glad.

[_Jersey Girl]

It's difficult to know how to respond to what you've written above. It's truly an overwhelming family history. You recognize it as such and it seems to me that you know you can strive to consciously separate from it. I think that we take everything from childhood with us as we go through life. I wonder if there is such a thing as working toward putting it in more perspective? Looking at the connections between your early experiences and you as you are now. Part her then, part her now, but more than that.

Now, I have a question for you. If you don't feel like answering, you can just say so. Here it comes!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
V

What are your strengths?

[_JonasS]

That is a hard question. The only thing I am good at is making people laugh, but it makes me feel bad because they are laughing at my stupidity.