I am better, been off meds but still searching for answers on what truly happened and why?

[SeanCouch]

This is kind of long which I want to apologize for.  I just want to make sure there is context to help describe what I am feeling and from personal experiences. So, I guess “buckle up” …
 

I believe I have experienced these events due to physical trauma.  The first was when I was 15 years old, I had spinal injury from a fall while sitting at a school chair/desk.  I fell back while leaning on two legs with the armrest behind me.  Image a 2x4 sitting on its side and falling back on it.  That's what happened and later found out in my 30s from an x-ray I had a "kink" in my back.  I recently discovered at 45 this article where there was a study done at University of Michigan.
 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200422101536.htm
 

I have always had what I thought were anger issues, but I only would take it out on myself.  I wasn't physically harming myself.  It was more of lack of confidence in myself or feeling of not "fitting in".  I didn't truly understand anxiety and thought it was just " the fear of something" so to speak.  I didn't know that there was more to it.

Fast forward to me at 41.  I was dating someone at the time who felt I might have ADHD and get tested for it.  They were diagnosed and saw similar traits in me they had.  I decided to get tested and ended up getting diagnosed with ADHD and GAD.  I was put on a script all at once of Adderall, Buspar, Lexapro and Xanax (only when needed).  I felt "normal" for the first time in my life and everything was going great.    

The confidence issue was hard to understand “why?”.  Considering I am a military vet and have 8 years’ experience in self-defense, specifically Brazilin Jiu Jitsu. Never did any sort of drugs in my life and was a social drinker.  I really don’t drink anymore and I have had a pretty normal life.  Other than having an abusive father, bullied though most of my childhood and parts of adult life. I was married but divorced now and had a fairly healthy life when it came to dating. 

I am engaged now to a wonderful woman who moved in after I got a new house this year.  We have been together for 2.5 years now and get along great with each other.

Then 2020 happened and I fell into a deep depression. Especially after George Floyd was murdered.  I was always coming home but then going straight to bed and no drive to do anything.  I would just lay in bed and stare at the walls.
 

I didn't know if my meds stopped working.  I did some research and found that ADHD can get misdiagnosed for being Bi-Polar and the reverse could be said.  I started talking to a therapist and a psychiatrist.  Toward the end of August, the psychiatrist took me off Adderall, adjusted my dosage of Buspar and Lexapro.  However, he added Topamax. 

I started feeling better or at least I thought I was.  After two weeks on it, I ended up having a dissociative fugue after being on Topamax.  I literally thought at the time god was talking to me though the TV and telling me to kill myself.  I made a phone call to a friend that was out of nothing more than paranoia at that moment.  I also called my mother and made strange accusations thinking she was at the house when she wasn’t. 
 

This episode only happened one day, and I have been fine after stopping the Topamax.   I had a friend who said prior to all this happening when I first started taking it.  He said to be careful because his wife was on that briefly and she had a bad reaction to it.  It makes me wonder if this was like what had happened to her.

Anyhow, after “coming back to reality” and having what feels like a life or death traumatic event.  It felt like my brain “rewired itself” so to speak or what I thought it did. I found out what Brain Plasticity and wondered “is this what happened to me?”. 

That first week after stopping that medication along with the others that I was on for the past 3.5 years.  I started being up late because of that sensation I was having and thinking my brain was “re-wiring” itself.  Were the meds I on also doing more harm than good to my mental health and my self-identity?

Reason I say that is because I had what I can only describe as the sensation of neurons in my brain firing.  These sensations would start around 11PM.  This lasted for about a week and then stopped.  Prior to that and now, I have always never had an issue sleeping.  Even in the military, I could sleep with aircraft taking off behind me while I was in the USAF. 

I would be up until 3am for example just writing physiologically.  Specifically, on subjects of society, religion, evolution, government and how life experience can shape our perception of how we “self-identify ourselves in conjunction to reality” if you will…

However I have been back to my normal self for some time now.  I go to bed around 1030-11, up by 6:45 and getting plenty of sleep with no issues like I had in the past.

I used to have communication issues when trying to get a point across at times, but I no longer do.  Before where it felt like forming a conscience, thought was like the telephone game where I would have an idea, run it past 4 other people but had trouble “putting the pieces together” consciously.  Whereas now when talking or thinking, everything just seems to come naturally to me now.  Plus, I am able to articulate my feelings into words like I have never been able to before.  Using words, I have never heard of before and using them in proper sentences/grammar.  It almost felt alien to me when it was initially happening. 

I used to have limited range of motion in my neck, shoulder and back.  To the point I could never touch my chin to my chest.  It was as if I was living my life with meningitis.  Yet now after the fugue, I can touch my chin to my chest with no issues.  I have full range of motion in my neck and shoulders.   I used to have flexibility issues even though I would stretch daily from BJJ training.  I remember years ago going to see a physical therapist for knee problems and him saying I have some of the tightest hamstrings he has come across. 

However now, all that tension or what I think was stress/anxiety in my back is gone.  I am more flexible and the best way to describe it is if you take a coil and turn it with both hands and how it will make it tighter.  I feel that’s what was going on with my back and makes me wonder if that back injury at 15 had something to do with some of this?

Yet I am still trying to understand or come to terms with what truly happened to cause that?  What was I feeling and was its plasticity and my brain literally fixed itself and what people call Acquired Savant Syndrome now? 

I have talked to my primary care physician about it and referred me to a neurologist but it seems they don’t have any sort of answer or any real curiosity other than in so many words “you’re better, don’t worry about it..”  and that “not all medicine necessarily helps” which I felt to be disheartening because its as if what I experience, they felt was “normal”.  Yet family and friends are curious to know as well because they obviously see that I have been changed.   These are people who knew me before I was on any sort of meds that feels needing to be mentioned.  The best analogy is how people have a new look on life and their identity after some form of trauma.  Like the trauma people experienced with acquired savant syndrome.

While I was still initially trying to find answers to everything I was dealing with.  It's when I came across psychological articles discussing Intuitive Thinking and how it becomes Critical Thinking for some people.  It feels as if before I was living my life characterized as being an uncritical thinker.  Whereas now with this new “look on life” is more focused on Fair-minded critical thinking. I think that is part of the cause where before I felt I didn’t fully have a positive belief in myself which in turn had a devastating impact on my own self-confidence and processing information in relation to critical thinking.  

I became more intuitive when it comes to emotional and deeply feeling what another person is truly feeling now.  Like the saying “Not understanding how someone feels until we walk in their shoes”. 

Mental intuition where you just know something is correct without having an explanation why. That “gut feeling” if you will. 

Psychic thinking which is just “being quick on feet” when thinking under pressure.  Not necessarily being a mind reader or predicting the future. I feel this also can tie into the ability to read body language and why sometimes people know what someone is thinking.  It's also how some people are good at telling if people are being truthful by how they are acting or behaving. 

Along with Spiritual thinking.  Where I said I was up at night having these ideas, theories and philosophical thoughts I mentioned previously.  Like the philosophical and spirituality behind Buddhism if you will.

I then began to wonder was I on the “spectrum” when it comes to Asperger’s for example.  Did this trauma open the “flood gates” if you will for this “spiritual, intuitive or philosophical thinking” now that was never there before?

I really don’t know.  I am curious and looking for answers from others who have studied this or maybe can point me in some sort of direction? 

Anyway, I will get off my soapbox now, hope this reaches someone and maybe shed some light on what I experienced and these new feelings…Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Sean

 

 

 

[manymoretodays]

Hi Sean, and welcome,

And this is a good forum for you to post this type of searching.

Would you also, start an Introduction topic for us, in the Introduction section.  And then do a signature as well.

I will give you the prompt for doing an Introduction, and the signature link as well.

 

Thanks for joining us.

Love, peace, healing, and growth,

moderator manymoretodays(mmt)