A new classification? Please read

I'm no psychologist, but I have done my fair share of reading on the topic, and encountered something pretty strange. I have a really close female friend with some strange (to say the least) problems. After countless hours of conversation with her, often acting as a therapist figure, I think I might have had some sort of breakthrough in the psychology field.

Let me start with a brief history of the subject, who I will call Lauren. Lauren is 18 years old, and she moved out here to Colorado two years ago with her dad and two younger brothers, seven and fifteen, to get away from her mom, who suffered from what she calls a "nervous breakdown". She started going on massive shopping sprees, bringing back bags full of clothing and other things that the family did not need. She also began to think that her youngest son was Jesus. Her mom is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, among other things. Her parents were always fighting, and her dad was a cocaine addict until they moved to Colorado. As a young teenager, she was sexually abused three times. Right before she moved to Colorado, she mauled her wrist with a cuticle cutter.

I became really close to Lauren, and although it's not like any other relationship I've ever experienced, it's a relationship nonetheless. We are with each other for a lot of the day, but during this time, we never talk about her problems (or mine, for that matter). Only at night, over the phone, will she really open up to me (and me to her) and allow me to try and help her (something that she “is not sure” that she needs).

One of the first relevant things that Lauren professed to me was about her cycles, or stages. These she calls "In" and "Out", which I immediately corresponded to depression and mania (and therefore bipolar disorder). I was not right on the dot, but close. She told me that these cycles last for months at a time, and that the "In" was her hating society, writing a lot (she has journals and journals full of writing, which I will get to later), having suicidal and violent thoughts, and "thinking too much". Sounds like a very extended depressed state to me. She tells me that when she is in her depressed state, she is happy with what she is doing, but she says that “the conclusions that I come to about myself and what I am doing here are frustrating, and they make me not want to stay here.” Her "out," however, does not sound like a manic stage. These also last for months, and are generally a little bit longer than her "in" stage. When she is "out", she does not write in her journals, is generally happy (as one should be), accepts society as something that is there unconditionally (as one should), and leads a healthy, normal life. I wouldn’t call this a manic state, just a normal one. She tells me that her manic stage (her mom was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, so she knows about the states) never lasts for more than a week, and is very rare. She pinpointed the period right before her depressed state as the time when she is most manic. This is not a classic account of what one might call bipolar disorder from the classifications that you might read about.

http://www.mydna.com/health/mental/bipolar/
http://bipolar.about.com/

I profess that I have not done enough research on the topic as I should have before posting this, but what the heck.

As of right now, she is in her normal state (as she has been since a very short time after I met her), but I came to a realization lately. Everyone loves Lauren, because she relates to anyone and everyone, and people call her the most honest, sincere, great person that I have ever met. I felt the same way, until recently. I discovered that she is a fake and a liar. Not a malicious one, but fake nonetheless. She puts on a façade far beyond that of any person in a normal state. She goes WAY above and beyond to mediate, and to agree with people, but never does she speak her own opinion or her own thoughts. She will say that which will please the person, just to make them happy. When I confronted her with this, saying “You can’t try and please the whole world, Lauren,” she admitted to me that she has "auto-responses" for everyone, and she knows what they want to hear, and she tells them. She said that “it had worked so far.’ She says that she has done this her whole life, since she was a little kid, and she has been perfecting it for years.

Far into a long conversation, I noticed something. Every time I would tell her something directly about her psyche or her subconscious (a direct attack, to her psyche), or try to tell her about where the root of her problems lay, she would skip over it, like it went in one ear and out the other, and try and scoot me along to something less relevant. She has told me on many occasions that she hates shrinks and she hates the idea of medicine for mental health, except for few extreme cases.

After telling her that she was an absolute fake, She paused for a long time, and then told me that no one has ever figured this out before. After much prodding, and I do say much, she professed to me that she has spent years building up these elaborate layers of her mask, and no one has ever sifted through it like I just did. She said that people have tried to help her before, and they either gave up or she was able to convince them that they helped her.

After pressing on for who knows how many more hours (this session lasted about six in itself), I got to thinking. Maybe, just maybe, she has a different type of bipolar disorder (one with extended periods of depression, and rare, short manic states during her normal state) and that maybe, just maybe, people with bipolar disorder have a closer connection between their conscious self and their subconscious self. Maybe the subconscious self is using the conscious self as a mask or one part of the conscious self is using the other as a mask, and no one has realized it yet because most professionals are not able to get on such a personal level with these people to see it. A normal person's conscious self is a vast ocean away from their subconscious (something so alien to most they hardly think about it or acknowledge its existence), but what if to Lauren, the boundary is only a river, with stones for stepping sprinkled all along it.

With these thoughts in mind, I pressed on, when suddenly she said, "I hear myself different." Puzzled, I asked her what she meant. She said, "No, you don't understand. I hear myself different. It's like I’m thinking about things after I say them, instead of before." My mind was racing, but I couldn't say anything. After I muttered something random, she said, “This hasn’t happened to me before in my whole life, ever.” She told me that she was scared, and that she was flustered, her heart was beating fast, and she was trembling.

This lasted for about 30 to 50 seconds, until she went back to the “normal” way she heard herself before. Immediately following, she became incredibly tired, such that she was on the verge of a sleep state but was still conscious enough to talk to me. I started talking to her, and she told me some very strange things. I went to my computer and started recording the conversation from this point, while she told me about (she was extremely tired, mind you) what she saw, which was:

A big red rubber wall that had a big whole through the middle of it. All around were her army men were lying down because they were scared. No one is allowed past the wall, or they get shot. Everyone thinks the wall is cement, but it’s really just like a balloon. The men are still lying there even though nothing is happening.

Next image set:

Inside a big, big flower. Can’t get out. If I jump I will splat. Doesn’t want to leave. I tell her to make a hole in it and climb down, she should leave the flower. Going down the stem, it’s a really big flower. I know where I am. I am in my garden. Me and my mom planted it when we were little.

It’s really hard to summarize it, but if you want the audio, email me at brickunderground@hotmail.com.

THIS BLEW MY MIND!! (Her metaphorical front, and either her trapped inside her childhood mind or her trapped by something…)

Was this the conscious brain first separating itself from the subconscious brain, or one part of the conscious self separating it from another? Could this be the beginning of a method on bipolar disorder? Is this a new classification of bipolar disorder?

One thing I have also recognized is that Lauren always says that she doesn’t care, whether she does or not. Some things that would bother anyone she just shrugs off. I think that she is saving it all for later, like her mom did. This scares the $#%^ out of me.

Any comments or helpful advice you can give me would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
MrYowler

With the cutting and her family hx, it sounds like she has overlapping sx's of bpd as a result, as well.

She is at the right age for her mania to start to show, the sprees, reckless behavior, etc.

It is very usual to see the both bpd and bipolar at the same time, I spent 6 months in dbt classes and 90% of the class was both bipolar and bpd.

You will see her moods change when she is stressing, pmsing, and then there are just enviromental depressions that pass with the situation, that we all know about, but a bipolar depression is different. It is dark, deep and dangerous.

AD(antidepressants) can cause rapid cycling in many of us. Which is not good. It makes us feel both moods at once. yuk. OR they can cause some to go into sheer mania, and get stuck there.

This is a great place to come to learn more. We can all tell you our stories, some similiarities, others are totally different, but I have noticed the difference runs in gender.

If she is living in a house of violence, this is a big scarey trigger for her. Her parents need a good talking to.