Lying
Reading over the entry by emere2 got me thinking about this, as it really struck a chord with me, so I thought it was probably time to introduce myself.
I'm Lynn, I'm 39, and I have a dx of ADD from when I was 30, but only recently have I begun researching Asperger's and... I really think this is me. I'm on Strattera currently, and have been since last May - it's really made a difference in my life, let me tell you. And thought it has gradually become slightly less effective over the months as I came down from that apparent "Strattera high," when I started, which made me so happy I thought I would cry for joy, life is still a lot better than I know it would be without it.
So I was diagnosed ADD around 30, when I was having a lot of job stress, marital stress, money stress, everything. Looking back, it seems to me that I grew up as the typical inattentive-type ADD kid, unrealized and undiagnosed, and called lazy. You know the spiel; I won't spell it all out. It seems to me however, that once I hit around 25 or 26, I started to notice behaviors, which I now know were related to the ADD, and even Asperger's, as I'm learning now. That period of time when I was 30-ish I went through personal hell in regard to all different aspects of my life - ever go through a period of time where you think you can even feel the brain cells dying off in your head, you're under so much stress and having so much emotional distress? Yeah, it was like that. Until I finally decided that I had to do something about it all, and I closed that chapter of my life. Split from my husband, sold my house, sold my horses, sold everything, and started over again. That was traumatic for me as well, because despite being called lazy by some, others have always known me to be an overacheiver, and very dependent on feeling "important," and "accomplished." So doing all that was a huge blow to my ego and self esteem, but I finally realized it was my only way out with two brain cells to rub together to create a thought.
Thankfully, I'm over most of it now, or at least I acknowledge it all. I still cry over it, though, but not too often. But it was a psychologist that I started seeing who identified in me that my biggest problem now was that I apparently contain an anger that just won't quit - and the more I think back, this has been there for a long time. A long time. Now that I can acknowledge these things I realize that I have always had a hair-trigger temperament, switch-on or switch-off - no in-betweens with me - and "on" is frightening. I know now that I'm pretty much filled with rage that keeps me from ever really getting any kind of long-term happiness from really anything, and that if my buttons are pushed the right way, that rage explodes. I can count on one hand thankfully the number of instances when it has, but it happened again recently, which was what sent me back to the internet to try to learn more about myself and what I could do for myself.
Currently I'm with a psychiatrist who does not believe that I have ADD, but gives me the Strattera anyway because it shuts me up; but I don't pay any attention to him because he doesn't even know how to use the drug correctly and I had to titrate myself and keep track of my own side effects and tell him whether something was abnormal or not. Yeah, I know. I'm looking for a new one, but in my area, oddly, the only specialists that deal with adults and ADD don't take insurance and I can't afford to pay $120 a visit, so I have just been going to this guy because he will give me the Strattera. I've also had to stop seeing the psychologist, because between his co-pays and hers, and the meds (I take two different capsule strengths, and thus I have to pay two co-pays for the same month's meds), but I realize now that while she was helping me spiritually (we both found that we had an interest in spiritualism), she really hadn't been helping too much in regard to my actual problems, since she didn't know much about ADD either, and never once even suggested that the anger could be related to something else. (Incidentally I went over the DSM-IV diagnostic list and I score in every category, as well as all four points in part A... so being that Aspies put a lot of weight in their own assessments of themselves due to the lack of knowledgeable professionals, I think this is really a consideration for me).
Wow, this is getting long, lol. Sorry.
It was actually the mention of lying in the previously mentioned post that prompted me to post, however, because when I read that, all my bells and whistles went off. See, I can't deal with people lying to me. I just Cannot. Deal. with it, and it's more than just paranoia. I'm sure there's some of that there, too, but when I know people are lying? I lose my mind. It's what caused my last "meltdown," if you will allow, which happened a couple of weeks ago. I'm not speaking to my sister, 27, right now because she lies to me. All the time. And she plans things with me, then bails out on me at the last minute. She constantly tells me things that she thinks I want to hear, then tells other people something totally different. She constanly makes plans around me, then fills me in later. She constantly changes her story with me, regardless of what she's talking about, because "she's afraid of making me mad," by telling me the truth - so it resorts to little white lies (or sometimes not so little) - which literally drive me insane. Which is, incidenally, what she feels that I am. But can you see how this would just make me crazy? Because every single time I go through one of these incidents with her it pushes me closer and closer to losing it, because, of course, I ask "Why do you have to lie to me? Lying to me really makes me upset."
The incident in question revolved around the fact that we are no longer speaking, because of her behavior, and my reactions to it. It revolves around something she told me in particular, which then she changed her story on, and it got other people angry at me. Her boyfriend sent me a scathing email about what a terrible person I am, and how I take advantage of my sister, which is just... wrong. But they also refuse to understand how it is from my point of view, and how the lying affects me. Instead, they would just rather call me crazy and ignore the issue. So what ended up happening is that I confronted her in my apartment, as we were attempting to mend the fences for the benefit of my mother, and she lied to me again, to my face (and I know, for a fact, that she was lying), and I lost it. I started out telling her that she needed to leave my home, because I couldn't deal with the bullshit she was feeding me, and because I knew that if she didn't, I was going to do something physical. I told her something like 5 or 6 times that she had to leave, and between she and my mother carrying on, she did not, and I snapped, lunged for her to push her out of the apartment, and of course she reacted back, so it turned into a few minutes of actual cat-fight. So what I have found as I've thought about it, even besides the lying, is that I am constantly being caught in that zone where everyone asks "Can't you fix yourself and be more normal?" and then when I figure myself out and remember to actually do that, nobody wants to live by my personal rules for myself.
Oh, the closer? As my sister finally did leave, she called back to me and said "Why don't you just go kill yourself already, so you can leave the rest of us alone!" Nice. And of course my mother laid on a guilt trip a foot thick to this whole thing. I later found out that she had also been lying to me, about issues that had to do with this entire incident. When I asked her if she was satisfied, that the two of them lying to me and then refusing to acknowledge my wishes in my own apartment had caused me to totally flip out and lose control like that all she did was continue to rationalize her reasons for lying to me, so no, I still have not been able to express to either of them just "how" wrong lying to me is, from a mental aspect. *sigh* I pointed out later to both of my parents upon discussing this and being asked why I can't controll myself that I know what my limitations are, and I was attempting to keep myself within them. That I knew I was going to explode like that, and I was attempting to rein myself back, but doing that meant that whatever the trigger was, that being my sister the liar, it had to be removed. My mother doesn't understand this. All she understands is that I should have kept myself in check. Miraculously, somehow, since she just doesn't get it.
OK, I could go on here forever, but what I wanted to know in all of this background and history is... well, I wanted to know about the lying thing, since it came up in the previously mentioned post. What is it about the lying, since it's apparently a point of stress. Do most of you get so negatively affected by lying? I can't even express how much stress it causes me when I think/know someone is lying to me.
Please share.
I'm Lynn, I'm 39, and I have a dx of ADD from when I was 30, but only recently have I begun researching Asperger's and... I really think this is me. I'm on Strattera currently, and have been since last May - it's really made a difference in my life, let me tell you. And thought it has gradually become slightly less effective over the months as I came down from that apparent "Strattera high," when I started, which made me so happy I thought I would cry for joy, life is still a lot better than I know it would be without it.
So I was diagnosed ADD around 30, when I was having a lot of job stress, marital stress, money stress, everything. Looking back, it seems to me that I grew up as the typical inattentive-type ADD kid, unrealized and undiagnosed, and called lazy. You know the spiel; I won't spell it all out. It seems to me however, that once I hit around 25 or 26, I started to notice behaviors, which I now know were related to the ADD, and even Asperger's, as I'm learning now. That period of time when I was 30-ish I went through personal hell in regard to all different aspects of my life - ever go through a period of time where you think you can even feel the brain cells dying off in your head, you're under so much stress and having so much emotional distress? Yeah, it was like that. Until I finally decided that I had to do something about it all, and I closed that chapter of my life. Split from my husband, sold my house, sold my horses, sold everything, and started over again. That was traumatic for me as well, because despite being called lazy by some, others have always known me to be an overacheiver, and very dependent on feeling "important," and "accomplished." So doing all that was a huge blow to my ego and self esteem, but I finally realized it was my only way out with two brain cells to rub together to create a thought.
Thankfully, I'm over most of it now, or at least I acknowledge it all. I still cry over it, though, but not too often. But it was a psychologist that I started seeing who identified in me that my biggest problem now was that I apparently contain an anger that just won't quit - and the more I think back, this has been there for a long time. A long time. Now that I can acknowledge these things I realize that I have always had a hair-trigger temperament, switch-on or switch-off - no in-betweens with me - and "on" is frightening. I know now that I'm pretty much filled with rage that keeps me from ever really getting any kind of long-term happiness from really anything, and that if my buttons are pushed the right way, that rage explodes. I can count on one hand thankfully the number of instances when it has, but it happened again recently, which was what sent me back to the internet to try to learn more about myself and what I could do for myself.
Currently I'm with a psychiatrist who does not believe that I have ADD, but gives me the Strattera anyway because it shuts me up; but I don't pay any attention to him because he doesn't even know how to use the drug correctly and I had to titrate myself and keep track of my own side effects and tell him whether something was abnormal or not. Yeah, I know. I'm looking for a new one, but in my area, oddly, the only specialists that deal with adults and ADD don't take insurance and I can't afford to pay $120 a visit, so I have just been going to this guy because he will give me the Strattera. I've also had to stop seeing the psychologist, because between his co-pays and hers, and the meds (I take two different capsule strengths, and thus I have to pay two co-pays for the same month's meds), but I realize now that while she was helping me spiritually (we both found that we had an interest in spiritualism), she really hadn't been helping too much in regard to my actual problems, since she didn't know much about ADD either, and never once even suggested that the anger could be related to something else. (Incidentally I went over the DSM-IV diagnostic list and I score in every category, as well as all four points in part A... so being that Aspies put a lot of weight in their own assessments of themselves due to the lack of knowledgeable professionals, I think this is really a consideration for me).
Wow, this is getting long, lol. Sorry.
It was actually the mention of lying in the previously mentioned post that prompted me to post, however, because when I read that, all my bells and whistles went off. See, I can't deal with people lying to me. I just Cannot. Deal. with it, and it's more than just paranoia. I'm sure there's some of that there, too, but when I know people are lying? I lose my mind. It's what caused my last "meltdown," if you will allow, which happened a couple of weeks ago. I'm not speaking to my sister, 27, right now because she lies to me. All the time. And she plans things with me, then bails out on me at the last minute. She constantly tells me things that she thinks I want to hear, then tells other people something totally different. She constanly makes plans around me, then fills me in later. She constantly changes her story with me, regardless of what she's talking about, because "she's afraid of making me mad," by telling me the truth - so it resorts to little white lies (or sometimes not so little) - which literally drive me insane. Which is, incidenally, what she feels that I am. But can you see how this would just make me crazy? Because every single time I go through one of these incidents with her it pushes me closer and closer to losing it, because, of course, I ask "Why do you have to lie to me? Lying to me really makes me upset."
The incident in question revolved around the fact that we are no longer speaking, because of her behavior, and my reactions to it. It revolves around something she told me in particular, which then she changed her story on, and it got other people angry at me. Her boyfriend sent me a scathing email about what a terrible person I am, and how I take advantage of my sister, which is just... wrong. But they also refuse to understand how it is from my point of view, and how the lying affects me. Instead, they would just rather call me crazy and ignore the issue. So what ended up happening is that I confronted her in my apartment, as we were attempting to mend the fences for the benefit of my mother, and she lied to me again, to my face (and I know, for a fact, that she was lying), and I lost it. I started out telling her that she needed to leave my home, because I couldn't deal with the bullshit she was feeding me, and because I knew that if she didn't, I was going to do something physical. I told her something like 5 or 6 times that she had to leave, and between she and my mother carrying on, she did not, and I snapped, lunged for her to push her out of the apartment, and of course she reacted back, so it turned into a few minutes of actual cat-fight. So what I have found as I've thought about it, even besides the lying, is that I am constantly being caught in that zone where everyone asks "Can't you fix yourself and be more normal?" and then when I figure myself out and remember to actually do that, nobody wants to live by my personal rules for myself.
Oh, the closer? As my sister finally did leave, she called back to me and said "Why don't you just go kill yourself already, so you can leave the rest of us alone!" Nice. And of course my mother laid on a guilt trip a foot thick to this whole thing. I later found out that she had also been lying to me, about issues that had to do with this entire incident. When I asked her if she was satisfied, that the two of them lying to me and then refusing to acknowledge my wishes in my own apartment had caused me to totally flip out and lose control like that all she did was continue to rationalize her reasons for lying to me, so no, I still have not been able to express to either of them just "how" wrong lying to me is, from a mental aspect. *sigh* I pointed out later to both of my parents upon discussing this and being asked why I can't controll myself that I know what my limitations are, and I was attempting to keep myself within them. That I knew I was going to explode like that, and I was attempting to rein myself back, but doing that meant that whatever the trigger was, that being my sister the liar, it had to be removed. My mother doesn't understand this. All she understands is that I should have kept myself in check. Miraculously, somehow, since she just doesn't get it.
OK, I could go on here forever, but what I wanted to know in all of this background and history is... well, I wanted to know about the lying thing, since it came up in the previously mentioned post. What is it about the lying, since it's apparently a point of stress. Do most of you get so negatively affected by lying? I can't even express how much stress it causes me when I think/know someone is lying to me.
Please share.