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What is it?
I'm not sure if anyone will be able to answer this but something happened yesterday. So, I(F/15) was talking to my friend about him liking my other friend and eventually he brought up the past with questions that made me uncomfortable. Soon after, I start crying, but then it escalated as I put thoughts into my head from the present. I started to cry uncontrollably and it, again, escalated. I began to get angry with myself for not being able to stop crying and started hitting my head with my hands, scratching myself, and digging my nails into my skin. It scared and confused me beyond belief so much that I forced myself to tell someone. After 5 attempts to reach 5 different people without being successful, I finally called my mom and told her what was happening. She eventually was able to calm me down. The crying and everything lasted for more than 30 minutes. I would occasionally whimper and move my leg left and right without talking, mainly mumbling as if I 'forgot' how to talk, although I knew I could. Me, my mother, and my father don't know what triggered it or what it even was. That was the first it's ever happened. So I need help on figuring out what it is if I don't go see a doctor if it happens again.
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Want to answer more questions in the Health & Fitness category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Mental health?
I am not a mental health Dr. But I have some family with mental health issues and as a teen I had severe social anxiety but back then,, anxieties weren't recognized and I was called shy. So I have read a few books on the topic, and by the way, I am cured now.
When I mention mental health, I am not saying you have a mental illness. A great majority of people will throughout life have negative and worse distorted thoughts come to mind. The difference is that most people dismiss the thoughts and tell themselves that what is feared won't happen, or that it is no reason to get worried. See, the mind and what we say or do because of our thoughts is very closely connected. So a person who tends to dwell on any bad thoughts, embarassments, worries and fears, etc. will only feel worse as they continue to entertain in detail bad thoughts. I can say I will have a negative thought at times and catch myself imagining a whole scenerio that is scary. Like seeing a car turned over along highway and that's all it takes for me to wonder what it felt like to be in a car being flipped. Then it progresses to wondering if I got hurt or even would survive and that is enough to get my emotions to kick in. It works the same watching a movie you know is a made up story and actors but you are emotionally pulled in and when something is sad you cry, or when a character is horribly mean to someone, YOu feel like its happening to you and you get angry, to the point adrenalline is pounding.
You are a very intelligent gal as I see by what you wrote and how you explained.
So I am going through what you said and compare with what I know. "He brought up the past with questions that made me uncomfortable."
I'd have to guess that this is where it started. Your brain had thoughts about how you did not want to talk about or reveal things from the past and that is what caused the immediate feeling of uncomfortable. This means lack of comfort started it but I am guessing changed to embarrassment once the crying started. You intuitively knew you had to change something, distract your mind and this is where as you said 'I put thoughts into my head from the present'. While you did need to put different thoughts into your head, I don't know what they were because you said they made you worse so you know now that whatever thoughts you dwelled on to stop crying, it didn't work. Not because overriding negative distorted thoughts doesn't work but because whatever thoughts you were thinking of now, made it worse. When you found you could not stop the tears, you got upset with yourself and probably even more embarrassed whether anyone witnessed it or not. I know I would have been embarrassed even if no one saw but just worry that someone might come along and see this. I am a person who likes to be in control and if you are the same, then I can see you getting mad at yourself. The hitting of your head and scratching etc. was no longer embarrassment but pure panic as you had no control over your crying and it kept going. I know it would freak me out if I was crying a half hour straight.
What I do not know is about 5 attempts to reach people to help. If you simply called friends to have someone to talk to, they would not have been able to figure it out any better than you. Mom was able to finally calm you down but I assume that either her voice or if you were back home, that family and home is where you feel more secure and protected and able to be yourself, so it was naturally easier for you to calm down.
I shared the above issues of ditorted thoughts as that is the most common reason for a person to have such a reaction. However, having a reaction like that if you truly had that issue, it would have happened before. It doesn't happen once and never again. You would have seem a gradual change in your thoughts over the time prior to this if I compare to people I know of, but then again, I am not a doctor and wouldn't know if such a thing can come on suddenly.
However, there is one more thing I will mention since you are a teen girl of 15. And this has to do with hormones. The hormones that are released at puberty do more than change how your body looks, but they can affect a girls emotions. I went through this, so did all my daughters. When it's a normal emotional affect, you react with irritation, impatience, a little anger to something that makes you mad or you tend to get sad or cry for no apparent reason, sobbing at anything and every thing. I was the more crying type but some never cry and become irritated. The problem is that there is too much of female hormones in your body. We tend to pick up plenty just from contact and use of plastics that contain an actual immitation female hormone which we then absorb slowly into our bodies. Hang with me, as this is all important . . . Some due to their lifestyle, have less contact with foods contained in certain plastic bottles, plastic wraps and so on. So long before puberty, there can be a good amount of these hormones already present from your environment. Then when your own hormones are created, that adds to the number and when it is really high, the too high status of hormones affects teen girls like an extreme emotion, so instead of just feeling angry, a gal becomes vindictive, irate, destructive, etc. and her whole personality can change. The changes can be sudden, come out of nowhere and there is no good reason for reacting that way. On the other side, the sadness and crying leads to depression and suicide. What can be done? See your Dr. and ask him to check your hormones levels to either confirm or rule this out. If they are high, there is something they can give you to help. If they are normal, then you are back to checking into the thoughts angle.
Even if puberty started a while ago like 12 or whatever, this doesn't go away quick if hormonal and can last most your teen years except maybe 18,19. I had three girls. When the oldest got hormonal, she would try to pick fights with me or her sisters. when its the anger/irritation thing, females tend to pick out those females closest to her, not males at all. When the middle daughter began puberty, it meant I had two at a time and both were always fighting until I explained that was going on, they weren't to the destructive mean level so just knowing it was normal and to give themselves time outs to calm down worked well. My oldest outgrew it but then the youngest was going through it and both her and the middle sister fought.
I am guessing but it could be that the crying if fueled by your hormones, was something you could not control. Not knowing this is normal teen girl stuff and that you don't have to feel embarrassed may have helped you to lose it and in a frantic try for some control and normalcy, you refocused your thoughts to something that made it got worse, and lastly got angry with yourself and began to be vicious to yourself, not to someone else.
I could be totally wrong here. However if mostly hormonal, and at normal levels of hormones, You can probably expect more of the same, not all the time but episodes where you lose control, can cry over no reason at all. I had extra hormones again after giving birth and recall reading a sad story that would make anyone shed a few tears, only mine went on and on, thought the day and when hubby got home that evening, I was still crying on and off any time my thoughts went back to the story I read earlier. I did not know back then to avoid thinking of whatever caused me to start crying so much more than what is normal.
I am glad you wanted to check this out and not ignore it. Going to the Dr. for a check up on your hormonal levels is a good start.
If it is not hormonal and a combo of both issues or only your emotions reacting to your thought life in negative ways, and if it repeats often enough, then you need to learn how to stop doing the thought process that sets you off. Once you have learned this, you will be as normal as the majority of us. The bad news, is that it is hard to cure oneself of a thought process related problem. You need a professional and the ones who can help are psychologists trained in CBT which stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Cognitive is just a fancy word for your thoughts. This is a knowledge that has been around probably 50 years if not close to fifty but it is not standard training for psychologists. Also, they main issue is to first try everything to help cure you without medicine and about 90% of people have been found to not need meds. So if you have insurance, the process is to see your general practiioner to get a referral. But don't let them choose, call the insurance first and ask if they cover any psychologists in your area. With that list of names, get as many as you can because not all will have the initials CBT in their ad. Then call each one, find one who is trained in CBT. and that is the name you will give to your Dr along with a contact number and fax so he/she can make a referal to the Dr you gave them the name of. I hope it doesn't happen again for you but everything I shared is all that I know of. You can try to not react to a fear of what others think of you or dwelling on negative distorted thoughts. It doesn't work well but I know you will want to try so every time you have a distorted thought, you start talking to yourself, internally or spoken aloud if alone. You will actually be talking to your subconscious mind who is always in the background taking things in. Unfortunately, the subconscious mind (SM ) thinks that what you focus on the most, is actually something important to you so it will do whatever it can to help whatever is on your mind to happen. So thinking about it happening again, is enough for your SM to actually help it to happen again. A good example is a girl broken up about her BF dumping her and every time she thinks of him, she feels worse or cries. Happened to one daughter who got so depressed she went to her one free visit with a psychologist that her job would cover. The Dr. told her the same things I told her for treating depression and she could hardly contain the surprise and told me that I was right and everything I told her, the Dr. had told her too.
So I don't take this stuff lightly and try to diagnose, but only share what things as examples that I have come across. ANd what things help in these situations. I got over my social anxiety doing the very thing mentioned in a book by a psychologist, and it took facing my fears and realiing that in my case, I was do something in psychology that is termed fortune telling, or predictions, where I imagine exactly how something will go, and it usually involved how others would react to any little thing I did. I couldn't go use the pencil sharpener in grade school at the front of the class for fear that everyone would be staring at my back because I got up to go to the front. Even if brief, the thought of that many eyes on me, freaked me out and actually froze me up. So its not so much as taking a leap of faith and facing that which makes you worry, but because of a fear, you don't know until you try going through the situation that scares you, that you learn over and over that nothing bad will happen. Most people are understanding but also curious. So what you are doing instead here, I would call a leap of fear. You decide to take that leap and face whatever scares you or disturbs your calm, and you are fearful and panicked when you start but at the end when you have been successful, there is relief and peace and I was smiling and proud of myself. So if losing control of yourself in a social setting is the only thing that really sets you off, the next time, don't try to hide or stop whatever is going out of control. We as humans will always have those times in life where things are out of our control. Just you realizing it is okay and nothing to be embarrassed about, someone seeing you when not at your best is something that will happen sometimes. What I quickly say to whomever I am with, still to this day, is something drawing attention to what I am going through, rather than try to hide it or stop it. If I drop something and spill and make a mess in public, well darn but that happens and nothing to be worried or embarrassed over as I was as a teen. I will simply look at whomever was closest and say, "Oops, I guess I am butter fingered today. I hope nothing splashed onto you." I have never had some one start yelling what an idiot I was, how clumsy etc. as I used to imagine. I get instead words like, "No biggie, its happens to me too." "Nope you did't get me. Did anything splash on you?" Even if a bunch of little things going wrong means i need the emotional release of a good cry and I cry when husband isn't crying. I make sure to not hide it from him and in case he is concerned that he unknowingly did something to cause it, I let him know, "Sorry, kind of weepy right now. Its all the little stuff going wrong that finally got to me. Just need to cry to let off pressure." That way he knows its nothing big and can feel more comfortable to just hold me til I am done. I hope all my sharing and examples have helped you. In the end, if this repeats and your attempts to change your thoughts so it gets better, doesn't work, you will have no choice but to see a mental health professional trained in CBT. If you forget what it is called, then think of the situation when checking out Dr. and ask if their treatment involves the process of how ones thoughts can affect their behavior and actions in a bad way and they will know what you are asking for.
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