I tend to lean towards borderline personality disorder as the most unpleasant because
People assume you are just an asshole. If you have schizophrenia people are aware you have a serious illness, with BPD people just assume you are a jerk.
BPD destroys your ability to get support from those closest to you since you are driving people away with rages. Even therapists are sometimes unwilling to take on BPD clients because of how they act.
One of the most persistent and hard to treat symptoms is constant negative emotions. Intense emotions of psychological pain due to a fear of abandonment and rejection. Supposedly a lot of this is tied into neglect/abuse at a very young age among sensitive children who as a result cannot regulate their inner emotional states as adults.
Schizophrenia has stigma but it doesn’t seem like it would be as subjectively unpleasant. Schizophrenia has an inability to function and comprehend reality as major features, disorders like BPD or anxiety disorders have intense, persistent negative emotions as their major symptoms. That would be worse.
I think BPD or a severe anxiety disorder would be worst from an emotional standpoint.
I agree that BPD does have the biggest stigma. Personality disorders in general have a high stigma, but especially the cluster B’s. I could see some attempt to sympathize with a person with BPD, but not a narcissist or a psychopath.
Panic attacks. I’ve been depressed and had panic attacks, and I’ll easily take feeling numb and hopeless over terrified and convinced you’re about to die.
Depression, for sure, because feeling miserable is just a huge part of what depression is. And depression with anxiety, in my experience, is the living definition of a shit sandwich with shit dressing and an extra helping of shit on the side.
The most miserably unhappy person I’ve ever met suffered from a Capgras delusion. She honestly believed that she wasn’t living with her real husband and child and hopelessly sad because she had no idea how to get “the real” them back.
My uncle was a schizophrenic he was also part of that subset of schizophrenics that was prone to violence during episodes. It didn’t help that he was 6’4 at 300lbs. He ended up not taking his meds and put a family member in the hospital on one occasion, with serious injuries. It was horrible for the whole family, all was forgiving in the end . He exiled himself from us after that and put himself in a home.
I remember when it happened over hearing people on public transit talk about the story. Thinking to myself quietly, yup that’s my uncle.
Our good friends who we vacation with have a 20 year who has been dx with Aspergers and OCD with a touch of anti social behavior. As he moves into adulthood he is being pigeon holed toward meds that stabilize his mood, read bi polar. I have a very hard time being around him for any length of time, most do but guess what…he could give a shit what anybody thinks , he believes its not his problem.
I think any mental disorder the afflicted knows is their burden to carry is tough.
Panic disorder is horribly bad, but I’m under the impression that a lot of schizophrenics have that during many episodes. Losing touch with reality in that way would be horribly frightening to me, I know. It’s the one thing I am most terrified of about getting older.
Still, of what I’ve experienced, Panic disorder is the worst. You aren’t just having a single panic attack (which is something I can handle) but having multiples in a row, with the fading off of one scaring you into another. I’d went days without a break when detoxing off my benzo–actually falling asleep for a few hours while still feeling panicked.
Yeah, that would be unpleasant. When I was in my mid 20’s I had to deal with (currently managed) a socialized anxiety disorder that eventually lead to depression as well. It was a horrible existence for awhile. Terrified of everything, When in public any situation where I viewed as being trapped; line in a bank, bus ride to work, at work, dinner for a coworker you name it would make me extremely anxious and at times lead to anxiety attacks that I just grit my teeth and plow through. I felt like a duck on water, gliding across the surface but my feet where paddling constantly underneath. My concern was also developing schizophrenia since it ran on both sides of my family, there was a total of 3 schizophrenics on mom and dad’s side, I thought for sure this was what I was going to get. I read lot of psychology books. I think for schizophrenia by the time you turn 30 if you don’t get it, you likely never will. I remember hitting 30 and celebrating the fact I didn’t get it. So if your over 30 good chance you can relax dude.
I’ve had severe depression and am now living with bipolar disorder.
I think bipolar is really misunderstood by a lot of people. They think everybody feels it in the same way–seriously depressed swinging to periods of manic behavior. When my doctor diagnosed me, he said “your mood cycling is more like severe depression to periods of feeling almost normal.” Like there are days when I sleep 12 hours a day and don’t want to talk to anyone, then there are days I work out, have a good day at work, and have pleasant times with my wife and stepkids. But I still have periods of–I don’t know how best to say this–“non-normality” during the day. I’m not sure if I prefer this to the episodes of severe depression I’ve had in my life. I guess in one respect with depression I knew what I was getting, and in a few instances where my depression was “situational” (after a divorce or bereavement or a forced move) I realized that eventually I would lift out of it. With this…it’s been several months since my diagnosis and I am getting markedly worse.
I think the other think about bipolar that’s worse is how other people act about it. I never see people say things like “X is depressed, he shouldn’t have kids”, “X is depressed, it’s probably why his kid is doing so badly at school and stealing stuff and smoking pot” or “I would never hire someone who was depressed, that person’s resume would be in the trash the minute I saw it”. But I’ve seen those exact sentiments on this very board–some of them directed at me. There is a HUGE stigma about bipolar. I’ve been told by some people that I shouldn’t be holding down a job because I’m crazy. One thinks if I were that outwardly insane that my company would have noticed it and not put an entire department on my shoulders. But it’s the stuff about bipolar and my family life, my kids, that really gets to me. Because it starts getting me thinking, “Are my wife and kids better off without me? Maybe the world is better off without me?”
And so I wouldn’t wish bipolar on my worst enemy. It just hurts me so much, that I have no friends and there are so many people out there who would want to be friends with me up until the very moment that they found I was bipolar and then would never speak to me again. That didn’t happen when I was depressed, and many of my friends back then knew I was going through that.