# What's it like being seriously nuts?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-it-like-being-seriously-nuts/150825
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [January 25, 2003, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-it-like-being-seriously-nuts/150825 "2003-01-25T05:46:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2004, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-it-like-being-seriously-nuts/150825/61 "2004-10-18T12:53:14Z")
And thus, I’ve killed yet another thread.
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### Author:  [@Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bites_When_Provoked)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2004, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-it-like-being-seriously-nuts/150825/62 "2004-10-18T14:22:30Z")
You’ve not killed it, Elmwood. But it’s a bit hard deciding to share the living proof that you’re a total nutjob with the wider world. 😉 Then, once I’d decided, the post got unwieldy, so I had to cut and cull and eventually put stuff into quote sections to keep it readable.
> [@elmwood](#):
>
> The ADD manifests itself in one form with non-stop chatter in my head; basically, my brain never feels rested. It’s always thinking hard, always churning away.
You’d feel right at home in my brain then. It operates on (at least) two levels all the time, constantly running a commentary in the background which occasionally catches my attention, but usually only when it gets interesting.
A possibly amusing anecdote depending on your local slang:
> [@StoryByKhiadra\_QuotedToKeepItNeat](#):
>
> A while back, I was shopping at the supermarket and noted, on BrainLevel\_1 (normal, day-to-day thoughts) that there’s a lot more product around by Dick Smith than there used to be. BrainLevel\_2 must have been pondering the ramifications of that, because the next thing I’m mentally rewinding because the following brain ‘chatter’ has just taken place and caught my attention:
>
> BrainLevel\_2: Hey, I wonder why …
> BrainLevel\_3: _inserts some information_
> BrainLevel\_2: oh! _hahaha!_ That’s why!
>
> (Yes, BL\_2 actually had a staccato laugh. Hey, you did ask if anyone was seriously nuts; I live but to serve. Anyway, back to the story.)
>
> So, naturally intrigued, I mentally backtrack to find out where exactly I was going with that. Turns out, BrainLevel\_2 was going through the different names for Dick Smith products (for example, his version of RedHead matches is DickHeads). The commentary and associated question that got intercepted and apparently answered was the following -
>
> BrainLevel\_2: Hey, I wonder why he’s called that stuff Aussie Cream Cheese?
> BrainLevel\_3: Because otherwise it’d be called ‘Dick Cheese’, and it looks like _that_.
>
> So now **I** suddenly know what it was that amused BL\_2, and as it happens I really \*do \* think that’s funny, so I burst into laughter.
>
> Fortunately I’m not a scary looking person, so all I get is a couple of amused glances.
Some possibly helpful advice for the OCD folks:
> [@Khiadra\_QuotedToKeepItNeat](#):
>
> As for wierd, horrible thoughts, I only get them very \*very \* rarely and I personally find that something I read in a book (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, FWIW) actually pretty much works. In the story, one of the character wants to lose a current thought and recalls that the brain can only hold 7 things in memory simultaneously before one has to drop out. I find it’s more than 7, but if you can think of enough different things and balance them together (I envisage 9 televisions stacked 3 up and 3 across with different animated images showing on each) it’s true that the one you’re not giving as much attention to (ie, whatever’s not on TV) will usually drop out.
And finally… **Elmwood** , I reckon if you did a study you’d find that most of the people on this board with the worst symptoms were probably considered ‘gifted’ as children. When I was in grade 3, I was given an IQ test by my teacher which showed I had a reading, spelling and comprehension level equivalent to an advanced year 12 student. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing ‘gifted’ did for me was to burn me out early.
> [@StoryByKhiadra\_QuotedToKeepItNeat](#):
>
> I had a total breakdown mid-year 12 (how ironic, considering my ‘gifted’ results of 7 years previous!) after spending the first six months of the year ‘somewhere else’, absent, while I let some other part of my mind run my body and life. Then I snapped back into myself one day at school, after putting my head down. Suddenly I was sure if I lifted my head, ‘everything’ would come pouring out of me, tearing through my throat, and there’d be nothing left. It was a horrific sensation. I can’t even describe it.
>
> Funnily enough, once I (meaning the’\*\* I \*\*’ that I recognise as me) took back my body, I discovered that somehow, whatever I’d been doing or saying for the previous six months, I was now a lot more popular with the kids at school. Whoever took over was more confident and took less shit, perhaps. They weren’t much chop at school work though, although they did some reasonable stuff on my history assignments. Of course, it’s really strange to have read essays written by ‘me’ on topics I’ve never encountered. They weren’t as well phrased as I’d have done, though, and they meandered a bit. Everything else was shot to hell however, and I had to work like a demon to pass that year - eventually scraping through with 13/20.
Year 12 was pretty much the beginning of the end for me; I’ve never been ‘right’ since. Of course, I’ve also never turned over my consciousness to some other part of my brain again, either, so that’s something.
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### Author:  [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2004, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-it-like-being-seriously-nuts/150825/63 "2004-10-18T17:11:16Z")
Dunno how nutty I am exactly, since I haven’t actually gone to a psychiatrist except a few times during college and it didn’t get very far past the first few sessions.
I, too, was a gifted child, loved math, loved daydreaming. (Instant recipe for trouble. :D) I always felt hyperaware and extremely self conscious (although the latter may be due to some nasty bullying I went through in middle school).
I remember wondering at a very young age if life were all a dream, or if I was playing a role in a massive celestial drama. (It may or may not have coincided with the start of my vivid dreaming.)
But yeah, I agree with that feeling of disconnection/helplessless. It’s like I’m not really here, but a part of me is on the outside watching (while another part is watching myself watching myself…etc.). I was a square block trying to fit into a round peg.
I got pretty terrible mood swings - panic attacks, inexplicable, **murderous** rage, uncontrollable crying - but the worst part was days where I just felt totally and aboslutely apathetic. I would go through the motions of daily life, but on the inside it was like I had died.
(And ditto to the annoyance at well-meaning people. My parents were convinced that it was some sort of hormonal adolescent phase that I would grow out of, and that I was exaggerating my problems to get attention. They were right, in some sense, and later on I realized that I was sort of giving myself all sorts of issues because I wanted to remain dependent on them. But try telling someone in a deep blue funk to “get over it” when you’re convinced that there’s no exit. :mad: )
What finally got me out of it was a combination of a very good friend who wouldn’t leave me alone to sulk and made me talk about my frustrations (and made me see that there were people in the world way more messed up than I felt at the time), my own realization that I was in a dangerous spiral of self-destruction, and my works of fiction, which allowed me to externalize my feelings into characters. I still have to monitor my thoughts constantly, though, because it’s really easy for me to fall back into the old vicious cycle.
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### Author:  [@pasunejen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pasunejen)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2004, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-it-like-being-seriously-nuts/150825/64 "2004-10-18T17:57:30Z")
Depression’s been pretty well covered here, so I won’t relate those stories.
Plenty of times in my life I’ve felt like I might be going a little more conventionally crazy, but only once in my life have I really felt absolutely batshit insane:
I was on vacation with my family and everything seemed to be moving too slowly–they were walking like snails, everybody was in slow motion except my thoughts, which raced around and around looking to escape…it was like torture. I wanted to break free but couldn’t see any conceivable release for all the energy threatening to make me explode. When we sat down for dinner, I started having really horrifically violent visions–taking my dad and sister’s heads and beating them against the ground, etc. And it just got worse as we sat and sat and sat. My impulse control was a fraying thread. This continued through a sleepless night. Somehow I held myself together, but it was a close thing.
If it had happened, I would have been completely conscious of what I was doing and how much pain I was causing myself and others. I would have been screaming from somewhere inside, “Stop! Stop!” But I wouldn’t have been able to stop. Just lying stiff in bed with the knowledge that something so horrible was so close to happening was probably the single most terrifying experience of my life. I have no idea why it happened. I live in fear that it’ll happen again and this time my guard won’t hold.
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