And thus, I’ve killed yet another thread.
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.
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:
Some possibly helpful advice for the OCD folks:
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.
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.
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.
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.