Ask the Therapist
Personality Test
I'm a 21 yr old female. I've had a tough life, lived in poverty, been molested twice, once at age
six, again at age 19, been betrayed by everyone I know, except my mom, lost people close to me to death,
especially my favorite uncle. anyway I have always had to be the strong one, because my mom is very
dependent, depressed and needy. Since I was little, I've felt crazy. Just felt like I was born with crazy
in me. My dad was crazy, his brother was crazy, a cold blooded murderer who was executed... I fear I got my
crazy from them. They made me that way. Since I was young I've had gruesome vivid horrific dreams, or
sometimes when I'll be in bed, sometimes just during the day even, I'm not sure if I'm awake or not, but I
hear screaming voices in my head, I know it's not in real life, because it's in my head. I don't hear it
through my ears, it's in my head. Hard to explain. I'm a very paranoid person as well. Anyway I took a
personality test, here are my results:
| Schizoid: Moderate | | Schizotypal: | Very
High |
| Antisocial: | High |
| Borderline: | Very
High |
| Histrionic: | High |
| Narcissistic: | High |
| Avoidant: | High |
| Dependent: | Very
High |
| Obsessive-Compulsive: | High |
I am afraid. I feel I belong in a mental health facility. I have no money to speak to a therapist. I
need help. What's wrong with me?
First things first...I took that personality exam and came out Moderate on everything, except Anti-social, Narcissistic and Histrionic, on which I scored Very High, High and Very High respectively. Not likely. I suggest that before you take the word of an Internet personality exam as Gospel, you get evaluated for real. I wrote to the webmaster to ask him which personality test it was and where he got it. I doubt he'll write back -- he's a kid and I probably scared him --, but what the heck.
Now, for the real stuff... It sounds to me that you are suffering from some form of Post Traumatic Stress, probably related to the molestation and rape. In fact, it's quite likely the symbolic flashbacks that you are experiencing (the nightmares, the daymares, the voices, etc.) are a reaction to the molestation that was triggered by the rape.
It's very common for a woman who has experienced sexual abuse to develop borderline personality traits...that's called Complex Post Traumatic Stress...and even more common for an event at an early age to be brought to the surface by an event at a later age. Further, your sense of being abandoned and/or betrayed by "everyone" has, if it is real, informed your state of mind or, if it is imagined, is a symptom of it.
You're not crazy. You're carrying around a whole bunch of past stress and trauma and you don't know what to do with it. That'd freak anybody out. Plus, if I can make an observation about your screen name, you identify fairly strongly with your sexuality and your sense of being a woman... If you combine that with your experience of sexual trauma, it's going to cause a conflict.
What to do?... Try and find a support group for women who have experienced sexual trauma.
