What might be the reasons that I suffer from low self esteem, sometimes feel numb, sometimes feel superior to others, sometimes lie and manipulate, sometimes quickly come to hate people, and have various other issues? How can I deal with these issues?

A2A, Thanks.Well, there really is no such thing as normal, so, don't aim for that.  Don't aim for anything you don't believe in or feel.I am not any kind of professional but I have been through so much in my life, and really, I am glad to have had the experiences.  Not because I enjoyed them but because I have learned so much from them.You say that nothing bad ever happened to you in your life?  Or are you saying that maybe something did but you would have turned out this way in any event?  If you suspect that something bad happened to you, just sit with that thought and allow it to be.If you think you had a perfectly regular childhood but have always just been the way you are.It is never easy to diagnose people and there are lots of Therapists out there that don't always know what they are doing.  We can go through several different diagnosis for  different reasons.  I have been through that to some extent also.  Diagnosis can change over time.  Nature VS Nurture has an effect on people also.  We are all born unequal.  Some of inherit genes that predispose us to various and sometimes significant things.  We are all born with a certain basic personality, also and that will make a difference in how we handle the things that develop in us over our first few years or even over our lifetimes.We can't help being born the way we are, but we can learn how to deal with it.  Is that fair?  No, it is not, but it is a fact of life.  Which of the diagnosis that you got do you believe to be the right diagnosis?  I think you may suspect what might be your difficulty, but you don't want that to be the case.  Try looking at this as:  You are a certain way.  You haven't found a way to be comfortable with it yourself.  Since anger is the only thing you feel, you may not want to give that up.  You weren't truthful with some or all of the various people you have seen for this.  If you want to live a truthful life as the person YOU are (We can't be anyone but who we are.) what are you afraid of?  Will finding this out kill you?  No.  Will it make life hard for you to live with?  It already has.  There are people out there that will help you learn to live with it and they will try over and over again, but unless you can live with who you are (You have already dome that for many years.), why waste your money and their time?I have known people who had Borderline Personality Disorder and I will tell you that I loved at least two of them.  I would still be seeing all of them if they hadn't cut me off.  I lived with a man who was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder.  He was fine as long as he took his meds.  He was a Psychiatric Nurse and knew exactly which meds he needed to take.  His family wanted to get him out of their lives.  They all moved away from where he lived and then he began to teeter.  He quit school, when he was going for his MS.  He then lost his job for arguing with his bosses. Then he got another job and eventually lost that too.  I had  some surgery and he began to tell his parents (He was 55.) that he was staying home to care for me.  I had a long talk with him and told him he couldn't use me as his excuse.  He began to be afraid of more and more things.  He lied about more and more things to all kinds of people.  He began to acuse me of stealing things from him.  He began to act very strangely.  One day he went totally down the tubes in the course of 14 hours.  I felt that he had been changing his meds but couldn't prove it until this day.  I called his doctor and she told me she thought he was decompensating and that I should take all his meds and put them in a bag.  She would admit him to a hospital.  Then I asked him to put together some clothes because his doctor was going to admit him to a hospital.  He did attempt to do that but failed miserably.  So, I went upstairs and found more of his clothing and put it in his bag for him.  Then he came down with a heavy looking bag.He had put all kinds of books in it that I knew he would now be unable to read.  I didn't care as long as he was happy with it.  Then we went to the hospital that she had directed us to and by the time we got there, he was even worse.  He told the triage nurse that I had been argueing with him all day. (Not true.)  She got the impression that I was trying to make him out to be crazy.  So when we got back to the waiting room, I went up to the desk and showed the woman there the bag of drugs I had with me and told her that these were his drugs and his psychiatrist had sent me her with him.  She called the triage nurse, and when she saw what all was in the bag. she immediately called the ER Doctor and got him into a room right away.  He deteriorated by the minute.  He knew who I was when I brought him but a half hour later, when asked, he told the doctor that he thought I might be his lover.  I am 14 years older than this man.  They kept losing beds at various hospitals by the that time.When I left at 1AM, I had been told that they would make sure he was as comfortable as they could make him.  He no longer knew me, although he had been living with me for 5 years.  He was very frightened.  They told me to go home and try to sleep.  An ambulance was on the way to take him to a certain hospital.  The next morning I called that hospital and they said they had no one there by that name.  Maybe he hadn't been admitted yet.  I should call back later in the morning.  I didn't want to call his elderly parents until I knew what was going on and what they thought might be wrong with him.  I called again and got the same response but then I remembered that he had to tell them if he wanted to see anyone.  I was not a relative.  I called back the ER we had been at the night before and they confirmed that he was indeed there.  I was finally able to talk to the Doctor that was in charge.  She knew that he was in bad shape but hadn't had time to figure out what was wrong with him.  She told me that she would be seeing him that afternoon and hoped to tell me more about him then.  She would call me.So I called his older sister, thinking that she could know what was happening and then when we knew more, she could go to his parents and break the news to them. She was sure that his doctor would talk to her but she made all kinds of calls and couldn't get through.  The only reason that I did was because the ER Personnel had called the hospital and told them that he had known me when I brought him in and I was the only person he had who lived with him.  Unfortunately, he never really recovered from that experience.  I gave him a good six months and they were the worst six months of my life.  When I finally got to see him in the hospital, he was like a two year old child.  He had no idea who I was but I spoke with him gently and coaxed him into talking with me.  They wanted to give him a shot of something so he could rest and asked me to come into his room with him.  I did.  He was very afraid to get a shot.  I held his hand and when they were finished, I went to help him get his pants back up.  His pants had a pair of shorts and underwear under them and all of thme were soaked through.  Even his socks were wet with urine.  I was so mad.  They told me that he had his breakfast in the morning but he was starved.  I made them bring him some food immediately.  They brought the food but he just stared at it.  I realized that he didn't know what to do because everything had covers on it.  I took the cover off the plate and his eyes grew wide.  He stuck his fingers in the mashed potatoes.  I opened the packet of plastic utensils that came with it and handed him the fork.  They all just stood there disbelieving that he was so hungry.  I didn't even let them change his clothes yet.  I took the cap off the glass and he picked it up and drank the whole thing.  My experience for this came from my having had foster children and my father-in-laws Alzheimer's.  You can't ask a question because they can't tell you the answer,  You just suggest things to them or show them how it is done.  Then I told them that they were going to have to help this pateint.  He was not malingering.  A nurse had stopped me in the hall when I was talking with him and told me that he had walked into another patients room and peed on the floor.  She was really mad.  I wondered why she was telling me this, until I helped him get his pants up after the shot.  NO one had followed up to see why he had peed on the floor.He had been peeing his pants since he arrived there and no one had checked.  This is why his doctor wanted him placed in a regular hospital with a Psych Ward.  In a Psychiatric Hospital they always think the patient is capable of caring for themselves or is just malingering.  People who don't believe in Mental Illness should have to live that way for a week.  The poor man.  Then his sister called him and promised to come and visit him.  She never came; neither did any of his family.  Still, his mother wanted me to be at the Hospital first thing every morning and to stay until it closed.  I couldn't drive myself because I had just had eye surgery.  So, I had to take a cab everywhere then.  One morning I was in the garage looking for the spare key because I had locked myself out of the house.  Some men were coming to cut the lawn for me, a friend had arranged it.  His mother called and started screaming at me that I had my priorities all wrong.  I should be at the Hospital, not trying to get men to cut the grass.  The grass had not been cut in more than two weeks and was now more than a foot high.  He was in the hospital for 10 days and no one in his family came to help.  He has both his parents, a sister and three brothers and everyone of them is wealthy.  I am just this retired woman, who had three surgeries since the 1st of the year.Well, when he came home he was more like a ten year old boy.  I lived with this for six months walking on eggshells trying to keep him calm and grounded.  Well, perhaps you know what it is like to have a ten year old boy.  I was just too old for this; 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  I told one of his brothers who came to visit months later that I was giving it 6 months.  If he did not recover substantially, I would have to  find housing for him.  I thought I would send him out to visit them so they could see what I was dealing with.  They wanted him to take the BART from the Airport to where they lived in the hills above Oakland.  I told them that even when he was well, it was I who figured out how to use the BART to get to their home.  I would not be coming with him this time.  They kept putting him off.  I wanted to send him out by May.  They wouldn't let him come until August.  I arranged a No-Stop flight for him and someone would have to meet him there.  If they wouldn't take him; he would have to live in subsidized housing because I couldn't care for him anymore.  They did every thing they could think of to try to get me to have to keep him but it didn't work and they finally had to do it themselves.  They were embarrassed to have him around.   Well, at least he didn't have to live alone in subsidized housing.  It took me over a year to get them to take him and I had to hire a lawyer.  I was a wreck by the time he left but at least I know that I never treated him with anything but respect.  I exercised extreme patience every day.  I paid the price too.People who have Bi-polar Disorder, can usually take medication to keep their symptoms in check.  They might run into trouble every once in a while but can get help when they need it as long as they take their meds.We can recover from PTSD but it can recur.  So we have to be vigilant with that.  You are not alone in  any event.  If you are, its probably because of your anger.  That anger really trips many people up.  Sometimes people just can't get over or manage their anger and they drive people away or forbid themselves to associate with a person ever again.I would suggest that you go back to a Doctor you trusted or find one you can tolerate.  Then hang in there, follow their advice and stick to the treatments they prescribe for a reasonable length of time.  It takes at least six weeks to fully understand if a medication will work for you.  It takes much less time to find out it doesn't work.  Still, you might have to titrate off of it.  Medications can be dangerous if not taken or used correctly, even by a Psychiatric Nurse.  CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and DBT (dialectic behavioural therapy) work for many people.  I have seen people resume their regular lives after going through this.  It is not a cure in itself though.I believe that we are born and live these lives for some reason, basically to learn much more than most people ever get the chance to learn.  If you can learn something from your disorder, whatever it is, you will be better for it.  Read the book  The Other Side of Normal by Jordan Smoller.  It will give you or anyone so much information that you may never have known about human beings.  I wish you the best and hope that you get what you deserve, in a good way.  You are a human being and you deserve as much as anyone else.

You have an attachment disorder. Genuine expression of emotion- positive and negative, concern for others, and the ability to trust others is learned the first three years of life from your primary caregiver- was she lacking these abilities? We all have to be taught how to be loving, not just how to get by. You haven't been taught yet, neither have I. You feel threatened by other people because you think that at some point, if they get close enough, they are going to take everything from you, like your parents did. You were unlucky in drawing the parents you got, because you only get one chance to do all the taking, and that is in the first two years. Now, you have to give and take. Stand your ground , stand up for yourself then turn around and be very generous. You want there to be strict rules for this written down. There are, in etiquette books, but no one reads them anymore, silly! So learn as you go. Make eye contact, smile. Hope something comes back but if not, move on, or not. Life is a risk now.  Who do I trust, who can I trust? You have to learn this now moment by moment.

Stop seeking to be like everyone else... To 'feel' like everyone else. You cannot possibly compare how you feel regularly to how another feels - you have no way of knowing how they feel. You are like me, very in tune with yourself and your surroundings (thus constantly self analysing how you feel and getting annoyed at external things). Thinking about feeling is like smelling a smell - the more you think about what you feel, the less and less you will 'feel'.Above all of this, accept that your on the psychotic / depressive scale (many millions of us are), and read the power of now. It really helped me and many others. Peace and love :) x

Well I can't diagnose you with anything.  But before looking at diagnoses we look at the human being in the circumstances. Humans have these emotions, these fears.  Some fear death, others fear rejection.  Some are afraid of everything. So you love your child more than anything in the world, but you feel numb.  It is safer not to love, then we don't break our hearts. We put up walls around our hearts so nobody can get in. A good friend once told me "a person who risks is free".  He had just come through a difficult time of self-isolating.

Start loving yourself ! IF you love yourself for who you truly are with all your beauties and flows, nobody can hurt you. You stop being dependent on other people's love, opinions or agreement with what you do. You do and act in your highest good, for your own personal growth and if people do not agree with it, you are detached from the need of having to act certain way. Also, you take actions that benefits you and not others. You will release negative people from your life: http://www.madamesque.com/how-to-detox-your-life-of-negative-people/ you will attract relationships that benefit you and release people who are hurting you. It's not simple starting loving yourself, because we are used to act certain way so people love us, so people don't hurt us, so we don't end up alone. But being alone and be content with it is the most beautiful things, because then you will enter into relationship with people who love you for who you truly are. And that's an awesome feeling; that's life long happiness. Here are some basics about Loving Yourself: http://www.madamesque.com/how-loving-yourself-can-improve-your-life/ I'm working right now on an article that lists different ways you can do everyday to start loving yourself, so you may subscribe to the magazine not to miss it.

Sounds like when you were a child you had trouble with your parents. Perhaps your parents were abusive or manipulative. You were not loved as a child and maybe you were treated like a slave. Otherwise, you were bullied by your peers and that caused you psychological damage. Bullying is more likely to be the cause. You realized that the only way to get respected was to treat others badly. You learned that by ignoring your emotions you would get on further in live from being only a child. Now it's all hidden deep beneath the surface so you don't even realize it's there. You learned that by being yourself you won't benefit in life so you adapted to others. Therefore you copy actions of others and your own figure is hidden. In order to get help and to solve your problem, analyze your childhood , such as parenting, school and friends. If any issues were matching what I said below, seek help. You do not have a mental illness, what you have is a problem that is hidden and if revealed can help you to fix everything.

I cannot answer this question though I applaud you for having the courage to ask these questions and look seriously at yourself. I strongly urge you to consider getting some form of counseling to address them with the serious attention these questions deserve.

A lot of good answers have been written here. The fact that you are totally aware of your thoughts, feelings and emotions, is a good thing. Give therapy another shot. You can't get good results with therapy unless you are totally honest.  You are paying them to help you, not to judge you. So don't hold anything back. Is it possible that you have repressed memories? Something that you may have successfully blocked out? I wish you the best of luck and please keep us posted on your progress.

Believe me, the meds can be a dead end, a bumpy + infuriating ride with their varying 'kick-in' or take effect time frames (by the time they may or may not have, one cannot remember how s/he felt before taking the meds usually), the physiological adjustment to dosage + even the titrating off of some of the nastier ones. This alone is enough to make one think that s/he is just a hamster running about aimlessly in the pharmaceutical wheels of legalized drug peddling. That being said (+ by now I have tried most things on the market), the options are limited; however, there are options depending upon lifestyle, resources + likewise. From what I can gather, it appears that a key symptom points to a manic type of disposition which would explain the extreme up's + down's, the sudden changes in emotional state, the apathy + so forth. That being said, here are a few thoughts + ideas. make note of any medications that have helped in the past but stopped working - try to list doses, side effects, duration, etc. from this you health specialist (or you yourself) might be able to draw some conclusions as to patterns of illness (e.g. perhaps there is a periodicity in certain manifestations of illness such as depression) or certain pharma families that work better than others try non-drug alternatives - the easiest (at least for me) is exercise in that is burns out the bad leaving one cleansed, less angry, anxious or frustrated (at least after you get used to it). the next easiest is to get fresh air (try to get outdoors) + more importantly sun + warmth. climate can have a great impact on mental health! try to get outside of yourself - be it via exercise or physical activity, meditation, yoga, helping others, work, reading, etc make a record of your habits - specifically in regard to health which includes diet + sleep (perhaps there is a sleep problem in the mix?) find like-minded peeps - in order to facilitate discussion, gather support + think through problematic issues if things get bad, there's always the old standard - though i am not promoting this by any means but merely mentioning this to complete the narrative, when all else failed + i was at rope's end, the fall back was always booze + a bevy of any other pharmas I had at hand. this usually always worked for me (though it was much tougher on the bod as i got older) + i usually powered through, got shit accomplished, met deadlines, was productive, etc. like i said, this was a last resort. Hope this may be of some assist + best of luck! :)