The whole point of this thread is to allow me to share my experience with a potential ABI (acquired brain injury) and to seek more knowledge about symptoms and hopefully find people that relate to my symptoms. Just a word of warning, though, I am not diagnosed with an ABI. I am NOT seeking medical advice. I would also like to gain understanding of the diagnosis process, but I'm not asking for a diagnosis.

When I was a 3-months-old baby, I fell seriously ill with a severe case of bacterial meningitis. I became profoundly deaf in the progression of the illness, either from meningitis itself or the antibiotics that were used to fight the illness. I'm 22 years old now, and the very idea of an acquired brain injury is new to me. You can imagine that I'm feeling all sorts of emotions about this possibility, because all of my life, I was called a problem child, someone who just liked to constantly get in trouble. For my entire life, I've been experiencing a huge pile of symptoms that seemed unrelated to each other that led me to be hospitalized several times, and I got locked up in jail as well.

I can't remember some symptoms, but I'll talk about the main ones for now.

I have a severe and major anger problem; I'm normally a very caring person, but I have frequent violent outbursts. I literally just lose it. Most times, it consists of screaming at top volume, throwing things, speaking in an extremely cruel way, and yes, punching. I notice that no matter how hard I try, I cannot stop myself or control anything I do in that state. People have noticed that I regress to a child-like mindset when having an outburst. After the outburst, I often feel confused, despondent, guilty, and disappointed in myself for not being able to control myself.

Another symptom I have is the inability to "see" my thoughts. I only recently gained insight on this, and it is definitely unsettling and weird. Everyone I know is able to magically form pictures, words, whatever they want in their mind. I see only blackness. I can consciously force myself to form thoughts, but even then it's very faded and barely there at all. Because of this, I honestly feel as if I'm on autopilot because I have no idea how I'm talking like this or even forming words at all. I do have thoughts, that much is obvious, but it's not there in the conscious mind.

I also have really bad memory loss. I cannot really remember 95% of my life, and I only remember when cued. My memory functions just enough for me to seem forgetful but 'normal', but I can't remember what I did yesterday let alone what I did years ago. I don't remember the faces of my friends, family, etc, after a while of not seeing them. I can remember facts, such as that I've played a certain video game, but I can't remember the storyline or what I did on the video game.

Other symptoms are things such as a minor problem with swallowing, slightly off-balance, slow processing speed, other neurological symptoms and a LOT of psychiatric symptoms resembling bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, oppositional deficit disorder, conduct disorder, adjustment disorder, psychopathic traits, ADHD, substance abuse disorder, depression, and anxiety. You get the idea. I was not diagnosed with all of that, but I have previously been diagnosed with some of those. I can tell you which if you ask!

I'm really hoping that there are some people on this forum who relate to what I said and is able to answer a couple of questions I have.

1. What is the name of the symptom where you cannot see your conscious thoughts?

2. Is there ANY way to stop an outburst in your experience?

3. What is the diagnosis process like? I already have neuropsychological assessments booked for me, but I'm not sure what would happen.

4. Is there any studies that has been done for what happens to brain injuries after 15 or 20 years?

Thank you so much for reading this far, you're awesome.