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#right now my only official diagnosis is adhd and ive had that since i was 4-5 and got it renewed at 13-15
needscaffeine · 3 years
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Was basically confirmed to me today that there are no therapists in this state just counselors and so I have no clue what I'mma do
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Hi… I wanted to ask this on anon so I didn’t ask on your personal, idk if this is too personal or anything to ask but
Do you have a problem with people saying they have a mental disorder if they don’t have a diagnosis? Like for me so… I have been diagnosed with anxiety but I am like 99% sure I have bipolar disorder. And like I know you can’t diagnose me so I’m not going to go into depth with my symptoms but ever since I was like, 11, I used to get very depressed to the point where I contemplated ending it but then i would snap out of it and I think for me my manic phase are hypomanic bc ive never experienced like the full range of those symptoms but my depressive phases get very rough esp if I have external stressors but it will go through what I assume to be these phases like sometimes within the day esp if I have a stressor.
I am in nursing school and I work at a psych hospital so like this isn’t coming out of nowhere, I am very familiar with all mental disorders and it was actually during my psych nursing class and learning about bipolar disorder that I was like… hm… why does this feel like a mirror right now. I am aware I should get to a therapist and get an actual diagnosis (if I had money I would lol) but like idk. Idk if it’s worth going to my doctor at my physical and being like “hey I think I have this” I am lucky enough now that I am in a good place and can manage my symptoms but I am terrified I will go through a stressor again and lose it so idk. I mean I feel like I already know the answer but I wanted to ask anyway to see your take :/
Anyway idk as a future medical professional I think self diagnosis got a bad rep and it’s like idk I think for mental disorders esp you can tell if you have anxiety and it’s a persistent problem. You can tell if you have depression. I know bipolar disorder is harder to diagnose but idk I think since I’m in the field it’s easier? Idk I felt like a sense of relief with learning about it and finding similarities and being like “well maybe that’s why I’m like that”. But idk now I’m feeling uneasy bc I don’t have a diagnosis and I don’t want to be like, stepping over people who were diagnosed. Thank you in advance if you read all this and yeah I’m sorry I know it’s a lot and this is controversial
ok this is a long post so im putting it under a cut but tldr, no i dont have a problem with it. it doesnt matter if you actually have an illness, it matters if you find a solution to your problem. if treating yourself like you have a certain condition makes it easier to go through life, then keep doing what works for you, you are doing nothing wrong. this all goes for physical and mental illnesses.
im a firm proponent of self diagnosis. i wouldnt be here if i didnt have the confidence to research mental illnesses and advocate for myself. as someone who is extremely familiar with the medical profession on account of being the daughter of a doctor and a nurse and spending my childhood running around a hospital, im extremely privileged to even have the knowledge and ability to do so, and i try to bear in mind the understandable hesitancy of people without this advantage. i know that you are well within your right to refuse medication that makes you sick, i know that you can complain about a doctor that isnt listening to you, i know that you are allowed and encouraged to be adamant about things you are told dont matter, and in addition to that, i have a VERY well known doctor and a nurse in my corner, and i am STILL treated as though i do not understand my own experiences enough to have any authority more often than i am not.
the reason self diagnosis gets a bad rep imo is because people have constructed this boogeyman of the worst case scenario, people collecting mental illnesses they dont have for attention as opposed to what it is, people doing research into their experiences and making theories on what they have so they can manage it. youll often see the take of "i dont hate self dxd i just hate people who do it for attention" and i think thats very irresponsible considering a symptom of many mental illnesses is thinking youre faking it and doing it for attention, nevermind the fact that attention seeking behaviour is literally a symptom of many mental illnesses people often dont want to empathize with. gatekeeping whos illness is real just keeps people who need help out. i could go into an anarchist screed about democratizing health, but basically, as someone whos life has been saved by my insistence on self diagnosis, and whos life has been made significantly easier by treating myself as though i have the conditions that i theorize i have, self diagnosis saves lives, and i, as an advocate for disabled people of all kinds on my island, will never put any conditionals on self diagnosis. it doesnt matter if you find the right name for your problem, it matters if you find a solution that works. i have yet to meet any of these fabled people who never try to receive a professional opinion, only people who literally cant.
as for feeling guilty, ill repeat how i opened this answer: it does not matter what exactly your problem is, it matters that you find a solution that works. in medicine generally, there will be a wide spectrum of problems with overlapping treatments, things which are similar but distinct, things which look identical but are completely different and at different levels of concern. it doesnt really matter which grab bag of bullshit your brain is reaching from, it matters that you know how to deal with what it throws at you, whatever that may be. dont worry about getting it right, worry about getting it working. okay?
for advice on how to deal with doctors, its helpful to pose it as a hypothetical as opposed to an absolute. when i bring up things im dealing with that i have a theory about i say "i think i have x" or "i think i might have x" or "i have a lot of symptoms of x". doctors are often egotistical and are easily challenged so it helps to pose it at a problem they can solve as opposed to one youve solved for them otherwise they get spooked. in my experience posing it this way leads them to actually interrogate this line of symptoms, and theyll ask you why you think that, and you can bring up symptoms that led you to that conclusion, and ones that give you trouble especially. for example, ive said "i think i may have autism or adhd? or both" to several doctors, and they either agree with me (i believe its been put in my file as a possibility now although i cant get an official test done due to financial and resource restrictions) or they ask why i think so, and i detail what i believe is due to my autism. its small, but this reframing helps a lot.
i think this covers all you said but my head is empty as hell.
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notsophun · 4 years
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10/14/2019: An effort
TW: Mental Health, Heavy Mentions of Suicide, Amnesia, Abuse
Today, maybe, I start with writing out these things that haunt my mind. At least some of them. I’m not really sure where I’m going to begin or where I will end, or what trauma’s I’m going to touch on while I go on this adventure of writing my mind onto pages in a blog/journal style.
I’m not really sure how long I’ll do it.
All I really know is that, what I’m 99% sure is, my depression seems to alleviate when I’m writing and reading. I’m only 99% sure because I don’t have a official diagnosis and just recently lost my insurance last Monday. I might touch on how eventually. Or I might just only make one post on this blog and then disappear into the void. I’m not sure.
Don’t worry, I won’t hurt myself more than casual starving. Blatant suicide has never really been my suit. The thought of it feels itchy and uncomfortable. I guess I’ve had too many bad run ins with it to make it feel like an escape or a possible friend (SPOILER: Suicide is not an escape, or a friend, or a comfortable place to be in.) Maybe further in this blog I’ll touch on that.
Right now I guess I’ll start at what I’m 100% sure of. I know I have severe ADHD. I was diagnosed as a child, and it was rare for my sex to be diagnosed with ADHD in those days. I sometimes joke, to myself, that it’s proof that I’m non-binary because I was able to get a male-centered diagnosis. Though, truthfully it just means my brains is wired wrong.
My parents weren’t real educated on what it meant to have a child with ADHD. I think my mom thought I would grow out of it and took an extreme hands off aproach. My dad probably thought if punished enough in various ways I would get my shit together. Neither really worked. I know I needed help that I didn’t get. So I grew up, distracted, unsure about life. Only thing I knew was that I was going to join the military and die before I turned 21. I didn’t realize back then that was a for of suicide. I just knew that my life would have value if I used it in that way.
So, when I was 18, I joined the USAF, like my grandfather. But ADHD followed me there. I was a piss poor excuse for a trainee. Unable to focus on anything other than the lessons. And I kept getting sick. I couldn’t run because of a sharp pain in my gut (later discovered to have endometriosis and ovarian cysts). I couldn’t get along with the other women in my flight. I also had severe gas due to the food we were eating and stress affecting my gut. 
I was the outcast...
There came a day where I was sick, like I often was, and my flight left to train without me. The previous night was a litany of how I was holding the flight back and how useless and stupid I was. Then I was left alone for what was at least 3 hours.
I looked through my manual, perhaps I thought I could study a little before the next written test or something. I cam across the mental health chapter, specifically how to identify if someone was suicidal. I remember realizing that I checked every single box. I was suicidal, but what would I even do? I couldn’t very well kill myself there. It really felt like that’s what the MTI wanted (he was a sadist and helped the rest of the flight blame me and a few other trainees for everything). Besides, all I had at my expense were dull scissors, trash bags and a toilet to do the deed. 
I couldn’t die like that. I realized then that I had wanted my death to mean something to me, and being the ‘See what did I tell you’ for some asshole wasn’t my idea of meaning something. At that point I decided that I wouldn’t off myself because death really didn’t mean anything, no matter how I did it. 
A few weeks after that, two days before graduation, on my Birthday, I caught viral meningitis and was hospitalized. I know I had gone into a coma at some point, but I honestly have no idea how long I was in the hospital. All I have from that moment of life is the memory of a few hallucinations and a scar from a poorly placed IV on my wrist. 
I lost a good chunk of my memory after that. I’ve been able to gather most of it back, but I’m pretty sure there are chunks that will be forever lost to the void. Some of them I’m sure it’s for the best. Others... well I still want to know what my favorite foods were as a child. What was that game I used to play endlessly and now can only remember a single image that makes no sense in words. What were my thoughts when my little brother was born?
My memory has suffered ever since. I can’t remember names, or some events after they happen. But these can be circumvented by writing thing down and being honest about the whole name thing. It’s a wonder how many people are truly understanding about forgetting names. 
Writing has made me feel a little bit more at ease. I’m going to try and get some house work done and work on a novel or something less non-fictional. 
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