I thought to share about getting diagnosed, coming up to 2 years ago now. I had been receiving regular support from the local Community Mental Health Team since my Bipolar 1 diagnosis in 2016 & my support person just out of the blue said we have an appointment with the Psychiatrist for you, I was confused, these are really really hard to get on the NHS & I hadn’t asked for one, I assumed that they were going to confirm or change my original earlier diagnosis which I wasn’t really happy about that being interfered with at all, after it had taken so long to get it.
I generally suffer a pretty constant level of white noise with almost constant anxiety making it hard to think clearly & decision making frequently impossible & to be honest, pretty much everything is majorly stressful under those conditions.
I went to the appointment with my support person & immediately hit a wall of terror, absolutely helplessness like the floor had gone. It was a new psychiatrist who I’d never spoken to which was like handing yourself over to a stranger to decide if you live or die. Literally a visceral thumbs up or down Roman Emperor moment it felt like.
The physical tension from the stress in my neck shoulders & upper body was excruciating, I did not feel entirely in my body, I could barely follow what was being said but I was becoming increasingly paranoid that they wanted to take my Bipolar diagnosis away & replace it with BPD which I knew very little about.
I fought to keep my original diagnosis desperately, not fully able to follow what they were saying.
After the 40 min appointment I went home & put myself to bed, absolutely baffled by what had just happened, I felt like I’d been on a spin cycle in a washing machine for an entire weekend. I proceeded to have a headache for nearly a week during which I managed to write an extended complaint about the psychiatrist to my GP.
Gradually I came to understand that I had a very distorted perception of what had actually happened, the psychiatrist had been adding BPD & not removing Bipolar, I had been so intensely paranoid I had misunderstood the outcome completely.
I started to research BPD & rejected the possibility entirely for weeks. Over time, I read more & I found that 10% bipolar also have BPD & that it’s really hard to see the latter when the former is activated at either pole.
In all, I think it took me about 3 months to fully accept the additional diagnosis and from that point forwards it has been the most helpful thing that’s happened in decades of interpersonal trauma & general dysfunction caused by my unrecognised mental illness.
Validation. It’s been hugely validating to know that I was not making it up, or exaggerating for manipulative effect. That the terrifically bad choices I kept making where the result of a brain based reactivity that was intrinsically baffling & believable & also sought to make trouble I believe, as a kind of self harm because I couldn’t work out how to make this damn disassociated thing float, not in any helpful of useful life affirming way anyway.
The most painful of the Mental Illnesses, BPD, deserves much much more recognition & respect for the devastation it causes in full flow without recognition but also to the tragic 1 in 10 suicide rate that is associated with this difficult of difficult mental illnesses. 💕
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