Being Correctly Diagnosed
From age 14 to present (I’m 53), I have been diagnosed as bipolar. However, a psychotic episode at age 17 that put me in a mental hospital for 3 months, diagnosed me as schizophrenic. My second psychotic episode at age 33 revealed a bipolar diagnosis and from that age I began medication treatment. For 20 years I have been given mood stabilizers and anti-depressants.
A month ago I started a new doctor and asked for anxiety medication, which I had asked all my doctors over the years. I told her my daughter tells me I have paranoid thinking. She asked about hearing voices. I said no (a lie). I was seeing a new therapist, too. At the second visit, my doctor gave me an anti-psychotic. It worked immediately to reduce my paranoid thinking. With increasing doses it lowered the volume of the murmur of voices I would sometimes hear. I had been hearing them since my teens. I have depressions frequently and am a rapid cycler bipolar, moods changing days apart. i conquered my depressions by self-taught cognitive behavioral skills. I cope by imagining a “double” mind. My ill brain, and a second healthy brain that speaks back in an adult, compassionate way. Unless you do this, cognitive behavior doesn’t work for depressed brains. They just won’t go there.
I was told that some doctors don’t want to tell their patients they are schizoaffective because their afraid of panic, anxiety, etc. They probably still treat it, though mine wasn’t. One medication caused brain seizures and I had to stop it. But, the anti-psychotic I’m on now has stopped my paranoid thinking completely and some of the voices. My doctor told me with all the medicine I take at night, other people would sleep 24 hours. I sleep 6. I don’t care what is wrong with my brain as long as the medicines are correct. What surprises me most in the stigma that still exists out there. I even have it from my grown daughter. I thought advocates would have gotten rid of the stigma by now. I insisted on telling people my illness out of honesty and fearlessness, but they react like a knee jerk. So, I guess I’ll keep it to myself now so people will think I am weird for no reason like everybody else.
