Personal Experience: The route to diagnosis, c-PTSD and anorexia nervosa edition
CW: eating disorders (anorexia), child abuse, substance abuse mention
//This might be under the jurisdiction of the trauma blog, but I’ll go ahead and submit. //
It is incredibly frustrating when you get misdiagnosed. The only thing more frustrating than months of ill-targeted therapy and medications that don’t help is having to go through the ordeal more than once. And that’s what happened to me.
My troubles started in late teens, I was having violent mood swings and just couldn’t predict how I’d feel in the next couple of hours. It was exhausting. Prior to that, I was a docile and withdrawn child and I went through continuous abuse and several traumatic events from the ages of 9-15. It was as if something inside my brain broke and the flood of emotions couldn’t be held back.
My first visit to the psychiatrist was uneventful. My official diagnosis was “hormones” and a desire to skip school. My mother agreed. Then came insomnia, obsession with my diet, nightmares, periods of depression, extreme distrust in everything and everyone combined with a pathological “clinginess” . Since I had no access to mental health resources, I self medicated with increasing amounts of illicit substances. Then it was apparent I had a problem.
The second psychiatrist was determined that I had rapid - cycling Bipolar disorder (I). Needless to say, the medications didn’t do anything except make my symptoms worse. I knew something was wrong, yet I had no way of helping myself constructively. I was already underweight, with a bmi of 16, but it wasn’t seen as a big deal because of shitty Eastern European culture.
Eventually, I completely discontinued all my medications, got financially independent, moved to the UK, while remaining equally miserable and adding a substance abuse problem to the mix.
In the UK I was able to get better help, to an extent. The diagnosis that I had stuck on my forehead for a long time was BPD and my eating disorder was finally addressed. I didn’t agree, but it didn’t really matter. The little amount of DBT that I received was, however, incredibly helpful. It might’ve saved my life.
After this whole incredibly boring story, the ultimate conclusion was that I didn’t have a personality disorder or a mood disorder. I had, and still do have a thing they call complex PTSD, and according to my understanding it is caused by prolonged trauma instead of a particular traumatizing event.
The diagnosis was huge for me because I could finally admit to myself that I was, in fact, abused and that instead of running from the memories and feelings I needed to deal with them constructively. My personality wasn’t flawed per se. There was still hope that I would become complete.
The moral of the story is - shit happens. Misdiagnoses happen. Especially when symptoms overlap or you don’t have a typical presentation. From what I’ve heard from other sufferers, c-PTSD is often mistaken for something else. It’s too common to be my unfortunate coincidence or a fundamental flaw of a post-communist medical system.
[Thank you for sharing your personal experiences! - Shrink]
