Just One Thing

Today, manyofus1980 from Therapy Bits posed an interesting question: if the world could understand just one thing about your mental health diagnosis, what would it be? In the post title, the question is about your “mental illness” rather than your “diagosis”. This is important to my answer, as my short answer is: my diagnosis does not dictate my experience.

I have had countless diagnoses over the years, some of which I agreed with and some of which I disputed. I don’t even know what my current diagnosis is according to my community treatment team. According to the university hospital where I got a second opinion last spring, it’s autism spectrum disorder, recurrent moderate depression and borderline personality disorder traits. Of this, I doubt the depression, because my default mood is low. Then again, I do seem to remember feeling much lower than low in the months that I had my assessment at this hospital. The thing is, I can’t usually connect my feelings from the past to the present if they’re very different.

We didn’t really go into my trauma experience, as my assessment was primarily focused on autism. However, the university hospital psychologist did recommend I get EMDR treatment for the negative experiences I had in the process of moving towards independence. I have not had a trauma-based diagnosis since 2013 and that’s fine by me. I don’t need a diagnosis to justify my experience.

I am who I am. We are who we are. We don’t fit in a diagnostic box, because, well, we’re we.

Sometimes, we feel upset that we don’t get recognition from our treatment team (as far as we know) for our traumatic and post-traumatic experiences. I had a lot of difficulty answering my psychiatrist’s questions about this during my intake interview. I mean, most of the trauma we endured, didn’t leave visible wounds. I know that dissociation can be caused by attachment issues, sometimes even too mild to create PTSD. However, there is still a common belief that only prolonged sexual or ritual abuse can create alter parts. I try not to care. We are we are we, so deal with it.

A Visit to My Former Psych Ward

So I went to visit my old psych unit today. The one I was a patient on from 2013 till last May. I never had a great relationship with the staff there. I mean, the psychologist there removed my autism diagnosis and I’d had great difficulty adjusting to this place back in the day. Lastly, the events that led up to my discharge were rather strange. I mean, a week before my original discharge date, no day activities or after care had been arranged yet. My discharge date was postponed a week to give me time to make these arrangements, but still, I didn’t feel supported.

I phoned the nursing staff yesterday to ask if it was okay for me to visit and was met with “I’m busy, call back later please”. That made some of us feel like we didn’t matter. However, when I called back later, it was confirmed that I was welcome to show up. So I did.

When I arrived, my favorite nurse had just come on shift. She asked how I was and whether I’d lost weight. Yes, I have. I am obese and have been on a weight loss journey for about three months, having dropped 7kg during this time. No-one before had said they’d notced, but then again a difference is easier to notice when you haven’t seen someone in a while. Later, when I dropped in to the day activities room, the staff there noticed too.

I chatted some to the nurse, until she had to go into handover. Then I went to the day activities room. My favorite day activity staff wasn’t there, but the other female staff was. She had at the end of my stay at this unit helped me write a list of activities that we liked to do. Sadly, in our upset during those last few weeks, Carol destroyed it. However, I am glad to say we do now do many activities of the sort I had put on the list, like walking, snoezelen, simple meal prep, etc.

The taxi to drive me back home arrived a little early. I had actually half expected that I’d be told upon arrival at the unit that none of my former fellow patients were interested in meeting me and that the staff were busy. As a result, I’d expected to be waiting outside for the taxi for at least half an hour, since i had planned to be visiting for about an hour. As it turned out, I was still talking to the activity staff when the taxi arrived.

I never expected this, but I tried to enlighten one of the most institutionalized patients on the unit that in fact there’s life after institutionalization. He obviousy wasn’t impressed. However, knowing how vulnerable and scared some of us are, I had difficulty believig there’s life after institutionalization myself.

I didn’t meet my former psychologist, as she’s on maternity leave. Not that I had any intention of meeting her. I’m just a little to self-righteous for that. I mean, I just don’t want to admit that my worst clinician ever kicked me into an actually meaningful life.

Katinka

Hello

Hi, this is my umpteenth blog. I’ve been blogging on WordPress since 2007 and have had more than a dozen blogs, most of which were short-lived. My main current English-language blog is still active four years on (it’s my second main blog), but not nearly as active as it used to be.

Maybe an introduction is in order. Maybe not. Most of those who will read this blog, will likely know me already. My name is Astrid and I am currently 31-years-old. I struggle with many mental health issues and live with multiple disabilities, including blindness and autism.

I chose this new blog name, even though I have many WordPress blogs that have very few or no posts so which I could restart. The reason is none of the other blog names reflect the fact that I may or may not be multiple and hence this blog may evolve into a cooperative blog but it may also evolve into a journal just for me.

For those who don’t know, a “multiple” is someone with multiple personalities or selves. Multiplicity is often referred to as dissociative identity disorder, though some people feel that they were born multiple. Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a trauma-based mental health condition. I did endure trauma and in fact used to have a diagnosis of DID. This was changed to borderline personality disorder though.

As far as I/we know, there are multiple identities sharing this body, but they can usually present themselves as Astrid. I also don’t have amnesia for events that happen when my “insiders” are out, which is is typical with DID.

I want this blog to be a place where I can be safe to explore myself/myselves and my inner world. I don’t care whether I require a psychiatric diagnosis of some kind or another. My experience is mine alone.