I’ve been in therapy since I was 8 years old and was diagnosed with everything under the sun before I realized I was neurodivergent
I feel so angry. I feel cheated out of life because for years, I struggled without any real reason or support given. I was gaslit so hard about my struggles and genuinely believed that I was mentally ill when all along I was just a disabled woman who was given no accommodations or guidance to navigate a life with these challenges.
I’ve been in therapy since I was 8 due to the fact that I had a “traumatic experience” growing up (it wasn’t that traumatic) and was underperforming in school and relationships.
The common theme with the therapist/psychiatrists I would work with is that they would Hyperfocus on the mental health symptoms as the origin of the problem without ever looking at the full picture. I cried in my therapist office as a child because I told her I felt dumb because I couldn’t get good grades or socialize like other kids, she diagnosed me with PTSD and said my underperformance and friendlessness was due to the trauma. This would happen multiple times in my life.
I complained again as a teen that I had trouble focusing in class, that I constantly failed tests no matter how hard I studied, that my peers at school thought I was odd and was outcasted a lot . I told the psych that I was depressed and had low-self esteem because of it. I told my psych that I believed that I might have a learning disability and that I was hopeless for the future and stopped having academic and career goals and dreams because I knew I would never achieve it.The psychiatrist immediately diagnosed me with depression and anxiety and put me on Prozac and Seroquel. Her reasoning was that depression can make it hard to focus, even though the depression came after the bad experiences.
Fast forward to adulthood, I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth. I take classes at community college. I start working a part time job and was fired from it shortly after because I kept making too many mistakes, messing up orders, or forgetting things. this would repeat for multiple jobs before I stopped trying. I would try to get my drivers’ license and failed multiple times because the amount of multitasking I had to do was too much. I was failing at life, just like I suspected I would. I once again went to a different psychiatrist, explained my problems, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after being asked a ton of leading questions.
It wasn’t until the age of 28 when I finally met a provider who was willing to entertain a possible ADHD diagnosis that I finally felt validated in all the struggles I went through. The only reason I got taken seriously (The Psych still tried to prescribe antidepressants) was because of a therapist I had who advised me to completely stray away from talking about depression, anxiety, or low self esteem because she knew the clinician would ignore the ADHD symptoms and diagnose me with depression again. I know I likely have more (I suspect Autism and NVLD) but I’ll never know because my insurance doesn’t cover Neuropsychiatric assessments for adults.
I feel so angry and resentful over the fact that the problem was so obvious, yet every therapist and psychiatrist missed it. Whether it was on purpose or not, I’ll never truly know. All I know was that years of my life were wasted because I never got the help that I needed. I had to watch so many goals and ambitions die due to this disorder, and had to deal with so much blame and gaslighting from professionals for YEARS before I was taken seriously.
I’ll always mourn the life I didn’t get because of this.