Experience with psychaitrist and diagnosis
I feel like my whole life people have never understood me, or put me in certain «boxes» to try to explain how I am to people.
In kindergarten I struggled to say «thank you» to the teachers after having lunch.
I basically couldn’t get the words out and I can remember the events so clearly, like what was going on inside my head. It’s hard to describe it in words, but it’s like I was so scared and froze, and how it all felt unreal in a sense, like a dream.
I had to say it, or else I couldn’t leave the table to go play with the others, who had no problem saying it, like it was just simple words to them.
So I sat there for many minutes, and I have no idea how many times this happened, but in my head I was like «just say it, why can’t I just say it», and sometimes I could force it out, but it never felt good, and other times I just sat there the whole time so they let me go anyways. After this, saying things like «thank you» or congratulating someone on their birthday, has become a stressor, so it always is something that doesn’t really come from the heart, but more like a thing I need to say to be a «good person».
The teachers never told my parents about this until I was done in kindergarten, and then they took me to a psychiatrist, and they thought I had selective mutism, and they had this person observe me at school, but I don’t know what really happened with that diagnosis, because I don’t remember any of it, but I think maybe I was feeling better when I started school, so they just let it go, I’m not sure. But the social anxiety, which is what I call it, just continued, but it did get better at times, and sometimes I even felt no anxiety reading aloud.
Fastforward to middle school and highschool it just got worse and worse for many reasons that would be too much to explain. But keywords are homelife and school peers. And I became really depressed and couldn’t continue school, which my mom got so angry at me for.
This time was the beginning of what I’m struggling with most now, which was a diagnosis that completely destroyed me, warped my self image, and exacerbated my anxiety so much. I got diagnosed with autism or «aspergers» that they called it. Which I never agreed with at all, and the whole situation was so bad. They had basically decided to start the evaluation and testing before even seeing my face, just based on my mothers explanations, because, well, my anxiety was so bad at this time so I didn’t want to see anyone. All I ever wanted was help with my anxiety and depression, instead I got so much worse. I got put in this box I tried so hard to fit into and understand, this is when the spiraling and research started. I just never felt it fit at all, it just made me feel so misunderstood and when I told them that they just said «anxiety and autism can co-exist, and here’s this informative presentation about autism you can go to.
Then everything went even further downhill, my mother told everyone about the diagnosis and I never really got to say how I felt, at this time I was also trying to make it fit and be okay with it, but this made my anxiety worse because now I felt everyone saw me as this person I was not and just making assumptions, and they were also treating me differently when I went back to school (which I also never truly wanted, long story). Thinking I was this and that, and needed this and that. Just so detrimental to me, and it made me overthink everything.
So I went to a new psychiatrist to get the diagnosis removed, and for help with my mental health that was getting worse and worse. Not only did the diagnosis do all the things I mentioned, but it also sort of closed the doors to the help I truly needed, because autism isn’t a mental disorder so they don’t treat it, it was more of a education about it and talking about yourself. It was just bad. But here’s the thing, this psychiatrist seemed nice at first and like she saw me, but long story short she was not and made me feel awful, like so awful.
This is the event that my brain keeps thinking about so much, just sitting in that chair, her telling me how bad my life is and how I need to go to school and how my mom needs to be stricter with me. Even calling my mom behind my back telling her to be strict with me, and bringing her in and them siding with each other. Bunch of other stuff too. And I cried after the sessions, because of how I was treated and also how my mom treated me afterwards. This went on for about a year and it was all to get the diagnosis removed, which turns out, it was the previous doctors who made the autism diagnosis who had the last say, which I was not informed of until towards the end. Apparently that’s how it just works in some systems, but that’s so stupid if you ask me, she should have been able to make an independent one.
So this made me deteriorate even further, and I was basically thrown back out, with no real treatment, only some medications throughout this awful experience, which only made me worse. So now I’m really struggling and I don’t really feel like I believe therapy can help me anymore, which I never even tried, but I’ve just been researching a lot, learning about myself and I thought for a while I had learned so much about myself that I would never go back into that depression, but I was wrong, it’s just as bad when it hits.
My head has just been going on repeat these past few months about my whole life basically, but especially about the diagnosis thing and psyciatrist experience. I just keep crying and feeling like I can never get over it. I keep having nightmares and just waking up stressed, and there’s not a single moment of silence in my head, and I keep making scenarios where I need to protect myself and make sure I’m not misunderstood again. This is especially hard because if I were to ever «get help» again I would be so vulnerable and even thinking about it makes me stressed, so I feel like that’s not really an option.
I also keep getting triggered whenever someone talks about autism or anything that even makes me think about it at all, and even going in this subreddit triggers it a bit. I haven’t talked to anyone about this, except my mom, who sometimes will support me and other times it ends up in a really bad argument, so I feel like I can’t risk it, because that would make it a million times worse.
I feel like many people don’t really understand how hard it can be misdiagnosed with autism, because people always say it’s the other way around, which makes me feel so alone. If anyone has experienced anything even remotely similar, just hearing that, matters a lot to me.