Diagnosis and what it means to me.

I have decided, for reasons best known to my 'better self' to begin documenting my new journey on the well-trodden path of the Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis.

It is highly likely that before long, this blog will be filled with self-obsessed, irrelevant rantings as I'm so often apt to do when setting hands to keyboard. I discovered my Live Journal err, journal the other day - one I used regularly when I was 17, and continued to blog throughout my university days.

It does not make for pleasant reading. On the one hand, it's full of your run-of-the-mill teenage angst, and on the other, it's rather disturbing. Looking back, it was obvious then I had borderline personality even then. Any casual observer (should they happen to drop by) can see that my dramatic and frequent changes in mood, life outlook and for want of a better word, impulsivity, indicate the presence of a Borderline Disorder.

How I wish I had known then what I know now. I researched every mental health disorder I could think of (or so I thought), I self-diagnosed, self-tested, analysed, observed. I had Schizophrenia, Bipolar, Munchausen's, OCD. But not once did I, nor any other professional for that matter, give me the diagnosis I craved.

It's taken me twelve years of obvious symptoms to reach this diagnosis. Not one of my therapists spotted it before. Or if they did, they hid it very well.

I suppose the time it took to diagnose is irrelevant, given that now I 'have' it and I am shortly to undergo some kind of therapy. Maybe it was down to the simple fact that mental health professionals simply could not see me outside of my disability. I can't help thinking that should someone - able-bodied - present to a psychiatrist with exactly the same symptoms, feelings and experiences that I had, a diagnosis would be immediate. Yet, because I was put under the 'further complications' category it was almost like they could not see the symptoms that were right in front of them.

Maybe there is something in that. You cannot, afterall, isolate a person's mental health from their life experiences. But to belittle or write off any prevailing symptoms as a result is surely missing the mark. Yes, I probably did develop BPD as a result of my disability, and therefore the experiences that went with it, but that's not to say that because I am disabled, I cannot, therefore have a mental health problem too, or logically, as a direct result.

Sometimes, when talking to therapists about my feelings, the response would sometimes be 'ah but that is quite normal. You are bound to feel X, Y, or Z because long-term hospitalisation does that to people. It's psychological.' And thus they failed to see their own logic. I could not possibly have X or Y a disorder, because, given the situation, anyone would have reacted in the way I did. It was 'understandable'. Well, isn't that the point?

So here I am, at Stage 1. I don't even know if anyone will be reading this as I progress along my treatment journey. Not that I'm so arrogant as to assume my blog would be of interest to anyone else, so maybe I'm journeying alone. But isn't that the same for everyone?

Note to self: Your first entry is utter rubbish. It's unstructured, badly written and reads like a self-obsessed err, narcissist. Do better next time.