I know I’ve told this story before but it’s particularly salient for me lately. I need to process a little so please bear with me.
(Let’s remember that during my first year of college, by October, I was so deeply depressed that I wanted to die and had to seek help at the Student Infirmary. I had told my parents over Thanksgiving break that I was suicidal and they said, “Let us know how it goes” when I said I had an appointment at the infirmary for my first appointment after the break. WE HAD INSURANCE. I will never understand the lack of help or support I received. Also, sidenote: they never told me at the student infirmary that I had bipolar disorder – they just slapped some depakote on top of my SSRI when I predictably switched from depression to hypomania a couple of weeks into taking the SSRI.)
When I was in between my 2nd and 3rd years of college at Stony Brook, I got kicked out for basically failing a ton of shit.
I told my parents that I was having trouble focusing and getting things done (but not that I was discharged from the university). My mom took me to a child psychologist that she had taken my brother to many years before, and who I think was also treating her. Yes, this is inappropriate on a number of levels.
Anyway.
This child psychologist I saw did some kind of evaluation on me for my inattentiveness and consistently fluctuating moods, and said that, given my history, I either had ADHD or maybe Borderline Personality Disorder, but no one wants BPD so he was going to diagnose me with ADHD. AND, he said, I definitely did NOT have bipolar, according to him.
Look. I do have ADHD. But I also do have significant “traits” of Borderline, which, forensically as I piece it together and learn more, I probably have/had BPD, TOO. And treating the ADHD with ritalin lead to the most hypomanic, hyperfocused semester of my LIFE. I decided to go off the meds at the end of that semester.
I hate to play the regrets game, but I’m starting to think about what might have gone differently if my Cluster B pathology had been addressed at a much younger age, because there’s still bits and chunks of it leftover from all the other work I’ve done on myself (even now, at age 42) and I can’t for the life of me (haha!) figure out how to tease things aparts into buckets, or if it’s just a matter of treating the acute symptoms and hoping for the best in the future.
I’m not TRYING to collect all the DSM diagnoses like they’re Pokemon (gotta catch ’em all!) but it seems to be going that direction.