Quote:
Originally Posted by The_little_didgee
Content warning: Some people may find my post offensive.
What I have always suspected has been confirmed.
I have been reading some of my medical records from 20 years ago to understand how I got misdiagnosed. It has been very helpful but painful at times. The list of diagnoses from DSM - III don't bother me at all, because they are wrong. What really bothers me is the inaccurate family and social history and what was withheld from me. There is also evidence of stereotyping based on ethnicity. They wrote I had an alcoholic father and came from a broken home filled with abuse. One notes states I was sexually assaulted. None of this is true. I cannot believe they would write this without verifying any of it. Perhaps I was mixed up with another patient, but I highly doubt it. I suspect this was done to support the PD diagnosis and to justify treating me like a disease that had to be extirpated.
I have realized my feelings, which they told me were wrong, were justified. My feelings were real, not wrong. They were the ones who were wrong. I was told, I was a terrible, evil person who had nothing to offer but chaos, and danger to any psychotherapist/psychiatrist who met me. I was assumed to be promiscuous, an alcoholic, eating disordered, and so on, all to fit the PD diagnosis. None of that was true. My adolescent issues were from bullying and ASD which wasn't diagnosed until years later.
Eventually I quit seeing psychiatrists and decided to recover on my own. As I read my records I couldn't help but think was my experience really necessary? Did they really have to diagnose me with a PD and then treat me like the plague? Why couldn't they question, observe and listen? I really need to get past this. Right now I'm livid and so is my family.
I should point out about 5 years after this horrible experience I developed psychosis. The clinicians treated me a lot different. Suddenly I was worthy of their help. Where the hell were they in the 1990s?
The point of my post:
Psychiatrists/psychotherapists are not gods. They can do great harm. The over emphasis of certain psychotherapy theories (blame parents, especially mothers) and alienating diagnoses makes me wonder. Be very careful with them, they can really try to break you.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_little_didgee
Thank you for all the replies.
I started this thread, because I know this has happened to others. I've read stories about parents losing their daughters to psychiatry. They certainly tried to distance me from my family, by telling me I was abused, because they didn't understand my "symptoms". I nearly fell for it, because I was so desperate to understand why I had social issues. It is hard to forgive myself for that and nourishing their suspicions. When I left in the very late 1990s, I vowed never to let that ever happen again.
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I’m late joining this discussion so let me just thank you for the original post. I had a different experience – I didn’t have anything but depression diagnosed for years when there was underlying trauma and personality disorder. So nothing serious was addressed and I trudged along as best I could until I fell apart. I don’t think therapists TRIED to break me but I do believe they contributed to my dysfunctionality in the last 20 years.
Also, once I finally got to therapists trained in trauma treatment, I had a realization in therapy of the extent of the trauma that was due to being terrified (and traumatized) during an operation when I was 3. So, yes, my family was dysfunctional in some ways and not perfect but the imperfect people who were my parents tried within the limits of their ability, which was limited due to their own experiences, etc., etc. Also, the nurse who held me down kicking and screaming in the operating room didn’t know any better at the time, much as I still have bad feelings about her (now deceased, no doubt). So LET ME GET OVER IT already – THAT’S what THERAPISTS are for, isn’t it?
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that when you’re distressed and depressed and anxious and dysfunctional, you are in a very poor position to try to realistically assess the risk and even danger that therapists and therapy may pose. We’re looking for HELP, for goodness sake. So, yes, I am really glad to see posts like yours that help to let people know about the kind of things that can happen but I’m still concerned that the profession can use, and has uses, that to offload their responsibility to vulnerable people.