Acceptance of Diagnoses

Same here re: diagnostic change. I was PTSD and MDD, Atypical.
I am told those "Atypical" depressions most often end up in the BP-2 category now that there is a BP-2 category.

I fully acknowledge the BP-2 label fits my experience the closest and is correct.

Just the idea that this BP-2 diagnosis is going to eventually make it to my medical chart where all of my specialists will see it and will wonder. I see a private pdoc; yet, in disability reviews, etc, my primary care sees all of the info and additionally asks my pdoc to participate (and my pdoc has helped out a lot in these situations.)

I guess the Truth is the Truth; yet, how much of it must come to light?

and

WC

Growing up I had no clue about bipolar disorder. I got in a little trouble at school (high school). I was taken to a therapist. He said I was depressed and gave me Prozac. I did that for less than six months. Then I started having symptoms that I didn't understand when I was in my mid thirties. I was told I had PMDD age 35. The doc told me I could take a med or try natural ways to handle the symptoms. I opted for the natural. I started meditating, exercising and affirmations. I had a hysterectomy at age 36. Then all hell broke lose. My moods started to flop from depressed to mad person. I went back to my primary after a meltdown at my last job. I was "then" diagnosed with adjustment disorder and depression....put on a antidepressant. I flipped out with in fews weeks and went back because I had gotten worse. I was then diagnosed with bipolar one. I was in complete shock! I learned about the illness and agreed it fit what I had been going through. I had so many of the classic symptoms. I started therapy and went for two years. First I had to deal with accepting it. That took a year. Then the next was "why me ? and what did I do to deserve this? After another year I finally accepted that I will never know why and it was just time to learn how to manage the illness. I'm ok with being bipolar 1. I'm not happy about it but it is what it is. I just have so survive the illness. Some of my immediate family know. I've told some friends from college. At this point I could give a care less what society thinks. I should not have to go out my way to "hide" my diagnoses. I have a non-curable mental illness. Yes major depression is an illness that everyone feels "safe" with. I'm not about to go around lying to hide something I can not help.

Both but mostly it's BP I resent. I grew up in a very German household emotions were to be controlled and anger was vorbotten. Instead the BP was in control. With the right AP and lots of therapy I'm mostly in control but not always.

I was relieved to get the bipolar diagnosis. It was hard because I also have GAD and borderline personality disorder, and they seem to be in play a lot. Throw in some PTSD for the hell of it.

It wasn't until my pdoc put me on a mood stabilizer and AP that things started getting better. I still get labeled as borderline in the ER when it's actually bipolar. What a pain.

I have always been a hot and cold kind of gal. I did not know I was bipolar for quite a long time. After being in the military a couple years, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I was given an antidepressant and rode a crazy wave of full blown mania for a few years, but I didn't know that is what was going on. I just told my flight serge on I felt great, because I did! just the other day I realized my mania often manifests in hypersexuality. Total break through for me, today. That was 10 years ago. 7 years ago I was told I was on the bipolar spectrum with borderline traits. Then when I got out the VA labeled me bipolar 2, but I think I'm 1. I have an appointment with my np next week, been seeing her since 2013, it's time she tells me what she thinks. I completely accept it. I know I'm different than most people. I'm glad I am. While I've struggled, I have a great life. I've seen and done so many things. I have achieved, I function. I love my manias. The agitation, not so much, depression, awful. But I get through it.

I only have to read my blog or my psych medical records to see that I'm bipolar 1.

Thank you! I actually just heard I got another grant to study Arabic, so I'll be doing that for a full year. I'm so excited!

Wow! You have every right to be very excited!
I am excited for you, as well.


WC

Hey Wild Coyote,
My diagnosis is also BP II. I started to really have problems and asked a colleague who is a psychologist to recommend a pdoc for me. I went to him completely wired and, in turn, I was put on Thorazine. It totally killed my gag reflex and my mom noticed changes in me. Can you say Thorazine shuffle? So I did some research on my own and found the mental health clinics and doctors that my insurance would actually accept.

The first pdoc was expensive. The first pdoc diagnosed a mood disorder, but the second got more specific with BP II. I had suspected it. It surely explained some of my behavior which extended back to high school, the late night study sessions and the explosive energy I had the next day, the hives, bouts of crying, and the flameouts that were treated with “mental health days” in which I stayed home and slept practically all day. I was in remission (if that’s what they call it) in college, and then fell down the rabbit hole again when I graduated.

I was kind of relieved when I was diagnosed, but then I realized that the umbrella of stigma was now covering me. It was now my “dirty little secret”. I think that I have come to terms with the diagnosis, but sometimes I feel like it’s not real and I’m not real. I can’t say that I alone helped myself come to terms with it. My mom was there, but at times I don’t think she fully grasps the ins and outs of the illness.

I tend to keep the knowledge of the illness to myself, although I’ve had a student who was also bipolar ask if I was bipolar. I avoided the question. I have told very few people about my diagnosis. I just revealed it to my best friend. She was with me when I was undiagnosed in high school, and she has been supportive. I thought about informing one of my coworkers who is a friend as well as my supervisor, but I deemed it too dangerous career-wise. So the illness is a little like Kali, the muse of creative discovery who gives energy and life to things mundane and spiritual, and the crone that works to curse my existence with despair and sometimes leaves pestilence and destruction in her wake.

Thanks for sharing so much. I appreciate your reference to Kali. Made me smile.


WC

Right now my "official" diagnoses are bipolar I and PTSD. I go back and forth with acceptance on both. I feel like my trauma wasn't "bad enough" for PTSD and I have done a lot of healing over the years so I don't think it really fits anymore.
Right now I don't think I'm on the bipolar spectrum either. Like I feel like all my manias were just reactions to severe insomnia or something along those lines. If they had a solid test for bipolar like a blood test or a brain scan I don't think it would come back positive for me.
But on the other hand I've gone through a lot of **** that "normal" people don't go through... idk.

You have the right to be honest regardless of how that makes someone else feel. If you had cancer I bet people would try to understand your symptoms. People with cancer I'm sure do not go around saying they have asthma just to make society feel better and not think of death.
Personally I'm more comfortable with MI than cancer....just my opinion.

Oh I am being honest....my pdoc said bipolar with psychotic features or schizoaffective I just get the psychosis so rarely she's not sure if it occurs outside the "mood episodes".

That's good. We should never let society make us "feel" we should have to lie if MI came up....of course it's our option to tell certain people like co-workers and such. But if I'm talking to a friend and they ask me or MI comes up in convo. I'll tell them that "I have bipolar 1...it can be hard but I'm stable". I think it's good your honest with your pdoc. Diagnosing can be hard sometimes. I think it's good you go to your pdoc for help

Did you know that having trouble accepting the diagnosis is part of the disease? We deny how sick we are all the time. Especially when we are manic or hypomanic.

What helped me accept my diagnosis was two things. First, the understanding that my diagnosis wasn't a label, or a guarantee, or a certainty, but rather a hypothesis that provided a framework for treatment. Seeing how the symptoms responded to various treatments would potentially help confirm or deny that hypothesis. I could operate within those guides. But while I could accept treatment, I could not fully accept that I was bipolar (in spite of a very strong family history of Bipolar I) with just that though, no matter how smart and clever it sounded.

The second thing--and this is the thing that brought no-looking-back acceptance was getting really, really sick with a full-blown dysphoric mania. Sick enough to almost succeed at suicide. Sick enough to end up wearing the little black dress. You know...the one that snaps at the shoulders? The one with the padding? Yes, it was the perfect things to wear to the single room on the PICU--that lovely ward with 24 hour in-room surveillance and nothing but a bare mattress on the floor.

I woke up on day four of lithium therapy and a pretty woman--she turned out to be the ward psychiatrist--was sitting on the floor near me. "What happened?" I asked.

"Julie, you're bipolar," she said. Her eyes were bright, concerned, insistent. Since that moment, I have never looked back, except to see all the insane things I did in mania over the years, all the things that made me go, "Ohhhhh...that makes sense now."

If you really are type two, you may never have such extremes in your moods to convince you/ prove to you what you seek proof for. But maybe you will have the framework idea to hold onto. Maybe you will have the severity of your depression to help you accept. I think it's really hard to accept the diagnosis, whether you have what I call a "grand mal" mania or not.

Even though you "only" need a single episode of mania or hypo-mania--as "little" as a four-day period--to confirm the bipolar diagnosis, if you have "only" one, you will likely need a different type of treatment than if you did not have the type of depression associated with bipolar.

As far as "telling"? I don't think you need to tell anyone what your diagnosis is. It's nobody's business but yours. Right? There is also nothing wrong with choosing to be comfortable with what you are comfortable with right now, and not worrying about whether it is bipolar or atypical, severe depression. The main thing, at least in my head, is that you are compliant with the medications and therapies recommended for you, assuming they work, assuming that if they don't, you make changes only under medical supervision. You probably already know how important this to keeping you steady, and staying steady? What else matters in terms of your mental health?

Am I too laise-faire? I hope I'm actually addressing the question you posed. I think I may have wandered off the path a bit.

But, yes. I DO agree people are far "weirder" about hearing I have bipolar than they were when I told them I was "depressed. I think this is in part because they have no idea what "biplolar" actually means.

Thanks for sharing so much, Julie.

WC

It's always been tough with my family. I have chosen to do life differently, after watching generations of severe pain and fractured relationships from both active alcoholism and undiagnosed/untreated mental illness.

My family has been angry with my choices -- like staying sober, going to ACOA and Alanon, etc. Some family members are downright hostile. They've spent years trying to put me down and my mentioning a "bipolar" diagnosis would just make them feel justified. ugggh!

So I just need to stay on my own path and do the best I can do.


WC

I feel like I need to pick which pdoc's dx I choose to embrace, If any of them... But at my support group I always feel uncomfortable during the check in bc ppl expect you to say why u r there and what dx u have and no matter what I say- atypical depression, bipolar 2, neither feels exactly like the right fit.

Which makes me start feeling like the whole putting ppl in little boxes based on some checklists written in a fancy dr manual that has questionable science behind it is utter bull shiit anyway. We are just lumping symptoms together and giving them disease names,
As if there is some clear neat precise line that fully distinguishes one mental disorder from another.
I accept that I struggle with depression and mood swings. And I say fuuck it to accepting some word that then becomes a scarlet B I am supposed to wear around my neck for life.

So I suppose- no. I don't accept my dx. I survive it, whatever the hell u want to call it. But I don't accept it and I sure as hell won't concede into letting it limit me from doing the stuff I want to do, or make me start pathologizing any extreme emotion or mood that I may be experiencing.

however fuucked up it may be, this is my life and overmedicalizing it all into symptoms and illness and stability somehow just doesn't sit right with me. But I am taking meds and I see a T and do all the crap I can to try to stay well. And I think that is enough. Because for me acceptance feels a lot like defeat. Idk. I am feeling a bit fired up and wordy so I apologize for my soap boxing here. I am sort of rambling. For those who find comfort in having a dx label, you are probably much more at peace than I.
Anyhow take care all.