How do you feel about living with a diagnosis?

All my life I was just busy excelling in school, getting my degree & excelling in my career along with being wife, mother & cleaning up after the financial messes my (now) EX-H made (good thing accounting was one of my majors). Along with that I was practicing my flute & playing in chamber groups. I had no time to think about mental health or mental anything.

Then I hit my early 40's & career fell apart, I didn't even realize how my bad marriage was effecting me.....but major depression hit. I thought it was JUST "burn out". But I kept getting worse, not better while on medical leave of absense from my career. Suicide attempts happened. I was diagnosed with major depression & major anxiety. It got so bad I ended up on permanent disability.

I never thought I was living with a diagnosis but I was so miserable I really didn't want to live at all with or without a diagnosis for 13 years.....NOTHING HELPED.

Top that off my mom died of cancer & the situation she created with having to have a home care person put me into a place that caused trauma to me & her but she wasn't cognative enough to even know what was happening.

I actually left my marriage after my mom died. Moved 2100 miles away to try & start life over. The amazing fact was that I did start my life over & realized in the process that most of what I went through was SITUATIONAL. I still struggled here & there with feelings of depression but I could get through it after giving it a few days to smooth out. Stayed on disability because at my age & with my massive migraines I was still dealing with it would have been hard to work a set job anyway.

Wonderful therapy helped me deal with & understand all I had actually experienced my whole life I had just ignored with my "busy" & all the things that had contributed to the diagnosed mess I had ended up being.

Life is now under control (no meds). My T helpes me deal with the tough things I still go through. The good thing about having experienced & been diagnosed is that NOW I am able to recognize when flares of depression hit.....this has been worse this year after losing my soulmate doggie (Leo) who had been a more wonderful & caring part of my life than my EX-H ever was. I can see & recognize the twinges of depression that keep hitting me. I do try hard to counter it & I do stay active with things I was doing before.....having been diagnosed & actually having gotten basically well has actually helped me recognize when I do go through NORMAL phases of depression & anxiety when other situations come up that normally cause these symptoms.

I hide my diagnosis. If there were compassion out there for mental illness it would be different. I don't like it that my medical record has it recorded. I wince at the pharmacy when the psychotropic is mentioned because they must know or others in earshot may know.

Sorry to hear that Goforward. I hope you feel zero judgment about mental illness here on PC. We are each unique but also have plenty of empathy to share!

As for the pharmacy issue, there is a way around that. I saw that you are in the U.S. so they have to follow HIPPA rules. It's very serious for healthcare providers (at pharmacy or anywhere else) to violate HIPPA. I recommend putting a call through (probably more comfortable for you over the phone than in person) and asking the pharmacist or manager to remind staff not to call out med names. They can simply pick up your Rx bag/bottle and point to the drug name on the label when talking to you or write it down on a piece of paper. There's actually no need for them to say the drug name aloud.

One day I was waiting to be seen by a doctor at urgent care once and could hear the nurses talking about a patient in the waiting room who was HIV+. People get sloppy sometimes with the rules...they need to be reminded that they can't just be talking openly about patient's private health info.

Hope this helps! You have my compassion.