Letting Go of Diagnoses Improved My Mental Health
By: H. M. Johnson
Tags: Mental Health, Wellness, Mental Illness, Medication, Psychology

Letting Go of Diagnoses Improved My Mental Health

And it just might work for you, too.

2017 was a really bad year for me. I ringed in the New Year in a psychiatric facility, and though my time there was brief, it led to a circus that included a new psychiatrist and a whole bunch of new medication. Along with that circus came a bunch of diagnoses I hadn’t ever heard of before, which included:

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

Bipolar Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

For years, I was treated with Lithium, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, Lamictal, Abilify, Doxapine, Trazodone, Latuda, and others. At any given time, I was on four to six different antipsychotic, antidepressant, mood-stabilizing, and anxiety-reducing medications at once. For a few brief years, I was a shell of myself hiding behind the cocktail I was prescribed.

Sadly, I let this go on for so long because I was allowing my diagnoses to define me. Behind every thought, word, and action that comprised my being, there were my mental illnesses. In any given day, I had a panic attack (PTSD), I dissociated frequently (BPD, PTSD), had some kind of a tantrum due to my unstable sense of self (BPD), and had an intense mood swing that brought me back up on my feet and feeling like I was on top of the world (Bipolar Disorder).

After three and a half painstaking years, I found myself with a new psychiatrist whose prescriptions were minimally invasive and whose thoughts on my prior diagnoses were a bit different than that of what I was used to.

She firmly believed that my BPD would improve over time and assured me that my condition should be first treated by therapy as the main course of action — she assured me that medication should be a boost and not the go-to solution for my conditions. I found a great therapist due to her, and with my new lifestyle as a person who was no longer over-medicated, I began to slowly but surely thrive.

Even my new therapist barely mentioned the names of my disorders to me when we were combing through the tangled messes that my maladies often left me with. She didn’t think of me as a diseased or disabled person — she just thought of me as a person. Being treated so differently than I had been from the team of doctors linked to the hospital was utterly refreshing and revitalizing.

Now, after years of feeling like a zombie, I was clear again. I still relied on medication to help prevent me from tipping into psychosis and other problematic states, and especially relied on it to help me through my night terrors and other sleep problems, but now I wasn’t over-medicated. Slowly but surely, I began to see myself as more than my diagnoses and to feel a greater sense of command over my body now that I wasn’t numb from the consequences of being treated like a sickly person.

The search for mental wellness is not always easy. I know this firsthand. Now that I have a better team of mental health professionals around me, I feel a sense of support that goes beyond medication. I feel that I suffered for so many years for a good reason and that the suffering I felt at the beginning of my wellness journey was very important in being able to lead a happy life now.

Is my life perfect now that I’ve stopped over analyzing my diagnoses? No.

In fact, some of those very words — like BPD — saved my life. Without my Borderline diagnosis, I would have never discovered Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), perhaps the greatest tool I have for everything from emotional regulation to distress tolerance. Diagnoses are important and do not need to be overanalyzed to the point of becoming a limitation. They tell professionals how to get us the best help possible based on decades of research.

If you or someone you know is struggling with a diagnosis, you are not alone. There is a way of acknowledging an illness without allowing it to consume us. I believe that over time, finding wellness becomes easier and we must learn graciously from the trial and error that comes with medication, therapy, and other tools to live our best lives.