fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2080 ]

[ SECRET POST #2080 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2080 ⌋

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Um, so, I made a comment on the general thread a couple of weeks ago about being anxious about my ADHD evaluation. Thank you to those who replied and were nice btw!

I do have ADHD but she also diagnosed that I have aspergers. Well, that wasn't what I expected like at all. It makes more sense now for a lot of things and I'm getting help for everything, but wow I don't know how to feel about this at all.

Anyone else ever get a diagnosis that you weren't expecting? If so, how did you deal with it?

Edited 2012-09-13 00:41 (UTC)

I don't think my story is that helpful. I was diagnosed with GAD at a very young age. I ignored it because at first I didn't understand it and then later I didn't believe it. I still don't.

I'm pretty sure that's not what you want to do. At least, I wouldn't advise it.

I guess the only helpful thing I can say is that you're no different from who you were the day before. You're still you. You just understand certain parts of yourself better.

I hope everything works out for you.

I guess the only helpful thing I can say is that you're no different from who you were the day before. You're still you. You just understand certain parts of yourself better.

That is both deep, completely true and nicely worded. I agree.

I have no stories or advice (sorry!), but I wish you the best as well.

you're no different from who you were the day before. You're still you. You just understand certain parts of yourself better.

Definitely ^this. Was going to reply with something similar but beat me to it. :)

The way I view being diagnosed - it's just something to help you understand yourself and cope with life. It's not really important unless you want it to be important. Edit to add: And I don't mean that in a dismissive way, just that reiterating the above idea, that the important parts of who you are are already there and this doesn't have to change anything about you as a person.

I heard someone once say being diagnosed was like being directed to the correct section in the library to find your Life's Manuel.

Edited 2012-09-13 19:54 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm still getting used to the idea, but I am trying to keep in mind that I've always been like this and that having a name for it doesn't mean I'm going to become a totally different person or something. And it's a relief to know why I have some of the problems I couldn't understand before.

You're welcome.

Take all the time you need to become comfortable with it. To become comfortable again in your own skin. With yourself. There's no rush.

It seems to me you're doing well so far. You're asking for advice and you're gaining some comfort in the knowing. I think you can keep going.

On a similar note, I have a friend who has Asperger's syndrome. If you have any questions and you want me to, I can contact him and ask him for advice or tell him to come here. He's very nice. He may say no but I doubt it. He is very into giving back to the Autism spectrum community. If you don't want me to I won't say anything to him. It's up to you.

Thank you for the offer. This is still pretty new information for me and I still have therapy and counseling to go to, so I'm not really sure if I'm ready to talk to other people about this at this point. I appreciate your kindness none the less. :)

I completely understand. Good luck with your therapy and counseling. :)

getting diagnosed is always kind of weird. on one hand, it's kind of a relief if you've been suffering for a long time and you just now have a name to give to all your symptoms. on the other hand, a lot of the time you're sitting there thinking "so this is what the rest of my life's gonna be like, huh?"
dont be surprised if you start crashing a little bit. there's something depressingly final about getting an absolute diagnosis.

it's safe to say, though, that all my diagnoses were pretty expected. at least one of them was an "oh thank god it's not cancer" because the symptoms for the disease very closely mimic the symptoms for a certain kind of cancer (that i was convinced i had for a few months)

in the end though, it's a slow dealing-with process. for like almost a year after i was diagnosed, i couldnt stop talking about it. i'm sure my friends got absolutely sick to death hearing about it, but talking it out was how i coped. eventually you come to terms with what you have and you just start surviving.

getting diagnosed is always kind of weird. on one hand, it's kind of a relief if you've been suffering for a long time and you just now have a name to give to all your symptoms. on the other hand, a lot of the time you're sitting there thinking "so this is what the rest of my life's gonna be like, huh?"

So much, this! I spent almost five years in constant pain, some days to the point where I couldn't walk, in and out of ERs, seeing specialists, getting an MRI, x-rays etc, being asked by ER docs "Are you sure you didn't just pull a muscle?" which is ridiculous since, they ask you prior to that HOW LONG you've been experiencing these symptoms, and I'm pretty sure no pulled muscled lasts four years... ¬.¬

So when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, it was kind of like a mixture of, "Oh so I'm not crazy..." and "Ugh, I basically have a condition that my best case scenario will always be "managing symptoms" and nothing more."

ugh this was so much like my experience. there was such a long period of time where none of my symptoms had any kind of "proof" that i was actually sick and not just trying to shirk my responsibilities. i ended up dropping all my classes and spending my entire day lying on the couch, sleeping upwards of 18 hours and rarely eating. lost a lot of weight i can't afford to lose, and to top it all off, i had what i thought were chronic urinary tract infections (which i had never experienced prior to that year)
cue a long, looong drawn out process of doctors, tests, bloodwork, etc. no one seemed to particularily believe me. there was a huge back and forth between my GP and my psychiatrist. the former was convinced that all my symptoms were a result of my bipolar. my psychiatrist (who had known me for 8 years) thought that was bullshit.
long story short, i got diagnosed with two different diseases. the first one was easier- it just required omitting certain foods from my diet. inconvenient and painful, but not the end of the world. second one hit a lot harder. no cure, no clear treatment, just a whole lot of finger crossing and hoping for the best. that, and the very real possibility that i could end up on disability some time down the road. that was a huge demoralizer.

still, it's nice to have a name to put on things.

Ugh, there was nothing worse than being treated like an attention seeker, it was so frustrating! Yeah I ended up losing about... sixty pounds between being in so much pain that was either just sleeping or not eating, and then regulating pain meds where one of them literally made me nauseated from everything, including water, it was ridiculous.

My poor mom was freaking out, because at my lowest point before diagnosis, I actually slept for almost two days, and she was panicking because she couldn't get me to stay awake long enough to take my other meds, let alone get me to eat or drink anything. :/

The 'bonus' if you want to call it that to being diagnosed was that at least I could put it on my work's occupational health records, so I have modified duties and I don't have to work more than five consecutive days (prior to this we/I would sometimes work up to twelve days straight). This has helped a lot because it stopped putting so much stress on my body, allowing me to keep pain and fatigue mostly under control.

+1 On the tiny not knowing what to do with yourself when it's lifelong stuff.

"So when you say I'm going to need to be on these pills forever, how long exactly is that forever?"
"Do you feel good on them now?"
"Yeah"
"Did you feel good before?"
"I wanted to die before"
"You could feel like that again if you got off them."
"Forever sounds fantastic."

I'm glad you figured out what's wrong and that you're feeling a bit better :)

I researched successful people with my disorder, so that it didn't feel like such an unfixable problem.

. . .I am glad that worked for you because that did not work for me at all when I did it. Most famous bipolar people do not have very happy stories. Most of them end in them killing themselves, actually, or going insane permanently or else struggling for decades before they were able to have a stable life.

Hooray for mental illness :/

Mine's ADHD. :(

Sorry about yours. But if it's any consolation, the thing about bipolar and similar stuff is that when someone's life goes to shit, the disorder is the first thing people point out. It's not because they were unlucky, it's because they're bipolar! Which is bullshit, because yeah, sure, there's problems because they're bipolar, but there's also life, which doesn't run smooth for anyone. Everybody shoots themselves in the foot at some point (not literally). When someone is successful, no one points out that they were bipolar because no one sees it as important.

...basically I'm saying that no one talks about successful bipolar people because their disorder is treated as inconsequential or "not-that-bad" or undiagnosed (for people pre-1900-ish) because they DIDN'T crash and burn. Not because they don't exist.

And hugs, man. Lots of hugs.

Edited 2012-09-13 03:33 (UTC)

<3 Thanks for the hugs and support and reassurance. Feeling much better for the past few days, but recently my brain was just being an absolute shithead and it's hard to not worry that I'm going down the 'insane failure forever' route when it's acting up.

Oh, and you were the one checking up to see if the ocd was going ok too last week and that went into remission as well.

My brain's a little fucked up, basically ;)

Edited 2012-09-13 03:39 (UTC)

My brain gave me the attention span of a gnat, the distractability of a toddler, and the obsessiveness of a dog with a peanut butter jar. No matter how often I try to think of it as being who I am, I always have those insidious little thoughts where I wonder how awesome I'd be if I'd being born differently.

On the up side, I'm not dead, I enjoy my life most of the time, and every time life gets too hard to handle, I just remember that nothing lasts forever and no matter how badly I fuck up, I've still got tomorrow to fix it.

I hope that it gets better for you--actually I'm pretty sure it will. You know what's wrong now, you're aware of yourself in a way you weren't before, and you're developing coping mechanisms to handle life-with-bipolar and days-with-ocd. Life will get better.

Thanks :) Your similes/metaphors are so cute, and your outlook on life is great. I think you're pretty awesome the way you are now, but then I only know you via internets and I've never known you not ADHD-ful, so I guess I can't say how you would be different without it. Eventually working around it just becomes a part of you, really.

I've been medicated for almost two years now and I try to keep the same mindset. I really am very lucky for being born in the time period that I am so that I have access to proper medication and I have a great support system and I'm able to be in school and I've never been sectioned, but yeah you do get those 'what if I were normal' days where I wonder what it would be like to not have to worry about waking up in the morning with the world turned on its edge. Or, well, really also, just being annoyed at little things like that I can't have coffee anymore because it makes my anxiety too bad.

It really has gotten better though for now anyway. I just got triggered really hard because I moved into an apartment for the first time a month ago and then I started school and everything was different and hard and I broke a little for longer than I usually do, but I'm ok now. I hope your life goes well as well, and thanks for the moral support <3

(no subject)

mudousetsuna - 2012-09-13 19:44 (UTC) - Expand

My Aspergers diagnosis came as a surprise, too. In retrospect, the signs were always there, but it still startled me when my doc brought it up. I dealt with it by just going on like I always have, only now I worry more often about whether my thoughts and feelings are normal enough, and I sometimes wonder if my life would be any different if I didn't have it. I know that's kind of stupid, but it still bothers me sometimes.

That's pretty much how I feel now.

Bipolar. That hit me out of the blue. Technically the doctor just mentioned offhand something about cyclothymia and I researched the hell out of that and rapid cycling bipolar and it didn't take long to figure out that I had a fairly glaring case of that. Putting a name to it has been really helpful, because I can figure out now when I'm sick and do things to prevent it from getting worse, and I can tell people what is going on without them scratching their heads in as much confusion. Telling people that you're depressed is a lot more understandable than explaining your emotion as "I feel like I can't breathe or see anything other than black and the word gaping keeps coming to me as a descriptor and I feel like I'm in a numb vortex can you help me?"

I'm glad you finally got the answers you needed. My best wishes for your future.

Thank you. I'm trying to focus on my feelings of relief at knowing what's been putting a wrench in my life rather than anything negative.

I hope things stay well for you too.

I was recently told by my doctor that I probably have an ulcer? But I didn't go back to get it confirmed, although they gave me some stuff to treat it.

I guess I sort of ignored it?

My anxiety diagnosis was pretty left field for me at first. I never really felt mentally anxious, but looking back on it... maybe I have been since I was really young, and I just got used to it. I guess 6 years olds don't usually lay in bed and contemplate mortality. Plus all my paranoia seems related, I guess?

Either way I was expecting the worst because it was chest pain, and yeah, so talking about it to my doctor made me tear up, but that also seemed normal to me, because it's personal and scary. Plus, anxiety attacks sound so SERIOUS and I never felt like I had experienced something like that. It felt silly, to me, to put whatever was happening with me on the same level as people who really suffer. But maybe I did and didn't realize it? I mean, I can think about things now that would give me a cold sense of dread all over my body and make my breathing feel difficult... without it happening.

It's weird shit, isn't it?

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