frustrated over seeing different psychiatrists

I'm really confused recently. I've just seen yet another psychiatrist, the 4th one in just over a year. Not through choice, but circumstance, as they keep getting locums in.

Each time I see a new one, a new diagnosis gets mentioned and it's been making me really anxious. The latest one said that he thinks I have some 'unhelpful personality traits' in addition to bipolar. BPD, OCD, OCPD and even Aspergers have been mentioned, but he can't say for sure whether I have BPD? I would have thought that it would be pretty easy to work out even if he has only read through my notes and spoken to my CPN.

He wants to get me properly assessed by someone to see what they think. This worries me to be honest.

I'm just wondering whether anyone here with BPD has been through similar? I'm in the UK if that helps.

I think it depends on their expertise and a lot of the symptoms overlap. My daughter was diagnosed by a psychologist with Aspergers at age 13 and I was so relieved and happy for her to finally get a diagnosis because we all knew that she was very different from everyone else. Then last year, she met with a new psychiatrist who said that my daughter was too self aware to have Aspergers and that she thought it was ADHD. That didn't seem to explain the self-harming and extreme emotions, so I looked up my own psychiatric diagnosis and found out that at 17, my diagnosis was BPD. (no one ever told me) We told her new psychiatrist and that day my daughter was diagnosed with BPD too.

The BPD definitely makes perfect sense because of my history and her father has been diagnosed with bipolar and BPD with sociopathic tendencies. It turns out his own father was diagnosed with Aspergers.

The problem is there are no blood tests for personality and developmental disorders. I still feel that my daughter has some traits of Aspergers because when I read about girls/women with it, it made so much sense in how she couldn't understand sarcasm for years, how she still takes things very literally, how she usually doesn't have a lot of eye contact and so many other traits I read about.

So let him do a more indepth test - it cannot hurt to have more knowledge and will help you for treatment.

Aspergers is a funny one. I knew a man who was diagnosed in his late 30s. He was my friend's brother. We all knew he was different. 'odd' and could say some pretty outrageous and offensive things to people.

He was also very intelligent. I don't believe that he didn't know that he was offending people, he just didn't care. He told me as much anyway. He was also quite extroverted and sociable. I guess the diagnosis of Aspergers helped explain what was going on with him. He was definitely different to everyone else!

Having read about Aspergers in women, a lot of it does fit, but then it could just be personality traits.

I think if you read a lot about Aspergers, BPD, etc. and it fits for you, then you find strategies from these books to help you live your life better. You know they say usually guys get diagnosed with Aspergers and girls get diagnosed with BPD. I remember being so relieved when my daughter was diagnosed Aspergers because I was worried about a BPD diagnosis - I felt it would mean that I had failed her as a mother.

Now that I realize how much BPD runs in both sides of the family, I feel relief in knowing that it was likely biological.

Thanks Triplemoon.

The annoying thing is that ever since BPD was first bought up I keep geting asked about self harm. I haven't done that apart from when I was 13. There was a spate of it going around the school and it became kind of cool, if you know what I mean? I only did it twice and then decided that it wasn't a good idea. It all started because there was this goth chick a couple of years above us who did it and we looked up to her.

I do want to know what's wrong. Debilitating anxiety is my main issue and it's stopping me from doing a lot of things.