Unsatisfied with my diagnoses

Hello, many of you will know me as Corgis or Smiggles. I'm assembling this post in hope that someone else in the BPD community can relate to my current situation, I'm seeking insight and understanding as I'm walking a tightrope just trying to put my thoughts and feelings into words.

Well, I suppose the title is self explanatory: I'm unhappy with my diagnoses. I was diagnosed with Dysthymic disorder somewhere between 2012 and 2013 and later on received my second diagnosis of BPD in late 2015. Following the initial diagnosis, I came to harbour a resolute conviction that Dysthymia wasn't a lone diagnosis and that another (bigger) disorder was to blame for my supplementary symptoms that my existing diagnosis would not stand as an agency for. When I discovered BPD, I felt whole again and any doubts came to dispel. Come December '15 and I'm diagnosed with BPD, this was one of the happiest and most reassuring moments I've come to experience in my short 17 years. I convinced myself that I was now able to meet the road to recovery and that I would finally better myself, but the doubt has only come to surface once again.

I'm happy with my BPD diagnosis, I can relate to every aspect of it, that's not where the problem deposits; I'm back to questioning subsidiary diagnoses. Munchausen? definitely not. My friends have questioned whether I have PTSD from a past (abusive) relationship, others ADHD, and other personality disorders have come to be conversation material.

I'm not even sure as to why I'm posting this here, but I'm desperate to know whether anyone else has experienced this. It has never made sense to me, my sister is a victim of rape and witnessed my mother's domestic abuse at a very young age, so why doesn't she have these problems? why me? someone that has never experienced severe abuse or trauma? I've never experienced anything extremely traumatic, my father left me before I was born and I've struggled to accept new people into my life following his actions, but otherwise it doesn't make sense to me. It feels as though my problems will never end, once one starts to improve, another comes to surface.

I feel like a burden, nobody is willing to hear me out and my mind feels like it's decaying.

Honestly feels as though I'm drowning in my own misery, I'm exhausted and want out.

Sorry, but can you explain where you're coming from regarding your diagnoses? I just had my birthday and I'm another year older and more senile! You might have to spell it out for me.

I have a theory as to why some people are triggered into mental illness.

I think some people have the temperament and genetics to be a potential time bomb in terms of mental health. The tendency is there and all it takes is for the right event or a series of events to ignite it. It doesn't even have to be traumatic in a bad way. It could even be something that's positive like a house move and having a baby.

My dad has bipolar (and I suspect a PD, most probably a weird mix of BPD and OCPD). My brother is fine and I get the 'crazy' genes. We didn't go through anything as traumatic as you and your sister. Yet, in my case you have siblings with a parent who has a severe mental illness. One escapes unscathed and the other seems to inherit the illness and ends up virtually the same as their parent.

As for what triggered it. Me and my mates all tried drugs when we were younger. A majority experimented with no harm done. A handful got triggered into psychosis and a couple were even diagnosed with schizophrenia. I ended up triggering bipolar disorder. Would we have ever ended up ill if we hadn't tried drugs? It's impossible to say, but I think the temperament and genetics were already there.

Maybe your sister just has a different temperament and carries some other genes to you?

Sorry for the waffle. I'm old now.

Happy (belated?) birthday! I'm just not satisfied with where my diagnoses stand. I always feel as though there's more to it and that I'm yet to uncover additional diagnoses, I'll find the source of one problem and everything makes sense, but there's always something that cannot be explained.

Also, thanks for the input. Me and my siblings (but my two younger ones) have different fathers, so it could definitely be genetic, though I've always had the impression that it's environmental.

(I had a lot of difficulties with school, etc. growing up and had a lot of bad friends)

Thanks!

Sorry, I think I got the wrong end of the stick with the diagnoses bit.

A PD is a very broad diagnosis. It seems that once they diagnose BPD they can squeeze all of your symptoms into it. Maybe this makes their paperwork and care plans easier?

I don't think there will be a diagnosis that will offer a Eureka moment.

What do you think you might have? Do you think your psychiatrist would listen to your concerns?

PS. I think that there is often a mix of environmental, psychosocial and genetic factors that end up in someone becoming mentally ill.

PTSD and another PD, perhaps? I'm not too sure, though I've been told not to look for a diagnosis, that will eventually come when the time is right. And yeah, I agree 100%.

Well, it's easy for people to say that you shouldn't look for a diagnosis, but it's natural for people to want to know more about psychiatry and psychology once they discover they have a 'disorder'. I'm not saying that you should Google away, but who can blame you for being curious?

I've read that PSTD is really common with BPD. Do you think you could bring it up with your CPN or psychiatrist? They might even agree though and not formally diagnose it.

To my shame, I have a PD obsession (OCD) and asked my psychiatrist a lot of questions about PDs. I was worried that I had a load of symptoms and thought I could have a mix of a few. He doesn't seem to think that's common and says that most people just have one. However, he did point out that this is the field of psychiatry and a lot of it is based on opinion.

I'm due to see my CPN at the end of the month, I'll definitely consider mentioning it.

That reminds me, I also need to talk about my OCD.

Thanks again, CS.

No worries!

Is your CPN any good?

It might not be all about traumatic events and personality disorders are maybe about not being socialised properly, so that your development is stunted. Like if you spent a lot of your childhood not really fitting in and withdrawing into yourself.

I don't know what you consider to count as a traumatic event. I can laugh about things now that I took really seriously when I was a kid that were emotionally scarring.

Hiya - I second CloudShark and NoMBs on this, although have some additional theories about what causes "mental illness", not that it's a universal concept, although is often treated as one.

As genetic allocation is pretty random, it could just be that you're brain is geared a bit differently to hers. Often, people seem to go through life after events that many of us would be stunned at and wonder how they've managed to stay sane, others experience no such events but their amygdala or hippocampus functions in such a way that makes it harder for them to cope.

Also, things tend to turn into a vicious cycle e.g. genetic predisposition to react more to fear, more fear = more habitual negative thoughts = more habitual negative thoughts = more neural pathways in the brain of the unwanted kind = more fear... I'm simplifying a lot of course, but you get the idea.

What's CPN by the way? I'm still trying to learn the acronyms that regularly pop up on these boards! Also, happy birthday CloudShark