Help with Mental Illness
Hey I am Ashton and 19 years old. I was never truly diagnosed with a specific disorder by and psychologist or psychiatrist. I am aware of having severe depression and anxiety But over the years they have given many guesses but never tested me. Is there anyone out here that can help me find a general mental illness I can bring up to my psychologist about being tested for?
Here are my behaviors:
-short attention span
-going into dazes
-repetitive social and verbal behaviors
-insomnia
-frequent nightmares
-extreme moodswings
-agression/rage bursts
-flashbacks
-night terrors
-excessive flinching
-picking at skin
-dirtiness/lack of intelligence
-inability to stay focused on specific tasks
-severe panic attacks
-habitual lying
-etc.
The list just goes on. I've been told over 10 different disorders I could possibly have and it's becoming overwhelming. But it makes daily life extremely difficult to live normally. Please help me.
I would question why it is that you are looking for a diagnosis? I understand that it can help to validate your experience and help clinicans to formulate a treatment plan but psychiatry as a field is incredibly subjective and there is a considerable amount of overlap between different conditions in addition to the fact that many symptoms are found in people without mental ill health and it is the degree to which they disrupt your life that defines them as pathological. As a young adult it is also possible that your treatment providers do not want to put a label on what you are suffering from before they are sure, as at this age you likely to be undergoing many life changes and that can contribute to the distress you experience, I would also think that depending on their theoretical approach some therapist shy away from labelling or letting you know what it is you may have and prefer to treat you as an individual with specific symptoms, as every case is unique and we do not always need a box to tick.
That said I understand that educating yourself about a specific condition can help you to feel empowered and can allow you to teach others to understand more about your experiences and consequently relate to you more effectively, from reading your account I would think that prehaps you have a history of trauma and possibly PTSD (which I personally consider to be a psychiatric injury rather than a psychiatric illness), potentially some degree of pathological dissociation and maybe attention deficit disorder but I am simply unable to judge without knowing you personally, it may well be worth googling the dissociative experiences scale and filling it in for an indication of whether you may be finding this challenging, if you do indeed have a history of trauma I think that maybe it is better to consider this as a normal reaction to an abnormal situation, because considering yourself as mentally ill can often lead people to feel attached to a particular diagnosis to the extent that they identify with it and healing and moving away from symptoms is then harder. Best of Luck :)
* I apologise for the typos in my post and I hope it still makes sense.
@Miracle What you have explained does make sense. I have been theoretically diagnosed from having ADD, BPD, Manic Depression, OCD, and even Asperger's Syndrome. I'm sorry if I sounded urgent to discover what I "have". But as these symptoms are showing now, I think I very well might have PTSD, and ADD. But again, as you explained, every case is unique and only someone who has known and worked with me and studied my behavioral growth since childhood can identify exactly what I do have.
Just wanted to let you all know that I have moved this thread to the 'Get Support' forum, where it fits better. :)