Posted by ramsea on October 25, 2003, at 23:57:04
Your description of waking is right out of my own book of horrors. I have been misdiagnosed through my many years (now middle-aged) as "classically" depressed, or depressed agitated type, or atypical,etc, as well as Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Acute Psychotic episode, schizophrenic, schizo-affective, alcoholic (i.e., "You don't need psychiatry, you're wasting our time, all you need is the 12-step program and a kick up the back side, now get outta here"), depressed over and over, borderline personality disorder (ie. it's your personality that's defective, there's nothing we can do to help you"). Finally, even though a thorough series of tests and interviews were given me by a distinguished psychiatry/clinical psychologist team when I was aged 24, and even though I was told I was bipolar and should be on lithium for life---though I told this to all subsequent psychiatrists, they ignored this diagnosis. Their eyes would glaze over when I'd tell them this. Like, Yeah, yeah, yeah---bipolar my butt.
Doctors are often like dogs, I sometimes think, not because doctors are hairy and have tails, which of course they do, but because they often like to mark out their own territory. The thinking sorta goes---If that last doctor decided this about you, I shall think something else, because I am my own man...
To be fair, I did move around a lot and doctors haven't always had the documentation--though they have always had my word. And if anyone had ever wanted to question me closely and freshly I would gladly have agreed. They were not all that concerned. Or they wouldve asked if I expereinced the symptoms of mania/hypomania or had it in my family, which I do. If they had trusted me enough to listen to what I was saying there would have been much more insight, as I am honest and straight by nature. I believe some of these pdocs and GPs just couldn't tolerate listening to my reality and only wanted to go on what they could see there and then. That could be a useful technique a lot of the time, but not all of the time.
I do believe I was mistreated and misguided through many years, often humiliated, ridiculed, distrusted, told to go "heal myself" and "stop being a nusiance", and all those antidepressants without a mood stabilizer may have caused a great deal more harm then good.But at last I am back to being just plain old bipolar. I only want this label because it indicates the true course of my illness, which has been dangerously manic/hypomanic and seriously, disablingly depresssed--with some periods of wellness in between. My current psychiatric team tells me that agitated depression is often bipolar, Mixed type, and that is what they believe I have always had a tendency to suffer. I was so frightened to fall asleep so many times for fear of the waking horror. I'm happy to say that for me---lithium has made my wakings feel just normal and fine. The sharp, streaking panic is gone.
Oh yeah--I just read this week in a diary excerpt of the genius manic depressive writer Virginia Woolf---she suffered these terrible wakings too. I hope you figure your own situation out with a good pdoc. Maybe you aren't bipolar, but it is worth discovering exactly why they think you are ***not*** bipolar, when many agitated depressions are in bipolar spectrum.
poster:ramsea
thread:273502
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031025/msgs/273502.html