The whole diagnosis thing really depends on who you see, doesn't it?.
Yes it does and I've seem several T over the past 50 years. Therapists also change their tune over the years.. You know the old saying, If you're trained to use a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. Therapy sometimes feels this as well --like I'm being attacked for thinking the way that I do. But then, this can be taken a step further --- as if, I'm being attacked for having had these experiences which they can't explain. This has created a huge conflict within my therapies. Every T had their own way of going around this conflict, though this isn't really helping me. They can hope that it will simply go away with time, yet it doesn't. I still have amnesia, some was recovered in 1988. I can recall the exact moment which hit me like a ton of bricks, repeatedly sending cold chills down my spine! I told my T about this experience a few weeks later and he advised me never to talk about it, again. So, I didn't talk about for another ten years. But during my next session with this T, he suggested that I see another T for suspected sexual abuse. This was my 10th year of treatment with him and only during my 10th year did he suspect past sexual abuse. Interesting. So most of my T have suspected I'm a victim of past sexual abuse. Only my mid 2019 T (phd) said, she couldn't find my trauma source. Here again, I was in conflict with this T as well, She tried to continuely counter everything I was saying about my past experiences. I felt very offended that she would think I'd accept her illogical alternate explainations as being true.
I have had all of these symptoms to varying extremes for years and wasn't asked about trauma other than on one intake form and I sure wasn't going to trust someone I had never met with it, hell I dont think I saw things as trauma but rather that I was just messed up and pretty faulty.
My symptoms have changed greatly over the years yet my intimacy difficulites didn't change much. I had only minimized my anxieties enough to go though the motions while the feeling were absent. As for my supposed 'imaginary experiences or strange hallucinations' I still experience them though rarely. As for my brief panic attacks or flashbacks at my kitchen sink, I still get them, even after all of these years. I can recall trying to explain this frightening visualization to my first T, during my mid 20s. He told me that this was my imagination and that, I should learn to tolerate it. I doubt that it's possible to learn to tolerate an intense fear response. I might only be able to learn to divert my attention.
I think the dissociation stuff attached to PTSD is just beginning to be truly understood but I am learning as much as I can.
The amygdala apparently gets stuck and so the trauma doesn't get processed ...sometime like that. The brain's wiring might reveal it within a brain scan. I've had many MRI since 2013 due to my brain tumors.
I had one therapist I saw very briefly tell me he thought I had DID full blown because of the memory problems, derealization and other cognitive type things to the point where I would fly out of my head without warning. I knew i didn't have multiple separates and left him after he once asked " Who am I speaking with now?," even i was mid sentence though I am grateful because I thought I had dementia and that people were lying when they said we talked about something I couldn't remember and wouldn't have even considered dissociative symptoms which finally led to PTSD dx.
Wow, your T said, 'Who am I speaking with now? Well, you stated that you only saw this T briefly ...figures ...they make snap assumptions sometimes and shouldn't. My T never have suspected DID. My behavior, mood and way of thinking are too consistent for DID. I do have amnesia though but only resulting from my strange experiences where I can't recall all of the experience. I told my PCP about this and she thinking I was hallucinating. Yet I was out in my backyard at that time doing my routine chore. I was wide awake before I began to dissociate. And I'm certain that I was dissociating and I still can't recall all of it. But I've never lost days as a result of it -- possibly a hour or so. I've never found myself to be in an different location either. Facing ior turned n a different direction, yes.
Schizoaffective disorder depressive type has been added before by psychologist but finally, finally I think I am being seen. I used to tell people that what we call it isn't as important as treating it correctly but I no longer feel that way at all. I avoided therapy for a long time and took the medical route believing I needed whatever it was to stay hidden from the community I worked in and had the insight to deal. Talk about the depths of stigma, right? I used to see soldiers after I worked for the mil who would pay out of pocket so it wouldn't affect their jobs. I got it then and I get it now. As a civilian in the field I was totally rejected and bullied after the hospitalization by people associated with my practice and even dismissed from a schizophrenia board I had worked with for years under the excuse that I missed meetings when i was in the hospital.
I was surprised to seesSchizophrenia in my medical records a few years ago when I first began reading my records online. I think my third T might have given me this diagnosis, in 2001. I only saw him one time and he wanted me to take anti-pyschotic drugs. I first told him about my CSA, as he was reorganized his desk. So, I suspect he wasn't believing me. Then he abruptly interrupted me to say, "Now tell me what really happened to you!" So, I then began to tell him about my strange experiences. Then, he interrupted me again, to say that, I was funknowning abricating these experience to cover what really happened to me. He was so very disturbed by what I'd been saying. He said, that If I take the anti-pyschotic drugs this will all go away. For him maybe! But the seems to be a stigma against schizophrenia, even if, only by those who read my medical records. Why should they believe anything I say. I do think that some of my doctors believe me though none of my past therapists do.
I just noticed how I completed ignored mentioning anything related to the sex stuff. I guess that's telling. Do you feel that that issue has been cured? Having reread your post
The psychiatrist I've had since 2014 has basically left the inpt dx which never felt right.
Because I've been such a loner throughout my life, I can't easily relate to others sexual experiences. The more important areas addressed in my herapy were about trust, my awareness of and acceptance of my sexual feelings and with overcoming my feelings of shame. I suspect my father had projected his own guilt feelings onto me and that because I was so young I just accepted his perception of me as being true. In his eyes I was the faulty one who should feel ashamed of myself for accepting my father's behavior.
