Other Been avoiding getting a proper diagnosis haha

[blissfuldaydreams]

I'm pretty sure I have an undiagnosed mental illness but I don't know what it is and I am scared to face it.

Earlier this year I tried to overdose and was baker acted and put into the hospital. They put me on Cymbalta and a mix of other medication (can't remember the names but one of them were sleeping pills). The psychiatrist at the hospital never gave me an official diagnosis though???? Like he just put me on these medications but did not give me an actual diagnosis. I assumed it was just depression because I looked it up and thats mainly what Cymbalta is for. But I HATED taking Cymbalta. I don't know how to describe it but it honestly made me feel worse. It didn't make me depressed but the way it made me feel wasn't right. I was super impulsive, could not sleep, I got really angry and irritable, and my anxiety was through the roof and a bunch of other stuff. I was supposed to follow up with a psychiatrist after the hospital, but unfortunately that never happened, because my mom refused to take me (she does not want to believe that I have a mental illness) and I do not have the means to transport myself. So I continued with cymbalta until the prescription ran out and then I stopped taking it. Of course after I fell into a depressed state.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. Last year my primary care doctor put me on Prozac for depression and it had the exact same affect and I could not continue taking it because of the way it made me feel.

I low-key already suspected that I have another disorder or that it is very possible because of some of the symptoms I have had over the past two years that have just not been adding up. But I also have been telling myself that its probably just my PTSD.

Its been a few months since I have to talked to my therapist but I finally set up an appointment with her. I told her all this and she told me it is imperative that I set up an appointment with a psychiatrist. When I told her I never went it was kinda like a big red flag and she was like yeah honey you need to go and get diagnosed/the proper medication.

I low-key have been avoiding going because I am scared that I already know what diagnosis I am going to get and that scares me because it runs in the family and Ive seen it before. And I have seen how my mom and everyone else judges my family members for it and I don't want her to look at me like im insane or something because I know im not. Coming from Caribbean descent, mental illness is not recognized and is not talked about at all.

I know no one on here can diagnosis me obviously but I just wanted to express this somewhere without judgement. And also see if anyone had the same experience taking those medications and what came out of it?

I should probably get my a** to the psychiatrist ?

 

[blissfuldaydreams]

I also have been having trouble in regards to food and eating. I starve myself for days at a time but sometimes I just don't feel the need to eat or that the hunger I feel isn't really hunger and I just suppress it. And then also sometimes I will feel hungry and go to eat but the thought of food completely grosses me out and I feel like throwing up and have to stop halfway through my meal.

I didn't think this was problem up until recently when I saw a picture of myself on someone else's phone ://
I was honestly scared at how thin I was because when I look in the mirror I believe that I weigh too much and could still lose an extra few pounds. But in the picture you could see my ribs and hip bones.

I really hope I do not offend anyone who has been diagnosed with other disorders already. I just need somewhere to say this stuff. I have no friends and no understanding family. And I only just started sessions with my therapist today. I know you guys are not doctors, it just feels good to type this stuff out and hopefully learn that I am not the only one.

 

[MrMoonlight]

Getting an assessment by a psychiatrist to know what I was fighting was a really big turning point for me. He put me on Cymbalta though I'm having great success with the med. I think it can take 3 months to get the effect with most psyc meds. Its so frustrating going through that step...takiong a med for a couple of months only to find you need a different one. Personally I have been through many of them over the years. The help me especially when going through therapy or processing stuff...the meds really help.

Hope you find a good doctor...looks like you are heading in that direction anyway.

 

[joeylittle]

I am scared that I already know what diagnosis I am going to get and that scares me because it runs in the family and Ive seen it before.

What diagnosis is that?

 

[blissfuldaydreams]

What diagnosis is that?

Bipolar disorder. It has affected both my mother and father’s side of the family.

 

[Powder]

@bluedreamdaydream I agree with you that taking the proverbial "bull by the horns" is the way to proceed, whether or not you ultimately determine to go meds or no-meds and try alternative ways of management.


Your posts resonated for me, and I wanted to say that I also have Bipolar in my family line and have spent some time wondering about this. I have been open with therapists in the past about this. They have never said they suspect that I have this diagnosis yet. I have other things. But, I wanted to say that having mental illness running down generations is no picnic, and it takes a strong person to recognize how to "make lemonade" out of those lemons, you know?

I also can relate to your post about not doing well with Rx meds most of the time. Been there, done that, too. And when they did work, for sleep and anxiety, I still wanted to get off of them when I read studies showed they can cause Alzheimer's. So, I did a medically-supervised taper schedule with my doc. And I don't do meds now. I see the benefit of specific meds, short term, for specific symptoms of PTSD.

(I just saw a MedCircle interview of Jacob Moore on YouTube titled "What It's Like to Live with Childhood Trauma". Jake Moore was diagnosed with Bipolar, ADHD, and depression in the past. He does martial arts, yoga, and other things like that to self-regulate on a daily basis. He looks like a fitness guru, and he claims to be free of any mental illness, as far as he and his therapist can tell. So, the point is, that regardless of diagnosis, treatment can take whatever form works and is healthy coping. Whatever works!

Having a diagnosis is just the first step in discovery. Then, you can see how you do getting well. Obviously, regulating eating is one thing you would probably be working on.

Some of us here with PTSD have noticed food sensitivities and allergies crop up.

I can say that you might want to eat foods by themselves and see if your heart races and you feel anxiety/doomed after eating a particular food. That is a sign you are allergic to it. If you have hives, or lips/face swelling or other allergy symptoms also, like nose running, you would need to use an Epi-Pen, as you are actually having a true anaphylactic shock reaction.

I was "having really bad PTSD" for a while. Then, I started noting certain foods "caused my PTSD to get worse." But really I was having allergic reactions, which for me included massive anxiety. So, after I eliminated that food, low and behold, my PTSD symptoms also improved. I, too, had lost 35 lbs. Go figure?

My point here is that you are right to not ignore these facts as relevant: your body weight has fallen off, and your PTSD has gotten worse, and there is a possible connection. PTSD can put your body into fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode, in which you feel literally no hunger and also fail to drink water sometimes for prolonged periods. This is built into us in order to allow us to escape a tiger. But, as there are no tigers in our apartments, and food and water are in the fridge, clearly, something is whacked.

I hope you find your Dx and solutions soon.

 

[blissfuldaydreams]

@Powder Thank you for the advice. Now that you mention the correlation between PTSD and certain foods , it makes a lot of sense. Im going to try your suggestion and see what foods affect me.

im so glad someone can understand where I am coming from regarding Rx and Dx. After reading your comment I realize no matter my Dx, finding healthy coping mechanisms is what is important. And medication doesn’t HAVE to be one necessarily.