I was diagnosed with Aspergers and ADHD between 3 and 4, so about 1996. This wasn't the best time to get DXed and a lot of it was very ableist. My first memory is of walking up to a kids' hospital, the building looming up at me, and the second is being experimented on in a white room with windows along one wall and sort of exercise equipment.
Dealing with medical professionals very much dominated much of my early life, as did being put on Ritalin which makes you a zombie and completely kills the best of what personality you do have or are evolving.
Primary years were very difficult. I was in a specialist base for quite a lot of it with gradually more mainstream integration towards the end. Most teachers have always patronised me at best and outright bullied me at worst, but the mainstream kids were exceptionally cruel in that context. I remember getting shoved up against a fence by some upperclassman when I was about 8 or 9 and when I was 10 two kids started targeting me, putting me in headlocks and getting my toxic best friend to bully me and the like, and it was only when I told my mum she got it to stop.
Home life during that time was also very challenging. Mum and dad seemed to constantly be arguing, which I would occasionally try to go and break up. Dad would either be absent for a lot of it or be there terrorising me; our best moments were away from the home at his work or out camping. Mum would be seriously overbearing then get drunk every week or so which made it seem like it was every single day. I'd have very little independence or choice in what I was doing which probably didn't help.
As an introvert the countless social appointments my mum kept become very wearing and I'd have to accompany my parents to whoever that day or night's house where I would inevitably get into a meltdown and then be blamed. Never did anyone question it might not have been a good idea to put me into those situations, or what impact it might of been having on more than just me. Bad too were the times when so-called "friends" would come to my house, invading my privacy, and touching my stuff, which I would be forced to consent to. Was me being happy all alone watching cartoons, and playing on my computer or video games really that bad? It was how the "high-functioning autistics" were allowed to live their childhoods, so why not me?
Oh and just incase y'all are wondering about physical abuse? Even though I never got spankings nonetheless getting singularly smacked on about 5 separate occasions by dad, most of them in public, had a deep impact on me. Also sometimes dad would manhandle me, and once shut me in my bedroom because I was melting down from someone winding me up. To be honest I probably hit him more than he hit me.
I consider the above to have laid the environmental factors for my British Petroleum Disaster. I do think I was probably way more likely to have developed the condition because of what genetically and neurodevelopmentally led to my AS and Co., but it was made worse by the way everything was handled.
It certainly made things very interesting when I was sent to a special boarding school for secondary years, unwise college, and fragmented employment, but that's another story which could fill up its very own book I'm sure. Maybe I'll edit this post to include it or add a new one when I have the spoons.
In August of 2020 my parents finally separated for good, and at the end of the year I had a massive breakdown with mum having to take me to A+E. The team on call that night prescribed me "emergency medication" and referred me to a contracted outpatients therapeutic clinic. They contacted me a few weeks later to arrange my appointments and despite me requesting in-person face-to-face because of my NDs, they sent me an e-Mail after that only offering by-phone or web ones. Then I heard nothing back from them, and it was only half a year later when I started trying to get counselling again that a doctor at my GP surgery told me I'd been discharged.
Roll on another half-a-year and after getting nowhere with a similar contracted clinic, I break up with my partner of 2 months and proceed to crash headfirst into the worst breakdown I've ever had which lands me in A+E. Mum had to call an ambulance which took forever. I tell them about my suicidal thoughts, like coming back from the chemist a month previously, waiting to cross the road, a van coming at me and wanting to jump out in front of it so bad. This culminated in them urgently referring me to a specialist clinic.
But I ring them up to see how my referral is going only to be told the waiting list is 3 years. That's over 1000 days in which someone could kill themselves. This sends me into another crisis and I ring my GP who then writes a letter to A+E, suggesting I'm sectioned in the nearest psych ward, so I'm back in there stuck for pretty much half a day way into the night before I'm FINALLY seen at about 2 in the morning. I try explaining to the people who see me about the severity of the situation but they don't offer me a bed or even explain to me why I can't have one. They essentially say I'll have to wait 3 years, so I lose it and smash a chair, then they call security and I'm relocated. I say I'm not going home until I get a result, so I stay there for the rest of the night. A couple of other people see me in the morning and talk things over with me, and refer me to a crisis team which I attend the next day.
Long story short I get seen by a doctor at the crisis center who tells me I have BPD, which is very similar to the CPTSD I thought I had. He tells me the waiting list for an official DX and therapy is 2 years but my GP is going to try and get that down to under 1 if possible.
PHEW!
This is very much an AMA (ask-me-anything) reply, btw
20 Jan 2022, 3:03 pm
