CPTSD/Disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified

I am not amused.

I keep laughing and rocking. I don’t like it. It’s not comfortable at all.

My biggest fear was having bipolar when I read up on it on my psychology degree before my PTSD attacks started. Luckily for me I got a 1st in the bipolar disorder exam just by describing my symptoms before PTSD hit me in 2018. Now I have new symptoms of CPTSD. I kept running to the mental health team in fear before my body has now crumbled under the pressure. The mental health team laughed at me in Hertfordshire and said “we aren’t neurologists you know.” And “go home, stop wasting our time”. I said it’s “bipolar you thick wits” – they said no it’s not, you’re overthinking. I said isn’t that a core part of bipolar disorder though. Is it though?

I said yes it is. Yes it is. Yes it fricking well is. You’re sending my brain crazzzzy.

They said “nope”. Sorry, it’s not. Okay? The police then radioed through to the mental health team at the time and said “she’s possibly got bipolar disorder” – the mental health team replied “just ignore her she has BPD”.

I sensed some similarities between what I learned about bipolar 1 disorder, and I really was hoping I didn’t have it. I didn’t study that year at university, I was depressed, exhausted. I had no friends at university except one other girl who too had bipolar disorder and CPTSD and we had a similar upbringing. She felt she was born with ADHD too.

She kept going to the mental health team but they laughed at her and said it was her BPD. I wonder if she still has that label? Because she had CPTSD at the time.

I couldn’t relate to other people, I’d zone out, daydream, need extra support in my studies. I failed multiple subjects over and over again despite trying so hard to concentrate. I’d get intense lows but no suicidal thoughts, just the fight to try and keep myself alive.

I still to this day don’t understand why they didn’t help me at the time with the bipolar side because maybe my body would still be working/functioning normal. Maybe I’d never have developed CPTSD.

It took multiple attempts from local services about my PTSD and Bipolar at the time to try and convince the mental health team I needed their support but they said “she can’t have bipolar because if it is then she’s rapid cycling and that’s extremely rare – we can’t diagnose a rare condition hence she’s been given the BPD label, she’s being manipulative”.

They took everything from me.

Everything.

I never had a voice. Now I have lifelong consequences of never getting the help on time. And yep you guessed it, the NHS try and cover up their mistakes.

I did try advocate for myself, but now I have a damaged brain I may as well make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

It’s not fair for people to go through that.

There needs to be a new law regarding diagnoses and how they apply them. The BPD label needs to stop being chucked around too so people can get the correct help they need who really do have it. Same with NPD.

The mental health system is a disgrace in the UK to be honest.

Anyone with true bipolar type 1 disorder will tell you they do not want it and it’s hell. It’s fucking hell.

Now it’s come back alongside my CPTSD I now realise I was right, and the hurdles they made me jump through. I never wanted it. I was hoping it wouldn’t be true.

But when I got a 1st in the bipolar disorder exam at university despite never studying it because of my depression at the time so I took a risk and described my symptoms I’d always struggled with since I was about 7, I passed with one of the highest grades to describe a clinical presentation of bipolar disorder.

A few months after that exam, I had my first ever manic episode. And in that moment all I could think was “you have got to be kidding me; please no. I don’t want it, the brain gets damaged over time and you have a shorter life expectancy.

It’s also a physical issue. Then ptsd hit, now CPTSD has hit. And I’m left in the wreckage wondering why the system in England left me to struggle my whole life.