Diagnosis

Let me get this out of the way, straight off.  What you’re about to read here are my personal rumination’s while replaying various conversations with friends and/or family in my mind.  These thoughts are my personal take on things, based on my own experiences, healing and growth.  I have no degrees, I’m no therapist and I’m only sharing my personal perspective.

I suspect that most of us, or some of our family members have been given various diagnoses as they struggle with dealing with life.  Myself, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety at different times in my life.  The diagnosis was real, I suffered from depression and anxiety most of my life.  I was on an anti-depressant for the bulk of the last 38 years or so.  About 10-15 years ago, while working with a psychiatrist on a medication change, I was also diagnosed with anxiety and started taking anti-anxiety medication in addition to a new anti-depressant.  I never knew that, but it explained a lot.  This new combination of medications seemed to help even things out.  Along the way, I also had opportunities to utilize formal therapy as I navigated some of my life’s more challenging moments (leaving my second controlling/violent marriage, getting my kids back and learning how to be a mom, my sons going off the rails in their late teens, early twenties, and more recently as I walked through the deaths of my dad, son and husband in the past few years.  In addition, I have been exploring some alternate healing modalities as well.  All of this seems to have come together at this point in my life.  Mostly out of laziness (ran out of medication, not getting around to re-ordering) I’m no longer taking anti-depressants and haven’t experienced “going dark” for days at a time.  I also quit taking the anti-anxiety medications as well, again, for the same reasons…pure laziness.  Since that time, it appears that I am not going down those paths nearly as deep as I used to.  The medication worked for me when it needed to.

One of the things I discovered for myself over the years, is that the medication is only a supplement to help regulate my nervous system.  It doesn’t change the way I think, nor does it change my life in any significant way.  What it does do, is give me the opportunity to focus on growing and learning to live with, deal with and find better ways to operate in my life.  Without that, nothing really changes and it’s just another diagnosis that I keep treating with medication.  One of the biggest things I learned early on with the anti-depressants and depression is that the real work is changing the way I think and thus, operate in my world more successfully.  One of the hardest things to leave behind as I came out of a deep depressive episode was the negative thinking that goes hand in hand with depression (and anxiety, I guess).  I had to consciously choose to adopt a more positive attitude and not take the negativity with me into the next moment.  And, it is baby steps over and over again to change how I think.  Some days I do it better than others, after all, I’m still a work in progress.  It doesn’t happen overnight, there’s no miracles here.

More recently, through conversations with Alice and others, it occurred to me that I probably also have ADHD, although never diagnosed or treated.  We were actually talking about others in our lives that have been diagnosed with ADHD and I realized that the way I’ve operated all my life fit very neatly into that diagnosis for myself.  With a smile, Alice acknowledged that it was probably true for me.

My reaction?  Does this newly discovered mental health issue define me?  Absolutely not!  None of my “diagnoses” define me.  They are simply labels western medicine has defined to explain what’s going on inside my head.  Does that make me flawed?  Absolutely not!  Guess what!  I’m human, I have some “defined” abnormalities in my way of thinking, but that doesn’t define me.  What defines me is what I do with that information.  One of my pet peeves lately is hearing from somebody else “it’s my anxiety, it’s my ADHD, it’s my depression, etc.”.  To me, that is just an excuse for why I think or act like I may do.

So, I have ADHD…Well, that explains a lot.  I can easily see how that has driven me in my life, contributed to some successes and quite frankly, a bit a chaos throughout my life.  Through the last few years of intense healing and spiritual growth I have been undergoing and as I reflected on the past 69 years of my life I’ve seen patterns emerge and contemplated the lessons I was learning, albeit a little later in life than I wish would have happened, but nonetheless, a lot of personal growth as I’m moving into defining who I am now and how I want to move forward with my life.  Understanding that depression, anxiety and ADHD were various drivers in the way I’ve operated, but it’s my choice how I move forward.

So, to me, it is just more information.  I thrive on information and constantly seek more, regardless of whether I’m working, playing or just trying to live my life.  It doesn’t define me, it only provides me something else to work on as I continue to seek healing and growing.  Even before I ran across that conversation with Alice and friends, I had already voiced my concerns about my mental capacity, even as I’m seeing physical recovery and strength in myself, and through discussion, came to understand a little more about myself and accepting who I am and where I am in life.  I’m aging.  There’s more baggage from my mind and body due to aging.  I don’t have the same mental or physical energy that I had in my 30’s and 40’s.  I can’t always do what I’ve always done.  Coming to terms with that was rather painful, to say the least.  I really don’t want to admit to myself that I can’t keep doing what I’m doing.  But, here I am, doing the best I can.  I had already come to the conclusion for myself that I need to work on being more present in my life and maybe I’ll notice or remember where I put my stuff or what I need to do in the moment, not scattered all over the place with the past or future.  The information I just discovered about myself only serves to energize me into pursuing different options for moving forward.  Oh, and about that ego?  It just needed some serious ass-kicking in order to slow me down and become open to learning more.  I really don’t have it all figured out, still just figuring it out as I go.

My point in all this?  Diagnoses, or realizations about myself and how I operate does not define me.  They are not excuses for how I operate, as if I had no choice.  I always have a choice about how I react to life situations or what I’m going to do about it.  What defines me is how I cope and move forward.  And, give myself a break.  I’m not broken or “fucked up.”  I just have other options for changing what really doesn’t work for me anymore.

My journey, my perspective.

Love and Peace,

Chick