Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello,
I finally got my NHS diagnosis of HFA and ADHD after a 2 1/2 year wait. I've been diagnosed with bipolar and a plethora of other things such as agoraphobia, social phobia, balloon phobia, personality disorder (misdiagnosis).
i was always shouted at and hit as a child and told that I was "bad", repeatedly shouted at as a teenager by my mum "why can't you be normal", kicked out of the house, compared unfavourably to other children, told my school marks were "not good enough" (mainly c grades although I worked really hard). They even tried to send me home from a holiday aged 15 because I was misbehaving and my mum accused me of being on drugs. They justified their behaviour as "when someone is spoiling something that you've saved up for, you just want to get rid of them so that they don't ruin it for everyone else". They never even asked me at the time what was wrong, I remember being so distressed, particularly when I was left to go to meals by myself and wander around the resort on my own for 2 weeks - I was terrified. They never asked me what the matter was, all they've ever been able to see was what was so "wrong" with me.
Life has always been a struggle because I always new I was different. I've been bullied most of my life at home and at school or work.
My relationship with my family has not been great over the last couple of years since my therapist identified that I had been the victim of emotional abuse and neglect as a child and verbal abuse as an adult. I had a breakdown, several suicide attempts and was sectioned as a result of this and their subsequent behaviour towards me. It got so bad when they tried to attend a meeting at the hospital that they were uninvited to (we hadn't spoken in 6 months, my mum flounced out of the meeting). The hospital and my therapist have diagnosed from afar my mother as having a personality disorder, my dad codependent and my brother having "personality issues"
Its all come to a head now - I told my dad on Wednesday about my full nhs diagnosis and he just said they'd done the best that they could. He tried to turn things around by reminding me of my achievements and I have to admit I shouted as I told him it was because I had no choice and had made me extremely mentally unwell.
My mum then phoned on Thursday, not to discuss my diagnosis, which she told me straight away, but to ask after the wellbeing of my mother in law who'd had an operation. I'd already told my dad about this and my mum is jealous of my MIL, refuses to acknowledge her existence and never asks about her. She then said that she "didn't need to discuss my diagnosis as dad had told her about it but that as far as she was concerned she had brought me up the same as any other parent and that she had nothing to feel bad about". I was devastated - she showed absolutely no compassion let alone empathy or remorse for the terrible things that she used to shout at me. I mentioned the holiday again and she just said ," well you always were a horrible little wotsit".
I have been crying on and off for the last couple of days- as if the shock of the diagnosis is not enough, the reaction of my parents is devastating. I am married and my husband is probably on the spectrum but doesn't know how to process this either.
I am struggling to find other peoples stories like this and, I guess, I'm hoping I can find some comfort on here. Did anyone else's parents behave like this?
The relationship with my family was certainly, never particularly easy. They both came from difficult backgrounds myself - my father was a late and unforeseen arrival and an only child, his mother died when he was a teenager, just doing his a levels, and one of the saddest things was when I last saw them as a family, he took out his old school work to show us.
Just heard something. Have to stop here