Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi!
So I’m a 34year old women who was first diagnosed with borderline personality disorder which now is generally called emotionally unstable personality disorder at 18 yrs old but I never felt I ‘fitted’ into that box so to speak but I did have some traits. I always felt it was my social communication that I struggled with, so I was referred to a speak therapist and then an autism referral and last week was diagnosed as having autism.
To cut a long story short, i wanted to see if anyone else was diagnosed with EUPD before getting an autism diagnosis? And if much has changed with regards to your mental health support or medication?
I was diagnosed mentally before the autism was thought of by my doctor. I wish they had gone down the autism route beforehand as now I've got schizophrenia stuck to my name and they won't remove the diagnosis.
I find they label with what they think suits. Initially when they said I might be autistic, one doctor said "no it's highly unlikely because she can go out and talk to me". But it was all masking on my part. They had no idea how much effort and energy it took.
Mental health support makes me worse in my opinion, as does the medication because of side effects. I wish they would leave me be and let me figure things out on my own - it would be a lot less pressure.
I hope you're doing OK. We are here for you, if you need us.
I've heard of other schizophrenia misdiagnoses too. One autism informed GP told me that was the label they slapped on everyone, before they started slapping the EUPD inappropriately on autistic people.
It's just as dangerous. Not much is going to improve, I think, until mental health services get some thorough training in autism and learn properly when conditions co-occur and when one is mistaken for the other and start listening to patients when they say their diagnosis doesn't feel like it fits.
I think, this is the thing that has really left me traumatised by them. I can see from my notes now that they did not understand and jumped to a lot of conclusions from the get go and having made their minds up how I must feel, would never listen when I was telling them I didn't and some other experience was the problem. Our relationship went down hill from there. Mental health seem to be manufacturing their so-called challenging patients out of people who just need them to listen to what the problem actually is to start with.