Hey everyone. I hope you’re well and in good mental health. Today, I’m going to talk you about understanding your diagnosis. I was diagnosed with something a while ago, then years later I found out I had something completely different, which I still haven’t been given any information about; I’ll go in to this a little later in the blog. I did get some help from our mental health services, but I’m on the waiting list for DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy). It’s meant to be really good therapy for someone with my condition.

In 2006 I was told I had borderline schizophrenia. After this, I was I was left to my own devices and I pretty much used the condition I had been diagnosed with as an excuse for my behaviour. I now know this wasn’t acceptable, but at the young age I was, I didn’t know what to do or where to get any support. I wasn’t given anything to help me succeed in my life, so in a way I was set up to fail.

In 2017/2018 I had a psychotic episode and had to wait to be seen by a mental health team. During their examination, they diagnosed me with emotionally unstable personality disorder. I had no clue what this was; I had only ever heard of split-personality disorder. I was told, “This is what you have, you’ve always had it, and you’ll always have it,” but I’ve now been under mental health services for nearly three years and STILL not had emotionally unstable personality disorder explained to me. I’m still learning about it every day. It also didn’t help that my condition is called two things: borderline personality disorder and emotionally unstable personality disorder. I went around saying to everyone I had the second one, then was told it was the same as the first, which made me feel stupid.

Not understanding my condition played on my mind a hell of lot, and it was impacting on my recovery, because I didn’t know what to do or how to do deal with it; I was stressing about it more and more. Yesterday, in a meeting I was in, we were talking about how we would want to know about our diagnosis: would leaflets help, or a website, or someone with lived experience of your condition you could talk to? I’d like all three options on hand, because each would help me to get better and understand a little bit more, in different ways, about my condition. One day, I would love to be that person talking about emotionally unstable personality disorder, and if I can help just one person through my blog and my podcasts, then my campaign has been successful.

Just remember – understanding your diagnosis does help your recovery. Also remember that everyone is unique and an individual, which means different people recover at different speeds, as well as in different ways.

Thank you for reading this blog. I wish you all good mental health.