A while back I wrote a post about how I felt that my diagnosis was wrong. Quite a few people responded saying they felt the same.

I had been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder but I just didn’t feel that it was enough. I was sure there was something else ‘lurking’ within me making me feel constantly unsettled. I’d been through four different antidepressants prescribed by the GP and all had made me feel worse, much worse. I’ve written a lot about my lows and coming out of them or falling into them but never about the highs when even though I thought I was stable I was actually hypomanic and then of course there are the stable periods too where I would still be on a high alert waiting for the next ‘state’.

So the day after my 47th birthday I had an online appointment with a different psychiatrist and he asked me about the highs as well as the lows, he asked what I like doing (so many things, he ran out of room), do I have friends? (too many to name) and about my relationships with food and alcohol and at the end I could have hugged him, lucky for him there was a screen between us.

My reaction was shock but not surprise, relief but also reticence. I’m on a new medication, a mood stabiliser. I don’t know if I will ever feel better. But, it has a name for this thing I have felt inside me, that also makes me creative, imaginative, sociable, positive... It’s going to take a bit of working out I think and I will try to take it day by day, hour by hour or minute by minute, whatever the day requires.

Lizzie

A Moodscope member.