It's funny, PTSD is the one diagnosis that every mental health professional I've seen has agreed on, and it's the one that I still feel like an imposter when I say it. Some of my coworkers are veterans and the shit they've been through...it's really hard to see myself in the same category.

But from the time I was born til the time I left home, I got up every day not knowing if I would be safe. I didn't know what stability felt like til I made it for myself as an adult. And I'm still training myself to accept that I deserve it, that I'm allowed to set boundaries with people who disrupt it, and that it's perfectly OK to not make everyone around me happy. If you think your childhood was traumatic, then it probably was. Part of the abuse is being conditioned to believe that it's not abuse.

I didn't expect this, but the antidepressants cleared my head in a way that made the things I was learning in therapy click. Like I understood them rationally beforehand, but I had a really hard time practicing them or feeling them. Now I'm able to catch things in the moment, rather than hours or days later.

I'm glad you're doing well!

Yep, that's another potential diagnosis that's been considered for me. And it's not clear which symptoms are PTSD and which ones are different illnesses.

And then you throw in the confusion of hormonal birth control.

Buproprion has worked really well for me for a while, which seems like a good indication that it's an adhd/depression combination.

My mother was abusive. She is also a doctor, and when teenage me started fighting back, she had me put on mood stabilizers for bipolar. I didn't take them for long, but when I left home that question always lingered for me - am I dealing with trauma or mental illness? Both? Which illness? My ups and downs are extreme and self-destructive.

I did talk therapy for a long time and despite improvements, it wasn't fixing things in a significant way. I was resistant to medication for lots of reasons. Having a hard time trusting doctors, worrying about the effects of trying different medications, seeing my sister use adhd meds to support her anorexia. And also, being worried about the label.

But antidepressants have turned my life around. I can think straight again. I get up in the morning and I want to do things. I can focus and prioritize. Some days I wake up happy just because.

This was a very long-winded response that you did not ask for, but it's all to say: at this point, I don't care what they say I have. I'm just happy that the treatment works.

Absolutely. But it's a lot harder on my body to deal with where I am without medication -- random bouts of insomnia, constant anxiety, bouts of depression where I don't exercise or eat right, and self-destructive patterns of drug use.

I do feel that I've spent enough time on each different med before stopping. The side effects in the first two weeks were enough to know that some weren't right for me.

And what I'm on now worked great on the lowest dose for a few months, then seemed less effective, so the dose was increased, and now it helps again. So I've been on the same medication for several months now.

I've struggled to get a mental health diagnosis for years. My therapist confidently assured me that due to this and that criteria, I was not bipolar. My psychiatrist said that it's possible that I am.

I'm gonna keep trying different treatments until I find one that works, and theres something oddly reassuring about the concept that no one really knows, and the whole system is figuring out how to deal with each individual case by case.

I thought that I was just so fucked up that I was confusing to mental health professionals.

This is beautifully unsettling.