Content Warning
This piece discusses mental health, self-harm, suicidal ideation, pregnancy loss, involvement with statutory services, and experiences of misdiagnosis and psychological harm within mental health systems.
Please read with care.
Author’s Note on Anonymisation
Some details in this piece have been intentionally anonymised or generalised to protect the privacy and safety of others, including my children and family members.
This does not change the truth of my experience or its impact on my mental health.
The purpose of this piece is not to accuse or expose individuals, but to describe how vulnerability, misinterpretation, and systemic failure shaped my life and understanding of myself.
I was fourteen when my struggles really started.
I felt alone. Different. Like an outsider everywhere — at home, at school, in my own skin. I never seemed to attach to people properly. I didn’t understand social rules or hierarchy. I watched other people move through the world with ease while I felt like I’d missed some vital instruction manual.
At sixteen, I was diagnosed with social anxiety and depression. I was self-harming by then. I was promiscuous, not because I was reckless, but because I was desperate for connection — desperate to feel anchored to something, anything.
By eighteen, I woke up one morning and decided it would be my last day.
That night, instead of dying, I made a choice that changed the direction of my life. Not because it saved me, but because it gave my survival a different shape.
I entered adulthood already exhausted.
I began seeing mental health professionals. I did what I was told. I showed up. I tried. I became a parent while still deeply unwell, and I developed postnatal depression. I became afraid of leaving the house alone, afraid of phone calls, afraid of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
Life didn’t slow down to let me catch up.
I had complicated pregnancies and traumatic births. I loved my children fiercely, but I had no idea how to be responsible at that level. I was overwhelmed and terrified most of the time, quietly holding it together because that’s what was expected.
Eventually, a safeguarding incident involving my children brought statutory services into our lives.
It was overwhelming and frightening. I complied with everything asked of me, but much of that time is blurred — I dissociated to survive it. I did everything “right,” and still felt constantly on trial.
Around this time, I was sent for a private psychological evaluation arranged through official channels.
The report suggested I had traits of a personality disorder. The language used described me as manipulative, wanting my own way, and behaving like a child.
I was never told clearly whether this report went on my medical records. No one would answer that question. But I felt the change afterwards. The way professionals spoke to me shifted. The tone became colder. When I later needed therapy again, I was sent for another psychiatric evaluation, and the same label was raised.
I assumed it must be true.
I did what I always did — I researched. The people I encountered who carried that diagnosis seemed loud, volatile, openly destructive. They appeared to sabotage their lives repeatedly.
I was nothing like them.
I didn’t externalise my pain. I internalised it.
I hated myself. I believed there was something fundamentally wrong with my character. I tried harder to be compliant, quieter, easier. I shrank myself in the hope that I could be acceptable.
When I was told the recommended treatment was group therapy, I went. I sat in the room terrified. I felt completely out of place. I was later told group therapy wasn’t suitable for me.
After that, secondary mental health services consistently refused to see me. Their communication became factual, distant, and final. There was no warmth. No curiosity. No sense of care.
Being labelled this way didn’t help me. It harmed me.
Not because there is shame in that diagnosis — there isn’t — but because people began to see me as someone I was not, and stopped listening to who I actually was.
I eventually left an unhealthy relationship and became a single parent to young children. I struggled, but I survived. I leaned on the few safe people I had and kept going because there was no alternative.
Later, I met my current partner. For the first time, I had real, practical support. I wasn’t alone.
I coped. From the outside, I coped “well.”
I tried more therapy. Some helped, some didn’t. I was told certain treatments weren’t suitable for me, but no one could tell me why or what was suitable instead.
During this time, one of my children — then a teenager — became severely unwell. She was later diagnosed autistic and ADHD. Another child has struggled his whole life and is now awaiting assessment.
Watching them was like looking into a mirror I didn’t know existed.
I began to wonder if the reason I had never been able to “fix myself” was because I was trying to treat the wrong thing.
I went back to my GP. For the first time in my life, I was completely honest. She listened. She believed me. She told me I was likely highly masking, and that repeating previous assessments would be pointless. She suggested a different route.
That changed everything.
Through the Right to Choose pathway, I was finally listened to. Half an hour into my assessment, the psychiatrist stopped and said he didn’t need to go any further. From my history, my answers, and my family background, it was clear.
The ADHD assessment was the same.
I was officially diagnosed with Level 2 autism and combined ADHD.
Nothing “appeared.”
Nothing suddenly changed.
What changed was that my life finally made sense.
One year on from diagnosis, I have around 80% fewer depressive episodes. I understand my anxiety now. When it rises, I have the language to explain it — and often, that alone is enough to settle it.
I do not have a personality disorder.
My emotions are dysregulated because of ADHD.
My shutdowns, fear, and overwhelm come from autism.
I cannot fix myself.
But I can stop trying to.
And for the first time in my life, that feels like the beginning of peace.
—Frost ❄️
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