I had a discouraging appointment with my psychiatrist yesterday and would like hear thoughts & maybe a reality check on the situation.
My formal diagnoses (since age 12) are Major Depression and GAD, but I’ve suspected autism for a few years. After my wife brought it up last year, we started operating under the assumption that I’m autistic. I started seeing a therapist who also felt that I was autistic and we got me on the waitlist for an assessment. I won’t go into details but let’s just say I have been quite unwell for a while and just barely scraping by.
Two months ago, my therapist went to a new practice and I wasn’t able to follow her. This coincided with the start of busy season at my job, and my health has plummeted. I’m doing fine at work but struggling in literally every other area. I’m chronically malnourished and dehydrated, my body is in constant pain from the tension I’m holding, and I have the emotional regulation of a 5-year old. Food is a huge struggle for me and always has been - I usually only have a few safe foods but that list has dwindled to almost nothing. Even thinking about certain foods makes me gag and sometimes this provokes multi-day episodes where I cycle through hunger & nausea and have to miss work. I feel like a shell of a person.
I finally brought these concerns up to my psychiatrist yesterday. I described my meltdowns, struggles with feeding myself, exhaustion, pain, and burnout. My psychiatrist has been told multiple times that I’m being assessed for autism and that my therapist thinks I’m autistic, but whenever I mention that he just ignores it? He’ll acknowledge the other things I say and ask more questions but he just doesn’t respond to the autism stuff. He seemed really concerned when I described my symptoms right now and also seemed quite…perplexed? Asked a lot of questions and called it anxiety.
And then he put me on Abilify, to “stabilize my mood and reactive behaviors”. I’m already on Pristiq (a nightmare to withdraw from) and a high dose of Propranolol. I’ve had previous experience with a mood stabilizer and didn’t love it, and I’ve also heard a lot of really intense things about Abilify. My sister really struggled when she was on it, and it just seems weird to me that this is our next step. He really emphasized how Abilify “isn’t an antipsychotic” which is partially true, but it still seems like a strong medication with risks. I’m really not interested in changing my meds right now, when I’m already so fucking exhausted and work is so crazy. I also feel like what I need is a therapist who understands neurodivergence plus a stronger support and care network (the only person I really have is my wife).
But maybe my psychiatrist is onto something and I’m just being overdramatic? I just didn’t feel heard at all and since he’s literally the only person on my care team right now, it felt really shitty and discouraging.