Fiona Kennedy

Fiona Kennedy first shared their experience with A Lust For Life, an Irish organization dedicated to reducing the stigma surrounding mental health issues through sharing personal stories. In Ireland, a culture of silence about mental health has led to many not speaking openly about their experiences or seeking help. Like us, they believe sharing stories breaks down the barriers that makes seeking help hard.

‘We are not broken, we’re human’ – Overcoming years of misdiagnosis and medication

by Fiona Kennedy

Almost 3 years ago, I wrote the following in an article for the Irish Times:

‘Over the years I’ve come to recognise that depression is, and quite likely always will be to one extent or another, simply part of my life, part of who I am.’

I genuinely believed I had a lifelong, chemical imbalance induced illness over which I had limited control, two in fact, because as well as being told I had clinical depression, I was also told I had borderline personality disorder.

Since then? Since then, I’ve learned a thing or two. Yes, I was severely depressed, and struggled for years. Yes, I had developed coping mechanisms that were extremely damaging and potentially life threatening. The emotional difficulties I was experiencing were significant enough to impact on every aspect of my life. But the crucial part of all of this is that I was not mentally ill, not in the way that I had come to believe.

There were no rogue chemicals causing all this chaos. I’ve come to recognise that everything I was experiencing was a direct result of trying to live a life that wasn’t for me, alongside carrying many rules and beliefs about myself from childhood and the impact of various traumas. Medication has gone from a combination of anti-psychotic, anti-depressant and occasional anti-anxiety, to just anti-depressant, to nothing at all, and I can genuinely say I have never felt better.

Before I go any further though, I want to make something perfectly clear. I am not advocating that anyone, under any circumstances, stop taking their meds based on my experience. My experience is just that. Mine. I was lucky enough to work with a fantastic psychologist who helped me see that my reactions made perfect sense, despite being extreme and sometimes scary to those around me. They were coping mechanisms, they served a purpose, but then they started doing more harm than good, which meant I had serious work to do to get a handle on my life. Once I had made significant progress with that work, I started reducing meds. It took 10 months, and huge patience and effort, but I got there. As I write this, I am medication free for the first time in over 6 years.

The only chemical imbalance that ever affected my brain was the one caused by the medications I was given. Yes, they served a purpose at the time, but that purpose had limited value. All of the so called borderline behaviours I was exhibiting were signs that something was wrong, that massive changes needed to be made in my life, not that there was something intrinsically wrong with my brain.

This is where we hit a massive catch 22. When someone is in crisis, and there’s no one to talk to, what are the options? Sadly, they’re extremely limited. Present to A&E in a suicidal state, chances are you’ll be given something to calm you down and sent on your merry way. After that, if you’re lucky, you’ll get into the system and just maybe access appropriate help, but far too many don’t and it turns into a revolving door scenario.

I didn’t need drugs. There were so many times over the years when timely psychological intervention would have served me far better, but that just didn’t happen. And once I was in the system, I was caught in a cycle of infrequent appointments with doctors who barely knew me, who prescribed and made massive decisions about my state of mind based on a 5 minute conversation. How is this supposed to be helpful?

Telling people that they have a chemical imbalance in their brain is unbelievably disempowering. Why bother making an effort to manage your mental health if you’re constantly up against misbehaving chemicals? Here’s another way of looking at it. How about talking to people? Instead of asking, ‘What’s wrong with you?’, try asking, ‘What happened to you?’ Help people to understand how and why they feel and act as they do, then teach them to do something about it.

Don’t medicate emotions into submission, they’re there for a reason. Just like sensitivity to physical pain is intended to keep us physically safe, emotional pain happens for a reason. It’s trying to tell us something. If you put your hand on something hot and it started to burn, you wouldn’t take a pain killer just so you could leave your hand there and carry on regardless. So why do we do just that with emotions? Emotional pain can be terrifying and feel out of control, but the more we fight with it, the worse it will get.

I’ve been on a massive learning curve this last year, and one of the biggest things that’s hit home is just how much actually is within my power, as well as how much responsibility I need to take for my emotional well-being. It takes work. I can’t expect to sit back and do nothing and for everything to just fall into place for me. If I don’t exercise or eat right, I won’t be physically well. If I don’t look after my mind, I won’t be emotionally well. It’s so simple, and at the same time, so, so hard.

I’m not for a second suggesting that any of the emotional difficulties people experience aren’t real. I’ve been through it and I know just how hard it is to keep going when every fibre of your being is screaming at you to give in, to give up, to stop trying. What I am suggesting though, is that we need to be more open to considering different ways of managing it, thinking about it and talking about it.

Don’t pigeon hole people with labels and drugs and conversations about chemical imbalances. Make space for the fact that we’re human, with a beautifully complex brain, living in a crazy fast paced world that has advanced far quicker than our brain has been able to keep up with. Accept that we will sometimes struggle, and that struggle will sometimes be overwhelming. Allow that we will sometimes need help. And recognise that this doesn’t mean we’re broken or faulty in any way. We’re simply doing the best we can with what we know.