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dual diagnosis bipolar and autism

M

monkeyclogs

Active Member
V.I.P Member
hello :)

The dual diagnosis of bipolar and Autism is where I'm at. I'm 46 and despite a pretty long and dramatic mental health history, it was only 4 months ago that they decided to assess me for Autism. There is some debate as to whether the bipolar is a misdiagnosis of ADHD but that's something they can't decide until im off what was a ridiculous number of medications. Work in progress on doing that safely.

I guess I'm here because I've read a lot of books on Autism since the diagnosis, with lots of other people's experiences but i've failed to find one that matches mine. It's making it really hard to accept the diagnosis as something more than another theory that will eventually be disproved. There have been a lot of diagnoses over my 46 years, all of which led nowhere in terms of understanding and coping with my 'symptoms'. I understand that this might be because they overlooked possible autism but there seems to be an expectation that my response to this new diagnosis should be "aah everything makes sense now" and it really isn't!

Is there anyone on this forum with a similar story?
 
HI and Welcome @monkeyclogs
Sorry but I dont have a story like yours, but your welcome here and i'd give it some time and see if there is someone in here with your story.

Certainly for the autism bit there lots of life experience here.
 
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There can be some crossover with autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, OCD, and schizophrenia... if you can imagine a Venn diagram. Some traits are common to more than one of these conditions.
 
Neonatal RRT said:
There can be some crossover with autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, OCD, and schizophrenia... if you can imagine a Venn diagram. Some traits are common to more than one of these conditions.
Click to expand...
I found some of these online. It's really confusing where I fit. One diagnosis i was previously given was cptsd which made no sense because the 'symptoms' predated the 'trauma'. Interestingly when I found a Venn diagram of cptsd v autism all of my cptsd symptoms fit into the middle part with none on the cptsd side and quite a few on the autism side. but, some of my 'symptoms' were not on the diagram at all and there were a lot of traits on the autism side that just don't fit.
 
I'm autistic and bipolar. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 60 something.

Heck of a ride, ain't it?

Welcome aboard!
 
TBRS1 said:
I'm autistic and bipolar. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 60 something.

Heck of a ride, ain't it?

Welcome aboard!
Click to expand...
hi, it"s really great to meet you :)

i have so many questions! I'm sorry if it's inappropriate to ask.

Were you diagnosed with both simultaneously or was there a time where you knew you had one but not the other?

Also, i dont know where you live or what the healthcare system is like for you but here in the UK i've discovered that the mental health team know virtually nothing about neurodiversity and the neurodiversity team know much about bipolar
If it is the same for you, how do you navigate this?
 
I'm in the U.S.

The amount of awareness and/or care depends on A) what one can afford, and the related issue of B) where one lives.

I was first diagnosed with long term severe depression. Only after that did the rest of it creep out into a broader diagnosis.

The result was what you - and a surprising number of others have pointed out - Suddenly, it all made sense!

Aside from that, the autism diagnosis doesn't do much for me that a good councillor or mental help professional couldn't do without it: learning to navigate anxiety and panic disorder caused by the stress of being autistic in an allistic world.

I was "cured" by retiring. No more stress of trying to act "normal" and being forced to mask, no more problems (mostly).
 
Thank you for sharing. It really does help to know that you exist too! I am grateful that our health service is free to use but it can be incredibly confusing to navigate!

I understand how retiring may have helped. It's not quite the same, but the sum of my mental health forced me to rethink my work life and as part of that restructuring I moved out of the city. I've found that in my new, less demanding life with new people I'm a completely different person. Everyone talks about unmasking after finding out but I think I've possibly been doing that already and I just didn't realise that's what i was doing. It's been interesting that, of the few people i've told about the autism diagnosis, the people from my old life are a lot more surprised than the people from my new life. One friend in my new life actually responded "oh, we all just assumed you knew" 😂
 
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