My diagnoses

I'm 25 months into my mental health spiral, and for some reason the last 24 hours some part of me has wanted an official "diagnosis."

 

I should ask my therapist or my ketamine guide what they think.  Neither of them seem particularly interested in the DMM—in fact, I'd guess they think labeling my condition would be contrary to functional medicine and healing.

 

Maybe I won't ask…I'll just keep working on moving toward the sunlight at the moments when I'm capable.

 

Diagnosing myself, here's what I guess:

 

1. I arrived in 2022 with a lot of unprocessed guilt, shame, and grief.  These toxic cultures were surviving quietly underneath the umbrella provided by a "I am not allowed to fail" pleaser/caretaker syndrome.  I solved life's problems successfully alone.  That part of me worked hard, every minute of every day, from age 5 until age 67.
2. I compounded this by picking a narcissistic partner—I loved her (I apologize to her because I neither understood nor was capable of meeting her needs).  We worked as a couple because I continued to place her at the center of my life…a proxy for what she needed, and an ultimately doomed rabbit hole that I dug for myself--deeper and deeper.  Daily doses of guilt, shame, failure, and unprocessed grieving, adding to the global stockpile I had dutifully built from kindergarten onwards.

 

Then 2022 (with trial runs for me in 2012, and for others who my wife discarded).  It all crashed.  It all came down.  I was left alone on my couch with the shards of my life structure absent.  My partner left, full of disparagement, and my single worn out survival strategy (by pleasing and caretaking) was eliminated.  You can't resolve anything when one party takes their toys and ghosts.  And I couldn't function when I had "failed."

 

So, what happened to me?  What's my guess on diagnosis?

 

I'm 69 years old, alone—and struggling with severe PTSD and depression.

 

There was shock, anger, terrible fear of death and more failure, impenetrable loneliness (I could not get to myself to help myself—my "ego" went into super protective mode).  I could not predict my own actions or lethargy. 

 

I think my diagnosis---based on symptoms—was straight down the middle of the fairway PTSD—half from the impact of the explosion of my marriage, and half from the realization that my Inner Critic (carrying the weight of my entire life) was now standing by himself in the middle of a dark bunker.  It was me and guilt, fear, shame, terror, anger, loneliness—and no outlet.

 

It all came out, and I became clinically, and depressed.  Depression with no outlet feeds on itself in a manic pursuit for resolution—once you're captured, you want to escape, but that becomes the sole neural pattern.  The rest of my brain quickly atrophied and I lived in a manic loop—getting worse most days—for two years.

 

I am healing—talk therapy, microdosing, cutting out most drinking, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy—these helped.

 

But I'm 69 years old, alone—and struggling with severe PTSD and depression. 

 

The best I can say is that ketamine, in particular, dusted off, tested, and relaunched millions of new and forgotten and unused pathways and connections.  Medical science suggests that psychedelics cause the hippocampus to regenerate brain cells.  I wonder if that's true.  It's so hopeful for me to believe this medical research. 

 

In happy moments, I dream of a life without PTSD.  Without severe depression.  And with my old buddy the Inner Critic on a well-deserved vacation…after 64 years of very very thorough work.