The Correct Diagnosis is Everything

When I was first diagnosed with depression, I felt relieved. Not because I felt understood, but because someone finally put a name to the heaviness I’d been carrying for years. I thought, okay, this is it. This is why everything feels so hard. Now that I know what it is, we can work on it.

I trusted the diagnosis. I trusted the process. I trusted that the professionals in the room could see something I couldn’t. The medication came soon after. I was told to expect side effects and to give it time. I wanted to get better, so I did exactly what I was asked. I waited. I pushed through. I tried to be patient with a body and mind that were already exhausted.

Instead of feeling better, I felt worse.

It’s difficult to explain without sounding like I’m overreacting, but I stopped feeling real. Not sad. Not numb in the way people with depression are meant to feel. I felt absent in my own life. I was still physically here, still functioning, but something essential was missing. I moved through my days as if I was watching myself from the outside.

I remember thinking, is this what healing is supposed to feel like? Is this emptiness progress?

When I tried to explain it, I didn’t have the right words. I told doctors I felt strange. Disconnected. Like I wasn’t fully myself anymore. They reassured me. They said it was normal. Adjustment period. Side effects. Dosing. All the buzzwords you’d hear in a psych office. I nodded and accepted it, because what else do you do when the people in charge sound confident?

But something still felt deeply wrong.

My moods didn’t settle. They splintered. There were stretches where my thoughts raced, and my body refused sleep, followed by crashes so heavy I barely recognised myself. The medication that was meant to stabilise me felt like it was pulling me further away from who I was.

What made it worse was how invisible it all was. From the outside, I still showed up. I went to work. I came home. I answered questions correctly. I looked functional. Inside, I felt hollow. Kept asking the questions, “Why?” and “Who am I?”

If this was the right treatment, then the problem had to be me. Maybe I wasn’t explaining myself properly. Maybe I was exaggerating. Maybe I just needed to try harder. Trusting yourself is quite hard when you’re told it’s apparently a part of the process.

The correct diagnosis didn’t come because someone finally listened closely. It came because I got extremely sick. The medication pushed me past a point I didn’t know existed. My symptoms became harder to hide. My sense of self thinned even further. Only then, they wondered, “What if this isn’t just depression?”

The bipolar diagnosis came later than it should have. When it did, I felt relief and grief at the same time. Relief because suddenly everything made sense—my moods, why the meds didn’t work, why I felt like I was fading. The grief came from realising how much damage had already been done.

Being treated for the wrong condition didn’t just delay the right care. It taught me to distrust myself. It taught me that disappearing was acceptable as long as I looked stable. It taught me to ignore the panic of feeling unreal when someone else told me that meant I was improving.

Getting the correct diagnosis didn’t fix everything, but it gave me answers. It validated that what I had felt all along was real. That I hadn’t failed treatment. The treatment had failed me.

I think about how many people are walking around with the wrong labels, taking medication that dulls or distorts them, being told to wait it out while they slowly vanish inside. I think about how easy it is to miss bipolar disorder when it doesn’t look dramatic, when someone is still functioning, still polite, still composed.

I spent a long time believing I was broken. I wasn’t. I was misread. Being seen properly didn’t solve my life, but it gave me myself back.

I’m in a different place now. I’m not cured, and I’m not pretending everything is easy, but I feel present in my own life again. Healing isn’t linear, but it’s real. I’m learning how to live with my brain instead of fighting it, and for the first time in a long while, that feels possible.