When you're struggling and don't understand what's happening to you, seven months is a very long time.
I'd reached a point where I knew I needed help.
The problem was that getting help — and getting answers — were two very different things.
I wasn't doing it completely alone
I'd started seeing my psychologist during the peak of my burnout.
She became a great source of help and support.
At a time when I didn't understand what was happening inside my own head, having someone I could talk openly with made an enormous difference.
But I still needed answers.
Why had this happened?
Why wouldn't my mind stop?
Why had my anxiety become so extreme?
And what was actually going on with me?
At the beginning of the year, my GP referred me to a psychiatrist.
Finally, I thought I might start getting some answers.
Then I found out how long I'd have to wait.
Seven months.
Seven months is a long time when you're scared
When your mind isn't behaving in a way you understand, it can be frightening.
And without an explanation, I started trying to find one myself.
Do I have OCD?
Could this be psychosis?
Schizophrenia?
Bipolar disorder?
What is wrong with me?
My mind went everywhere.
I was scared.
I was confused.
And I stayed that way for a very long time.
Looking back, I can understand why I was searching so desperately for an explanation.
I wasn't trying to diagnose myself.
I was trying to make sense of something that didn't make sense to me.
There was clearly something happening.
I just didn't know what it was.
And every time my brain produced another possibility, I had months available to think about it.
Eventually, September arrived.
After seven months of waiting, the psychiatrist appointment finally came around.
I'd built a lot of hope around that appointment.
Maybe this would finally be the moment when somebody joined all the dots.
The appointment lasted around two hours.
I told him my life story.
I talked about what I'd experienced.
I talked about the anxiety.
I talked about everything that had brought me to that room.
After waiting so long, I desperately wanted someone to help me understand what had happened.
Instead, I left feeling even more confused.
I felt completely unheard
His conclusion was that I had ADHD traits but suffered from extreme anxiety.
Then he turned to me with his prescription pad and asked:
“What do you want?”
I didn't know what to say.
I'd waited seven months because I didn't know what I needed.
That's why I was there.
I wasn't looking for a particular prescription.
I wasn't looking for a particular diagnosis.
I wanted someone to help me understand me.
After months of waiting and two hours of explaining my life, I walked away feeling completely unheard.
And deflated.
I'd spent so long believing that getting to that appointment might finally provide some clarity.
Instead, I had another piece of information — ADHD traits — and even more questions.
Then one conversation changed the direction.
I went back to my psychologist.
We talked about the appointment and how I was feeling.
And during those conversations, I explained something that had always been difficult for me to put into words.
I'd always felt a bit different from everybody else.
Not necessarily better or worse.
Just different.
There were things about the way my brain worked that I'd always taken for granted.
For example, I've often been able to understand the mechanics of how something works simply by thinking through the most logical way it should work.
That felt normal to me.
It was just how my brain worked.
Then my psychologist asked me about something I genuinely hadn't considered.
Autism.
I'd never thought about autism
It wasn't something I'd been investigating.
It wasn't a diagnosis I'd been chasing.
It hadn't really crossed my mind.
But that question opened another door.
My psychologist recommended a clinic that specialised in ADHD and autism assessments.
So I went back to my GP.
Another conversation.
Another referral.
And then came something I'd become very familiar with.
Another wait.
This time, six weeks.
But this wait felt different
I still didn't know what the assessment would find.
I didn't know whether I had ADHD.
I didn't know whether I was autistic.
I certainly didn't know the term AuDHD would eventually become such an important part of understanding my life.
But for the first time in a long time, it felt like we might actually be asking the right questions.
I'd spent months wondering whether something terrible was happening to my mind.
I'd questioned whether I had OCD, psychosis, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
I'd waited seven months believing a psychiatrist might finally explain everything.
I'd walked away from that appointment feeling more confused than when I'd arrived.
And then, almost unexpectedly, a conversation with someone who had taken the time to understand me pointed things in a completely different direction.
So I waited another six weeks.
But this time I wasn't just waiting for help.
I was waiting to find out whether, after all these years, there might finally be an explanation for why I'd always felt different.
This is part of my personal experience of burnout, mental health and eventually discovering AuDHD. Everyone's experience of seeking mental health care is different, and this reflects my own experience rather than the experience someone else should expect.