I've suffered with depression and anxiety all my life from as long as I can remember - feelings of distress I feel today I can remember feeling at pre-school.
To me, I've always suffered from 'depression' and have spent decades trying to treat the depression with limited or no success.
This week I was diagnosed as having a complex personality disorder, and that the depression was a symptom of the personality disorder, not the actual problem.
It took me a while to get my head round it as this contradicted a deeply ingrained internal belief, however, when I was shown a list of defining traits, it suddenly became blindingly obvious this was, and has been all my life, the main issue and explains why I've always lived under so much distress, unhappiness and discontent.
All that was happening was that as I went through life, I developed (often unhealthy) coping strategies, which superficially papered over the cracks, at least to an outsiders perspective, where actually I was screaming internally and not understanding why I have lived a life of torment, frustration and distress.
Now I know what I'm dealing with, I can at least begin to try and address the root cause, rather than just mask the symptoms.
The only slightly upsetting thing has been to be told the brutal and honest truth that due to the type of disorder and how utterly embedded in my entire make up it is, that it's unlikely that I'll be able to unwind my hard wiring as it goes so very deep to my core.
At least I can stop chasing anti-depressants all over the place wondering why they never fix anything and can now try some specific CBT in the hope of at least trying to find just a whiff of understanding and inner peace.
A long and probably painful road lies ahead.