A Mothers Diagnosing

My mother has been diagnosing me all my life.  Any time anyone questions her on her methods of dealing with me or when she suspects that anyone might be looking at me badly she gives them the newest diagnoses.  At first she would tell people I was Schizophrenia .  That diagnoses lasted into my teen years.  For the longest time I had no idea what it even meant.  All I knew was that before people were told this they would treat me one way and as soon as they were told they looked at me with pity, or confusion or sadness and treated me totally different.  When I became a teenage I started learning for myself what it meant.  That is when I started fighting against her diagnosing me.  She used it as an excuse for her behaviour.  But I was the one that suffered for it.  It was another isolation tactic of hers.  Once I started to fight against it then she would tell people I had a split personality or I had some type of psychosis. 

A lot of the time her diagnosing came when I would try and tell people what was happening to me.  And the sad thing people would believe her.  I was a very quiet and withdrawn child.  Adults scared me and made me very uncomfortable with how they treated me. I never felt accepted because of how my mother portrayed me to others.  Kids would pick up on this and kids can be very cruel.  I was always the victim of bullies.  Constantly being beat up and teased.  Teachers didn't know what to do with me because of what my mother told them.  So a lot of the time when I would go to a teacher about the abuse they didn't believe me and thought I was creating "stories".  I could trust no adult.  So I hid.  At school I would hide in a bathroom stall or under the stairs at recess and during lunch.  My only true friends were animals.  I would befriend all the dogs around.  Helping train them to do tricks and take them for walks.

I was not the only child my mother diagnosed.  The oldest step kid had many disorders my mother claimed.  The step son had no feelings and would grow up and become a serial killer, the youngest was a passive aggressive personality type.  There were many more diagnoses she gave them to explain away her behaviour or them trying to tell people the truth.  When she was only parenting the youngest she would go to the therapist that the child was seeing and tell her all these things that were not true to lead them to diagnosing things about her that were not the truth and causing teachers to believe things that we not going on.  Again all to isolate and protect her ability to abuse at home so that no one would suspect a thing.

Now she is doing the same to my 3.  My oldest is now on ADHD meds.  All against my wishes.  And when she was put on them last Christmas I told my fiance that just you wait.  She will diagnose my oldest son the same way and make up symptoms to convince the professionals that it is a fact.  All that year she tried convincing me that he was color blind to explain why he had not learned his letters or numbers or colors.  I knew it was a lie and when I was allowed visits I would work hard with him and got him to the point where he learned them.  She still continued to create diagnoses.  She tried to convince me my daughter was suffering from FAS.  The only problem with that is I never drank any achohol while I was pregnant.  So there was no way she could be.  The whole reason for these diagnoses was to drug up my kids.  Making it easier on her to continue in what she was doing. 

With my oldest son I got the email in August stating that he was diagnosed with ADHD(he was not even 6yrs old yet) and that they wanted to put him on medication.  The symptoms they said he was having were all lies.  None of the symptoms were true.  And I knew this from my constant visits every week.  ADHD does not just turn off.  It is there all the time.  The meds they wanted to put my 6yr old on was a new med out and some of the side effects were:

agitation, nervousness, or anxiety

dizziness or drowsiness

loss of appetite

nausea or vomiting

trouble sleeping

confusion

hallucinations (hearing, seeing, or feeling things that are not actually there) or abnormal thoughts or behaviour

palpitations (feeling your heart beat quickly or irregularly)

sudden high fever

symptoms of depression (e.g., losing interest in your usual activities, feeling sad, having thoughts of suicide - see below)  This one truly frightened me since any med that has this side effect in it causes just this reaction for me so it could for him as well.

symptoms of liver damage (e.g., yellow skin or eyes, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, pale stools, dark urine)

tics or symptoms of Tourette's syndrome (involuntary, sudden body movements or uncontrolled vocal outbursts)

These were just a few of the side effects of the drug they wanted me to put my 5yr old on.  All because the doctors were being lied to about his behaviour so that my mother could have more excuses to explain away anything the kids would then say was going on.  There was no way I was agreeing to it and said so.  I sent them instead a long list of things they could do that didn't require drugs that would help a child with ADHD if he did have it(total doubtful though).  Then this past month my mother stated to everyone that my 3yr old is also ADHD.  And people are taking her seriously.  This woman has had 8 kids in her care(my sister and I, the 3 step kids, and now my 3 kids) and the only one that has no mental disorders is my older sister?  Does no one see a problem with this picture?  Her making up these diagnoses and then researching the symptoms, making wild stories to get the professionals to think she is a caring caretaker so that she can continue to abuse and drug children.  The department refuses to see it.  They see her as a gift from God.  The step kids feel just as I do.  But with all her lies she might end up being able to keep my children and drug them and do irreparable harm.

I have been fighting for all I am worth to over come the abuse and get my kids back.  But for lack of funds to legally fight back the way I need to against the lies I am losing the battle.  I can't find a lawyer that will do it probono.  I can prove all the lies too with emails, the step kids, videos, audio tapes, court records, insurance documents and so on.  I am terrified that I will lose them.  I was able to save the step kids but I failed my own.  And now that she has gotten so good at convincing people she can abuse even worse then she ever did before.  Even now she called one of the people involved in doing assessments on myself and my children(that I passed) and told them that I had a violent personality but present as normal. 

Do I have some mental health disorders?  Yes.  I am diagnosed as bipolar, post traumatic stress disorder(for obvious reasons) and agoraphobia.  My mental health team and the clinical assessor that did a full assessment on me requested by the department all passed me as being stable and able to parent.  Yet because of my mothers lies about how the children behave when a visit happens, lies about number of visits, lies about interactions they witnessed and so on I am being vilified.  And because I have a mental health disorder I am the one that is seen as not safe.  Yet I have no history any where of violence or abuse.  No history of neglect, no history of drugs or acholhe.  Nothing.  She has a history, long history, of violence and physical and psychological abuse and she is see as the Saviour.  What is wrong with this picture?

Why can I not save my own children?

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