I want to apologise on behalf of the medical community.

We were wrong.

I believe that millions of you have been told you were disordered, broken even and needed treatment. Told your anxiety, depression, stress and exhaustion were your own symptoms that needed managing and even fixing.

You were labelled as dysregulated, deficient, hyperactive, with mood disorders and possibly even personality disordered.

You were given years of strong psychotropic medication that sedated your nervous system and were then told because when you tried to come off it your body rebounded and then sold a story “well this is evidence that you have a problem so you can’t possibly exist without the medication”

I believe we got it completely wrong.

What if you were all along living without validation of your neurodivergent brain and nervous system, trying desperately to survive in a broken system that was slowly destroying your spirit.

What if you were instead asked to describe your inner experiences and worked with you to design a life that you could thrive in.

My favourite saying is this:

If a plant starts to wither and looks wilted we don’t diagnose it as having “growth deficient disorder” and blame its biology instead we bring it back to life by changing the environment and giving it some love and attention. We even speak to it kindly and make sure it is watered, and given enough sunlight.

Why oh why don’t we do that with people?

Stay human,

Dr Kim ✨