Taking the Knife Out of My Heart: Healing Beyond the Diagnosis

Seventeen years ago, I fell for someone who decimated my heart. He was a classic dismissive avoidant — emotionally unavailable, distant, unable to truly connect. Back then, I didn’t have the words for it. I just knew that the rejection cut deep.

What I didn’t realise at the time was that it wasn’t about me being “not enough.” Dismissive avoidants reject the one who gets closest, not because of that person’s flaws, but because they cannot reciprocate emotionally. That’s their wound — one formed in early childhood, often through neglect or emotional suppression.

Unfortunately, what made this person so hard to forget were the breadcrumbs for years afterwards (meaningless messages to see if I was still an option) - it's a cruelty that stopped me from moving on, trapping me in confusion and heartache.

Understanding this has helped me take the knife out of my heart. I wasn’t truly rejected — I was simply trying to love someone who couldn’t let love in. He lost me, not the other way around. And for the first time in a long time, I’m no longer blaming myself or thinking I’m broken or unworthy.

It’s still painful to recognise that the emotional devastation he caused became the catalyst for a long psychiatric spiral. What followed was years of misdiagnosis, medication overload, and a slow erasure of who I really was. That relationship lit the match, but the system poured the fuel.

Dare I say it — deep diving into my past with an excellent psychotherapist is helping me untangle all of it. And most importantly, it’s helping me find the path to freedom.

Getting off the medications and stabilising my brain chemistry was a huge step, but it was only part of the healing process. The deeper work — the work that actually transforms — lies in addressing the core wounds. We cannot fully heal until we face those roots.

For years I’ve understood, somewhere deep down, that these “disorders” don’t just come out of nowhere. There is always a cause. But psychiatry rarely deals in causes — it deals in labels and prescriptions. When I was diagnosed as “bipolar,” I was told it was lifelong, irreversible. That I’d be medicated forever.

But that narrative isn’t true. It’s a trap dressed up as clarity.

The drugs didn’t save me. They numbed me. Sedated me. Created brutal withdrawal symptoms when I tried to come off them. They masked the pain — they didn’t resolve it. And in doing so, they delayed my healing.

The real freedom began when I stopped medicating the symptoms and started exploring the why. Why I felt so lost. Why that breakup shattered me so completely. Why I ended up in the system in the first place. Through therapy, through reflection, through facing the darker parts of my story — I began to put the pieces back together.

Understanding myself, my past relationships, my family dynamics — it has been the hardest work I’ve ever done. But also the most liberating. Because once you begin to understand your story, it stops owning you.

Healing is possible. Not in a diagnosis. Not in a pill. But in truth, compassion, and deep self-inquiry.

I’m not fully there yet — but I’m on the path. And that, finally, feels like the beginnings of true freedom.

TR