“They just labelled me as a ‘bad kid’ or ‘problem child’ rather than someone struggling with a behavioural disorder.”

I am sharing my story of living with Conduct Disorder because I want to actually educate people, especially teachers, on how to treat a Conduct Disorder kid, because our treatment by authority figures in early childhood can really shape the rest of our lives.

From memory, the symptoms I experienced or others detected during early childhood were aggression, starting fights, lack of emotional empathy and guilt, and a lack of respect for authority figures. I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe when having to follow social rules.

I was suspended a lot and after I was caught carrying a weapon I was referred to CAMHS, who made me see a behavioural psychologist. I was diagnosed there, then stayed with CAMHS for the rest of my childhood to late teens. Throughout my whole time at school they were very minimising of my issues. They just labelled me as a ‘bad kid’ or ‘problem child’ rather than someone struggling with a behavioural disorder.

As I got older, the symptoms definitely got a lot worse. I first started breaking the law at age 11 and committing petty crimes at age 13. I was in a really bad place mentally and my Conduct Disorder became the worst it had ever been up to that point. I started abusing substances and engaging in other addictive behaviours such as compulsive sexual behaviour and eating disorders, and getting into more dangerous situations committing more serious crimes and showing a severe lack of impulse control.

The whole time CAMHS failed me over and over again. It was clear they had no idea how to help me and kept giving me colouring books to help with my explosive anger, despite me getting progressively worse each year. CAMHS pretty much failed me again and again, slowly watching me get worse and just continuing to do the bare minimum. I remember a few instances where CAMHS would say without any filter whatsoever that they couldn’t help me.

I remember one time a counsellor I saw through them was stigmatising towards my lack of empathy. They definitely did not have enough understanding of more complex disorders especially Conduct Disorder. For me personally, I think if they had researched and had a greater understanding of the disorder, the ASPD could have definitely been prevented. I’d say personally, a mix of childhood trauma as well as failure by the mental health system lead to me developing ASPD.

I’d say with family relationships, the diagnosis changed everything. Stigma fuelled the way I was treated as a kid, which lead to more parental neglect and the unstable dynamic with others around me because I found it very hard to bond and connect with others due to my aggression and lack of empathy. People distanced themselves from me or were stigmatising. Looking back on it now, I’d say I only ever had very few friends.

Personally for me when I got the ASPD diagnosis, it was a continuation of the same symptoms and there was no decline in them, but I remember at age 17 I was worrying about the ASPD diagnosis knowing that I no longer had Conduct Disorder. I was referred upwards and was diagnosed in a treatment centre through a psychiatrist. I then started the journey of becoming more self aware through recent therapy and trying to look back on the events from the past. So far it’s definitely been more useful. I’m under qualified therapists now who are specialised and actually understand me. I do DBT/schema therapy as well as separate trauma therapy.

People with CD/ASPD are not bad people due to their disorders. Most of us are trauma survivors- we did not choose to develop these disorders and stigmatising our symptoms only isolates us further from getting the help we need. I’m not really open about my diagnosis in person unless I feel close to them. I wouldn’t tell them, whereas online I’m pretty open about it and talk about my experiences. It feels good meeting other people who relate and understand you.

The biggest challenges I’d say for me are definitely the risky behaviours and low impulse control. I’ve put myself in dangerous situations time and time again, and my shallow emotions and apathy definitely feed into it. Apathy can also make it very hard to function and stigma also plays a part in challenges too. The positives for me I’d say are that I’m more logical when making decisions. Despite my lack of emotional empathy, my cognitive empathy usually makes me logically sort problems out with reasoning. I don’t let emotions get in the way of making decisions.