Remember I come from an age very different age where any mental problem could only be one of three things. They saw it as a gradual descent into insanity rather than you can have a mix of issues. I was soon seen as more than a "neurotic" therefore I must be a borderline. Then after a while, they thought I was strange even for that, and tried to pin psychosis on me. "Just admit you hear voices!" they said. What can you say when you don't? Of course you will say no and that will feed into the idea you hide your crazy. So my second diagnosis was "suspicion of schizophrenia". That faded with time.
I somehow managed to get a diagnosis of anxiety despite this, probably because some doctor was more sane than the system. I've always been quite anxious. Not in the terms of GAD though, like those people are anxious all the time because of nothing. I've never been like that.
Then they realized I didn't fit the diagnosis of borderline at all. By then, psychiatry had changed and borderline had become to mean something more than the border between uneasy and batshit crazy. So they had to rethink that. I was diagnosed with depressive PD (even if that had left the manuals) and later schizoid, schizotypal, paranoid and narcissistic PD. When they once again realized I didn't fit that either, I was diagnosed with PD NOS, and afterwards NPD was readded.
When I happened to plunge into depression I couldn't convince the psych of that. I'm sort of the opposite of drama, I express myself with words, often not very impressive ones either. But since they still had PD in my files, I must somehow look for attention! When in fact I was keeping more low key than even normal people. So it took quite while to convince the doc of the depression. That was staring her right in the face. Moron. But something changed when they started diagnosing more with bipolar, it became my docs new pet diagnosis and she tried to fit that on me. That meant she suddenly didn't care so much about PD because it wasn't popular anymore, I could have this cool "new" thing. WIth a doc change that disappeared and was simply replaced by depression with anxiety. Treated the depression got much better and isn't a bother anymore. Before the old doc left, she had heard about this even newer, cooler thing called Asperger's, so maybe I had that! She stopped treating me like if I had been a drama queen and started treating me like a retard. I had self diagnosed a year earlier though, just didn't want to push my luck with her (she was very narcissistic), by saying what I really "had".
But I was sent for proper testing, I mean no more of that guessing shit, but real tests. So I was properly diagnosed AS, plus the old diagnosis of depression with anxiety, that are also correct I feel. The new doc's pet diagnosis though was ADHD, so he sent me for further testing and I came out ADD. AS + ADD totally explains "everything" so all suspicions of ALL PD's were scratched in a heartbeat. (All but the NPD that sort of mysteriously resurfaced, no doc taking responsibility for that, and bipolar that tagged along with an old referral and then was sent back so reappeared because of that even if psychatry itself scratched it, so I think that label is gone now.)
Diagnosing looks straightforward? How can I know what I landed with is correct? In its own context, what things meant back then (a PD described me better than AS, since back then AS was only a diagnosis for very severely autistic people who could not take care of themselves, that has changed A LOT), most my diagnoses were correct. It is new definitions that made them incorrect and the enter neuropsychiatry, versus "We're all born the same with perfect brains".
If I live into the future, I am sure I will see changes in my diagnoses. The whole diagnosing system will collapse and be replaced with something of more sanity. Insanity has always been built into the system. Laymen could see how nutty it was, but it couldn't see it itself. Insight has been very poor in the field of psychiatry, "experts" have always been in denial of the obvious.
What brought me into psychiatry was issues with anxiety. I had no idea what I was in for.