I agree. Diagnosis is just to have a language to communicate amongst professionals and be able to bill insurance. In terms of therapeutic value, they have none and they can also harm. I am glad you found a therapist not focused on them. Great writing!
yea when I finally got my bp1 dx it was very helpful bc I didn't recognize what mania was lol. but I think what made treatment most helpful was that my therapist did not subscribe to the "permanently wrong brain chem" stance and was the first person that talked to me about mental illness as a normal part of life triggered by/related to individual and collective factors. like she would straight up say "work fucking sucks and it's reasonable to be depressed by your job, how can we build a plan to make things bearable." I don't think diagnoses are bad in and of themselves, they aren't what cause these systems of "care" to be messed up. coping skills and guidance from a practitioner that believes in nuance is key.
I’m curious why you stated that your diagnosis of BPD was your “most loathed”. It feels insulting cause why? Why didn’t you feel the need (or even moreso responsibility) to expand on that? As someone with BPD I despise having the condition too, but for you to list all your other diagnoses and signal out BPD as loathsome makes me feel idk weird cause again why? Getting my diagnosis was amy first step of healing but I can recognize that it’ll be more paralyzing for some than I. Anyway, looking forward to your response!
TLDR: diagnoses can be helpful as mapping your starting point, but fully committing to one is I think often pretty harmful and a self fulfilling prophecy.
I love this. I think there is a bit of nuance that could be added though because how the diagnosis is treated is not uniform, either. I agree wholeheartedly that giving a diagnosis in order to predominately prescribe meds is a problem (I would recommend Johann Hari's book on depression where he also talks about his own years long history with this). In my case, receiving the CPTSD diagnosis has been very important in giving gravity to the things I experienced and mapping the starting point for therapy. I have started saying "I'm healing from CPTSD" rather than "I have CPTSD" more often, in order to remind myself it is a transient state. Fortunately my therapist is very literate in how all of the different diagnoses I could be getting overlap (most importantly auDHD and CPTSD). I know it's not common and a priviledge to have this type of support.
What I also wanted to say is that something I see quite often especially on neurodivergent tiktok is people fully identifying themselves with a label to the point of seeing everything they do through that lense, and sometimes rejecting responsibility. I, too, sometimes have the urge to shout BUT I HAVE CPTSD in difficult situations I have problems solving, so I completely understand where it comes from.
I agree. Diagnosis is just to have a language to communicate amongst professionals and be able to bill insurance. In terms of therapeutic value, they have none and they can also harm. I am glad you found a therapist not focused on them. Great writing!
yea when I finally got my bp1 dx it was very helpful bc I didn't recognize what mania was lol. but I think what made treatment most helpful was that my therapist did not subscribe to the "permanently wrong brain chem" stance and was the first person that talked to me about mental illness as a normal part of life triggered by/related to individual and collective factors. like she would straight up say "work fucking sucks and it's reasonable to be depressed by your job, how can we build a plan to make things bearable." I don't think diagnoses are bad in and of themselves, they aren't what cause these systems of "care" to be messed up. coping skills and guidance from a practitioner that believes in nuance is key.
I’m curious why you stated that your diagnosis of BPD was your “most loathed”. It feels insulting cause why? Why didn’t you feel the need (or even moreso responsibility) to expand on that? As someone with BPD I despise having the condition too, but for you to list all your other diagnoses and signal out BPD as loathsome makes me feel idk weird cause again why? Getting my diagnosis was amy first step of healing but I can recognize that it’ll be more paralyzing for some than I. Anyway, looking forward to your response!
I'd suppose it's because this diagnosis is usually laid out in such as way as to make people seem "crazy" and unreliable.
Appreciate your perspective and approach here. Diagnoses become one more thing to balance with reality. What’s me and what’s capitalism.
TLDR: diagnoses can be helpful as mapping your starting point, but fully committing to one is I think often pretty harmful and a self fulfilling prophecy.
I love this. I think there is a bit of nuance that could be added though because how the diagnosis is treated is not uniform, either. I agree wholeheartedly that giving a diagnosis in order to predominately prescribe meds is a problem (I would recommend Johann Hari's book on depression where he also talks about his own years long history with this). In my case, receiving the CPTSD diagnosis has been very important in giving gravity to the things I experienced and mapping the starting point for therapy. I have started saying "I'm healing from CPTSD" rather than "I have CPTSD" more often, in order to remind myself it is a transient state. Fortunately my therapist is very literate in how all of the different diagnoses I could be getting overlap (most importantly auDHD and CPTSD). I know it's not common and a priviledge to have this type of support.
What I also wanted to say is that something I see quite often especially on neurodivergent tiktok is people fully identifying themselves with a label to the point of seeing everything they do through that lense, and sometimes rejecting responsibility. I, too, sometimes have the urge to shout BUT I HAVE CPTSD in difficult situations I have problems solving, so I completely understand where it comes from.