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What diagnosis do I have?
People are often keen to find out what their diagnosis is. This is often because mental health is seen as the same as physical health where each diagnosis describes a different, discrete, condition.
Further research into diagnosis shows that this isn’t always the case. A diagnosis can give a label to what you are experiencing, however, a diagnosis will rarely help you to discover what factors led you to be vulnerable to whatever difficulties that you are experiencing. It is also worth bearing in mind that many different diagnoses hold similar symptoms and so you may read through different mental health problem diagnoses and decide that you fall into the diagnosis for lots of different mental health problems. What might actually be happening is that the symptoms you experience are symptoms that can be found in different diagnostic categories.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have all of these diagnoses, it just really points to one of the main arguments against diagnosis, which is that a lot of mental health problems share common symptoms and so maybe it’s actually better to think about mental health problems as forms and patterns of distress, as opposed to separate, distinct diagnoses that don’t overlap.
With this in mind, I suggest using a diagnosis lightly and paying more attention to what symptoms you are experiencing as opposed to what diagnosis you might fit into. The research suggests that regardless of the symptoms that you are experiencing there are some core factors that are indicated in the majority of mental health problems.
Why am I experiencing emotional difficulties?
What if I told you that whatever you’re experiencing is an understandable response to all the things that have happened to you in your life!
The truth is that normality is on a continuum that gets fuzzier as we start to get into all the variability of our very human experiences and perceptions.
For instance, did you know that some people hear voices that other people cannot hear? This is actually a very normal response to traumatic life experiences and only may require some sort of support if those voices become distressing. It is perfectly normal to have experiences like this and to live a life that you love and value.
Sometimes, it feels as if we’ve become so used to neatly packaging up and pathologising our everyday experiences that we start to fear any experience we have that appears to deviate from what we consider the norm!
And why wouldn’t we?! Societal representations of mental health skew towards the negative and are so exaggerated. They are often stories full of drama, despair, hopelessness! We learn that these are narratives that we do not want to be a part of because success, worth, happiness is not here!
Whatever the experiences that have brought you here (thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, behaviours) are, it’s important to consider three things: do they distress you or those around you? Are they impacting on your daily life? Does it feel as if these experiences are taking up a lot of your headspace?
If any of these resonate with you, this is often an indicator that something needs to change for you. If you are in doubt, it’s a good idea to speak to your local general practitioner or mental health specialist. We sometimes need a human connection to be able to really figure out whether the experiences we have are actually a problem or whether they are just part of the natural ebb and flow of our emotional lives.
For each of these maybe we put them all in black circles and then have the info appear once it has been clicked on rather than having a stream of information like the blog.
When to seek extra support?
Mental Health Resources
#TimeToTalk
How to encourage conversations on mental health in black households
Our guide to helplines and groups
Where to find a black therapist
This PDF lists organisations are where we find the majority of our therapists
Understanding common mental health problems
Read our guide written by Dr Mayowa Aina, Clinical Psychologist
