Hi
@Solara
I strongly suspect that there are very few situations in which there is only one course of action that can be taken to reach a given goal.
If we define our terms:
I'll make the assumption that the OP's
"goal" is to reduce their symptoms to a manageable level, at which they can get on with life, work, play and interpersonal relationships.
To do that, requires both an assessment of what (I'll call it "proper function", I suppose it could equally be called "normality" or "good health") might consist of or look like.
and,
an assessment of how and where the OP's current situation differs from what ever that desired end point might consist of or look like.
I haven't written "feels like" because the only person who can "feel" it is the OP.
Implicit in that is some form of "evaluation"
Eh, I'd go with the "get evaluated" route instead of the "live in a world of paranoia and fear and wonder WTF is wrong with you indefinitely" route.
I'm not completely disagreeing with you.
What is an evaluation? and is it synonymous with "diagnosis"?
What follows is probably going vary from place to place. The received wisdom among posters who come to this site appears to be that "only a psychiatrist can make a diagnosis"
My own, very cynical take on that, is that that has more to do with job demarcation lines and restrictive practices (modern day guilds) than it has to do with finding out why someone doesn't feel like they are functioning in the way that they want to, and finding a route for them to get to a stage where they feel that they are functioning in a way that is more to their liking.
Individual psychiatrists vary widely in their outlook, however, if we can take the image presented in the DSM and ICD as defining some sort of a mainstream paradigm (I hope that I'm not constructing a straw man here in my attempts to keep this to a readable length); Then psychiatrists are looking at collections of behaviours and self reported feelings which generally fall onto a spectrum, and if they check the boxes, then a "disorder" is diagnosed. A large section of the current paradigm, is that these are due to "chemical imbalances in the brain" which can be "corrected" by swallowing very expensive pills that often have nasty side effects.
There are a huge number of criticisms of that;
- dysfunctions are being defined without any reference to what correct function might look like, and by definition, most of those spectra pass through the undefined "normal".
- The number of symptoms from a check list which is required to diagnose, has zero scientific basis - in the case of depression - the man who set the number later said "it felt about right" about the number required.
- In the case of people with childhood trauma (many of us here) there are about eight or ten, overlapping "diagnoses" listed, all with the same symptoms.
- The "chemical imbalance" has never been satisfactorily demonstrated.
There are some (the late Thomas Szasz was one well known example) who even from a highly respected level in the field of psychiatry (Szasz was a Professor of Psychiatry), reason that the entire medical model which psychiatry uses, is falsely medicalizing something which is not medical at all.
Away from the "medical model" and writing a "diagnosis" onto your medical records, where it may or may not result in adverse consequences for you.
There are other schools of thought, both within psychiatry and psychology, which can demonstrate at least as good an initial improvement in trials as the best published drug trials (we only rarely get to see the dud drugs trials, those which failled to demonstrate any statistically significant improvement), and usually a far better continuing improvement than the drugs - as they teach coping skills which drugs cannot teach. Contrary to the idea of a single diagnosed and medicatable "illness", those other methods, such as CBT, mindfulness, and the somatic techniques such a yoga, do not require a single "diagnosis" but can work on teaching us how to cope with the symptoms which we experience in the present. other techniques such as EMDR or EFT for flashbacks, again do not require a specific diagnosis to be used.
I, personally think that it is important to point out that there is no single path that is "right" for everyone.
Assessment and evaluation is not necessarily synonymous with
"diagnosis" by a psychiatrist. and they need not result in something being written on your medical records, where it may be used or abused for the rest of your life, and perhaps beyond.
Psychiatry, even though it comprises many schools of thought, is just one career path and job demarcation within a much wider field of possible sources of understanding and possible help. There are others, at least as good and perhaps better.
Honestly [DLMURL="https://www.myptsd.com/c/members/28019/"]@Anarchy[/DLMURL], I'm surprised you're even on the forum as guess what? There is no privacy online.... You can be discovered here, too!
I could indeed be discovered here, but I rely on the relative incompetence of the state at finding insignificant needles, and the large size of the internet haystack.
however, it is certain that I would be discovered if it were written on my medical records. I am required to grant bureaucrats access to my medical records for several of the things which I do in connection with my work. If the information is not on my medical records, then it cannot be mis-used.
Paranoia is a strong term; I'm probably a little older than you (I'm round about a half century, give or take), certainly up until I was in my twenties, people were still being coercively detained and "treated" in psychiatric institutions (including in America) for being gay, and the united state was still funding coerced eugenic sterilization for "disorders" as trivial as being too short sighted to see the classroom black board, in Sweden.
I had some same sex relationships in my teens (when the legal age of "consent" here was 21, and, although it was long before I became sexually active, homosexual acts were criminal offences in Britain in my lifetime), I'm short sighted (and also need reading glasses -middle age sucks), and I have considerable investment in a skill set that before my symptoms took me down about five years ago, earned me very good money for things like rock blasting.
Even if having a diagnosis on my medical records wasn't going to cause me problems in the present (it would cause me problems in the present), there is absolutely no guarantee that that benign state of affairs would persist for ever.
