How Helpful Is A Diagnosis? Are You 'a Problem That Needs To Be Fixed'??

[sea]

So you got a diagnosis, got a treatment, and refused it and were able to accomplish what you wanted.... Which is irrelevant to the fact that there was still a problem in the first place, or a diagnosis in the first place, or a prescribed treatment plan in the first place.... And, clearly, as you just stated, you recognize in hindsight the decision was not smart. Probably because of some sort of consequence either immediate or long term. You missed the point of my example by trivializing.

I could easily have replaced broken leg with, I don't know, necrotizing fasciitis. Which pretty much will stop you from doing what you want to do, as it will eat your face off and kill you :cautious: And as it even says in the front of this website, PTSD can also kill you. I pretty much fail to see the logic in any argument here for how a diagnosis is not helpful. Seriously?

Being told what is wrong and how to fix it is in some way harmful? It is, as you just demonstrated, your choice to do whatever you want to with the knowledge (knowledge which, by the way, even brought the original poster to this very board at all), but having the knowledge itself can do nothing except give you more options.

People talking about how they are "problems waiting to be fixed" and how this is all "wrong and crap and we don't need things outside of ourselves to fix ourselves"........ uh, okay. I spend all day long in my closet talking to my nonexistent crazy dad. If someone is gonna diagnose me with something and then subsequently find a treatment to correspond with that diagnosis to make that stop, I'm all goddamn for it.

It doesn't make me any less of a f*cking person if I have a problem and I need something to help with it. It discredits and frankly disrespects all the people on this website who have sought diagnoses for years, who are being refused treatment, who don't have the resources for treatment, or therapy, who were told stupid shit like they were crazy when they have an unavoidable disorder. People who have been seriously harmed by the traumatic events in their lives. People who are very clearly hurting, and in need of help.

This isn't empowering, it's just denial, and what it's really doing is taking power away from people who have fought for years to get mental health diagnoses even on the f*cking table. If this discussion were about a broken leg, this wouldn't even be a goddamn discussion. But everybody brings in all their baggage when it comes to mental health like it isn't every bit as functional and physical and required as anything else.

 

[Kb3]

When I can say to myself that I am not a problem, everything is actually okay, I am actually okay right here right now, I can begin to be and feel calm, and can see my mind when it starts chasing another worry or problem.

This is fantastic and has been the most powerful thing that I have been able to say to myself too.

I could say a lot of similar things to what you said in your original post and found myself becoming very limited by defining myself through labels.

While sometimes helpful they can also be totally dehumanising as well. It felt very good to break those chains and realise that I am a human being, not a diagnosis.

 

[simplekindofgirl]

And you have every right to feel and think all of that. I am sorry if you felt that I was being disrespectful. I certainly did not intend that. I apologize to you and to anyone here if I have done so. Truly, I am sorry.

 

[simplekindofgirl]

The diagnosis is inarguably helpful. Hugs to all of you, for the courage you have in sharing your experiences, thoughts and feelings about everything in this journey.

 

[Eleanor]

Yikes, I wish ever lingo-slinging dx-happy doc on the planet could read THIS thread! Sea, I think I agree with you about the dx giving you a clearer picture of your options and the necessity of help in many cases, and it being up to you to decide what to do with that information. I think the original concern in the thread was the trouble with Identifying with the Dx - It looks to me like you are an excellent role model for keeping your"self" separate from the diagnosis!:) Maybe some people can heal their PTSD without outside intervention - I don't know. The logic of the thing makes it seem unlikely tho. :( What is the name for the disorder where you are unwilling to help people heal because you want to increase profits? PTSD CAN kill you (and cause you to harm others, wreck marriages etc etc as well) for sure. We've set up a system that requires a label/Dx to gain access to a set of resources for treatment. Thus we've made the label matter in ways additional to those implied in the description that the label summarizes. My opinion - that's too bad. Why not just recognize suffering and treat that? Why require people to fit into a box to get help? (I know, I know, insurance, fraud, etc etc etc, still, it seems we have complexified the thing out of all proportion...)

@ simplekindofgirl, I am wondering how you understand it if not as a pattern? Just to clarify, when I say PTSD is a "pattern" I don't mean its not REAL - just that it is not an object - like a tumor, or a spoon. Dancing is certainly REAL - but there is not a "thing" that is a dance - there have to be bodies (objects) doing the dance (pattern.) If I understand it, PTSD alters how the nervous system reacts to stimuli - and over long periods of time might have some effect on the gross anatomy - but you can't "cut it out" so it's not (strictly speaking) a "Thing". It is helpful sometimes to shift the metaphors we use - patterns can be instantiated or run or suppressed, we can be trapped in them, and so forth. For that matter bones are things - when we say a bone is broken we are naming a disruption in the pattern of normal organization for that bone. A bone is a thing. A break is a pattern. A nervous system is a thing. Sanity, love, thinking, REM sleep, PTSD are all patterns. If I thought PTSD was a thing I would go for "spirit possession" or something like that, and hire an exorcist. (And there are days when I think this might be a good option :devilish:) When my husband is bad and running his mother's script, and I am keeping myself from engaging with him, I often repeat to myself "I will not talk to dead people, I will not talk to dead people." So exorcism, if it worked, would seem like a natural solution to me!

It seems to me that what sea and srain are both saying is something like this: Because we are all vastly complex dynamic systems (biologically speaking) it is important to correctly identify what "ails" us if we hope to shift the operation of the system (aka pattern). If somebody has schitzophrenia, we think altering the chemistry of the brain can alter the function of the brain in ways that make the pattern of thought/affect/behavior more normal. But if they have PTSD - the drugs won't do what we have in mind. Or even worse they will do part of what we have in mind, but make other things worse, confusing matters even further. So correct diagnosis IS crucial - both to treating and to FINDING better treatments. But that's a different problem than treating any particular person as a helping professional - or in dealing with a disorder in yourself or in a loved one. So the territory is rife with possibility for misunderstanding, well-meaning injury, and just plain frustration and hurt.

 

[simplekindofgirl]

Elanor- PTSD, as I see it - it is a thing, AND a pattern. When I read the post in which you stated it as a pattern, I had misread it and believed that you were referring to it as a pattern based on it existing in only symptoms. I understand in your further post that I was incorrect in reading how you were explaining it. But I do still see the bone as a thing, and the break also as thing. They are both things. I associate the word pattern with things that are at least somewhat repetitious. However, like I said, how I read the initial post, and now reading this one, I understand how you were using the word as a representation, which in that case made me incorrect and not you.

The truth is, with my diagnosis- nothing about my treatment has changed. All it did was put a name to it, appropriately so. But my treatment remains unchanged. My physicians agree with my position in declining to use pharmaceutical medications because of the stage of my kidney disease. So for me, the diagnosis was just a branding. It changed nothing for me. Nothing at all. I understand that I am the minority. But this is how I see it, and this is why.

 

[Eleanor]

As an example, my neuro-opthamologist (you can't get much more specialized than that) who is good at what he does, and unlike some I have no issues with.

Anything with neuro in front generally has the bedside manner of a banana slug. Wait, no, sorry, banana slugs will acknowledge your presence by waving their antenna (or whatever those things on the front of them are.) Clam maybe?

I find that if I introduce myself as "Dr." they talk to me more. I don't know that anyone has ever checked to see if I was a doctor, or what I was a doctor of. So you could probably use this gambit even if you are not one :tup:

I look back now and it seems utterly crazy to me. They didn't even know my dad was going around the house with an axe, just this close to killing us all, using it obliterate objects around the house and threatening us with it . How could they not know?

Beyond crazy. I wonder if people will start following Dr.Phil's example and video taping people in their homes? In your case such a thing might quickly have revealed that you were merely the 'identified" "patient". I've actually thought about putting a camera or two in our house for us, because I'd like to see the details of the interactions to get a better handle on what is going on when conflicts escalate (or not). Maybe they didn't want to know. Maybe it was so far out conceptually that it was not a "live" possibility for them. Maybe they were just shut down generally. Another good reason for the "be here now" strategy is that it seems to make it more likely that we notice what is in front of our faces.

I won't allow any one to label me any more--because, as an adult, I do have that choice.

There is some language (I forget which) that apparently doesn't every use the verb "to be" to connect people and characteristics. So in that language you never say "You are fat" or "I am poor" or "I am smart" the just don't. I am trying to unlearn such formulations - which is interesting, it really does "loosen" up one's thinking/perception. So when I don't think "He is a jerk" about a particular person I work with, I am better able to deal with whatever he is doing right now, which may or may not be jerky. :rolleyes:

 

[Kb3]

I find that if I introduce myself as "Dr." they talk to me more. I don't know that anyone has ever checked to see if I was a doctor, or what I was a doctor of. So you could probably use this gambit even if you are not one :tup:.

You are hilarious Eleanor - I may just give this a try sometime.:roflmao:

 

[Eleanor]

When I read the post in which you stated it as a pattern, I had misread it and believed that you were referring to it as a pattern based on it existing in only symptoms.

Actually, when I wrote the first post I think that is exactly what I did mean! (It certainly appears to be what I wrote! :rolleyes:) So you didn't misread at all. I guess what I should have said was most folks who apply the label do so just on the basis of the symptoms (and that is proper and ok) and I fear that many of them only MEAN that - and don't look much deeper to try to understand what it IS for the sufferer or how it works in various contexts. I am learning, writing in this thread, that the problem of reference is very acute in this subject area. It is just hard to keep delimiting the context so that "PTSD" means the thing you want it to mean. Interesting.

I am glad you have a good team of people helping you. I wish everyone could see the label as just a technical term in a chart, and not a life sentence, or a moral judgment or whatever. I sometimes think there are only two big challenges in this life: the first is to fully believe that I actually totally exist, the second is to fully believe that everyone else does as well.

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

The only difference really being my mindset. Before the diagnosis I would think of things such as, why am I so easily agitated, why is my anger becoming rage, why am I so uncontrollably dysfunctional, why am I avoiding the things that I used to love- ok, depression is what they say, so depression is what it is and I will just rage on. I am depressed therefore it is all my fault, and I am just a jerk. With the diagnosis came the realization (over time, not immediately) that maybe it is not entirely all my fault.

This, and some similar things Srain said, are exactly the crux of the damage it did to me.

I was not old enough, nor did I have the information, to understand that all this did not mean that I was bad, this was not my fault, and I was not crazy. Or to filter out that attitude when it was there, and realize, they might see it that way, but that is not true, because...

I had no other perspective or experience with which to see myself any other way. I didn't know about triggers back then. All I knew was what they said, and how I lost control of my emotions, how I reacted to things, how I self injured. Of course to me that just reaffirmed for me that what they said was true. Even if those reactions where in response to THEM, I didn't understand that. I just felt everything was my fault. I was bad, I was crazy, I couldn't trust myself, everything is my fault, and there is something seriously wrong with me as a human being, and it can't be fixed.

You can't even imagine how angry I was when I found out everything I had believed and been told was a lie. How there were reasons, I was how I was. Reasons I was so depressed. Reasons I self injured. That yes, in fact there were problems in my family all along just how I had felt there were, but no one but me was willing to see or admit to that fact. It wasn't all my fault.

And today? I still feel like everything is all my fault. It's something I am working on in therapy, I don't feel what happened to me with the mental health system is my fault. But that is about it. And if anything happens to me that is bad in my current day to day life? I feel like it's my fault. No pun intended, but "it's my fault" is my "default setting".

I just thank God I know I am no longer crazy, because had things continued on how the were, had I remained convinced that my thoughts and feelings were not only invalid but flat out crazy, I would probably be dead right now.

Fortunately for me, I am a very stubborn and persistent person, and have never been the type to sit back and just let people dictate to me.

So yes, diagnoses (and lack of, also) can be extremely damaging. And nowhere in there, was I ever diagnosed with PTSD, it was not even considered. Depression, which was accurate, and I also felt was my fault because I was 14 when it got out of control and I felt like I should have been able to pull myself out of it and not let that happen to me. That was about it. Except previously I had also been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder--which you would have thought would be a red flag that it was more than just depression.

But, even the depression wasn't taken seriously for years after I became severely and suicidally depressed. My first effort, at the beginning, when I knew something was really wrong with me, and I knew it had gotten to the point where I could no longer help myself, was met with "well, it's just normal teenage mood swings." I wanted to DIE. Every day was a struggle to live. Even after I sort of managed to convince this person that this was more than that, they finally agreed to see me once a week, I went for the first one, and they never showed up. They had forgotten, and never followed up (and yes they were aware that I was suicidal). After that, I wasn't asking any one for help, since it had been hard enough to do in the first place and I had difficulty trusting people.

So instead, I went on like that for several more years before eventually everything fell apart.

I was failed by that system so many times. Who knows what a difference that would have made in my life if someone had actually DONE something before things got as bad as they did. As it was, I never even managed to finish high school due to not just all the problems I had, but the problems that they heaped on top of those problems, which in turn created more problems. An extreme loss of self confidence and self distrust being a couple, in addition the whole it's my fault/I'm bad/I'm crazy/there is something wrong with ME... something wrong with my feelings and my thoughts, something wrong with my perceptions thing.

And I could have died anywhere along the way as a result of what they did. I was just strong enough to hang on for dear life.

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

Eleanor,

I think your last post, just above mine, pretty much hits the nail on the head where all this is concerned.

(And if you really are a dr., lol, I have no issues with that or you, only ones who were in my life long ago. I find your posts very insightful.)

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

Eleanor, before I posted this last post, I had not read your response to my post.

I want to say how very much that means to me, and I really appreciate it :) :) :) very much.

And, LOL, you are too funny, I love your sense of humour.

Thank you,

Phoenix_Rising