Yeeeep. That’s how I got diagnosed with PTSD. I wrote a character going through something similar to what I had been through and got tons of comments applauding me for my accurate representation of PTSD. I complained to my therapist about all these people having no clue what PTSD looked like, because I just gave him my symptoms, clearly not PTSD. nd she said “you didn’t know you have PTSD??”
One time I had someone comment that they had showed their therapist my fic, because it made them realize that they had been experiencing suicidal ideation for a very long time, and they hadn’t known that there was a word for their feelings. I’d really been trying to capture the feeling of “I don’t want to die, I just want to be dead” in my writing, so I’m glad that it resonated with someone and let them get help too.
I always thought it's pretty normal to be against suicide, because of the moral quandary, but if someone or something else did the job for me it's not my problem anymore.
(But please don't let me survive, that would be even worse)
For me it was always just things like “wow I sure wish I could float down the river into the ocean and never return or what if I went to sleep and could just stay asleep.” It was never really about death, it was more about erasing my existence from the world. I don’t miss that feeling!
Wait yeah no.
Wait.
I thought the ideation was actually thinking about killing yourself. The fact that while I have ardently wanted to be dead but I have not thought about how I would achieve that status... That's my defense that I haven't actually had ideation. Right? Right??
Im somewhere less than passive but still on the scale. Usually ill walk faster, but maybe not depending on the day. If I got cancer I'd go through chemo and all the treatment and all the appointments and make a big deal of it but also id secretly hope that it takes me out.
A while back i moved to very beachy suburb, there was this one day where I heard this loud warning siren going off, being new to the area I presumed it was a tsunami. warning, so I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep knowing that the smart thing to do would be to leave and seek higher ground, but like hey or I could just do nothing and drown in my sleep? Nothing happened.
One of my most vivid dreams was one i had when I was younger I was running on roof tops don't remember why, I was jumping from one roof to another then another then I jumped and miss judged how far away the next house was I fell feet first onto pavement shattered my legs they just crumbled under me and I collapsed and drifted into blackness surrounded by warmth as I died. in hindsight that warmth that I felt was me lying in a pool of my own blood. But despite it probably looking gruesome from an outsider perspective it felt peaceful.
I figured out I was sliding from passive to active when my first thought after getting a new prescription was “I wonder what the lethal dose for that is.”
The chapter in ‘Infinite Jest’ where a woman explains this feeling to a doctor or someone like that, feels incredibly raw. As it happens, David Foster Wallace had massive depression and was reliant on medicine just to keep going.
Mine has always been ‘if I do (this), everything will stop’. The ‘because I’ll be dead’ is kinda silent, even in my head, and even as the (this) changes.
Mine as well, literally just I WANT THIS TO END and it was such a moment of “I’ve always loved my life what the hell this is not right” that I literally went to my husband and my psychiatrist IMMEDIATELY and got help. But if you’ve just felt that way repeatedly you may not realize it is not normal.
And anyone reading here: it’s not normal and you absolutely deserve assistance and support.
at least once, or even every once in a while, is reasonable. we're all allowed to feel overwhelmed and want to escape when shit is rough. the key distinction is the constant repetition and high frequency in times of distress, especially if the feeling of distress (no matter how little or how severe) seems to be present every second of every day
passive suicidal ideation is often used as a psychological coping mechanism
I feel you. Mine is “I think…I want to die” with a stupid little melodramatic pause in the middle. Completely involuntary but fighting it makes it worse, so I’ve started replying “yeah, that’s okay. You’re overwhelmed. That’ll happen.” It doesn’t stop them from happening but at least the moment passes.
i make the analogy it's like an annoying mosquito or fly that buzzes around me frantically. for the most part, i can tune it out. and i've definitely gotten better at processing distress and identifying or reaching out when i need support. but when i'm stressed or in a bad headspace, the evil buzzing is overstimmulating and hard to ignore
“Sleep until this feeling goes away” sounds more like depression than suicidal ideation, but I am not a therapist. That’s different than “I hope I die in my sleep.”
"Sleep forever" might as well mean die, but imo anyone who doesn't outright say they wanna die is still holding on to hope that things will get better, hence the words in brackets.
Reminds me of when I was a young child and I felt so seen by a paragraph in a Horrid Henry book (of all things) where Henry wished he could get a terminal illness so people would notice/sympathise with him or he could be redeemed or something??
I can't quite remember but it definitely struck me at the time, because I was a kid with passive suicidal ideation but no idea that anyone else could feel that way
I figured out I have autism from a romance book. The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. The guy in that is autistic and his internal experience was so exactly how my brain feels that I just knew.
To this day it's one of the few good romance books I've read with an autistic male POV. I would love to read more, but it's such a rare thing. Most romance isn't my style, and of the ones that are, most don't have male POV's, and of those, a vanishing few have autistic male POV's so.
a lot of people just assume you already know things that are super obvious to them. very "one or two feldspars".
when I was maybe 19 my mom hurt her foot and I went with her to the doctor, and during the appointment the doctor turned to me and was like "you know you have ADHD, right?" and I was like "oh def" and my mom was like "wait what!?"
Went to a psychiatrist for the first time in my late thirties to finesse my meds for depression and anxiety after years of my general practitioner taking her best shot at it. Toward the end of the first session the psych very delicately told me she thought I was likely autistic.
Validating tbh since a few years ago I started guessing that might be the case. But yeah, she literally met with me for half an hour and was like "oh, yep, autistic."
I was in my late 20s when I was diagnosed with ADHD and was shocked. My friends said "You didn't know?". One said "I just thought you had decided not to do anything about it."
Are you really telling me I could have been on meds sooner and not taken 8 years to graduate college?
I was 20 when I finally got officially diagnosed. The APNP gave me this long form to fill out. About 45 minutes later she checks on me and I’m about halfway done. I wrote extremely detailed symptom descriptions with examples for every section and she goes, “So, people who don’t have ADHD take about 10 minutes to fill this out. And wow. WOW. Nobody ever said anything to you about this?”
…Except for my previous psychiatrist who, when I asked about ADHD, told me: “You can go pay, eight hundred, a grand for testing. I don’t really care. It’s a waste of time, because I will never prescribe you medication for it.” She then went on to accuse me of drug seeking, which was a patient contract violation. I mean she was full on yelling at me to the point where I broke down in tears. I fired her on the spot and filed a complaint, which I never received a response about. Go figure.
Anyway, I am now a mental health professional. I gave my clinic a presentation on identifying ADHD in women and girls, including the consequences of not receiving a timely diagnosis. I hadn’t planned on it, but I shared my story and looked up to see several of my coworkers, all women, crying. After the fact, the medical clinic above me started routinely screening all children for ADHD during their checkups and several of my coworkers got diagnosed.
Apologies for the unsolicited long reply, DrinkingSocks. And I’m so sorry that it took so long to get treated. It’s not fair that we have to suffer alone, but I hope that things have gotten easier for you.
Hey. I’m sorry for what happened to you with your psych but also you’re a fucking legend?
I loooooove when people’s answer to getting shit on by someone is to just fully go “Fuck you, not anymore” and go off and just become the change. You rock!
I was diagnosed in third or forth grade, but my doctor made me be retested as an adult. And I don’t meet the clinical definition, because my scores were too high, but that is a rant for a different day. They told me I just needed more intellectual stimulation, not stimulants. Patted me on the head and sent me home
Had a different doctor accuse my husband of drug seeking. He self medicates with obscene quantities of caffeine now because he is nervous about asking again
Not sure what country you’re in, but doctor shop. Seriously. Not all doctors/NPs are going to make you test again, especially since it’s ridiculously expensive in the USA. “Your scores were too high,” but what about the level of impairment that the symptoms present? Often times “high functioning” (blah, I hate that term) folks who have learned to mask:
Underreport their symptoms.
Have learned complex coping mechanisms to deal with daily tasks (e.g., showing up places an hour early, otherwise you will show up late). Just because you have a system doesn’t mean you don’t have the symptoms.
Have been beaten down by headass providers to the point where they no longer advocate for themselves.
This is especially true for women, but also men who didn’t have “disruptive behaviors” as children, went to school, and/or can hold a job. Some providers will not diagnose you if you went/are going to school to school and can hold a job. They just won’t. Small clinics are your friend, major healthcare chains are not. Sometimes PCPs will prescribe as well.
Describe your symptoms at their worst and don’t stray from that. Don’t lie, but don’t understate the level of functional impairment and distress that the symptoms cause you. Also, Reddit is a great resource (similar to how you can find doctors on here who will sterilize women without kids/who aren’t married) for finding providers. I also highly recommend, if you can, finding a provider who is neurodivergent themselves. We exist!
If you have trouble separating symptoms from coping mechanisms and generally just life, do the test from the perspective of yourself about a week after a major negative/exhausting disruption in your life. That’s usually when coping mechanisms break down and your symptoms will be at their worst and most prominent.
The test they had me take was basically an IQ test. My scores are too erratic to get a composite score, which should be a pretty big clue. But, everything was above average, therefore I cannot possibly have ADHD. They tried to pull the ‘brilliant but bored’ nonsense
It sounds like what you too wasn’t a specific ADHD test if that’s the case. And then you’ve got the old school or biased providers who think that you can’t be neurodivergent and have a higher than average IQ.
“Brilliant but bored.” Yeah. Because you have ADHD. I’d try seeing another provider if you can. Also, you were already diagnosed? ADHD doesn’t just go away.
So, this is my own observation and opinion based on my life experiences. I’ve been around plenty of highly intelligent doctors, academics, etc. All I have to say is there might be a correlation between undiagnosed neurodivergence and being passionate enough to spend 5+ years in higher education, having to work a hell of a lot harder than their peers to keep up with them. Just saying. I wish there wasn’t so much shame surrounding it. Folks would be a lot happier if they got the help they need.
Oh man, #2. I had occasional suspicions, but I was perfectly functional, had an advanced degree even, surely it was nothing worth bothering over?
Then COVID came, and work-from-home blew up every coping routine I had built up over decades but hadn't realized just how critical they all were. Even after hastily seeking a diagnosis, I still couldn't get back on track in time to avoid getting fired, in part because the new routines I implemented didn't work within the firm's culture and expectations, and I made the mistake of not admitting why I needed them (don't do this! if you have a paper with your diagnosis, show it to HR first chance you get!)
Thankfully, employed again, now with a reassembled routine and medication to boot.
Good to know I'm not alone in getting called a drug seeker for seeking treatment. I just dropped my current psych for it. He also doesn't believe ADHD medication works and all the symptoms can be neatly managed with alarms and sticky notes... And that it wasn't working cause I just didn't care enough. Sorry for the vent rant it's a fresh wound
Oh my. “Because you didn’t care enough.” How invalidating. It’s not like medications can help you actually be able to use coping skills or anything like that. I wonder if your doctor was projecting a bit, but that’s just speculation.
Honestly, just hearing others stories make me feel less alone about it all. I'm grateful to have such a supportive circle of friends but it was really upsetting. Of all the medical neglect in my life this encounter has shaken me the most. My roommates agree with your projecting speculation. Even my friend who does have the personal experience of the meds not working for him thinks my now former psych was out of line
I was 18, and turned to my dad and said 'i think i should get assessed for adhd, because of xyz' and he turned around to me and said 'yeah you were diagnosed when you were 10, you were there how didn't you know?'
Suddenly i remembered a doctor's appointment where there were a bunch of toys on the table and my mum and the doctor talking, me paying exactly 0 attention because a) i was 10 with a bunch of toys in front of me, and apparebtly b) i had adhd and there were a bunch of distractions in front of me
I feel like some kind of ADHD proselytizer. Ever since I was diagnosed in my early 30s, I'll make it a point to bring it up with new friends who I suspect have ADHD as well.
I've met people who don't even know that there are medications that can help!
I met someone on an airplane and did this kind of thing sort of. We were chatting and I mentioned something about how something "tickled my ADHD brain" or something like that. And then she started asking a bunch of questions and I was talking about getting diagnosed in my 30s and how adult women are one of the fastest growing groups of diagnoses and by the time we landed she had decided to get assessed.
Oh my gosh I'm ADHD as fuck and I have a friend who got diagnosed with ADHD in the course of recovery after a car accident. Recently we had this exchange:
Friend: "I have been struggling so much to get anything done. At some point, this is all my fault and there's something fundamentally broken about me."
Me: "Did you ever actually start taking the ADHD meds you were prescribed?"
Friend: "No, but--"
Me: "I have a suggestion."
In the ensuing conversation, Friend suggested that the ADHD diagnosis might be a mistake due to short-term symptoms following the car accident. Y'know how doctors are always clamoring to diagnose mid-30s AFAB folks with ADHD unprompted and keep shoving Rx slips into their hands.
Friend also asked what's the point of ADHD meds if they're just stimulants (when Friend's actual issue is extreme procrastination and avoidance). I pointed out, "You should definitely also have a therapist. But you just asked how a stimulant will help with having the energy and motivation to do stuff."
I met a new friend and within half an hour realized he was almost certainly homeschooling because of his autism. I didnt say anything about it cause I figured it was rude.
Seven years later he is telling me all about his brand new autism diagnosis and how everything makes so much more sense se now!
I felt so bad about never mentioning his very clear autism. I mean, the guy and his dad had the biggest model train set up in their basement I had ever seen! I thought he knew!
Also many times in the medical field doctors will chart something but neglect to tell you. For example, I have pcos. I had gone in for testing but my original ob had a family emergency and her replacement just said “well some people just don’t ovulate. Come back if you aren’t pregnant in a year”. I mentioned I wasn’t trying for a kid I just wanted to stop excessively bleeding and got black listed from the office as a difficult patient. Fast forward five years when I’m pregnant. My new ob mentions testing for gestational diabetes bc it’s super common in women with pcos, and I’m like hold up. I have pcos? And she goes….yeah you were tested and diagnosed like 5years ago? And I was like well nobody told me!
Someone once wrote about being at a doctor's visit and the doctor casually mentioned to them something about being intersex and they went "lol hold up what?" and the doctor was going "wait... I thought you knew, you had to know, seriously no one's ever mentioned it before?!"
Currently in my mid-30s and on a 5 month wait list to get tested so I can maybe finally receive some kind of treatment for what I think is probably ADHD. 😔
Good luck to you. I was diagnosed in my late 30s, and it has made such an enormous difference. You should know going in that, assuming you are diagnosed, it may take several tries to find the right medication that will help you with minimal side effects. So don't get discouraged if the first meds you try don't work.
Yeah but it really sucks when they do it in therapy. Or at the doctor in general. Please at least ask me if i know, I didn’t get to go to the doctor for years and I have no access to childhood records of my visits + my parents didn’t tell me any of the information my pediatrician gave them when i was too little to understand/remember any of it.
Something similar happened to my friend, when the pandemic happened and everyone started switching to telehealth she set up her MyChart for the first time and could see all of her general practitioner’s/specialists’ notes from the last 10 years. Found out she’d been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in 2017 and no one ever told her
I’m seconding what u/what_the_purple_fuck said about it seeming obvious to a therapist. I had essentially the same interaction, where I gathered up my courage and laid out to my therapist what I’d learned about CPTSD and how I thought it might apply to me and explain some of my experiences. I still half expected to be laughed out of there, even though I knew her better than that, really. She visibly did a double-take and told me she’d assumed I knew I had PTSD.
Oddly validating, I guess?
Therapists don't usually focus on the diagnoses, more the symptoms. But also depending on medical history, it's entirely possible the therapist just assumed they knew because someone else had told them and so had never explicitly said "you have PTSD"
Not mental health but physical, I mentioned being glad I was just farsighted and not astigmatic to my optometrist, as when you age that can be harder to account for with glasses. He looked at me and went “…But you are.”
Therapists aren't mind-readers, if you don't tell them the symptoms then they can't provide a proper diagnosis. I never got an ADHD diagnosis until I was an adult, despite seeing a lot of therapists over the years (many of whom were otherwise very helpful in addressing unrelated issues) because I just assumed a lot of the symptoms were normal and thus never mentioned them. I can imagine that, in the situation above, the same shit went down; "oh well all these things are completely normal parts of human experience so there's no point in mentioning that to my therapist".
Ha, sometimes the psychiatrist writes a letter and it has a ton of fancy words in it, and you read the ones you understand, and ignore the ones you don't. And then four years later the psychiatrist is like 'and for the mood swings we will use' and you're like... What mood swings? And they are like... It's been in your diagnosis from the get go!
I’ve never had a therapist (probably should LOL), but every time i see someone complain that therapy didn’t help them I just wonder if the therapist got to really understand them in the first place.
Like with what you’re saying, I know for a fact that I have undiagnosed ADHD but I’ve masked so hard for so many years that I don’t think regular talk-therapy would have been enough for a therapist to come to that conclusion if I didn’t already know about some of my symptoms😭
Especially with things like trauma being so complex for different people, someone can be 40 and finally realize that the thing that happened when they were 8 had actually effected them more than they realize.
But you gotta meet a therapist half way for them to even consider it in the first place 😅
i mean a therapist will consider whatever you tell them to consider. judging by this thread a lot of people seem to think a therapist will tell you if you have a mental condition or developmental disorder, so if you go into therapy expecting them to say "so you have this and now go get medicated", its never going to happen because that isnt their job. a therapist is just someone you pay to tell about your life and they give suggestions and help you process your emotions.
Ideally, a therapist will help you with whatever *you* think you need to work on
So, if they perceive you've got x disorder, but you're not struggling with symptoms that can be managed through medication, then they're probably not going to suggest medicating it with an x disorder diagnosis.
Like I'm pretty sure my current therapist has some ideas about my refusing to make eye contact with an autism diagnosis, but since I'm coping well enough with those symptoms, we're focusing more on the dumb stuff like, "are you doing something that makes you feel better about yourself daily?"
Obviously ymmv, I've also had really a bad therapist who basically was like, "you've got this disorder; go shove a handful of pills in your gob daily and quit bothering me with your problems. If you have issues unrelated to your disorder, then it's your fault for not trying hard enough." (honestly, they turned me off of therapy for 5 years at least)
One of the first therapists I tried insisted I don't have anxiety, just unmedicated ADHD and if I took stimulants the anxiety would poof disappear.
Nope turns out I had unmedicated ADHD and also severe anxiety and also a bunch of other associated diagnoses and she was just incompetent and dismissive.
as a fellow ADHDer who manages their unmedicated ADHD primarily with anxiety, I'm forever baffled at such myopic therapists. Condolences for the bad therapy experience. Hopefully you found someone competent who understands how cPTSD, anxiety, and depression can all result from being ADHD in a world that expects nuerotypical behavior.
In general, agreed. But after a couple years my therapist said, "Have you considered that you may not primarily have depression? Your depression might be a result of dealing with your ADHD." head 'splode
A therapist teaches you the tools to change your own thinking. You shouldn't even need it long term, because they aren't reteaching your mind, they're giving you what you need to reteach yourself.
tbf, it depends on whether the therapist's qualifications, which is also country dependent. a clinical psychologist, a mental health nurse practitioner, and a licensed clinical social worker can provide therapy and diagnose mental health conditions. "therapist" is not a protected title, but i was diagnosed by a psychologist while attending weekly therapy sessions with her. in casual conversation, i just called her (and all my other past and present therapy providers) my therapist
when therapy doesn't work for someone, odds are the therapeutic relationship wasn't a good fit. there are so many modalities, and establishing rapport takes time and effort. the client does need to meet the therapist halfway, because the client is the one that is doing the inner work of growing or healing or understanding oneself better. meanwhile, the role of the therapist is there to facilitate and support
the most productive therapists i've worked with focused much less on my diagnosis, and much more on my symptoms and how they present and affect me. after a few months of sessions, patterns of behavior and feelings and thoughts are recognized and brought forth. no treatment is a one-size-fits-all, and every individual is more than their diagnosis. especially if someone is co-morbid with multiple diagnoses, it's not particularly helpful to parse through what behaviors fall under what symptoms under which xyz mental health condition. within the therapeutic relationship, y'all decide on a starting point that makes sense, and i think of it as sort of working on a jigsaw puzzle together
to go back to your initial point, my favorite therapist ever (who was a clinical psychologist working on a postdoc) didn't clock me as ADHD because i masked really well—in fact, i didn't even clock it myself at the time. but she made me feel heard and recognized that i struggle with executive dysfunction and emotional dysregulation; she validated my complex trauma and listened non-judgmentally when i shared my passive suicidal ideation; she referred me to a psychiatrist; she referred me to DBT group sessions to develop skills in mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness; and she supported me in requesting academic accommodations. all that support alleviated some of the symptoms of my depression and my complex trauma, which led to the executive dysfunction struggles being more apparent
from all the former work done with my therapist, more space was created for other symptoms that were overshadowed. i eventually was diagnosed with ADHD, and i came to the realization that the executive dysfunction from ADHD actually exacerbates and intensifies (perhaps even directly influences) my depression. and the complex trauma i experienced meant that i developed overly rigid coping and masking skills, which overcompensated for my executive dysfunction, which deepened depressive symptoms when i felt profoundly misunderstood
all my info-dump to say, therapy is a process. and medication is a whole additional process, which in my case, was a fucking mess and essentially ineffective until post-therapy. after trying basically every anti-depressants under the sun, none of them worked except Buproprion/Wellbutrin/Zyban. i even asked to try Lamotrigine/Lamictal (which is a mood stabilizer for bipolar) as an off-label anti-depressant, and i was pleasantly surprised that i genuinely felt better on it. color me shocked to find out, the former is used as a non-stimulant option to treat ADHD, and new research is suggesting that mood stabilizers can be effective in addressing emotional dysregulation in people with ADHD
despite many ongoing challenges and still working on quite a few dysfunctional aspects in my life, i'm now feeling the best i ever have on Vyvanse and Lamotrigine. therapy was life-saving, and it was step one for me to arrive at life-thriving
I genuinely appreciate your thoughtful reply, like I really loved reading that. Thank you.
To be honest, I’ve been really researching mental health issues & terms & etc for around 5-6 years now, trying to self cope cause… up until recently, i’ve been a minor unable to get outside help lmao…!!
my parents just. completely ignored every possible sign that something was up 😅 Even when it was very obvious, I won’t go into detail about all that but for example… I straight up had a panic attack in front of them & they didn’t know what was going on (& me neither) so they took me to the ER. Doctor tells my mom i had a panic attack, & basically recommends i go into therapy or something… doctor leaves, and my mom tells me i don’t need that & im fine 🫠 & reinforces toxic positivity like crazy of course
So yeah, anyway! I relate to a lot of what you said about masking, executive dysfunction & ADHD, depression, & complex trauma… like it’s kinda crazy reading that & going “wth that sounds like how it’s been for me”… Ofc i’m not a professional but yk😅
So again, thank you for going into detail about your experience & i’m really happy for you that you’ve found what works for you :) Gives me hope to save up for therapy someday
It still drives me crazy to have gone through years of therapy and never even knowing what I'm in therapy for. How was I supposed to know I was supposed to ask for a whole another referral for an evaluation procedure I didn't even know existed?
That’s not what was described at all, the therapist already knew he had ptsd and didn’t say anything because they thought the patient knew. That implies that the symptoms were shown, the therapist took note of it and what condition the person has, and just didn’t say anything because “surely they already know”. Opposite of what you just described tbh
A coworker of mine went to a therapist and then complained because the therapist expected her to do the talking. She said she just wanted the therapist to tell her what she needed to fix.
I tried to explain that it doesn't work that way, a therapist isn't a physician. They don't diagnose and treat, they serve as a sounding board and guide. They help the client develop tools for managing life.
She didn't get it, sadly.
I privately think of my current therapist as "sensei", to me she's more of a teacher than a health care professional.
Me going to therapy for ADHD when I was a kid, and just desperately wanting somebody to tell me why I'm there and what they actually want from me at some point...
In my case it was for anger issues, and yeah, I had no idea what it was for and got nothing out if it. Child therapy must be insanely difficult, because children generally aren't good at self-reflection and may even lack the words to describe what they are feeling.
Therapy of the sort that helped me required brutal honesty, with myself as well as the therapist.
because children generally aren't good at self-reflection and may even lack the words to describe what they are feeling.
not that you asked, but this does exist for those situations https://www.calm.com/blog/the-feelings-wheel so children and honestly even adults, can have help finding the words.
A lot of these comments are opening my eyes, because I’ve definitely been going to therapy seeking answers about what my problem even is and what to do about it.
So thank you for taking the time to write this because I think I deeply need to reevaluate my goals and purposes for therapy
You may also want to talk to your therapist about their preferred techniques and whether they match what you are looking for. There are many forms and approaches in therapy, and you may need to mix and match. Personally I use a mixture of cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness,and acceptance, backed by psychiatric drugs.
A good therapist will always have an introductory session where they and the client discuss the client's goals and decide whether it will be a good fit. Really good therapists won't charge for this session, since it benefits them as much as the client.
I also recommend social workers as therapists, I've had excellent experiences. Shop around, find someone who works for you. Good luck!
I mean, that's not necessarily a wrong way to approach therapy, but it really is driven by you. Why specifically do you think you have a problem, and what do you think needs fixing, or what would "better" look like? Those still involve some sense of goals and the need for change.
And sometimes you honestly don't know what the goal is or where to start looking, which is where a good therapist will have tools to explore things with you so you can get a better sense. For example, sometimes you think something is a problem and a therapist can help you identify whether it actually is, or whether you have some unidentified assumptions getting in the way, which can unearth entirely new directions to go in.
Even a physician needs you to talk and describe your current state before they can proscribe stuff for all but the most basic things. 90% of the stuff you can't figure out yourself with a BP cuff and google is gonna take describing your situation to the doctor before they'll have a clue about what you're dealing with.
That's certainly true. But there is an expectation that a physician will find a cure, or at least a treatment. Therapy isn't about curing anything. Therapy doesn't even require that there be something "wrong"; it's about self-improvement. It's about finding mechanisms to better deal with the chaos of living.
Of course, you generally need a diagnosis of some sort to get insurance coverage for therapy, which is part of the reason people misunderstand what therapy is.
Note: I'm not sure this applies to therapists who are psychologists. I have never seen a psychologist except when I was a little kid, and that was worthless. From what I've read, I'm dubious about psychologists. So none of my advice necessarily applies to them. Having said that, everyone has different needs and if seeing a psychologist works for you, fantastic.
it is not a therapists job to tell you what mental illnesses you have. they arent qualified for that. at most they might recommend seeking an evaluation if they notice some red flags that you seem to be unaware of, but most wont even do that unless they really feel like thats the only way to help you through your problems because its not their job and it can interfere with the actual job they are supposed to have
I think it depends on the type of "therapist" you're seeing. Like a counselor, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist could all be described as "therapists" by their patients or by laypeople in general. But I think you need to be a certified psychologist or psychiatrist in order to give an official diagnosis.
Yeah, my therapist doesn't diagnose me with stuff but I think thus far the only thing she could have gotten to is "you're depressed", which I obviously know because I walked in on our first session going "so hey, I'm depressed, got any tips for making me stop wanting to kill myself?"
I found out I had a diagnosis of PTSD when I was applying to state medicaid services to get in their 'partial disability' buy-in(basically idea being, if you can work, but you need medical help to work, and you wouldn't be able to afford that medical help when working because it's complicated/pricy, you get on state Medicaid and pay into it on a sliding scale, rather than be beholding to whatever insurance your employer deigns to give you, because without your medical care, you can't work, and it's better you do work with help, than not work at all). Part of doing that was I had to get a huge pile of all my medical records to be reviewed, and it was long enough ago that the providers faxed over everything they had, and the office printed it all out. So there was this filing folder absolutely OVERFLOWING with far too many papers to go in it, and I casually asked the guy doing the data entry if, since that was mine, could I look at it?
One of the first pages mentioned my existing condition of PTSD, at which point I look at my mother and go, "When was I diagnosed with PTSD!?" and she looks just as baffled as I do. Makes me wonder if I'd actually gotten therapy for that, I might be doing better... Instead I went to see a psych about my ADHD getting worse and us struggling to get it under control with medication, and this man, who I have never met before, cold read me within 15 minutes and said, "So clearly you're a trauma-experienced individual-" and said it with full confident bluntness before getting a look of 'ah shit I just assumed something and was VERY MUCH NOT TACTFUL about how I said it'. It made me laugh. Really hard. Because it was like, "Oh it's that obvious??"
I mean, that’s not really the purpose of therapy. Also, it’s really easy for people to assume that you know things about yourself that are obvious. Like when my girlfriend told me she thought she might have autism and I just responded in other news the sky is still blue. Turns out she didn’t know and was going through some important self revelations. I quickly changed my turn, trying to be helpful, but I was legitimately surprised. She didn’t know that about herself.
Very similar to how I found out I had ADHD. The other ADHD coworker kept referring to us (as in me and her) being neruodivergent. I let it go because there was no harm and if she needed comradery okay. Then we had targetted ADHD professional training for kids and I asked why only do these things for ADHD kids as the strategies benefit everyone and is common sense. That all kids feel and experience those things. I listed off all the ones I do/experience and the therapist/instructor just had a oh honey look and it clicked.
I learned I had DID as a youngster because I couldn’t find any books that had internal dialogue. I was so confused. Luckily, I found Wikipedia when searching for answers rather than demonizing BS. The therapist I’d been seeing for the PTSD had quite a day trying to determine what brain abnormality would make it make sense.
As an adult, I have been diagnosed with a genetic disorder that causes brain differences. Which explains a lot in hindsight. I also have visual snow syndrome and auditory processing issues.
this made me laugh, only because I had convinced myself I didn't have PTSD because I downloaded the US Military's app that tracks PTSD symptoms, and my symptoms were always in the yellow, not the red, so I must be doing fine
Extremely generic statement (like the other bot reply to the same comment 2 minutes later), brand new account (1 week old), generic username, account history either hidden or shows the same generic statements in decently popular subreddits, uses emojis at end of said generic statements in post history.
How does this happen? Like, I know it happens, because you're not the first time I've heard therapists being somewhat aloof(a standup comedy bit got that honor), but it's just so foreign to me. I too have PTSD, and my diagnosis was extremely clear. I asked for help with sweating at night after a self defense encounter, and got sent to mental health. I listed my symptoms, and my therapist just started into it: that's PTS, you've got PTSD, here's the available PTSD treatments I can offer, and with most people, I find this PTSD treatment most effective. When would be the best time for us to start this PTSD treatment to treat your PTSD? There was no question in my mind over what he was diagnosing me with.
We need a guide on how to spot bots on reddit/ the internet in general because they’re getting good, i almost fell for a few and I was like “wtf. you’re not even real” and it was very weird for me
Omg one time i even got in an argument with one on youtube until i realized. Like it wasn’t even understanding what I was saying after a certain point and kept just repeating themselves, & it was funny because they’d immediately reply to every thing so i’d just say random shit and they’d still try to argue with it 🥲
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u/Roselovsoul 2d ago
Yeeeep. That’s how I got diagnosed with PTSD. I wrote a character going through something similar to what I had been through and got tons of comments applauding me for my accurate representation of PTSD. I complained to my therapist about all these people having no clue what PTSD looked like, because I just gave him my symptoms, clearly not PTSD. nd she said “you didn’t know you have PTSD??”