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Old Nov 26, 2006, 08:56 PM
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I think your reply sounds fine.

Sometimes it can help to share our experiences. Do you have experience of depression? If so then you could have said something to 1) validate their concern e.g.,

I understand that sometimes it doesn't help to read about depression. Sometimes reading about it can be... Well... Depressing.

And then 2) to share your experience e.g.,

But I've personally found that it can be helpful to me to read about other people who have been through it and come out the other side. Sometimes they have helpful suggestions for me and sometimes it helps me to feel understood.

I think that internet boards can be something of a mixed blessing...

Sometimes they help (as when you get responses you can click with)
Sometimes they harm (as when you get responses that you really don't click with)

I've been reading some stuff on how internet boards are a mixed blessing... There has been a lot of stuff written on the effects of diagnosing / labelling people and how that can negatively affect their identity etc. I was reading this article on how removing diagnoses / labels can also negatively affect peoples identity too. They were saying that a consumer movement has risen up where there are people who don't want to get better (lose the label) and people are able to chat to people online who want to continue with their self harm or anorexia or who want to try and find doctors to amputate their healthy limbs or give them liposuction or whatever...

I tend to avoid dissociative forums / boards because I (personally) don't find it particularly helpful to get caught up in the current stereotype of the diagnosis. Ian Hacking has written this wonderful book called "Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory"

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5673.html

Which helps me...

Of course denying ones symptoms doesn't help particularly... But being aware of how categorisation affects both how others relate to us and how we view our selves and subsequently behave helps me a great deal.

Aside from that... Just talking to people regardless of dx. Sometimes I find it more helpful to talk to people of different dx's even because we don't play on each others weaknesses...