Did your therapist "diagnose" anyone in your life?

I am wondering if anyone's received an unofficial "diagnosis" from their therapist of other people in their life who the therapist hasn't met?

So, not an actual diagnosis (I'm using the word as a shorthand) but something like a suggestion that X may be suffering from such and such thing and so, their behavior may be related to that?

If yes, did it help you to hear that?

My therapist has done this twice now (for two different people) as a way to help me create some distance / deal with guilt etc.

But, I'm finding myself rather unexpectedly unsettled after learning of the "diagnosis".

So, I was wondering how others have felt if / when they were told similar stuff?

If you were told that by your therapist, did it help? Not? Made no difference? Something else?

And, P.S. I am totally aware that it's against the code of ethics to give a diagnosis of people therapists haven't met -- this is really along the lines of a suggestion of sorts and not an actual official diagnosis.

P.P.S I considered making this a poll but couldn't figure out comprehensive answer options!

No, but the people in my life diagnose my therapist all the time.

Yes - there are a couple of people that each of them has, for some reason, seen fit to offer an opinion about. I don't recall really feeling anything about it - they are not dealing with the therapist and I did not ask the therapist's opinion about them. It didn't help anything - I am not sure how it ever could have helped. I wouldn't say it hurt anything - it was more a "why are you telling me this" sort of thing from my side.

My psychiatrist suggested a possible diagnosis for my future ex-husband based on my descriptions of his behavior. It wasn't a surprise, as he had a medication one of the uses of which was to treat that condition in his medicine cabinet. (A medication he was not taking.)

All it really is is a way to say "something is wrong here." Didn't disturb me, but didn't help me deal with guilt either.

Yeah my t has "diagnosed" my parents based on what I've told her. It didn't really make a difference to me honestly. I'm pretty detatched from them

Yup she diagnosed my brother as a narcissist. It made me sad at first as no matter how much a dislike the things he has done he IS my brother. However, it did make it easier to distance myself from him.

My pdoc thinks my mother is probably a narcissist

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No, and I can't imagine it would make a difference to me or to my therapy. Everyone's different, though. If you have feelings about your T doing this, like it angers you or makes you feel defensive, or your T hasn't made it absolutely clear why s/he is doing this, tell your T how you feel.

My t said my dad sounds as he is bipolar. He is very likely bipolar, but no official diagnosis. T is probably right. It explains many things. Both I and my brother exhibit mild symptoms of bipolar, more like cyclothymia with similar hypomania ( the way we act during it), but it's not severe enough to be officially diagnosed. Pretty much we are much more mild version of our dad.

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Is "ahole" a diagnosis? It works for me when he says it.

Yes T thinks my mother and sister have BPD

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Yes my first therapist used to do that all the time and I found it extremely unhelpful, especially when he was way off base, like when he suggested my H was anorexic, and when he speculated about people's histories and childhood traumas that he had no evidence for.

No, my t refrains from doing anything like that. Although come to think about it, she did say my family members were also traumatised. Does that count. Idk.

Group T thought my parents were narcissist. Didn't make a difference to me.

Instead of them doing the diagnosing, they often ask me to diagnose the people in my life.

No, I'm not angry or defensive. She specifically said that she was mentioning the 'diagnosis' to help me to deal with my rather deep-rooted guilt in these relationships and create some distance.

So, she connected the behaviors I was describing to a specific 'diagnosis' and suggested that usually it was indicative of certain types of trauma.

In the past, I'd suspected the same types of trauma and tried to have a conversation with the people in question and got flat out denial.

So, listening to my therapist say similar stuff just really unmoored me -- maybe because the idea of a diagnosis from a mental health professional makes it seem much more serious in my noodle, I guess.

I did tell my therapist that I was having a weirdly hard time dealing with it and she listened.

Yes she has. Not in a dogmatic way.
Did it help? It help me put words to an experience that was hard to think about in a concrete way, so yes it was part of a process of helping to put words to my experience.

In the end though, the dx didn't play a big part. It was just a part of it.
I think I already knew really. It's not like T crested my life experience by 'naming' it. The focus remained on the abuser.

My T, based on what I've told her used the words Psychopathic and Murderous to describe my step dad.

It was the confirmation I needed to realise that he was the bad one, not me.

No I've never had that happen. That seems inappropriate/

I don't think any therapist would use terms of diagnosis unless they believed that person you're describing, has some of the traits or signs of being whatever term they've used. For me, murderous and psychopathic are absolutely correct and I know how lucky I am to be alive. It was a comfort having my T, having anyone for that matter especially a trained person who recognised and validated my suffering. I don't think it's unethical to do that, for all those years I believed being tortured was punishment for being badly behaved and I was finally told No, it wasn't you, you didn't deserve those things. It was him. That validation was a huge leap in the right direction for me.

I could see how that would be validating but still I don't think they should actually diagnose someone they have never met. Maybe a middleground is best? Validating the feelings but not necessarily pathologizing others to do it? Like, then they can focus on what you're experiencing and not the outside factors. Because your feelings are ALWAYS valid!

In my case my T said he sounds like a murderous man or he acted in a psychopathic way. so for me alone it was, but it wasn't a diagnosis. But I understand what you're saying, feelings are always valid and using diagnostic terminology for someone they haven't met might seem wrong, but I think that depends on the situation and the person. It was what I needed to hear because I suspected my SD was a psychopath. Coming from someone who is trained in mental health really solidified this for me in a way I never thought was possible.

I think it all comes down to if your T is confident on saying it given the information they have, as well as taking your word as truth. I've only realised recently how much I needed my T's validation, but more recognition of my suffering because no one ever had. People watched me suffer and said nothing, so in a sense I really needed someone to hear me and I feel like she did. It was the right thing for me, and she sensed that, but it might not be right for everyone. In terms of the question I think it was meant the way my T said it. Not definitively, but saying a person sounds like they have tendancies, or symptoms of a particular mental illness they are aware of.

So, for what it's worth, I just wanted to clarify that my therapist didn't offer a definitive diagnosis either and she wasn't even remotely holding on to it as being correct etc.

She's watched me over the better part of 9 months go on rather endlessly about the guilt I feel (largely towards family but also others).

The guilt stems from believing (like Anglo said) that their behavior is 'normal' and I'm the one who's aberrant and hence, the guilt etc.

So, for a long time, she would simply try to point out how their behavior wasn't 'normal' but somehow it never sunk in (although I'd made progress in other ways).

Finally, recently (and I'm not sure what changed for her) she just came right out and said, 'It sounds like this person may have ABC (diagnosis from the DSM)' and here's why -- so, she'd earlier said that in fact my response of feeling endlessly guilty was / is typically how others feel around people with that particular diagnosis.

She was in no way rigid or certain or anything of that sort and she hemmed and hawed endlessly about even offering that opinion. And, even after offering it, she was hesitant and just said 'If this will help you etc...'.

So, she said that she was offering that opinion mostly so that I could look at the traits related to that diagnosis and make sense of my own life / story and most importantly, deal with my relationships in a more healthy way going forward.

So, a big part of this for my therapist I think was my feeling of being stuck in this endless loop of guilt. By the time she gave this suggestion, I think she'd tried just about every trick in the book, including doing something that she almost never does -- asking me to consider my experiences in light of what 'normal' means / what other 'normal' people usually do or feel etc.

Anyway, I'll quit the long-winded response just about here -- I just wanted to clarify given my original post to make sure that people don't get the wrong impression that somehow offering random diagnoses is the way to go

Guilt is widely what I feel, and I'm sure my T said it because I felt deserving of that behaviour, she wanted me to understand that I had nothing to feel guilty over. I'd taken on far too much responsibility that really didn't belong to me. For me to have something to compare my SDs behaviour to, I had acknowledgement that it wasn't me.

I think T's do what they think is best, sometimes it doesn't always have the desired effect but we all make mistakes. The best thing about the situation is, most T's want to know if they've upset you or said something wrong because they don't want it to effect the relationship we share with them.

Yeah, you're right -- I think (realizing especially as I'm reading this thread) for me it was just seeing my life in a whole new light that's been a trifle jarring.

But also, I think I've been giving the dx way too much weight -- as others have said, they just took it for what it is as a way of confirming stuff for themselves and I think that's how I'd like to see it as well.

So, I reckon it'll all get normalized soon enough but for whatever reason, my initial reaction resulted in my insides turning a bit topsy-turvy!

The way I see it, when our normality or our perception of normality is challenged, because it's usually associated with people close to us, it shakes us. If it's a close friend or relative and you acknowledge them to share certain qualities with a particular diagnosis, it can change our perspective of them and the way we interpret their behaviour. It can change the way we think and change and reality can be scary. I think your response is perfectly normal, although I felt validated, it brought to light a darker, far more clear reality. It scares me, but now I'm kinda proud of the fact I survived someone like him. Your T sounds like she's showing you she recognises your struggle and trying to relieve you of your guilt.