How do/ did you feel about a diagnosis

Looking to hear peoples experiences!
What are the best and worst things about getting a diagnosis?
Was it an AHA moment or did you feel misunderstood and like you want to reject the diagnosis
Did your diagnosis scare the crap out of you?
Did it change your therapy ? As in did it mean your individual needs were ignored because decisions about treatment became based on a diagnosis?
Did you feel it masked/ excused the role of life events that had a big part in causing your symptoms?

It means a lot to me to hear from anyone willing to share any details at all! Thank you ❤️❤️

I think your thoughts and feelings about diagnosis is very understandable as are you questions.

The nomenclature of psychiatry and psychology has a history and is open to the future. By open to the future, I mean that both psychology and psychiatry are not at the end of their roads today, May 11, 2023. Does that make any sense?

It is sometimes easy to fall into the illusion that one is living at a period of time where one is very close to the end of a science.

Some 19th century psychologists wrote in a style to sort of suggest that while previous thinkers were fumbling in the dark so to speak, now in the 19th century, psychology had reached the basic concepts and the deep levels of understanding.

Many thought that future psychology would end up being a mere filling in of little details on the basic understanding.

But history does not stand still. Are we at the last few miles of psychology as a science or are we perhaps a hundred or a thousand years away from the greatest understanding possible of the human mind and human behavior?


Psychology is part of a history that it not yet finished and is open to new discoveries and understandings.

Mental health professionals [hopefully always following the best science of the time] have concepts and categories which are used because of their helpfulness. And this includes diagnoses.

We often live by simplifying complex things. I mean we need to make maps in order to help ourselves along in life.

The science of psychology has its maps too. Different schools of psychology often have somewhat differing maps. Neo-Freudians, Jungians, Cognitive Behavioral Therapists, Existential Therapists and so on have slightly different maps.

Although there is an attempt to keep controversies in mental health science out of sight from patients and possible patients, such controversies do exist.

So I think it is sometimes helful to not be overly scared or reassured by a diagnosis made by a mental health professional.

Sometimes it is helpful to consult more that one mental health professional when one is diagnosed. I am not promoting "doctor shopping." Just suggesting that in a matter as important as one's mental health, it can sometimes be helpful to get one, two, even three different views by professionals.

There are certain features of the relationship between therapist and patient which is not often appreciated. The relationship is a bit unique.


While there is oversight of the mental health professions, there is no oversight of individual therapy sessions. One is supposed to allow an "authority" to advise one.


There are certain unspoken rules. The therapist can ask the patient anything but the patient is not allowed to probe the personal life of the therapist.

The patient has little power over the therapist while the therapist often has the power to involuntarily commit the patient to a psychiatric hospital. So there is some inequality in this relationship which is different from other relationships.

Often disagreement with a therapist is seen in a derogatory way as resistance, a sign of illness or stubborness.


Of course in ordinary conversations, equals often think that people who disagree with them are so-to-speak "crazy." But the relationship between a therapist and patient is not one of equality exactly. The therapist has a great deal of power over a person who is often at one of the most vulnerable stages of their life.

And one is usually all alone with a therapist.

There is not total consensus among mental health professionals. An individual practitioner might have various views regarding the parts played by genetics, biology, other heritable factors, socialization and so on in the genesis of psychological distress.

Thus individual therapists can differ on how they view treatment modalities such as medication, individual talk therapy, group therapy and so on.

Therapists themselves are all human beings. Some are wrestling with life problems of their own. As human beings every therapist can have a bad day and so on.

Sorry that this seems so impersonal and has the stink of the laboratory about it. I myself have had issues with diagnoses!

I am not telling you all this to bore you silly or scare you. The reason I share these things with you is so that you will be able to try at least to maintain some sense of understanding of how things are and options that are open to you.

A psychological and psychiatric diagnosis can be quite unnerving. Some people are happy to finally get a diagnosis. Others might treat a diagnosis as a sign of weakness or failure. We all react differently to things at times.


Some things classified as mental illnesses are now no longer so classified, at least by the majority of mental health professionals. Some concepts and ideas which were once thought to be the be all and end all of psychological understanding have now sort of faded into general disuse although they still have their champions.

I think can be very helpful to keep in mind that you as a person are made of up of millions and things and events and cannot be fairly reduced to a "diagnosis."


You are way too deep and complex to be able to be simplified in this way. It would be like trying to fit the ocean into a teacup. You are a million times more than a diagnosis, even if that diagnosis is helpful.

I hope all these words prove helpful to you in some way and not just a waste of your valuable time to read. I hope they will not ramp up your distress but given you a little peace of mind after the sort of shock of being diagnosed.


I ask your pardon if anything I have written has made you feel bad. I am not a sage. I am often wrong about things.

It is very hard to know what to say to someone experiencing distress. There are many members here with more knowledge, experience, insight and wisdom than I have and I sincerely hope they will see your post and respond with something more helpful to you than my poor words.

My biggest hope is you are going to get through this time and feel better, however than is accomplished.

I felt relieved when I got my diagnosis. For years they thought I had it, but would tell me I'm faking it if I didn't have certain types of trauma. When I turned 30 and had a new pdoc and a new T, I asked them both to diagnosis me. To my relief, they both came up with 3 similar diagnoses. I finally felt like it wasn't all in my head, that I wasn't faking it, and that there was a reason for all my symptoms. AND it was scary because I also didn't want the diagnosis because it's so stigmatized. Thankfully, most the professionals I've had don't judge me (though I have had a few who did). Now I have a good team: my new pdoc, T, and L. None of them judge me. In fact, they encourage my strengths from having the diagnosis. For example, I tend to feel things more deeply and am more sensitive. With that, I can actually empathize more and give more of myself to the people I do let in. Or I've become a much more honest person because of the trauma I went through.

It's different for everyone when receiving a diagnosis. But as L tells me, a diagnosis doesn't define you, it's not a part of your core-self. It's just a label to help professionals treat you and anonymously identify you when consulting. Even then, some use other ways of consulting about your case. Like L calls me "email client" to some...lol. Or T uses my initials.

Just remember that you are NOT your diagnosis. You HAVE a diagnosis, but it's not you.

I wish I could be diagnosed officially, because I just feel like people think I'm nuts. At least if I had a diagnosis I could label what's wrong with me. It seems nearly impossible to be diagnosed in the UK though, unless you are hospitalised due to self injury etc. I've always been terrified of being imprisoned so I've never sought medical help when I've done something bad. At the same time I wouldn't want to get wrongly diagnosed and for it to make things worse.

When I entered treatment for alcohol addiction I was dx with BPD. I remember googling it and the feeling of hopelessness.

I cried and cried. A Gp once told me that I need to to help myself because of this dx and turned me away from any help. This was 23yrs ago.

I then left treatment and entered long term psychoanalytic therapy. T didn't hold much value in dx. She certainly didn't have me pegged with BPD..
I feel the original dx set me off on a path to discover what the hell was going on.
So I feel if a dx is used as a jumping off point its OK but if you're just going to be held hostage by it than it serves no purpose.

Really there are no words to describe how I feel about my diagnoses. It just kinda makes me want to scream if you know what I mean. I have so many diagnoses it just doesn't seem real.

I got told I was just faking an eating disorder when I was 14 and was refused help. Now I'm 30 years old with an official diagnosis on paper and being treated for atypical anorexia or whatever its called. It sucks to have one, but it also sucks to be told you are just faking a diagnosis and to have your feelings dismissed.

Thank you everyone ❤️❤️ I don’t know what’s worse, getting one or not getting one if that makes sense ? I don’t want to be told there’s nothing wrong with me when I know there is. But I don’t know how I’d feel about a label either. I think I’d gladly wear one if it actually fits. I don’t want to be misunderstood. Or misdiagnosed. I am hard to understand already. I don’t know if a diagnosis will change that or make it worse. Just rambling…. Thanks again everyone. I think these forums are great ❤️

I do have a couple of diagnoses and they aren't particularly stigmatized ones, so they don't really bother me. My therapist seems more interested in relationship dynamics and core meanings when we're talking through things. Have you ever heard of schemas? I think understanding things like that that you carry around can be way more helpful than a diagnosis in terms of noticing and changing things.

My diagnoses changed around a lot so I never really knew what they were officially. I got a blood work form from my pdoc with the codes on it so I looked them up today. No surprises. I'm kinda pissed about all of them (there were three) and ashamed about all of them, but that's more so because I have the disorders rather than because I was just notified I am officially labelled with something describing them. Especially when two of them are more behaviors that started as choices rather than developing symptoms you don't have control over.

But yeah, I knew I was messed up, now there are just less letters to describe it.

I was relieved to finally have a name for it ...

The realization that the knowing of it would not magically fix anything hit kinda hard.

Been working on it for 30 years now ...

The process has been slow & arduous, but well worth it I think.

There are still times it's extremely frustrating though!

It took 18 years to figure out what I had and it was by accident. I asked my mother about my discovery and was surprised by her response. Apparently she discussed this previously with other family members but never approached me about it. Her area of expertise was education and this is how she learned about ASD/Asperger’s Syndrome. I ended up getting two ASD assessments one in the community and the other at the hospital. Both clinicians diagnosed it.

In 1994 (when my hell started), I entered the world of psychiatry as a depressed grade 10 student who had poor grades and no friends. I wasn’t a rebellious teenager causing all kinds of trouble, abusing drugs, etc. I was just hurting because I didn’t understand why I struggled with social interaction and friendships. I ended by being misdiagnosed and put on medication that made me very suicidal and angry. It appeared to them that I was a youth in constant turmoil with a history of abuse and family dysfunction and treated as such. -- I tried to take my life because of this, since it made me question everything about myself and my family. Apparently I had suppressed CSA??? My life slowly got better after I severed my connection with psychiatry and stopped all the medications I was on.

The path to healing came 5 years after that ordeal when I developed psychosis. I got treatment for it and recovered. Strange but that illness validated my feelings and has helped me slowly recover along with the ASD diagnosis I received in 2012. Now I understand why I struggle with social interactions and anxiety. It explains my vulnerability to psychosis and why I got ill with it at the age of 25. It also helps explain the two episodes of MDD I had.

I’m still recovering today from my traumatic (and inexcusable) psychiatric experience. I discuss it in my therapy sessions and find them more effective now. Prior to that they weren't helpful due to the misinterpretation of my situation.

A diagnosis can be very helpful especially if it is correct.

I'm glad I have a diagnosis. It was more of a validation, feeling understood, since I felt the diagnosis does match what I experience.

My therapy did not change, my therapist is thankfully able to provide the treatment I need and has not changed at all due to the diagnosis. If anything, I feel he can help me better. I think it's not excusing life events, but rather caused by life events.

I know it can be hard in the health care system as well as society in general if there's a mental health label attached. For example, I was recently not able to upgrade to a better insurance plan due to my diagnosis (BPD) or rather due to the fact that I'm still in therapy. I think that's ridiculous, but it's not the fault of the illness or diagnosis, it's the system that doesn't assess these things more logically.

I'm glad that there's a word for what I experience, a way to compare my own experience to that of others and to relate to people. It's like if you have a bad cough, of course it sucks to have the cough, but knowing what causes the cough helps, even if it's a bad illness, that is still better than not even knowing what it is, having no treatment available to try and so on.

Thank you everyone! How long does it take to get a diagnosis ? Will it be after my first Pdoc appointment? Any tips for that first meeting ?

I was diagnosed in 2010 after a year of suffering from depression/mania begote I was diagnosed with bipolar 1. I saw Psychiatrist in May and then again in Sept due to getting severely manic. Diagnosed in Oct and started meds in Nov.

I argued, cried and refused to accept it all. I still refuse 13 years on. I need to grow up and accept it all. It's just hard accepting your ill huh!

Before my bp diagnosis they thought I had major depression and ptsd. They also mentioned alexythymia as well.

When I was diagnosed at 20 it was a relief to find out that those manic elated times
Weren’t me being immature and crazy but rather something treatable