I've been through the same thing a lot of people have after being diagnosed. I said to myself:
"Oh! That's it! That's why I am the way I am. That's why my brain floods me with these random pop-up thoughts. I know who I am now! I have an official confirmation! A diagnosis!"
Which usually turned out to not be the case. I had to discover it myself, but I am a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and a whole lotta the other thing... this year. Next year, I will be more of that, and less of this. The truth of me is, I am a human being. That's it.
The problem for many (not all, of course) is taking that diagnosis from a singular person to heart and mind. Their opinion, which is based on their observation and what you have told them in that moment, is not measured in the quantitative. Their interpretation is mostly based on the opinions they have read by others in their field, those who live in New York or Burbank California, the capital cities of neurosis and Woody Allen.
It is really not much better than reading advice given on a Blog or Twitter account by someone who believes they found the solution or remedy to the condition in question. What happens to a lot of people is they are diagnosed as "THIS" and then they become even more "THIS" because they were diagnosed as "THIS."
Except in extreme cases of mental illness, like full blown mental and chemical schizophrenia, most people are not just "THAT". They are a little of this, and a little of that, and a whole boatload of insecurities. In a year or two, they will be more of that, and less of this, or something else completely.
Me, I am a little bit obsessive-compulsive (O.C.) in very specific ways. Not in all ways, just in this and that way. But I am that today, but next week, I will probably be too tired to do all of that. I will skip it that week.
I am manic-depressive, but not all day long. I have strange thoughts that pop into my head, out of the blue, that make me wonder where all of that came from. I know now, later in life, that those strange thoughts would make a good line of dialog in a short story, or a full-blown storyline. It is called having a creative brain. It creates things you want it to create, and things you don't want it to create; Things that might embarrass and even disgust you to have conjured up. I am sure writers like Stephen King sometimes wonder at what their brains come up with.
*chuckles*
I have been to a psychiatrist who told me I was THIS. I went to another who told me I am not THIS, but I am more THAT. I went to another one who told me I was both things, and yet another who told me I was neither. He said I was just tired, overstressed, and a chain smoker; I could benefit from drinking more soothing green teas and less coffee.
Don't be, and become, the psychiatric label the person who is billing you puts on you today. Perhaps that doctor is feeling the people in world are more O.C. than they were yesterday, or their opinion is colored because they had a bad experience this week with their mother, or wife, or husband, or friend. It could even be that they read something that Oprah said that opened their eyes to a pop culture diagnosis.
Yes, medical doctors and psychologists and therapists are human too, and as such, imperfect, prone to impulse opinions and conjecture, just like you are. They just read more on the topic from official psychiatric textbooks than you have (probably). Of course, what they read, that is also written by humans who... do the same thing as other humans. :)
Have a great day, everyone!
M.W. Van Dyke
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