IS SELF-DIAGNOSIS USEFUL OR BENEFICIAL?

I had a customer once asking me this question within their first few minutes of talk-therapy with me: “Is my self-diagnosed trauma condition a mistake Nicolas? Or not?”. Not knowing much about this person I took a step back and said: “If your self-diagnosis has allowed you to feel like you are more in control of your own future, then this is not a mistake. If, on the other hand, it has become a vehicle of mistrust, isolation, and hopelessness and sadness, then going through a proper professional process of assessment would be better.”

I think Self-diagnosis works best when we are at a stage of our lives when we suspect to have gone through a traumatic experience but no one around us suspects it, or would even approve of us talking about it. Self-diagnosis empowers individuals to acknowledge that there is something fundamentally wrong with their biographical history, and that this has not been acknowledged appropriately, let alone processed through. Self-diagnosis also potentially sends us on a trajectory of great learning, as well as new discussions with peers on what it means to be human, such as the notion of authenticity, the notion of how pain is passed down through the generations, and the notion of neglect , narcissism, emotional numbness, relational schemas, and many others.

Where self-diagnosis disempowers us is where we come to think of it as an end point. Diagnosis in the professional world is not an end point but a beginning reference, and a reference that exists in a much larger context of ideas of what it means to be human, and what it takes to be mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy. Very likely then, a self-diagnosis that is not challenged in its content and accuracy by the professional world, leads to an inflated idea of personal suffering, the me me effect that ends up working against our healing as I explain in the short videos about being a victim. Self-diagnosis in this way should not be used and is unnecessary.

If you have been curious enough about your past and your critical and formative experiences of childhood, and you have come to conclude that your current distress might be related to it, then find a professional that can briefly confirm and/or discredit your own understanding so that you can begin a more paced and methodic process of reassessment of your childhood and early growth experiences. 

Look after your Heart,

Your Shrink in Bansko