Self Diagnose Quotes

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

Comparing ourselves to people on social media is as risky as using WebMD to diagnose yourself. You’ll end up way more stressed than before - just don’t even go there.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, surrounded by assholes.

That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names — anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton's melancholia or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative psychotic depression — but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It. It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self's most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency — sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying — are not just unpleasant but literally horrible. It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify is also an integral part of It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one. The authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. Think of it this way. Two people are screaming in pain. One of them is being tortured with electric current. The other is not. The screamer who's being tortured with electric current is not psychotic: her screams are circumstantially appropriate. The screaming person who's not being tortured, however, is psychotic, since the outside parties making the diagnoses can see no electrodes or measurable amperage. One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it's a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.

The disorder is more common in women." Note the construction of that sentence. They did not write, "The disorder is more common in women." It would still be suspect, but they didn't bother trying to cover their tracks. Many disorders, judging by the hospital population, were more commonly diagnosed in women. Take, for example, "compulsive promiscuity." How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label "compulsively promiscuous"? Three? No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That seems more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess - if they ever put that label on boys, which I don't recall their doing.... In the list of six "potentially self-damaging" activities favored by the borderline personality, three are commonly associated with women (shopping sprees, shoplifting, and eating binges) and one with men (reckless driving). One is not "gender specific," as they say these days (psychoactive substance abuse). And the definition of the other (casual sex) is in the eye of the beholder.

What separates great players from all-time great players is their ability to self-assess, diagnose weaknesses, and turn those flaws into strengths.

when people hear anything that sounds like criticism, they tend to invest their energy in self-defense or counterattack. If we wish for a compassionate response from others, it is self-defeating to express our needs by interpreting or diagnosing their behavior. Instead, the more directly we can connect our feelings to our own needs, the easier it is for others to respond to us compassionately.

Postmodernism's specifically academic appeal comes from its being another in the sequence of all-purpose "unmasking" strategies that offer a way to criticize the intellectual efforts of others not by engaging with them on the ground, but by diagnosing them from a superior vantage point and charging them with inadequate self-awareness. Logical positivism and Marxism were used by academics in this way, and postmodernist relativism is a natural successor in the role. [The Sleep of Reason]

from the Basement tapes Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. "I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse," Eric said. "But I do." Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn't done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him. "Those are the most worthless apologies I've ever heard in my life," he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, "if you guys live." "If you live?" Fuselier repeated. "They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry they would not do it!

You can't fight mental health bias if you label people based on a lists of symptoms and you have no medical degree to diagnose people. We all have crazy running through our blood and so many things trigger that. We all struggle with our anxiety and twisted issues. Defamation of character is not kind, nor Christlike. Because when you label people with self righteous vindication you open the door to the very idea that self righteousness is itself a disorder that we should all be afraid of. This doorway when left open too long gets people to pull away from Christ, not run to him.

A lumpy mass of American stereotypes was metastasizing inside me. It made me cringe when I heard Mr. Miyagi say "Wax on, wax off, Daniel San." It made me pretend to laugh when I saw Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles. It made me sign up for tae kwon do that year because that was what Asians did. It would be decades before I diagnosed the lump of alienation, dual consciousness, and self-hatred, but it was already growing quickly, bilious and caustic. I only saw myself as the piece that did not fit in the puzzle.

One of Aysha’s favourite quotes. Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you’re not just surrounded by assholes.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” Sigmund Freud

In this world where value is unknown, but the price of anything is marked, where the creation of self has been abandoned for the search for self, the behavior diagnosed as antisocial is often too quickly ascribed to intelligence when thrust into contact with widespread conformity, and refuses.

The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is no pressure to reduce the costs of treating fictitious diseases. On the contrary, there is pressure to define ever more types of undesirable behaviors as mental disorders or addictions and to spend ever more tax dollars on developing new psychiatric diagnoses and facilities for storing and treating the victims of such diseases, whose members now include alcoholics, drug abusers, smokers, overeaters, self-starvers, gamblers, etc.

Many people in the USA come to the conclusion that it is better not to purchase extremely expensive health care insurance and to use the saved money to self diagnose and treat with lifestyle changes, organic food, supplements and vitamins.

Diagnoses of the malaise of the humanities rightly point to anti-intellectual trends in our culture and to the commercialization of universities. But an honest appraisal would have to acknowledge that some of the damage is self-inflicted. The humanities have yet to recover from the disaster of postmodernism, with its defiant obscurantism, self-refuting relativism, and suffocating political correctness. Many of its luminaries—Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, the Critical Theorists—are morose cultural pessimists who declare that modernity is odious, all statements are paradoxical, works of art are tools of oppression, liberal democracy is the same as fascism, and Western civilization is circling the drain.54

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals. A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal. Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact. But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections. We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.

We began then to see trauma-related disorders not as disorders of events but as disorders of the body, brain, and nervous system. The neurobiological lens also resulted in another paradigm shift: if the brain and body are inherently adaptive, then the legacy of trauma responses must also reflect an attempt at adaptation, rather than evidence of pathology. Through that neurobiological lens, what appears clinically as stuckness and resistance, untreatable diagnoses, or character-disordered behavior simply represent how an individual’s mind and body adapted to a dangerous world in which the only “protection” was the very same caretaker who endangered him or her. Each symptom was an ingenious solution by the body to create some semblance of safety for the developing child or endangered adult. The trauma-related issues with which the client presents for help, I now believe, are in truth a “red badge of courage” that tell the story of what happened even more eloquently than the events each individual consciously remembers.

Please take a moment to answer this questionnaire and discover if you can benefit from a Taco Cleanse: Do you experience recurring feelings of hunger on a daily basis? Do you frequently lack access to eating utensils such as forks or chopsticks? Do you consider tortillas to function as edible napkins? Do you enjoy attention from peers based on dietary restrictions? Do you experience a range of emotions? Do you tilt your head when inserting food into your mouth? Do you use medical websites to self-diagnose your symptoms? Answering yes to any of these questions may indicate that a Taco Cleanse is right for you.

Hershey Pennsylvania was self-proclaimed as the “Sweetest Place On Earth,” but less advertised than chocolate, it was also home to one of the state’s largest Children’s Hospitals. The streets lined with Hershey Kiss–shaped streetlamps that led excited children and families on vacation to chocolate tour rides and rollercoasters were the same exact streets that led anxious children and families to x-rays and MRIs on the worsts days of their lives. Chocolate was being created on the same street that childhood diseases were being diagnosed. And that was life. The sweetest of sensations and the deepest of devastations live next door to each other.

Before you diagnose yourself with low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, surrounded by people who are not in touch with their sensuality.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” —STEVEN WINTERBURN

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid fifties and I was given Ritalin and Dexedrine. These are stimulant medications. They elevate the level of a chemical called dopamine in the brain. And dopamine is the motivation chemical, so when you are more motivated you pay attention. Your mind won't be all over the place. So we elevate dopamine levels with stimulant drugs like Ritalin, Aderall, Dexedrine and so on. But what else elevates Dopamine levels? Well, all other stimulants do. What other stimulants? Cocaine, crystal meth, caffeine, nicotine, which is to say that a significant minority of people that use stimulants, illicit stimulants, you know what they are actually doing? They're self-medicating their ADHD or their depression or their anxiety. So on one level (and we have to go deeper that that), but on one level addictions are about self-medications. If you look at alcoholics in one study, 40% of male adult alcoholics met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD? Why? Because alcohol soothes the hyperactive brain. Cannabis does the same thing. And in studies of stimulant addicts, about 30% had ADHD prior to their drug use. What else do people self-medicate? Someone mentioned depression. So, if you have been treated for depression, as I have been, and you were given a SSRI medication, these medications elevate the level of another brain chemical called serotonin, which is implicated in mood regulation. What else elevates serotonin levels temporarily in the brain? Cocaine does. People use cocaine to self-medicate depression. People use alcohol, cannabis and opiates to self-medicate anxiety. Incidentally people also use gambling or shopping to self-medicate because these activities also elevate dopamine levels in the brain. There is no difference between one addiction and the other. They're just different targets, but the brain systems that are involved and the target chemicals are the same, no matter what the addiction. So people self-medicate anxiety, depression. People self-medicate bipolar disorder with alcohol. People self-medicate Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. So, one way to understand addictions is that they're self-medicating. And that's important to understand because if you are working with people who are addicted it is really important to know what's going on in their lives and why are they doing this. So apart from the level of comfort and pain relief, there's usually something diagnosible that's there at the same time. And you have to pay attention to that. At least you have to talk about it.

the kids who can’t adapt to school’s tedium are diagnosed with ADHD and are put on powerful psychoactive drugs, which have the immediate effect of reducing their spontaneity so they can attend to the teacher and complete the senseless busywork. Nobody knows the long-term effects of these drugs on the human brain, but research with animals suggests that one effect may be to interfere with the normal development of the brain connections that lead children generally to become more controlled, less impulsive, with age and maturity.13 Perhaps that helps to explain why today we see more and more cases of ADHD extending into adulthood. As with lots of psychoactive drugs, the drugs used to treat ADHD may be creating long-term dependency.

DID may be underdiagnosed. The image derived from classic textbooks of a florid, dramatic disorder with overt switching characterizes about 5% of the DID clinical population. The more typical presentation is of a covert disorder with dissociative symptoms embedded among affective, anxiety, pseudo-psychotic, dyscontrol, and self-destructive symptoms, and others (Loewenstein, 1991). The typical DID patient averages 6 to 12 years in the mental health system, receiving an average of 3 to 4 prior diagnoses. DID is often found in cases that were labeled as "treatment failures" because the patient did not respond to typical treatments for mood, anxiety, psychotic, somatoform, substance abuse, and eating disorders, among others. Rapid mood shifts (within minutes or hours), impulsivity, self-destructiveness, and/or apparent hallucinations lead to misdiagnosis of cyclic mood disorders (e.g., bipolar disorder) or psychotic disorders (e.g., schizophrenia).

Interestingly, the patients who presented to me self-diagnosed [with Dissociative Identity Disorder] had tried to tell previous therapists of their plight, but had been disbelieved. These therapists had used fallacious "capricious criteria" (KIuft, 1988) to discredit the diagnosis; e.g., that the patient could not possibly have MPD because she was aware of the other alters [sic!].

one important thing to keep in mind about BPD is that it comes with a lot of extra baggage. That is, many people with BPD have other problems and may meet criteria for other diagnoses. For instance, many people with BPD suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and/or drug and alcohol problems. People with BPD are also at risk for suicide attempts, self-harm, and other self-destructive behaviors.

When we listen to ourselves with callous objectivity—trying to diagnose and eradicate our problems with effective solutions—this “listening” rarely works. Think of the people who treat you this way: those who can’t see beyond their labels and judgments of you. Those who only “listen” for long enough to decide which advice to give you. It feels horrible. This same attitude prevents us from hearing our inner conversations. When we feel like someone has an agenda, we resist. Trying to fix ourselves while pretending to love ourselves doesn’t work. We don’t heal through objectification. We heal through understanding. We need to feel appreciated by the people who help us—ourselves included.

Merely knowing the material doesn’t get you out of the box. Living it does. And we’re not living it if we’re using it to diagnose others. Rather, we’re living it when we’re using it to learn how we can be more helpful to others—even

Our hurts and wounds can make our self-centeredness even more intractable. When you point out selfish behavior to a wounded person, he or she will say, “Well, maybe so, but you don’t understand what it is like.” The wounds justify the behavior. There are two ways to diagnose and treat this condition. In our culture, there is still a widespread assumption of basic human goodness. If people are self-absorbed and messed up, it is argued, it is only because they lack healthy self-esteem. So what we should do is tell them to be good to themselves, to live for themselves, not for others. In this view of things, we give wounded people almost nothing but support, encouraging them to stop letting others run their lives, urging them to find out what their dreams are and take steps to fulfill them. That, we think, is the way to healing. But this approach assumes that self-centeredness isn’t natural, that it is only the product of some kind of mistreatment. That is a very popular understanding of human nature, but it is worth observing that it is an article of faith—a religious belief, as it were. No major religion in the world actually teaches that, yet this is the popular view of many people in the West.

and only much later, when Mascha wanted a child, did I realize that love is a deadly poison, a vice, a vice that one wants to see shared, & that if one of the two involved is smitten, the other is often no more than a passive participant, or vixxtim, or possessed. And Moravagine was possessed. Love is masochistic. These cries & complaints, these sweet alarms. this anguished state of lovers, this suspense, this latent pain that is just below the surface, almost unexpressed, these thousand & one anxieties over the loved one's absence, this feeling of time rushing by, this touchiness, these fits of temper, these long daydreams, this childish fickleness of behavior, this moral torture where vanity & self-esteem, or perhaps honor, upbringing & modesty are at stake, these highs & lows in the nervous tone, these leaps of imagination, this fetishism, this cruel precision of senses, whipping & probing, the collapse, the prostration, the abdication, the self-abasement, the perpetual loss & recovery of one's personality, these stammered words & phrases, these pet-names, this intimacy, these hesitations in physical contact, these epileptic tremors, these successive & even more frequent relapses, this more & more turbulent & stormy passion with its ravages progressing to the point of complete inhibition & annihilation of the soul, the debility of the senses, the exhaustion of the marrow, the erasure of the brain & even the desiccation of the heart, this yearning for ruin, for destruction, for mutilation, this need of effusiveness, of adoration, of mysticism, this insatiability which expresses itself in hyper-irritability of the of mucus membranes, in errant taste, in vasomotor or peripheral disorders, & which conjures up jealousy & vengeance, crimes, prevarications & treacheries, this idolatry, this incurable melancholy, this apathy, this profound moral misery, this definitive & harrowing doubt, this despair--are not all these stigmata the very symptoms of love in which we can first diagnose, then trace with a sure hand, the clinical curve of masochism?

When he wrote back, he pretended to be his old self, he lied his way into sanity. For fear of his psychiatrist who was also their censor, they could never be sensual, or even emotional. His was considered a modern, enlightened prison, despite its Victorian chill. He had been diagnosed, with clinical precision, as morbidly oversexed, and in need of help as well as correction. He was not to be stimulated. Some letters—both his and hers—were confiscated for some timid expression of affection. So they wrote about literature, and used characters as codes. All those books, those happy or tragic couples they had never met to discuss! Tristan and Isolde the Duke Orsino and Olivia (and Malvolio too), Troilus and Criseyde, Once, in despair, he referred to Prometheus, chained to a rock, his liver devoured daily by a vulture. Sometimes she was patient Griselde. Mention of “a quiet corner in a library” was a code for sexual ecstasy. They charted the daily round too, in boring, loving detail. He described the prison routine in every aspect, but he never told her of its stupidity. That was plain enough. He never told her that he feared he might go under. That too was clear. She never wrote that she loved him, though she would have if she thought it would get through. But he knew it. She told him she had cut herself off from her family. She would never speak to her parents, brother or sister again. He followed closely all her steps along the way toward her nurse’s qualification. When she wrote, “I went to the library today to get the anatomy book I told you about. I found a quiet corner and pretended to read,” he knew she was feeding on the same memories that consumed him “They sat down, looked at each other, smiled and looked away. Robbie and Cecilia had been making love for years—by post. In their coded exchanges they had drawn close, but how artificial that closeness seemed now as they embarked on their small talk, their helpless catechism of polite query and response. As the distance opened up between them, they understood how far they had run ahead of themselves in their letters. This moment had been imagined and desired for too long, and could not measure up. He had been out of the world, and lacked the confidence to step back and reach for the larger thought. I love you, and you saved my life. He asked about her lodgings. She told him. “And do you get along all right with your landlady?” He could think of nothing better, and feared the silence that might come down, and the awkwardness that would be a prelude to her telling him that it had been nice to meet up again. Now she must be getting back to work. Everything they had, rested on a few minutes in a library years ago. Was it too frail? She could easily slip back into being a kind of sister. Was she disappointed? He had lost weight. He had shrunk in every sense. Prison made him despise himself, while she looked as adorable as he remembered her, especially in a nurse’s uniform. But she was miserably nervous too, incapable of stepping around the inanities. Instead, she was trying to be lighthearted about her landlady’s temper. After a few more such exchanges, she really was looking at the little watch that hung above her left breast, and telling him that her lunch break would soon be over.

Depression frequently is internalised anger or anger turned inward. A clinically depressed person is most often someone who is sitting on a great deal of rage - to the point when a patient self-diagnoses with depression, the first reasonable clinical question to ask is: What pissed you off?

Those who are diagnosably narcissistic may be talented, charming, even inspiring, but they lack the capacity for self-awareness and self-evaluation, shunning humility for defensive self-protection. Christian psychologist Diane Langberg says of the narcissist, “He has many gifts but the gift of humility.”1

Musk would later talk about—even joke about—having Asperger’s, a common name for a form of autism-spectrum disorder that can affect a person’s social skills, relationships, emotional connectivity, and self-regulation. “He was never actually diagnosed as a kid,” his mother says, “but he says he has Asperger’s, and I’m sure he’s right.” The condition was exacerbated by his childhood traumas. Whenever he would later feel bullied or threatened, his close friend Antonio Gracias says, the PTSD from his childhood would hijack his limbic system, the part of the brain that controls emotional responses. As a result, he was bad at picking up social cues. “I took people literally when they said something,” he says, “and it was only by reading books that I began to learn that people did not always say what they really meant.” He had a preference for things that were more precise, such as engineering, physics, and coding.

By contrast, moderate identity alteration differs from its milder countepart in that the alterations are not always under the person's control. In addition, moderate identity alteration does not always manifest the presence of distinct alter personalities. Someone who experiences moderate identity alteration may present with mood changes and behaviors that they perceive as uncontrollable. Patients with nondissociative psychiatric disorders (e.g., manic depressive illness) may report moderate alterations in behavior/demeanor that they cannot control; for example, one patient diagnosed as manic depressive mentioned being bothered by his inability to "keep his mind from racing" (SCID-D interview, unpublished transcript). However, these alterations do not coalesce around distinct personalities. Similarly, individuals who have borderline personality disorder tend to fluctuate rapidly between radically different behaviors and moods; however, these changes do not involve different names, memories, preferences, distinct ages, or amnesia for past events.

I walked downstairs, toward the beach, and then through the dunes, feeling the sort of rage that comes with the realization of one's gross inadequacy, of knowing for certain that you are at fault. It was the first time I realized that as much as he was two people around us, so were we two people around him: we saw of him what we wanted, and allowed ourselves not to see anything else. We Were so ill-equipped. Most people are easy: their unhappiness are our unhappiness, their sorrows are understandable, their bouts of self-loathing are fast moving and negotiable. But his were not. We don't know how to help him because we lacked the imagination needed to diagnose the problems. But this is making excuses.

In 1944-1945, Dr Ancel Keys, a specialist in nutrition and the inventor of the K-ration, led a carefully controlled yearlong study of starvation at the University of Minnesota Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene. It was hoped that the results would help relief workers in rehabilitating war refugees and concentration camp victims. The study participants were thirty-two conscientious objectors eager to contribute humanely to the war effort. By the experiment's end, much of their enthusiasm had vanished. Over a six-month semi-starvation period, they were required to lose an average of twenty-five percent of their body weight." [...] p193 p193-194 "...the men exhibited physical symptoms...their movements slowed, they felt weak and cold, their skin was dry, their hair fell out, they had edema. And the psychological changes were dramatic. "[...] p194 "The men became apathetic and depressed, and frustrated with their inability to concentrate or perform tasks in their usual manner. Six of the thirty-two were eventually diagnosed with severe "character neurosis," two of them bordering on psychosis. Socially, they ceased to care much about others; they grew intensely selfish and self-absorbed. Personal grooming and hygiene deteriorated, and the men were moody and irritable with one another. The lively and cooperative group spirit that had developed in the three-month control phase of the experiment evaporated. Most participants lost interest in group activities or decisions, saying it was too much trouble to deal with the others; some men became scapegoats or targets of aggression for the rest of the group. Food - one's own food - became the only thing that mattered. When the men did talk to one another, it was almost always about eating, hunger, weight loss, foods they dreamt of eating. They grew more obsessed with the subject of food, collecting recipes, studying cookbooks, drawing up menus. As time went on, they stretched their meals out longer and longer, sometimes taking two hours to eat small dinners. Keys's research has often been cited often in recent years for this reason: The behavioral changes in the men mirror the actions of present-day dieters, especially of anorexics.

Debbie Nathan blames the early symptoms on pernicious anemia yet explains their supposed remission by Shirley’s being out of contact with Dr. Wilbur for those 9 years. But Dr. Wilbur never diagnosed a dissociative disorder in 1945. Nathan does not seem to recognize the implausibility of Dr. Wilbur creating via suggestion a complex dissociative disorder in five sessions, particularly when the doctor herself did not diagnose it. Nathan attributes Shirley’s postintegration improvement in functioning to being out of contact with Dr. Wilbur rather than to the therapy. But the pernicious anemia continued to be undiagnosed and untreated during that time period, so any symptoms due to it should have continued rather than showing an improvement that coincided with psychotherapy with Dr. Wilbur. Debbie Nathan’s thesis is self-contradictory.

In my series, five percent presented self-diagnosed. In most cases, this was not believed by the initial clinician. I had the following unnerving experience. Prior to my first multiple personality disorder case, I did not think the condition existed. I saw a young woman who claimed to have multiple personality disorder, and dismissed her claim. She never mentioned it again. Seven years later, while doing research in multiple personality disorder, I asked her to be a control subject for a new multiple personality disorder screening protocol, since I believed she was a medication-controlled paranoid schizophrenic. A protector personality rapidly took over, cursed at me for disbelieving the patient in the first place, introduced me to other personalities, resumed control, and chastized me vehemently at great length. Thereafter, she left, never to return.

Self-diagnosed adolescent trans boys – natal females – started to fill up GIDS’s waiting room with similar stories, haircuts, even names – ‘one after another after another’. They’d talk about their favourite trans YouTubers, many having adopted the same name, and how they aspired to be like them in the future. Given how complicated these young people appeared to be, could something else be going on that explained this, something other than them all being trans?

Most curable sickness can now be diagnosed and treated by laymen. People find it so difficult to accept this statement because the complexity of medical ritual has hidden from them the simplicity of its basic procedures. It took the example of the barefoot doctor in China to show how modern practice by simple workers in their spare time could, in three years, catapult health care in China to levels unparalleled elsewhere. In most other countries health care by laymen is considered a crime. A seventeen-year-old friend of mine was recently tried for having treated some 130 of her high-school colleagues for VD. She was acquitted on a technicality by the judge when expert counsel compared her performance with that of the U.S. Health Service. Nowhere in the U.S.A. can her achievement be considered "standard," because she succeeded in making retests on all her patients six weeks after their first treatment. Progress should mean growing competence in self-care rather than growing dependence. 5

We continue drinking unchecked, often overlooking the danger of addiction, because we have come to believe alcoholism can only happen to other people. By the time we realize we have a problem, we are faced with self-diagnosing a fatal and incurable illness or admitting to being weak-willed and lacking self-control. We tend to avoid this horrific diagnosis until things have gotten so out of control we can no longer avoid the problem. In some ways this approach has defined alcoholism as a disease of denial.

It’s joyful to know you could be diagnosed with a mental disorder but to opt out, to say yes to yourself instead, to have the patience and care to resist the label that never got you anywhere before, that was voted into existence as an illness, that simply isn’t helpful in looking at your life. Nothing tastes sweeter than inching toward self mastery, self intimacy, the progress that comes slowly over a long period of taking good care of yourself, the very best way you know how to, and very imperfectly at that.

Dying isn’t the end of the world,” my mother liked to joke after she was diagnosed as terminal. I never really understood what she meant, until the day I suddenly did—a few months after she died—when, at age thirty-eight, the breast cancer I’d been in treatment for became metastatic and incurable. There are so many things that are worse than death: old grudges, a lack of self-awareness, severe constipation, no sense of humor, the grimace on your husband’s face as he empties your surgical drain into the measuring cup.

There I was, in black and white. My entire being of weirdness, easily explained with bullet points listed under both “Signs of Adult AD(H)D” and “Signs of Adult Giftedness.” Double trouble. Twice fucked, as I like to say. Getting diagnosed was definitely a mixed blessing for me. On one hand there was a nicely packaged reason for all of the things I felt were wrong with me. On the other hand, it was comparable to a mental-health death sentence. I used to say to my mom, “It shouldn’t be this hard…it isn’t this hard for other people…this isn’t normal.” I used to think I could just fix myself away with my little self-improvement plans. I still do, actually—a different one every week, but getting that diagnosis meant I could do all of the self-improvement plans available in the universe, and I would still come out as messed up as I went in. No improvements for me. Sorry, Charlie. Shit out of luck, my friend. I’ve always felt misunderstood. Though I was never at a loss for friends, I was always told I was weird, which I was totally OK with. Weird

She had survived to age twenty-two with only the usual signs of wear: mild nutritional deficiencies, self-diagnosed anxious attachment style, self-diagnosed avoidant attachment style, stiff neck from excessive phone use. She googled things like “wildfires europe” and “heat wave crop failure famine” and “when will dublin underwater” and “will england fuck ireland over” and “will WHAT IS HAPPENING IN england fuck ireland over” and “why am i lonely” and “why do i hate existing” and “how many painkillers to die” and “how much carpet cleaner to die” and “why wont the government let me die.

I said. “I’m fine. I have a little bit of a head ache, but I’m not dizzy or nauseous. I can walk and talk just fine, and I can remember everything.” “Everything, huh? Don’t self-diagnose, Doctor Fisher. Do you remember when the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought?” “The what?” “The Battle of Bunker Hill. We covered it in World Civ.” “No, we did not.” “We did, too. The unit on the American Revolution.” “Davin, that was like, two years ago! I don’t remember stuff like that!” “So, not everything.” “Everything important.” “That happens to have been a very significant battle,” Davin reminded me, in a smug tone.

In the Judeo-Christian view--and thus, the dominant Western view--to die by suicide is a sinful, selfish act. This perception has been slow to fade, though the science is clear that suicide has root causes in diagnosable mental disorders and substance abuse. ("Sin" does not qualify for the DSM-5.) The cultural meaning of suicide in Japan is different. It's viewed as a selfless, even honorable act... Outsiders say that the Japanese romanticize suicide, and that Japan has a "suicide culture." But the reality is more complicated. The Japanese view of self-inflicted death as altruistic is more about wanting not to be a burden, rather than fascination with mortality itself.

I didn’t like the way Elgie was talking. Thanks to Victims Against Victimhood, I have grown expert at detecting the signs of being victimized by emotional abuse: confusion, withdrawal, negotiating reality, self-reproach. At VAV, we don’t help newcomers, we CRUSH them. C: Confirm their reality. R: Reveal our own abuse. U: Unite them with VAV. S: Say sayonara to abuse. H: Have a nice life! I launched into the saga of Barry’s failed businesses, his trips to Vegas, his Intermittent Explosive Disorder (which was never diagnosed, but which I’m convinced he suffers from), and finally how I found the strength to divorce him, but not before he successfully drained our life savings.

My awakening unfolded in phases. It occurred during a time of extreme physical and emotional stress when I was imbalanced in body, mind, and soul. It was a crisis of the Self. Life began to feel intolerable, old and new struggles compounding around me so that I had no choice but to address those that had gotten so far out of hand that they were my “normal.” It’s highly likely that if I had sought outside help again at this time, I would have been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, as I had been in the past. Instead I was intuitively drawn inward to self-witnessing that showed me how disengaged I had been. For the first time ever, I began to view these signs as messengers, not as something to repress or avoid.

Let’s take a quick look at what a psychopath is. Although the American Psychiatric Association (APA) no longer uses this term, much of the rest of the world does. The APA has incorporated the term psychopath and sociopath within a broader definition designated as antisocial personality disorder. Even within the APA, there is wide disagreement as to what these terms actually mean. The most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) is an American handbook for mental health professionals. It lists different categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing them, according to the publishing organization, the American Psychiatric Association. The APA defines antisocial personality disorder, which would include Lobaczewski’s psychopathic personality disorder, as a pervasive pattern of disregard for the violation of the rights of others occurring since age fifteen years, as indicated by three or more of the following:   1.     Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest. 2.     Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure. 3.     Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead. 4.     Aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults. 5.     Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others. 6.     Consistent irresponsibility. 7.     Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Some researchers, such as psychologist Jean Twenge, say this new world where compliments are better than sex and pizza, in which the self-enhancing bias has been unchained and allowed to gorge unfettered, has led to a new normal in which the positive illusions of several generations have now mutated into full-blown narcissism. In her book The Narcissism Epidemic, Twenge says her research shows that since the mid-1980s, clinically defined narcissism rates in the United States have increased in the population at the same rate as obesity. She used the same test used by psychiatrists to test for narcissism in patients and found that, in 2006, one in four U.S. college students tested positive. That’s real narcissism, the kind that leads to diagnoses of personality disorders. In her estimation, this is a dangerous trend, and it shows signs of acceleration. Narcissistic overconfidence crosses a line, says Twenge, and taints those things improved by a skosh of confidence. Over that line, you become less concerned with the well-being of others, more materialistic, and obsessed with status in addition to losing all the restraint normally preventing you from tragically overestimating your ability to manage or even survive risky situations. In her book, Twenge connects this trend to the housing market crash of the mid-2000s and the stark increase in reality programming during that same decade. According to Twenge, the drive to be famous for nothing went from being strange to predictable thanks to a generation or two of people raised by parents who artificially boosted self-esteem to ’roidtastic levels and then released them into a culture filled with new technologies that emerged right when those people needed them most to prop up their self-enhancement biases. By the time Twenge’s research was published, reality programming had spent twenty years perfecting itself, and the modern stars of those shows represent a tiny portion of the population who not only want to be on those shows, but who also know what they are getting into and still want to participate. Producers with the experience to know who will provide the best television entertainment to millions then cull that small group. The result is a new generation of celebrities with positive illusions so robust and potent that the narcissistic overconfidence of the modern American teenager by comparison is now much easier to see as normal.

Criteria for Diagnosing Borderline Personality Disorder 1. Frantic efforts to avoid being or feeling abandoned by loved ones. 2. Instability in relationships, including a tendency to idealize and then become disillusioned with relationships. 3. Problems with an unstable sense of self, self-image, or identity. 4. Impulsivity in at least two areas (other than suicidal behavior) that are potentially damaging, such as excessive spending, risky sex, substance abuse, or binge eating. 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, including thoughts, attempts, or threats of suicide, as well as intentional self-harm that may or may not be life-threatening. 6. Mood swings, including intense negative mood, irritability, and anxiety. Moods usually last a few hours and rarely more than a few days. 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. 8. Problems controlling intense anger and angry behavior. 9. Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociation.

I have used the word ‘tolerance’ in this chapter because it is the term that the people I am writing about use with real intent. Tolerance here, I think, is not what Goethe brilliantly diagnosed when he wrote, ‘Tolerance should really only be a passing attitude: it should lead to recognition. To tolerate is to offend.’2 So often, as Goethe knew, to talk of tolerance is a sign and symptom of the failure to integrate – and a hierarchical, patronising attitude towards others. We will tolerate you if you fit in with us: an attempt to keep power relations in place, while disavowing their force. But tolerance towards queerness is a much more unstable dynamic, which requires a different, more radical form of hospitality to otherness, and an acknowledgement of the impact of queerness on one’s own sense of self, and a consequent loss of bearings. Tolerance in this sense is an exploratory value, and not just a gesture of political self-congratulation.

the new “affirmative-care” standard of mental health professionals is a different matter entirely. It surpasses sympathy and leaps straight to demanding that mental health professionals adopt their patients’ beliefs of being in the “wrong body.” Affirmative therapy compels therapists to endorse a falsehood: not that a teenage girl feels more comfortable presenting as a boy—but that she actually is a boy. This is not a subtle distinction, and it isn’t just a matter of humoring a patient. The whole course of appropriate treatment hinges on whether doctors view the patient as a biological girl suffering mental distress or a boy in a girl’s body. But the “affirmative-care” standard, which chooses between these diagnoses before the patient is even examined, has been adopted by nearly every medical accrediting organization. The American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Pediatric Endocrine Society have all endorsed “gender-affirming care” as the standard for treating patients who self-identify as “transgender” or self-diagnose as “gender dysphoric.

I began to see that the stronger a therapy emphasized feelings, self-esteem, and self-confidence, the more dependent the therapist was upon his providing for the patient ongoing, unconditional, positive regard. The more self-esteem was the end, the more the means, in the form of the patient’s efforts, had to appear blameless in the face of failure. In this paradigm, accuracy and comparison must continually be sacrificed to acceptance and compassion; which often results in the escalation of bizarre behavior and bizarre diagnoses. The bizarre behavior results from us taking credit for everything that is positive and assigning blame elsewhere for anything negative. Because of this skewed positive-feedback loop between our judged actions and our beliefs, we systematically become more and more adapted to ourselves, our feelings, and our inaccurate solitary thinking; and less and less adapted to the environment that we share with our fellows. The resultant behavior, such as crying, depression, displays of temper, high-risk behavior, or romantic ventures, or abandonment of personal responsibilities, which seem either compulsory, necessary, or intelligent to us, will begin to appear more and more irrational to others. The bizarre diagnoses occur because, in some cases, if a ‘cause disease’ (excuse from blame) does not exist, it has to be 'discovered’ (invented). Psychiatry has expanded its diagnoses of mental disease every year to include 'illnesses’ like kleptomania and frotteurism [now frotteuristic disorder in the DSM-V]. (Do you know what frotteurism is? It is a mental disorder that causes people, usually men, to surreptitiously fondle women’s breasts or genitals in crowded situations such as elevators and subways.) The problem with the escalation of these kinds of diagnoses is that either we can become so adapted to our thinking and feelings instead of our environment that we will become dissociated from the whole idea that we have a problem at all; or at least, the more we become blameless, the more we become helpless in the face of our problems, thinking our problems need to be 'fixed’ by outside help before we can move forward on our own. For 2,000 years of Western culture our problems existed in the human power struggle constantly being waged between our principles and our primal impulses. In the last fifty years we have unprincipled ourselves and become what I call 'psychologized.’ Now the power struggle is between the 'expert’ and the 'disorder.’ Since the rise of psychiatry and psychology as the moral compass, we don’t talk about moral imperatives anymore, we talk about coping mechanisms. We are not living our lives by principles so much as we are living our lives by mental health diagnoses. This is not working because it very subtly undermines our solid sense of self.

Kathy’s teachers view her as a good student who always does her homework but rarely participates in class. Her close friends see her as a loyal and trustworthy person who is a lot of fun once you get to know her. The other students in school think she is shy and very quiet. None of them realize how much Kathy struggles with everyday life. When teachers call on her in class, her heart races, her face gets red and hot, and she forgets what she wants to say. Kathy believes that people think she is stupid and inadequate. She imagines that classmates and teachers talk behind her back about the silly things she says. She makes excuses not to go to social events because she is terrified she will do something awkward. Staying home while her friends are out having a good time also upsets her. “Why can’t I just act like other people?” she often thinks. Although Kathy feels isolated, she has a very common problem--social anxiety. Literally millions of people are so affected by self-consciousness that they have difficulties in social situations. For some, the anxiety occurs during very specific events, such as giving a speech or eating in public. For others, like Kathy, social anxiety is part of everyday life. Unfortunately, social anxiety is not an easily diagnosed condition. Instead, it is often viewed as the far edge of a continuum of behaviors and feelings that occur during social situations. Although you may not have as much difficulty as Kathy, shyness may still be causing you distress, affecting your relationships, or making you act in ways with which you are not happy. If this is the case, you will benefit from the advice and techniques provided in this book. The good news is that it is possible to change your thinking and behavior. However, there are no easy solutions. It takes strong motivation and time to overcome social anxiety. It might even be necessary to see a professional therapist or take medication. Eventually, becoming free of your anxiety will make the hard work well worth the effort. This book will help you understand social anxiety and the impact it can have on your life, now and in the future. You will find out how the disorder is diagnosed, you will receive information on professional guidance, and you will learn ways to cope with and manage the symptoms. Becoming an extroverted person is probably unlikely, but you can become more confident in social situations and increase your self-esteem.

These are examples, however, of how we can sometimes be taken advantage of. Our loyalty and strong work ethic, combined with not always being able to read people, mean that we can end up in situations where we get saddled with more than our fair share and are overworked and underpaid.

She was surprised to find that the more psychological safety a team felt, the higher its error rates. It appeared that psychological safety could breed complacency. When trust runs deep in a team, people might not feel the need to question their colleagues or double-check their own work. But Edmondson soon recognized a major limitation of the data: the errors were all self-reported. To get an unbiased measure of mistakes, she sent a covert observer into the units. When she analyzed those data, the results flipped: psychologically safe teams reported more errors, but they actually made fewer errors. By freely admitting their mistakes, they were then able to learn what had caused them and eliminate them moving forward. In psychologically unsafe teams, people hid their mishaps to avoid penalties, which made it difficult for anyone to diagnose the root causes and prevent future problems. They kept repeating the same mistakes.

My neurological doctor thought I had a brain tumor before I self-diagnosed and treated for ‘Magee's Disease’. He sent me through CT and MRI brain scanners looking for it. I later discovered I had ‘Altitude Hypersensitivity' and I was very reactive to altitudes above 1,000 feet, bringing on severe altitude sickness symptoms that were affecting the brain. I had been breathing oxygen, nitrogen, helium, carbon dioxide and mercury polluted air at high altitude during a decade of working in professional astronomy.

Going to therapy and talking about healing may just be the go-to flex of our time. It is supposedly an indicator of how profoundly self-aware, enlightened, emotionally mature, or “evolved” an individual is. Social media is obsessed and saturated with pop psychology and psychiatry content related to “healing”, trauma, embodiment, neurodiversity, psychiatric diagnoses, treatments alongside productivity hacks, self-care tips and advice on how to love yourself without depending on anyone else, cut people out of your life, manifest your goals to be successful, etc. Therapy isn’t a universal indicator of morality or enlightenment. Therapy isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution that everyone must pursue. There are many complex political and cultural reasons why some people don’t go to therapy, and some may actually have more sustainable support or care practices rooted in the community. This is similar to other messaging, like “You have to learn to love yourself first before someone else can love you”. It all feeds into the lie that we are alone and that happiness comes from total independence. Mainstream therapy blames you for your problems or blames other people, and often it oscillates between both extremes. If we point fingers at ourselves or each other, we are too distracted to notice the exploitative systems making us all sick and sad. Oftentimes, people come out of therapy feeling fully affirmed and unconditionally validated, and this ego-caressing can feel rewarding in the moment even if it doesn’t help ignite any growth or transformation. People are convinced that they can do no wrong, are infallible, incapable of causing harm, and that other people are the problem. Treatment then focuses on inflating self-confidence, self-worth, self-acceptance, and self-love to chase one’s self-centered dreams, ambitions, and aspirations without taking any accountability for one’s own actions. This sort of individualistic therapeutic approach encourages isolation and a general mistrust of others who are framed as threats to our inner peace or extractors of energy, and it further breeds a superiority complex. People are encouraged to see relationships as accessories and means to a greater selfish end. The focus is on what someone can do for you and not on how to give, care for, or show up for other people. People are not pushed to examine how oppressive conditioning under these systems shows up in their relationships because that level of introspection and growth is simply too invalidating. “You don’t owe anyone anything. No one is entitled to your time and energy. If anyone invalidates you and disturbs your peace, they are toxic; cut them out of your life. You don’t need that negativity. You don’t need anyone else; you alone are enough. Put yourself first. You are perfect just the way you are.” In reality, we all have work to do. We are all socialized within these systems, and real support requires accountability. Our liberation is contingent on us being aware of our bullshit, understanding the values of the empire that we may have internalized as our own, and working on changing these patterns. Therapized people may fixate on dissecting, healing, improving, and optimizing themselves in isolation, guided by a therapist, without necessarily practicing vulnerability and accountability in relationships, or they may simply chase validation while rejecting the discomfort that comes from accountability. Healing in any form requires growth and a willingness to practice in relationships; it is not solely validating or invalidating; it is complex; it is not a goal to achieve but a lifelong process that no one is above; it is both liberating and difficult; it is about acceptance and a willingness to change or transform into something new; and ultimately, it is going to require many invalidating ego deaths so we can let go of the fixation of the “self” to ease into interdependence and community care.

Narcissistic Disorder The basic premise of this personality disorder is an inflated sense of self worth. This trait is often emphasized by a need to be appreciated and admired although someone with this disorder usually is unable to have any empathy for others; no matter what their situation. People with this disorder will often be fond of overly grand gestures and will assume they are the most important part of anyone’s life; even if you met them just five minutes ago. There are very few scenarios where this inflated sense of self worth is appropriate in modern society. Surprisingly, under this façade there is usually a very fragile self esteem which needs the consistent bolstering of ego that their behavior attracts. People with this disorder will often appear to be snobbish, disdainful or simply patronizing and condescending. They are likely to give out opinions on the failings of others at the drop of a hat without acknowledging their own shortcomings. The belief that they should be the most important person in any room can lead to issues when dealing with relationships at home or at work; this will be particularly noticeable if someone else is praised and you are not. In situations such as these, it is common for someone with this disorder to react angrily or impatiently; making it very difficult to build a long term relationship. The Symptoms Again, in order for someone to be diagnosed with this condition they will need to display at least five of the following symptoms and to have had these issues for at least one year. •   A sufferer has a hugely inflated opinion of their own self worth. They will usually inflate their achievements and skills to ensure they are the best in the room. They are unlikely to be able to substantiate any of these claims. •   They often indulge in a fantasy world where they have unlimited success, power, money and love. This indulgence can occur at any time. •   They will have a belief that they are very special and that there are only a few other people in the world which are on the same level as them. This belief means they will often try to associate with these people and no one else; as these are the only people who will understand them. •   The belief that they are special necessitates them to expect and demand your praise and adulation at all times of the day. They expect to be admired simply for being who they are. This belief extends to expecting others to provide them with favorable treatment and to know their expectations without being told them. •   This feeling of their own self worth will cause many people with this disorder to take advantage of others in order to achieve their own goal. They are unlikely to see this as exploitation; instead, it is just others doing what they should to satisfy their needs. •   It is usual for someone with this personality disorder to lack empathy towards others, particularly those who they feel are beneath them; which is almost everyone. •   Envy is a common trait in people with this disorder. They are liable to be envious of anyone who has something they do not and they will believe others are envious of them; because of their importance. •   People who suffer from this illness will often come across as arrogant, haughty or even rude. This disorder occurs in more men than women and current estimates suggest that the disorder is present in approximately six percent of the population. Symptoms associated with this disorder will always be present, even when a child; but the constantly evolving personality is likely to mask this and it is not usually possible to diagnose the condition until the late teens or early twenties.

Did you know that people with mental illness can have strong mental health? More often than not, mental illness and mental health are used interchangeably, however they do not mean the same thing! Every person has mental health, but not every person will have a mental illness. Mental health is the ability to adapt to change, be resilient in difficult circumstances and live a full and passionate life. Mental illness on the other hand is diagnosed by a professional (psychologist etc.) and require a well-managed plan, therapy and occasionally medication. Mental health is improved by journaling, yoga, exercise, healthy boundaries, good diet and active self-care!

To be sure, at times reality can feel unbearable, and despite the general satisfaction most people feel with their lives, mental illness is actually a lot more common than people realize. In fact, most people develop a diagnosable mental illness at some point in their lives.41 Nevertheless, most people report being fairly happy in life, show positive developmental change across their life-spans, and display extraordinary capacities for resilience, dignity, and grace.

Dahmer was later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (sometimes and more recently known as emotionally unstable personality disorder), but if you analyze the definition, many of the behaviors and symptoms have also been used to describe his mother Joyce, including sometimes irrational fears of abandonment, low self-esteem, unexplained anxiety, and depression, which must have affected him in childhood and as he grew up.

Though Arjuna deplores this state of inertia and self-pity, he is unable to shake it off. This is often our problem too; we can diagnose our shortcomings and even give a brilliant synopsis of the world’s woes, but as long as our knowledge is limited to intellectual analysis, we will not have the capacity to make the world more peaceful; we will not be able to prevent pollution or even bring together estranged families and friends. It is the deeper will and wisdom which come through meditation that enable us to tap the creative resources and untiring energy lying latent in our consciousness.

To my amazement, staff discussions on the unit rarely mentioned the horrific real-life experiences of the children and the impact of those traumas on their feelings, thinking, and self-regulation. Instead, their medical records were filled with diagnostic labels: “conduct disorder” or “oppositional defiant disorder” for the angry and rebellious kids; or “bipolar disorder.” ADHD was a “comorbid” diagnosis for almost all. Was the underlying trauma being obscured by this blizzard of diagnoses?

Creepelyn,” Layla called. “Open up, weirdo. You can’t get out of this one.” Creepelyn? What the fuck? “Oh my god, you’re so mean,” Veronica snickered. “You can’t, like, call autistic people creepy. It’s ableist or whatever.” Layla scoffed. “Oh, please. She’s all, like, ‘I’m so neurospicy, UwU.’ No one cares, and anyway, she’s probably self-diagnosed like half the internet and uses that as an excuse for her extreme creepiness.” “I haven’t noticed her being creepy…” “Shut up,” Layla hissed, slapping the door again. I expected Evelyn to ignore them, so I was surprised as hell when the door swung open. Layla pushed into the room while Veronica lingered right outside. I’d seen enough. No one talked about Evelyn that way, and Layla sure as hell didn’t get to push her around like that. Veronica squeaked when I appeared from my secret spot, her hands flying up in a defensive gesture. “Hi, Ivan. I was just—” I jerked my head to the side. “Get the fuck out of here.

Within one session, I had diagnosed EJ with narcissistic personality disorder—the characteristics of this diagnosis include a long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, cravings for admiration, and impaired empathy.

If we wish for a compassionate response from others, it is self-defeating to express our needs by interpreting or diagnosing their behavior. Instead, the more directly we can connect our feelings to our own needs, the easier it is for others to respond to us compassionately.

We were struck by how many of our patients who were diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) told us horror stories about their childhoods. BPD is marked by clinging but highly unstable relationships, extreme mood swings, and self-destructive behavior, including self-mutilation and repeated suicide attempts.

I am not aware of any other mental or medical condition in which a kid or young adult self-diagnoses themselves after social media and internet engagement, undergoes no objective testing, and then receives irreversible medication and surgery upon demand

Dr Babbington snorts a mighty snort of derision. ‘You young people spend entirely too much time online, self-diagnosing.’ He pauses and adds with a smile, ‘You all turn up here telling me that you’ve got this or that and talking about worst-case scenarios. You need to leave medicine to the medical professionals. That’s what we’ve been trained to do.

If you have been misunderstood your whole life, take heart, you are not alone. There are many people who have been diagnosed with ASD as adults. It is never too late to receive a diagnosis.

Figure 2.2 Number of connections over 25 years across brain areas. This process — neural exuberance followed by pruning of connections — makes the human brain highly adaptable to any environment. Is the infant born in an urban or an agricultural society? Is it the year 2012 or 1012? It doesn’t really matter. The brain of a child born in New York City or in Nome, Alaska, is similar at birth. During the next two decades of life, the process of neural exuberance followed by pruning sculpts a brain that can meet the demands, and thrive in its environment. Brain differences at the “tails” of the distribution As with any natural process there is a range of functioning, with most individuals in the middle and a small percentage of individuals being far above and far below the mean. While the general pattern of increasing and decreasing brain connections is seen in all children, important differences are reported in children whose abilities are above or below those of the average population. To investigate children above the normal range, Shaw used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to follow brain structure in 307 children over 17 years. Children with average IQs reached a peak of cortical thickness (and therefore number of neural connections) around age 10, and then pruning began and continued to age 18. Children with above-average IQs had a different pattern: a brief pruning period around age 7 followed by increasing connections again to age 13. Then pruning ensued more vigorously and finished around age 18. There were also differences in brain structure. At age 18, those with above-average IQs had higher levels of neural connections in the frontal areas, which are responsible for short-term memory, attention, sense of self, planning, and decision-making — the higher brain functions. At the other end of the spectrum, individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, compared to normal children, lose 3% more connections each year from age 10 to 18. Symptoms of schizophrenia emerge in the late teens, when the cortical layer becomes too thin to support coherent functioning. A thinner cortical layer as a young adult — about 20% less than the average — could account for the fragmented mental world of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Who is in control? Neural exuberance — increasing and decreasing connections — is genetically controlled, but the child’s experiences affect which connections are pruned and which remain. Circuits that a child uses are strengthened. So a youngster who learns to play the piano or to speak Italian is setting up brain circuits that support those activities — she will find it easier to learn another instrument or language. ​Warning to parents: This doesn’t mean you should inundate your toddler with Italian, violin, martial arts, and tennis lessons. Young children learn best when following their natural tendencies and curiosity. Children learn through play. Undue stress and pressure inhibits the brain’s natural ability to learn.

According to DSM-5-TR, children 4 to 16 must show at least 6 out of 9 symptoms listed in the DSM-5-TR with apparent severity to be officially diagnosed. Who and where: A psychiatrist, a neurologist, a psychologist, a certified mental health professional, or a pediatrician must be the ones to make the diagnosis.

…another kind, by no means uncommon, in which one person sucks the vitality of the other, one receives what the other gives, but gives almost nothing in return. Some very vital people belong to this bloodsucking type. They extract the vitality from one victim after another, but while they prosper and grow interesting, those upon whom they live grow pale and dim and dull. Such people use others as means to their own ends and never consider them as ends in themselves. Fundamentally they are not interested in those whom for the moment they think they love, they are interested only in the stimulus to their own activities, perhaps of a quite impersonal sort. Evidently this springs from some defect in their nature, but it is one not altogether easy either to diagnose or to cure. It is a characteristic frequently associated with great ambition and is rooted, I should say, in an unduly one-sided view of what makes human happiness. Affection in the sense of a genuine reciprocal interest of two persons in each other, not solely as means to each other's good but rather as a combination having a common good, is one of the most important elements of real happiness, and the man whose ego is so enclosed within steel walls that this enlargement of it is impossible misses the best that life has to offer, however successful he may be in his career. Ambition which excludes affection from its purview is generally the result of some kind of anger or hatred against the human race, produced of it is impossible misses the best that life has to offer, however successful he may be in his career. Ambition which excludes affection from its purview is generally the result of some kind of anger or hatred against the human race, produced by unhappiness in youth, by injustices in later life, or by any of the causes which lead to persecution mania. A too powerful ego is a prison from which a man must escape if he is to enjoy the world to the full. A capacity for genuine affection is one of the marks of the man who has escaped his prison of self.

A chronic disturbance in which at least twelve of the following are present: 1. A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one’s goals (regardless of how much one has actually accomplished). 2. Difficulty getting organized. 3. Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started. 4. Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow-through. 5. A tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark. 6. A frequent search for high stimulation. 7. An intolerance of boredom. 8. Easy distractibility, trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or a conversation, often coupled with an ability to hyperfocus at times. 9. Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent. 10. Trouble in going through established channels, following “proper” procedure. 11. Impatient; low tolerance of frustration. 12. Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as in impulsive spending of money, changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans, and the like; hot-tempered. 13. A tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; a tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers. 14. A sense of insecurity. 15. Mood swings, mood lability, especially when disengaged from a person or a project. 16. Physical or cognitive restlessness. 17. A tendency toward addictive behavior. 18. Chronic problems with self-esteem. 19. Inaccurate self-observation. 20. Family history of ADD or manic-depressive illness or depression or substance abuse or other disorders of impulse control or mood. B. Childhood history of ADD. (It may not have been formally diagnosed, but in reviewing the history, one sees that the signs and symptoms were there.) C. Situation not explained by other medical or psychiatric condition.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

Heightened emotion potentially posed another threat more serious than bad skin: hysteria. Doctors diagnosed the condition as a woman’s disease, believed to originate in the womb and to demonstrate female frailty and fallibility. Girls around puberty were particularly susceptible, doctors worried, to the fits and seizures hysteria could induce. How important it was, then, for a young woman to exercise self-restraint and to remain in a limited arena: the home.

In our secular world, we no longer see eternal paradise as a carrot at the end of the stick of life, but try to cram as much as possible into our relatively short time on the planet instead. This is, of course, a futile endeavour, doomed to failure. It is tempting to interpret the modern epidemics of depression and burnout as the individual's response to the unbearable nature of constant acceleration. The decelerating individual - who slows down instead of speeding up, and maybe even stops completely - seems out of place in a culture characterised by manic development, and may be interpreted pathologically (i.e. diagnosed as clinically depressed).

To call oneself a journalist when one has no established qualifications is “bad”, but to tack the “autistic” qualifier onto title is worse in my opinion, and potentially more misleading. Assuming the “autistic journalist” actually has autism and is not self-diagnosed, why should the fact that someone has autism make them qualified to write about autism and bill themselves as an autistic journalist? On the surface, it makes perfect sense. A person has autism. They know what it is to live with autism. They are therefore qualified to write about autism. But

Today, Americans spend billions of dollars every year to maintain a strong national defence as a deterrent against external attack by foreign powers, but they fail entirely to apply the same principle of preventive defence to their own health. They eat, drink, and live indiscriminately and treat their bodies as engines of pleasure, without the slightest regard for the damage their habits inflict on their health. When they get sick, they run to the doctor or hospital for a quick fix and never imagine that their ailments are self-inflicted. Those ailments are then further compounded at the clinic, because more often than not they are not correctly diagnosed owing to the lack of a comprehensive and systematic view of the human body and human health. Western medical practice has become increasingly fragmented into narrow fields of specialty, and patients are referred to 'specialists' based entirely on what parts of the body exhibit their symptoms. It does not occur to Western medical specialists that symptoms may appear in parts of the body far removed from the root cause of the disease, although this remains a fundamental tenet of traditional Chinese medicine.

Writing is a solitary venture. Making use of a soundless void in the vortex of time the author enters the realm of restoration, an undertaking where he or she explores that private psychic space of the self. In this mystical state of heightened awareness, the writer investigates the soul’s grievances, and diagnoses and treats their grim afflictions.

The self-esteem of psychiatry got very low as a result of it. It had never really been accepted as part of medicine because the diagnoses were so unreliable, and the Rosenhan experiment confirmed it.” Spitzer’s

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the reference manual used by mental health professionals to diagnose psychological problems, defines the avoidant personality disorder by saying that this personality type has the “essential feature of hypersensitivity to potential rejection, humiliation, or shame. . . .” Avoidant people are always afraid of “messing up,” “saying or doing the wrong thing,” “getting caught,” “not being good enough,” and so on. They do anything to save face—even, and this is the extreme, not showing their faces at all. The Manual goes on to describe “an unwillingness to enter into relationships unless given unusually strong guarantees of uncritical acceptance. . . .” Most avoidant people do whatever they can to keep relationships superficial or nonexistent, unless they are sure that the person will accept them without judging them; often, they turn to relatives for emotional support, perceiving them as “safe.” Even if superficial friendships do exist, it is unlikely that an avoidant person will take the perceived risk of sharing intimate thoughts or feelings, for fear that the acquaintance would find “the truth” horrifying or even merely unattractive or unacceptable. “Social withdrawal in spite of desire for affection and acceptance. . . .” Avoidant people may look and act like “loners,” but they’re not. Many of the people I have worked with in my social therapy program start out saying that they are perfectly fine without friends, even though they have sought out treatment for depression or anxiety. The truth is, most people truly want companionship, even if they can’t verbalize the desire. Avoidant people are no exception; the only thing that makes them different is that the fear of rejection we all feel to one degree or another has become so great in their minds that they have trouble controlling it. With effort, though, avoidant people can learn to overcome their fear of rejection and seek out the friendship and even romance that they secretly want. “Low self-esteem.” As I’ve explained, most people who fear rejection act as though they have some terrible secret that would mean instant loneliness if it were discovered. Usually, we are much harder on ourselves than others would ever be. For people whose low self-esteem is a stopper, it seems as though the whole world sees them the way they do, and that only magnifies their poor self-image. “Individuals with this disorder are exquisitely sensitive to rejection, humiliation, or shame. Most people are somewhat concerned about how others assess them, but these individuals are devastated by the slightest hint of disapproval.” So sensitive to disapproval, in fact, that they will avoid it at all costs—even if it means forgoing job opportunities, social events, or intimate relationships that they would truly like to pursue.

While some mainstream medical professionals continue to insist that NCGS doesn’t exist, scientists have validated it as a distinct clinical condition. In one major study, researchers reviewed the charts of 276 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who had been diagnosed with NCGS using a double-blind, placebo-controlled wheat challenge (patients were put on a gluten-free diet and then given capsules containing either wheat or an inert substance). As a whole, the NCGS group had a higher frequency of anemia, weight loss, self-reported wheat intolerance, and a history of childhood food allergies than those in the IBS without NCGS group. The authors concluded that their data “confirm the existence of non-celiac wheat sensitivity as a distinct clinical condition.

While some mainstream medical professionals continue to insist that NCGS doesn’t exist, scientists have validated it as a distinct clinical condition. In one major study, researchers reviewed the charts of 276 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who had been diagnosed with NCGS using a double-blind, placebo-controlled wheat challenge (patients were put on a gluten-free diet and then given capsules containing either wheat or an inert substance). As a whole, the NCGS group had a higher frequency of anemia, weight loss, self-reported wheat intolerance, and a history of childhood food allergies than those in the IBS without NCGS group. The authors concluded that their data “confirm the existence of non-celiac

What if the theories in psychology that dominate our mainstream culture are flawed, rather than the people they diagnose? That we close our eyes to modern brain science and global context and pigeonhole human beings as “normal” or “abnormal” is one of the biggest shams of the century.

In 1964 following a very stressful trip to Russia, [Cousins] was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (a degenerative disease causing the breakdown of collagen), which left him in almost constant pain and motivated his doctor to say he would die within a few months. He disagreed and reasoned that if stress had somehow contributed to his illness (he was not sick before the trip to Russia), then positive emotions should help him feel better. With his doctors’ consent, he checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel across the street and began taking extremely high doses of vitamin C while exposing himself to a continuous stream of humorous films and similar “laughing matters.” He later claimed that 10 minutes of belly rippling laughter would give him two hours of pain-free sleep, when nothing else, not even morphine, could help him. His condition steadily improved and he slowly regained the use of his limbs. Within six months he was back on his feet, and within two years he was able to return to his full-time job at the Saturday Review. His story baffled the scientific community and inspired a number of research projects.

robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs and even self-propagate.

Toward the end of his presidency, he gave one of his most famous speeches, diagnosing a crisis of confidence in the country and attacking materialism as the cause: "In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.

THE DSM-V: A VERITABLE SMORGASBORD OF “DIAGNOSES” When DSM-V was published in May 2013 it included some three hundred disorders in its 945 pages. It offers a veritable smorgasbord of possible labels for the problems associated with severe early-life trauma, including some new ones such as Disruptive Mood Regulation Disorder,26 Non-suicidal Self Injury, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Dysregulated Social Engagement Disorder, and Disruptive Impulse Control Disorder.27 Before the late nineteenth century doctors classified illnesses according to their surface manifestations, like fevers and pustules, which was not unreasonable, given that they had little else to go on.28 This changed when scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch discovered that many diseases were caused by bacteria that were invisible to the naked eye. Medicine then was transformed by its attempts to discover ways to get rid of those organisms rather than just treating the boils and the fevers that they caused. With DSM-V psychiatry firmly regressed to early-nineteenth-century medical practice. Despite the fact that we know the origin of many of the problems it identifies, its “diagnoses” describe surface phenomena that completely ignore the underlying causes. Even before DSM-V was released, the American Journal of Psychiatry published the results of validity tests of various new diagnoses, which indicated that the DSM largely lacks what in the world of science is known as “reliability”—the ability to produce consistent, replicable results. In other words, it lacks scientific validity. Oddly, the lack of reliability and validity did not keep the DSM-V from meeting its deadline for publication, despite the near-universal consensus that it represented no improvement over the previous diagnostic system.29 Could the fact that the APA had earned $100 million on the DSM-IV and is slated to take in a similar amount with the DSM-V (because all mental health practitioners, many lawyers, and other professionals will be obliged to purchase the latest edition) be the reason we have this new diagnostic system?

Self-reflection is an important stage to diagnose, develop and strengthen your creativity.

Until this point in history, it was advantageous for a person to claim to be autistic when one really wasn't autistic at all, because society was more than willing to cut people with autism slack, or make special accommodations for them. But as people's medical privacy continues to erode, and as national healthcare systems continue to be modified, as the US one is currently, it will be much harder for self-diagnosed people, wannabees, and diagnosis shoppers to claim to be autistic when the government will be scrutinizing everyone so closely. So

Unfortunately, by this time it didn't matter. Self-diagnosed autistics and fakers were asking diagnosed autistics whether or not they had a diagnosis, and if the diagnosed ones answered “Yes,” the self-diagnosed autistics and fakers would say “Prove it!” And since no one wanted to post their personal information online, nothing was ever proved. But

For the record, I seldom see real-life autistics stalking people online with the zeal that fakers do, and I do not often see them conniving behind each other's backs. I do not often see them ganging up on people and picking on them until their victims are near-suicidal. The real-life autistics that I know are mostly employed in good jobs, are financially solvent -or have little debt- are involved in friendships and amorous relationships, are not prone to all the “deviant” sexual proclivities described by many of those misdiagnosed and self-diagnosed people in the online forums. They are upstanding citizens, do not have a criminal record, and have saved for their retirement. Then