Gemma Spake

Sometimes these self-diagnoses, like you know yourself better than probably anybody.

So sometimes they're correct, but sometimes they're just not.

And those are the cases that they get really worried about because they're like, oh,

Once you have that label, once you really do feel aligned with it, it can become very easy to start seeing everything through that lens.

The risk is confirmation bias.

We notice the evidence that supports the diagnosis and we overlook the evidence that complicates it.

We start collecting examples that fit.

Forgotten appointments, awkward interactions, bad days, and not examples of maybe a more accurate explanation.

This is similar to the risk of over-identification, right?

Your diagnosis, especially in this case where it's a self-diagnosis, made on simplified information, right?

Without clinical help.

It can feel like in that isolated way, it becomes your whole identity rather than just one part of the person that you are and one part of your experience.

The problem with that is that it turns as well language and terminology into something that can explain everything and is therefore overly loose and overly casual or even at times aesthetic.

And that can really flatten important differences in severity and important differences in experience.

mildly relatable struggle is described in the same language as profound life-altering incredibly difficult then the people who do and who need the most help become a lot harder to see

If I'm a bit distracted and I hate admin gets put into the same category as profound difficulties with executive function, that can really make an individual's own experiences feel less seen and less visible.

something important gets lost.

We cannot deny that there are variations in their definitions and there are criteria and levels for this very reason.

If ordinary sadness is described in the same breath as incapacitating depression, or if discomfort is described in the same breath as trauma, there is meaning that is lost there that is important for literally everybody.

That is when you start to feel