More Than a Label

It can feel like a relief to have a name for what you’re going through. A diagnosis can bring order to chaos, give language to your pain, and help you feel less alone. "At last,” you think. “This explains me.”

And sometimes it helps. But it’s not the whole story.

A diagnosis might tell you what you’re doing — but not why. It won’t trace the roots of your anxiety back to a frightened child who felt unseen. It won’t understand the nights you couldn’t sleep because your mind wouldn’t let you rest. It won’t sit with the unbearable tension between desire and defence.

You are not your diagnosis. You are not a disorder. You are a person who found ways to survive — ways that might not make sense on the surface, but always made sense at the time. The panic, the withdrawal, the self-criticism… all of it has a history. It’s not random. It’s not brokenness. It has meaning.

Sometimes a label can become a place to stop - when what’s really needed is a place to begin.

Therapy can be a space to go deeper than the label. To be curious and ask, what happened? — not just what’s wrong? To be interested and listen to symptoms as messages — not malfunctions. Not to fix, but to understand — and through understanding, to make space for change.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a diagnosis. Sometimes it opens doors. But there’s also something profoundly freeing in allowing yourself to be more than that — Messier. More human. And full of stories waiting to be told.

If you're interested in reading more about current debates around diagnosis, The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O'Sullivan, and No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis by Alastair Santhouse are both thoughtful and thought provoking reads.