The Ever growing list

[ZombiePringle]

Yesterday I brought up obsessing over a potential diagnosis and doing potentially too much research.

Well, that kind of leads to this. If I get this new diagnosis (probably will,) That'll be the 5th one on the diagnosis list, and possibly even a 6th one to come later on. To me even 4 was a bit overwhelming, I'm a really bad overthinker and I get overwhelmed a lot when thinking about how to deal with them, especially if all the symptoms start to hit at once. I know for me some coping skills can be detrimental to one symptom/illness while proving beneficial to others.

What are some ways people prepare for if you have multiple, but completely different symptoms happen at once? Or some universal kind of coping skills?

 

[Angie]

The subject of diagnoses is a good one.

Early on in my mental health life I really obsessed over a diagnosis. Like having one was super important for me. One of my first was Bipolar, turns out I am much more than that although at the time I was devastated.

The last time I asked my pdoc, it was Bipolar Schizoaffective with PTSD and DID and my therapist says Borderline Personality Disorder.

Well man, if I look at those diagnoses I might as well quit right? But wait, even my mental health team doesn't agree.

So for me, I report symptoms as they happen and my team is fluid enough to deal with them. I do take medication (although medicating a Personality Disorder is an iffy business) and I believe the med cocktail worked out over many years of trial and error does help me be stable.

So I am all about the symptoms, not the diagnoses.

Thanks for bringing up a great topic!

 

[Aurelia]

The diagnosis doesn't matter as much as how your most bothersome issues get helped/fixed/treated by a psychotherapist/psychiatrist. The diagnosis is just a label. Its relevance is literally just to help clinicians communicate more easily and effectively about what symptoms each client has without having to go into detail to explain them. So instead of "that person with depression and extreme anxiety around others, and especially social groups", they would say "That person with depression and SAD (Social Anxiety Disorder). That's the whole purpose of labels. Unfortunately, they have stigmas attached to them, but it's not something the client needs to worry about. They need to worry about what bothers them the most and finding the right person to treat it.

 

[Angie]

Also, in the US at least, diagnoses are for insurance purposes mainly anyway.

 

[Auri]

I agree with what's been said here. The symptoms matter and how you treat each of them, but the label? Only for easier communication in order to get hopefully the best treatment for you.
More labels doesn't mean "more is wrong with you". Actually, nothing is "wrong" with you, but I know that it feels that way... I struggle with adding up diagnoses myself.

Truth is, we could add labels infinitely as we create them, for everything, by regrouping certain symptoms together, and they overlap each other. E.g. If you have 5 out of 10 symptoms in one particular disorder, bam!, you qualify for it. But wait, you have 2 other symptoms, which if you add to 3 of the previous ones, qualify you for another label. Yay! And so on.
Imagine, for example, if we merged, say... PTSD symptoms with BPD symptoms and created a label for it. Let's call it "BPTSD". Would you have felt better to have that one diagnosis instead of two? Does it feel like you have "one" disorder instead of two?

So once you start analyzing your mental health (for necessary purposes of course), it rarely ends at one "diagnosis" because there's a plethora of labels out there for so many combinations of symptoms, and you could "fit" into many of them, but it doesn't mean there is "more bad" in your mental health.

They're manmade categories to describe combinations of symptoms and behaviours, but they're not tangible things that you can "add up". You're just a very complex human being and it's not easy to describe you with the few existing words, that's the limit of language and science. In the end, you are unique, you have a unique personality, a unique mental health, a unique combination of feelings, symptoms and behaviours. No one else has the exact same, even if they have the exact same labels as you.

 

[Human Ex Machinae]

What are some ways people prepare for if you have multiple, but completely different symptoms happen at once? Or some universal kind of coping skills?

I remind myself that I'm Superman. I don't have to worry about most things that mortals do. And when I die? Someone else will play this character. I don't give a shit.

 

[Auri]

What are some ways people prepare for if you have multiple, but completely different symptoms happen at once? Or some universal kind of coping skills?

What kind of symptoms happening at once for example?

In general, I'd recommend to focus on one symptom at a time.

 

[Butterfly]

I've had many diagnoses over the years but the most important thing is that your symptoms get treated.