Posted by WorryGirl on March 19, 2003, at 10:49:42
In reply to Re: How many mental illnesses can 1 person have » WorryGirl, posted by Dinah on March 19, 2003, at 4:09:58
> Noa is completely right. I'm kind of surprised they hit you with that list all at once. My therapist has always tried to do it more conversationally, rather than throwing DSM-IV diagnoses around.
Dinah,
This psychologist is a friend of a friend and I brought everything that I had acquired from seeing my former therapist. My friend had already asked him to give me the tests because I really wanted to know everything that is wrong with me. Now I'm freaking because it's worse than I thought. I'm sure some of these disorders can bleed into another, as you said, and my husband thinks that it's probably not as bad as I think, but this was hard enough for me just to go. To make matters worse, my husband is not a fan at all of pdocs and meds. He thinks they are a temporary crutch for people who are weak and/or defective. Well, I guess I'm both, whether he likes it or not. I'm trying to save this marriage while he still loves me (and thankfully he does).>At any rate the DSM-IV diagnostic method is unbelievably arbitrary and doesn't reflect real life situations well at all. Overlap between diagnoses is unbelievably common, as is not quite fitting a particular diagnosis.
>I know that I need for him to be able to assess my life situation. I just don't know if I can handle opening up again. When I started to open up with my former therapist (I mean REALLY starting to open up!) he sort of backed off. I swear, it was like he really didn't want to hear about some of the stuff I was trying to tell him. He wanted to fixate on what he perceived as the immediate problem at hand, my social anxiety. I'm surprised that he didn't want to know about my bulimia, or abusive ex-boyfriend, or abusive ex in-laws, etc. Almost the second I brought it up he shhh'd me with "we really need to work on THIS problem".
> Don't let the labels get you. You are the same person five seconds after getting the diagnosis as you were five seconds before. You are uniquely you. The human brain is far too marvelous and complex to reduce to a set of diagnostic codes.
Thanks for your kind words. I know how stupid I sound (I forgot to mention stupidity as one of my best traits!) As sorry as that attempt was at tongue in cheek humor, I sometimes feel that this knife gets duller every day. Getting older stinks. I miss the allowances people seemed to make for everything when I was younger. I'm trying, though!
poster:WorryGirl
thread:210476
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030310/msgs/210666.html