a while ago i attended this lecture on autism. guy in the audience said he had many of the symptoms that were presented and asked what should he do to get treatment and possibly a diagnosis. instead of answering his question the psychologist went on a tangent about how āthe clinic reigns all powerful over guessworkā, and how actually it has become a trend amongst little children on the internet to claim that they are autistic for cool points, and that this hurts real autistic people. no she didnāt tell him how to get his symptoms looked into, she just made it very clear that to her, aknowledging your own symptoms is bad and evil and hurts the poor real mentally ill people.
an ex-friend of mine, then a psychology major and by now probably a full psychologist, once lectured me on how horrible and bad it was that i told her āi probably have some sort of neurodivergencyā, and that if i were her patient she would never give me a diagnosis because āyou arenāt like this now, but i know that if you get a diagnosis youāll use it as an excuse to start treating people badly. thatās just how mentally ill people are.ā
same ex-friend was extremely disgusted when she found out that fans sometimes make neurodivergency headcanons for characters that have the same symptoms as they do, and that authors sometimes write books with neurodivergent protagonists in stories that donāt focus on that (ex: she seemed horrified that percy jackson has adhd?)
multiple psychologists iāve seen on facebook agree that they should refuse to treat patients that say āiām here because i have symptoms of a disorder and wonder if i have itā, and that a patient should arrive to a psychologist as a blank slate.
school psychologist asked me how i was feeling about my trauma situation and i told him i thought my friends would leave me. instead of addressing the issue he said that that no i didnāt, that i was lying, that i had searched ābpd symptomsā online and now i was faking symptoms because i wanted to have bpd, that he shouldnāt have told me he suspected i had a personality disorder because now look what was happening. no, i didnāt search bpd symptoms online. yes, my friends left me, it was a completely founded belief and not a symptom, let alone a faked symptom.
so the next time you hear someone saying theyāre āanti self-diagnosisā i want you to understand what theyāre saying. what theyāre saying is:
- i donāt want people to be aware of their own symptoms
- i donāt think my patients should have access to any information that doesnāt come from me
- i donāt think neurodivergent people should learn how to cope with their symptoms and live ānormalā lives
- i think neurodivergent people should be denied a diagnosis because the moment they get one they will become evil and dangerous
- i donāt think people who donāt look like a stereotype could possibly be neurodivergent, even if they have all the symptoms, so i think they are faking it for attention and should be denied treatment
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