Sorry For Secretly Diagnosing You
my toxic relationship with therapy-speak (it’s not you, it’s me)
It’s 2 A.M. I bring the phone closer, squeezing my arms tight beneath the covers, as my eyes flick methodically over the screen.
signs of depression
r/narcissism
r/anxiety
bpd bipolar same?
ocd anxiety depression
I scroll through countless articles, posts, and confessions, keeping a mental tally of each website. Psychology Today doesn’t think so, but what does it know? Psych Central is new to this. Quora says maybe, but got weird about it. Reddit — agrees with me? I think?
Eventually, I have to put my phone down, blinking away the screen pressed against my eyes. As I drift towards sleep, stories from online strangers creep up behind me, leaving wet footprints across my dreams.
The next morning, I wake with a solemn sense of purpose. Then my phone dings and I immediately surrender, scrambling beneath the pillows at the notification. I resume the position held six hours ago, grinning in thoughtless joy as I type out my response. All memories of last night have been shoved deep into my subconscious where they will undoubtedly spill out the next time I’m left on read, but for now, everything is perfect again.
When I was in middle school, wikiHow taught me how to kiss. I never applied this information directly, but it was useful to have, mostly because I lied about kissing all the time. In high school, I didn’t know I was gay until Buzzfeed told me I could be. I felt something in my stomach reach up for that word, but in the way I grabbed at anything back then, when it was impossible to know whether I belonged or craved belonging.
Even before the internet, the bulk of my social education in elementary school came from books. I learned how to pick out a jealous glance, angry huff, and contented sigh, all from the musty, objective comfort of the written word. This is the closest comparison I can make to the way therapy-speak makes me feel. Like a little girl cutting out imaginary text to stick down something I can’t understand yet.
Nowadays, I delete Reddit off my phone every nine days. It is my ritual, a cleansing, followed by failure the moment I encounter an unforeseen edge in my social encounters. Coworker snapping at me. Partner too busy for me. Friend ghosting me. I need to know why. I have to understand. More often than not, I will find shared strands of the sticky web that I’m searching for, but everything attached to this newfound insight pulls me deeper into an imagined mind.
This isn’t healthy. I know it isn’t. But I can’t bring myself to search “anxious diagnose everyone normal” to confirm my suspicions.
All of this year, I have been working on releasing my need for control. To feel my feelings. Live in my body. Everything white women in yoga videos have been saying for years. Obviously, this is trickle-down therapy at work, but I think it is working — only l have no way to know for sure.
You know, except for actual therapy.
It’s pretty easy to forget what I read online comes from the real world, not a fairytale forest where people whisper their feelings into trees until they reach something leafy and raw within themselves.
Actual therapists would never encourage you to diagnose your partner. They wouldn’t tell you that your mother is bipolar. Or that your best friend is avoidantly attached. Actual therapists can’t diagnose a patient unless they have administered an assessment or provided treatment. An actual therapist would probably gently guide me to the conclusion that I diagnose people to be in control, detaching myself from the hurt I associate with their behavior.
Look at that. It’s almost like I was possessed by the spirit of an actual therapist (truthfully I folded and googled “anxious diagnose everyone normal”.)
Therapy-speak is dangerous when we’re unable to differentiate between describing something and addressing it. We may struggle to claim our simplest emotions, choosing instead to grasp tightly onto a balloon filled with the helium of being better than everyone else. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say, “I just don’t like him.” Yet, people will constantly explain all the reasons someone is a narcissist — and still date them. In that way, it matters less where our language comes from, and more that it encourages an honest dialogue with ourselves.
Is searching for an online diagnosis my way of avoiding hurt or justifying my right to be hurt? Am I seeking validation from strangers or deeper connections? Will I ever keep Reddit deleted? I hope these ungoogleable questions mark the start of a new era where I pursue personal truth over objective analysis (and maybe real therapy will be involved).
To be clear, my descent down the pseudo-psychology rabbit hole hasn’t been fruitless. I have been the tree people whisper intimacies into, and in that stillness, felt an overwhelming affection for their beating life. There are updates on posts that make me emotional, strangers that transformed therapy-speak into healing, and healing into something like magic. I have been given hope that words hold some power, and I don’t think that is an entirely useless belief.
But obviously, I can’t speak for everyone — I’m only trying to speak for myself.
