We hear a lot about how we, as a society, need to pay more attention to mental health. We are told about soaring rates of depression and anxiety. This has been an extraordinary couple of years and I see a lot more people who are quite understandably struggling to cope. But the epidemic that concerns me is the willingness of people to accept, or more often, self-diagnose, serious mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression.
In response to the addition of Prolonged Grief to the list of mental illnesses in the DSM 5, Joanne Cacciatore, a grief specialist and Associate Professor of Arizona State University says, “When someone who is a quote-unquote expert tells us we are disordered and we are feeling very vulnerable and feeling overwhelmed, we no longer trust ourselves and our emotions,” Dr. Cacciatore said. “To me, that is an incredibly dangerous move, and short sighted.”
We are being convinced that medical intervention is required for normal human distress. But most people in therapy are not experiencing mental illness. They are facing big questions such as: Am I good enough? Am I lovable? Am I loving? What do I really want? What do I do about the things that I don’t want?
I’m writing this because I’m worried that we are losing the ability to describe ourselves in non-medical terms. Even if everyone were accurately diagnosing themselves with anxiety and depression, it wouldn’t tell us anything about them or their experiences.
I’m also writing this because I believe in our collective ability to endure, persevere and even triumph. Depression and anxiety are treatable, but they are illnesses. Describing yourself with these conditions means that your responses to life are outsized and pathological. For a small percentage of people reading this, I know that this is, or has been, your reality. For you, a diagnosis may have been a source of relief and hope.
But for most people, every time you describe yourself as depressed and anxious you are essentially saying, “There is something wrong with me and I have little to no reason to feel the way I do”.
Over the years, people have told me that when they settled on a diagnosis for themselves, it prevented them from asking why they were unhappy. Unhappiness is a sign that there are circumstances in your life that aren’t working for you. Changing those things may be difficult, but you’re not wrong to be unhappy.
Many of the things you do to mitigate the effects of a mental illness can be usefully applied to unhappiness: Learning to calm your body and question what you think, resolving old trauma, finding ways to express yourself and acting in accordance with your values and purposes. You don’t have to be mentally ill to benefit from these practices.
People often ask me how I can stand to listen to people’s problems all day, but that’s not what therapy is about. What brings me to work everyday is that I get to witness people transform from pain to peace. Part of helping people with that transformation involves sponsoring health affirming conversations.