crackpot diagnoses

[Walrus]

So. I want to hear what shit the doc with the couch has diagnosed you all with. Everybody and their dog are getting diagnosed with some mental disorder today that you have to wonder if being depressed, inattentive, inept at social skills and whatnot are just HUMAN TRAITS.

I'll start out with myself. Depression. I will grant the head doctors a little slack, because if being minutes away from killing myself USUALLY means someone's depressed. OCD. They thought I had that for a while because I was a compulsive skin picker. I was not OCD. OCD is a obsessive thought or action, and I wasn't obsessing over my skin. It stemmed simply from two things - I was anxious and I like peeling things. Big difference. A lot of OCD people don't even realize they're doing what they're doing, especially in the case of skin picking. I was fully aware of what I was doing.

Asperger's Syndrome. I waver on this one. I go through these denial and then acceptance stages and then back to denial. Right now I'm in a half-denial and half-acceptance stage. I do meet the criteria for the disorder but only mildly. If I were brought to a psychiatrist ten years ago I wouldn't have been diagnosed with the disorder because my case is so mild. One has to wonder, if a case is that mild, should it even be diagnosed at all? Yeah, yeah, I'm a pretty quirky person. I'm somewhat socially inept and say things I really shouldn't say without thinking about how the other person might feel. But doesn't everyone do that? And yeah, so I obsess over my interests. But the interesting thing about this is I didn't start obsessing over things until 4th grade, and my obsessive interests have kind of waned. I don't go around talking about serial killers obsessively anymore (yes, that was and is one of the things I'm very fascinated with). And I have limited eye contact. A lot of people, diagnosed or not, have poor eye contact.

I can maintain eye contact with certain people, so it's not like I can't do it at all. I just avoid eye contact with authorities and people I don't like, and so many people do that anyway. It's not abnormal.

I was also diagnosed with nonverbal learning disability. This entails visual-spatial problems and social skills problems and shit like that. Let me make it clear I have no visual-spacial problems. I don't have fine motor problems, either. And while it may be true that I'm in the bottom 2% or something like that for recognizing and remembering faces, that can be attributed to other things. Not just NLD. And fuck, most of the people at my school have NLD. I don't want to be on the same spectrum as them.

Social anxiety. I was very anxious as a younger kid (well, really, up until this last year) and even now I won't talk on phones, but it's really ebbed. I don't have any problems telling people off anymore or standing up for myself. its given me lots of practice.

ADD. Some weird psychiatrist who looked like Freud gave me this diagnosis. I do NOT have ADD. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT. ADD is marked by inability to pay attention. I have an ability to pay attention. Do I use it? No. Why? Because I don't care. Does that mean I have ADD? No. ADD has become this thing that professionals and parents slap onto kids when they want an excuse for why the kids aren't paying attention. Anybody ever stop to think and wonder why the kids aren't paying attention in the first place? Maybe because their school is as boring as hell.

I'm not saying AD/HD doesn't exist. I know a girl who has severe ADHD, and off her meds she's like a completely different person. She literally bounces off the walls. But 1 in every 6 kids is now diagnosed with ADD. If it's really that common, then maybe inattention is just a human trait and not some disorder.

I'm pretty sure there's some other things they've slapped on me but I can't remember. If I really cared I'd go search through my medical records but I couldn't be bothered.

So come forth and post the labels you've had slapped upon you.




I just realized how ironic it is that I love psychology so much but yet I'm so skeptical of it.

[God]

They should come up with a mental disorder for people who excessively deny the accuracy of psychological diagnoses.

[Walrus]

that hurts

[pichubro]

They say my shyness is a form of nonsocial skills. I actually went into therapy so I could learn to ''make friends''. I have friends - less then 10 (In real life. You guys are my other group) - but friends nonetheless.

Oh no, there's a problem: I don't have a billon friends and we don't go out to the mall every other day. Either we do different things, or I don't know how to interact with them. I'm pretty sure it's the first option, but that lady was crazy.

Then there is the matter that I treat people I dislike by interrupting their conversations. Nope, wrong again. Some of the people in the group weren't talking to anyone so I decided to ask what their haobbies were. You know, as a nice, interested person willing to make a new friendship. Instead, they gave me the cold shoulder, so I gave it back.


Here's the best part: I went into the school therapy class, and (OMG!) those people who shunned me were there too. So, because we shunned each other, we got to spend a whole hour together each week watching videos on friendship.


That was reason number one why I hated 6th Grade.

[Walrus]

social skills groups in public school sucks. I went to two different ones for once a week each during lunch period. everyone else would always skip it so the school counselor would have to hunt them down and by the time she got everyone the lunch period was pretty much over. we never accomplished anything though we did have to play these really horrible game where you talked about your emotions

[Giant Squid]

ADD is the only thing that comes to mind along with the tired line about how gifted I am. Pretty much anyone with even slightly above average intelligence gets that same speech. I don't remember much about what I was diagnosed with because I was pretty young at the time I was seeing shrinks a lot; I usually wouldn't pay any attention to what they were saying to me, I would just complete the puzzles and play the games. I used to see a shrink my parents made me see but he never diagnosed anything, or did anything else for that matter.

P.S. SEMICOLON

[Eve]

in england we dont get diagnosed for anything really. unless your parents are over reactive freaks. i dont have any medical records like that. though the teachers pin on me anger problems, depression and antisocialness.

[Mex]

I saw the name of this topic and I knew it had "walrus" written all over it. O love yah

[Cool Latios]

when i was in first grade they sent me to a psychologist because i climbed on my desk and shouted random things.

I was pretty crazy at that time. But the exercises were fun, she even said she couldn't diagnose anything because I was too good, she was in front of me and i read the answers upside down.

I ONLY PUT A PIECE IN ONE PUZZLE THE WRONG SIDE AND THAT'S ALL WOW WHAT A MENTAL DISORDER

[Mex]

you obviously need to be heavily medicated!

[Walrus]

CL YOU'RE THE WORST CASE OF AUTISM I'VE EVER SEEN!

[Mex]

HE MIGHT NEED TO PROCESS HIS FEELINGS

[Walrus]

CL YOU'RE VERY ELEVATED, YOU NEED TO PROCESS YOUR FEELINGS AND THEN WE'LL TALK ABOUT COPING STRATEGIES.







^ my school's favorite line