Self Diagnosing

It’s dangerous. 

I’m watching a documentary on a missing person, who, in her blogs, said “I’m bipolar”. Again, nobody is bipolar! She continues to say that she found an antidepressant that was working for her. Yeah... anyone with actual Bipolar Disorder, or anyone who knows anything about it, knows that antidepressants make BD intolerable. It sends the sufferer into a spiraling mania, that gets dangerous. So, no, she didn’t have BD.

Thanks to the internet, there’s a ton of people self-diagnosing. Everything from thinking you’ve got COVID, when you actually have a cold, to thinking you’re dying from cancer, when it’s nothing more than a headache. I knew someone who self-diagnosed as having autism, based on a Facebook list of symptoms consisting of things like, being sensitive as a child, having an imagination growing up, and having a sensitive scalp. Ridiculous, as I dare you to find a child who isn’t sensitive, or who doesn’t have a vivid imagination. As for the sensitive scalp... It’s beyond common.

When you use the internet to diagnose your ailments, it does exactly no good, and causes you unnecessary stress. Always, always, ALWAYS see a professional, for any problems you’re having!!! Also, many times, it takes years to get a proper diagnosis. Why? Because your symptoms are going to shift, change, and morph as whatever’s causing you problems will also shift, change, and morph. 

You cannot look up something like Bipolar Disorder, look at the list of usually made-up symptoms, and say for certain that you have it. It’s a dangerous road, and often leads to even worse things.

In school, I knew a girl who insisted that she had BD, but she jumped from psychiatrist to psychiatrist, because they’d eventually say that she didn’t have it. When they told her differently, she’d find a new doctor, because, “He’s wrong”. Best part of it was when she started on lithium. It’s known that lithium can make you lose hair. However, it’s maybe ten more hairs per day, than you’d usually lose. She’d show up to school with systematically shaved lines, going farther and farther back, until she finally shaved her whole head. She did this to get pity and attention. Wanna guess which personality disorder craves pity and attention? Nah, I’ll just tell you... Borderline Personality Disorder! But she kept insisting that she had BD. I haven’t heard from her in years, and it makes me wonder if she’s giving up that disturbing dream of getting that diagnosis, or if she finally got the proper help.

If my point wasn’t clear enough...

Do not use the internet to diagnose yourself! No matter how much you think you know, you cannot properly diagnose something while looking inward. It takes someone on the outside, with the proper education and experience, to see what’s going on!