Is There a Name for What is Going on With Me?
If you are going through a significant period of struggle, and you don’t have quite the words to describe it, you have likely wondered some version of this question in the recent past. And it makes perfect sense. Imagine a time before people understood where the chicken pox came from. Imagine even further if you were the first person in your entire community to develop a case. The number of conclusions that you might draw about such a thing could be endless. It would certainly feel scary and isolating, and you might even start to wonder how people saw you differently.
Maybe a day or two into your ailment, a stranger comes through town and sees you in your fear and agony. Maybe this stranger then shrugs and tells you that it’s “just the chicken pox,” before leaving town again.
There are a few elements to this example that make it both comforting and unsettling. For one, the stranger gives you a name for it. While the name might make you think that your exposure to poultry had something to do with it, at least it lets you know that other people have gone through the same thing.
Next, the stranger shrugs it off, which could mean you don’t have anything to worry about. It also makes sense, though, that without more explanation your swirling thoughts would still run away from you.
In the Realm of Mental Health
At this point, so many people have had so many different mental health concerns arise, that there are volumes of different versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM). The DSM puts into black and white letters the criteria for every one of those mental health concerns, which allows mental health workers a framework for helping you through them. And of course with the advent of the internet, almost anybody can find some copy of the DSM online somewhere. This is a wonderful development in the pursuit of relieving the sense of otherness and isolation that accompany a lack of awareness of certain ailments.
On the other hand, though, it has also awarded an opportunity for other anomalies to arise. For example, many of the disorders in the DSM have comorbidity with others. In other words, the presence of one increases the risk for another. For example, many of them share comorbidity with both anxiety and depression.
The reason that this is concerning is that much of the information that is readily available only provides part of the picture. To illustrate this, lets go back to the chicken pox story.
The stranger has provided a name for the ailment and displayed a general lack of concern. However, he has not explained his lack of concern or given any information at all about where it comes from, how communicable it is, or what the timeline for recovery is. Leaving these questions unanswered naturally stirs up a level of anxiety about what the next few days, weeks, or years has in store. And this example is about a condition that does not necessarily increase the risk of anxiety.
Now imagine you are increasingly burdened with feelings that you can’t quite put into words (maybe this is something you are dealing with now). A brief internet search might very well point you in the direction of narrowing down your possibilities to one of a few different ailments. However, if the road to healing and recovery is not laid out as well, it only makes sense that other worries and anxieties might start creeping up.
What it All Means
None of this is to say that you shouldn’t go looking for answers when you can. It is always, at the very least, a place to start. Maybe you are even wired to where having a name for your condition relieves enough of the stress that you are comfortable again. That is fantastic.
If, on the other hand, you find incomplete answers still unsatisfying, there is additional help out there. The biggest point in this post is this: You do not have to go through this by yourself.
If you feel like you are struggling and can’t quite navigate it on your own, you absolutely have every opportunity to find a professional who will work with you based on your needs and your values. It seems that one of the major obstacles to getting help is a belief that you will have to adopt a different set of core values altogether. And if you do feel that way, it is perfectly okay for you to look for other options. There are many to be found.