The internet is really cool. You
can learn all about psychology and mental health diagnoses. But you
aren't learning it in any order, which means that you aren't getting the first
lecture in every psych class, which means it's more likely that you'll self-diagnose
in a way that might be harmful for you. In this video, you're going to learn all about
how trendy psychology may be convincing you that you're broken and how to prevent yourself
from getting sucked along with psych trends. But first, let me tell you a story. If you'd like to improve your relationships with
family and friends but you don't know where to start, there are steps you can take. Building
good relationships isn't just something that happens to you; it's a skill that you can learn.
In my course Better Relationships in 30 Days, I'll walk you through the process of fostering
appreciation, improving communication. You'll learn how to make repairs and restore those
feelings of warmth and love. You really can learn to transform conflict into connection. So check
out the link in the description to learn more. When I took abnormal psych in college,
I had a brilliant professor who started off the class by asking us all to take a
personalized assessment, kind of like the inkblot test. In order to get a better idea of
the personalities of the students in the class, the teacher asked us all to draw a tree, a
house, and a person on a single sheet of paper. We were told to turn them in and that in
the next class period we would all be given a personalized interpretation of what our drawing
said about us. So I did it. I drew my tree, house, and person, I turned it in, and I wondered
what the professor would deduce about me. When we came back to class the next time,
we were all handed our tree, house, person in a yellow envelope. And inside was a short
paragraph explaining what this drawing said about my childhood and my view of the world. We
all took a moment to absorb what we were reading. And then the teacher asked us to share
what we thought about the comments, but specifically asked us not to share any
details from the paragraph we were given. One by one, the other students expressed amazement
at how accurate their description was and how true to their life it was. Many of them said,
"This paragraph describes my home life exactly. Now, I was the obnoxious student
who raised my hand and said, "This all just sounds like a horoscope to me."
And the teacher got a little annoyed with me, and then he kept going with the other students.
The students went on for like 20 minutes talking about how accurately the situation described
them and how much they were learning from it. Some of them got a little emotional as the
insights poured in. And then the teacher asked if there was a volunteer who would
read their entire interpretation aloud. Someone did, and the room went very quiet. The students all glanced at their
own "personalized" interpretation and realized that everyone had been given the
exact same interpretation. They'd been duped. None of the interpretations were
personal at all. We all just felt like they were. We humans have a tendency
to read into things and to see ourselves in them. We see ourselves in vague descriptions.
We empathize with characters in books. And when we hear a list of symptoms and a
diagnosis, we think, "Uh-oh, that sounds like me. Maybe I am depressed. Or maybe I
did have a disturbed childhood." Now, right now anyone with internet access
has the ability to look up a list of symptoms and decide if they fit the criteria
for any disorder out there. Videos and blogs and webMD articles can all tell
you what to look out for with any mental illness. But what they're all missing is the
first lesson in every psych class, starting with psych 101. And this seems wrong
to me. Tons of people are essentially making money telling you that you might be broken, but
they aren't taking the time to tell you first that you're likely to jump to conclusions,
and this can make you feel broken. So in psych 101, the teacher almost always starts
the course off by telling people, "As you learn about these diagnoses, you're going to be tempted
to see yourself in every one of them." We have a tendency to self-diagnose, to label ourselves, and
to take suggestions as if they're fact. But just because you sympathize with the list of symptoms
doesn't mean you actually have that disorder. Now, I've heard this lecture at the
beginning of most of my psych classes, so a couple dozen classes. But even into
grad school, and even with that knowledge, it was easy for me when I took a
diagnosing class in grad school to start seeing myself in every diagnosis. We
have a tendency to diagnose ourselves inaccurately because we don't have the context to see
that it's common to over-diagnose yourself. And because people are diagnosing themselves
online, out of context, without the support of a licensed professional who can walk them through
the steps of treatment, then some people just feel hopeless or broken - when in reality they may
not even have the disorder, or if they do, there's tons of treatment options. So self-diagnosis should help you to
reach out to a mental health provider to get the skills and treatment needed. But when
so many people can't get access to good resources, we get caught up in this huge wave of
increasing anxiety and depression rates because people are either over-diagnosing
themselves or diagnosing themselves without the context of support
and treatment and education. So for example, if someone were just to do a
quick, cursory search of the internet and be like, "Oh yeah, look, I have depression" and then
they were to look very quickly to see, "Oh, what causes depression and what are
the treatments?" they might see an overly simplified explanation that depression is a
biological illness caused by a chemical imbalance, and the only treatment is medication. Now, biology
does contribute to depression, but it's way more complicated than that. And medication is not the
only treatment option. Medication is a perfectly fine treatment option, but there's so many
treatment options. So without the context of, you know, well-rounded professional expertise,
pretty hard to get high-quality information. Okay. Another way you can see this is
that psychology has had these really interesting trends. The more a disorder is
talked about it, the more people have it. In the nineties, ADHD was starting to be described
with more clarity, and more people were talking about it. More and more medications to
treat it were developed and advertised. Then you can see that the rates of ADHD
doubled from 1997 to 2017, going from around 5% to around 10% of kids. Now, it's not possible to
tell whether this increase represents a change in the number of children who have ADHD
or a change in the number of children who were diagnosed. Seeing an increase
in diagnosis could be a good thing. It means that more kids are getting resources
at school or medication or other treatments. But it also means that kids who are diagnosed
by their parents or neighbor or teacher as being ADD, it might be a false label. It might
be something that changes how they see themselves or how others see them. They might feel broken
or defective or incapable of doing schoolwork because that label could be inaccurate. Or maybe they do have ADD, and the diagnosis
comes without treatment or support. Now, one of the reasons that we have increasing
rates of some of these things is because we do have better resources available: better
medication, better diagnostic tools, more early intervention. So for example,
autism is being talked about more than ever. And pediatricians all across the country are
screening two- and three-year-olds for autism. And if they have symptoms, then they'll try
to enroll them in early intervention programs. Now, 40 years ago, most kids wouldn't be getting
a diagnosis or much support. So I'm not saying that these issues aren't real. It's just that
people also have a tendency to self-diagnose and to diagnose others. The more we talk about
a disorder, the more people self-diagnose. And pharmaceutical companies don't help with
their ads. Many people self-diagnose after watching a medication commercial and then believe
that medication is the only treatment option for depression or ADHD. And like I said, it's a fine
option, but it's just one of them. It's just one of many options. And if you self-diagnose,
you might not even have the disorder. The more we talk about something, the
more people self-diagnose. So for a while, around 2000 to 2010, bipolar disorder was very
popular. New medications had come out, and a lot of people were talking about it, and
a lot more people were self-diagnosing as bipolar. And mental health
professionals are not immune to this. For example, there have been weird trends
in trauma treatment where decades ago, therapists thought there was this massive wave of
ritualistic sexual abuse. So they would suggest that to their clients in therapy, sometimes
under hypnosis, and then their clients would form memories, memories of this abuse, and
then confirm the idea to the therapist. Now, it's been shown that therapists
helped clients create false memories. It's pretty disappointing, right? There was
also a trend in trauma treatment where people who had experienced trauma would get triggered,
and they'd fall on the floor and convulse. Like that was really common a few
decades ago, but now it's not. So those are both examples where the
more people talk about certain ways trauma is expressed or
certain ways trauma happened, the more people then believe that that's how they
experience it. This is why psychology is partly a hard science and partly a soft science, right?
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't some cases of ritualistic sexual abuse or that some people
with PTSD don't convulse. But the waves of the trends indicate that once we start talking
about this stuff, we start to see it more. And that's how psychology works. The more
we talk about something, the more we get out of it. We humans are very suggestible.
So here's what I'm trying to say. Right now it's culturally very cool and very popular to
be very open and talk about mental health. And this is great. I'm totally for mental health
awareness, as long as it comes with education about what to do about it instead of
just leaving people feeling broken. But if everyone is just learning
about mental health on the internet or from the pharmaceutical
commercials and it's not sequential, then they aren't getting that first lesson in
all the psych classes. They aren't learning how to protect themselves from seeing every
disorder in themselves. And they aren't getting all the other lessons with the skills
of what to do to improve your mental health. So this is my attempt to give you that
first lesson. Right now I think one of the hottest trends in popular psychology
is narcissism and narcissistic abuse. Everyone's talking about it. And just like the
person, tree, house, now everyone's seeing it in their boss and their parents and their ex, and
suddenly the rates of narcissism have shot up. Narcissism is cool. I can give a lot of examples
of people coming to me and asking if their person is a narcissist, but that is for another
video. So I hope you'll be really cautious about how you think about diagnoses,
how you think about getting treatment, and maybe be a little bit slower to diagnose the
people around you. And when it comes to trends, you know what isn't trendy
but I'd love for it to be cool again? Personal responsibility, honesty,
accountability, growth mindset, personal self-reliance, and community values, and kick-butt
mental health education that everyone can access. But these are not very fun topics. They
don't make great headlines or fun gossip. Deciding that your ex is a
narcissist, that's kind of fun. Now, just to recap: ADHD, bipolar disorder,
autism, narcissism, PTSD, and other mental health disorders are real disorders, and there's
no need to be ashamed of them. Let's just find them and treat them. Just be a little careful
before you run around and diagnose everyone, including yourself. Talk with your mental
health providers and see what they think. Also, don't cling too closely to a diagnosis,
because a diagnosis isn't an identity; it's an experience. I'm not saying it isn't
real. You might meet the criteria, but it's something you are experiencing; it's not who you
are. Okay. Thank you for watching, and take care.
