How much does a diagnosis matter? | The therapist is in

The Mental Health Project is a Seattle Times initiative focused on covering mental and behavioral health issues. It is funded by Ballmer Group, a national organization focused on economic mobility for children and families. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over work produced by this team.

I never wanted to know my diagnosis when I began long-term therapy.

I knew what topics I wanted to talk about and which events I learned to call traumas, and certainly had suspicions about their impact on me. But the label itself felt irrelevant.

My goal, at the time, was to eradicate or manage all the parts of me that express distress and what I perceived as inappropriate emotions. To my mind, the problem lay in those specific past experiences — once they were resolved, I could be cured.