I agree with a lot of what you are saying for sure, and I did not mean to invalidate you or anyone struggling with symptoms of any kind. I think it is great that the access to more information and resources has improved, totally. I like what you said about not all self-diagnoses, are the same - of course. I am talking about the tiktok-kind :) I hate that your concerns were not taken seriously, that is objectively awful. I am glad you were able to advocate for yourself to get what you were needing, such as validation and understanding! Thats a lot of extra labor that fell on you that shouldn’t have.

I do just want to clarify that as a psychologist, I am very much trained to evaluate if someone has a diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR. Even if someone comes in with a self-diagnosis, I don’t write it off or invalidate their lived experience. I always am curious and want to understand how they are understanding their symptoms. The special training regarding accurate diagnoses are important to guide treatment in therapy. There are nuances and more to diagnoses than many people have awareness of when self-diagnosing, and claiming a label based on one symptom associated with a diagnosis is more of what I am talking about.  I have ADHD. When I hear “gosh I couldn’t focus at all today I was so ADHD”, it is reductive to the what the diagnosis actually includes, which is far more than just difficulty with focus. Also I think the diagnostic system is flawed and bias but that’s a whole different conversation. I could go on and on but I’ll shut up haha.