###### 🔑 Psychiatric diagnoses are almost useless A diagnoses helps define, describe, and communicate [[Symptoms of Unresolved Trauma|symptoms]], but they don’t actually explain anything. “You can’t focus because you have ADHD and we know you have ADHD because you can't focus." "Mental disorders," are not diseases, they're a list of symptoms — constellations of [[💡 Parts]] interacting with one another and behaving in a particular way. Likewise, "Big Dipper" is useful for knowing which stars we're talking about, but it's not like there's a giant ladle floating around in space. It's not as if a diagnoses was out floating around and somehow took hold of us.  A diagnosis is not a statement about who we are, it's just a way to categorize our experiences and symptoms so people can help us on our [[🦮 How to Recover from Trauma|path to trauma recovery]] — that's about it.