How to Use Your Diagnosis (Without It Using You)

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2022

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Receiving a diagnosis can be emotionally challenging, and leave a person with a lot of understandable questions: What does this mean? What do I do now? How do I relate to this? On this episode Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson explore what a diagnosis is, how the diagnostic process works, the limitations of diagnosing someone, dealing with the emotions that come up, and how we can better think about and relate to receiving a diagnosis. Throughout the conversation they focus on how we can come to understand ourselves better, and be liberated by that understanding rather than burdened by it. ADHD is used a number of times during this conversation as an example, so if you have an ADHD diagnosis this episode could be particularly interesting. Watch the Episode: Prefer watching video? You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction 2:55: What is a diagnosis, and what is the process used to give a diagnosis? 6:50: What is the purpose of diagnosing someone? 8:50: Situating what defines pathology within our evolutionary and cultural context 11:40: Origins of mental health conditions, social environment, and privilege 14:40: How diagnosis done, and differentiating between different diagnoses 25:05: More discussion on environmental and cultural effects 31:10: Three subtypes of ADHD 33:00: The emotional complexity of receiving a diagnosis 42:30: What helps people in working through the emotions that come up? 46:35: Paying attention to your emotional experience as much as solving your problem. 49:35: Mental health awareness, resources, and support from others 51:00: Rick’s response when someone is given a diagnosis 58:50: Recap Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors: MDbio is a plant-based medicine company with natural products that address sleep, anxiety, pain, and immunity. Get your FREE 10-count sample pack by going to mdbiowellness.com and entering the promo code BEINGWELL at checkout! Join over a million people using BetterHelp, the world’s largest online counseling platform. Visit betterhelp.com/beingwell for 10% off your first month! Want to sleep better? Try the Calm app! Visit calm.com/beingwell for 40% off a premium subscription. Ready to shake up your protein Ritual? Being Well listeners get 10% off during your first 3 months at ritual.com/WELL. Connect with the show: Subscribe on iTunes Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Forrest on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Visit Forrest's website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson.
0:10.4	If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today.
0:12.8	And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:15.3	One of the big topics that we emphasize on the podcast is how we can understand, relate
0:19.5	to you, and deal with the various emotional and psychological tendencies and challenges
0:25.1	that we might face.
0:26.5	And sometimes those tendencies group together clearly enough that doctors can put a name
0:30.4	on them.
0:31.4	Some of them are well known, being things like ADHD, OCD, borderline, narcissism, and so
0:37.2	on.
0:38.2	And we've talked about many of these diagnoses in the past, but we've never focused
0:42.3	a full episode on diagnosis itself.
0:45.9	Receiving the diagnosis can be really emotionally complicated.
0:49.0	And it can leave you with a lot of understandable questions, things like what does this mean,
0:54.5	what do I do now, how do I relate to this, and maybe even is my life as I know it over.
0:59.8	So today we're going to be focusing on what a diagnosis is, what it means, how the
1:03.8	diagnostic process works, and how we can better think about and relate to receiving a diagnosis.
1:10.4	And to help us do that, I'm joined as usual by Dr. Rick Hanson, because clinical psychologist,
1:15.7	a best-selling author, and he's also my dad.
1:18.2	And it's also been a while since I've talked with him because he's spent the last month
1:21.7	or so living out of a camper van going on rock climbing expeditions.
1:26.0	So dad, how are you doing today?
	...

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