Impostor syndrome, narcissism, neurosis and a huge number of specific psychological terms are increasingly used by people today when describing themselves. It is interesting that they often carry out such diagnostics on their own, having read about some psychological phenomenon on the Internet. Of course, such “diagnoses” should be treated correctly, since this topic itself in professional psychology is far from being as simple as it seems.
Everyone is well aware of the phenomenon of medical students who, while studying their future profession, find almost every second disease they study. For psychology students, things are even worse, and for ordinary people who come across psychological literature in this matter, the imagination can be very much played out. The problem is that all psychological categories are not so easy to understand. Professionals are never in a hurry to “make a diagnosis” for several reasons. Firstly, they doubt, and they do the right thing, since in order to correctly determine the problem, you need to collect a huge amount of personal information about a person, observe his/her behavior in different situations, and also listen to oneself and one’s own feelings around him/her. Second, some categories are so similar, and their boundaries are so overlapping, that it is not always possible to clearly distinguish narcissist from sociopath, or neurosis from regression. And, thirdly, there are many schools of psychotherapy that generally avoid any labels, since this prevents the specialist from seeing a living person in front of him/her with all his uniqueness, and not a page of their psychiatry textbook.
All these labels and diagnoses, of course, are sometimes very convenient for specialists, as they allow them to speak the same language. But for people, not even for clients, but for those who simply wrap circles around psychotherapists, but do not dare to start their own therapy, this is just a way to cope with their own anxiety, giving their feelings a clever “incomprehensible” name. It is a pity that time is wasted on this, since real relief often comes not when the diagnosis is voiced, but when the person on the contrary really understands and accepts you.