Why Mental Health Diagnoses Often Fail Trauma Survivors

Why Mental Health Diagnoses Often Fail Trauma Survivors

When no one can agree on what’s “wrong” with you

Have you got a list of diagnoses—or maybe a changing rotation depending on which professional you see?

It’s not uncommon for me to see clients with a long list of labels: depression, anxiety, BPD, PTSD, bipolar. One former client I still keep in touch with seems to get a different diagnosis with every hospital she goes to. I find myself reading the latest report, scratching my head, thinking, Really? It’s getting ridiculous.

The medical and psychiatric system is deeply focused on diagnosis. And I get it. Sometimes diagnoses are necessary—to access Medicare, NDIS, or other services. Sometimes they help people feel validated, give language to experiences they’ve struggled to name, or open doors to support. And when that’s the case, I’m happy to provide them.

But in my practice, diagnosis is not the point. It’s not where the work happens. Because ultimately, I’d rather help you heal what’s underneath—so that, over time, the label stops fitting altogether.

Why you keep getting different diagnoses

The DSM—the handbook used to diagnose mental health conditions—lists hundreds of “disorders,” each with a checklist of symptoms. If you meet enough boxes, you get the label.

It sounds scientific. But here’s the problem: Human beings don’t fit neatly into categories.

You can meet criteria for anxiety and depression and trauma and something else entirely—all at once.

Mental health categories are just inventions

In physical medicine, the medical model works, and categories make sense — there’s a tumour or there isn’t. A virus shows up on a test.

But mental health doesn’t work like that. These diagnoses aren’t natural categories. They’re man-made descriptions of overlapping symptoms — symptoms that shift and blur, depending on your history, your nervous system, and your life.

You can’t do an MRI for anxiety. You can’t do a blood test for depression. The real story lives in your experience, not in a symptom checklist.

Why diagnoses can change depending on the professional

Depending on which professional you see, and what framework they’re trained in, your diagnosis might change. One clinician sees BPD. Another says PTSD. Another sees depression.

But none of those labels tell your full story. Because the system is only looking at your symptoms and behaviours—not why you’re doing it.

• “You’re too emotional” (but no one asks why you feel so much).

• “You’re avoiding life” (but no one asks what made you feel unsafe).

• “You rely too much on others” (but no one asks who let you down when you needed them most).

Your symptoms are adaptations. Survival responses. Your nervous system learned to protect you the only way it could.

When no one asks what you’ve been through, those adaptive responses get turned into permanent-sounding disorders—and often, into lifelong prescriptions or revolving treatment plans that never touch the root.

A diagnosis is just a snapshot

A diagnosis should describe what’s happening right now—not who you are forever. It’s a snapshot of how your mind and body are coping with pain in this moment.

But too often, that snapshot becomes a sentence. It gets treated like a fixed identity: “This is who you are. This is who you’ll always be.”

When the medical model overlooks trauma as the cause, it misses that healing is possible. It views disorders as fixed problems that can’t change. They tell you that the best you can hope for is management of your symptoms.

But that’s not how healing works.

When you begin to heal the emotional wounds beneath the symptoms—when your nervous system starts to feel safe, when your relationships shift, when you reconnect to yourself—your patterns change. Your symptoms soften. And what once met the criteria for a diagnosis… no longer does.

What if there’s nothing wrong with you?

What if your sadness, your anxiety, your shutdown, your people-pleasing, your rage—
aren’t symptoms of six different disorders?

What if they’re all responses to one thing: emotional injury.

You weren’t born this way. You adapted. You learned to survive. And those adaptations—so often labelled as disorders—are really just your nervous system trying to protect you from what felt overwhelming.

That’s what the trauma lens offers. It stops asking what’s wrong with you—and asks what happened to you.

That’s where healing begins.

If you’ve spent years collecting diagnoses but still feel like no one has truly seen you — you are not broken. You were never broken. You’ve been surviving. And healing is possible.