[PREVIEW] What the DSM Gets Wrong About Survivors

You’ve probably heard of the DSM—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s often treated like the authority on what’s “wrong” with people. It’s where diagnoses like anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, and personality disorders are defined and categorized.In this episode, I’m breaking down what the DSM actually is—and what it isn’t.These diagnoses are not based on clear biological evidence. There are no blood tests, no brain scans, no definitive markers. They are based on patterns, observations and agreements among clinicians.With the development of the next version (DSM-6), there’s a push to move even further toward a biological model of mental health—despite the fact that those biological markers still don’t exist.That matters for survivors.If you’ve ever been in a therapist’s office and felt like your reactions to abuse were being labeled as symptoms instead of understood as survival… this conversation is for you.We talk about:Why trauma responses are often pathologizedHow diagnoses like BPD are disproportionately applied to survivorsThe risk of shifting away from context and toward unproven biologyThe history of psychiatric models getting it wrong (like the chemical imbalance theory)And why your pain makes sense in the context of what you’ve been through