Why I Don’t Believe in Diagnosis - as a Trauma Survivor
Introduction: I’m Not “Disordered.” I Was Harmed.
I’ve lived through trauma. Deep, life-changing, world-shattering trauma. For years, I tried to make sense of the chaos inside me — the fear, the rage, the dissociation, the exhaustion. And every system I turned to told me the same thing: there is something wrong with you, you have a disorder.
But here’s what I’ve come to believe — and what I now hold onto as both a therapist and a survivor: I don’t need a diagnosis to explain my pain.
What happened to me wasn’t a chemical imbalance or a flaw in my brain. It was violence. It was betrayal. It was systemic oppression. My responses were human. My body and mind did exactly what they were designed to do when faced with harm.
So no, I don’t “believe in” diagnosing myself as a trauma survivor. Because the problem was never me.
The Scale of the Problem: When Trauma Becomes the Norm
Sexual trauma is not rare. It’s not exceptional. It’s the air women breathe.
Here are some statistics-
3% of women aged 16 and over experienced sexual assault (including attempts) in the year ending March 2025. That’s almost 900,000 women in one year alone.¹
Since the age of 16, around 7.3% of women — that’s roughly 1.8 million — have experienced rape or attempted rape.¹
When broader measures of harm are combined — domestic abuse, sexual assault, and stalking — around 12.8% of women (an estimated 3.2 million) experienced at least one of these forms of abuse in the year to March 2025.²
Over the past decade, rates of sexual assault among adults aged 16-59 have risen from 1.7% in 2015 to 2.4% in 2025, showing that the issue is not improving despite increased awareness and policy attention.³
These are not isolated incidents. This is a social epidemic.
When almost every woman you know carries some story of violation — when girls are harassed before they even understand what sex is — when women are blamed, disbelieved, and retraumatised by the very systems meant to help them — how can we possibly frame their responses as individual disorders?
If trauma is everywhere, why do we keep pretending it’s a rare, pathological event?
The DSM-5 and the Pathologising of Pain
Let’s talk about the manual of mental illness, the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). The DSM-5 describes Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a cluster of “symptoms” - intrusive memories, avoidance, negative mood, hyperarousal, that persist after a traumatic event. These are listed as signs of disorder.
But what if they’re actually signs of survival?
When a woman has been raped, assaulted, gaslit, or systematically disempowered, is it really “disordered” that she avoids reminders of danger, startles easily, or struggles to trust people?
The DSM framework was built within a Western, male-dominated medical model. It was not designed to understand trauma as a response to ongoing social oppression - only as a reaction to isolated “events.”
It asks: what’s wrong with her?
It rarely asks: what happened to her - and who benefited from it?
Even within the DSM, trauma is treated as a deviation from “normal functioning.” But if women live in a world that normalises violence against them, then what exactly is “normal”?
When the very environment is unsafe, the pathology lies not in women’s responses - but in the conditions that created them.
The Diagnosis Trap: When Women’s Pain Becomes a Psychiatric Label
Dr Jessica Taylor has done powerful work exposing how women’s trauma responses are so often reframed as mental illness. In her research, around 79% of women who sought support after sexual violence were given a psychiatric diagnosis — most commonly depression, anxiety, or “borderline personality disorder.”
Taylor calls this what it is: a system that shifts the focus from the violence to the victim.
“It individualises what the woman has been subjected to as being in her own head.” - Dr Jessica Taylor
When a woman presents with hypervigilance, emotional overwhelm, distrust, self-blame - she is showing us what trauma does. Yet instead of asking what happened to you?, we pathologise her.
We label her as unstable, disordered, broken - and in doing so, we remove the context. We erase the violence. We silence the truth.
Laura Bates, through her Everyday Sexism Project, has documented tens of thousands of testimonies from women and girls across the UK describing harassment, assault, discrimination, humiliation — and the consistent message from society: don’t make a fuss.
So, what do you do with years of suppressed rage, terror, and grief?
You dissociate. You shut down. You over function. You develop symptoms.
And then the system calls you ill.
The Politics of Oppression: Women Aren’t Sick — We’re Surviving Patriarchy
Here’s the truth I wish I’d known years ago: trauma doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
We live in a world where women’s bodies are politicised, scrutinised, controlled, and violated. Where violence against women is normalised. Where pain is minimised. Where anger is labelled “hysteria.”
It’s no accident that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and personality disorders. These are not random patterns. They are the predictable outcome of living in a patriarchal system that gaslights us from birth.
When we medicalise women’s trauma, we individualise what is collective. We transform social oppression into private pathology.
We take systemic abuse and rename it as personal weakness.
That is not care!! That is oppression dressed up as empathy.
Why I Reject the Label — and What I Hold Instead
Rejecting diagnosis isn’t about rejecting help. It’s about reclaiming the narrative.
A diagnosis can be useful for some - it can open doors, provide language, bring relief. I honour that. But for me, and for many women I work with, diagnosis has often felt like another form of erasure. Another way the system says: this is your fault to fix.
I no longer see my trauma responses as symptoms. I see them as messages. As the body’s protest. As the psyche’s attempt to make sense of unbearable things.
My hypervigilance kept me safe.
My dissociation kept me alive.
My anger connects me to my truth.
These are not “disorders.” These are survival strategies. They are evidence of my body’s wisdom, not its failure.
In My Work: Centring Context, Not Pathology
As a psychotherapist with lived experience, I hold space for people who have been harmed - often repeatedly, often by those who were supposed to protect them. I refuse to start from the assumption that they are ill.
Instead, I start with:
What happened to you?
What did you have to do to survive?
What would healing look like if you weren’t being blamed for surviving?
In my practice and in my wellbeing walking group, I see every day that connection, safety, and compassion do far more for healing than any label ever could.
When we move together - when we speak honestly, when we rage and rest and reclaim - that’s where the real healing happens. Not in pathologising ourselves but in witnessing one another’s truth.
Conclusion: The Anger That Heals
I don’t believe I have a disorder.
I believe I have a right to be angry.
Because what happened to me - and to countless women - was not inevitable, not genetic, not personal weakness. It was violence, enabled by systems of oppression that still protect perpetrators and pathologise survivors.
My anger is not destructive. It’s sacred.
It’s the fire that tells me: I deserved better. We all did.
And until we stop calling women’s trauma a “disorder,” until we start naming the systems that keep harming us, we will never truly heal.
So, no - I won’t diagnose myself.
I’ll name it for what it is: trauma, oppression, survival, and resistance.
Further Reading
If this resonates, here are some brilliant books and thinkers challenging the pathologising of pain:
Dr Jessica Taylor — Sexy but Psycho and Women Who Are Blamed, Attacked and Dismissed
Jo Watson (Ed.) — Drop the Disorder! Challenging the Culture of Psychiatric Diagnosis
Lucy Johnstone & Mary Boyle — A Straight-Talking Introduction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework
Laura Bates — Men Who Hate Women and Everyday Sexism**
Ruth Lanius & Bessel van der Kolk — The Body Keeps the Score (for trauma physiology)
Suzanne Keys — Dropping the Disorder: The Power of Formulation Over Diagnosis
References
Office for National Statistics (2025). Sexual offences in England and Wales: year ending March 2025. Retrieved from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/sexualoffencesinenglandandwalesoverview/yearendingmarch2025
Office for National Statistics (2025). Developing a combined measure of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking, England and Wales. Retrieved from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/developingacombinedmeasureofdomesticabusesexualassaultandstalkingenglandandwales/july2025
Office for National Statistics (2025). Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025. Retrieved from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025
Written by Beccie
