Rising Rooted

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The DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is treated like the sacred text of psychology. Its categories are spoken like spells: depression, ADHD, borderline, bipolar. And for many people, hearing one of these names brings deep relief. A diagnosis can lift shame, offer community, and make suffering feel less like a private failing. It can also open doors to support, treatment, and language.

But names are never neutral. To name is to enchant. To classify is to bind. And the DSM, for all its authority, is not an eternal truth but a shifting spellbook, written by committees, revised by vote, always carrying the imprint of the culture that wrote it.

The Spellbook That Shifts

Consider how the DSM has changed over time:

• Until 1973, homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder.

• Grief was once recognized as a natural response to loss, but later versions narrowed how long “normal grief” could last before it became “disorder.”

• New categories appear with each edition, expanding the scope of pathology. This is called diagnostic inflation: normal variations in human life recast as illnesses.

These shifts reveal what the DSM really is: a cultural document, not a timeless science. What counts as “disorder” is always shaped by politics, prejudice, and profit.

The Relief and the Trap

I’ve seen firsthand the power of diagnosis to bring relief. Someone struggling with ADHD feels less broken when they realize their brain just works differently. Someone suffering in silence feels seen when they hear the word depression. A name can connect you to community and treatment.

But a name can also become a mask. I am depressed can shrink into I am depression. A living process hardens into an identity. Anxiety, grief, or despair—once honoured as part of the human spectrum—become permanent disorders.

This is the danger of enchantment: the spell comforts even as it confines.

The Colonial Gaze

The DSM also carries the colonial gaze. Built primarily on white, Western, neurotypical populations, it casts behaviours common in other cultures as disordered. It reinforces ableism, assuming one correct way of thinking, feeling, and being in the world.

The irony is painful: what’s considered disordered here might be honoured elsewhere. A visionary might be called psychotic in one culture, and a seer in another. A child’s hyperactivity might be pathologized in a classroom, while in a different community it might be a sign of vitality or leadership.

What If We Named Differently?

I often imagine a different system. Instead of rigid categories, a spectrum of colours or patterns—acknowledging that a person can carry shades of many experiences. Instead of asking “What disorder do you have?” we could ask “What patterns are present? Do they hinder your life—or are they simply part of your unique expression?”

This is what many traditional systems once did. In some Indigenous traditions, those who heard voices or had visions were given roles as wisdom keepers. In Ayurveda or Chinese medicine, imbalance is contextualized and rebalanced, not pathologized.

Even within psychology, archetypal psychology offers another lens: symptoms as images, invitations, archetypal forces moving through us. Anxiety as the trickster knocking. Depression as descent, like Inanna into the underworld.

These frameworks don’t deny suffering—they widen it, honouring its place in the human experience.

The Magic of Naming in Mythology

In fairytales, names hold power. Think of Rumpelstiltskin: to know the name is to control the being. The DSM works in similar ways. Once you are named, you are placed within a system—some doors may open, but other doors close.

The risk is not being named necessarily, but mistaking the name for the whole of you. You are always more than a diagnosis. You are always more than the spell.

🔥 Strategies for Loosening the Spell

• Hold diagnosis lightly. Let it be a tool, not a destiny. Relief is real, but remember it is one lens among many.
• Ask questions. Who created this category? When? For what purpose? What has changed since?
• Translate the name. If you receive a diagnosis, explore what it means in your cultural, ancestral, or spiritual framework. How else could this experience be named?
• Notice the self-fulfilling prophecy. When you hear yourself say, “I am X,” ask: am I naming a moment, or binding myself to an identity?
• Balance your lenses. Explore neurodiversity frameworks, archetypal psychology, or traditional wisdom alongside modern treatment. Practice two-eyed seeing.
• Honour your complexity. No single category can capture you. You are a constellation, not a code.

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If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:

Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.

<3 Rachel