When Curiosity Meets Categorisation: Understanding Emotional Suffering

What happens when emotional suffering needs a diagnosis before it deserves support?

It Often Begins With a Question

When did emotional suffering become something that first needed a diagnosis?

Needing support doesn’t always mean someone has a mental health condition.
Sometimes life simply hurts.
A relationship ends. A parent dies. A child becomes unwell. Someone experiences betrayal. Work becomes overwhelming. A beloved pet dies. Someone witnesses a traumatic event. A family begins to fall apart. The thought of visiting the dentist is terrifying. Your saw a message on your partner’s phone. The future no longer looks as it once did.
People seek therapy for countless reasons. Many are responding to experiences that are part of being human, not evidence that something is “wrong” with them.
Yet I sometimes find myself wondering when emotional suffering became something that first needed a diagnosis before it was considered worthy of support.
Perhaps it is because systems often rely on categorisation. Insurance providers, healthcare services and workplaces frequently need criteria to determine eligibility, funding and access to support.
Categories provide structure.
People, however, rarely fit neatly into categories.

Curiosity before categorisation

One of the things I value most about therapy is that it begins with curiosity.

Not with a checklist.

Not with a label.

Not with an assumption.

It begins with questions.

What has brought you here today?

What has happened?

What feels most difficult right now?

What has helped you survive until this point?

There is space to understand the person before trying to understand the problem.

This way of thinking resonates with the work of clinical psychologist Dr Lucy Johnstone and Professor Mary Boyle. Through the British Psychological Society’s Power Threat Meaning Framework, they encourage us to shift the conversation away from asking, “What’s wrong with you?” and instead ask, “What has happened to you?” Their framework views many experiences of emotional distress as understandable responses to adversity, restoring the link between people’s life experiences and the ways they respond to them.

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A diagnosis can help, but it should never become the whole story

What I am sharing is not an argument against diagnosis.

For many people, receiving a diagnosis brings enormous relief. It can help explain experiences that have long felt confusing, reduce self-blame, guide treatment, provide access to support and help people feel less alone.

A diagnosis can be both meaningful and important.

Yet it is only one part of someone’s story.

Psychiatrist Professor Allen Frances, who chaired the task force responsible for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), has spoken openly about both the benefits and the risks of diagnosis. Reflecting on the importance of careful assessment, he wrote:

| “A diagnosis should be written in pencil.”

Frances wasn’t suggesting that diagnoses should be avoided. Rather, he was reminding us that people change, circumstances evolve, and understanding deepens over time. A diagnosis made at someone’s lowest point may not define who they are months or years later.

In the same interview, he also warned that “an inaccurate diagnosis carries unnecessary stigma” and that “a diagnosis once given, can have terrible consequences that haunt and last a lifetime.” Those words invite us to approach diagnosis with both care and humility.

Perhaps that is where curiosity has an important role to play. Before we ask what category someone belongs to, we might first ask who they are, what has happened, and what they need today.

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Emotional suffering doesn’t always need to be viewed through the lens of diagnosis before someone deserves understanding. Every story deserves curiosity before conclusions.
If you’d like to continue exploring thoughtful reflections on relationships, emotional wellbeing and the human experience, you’re warmly invited to browse the weRcurious Blog.