🧭 Session 5: You Don’t Need to Be Diagnosed to Be Valid
🌿 Transformative Education for Neurodivergent Liberation
“Self-diagnosis is such a foundational pillar of disability justice which aims to dismantle the medical model from which disability in and of itself is pathologized.” - Mimmi Love (Disability Justice Advocate)
📌 If you’re just joining us, I recommend starting with [Session 1 – Why I’m Leading This Workshop (My Positionality)] for shared context and the way this space is held.
Diagnosis Is Not the Beginning
Many of us are taught to believe that the moment of diagnosis is where our story begins.
But the truth is—you existed long before the paperwork.
Your sensitivities, your shutdowns, your pattern-seeing, your sensory overwhelm, your intuition, your burnout, your "quirks"—none of these began at the moment someone gave you a label. They’ve likely been with you since the beginning. What changed with diagnosis wasn’t you. What changed was the frame.
And for many, that frame still doesn’t fit.
Because let’s be honest:
Not everyone has access to formal diagnosis.
Not everyone is believed.
And not everyone sees themselves reflected in the diagnostic criteria—especially if you’re BIPOC, trans, poor, late-diagnosed, assigned female at birth, or masking so well it hurts.
We live in a world that treats diagnosis like a finish line—when for many of us, it’s a fracture. A rupture. A reframe we never expected but suddenly couldn’t unsee.
So if you’ve never been diagnosed, or if you’re self-recognized, or if you’re wondering whether you “count”—you do.
You are valid, whether or not a system saw you.
Diagnosis Is a System—Not a Truth
We need to name what diagnosis really is:
A tool. A gate. A system. Not a source of inherent truth.
It was created by institutions.
It’s shaped by culture, class, race, gender, insurance codes, and power.
In the U.S., a diagnosis often depends on whether you:
Can afford testing
Have a provider who believes you
Can describe your experience in “acceptable” language
Can mask just enough to be dismissed, but not so much that you’re invisible
Are not already being criminalized, misgendered, gaslit, or overlooked
That’s not science. That’s structure.
So when we say you need a diagnosis to be valid, we’re not just upholding the medical model—we’re upholding systems that have consistently failed the people who need support the most.
People who are Black, brown, immigrant, working-class, nonspeaking, incarcerated, in recovery, or estranged from formal systems often go undiagnosed not because they aren’t neurodivergent, but because those systems were never designed for them.
Diagnosis is real. It can be life-changing.
But it is not more real than the years of survival that came before it.
You existed long before the form.
Your pain was real before it had a name.
And your truth does not need to be proven to be believed.
I Recognized Myself Before Anyone Else Did
I didn’t always have the words.
But I felt it.
Long before I knew I was autistic, I knew I was different.
Not in a vague, quirky way—but in a deep, raw, embodied way that no one around me seemed to understand.
I thought I was “too sensitive,” “too intense,” “too much,” and somehow still “not enough.”
I could read people without trying—but not navigate social rules that seemed to change without warning.
I performed wellness while burning out.
I survived environments that celebrated my intellect but punished my needs.
And for most of my life, I thought it was a character flaw.
Because no one named it.
Because the systems didn’t see it.
Because I had learned to mask so well, even I couldn’t tell where the mask ended and I began.
My diagnosis didn’t give me a label I was chasing.
It gave me a mirror.
And that mirror shattered me—because it reflected back all the years I’d gone unseen.
All the times I’d asked for help and been told I was “fine.”
All the parts of myself I’d buried just to stay in the room.
But here’s the truth:
I already knew.
I knew in my nervous system.
In my shutdowns.
In the way joy felt like clarity, and disconnection felt like death.
Diagnosis didn’t make me valid.
It confirmed a truth I had carried all along.
And if no one ever gives you that confirmation?
If you name it for yourself—gently, quietly, or with fire?
That truth is still yours.
You are still valid.
The Trauma of Being Missed
There’s a specific kind of grief that lives in the body of someone who was never seen.
It’s the grief of being misunderstood for decades.
Of being punished for traits that were actually signs of divergence.
Of asking for help and being given blame instead.
It’s the grief of being misdiagnosed—
Told you’re anxious, dramatic, manipulative, avoidant, depressed.
Given labels that pathologize your pain but never locate its root.
It’s the grief of being told:
“You’re too smart to struggle.”
“You don’t look autistic.”
“You’re just being sensitive.”
“Everyone feels like that sometimes.”
It's the grief of having survived without support—
and then being told you don’t need it because you survived.
Many of us didn’t just miss a diagnosis.
We were actively misread by every system we turned to for answers.
And that misreading became its own trauma.
So when someone says “you need a diagnosis to be valid,”
what they may not realize is that for some of us,
a diagnosis would have saved our lives.
And for others, a diagnosis would’ve pathologized us even further.
Locked us away.
Shamed us more deeply.
Or stripped us of autonomy we had to fight to keep.
This is the paradox: Diagnosis can be a gift.
But not receiving one—or receiving the wrong one—is a wound that deserves to be named.
It is a trauma to be unrecognized.
And healing begins when we start recognizing ourselves.
Validation ≠ Permission. You Already Are.
Diagnosis can be validating.
But validation is not the same as permission.
And you do not need anyone’s permission to know who you are.
You don’t need a professional to make your story real.
You don’t need a checklist to prove your inner world.
You don’t need diagnostic language to access your own truth.
Because the truth lives in your nervous system.
In your memories.
In the places where you broke down trying to keep up.
In the sensory overwhelm, the social confusion, the deep empathy, the pattern recognition, the internal world that carried you when nothing else made sense.
You already are.
Whether or not a clinician ever said so.
Whether or not your mask was too convincing.
Whether or not your pain was missed, or mislabeled, or written off.
Your knowing is sacred.
And your journey back to that knowing is a kind of homecoming.
This doesn’t mean you’ll never want support.
It doesn’t mean the world will stop demanding proof.
It just means you get to stop demanding it from yourself.
You are not a diagnosis.
You are a human being who made it this far—
without a map, without language, without permission.
And that is more than valid.
That is powerful.
🌿 Reflection Prompt
Take a few moments with these questions—not to perform, but to listen inward:
When did you first begin to sense that your experience wasn’t “typical”?
What truths have you carried long before anyone named them?
Where have you internalized the idea that your pain or needs aren’t real unless they’re “clinically confirmed”?
What would it mean to trust your inner knowing—even without external validation?
Let your answers be incomplete. Let them unfold over time.
Self-recognition isn’t a single moment—it’s a practice of remembering.
💫 New Sessions Every Monday & Wednesday
This 12-week journey unfolds twice a week—every Monday and Wednesday—with each session building on the last.
You can view the full session lineup here, and here’s what’s coming next:
✨ Session 6 – Functioning Labels Are Harmful to Us All
We’ll unpack the language of “high-functioning” and “low-functioning,” explore the damage it causes, and begin reimagining how we talk about support without collapsing into hierarchy.
👇 Drop a comment if you’d like to be tagged in future sessions, or follow along at your own pace. This space is yours.
💖 A Note on Support
This work will never live behind a paywall.
It’s here to be accessible, co-created, and shared freely.
If you have the means to support it through a paid subscription, please know it makes a real difference. It helps sustain this series, supports my ongoing work as a neurodivergent creator, and directly contributes to The Compassion Collective—our community rooted in justice, mutual care, and transformative change.
Every subscription, every share, every moment of resonance helps keep this space alive and open.
Thank you for being here.
❤️
Shamani of The Compassion Collective
At the moment, self-diagnosis may also be the only safe option in some countries.