You are not your pain, you are not your diagnosis

I am often reminded how easy it is to become so preoccupied with a diagnosis — whether it is a medical or a mental health diagnosis — that life seems to become the diagnosis or, more to the point, the individual seems to turn into a diagnosis.  A depression.  A diabetes.  A cancer.  Life becomes about living the diagnosis — the medications, side effects, lifestyle adjustments — and every interaction, every thought, is somehow related to the diagnosis.  At some point, individuals begin to define themselves as who they were before the diagnosis and who they are now.  But you are not a diagnosis.  You are a multi-faceted human being with a past, a present, and a future.  Your diagnosis is part of you, but only a part.  You can choose how much real estate you want to give up.