You Are Not a Diagnosis

Brought to you by Penguin.

Maybe you’ve been there: sleepless, overwhelmed, numb with sadness, scrolling through endless posts that tell you your feelings must mean you’re anxious, depressed, or traumatised. Maybe you’re a parent, watching your teenager do the same. And maybe you’ve wondered: Am I broken? Are they?

I know that question. I’ve asked it myself. And after thirty years as a clinical psychologist, I’ve watched countless patients wrestle with it too. The truth? Sometimes exhaustion is burnout. Sometimes anxiety is simply the weight of living in a world that feels too much. These aren’t symptoms to be labelled away — they’re human experiences to be heard, held, and lived through.

The trouble is, therapy-speak has taken over. We’ve started calling every heartbreak depression, every worry trauma, every distraction ADHD. In doing so, we’ve drowned out those who really are living with mental health conditions, and we’ve lost something essential: the ability to listen to ourselves, and to one another.

This is not a book about dismissing distress — it’s about reclaiming it. To show you how to uncover what you’re really feeling beneath the jargon, how to tell the difference between distress and disorder, and how to find healing not in hashtags or self-diagnosis, but in the conversations and communities that sustain us.

If you’ve ever feared that your feelings mean you’re broken, or if you’re a parent trying to understand a child lost in therapy-speak, this book is for you. Because you are not a diagnosis. You are human — and you deserve to be heard.

© Tanya Byron 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026