Interpretation Arrives Too Early

Read the full article here: https://open.substack.com/pub/lucywishart/p/interpretation-arrives-too-early?r=71cs29&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Sometimes interpretation arrives too early.

A person tries to describe an experience that doesn’t fit neatly into familiar language — grief, trauma, spirituality, collapse, transformation, disconnection, awakening — and almost immediately the system begins translating it into something clinically manageable.

Not always maliciously.

Often professionally.

Carefully.

Even compassionately.

But there is a difference between listening to an experience and rapidly categorising it.

That difference matters.

Especially in mental health spaces.

Lived experience taught me that some of the most important questions are not:

“What diagnosis fits this?”

But:

“What is this person trying to communicate?”

And perhaps even:

“What happens when interpretation arrives before understanding?”