My [30f] best friend [30f] just got her psych degree, and she is constantly "diagnosing" our friends or friends of friends.

Everyone knows that person - the psych major. Hell, even that person who took Psych 101 and decided they're now a licensed professional.

My roommate, after a struggle with school, got her bachelor's in psych. She has a job in her field while she applies and prepares for grad school.

Ever since she graduated, she will actively jump into various conversations (both those she's involved in and those she's not) to try and diagnose a character in the conversation/story, usually with autism spectrum disorder. She and a mutual friend of ours talk relentlessly about how they believe the mutual friend is on the spectrum based on a few behaviors. This mutual friend is also in her 30s. At a recent group activity, a coworker and I were talking about another coworker. The line "He's just not that great at social cues" came out, and suddenly my best friend was jumping in, saying things like "Oh, I bet he's autistic. Tell me more about him. I'd bet my paycheck he's on the spectrum." At that point, I did chuckle and say something along the lines of "Can you please stop diagnosing our friends with autism?" She back pedals, says she's not diagnosing, almost everyone is on the spectrum, etc. etc.

On one hand, I'm super excited for my friend obtaining her degree after the absolute hell she went through the years leading up to it. She's excited to be working in her field and putting her knowledge out in the real world. And maybe these people's behaviors do exhibit some sort of spectrum disorder. However, it is getting increasingly frustrating listening to her make these pseudo-diagnoses about people that she either doesn't know at all or, on the other hand, have known long enough that if they were on the spectrum, I'm pretty sure they'd have been diagnosed by their own licensed professionals.

How do I bring this up the next time it happens without basically shitting all over my best friend's new excitement?

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TL;DR - My best friend has a new psych degree, and like most psych people I personally have encountered, has begun "diagnosing" our friends.... usually on the autism spectrum. I'm getting irritated and don't know how to tactfully handle it.

Submitted July 31, 2019 at 12:53PM by trashypandaperson https://ift.tt/2YzBZ9m