Diagnostic labels
Lucy Maddox in her book "Blueprint: how our childhood makes us who we are" describes diagnosis as a blunt old tool for describing the subtleties of what is happening for someone and says that it is highly subjective, pointing out that even DSM lists are debated in meetings by Psychiatrists. She further says that it is more useful to see things like depression and psychosis as spectrums or continuums with degrees of intensity of e.g. sadness or hearing voices, and whether or not they interfere with a person's functioning.
She writes that although labels can be powerful as levers for extra support they also remain powerful in their capacity to stigmatise and shame and are very difficult to remove once they are assigned.
More information on her book can be found here:
Pervasive Labelling Disorder
David Levy has written a tongue-in-cheek article about those who are addicted to labelling others, and this can be found at:
Labelling theory
Labelling theory arises from Sociology and proposes that people will behave in accordance with how others label them. It arose in the 1960s and 1970s, and key theorists were Emile Durkheim, George Herbert Mead and Howard Becker. There was a particular focus on crime and deviance, and they theorised that once a person is labelled deviant, they are likely to see themselves as deviant and act accordingly.
A good overview of this theory can be found on this YouTube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do6_KgRslDc
Self-labels
Sabine Beecher in her book "Happiness it's up to you" talks about self labels being illogical, self-destructive and all-pervasive. She says that calling ourselves names e.g. "failure" or "stupid" can make us feel that the whole of us is a "failure" or "stupid", that we will be like this forever and that there is no way out. She also points out that,conversely, labels cannot turn us into that label and uses the example that quacking like a duck does not turn us into a duck.
She sees labels as opinions not facts and that they are usually about one thing we have done -- they are not about us as a whole person, and to free ourselves up from them we need to turn them into facts i.e. say exactly what happened -- no more and no less. She suggests doing an exercise where we write down the labels we use on ourselves, change these to straight facts and then write what we are going to do about the fact (e.g. the label "stupid" might have been applied after the fact "I spilt the milk" and what we are going to do is to "wipe it up and be more careful in future").
Further, she points out that good labels can be just as destructive as bad, as they can make us go up and down on the scales of worth, leaving us feeling insecure and anxious, and we need instead to aim for self-acceptance. She says that others can put labels on us too, but these will only hurt if we turn them into self-labels and, with these labels we can seek their real meaning (e.g. someone labelling us as "too sensitive" may really mean "I can't handle your feelings").
Her excellent book used to be able to be obtained from her website (however I got a message saying it was closed for maintenance when I tried today):
Sabine Beecher Happiness it's up to you:easy steps to self-acceptance and good relationships Boolarong Press, Australia, 2008 (reprint) ISBN 0 646 33230 9.
Remember: labels are judgements
Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we are supposed to be, and embracing who we are. Brene Brown (berryintention.com)
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