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Labels and Diagnoses — Daring to Live without them…
I find myself extremely resistant to accepting psychiatric labels as something necessary or good. To me, they obscure the person behind the label(s). And the person more and more becomes their labels(s). To themselves as well as to the ones who meet them.
And I find I resent that. That this, in my opinion, is stopping everyone from possible growth and development. Receivers, as well as giver, of psychiatric diagnoses.
I get it, a psychiatric label, a diagnosis, can give relief, to the one receiving it. And it can help with acceptance of who we are, and the struggles we have.
Yet. I don’t like this more and more medicalized view on human struggle, on human hardships, on human experience, on human emotions, on human diversity, on human trauma…
There seem these days to be a disorder for everyone… and for everything. And a medication… or a treatment.
And I wonder what this need is about — to be diagnosed and to diagnose? To label the human experience as something sick, disordered and disturbing?
I have been sitting with my own diagnoses of autism and ADHD since I received them in the autumn of 2021. And I still don’t know what to think about them. They have helped me in some of my understanding of myself, but they also have hindered…
