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 me from moving forward in other, perhaps more important ways.
I have never thought about autism or ADHD as disorders. Though it is part of these labels’ names. I thought about them as being just variations of being a human. But when I try to talk to organizations, or the health care system, to the societal system at large, and so on, I am met with an embracing of autism and ADHD as psychiatric disorders. As sicknesses, as something to be treated and/or to look for cures to.
And the same goes for my trauma diagnoses… where my lived experience and the consequences of those experiences are turned into disorders, disturbances, illnesses etc. While for me — they are my life experiences and the ways I have tried to deal with those.
It gets harder and harder for me to even use the names of my divergence as autism and ADHD, harder to name my hardships and coping strategies I have had around how to deal with severe childhood abuse — as DID and PTSD. I find that I don’t want to. That I resist it. That I resist how what is actually hard for me — becomes hidden by these labels. How these labels are seen by others, and then how others see me, through the lenses of my diagnoses. Thinking they know me and my life, and what I need.
I have resigned from all psychiatric diagnoses before. I wrote about how I in some metaphorical sense handed them back to where they came from. Saying thank you, but no thank you.
I find it so sad that we cannot get the help we need, the support we need, without having a diagnosis (or several). To me they are limiting me, while I want to live an expansive life. A life full of growth, where nothing can tell me, or anyone else can tell me, what is possible for me (as well as what is wrong with me).
My experiences from childhood and growing up might have brought about some changes in me/my brain/mind that would not have been there without those experiences. And maybe I can never heal from it all. Maybe I will not have the time to catch up and learn all of that which I have missed out on. I don’t know. I still refuse to see myself as sick, disordered, or ill. Maybe I was born different, maybe not — I find that less and less important to know.
I am studying psychotherapy and cognitive science, and now also psychology. And I feel appalled by the way humans who struggle and/or are suffering are talked about in much of the literature and science belonging to these fields. I don’t think it is a deliberate disrespect. I think most people using labels and diagnoses are well-meaning. I still react very strongly to it. To me it feels divisive — on one side the “healthy” ones — on the other side the “sick” ones. As if we do not all of us have hard stuff happening to us, that has the potential to overwhelm us, and at times so much we need to ask for help and support?
They are just words, but there is so much coming with those words and labels. Power imbalances, accepting what authority says about you, accepting restrictions, projections, explanations models, and at times treatments you do not want — or need.
One the one hand, I have no desire to fight this use of psychiatric labels and diagnosing. Why? Because if I do — I will not learn what purpose they serve, why it is so ingrained in our society today to use them, even in the way we speak in everyday life (I feel depressed, this gives me anxiety, I dissociated that away, I am so OCD, bipolar… Are you schizo? I need to lose weight; I wish I had a bit of anorexia… don’t be so autistic… But also, why we want and need this medical system telling us what is wrong with us.
On the other hand, I do want to fight it, but realize it is a don Quixote fight against windmills. Society is heading towards more labeling and diagnosing — while I am heading in the other direction.
What upsets me is how hard it is to find support and help when needed, without having to engage in the diagnosing. As if you are not struggling or needing help if you are not told by someone else what is wrong with you first. As if your own experience is not reason enough.
I also find it interesting with the intersection between trauma, neurodivergence and giftedness — all of which share so many “traits” and “symptoms”. How can anyone ever tell what is what? With any certainty? Struggling as a result of giftedness is not deemed as a disorder or illness, but the same “symptoms” if deemed to come from neurodivergence or trauma — is? How is it then about the person and not the “disorder”?
I also wonder what our school systems are telling us — where we at an early age are conditioned to accept evaluations, grades, meetings where our achievements are discussed, our successes and shortcomings analyzed. And then together with social media and the pressure to be in certain ways, to look a certain way, to live certain lives… with judgments, judgments, and judgments — meeting us in every area of our lives. How does that prepare us for the continuation in diagnosing or life struggles as mental illnesses and disorders?
I don’t think it is strange that we have the escalating diagnosing of people, espcially young people. And that makes me sad. The pressure and stress, what we are taught about ourselves, what models of the perfect life, perfect surface, perfect relationships etc., that we are trying so hard to live up to, many of us, instead of figuring out what works for us. As if the diagnoses are the answers to our uncertainties and fear of failing at life? Never feeling like we are enough or are doing enough?
Why do we not dare to believe that there is nothing wrong with us? Why do we feel better (many of us) if someone tells us that something is wrong with us, and/or our children?
I am not writing this to say I have any answers — I am myself somehow caught in the middle of all this — and feeling an urge to “get out of there”.
I just want to live my life, in a way that works for me, and support my children to do the same, regardless of societal pressure to fit in (or to receive a diagnosis for being “wrong”).
What will happen to our societies if we label and diagnose everyone who does not fit in? If all the different people, choosing different lives, are deemed disordered, sick, disturbed?
Isn’t this how it always has been? Labeling and diagnosing as a political tool? So, nothing is threatening the status quo?
I was listening to a webinar last year by the organization AD4E (A diagnosis for everyone) who runs the FB group “drop the disorder” — and the one of the speakers said (not quoting verbatim, but the spirit of what she said was) — if all women who can think outside the box and dare to speak about what is not working in society and name all the uncomfortable truths by their right names — are diagnosed as having autism and/or ADHD — then, do we really need to listen to them? As they are presumably sick and disordered…
How convenient.