We Need to Talk About Labels
Stations on the way to something better.
Last week, I talked about “rightness”, and in a rare narrative arc, it made me think about today’s subject. If you didn’t read it, here it is (not essential to enjoying today’s ramblings, but is practical context)
Onto today’s love letter to you all:
There’s a moment in Couples Therapy - that astonishing series fronted by the unflappable Dr. Orna Guralnik - where she talks about splitting. It's one of those concepts that sounds clinical until you realise we do it every day: splitting people into good or bad, safe or unsafe, right or wrong. Us and them. It’s a defence mechanism. A way of managing complexity when it all feels too much. And nowhere is this more visible, lately, than in how we talk about neurodivergence.
Take the current wave of “Here’s how to know if you’re AuDHD” posts. They’re everywhere. You might be scrolling past a list that says: You hyperfocus. You interrupt. You feel too much, or not at all. You have fifty tabs open. You never finish anything. You finish everything all at once. It’s tempting to see yourself in them. I do too, sometimes.
But I don’t buy it. At least not as the story.
Here’s the thing: while labels can soothe, they can also split. And when they split, they shrink us. They draw lines between “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical,” “valid” and “invalid,” “us” and “them.” That’s precisely what Orna warns against: the dangerous illusion of binaries. They make us feel temporarily safe, but at the cost of wholeness. Of seeing people - ourselves included - as layered, dynamic, context-sensitive, often contradictory.
Labels can be stations: a way to pause, reflect, and organise. But too often, we mistake them for a final stop. They become walls instead of windows—scripts instead of starting points.
What I’m hungry for - and I think became apparent to me this week - is what I see glimmers of in Orna’s quiet, steady presence, and Esther Perel’s provocative writings - is a model that allows for difference without division. That invites us to embrace otherness, without being othered.
Being “other” isn’t a problem. It’s a perspective—a position from which to observe, question, and reinvent. The discomfort of otherness, when held gently, can deepen connection, not threaten it. But only if we resist the urge to make it mean less than.
Esther says, “We’re all wired for connection, but shaped by separation.” And in that space between wiring and shaping, we find our deepest work. To stay in dialogue with ourselves and with each other. To not reach for quick answers. To see the parts of us that don’t quite fit—and hold them with reverence, not shame.
So no, I won’t reject labels entirely. Sometimes they give language to pain that went unnamed for years. But I’m suspicious of the algorithmic reduction of identity. I don’t want a checklist - I want a conversation. A growing edge. A mirror that says: “You are not a type. You are becoming.”
Stop splitting. Stop sorting ourselves like dirty clothes. Allow for the mess of becoming.
Sit in the discomfort of difference, long enough to see it bloom into something rare and necessary.
Not othered. Just other.
And entirely worthy of being here
Peace, love and happiness
Michael
Thanks for adding some seasoning to this David. It's a theme which is emerging in my mind, and it's a personal reflection which warrants some generalisation, but people are never general or average.
I'm really glad someone is writing about this Michael. I worked in mental health many years ago and we went out of our way to avoid labelling people. "Treat the person, not the diagnosis," was our mantra. We were working with people who were acutely unwell and for whom labels could result in stigma and worsening of symptoms through isolation and anxiety.
Now people seem to have swung the other way. I find it odd to hear someone referring to themselves as 'ADHD' or 'OCD.' So say "I am...." is to identify as a condition which has its roots in clinical diagnosis. In a clinical environment, between clinicians, this language can be useful. But to use it as a catchall in the broader environment is at best vague and at worst downright dangerous.
I do not subscribe to the term 'disorder.' I find it unhelpful and detrimental. A personality or a set of behaviours is not 'disordered' in and of itself. Only in the context of social norms does that set of behaviours become disorders. This means that we are all subject to both internal and external determinants.
However, as you point out, labels can be helpful to help people understand a set of behaviours as 'normal' within the construct of that diagnosis. But the diagnosis is a construct. It is literally a set of behaviours and emotional responses defined by the Diagnostic Service Manual as being a particular 'disorder.'
This is where my greatest fear lies, that people who experience the world in a slightly different way to what society says is 'normal' are medicalized by a system which then profits through the sale of pharmaceuticals. I lived with anxiety depression and all kinds of borderline and attention deficit behaviours for most of my adult life. However, it was only after a head injury and the onset of PTSD that I came to face the childhood roots of these behaviours. I have been fortunate to work with an amazing therapist and unpick the root causes to the extent that I am now living in a truly authentic manner to who I am.
Labels can soothe, as you say. But they can also hold us back and become barriers to doing work necessary for making long lasting change that leads to happiness and a deep connection with self, place and people - no matter who you are.
This is a complex subject and for me there is probably no end result, it is all about having the conversation and recognizing different experiences with compassion and respect.
Allt he best,
David Stone.