Information sheet: LabelsX
Labels
Labels are stereotyping tags
People attach labels to us so they can deal with us while not relating to us. We are likely to feel misunderstood when any single aspect – even a "good" one – is held up to fully represent us. We can feel diminished when officialdom typifies us by our "status" re: class, education, employment, credit rating, race, sex, age, health, etc. We can feel caricatured when family and friends label us by selecting those details of our character and appearance that they find especially amusing or odious. We can feel doomed by medical and psychiatric diagnosticians whose labels condemn us to an empty pre-sent and a future of bad expectations.
When we are made to believe that the views others have of us are more accurate than our direct experiences of ourselves, we might become incapable of these experiences. We might accept a label in the belief that misrepresen-tation is better than non-representation. Or sometimes the exactitude of a diagnostic label gives an illusion of certainty and hope to a person whose life feels chaotic and fearful.
Why do we create and wear labels?
The devil you can name is the devil you can control is an old proverb. In our evolutionary development, speech gave us the advantage of mutually identifying and therefore avoiding dangers. "Safe" and "unsafe" were survival labels that we exchanged in tight corners where there was no time to consider finer shades of significance.
In the "blackboard jungle" of our schooldays we may have felt equally vulnerable. To feel safe we distinguished childhood friends from enemies and distanced ourselves from the latter. This was done by imposing mocking or judgmental nicknames that fixed their characters for us and possibly represented our first experience of reductive labelling as a social custom. Friends awarded us gently humorous nicknames and enemies burdened us with cruel labels that exaggerated our physical or mental features: Short-arse, Fatty, Skinny, Spotty, Four-eyes, Mental, Psycho, Spastic, Sissy, Queer, Butch, Wog, Paki, Goody-goody, Know-all, etc.
We may have been labelled much earlier in our lives
Our parents' attitudes to our gender, zodiacal birth sign, their choice of name, their likening of us to either of themselves or a grandparent or a historical personage or media icon, etc., might have gone some way towards "sealing our fate." Unconsciously, they may have paid great attention to certain of our impulses while downplaying others. They may have named and labelled us in order to project onto us their own unfulfilled ambitions or disapproved urges. To disobey such an instruction-disguised-as-an-observation could have meant risking the withdrawal of their love and facing the dark tide of their rejection. So perhaps we obliged by playing along with being Clever, Quiet, Stupid, Trouble, Hyper, Chatterbox, Clumsy, Ballistic, Sweet, Touchy, Brave, Helpful, Crazy, etc.
If we were related to mainly through the label, the implied instruction will have become firmly embedded in our body-mind system. Learning to move only in the required manner, we will have held back our real energetic impulses by unawarely developing patterns of respiratory and muscular ten-sion that firmly established the approved responses but that over time could result in stress-related illnesses as well as restrictions to the expansiveness of our character.
What about a medical diagnostic label?
This is something we are all likely to receive sometime. It doesn't seem to be a problem: we present a complaint and the GP prescribes medication or arranges treatment. However, it is the diagnosis that is being treated, not the whole person that is being related to. Obviously, hard-worked doctors have not the leisure to get to know us exhaustively. If they could, they might discover that many of our physical ailments are due to emotional stress and that this can be released when someone does take the time to encourage our natural capacities for self-healing and self-understanding. Failing this, we have only the diagno-stic label, as well as a corresponding label stuck on the medication package.
A psychiatric diagnosis involves the concept of "mental health," but this term is really a misnomer. Our culture exalts the thinking function above all others and presents it as the measure of our "sanity." However, it is as a result of suffering from emotional stress that our mental functions become confused. This is due to the relationship between emotional stress and inhibited breathing: the brain is then deprived of sufficient oxygen for clear thinking. Without knowledge of this, a "mental health" practitioner isolates the secondary symptom and elevates it to the status of an all-inclusive categorisation. A person is then diagnosed as being "mentally ill" – or, in politically-correct jargon, as having a "mental health problem.".
The label imposes the stigma of being unable to "think properly," of having "something wrong" with one's brain. It is then a short step to prescribe drug treatment or even electro-convulsive therapy to "adjust" cerebral functions. By means of the label, the person is reduced to the status of an item of machinery. His or her emotional and energetic life is considered irrelevant and is not explored.
What purpose is served by a "mental illness" diagnosis?
There is a hierarchy of labels by which psychiatrists ration the time and attention they are prepared to give. If you have been diagnosed as, say, "neurotic" or a "case" of "personality disorder," you will receive a certain rationing of person-to-person contact via counselling or psychotherapy in a medical setting. "Bi-polar disorder" will reduce your ration somewhat. But in direct proportion as the diagnostic labelling gets heavier, so your ration of communication with the professionals is diminished. Labels like "psychotic," "schizophrenic" and "paranoid schizophrenic" will put you beyond the pale. Treat-ments are likely to be implemented without discussion: being "mentally ill," you are presumed not to have the ability to understand; having "lost your reason," there is no way to reason with you. The label measures not the self but the specialist's reaction to it and his or her ability to relate.
In counselling and therapy, diagnostic labels need have no function
Labelling is part and parcel of the very conditions that create stress, and their application could only prolong the old feelings of fragmentation and fixity. You are not even labelled as a "patient," "client" or "service user." You are instead acknowledged as a self-helper, i.e., somebody with an innate capacity for discovering your real nature and true orientation in the world.
An experienced Centre worker is able to assist you to explore the often painful memories of having labels and false identities and useless functions imposed by those in your life who failed to accept you as you are. As your capacities for self-understanding and self-healing are gently encouraged you may feel able to peel off unwanted labels and rediscover the uncategorised whole self.