Last week, I wrote about the difference between discomfort and being unsafe. You can read that post here. This is post 2 in what will probably be a four-part series. Ideally, this will grow into a full-length book. The outline is almost done; the writing needs to commence.
As I was developing that post, I realized there was a book idea hiding inside of it.
Culturally, we’ve learned to hide behind words. It’s not that words don’t matter. They do! Tremendously.
When we realize that words don’t just describe reality, they shape it, we realize just how important they are.
The truth that keeps reverberating around my head, though, is the fact that if words actually do that, then how we talk at some level must shape who we become!
Every time you talk, at least two people are hearing your words: the person you’re talking to and the person who is speaking those words: YOU!
One of the things I appreciate about where we are culturally is that people are much more willing to talk about mental health than they were when I started working as a therapist.
People talk about anxiety. They talk about depression. They talk about ADHD, trauma, autism, attachment styles, and all sorts of other things that previous generations either didn’t understand or didn’t discuss.
For the most part, I think that’s good.
Understanding what’s happening inside of us can be incredibly powerful. I’ve watched people experience genuine relief when they finally had language for something they had struggled with for years. Suddenly, experiences that seemed confusing began to make sense. They could look backward and understand themselves differently.
Sometimes getting the right diagnosis can feel like finally finding the missing piece of a puzzle.
“Oh. That’s why I do that.”
There’s power in that sentence.
There’s also danger in it.
Because “That’s why I do that” can quietly become “That’s just who I am.”
Those are two very different statements.
While a diagnosis can help explain behavior, it shouldn’t become an excuse for never changing it. Have we allowed our language to move from diagnoses explaining our behavior to diagnoses becoming part of our identity?
Clearly, some confusion exists around this concept in our society. In our effort to reduce shame around mental health, which is a good and necessary goal, we have sometimes drifted toward reducing responsibility as well. We don’t want people to feel bad about having anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma, or any number of other struggles.
I don’t want that either.
But removing shame doesn’t require removing responsibility.
In fact, I would argue that understanding ourselves should increase our responsibility.
Once I understand why I respond a certain way, I have more information available to decide what I’m going to do about it.
That’s the point.
Imagine discovering that your car pulls hard to the left because the alignment is bad. That information is important. It explains why you’ve been fighting the steering wheel every time you drive.
But imagine learning that information and saying, “Well, my car has an alignment problem. That’s just how it drives.”
Then you keep drifting into the other lane.
Understanding the problem doesn’t eliminate the responsibility to address it.
Human beings are obviously much more complicated than cars, but I think we sometimes treat diagnoses this way.
“I have anxiety, so I can’t do that.” This leads to words like, “I am anxious.”
“I have ADHD, so I’m always going to forget.” This leads to words like, “I am ADHD.”
“I have depression, so I don’t have the energy for that.” This leads to words like, “I am depressed.”
“I’m an avoidant attachment style, so this is just how relationships are for me.” This leads to words like, “I am avoidant.”
You can clearly see how these lines of thinking lead to identity and that identity can hurt our development.
Trauma can even become our identity. People can think and say, “I experienced trauma, so that’s why I react this way.”
Over time, the trauma can move from being something that happened to me to becoming part of how I define who I am.
Maybe all of those things are true diagnostically.
But what happens after the diagnosis?
That’s the question I’m interested in.
A diagnosis can be incredibly helpful in explaining how you arrived where you are. It doesn’t necessarily tell you where you have to go from here.
I’ve spent much of my career sitting with people who have very legitimate reasons for the ways they respond to life. Some learned early that people couldn’t be trusted. Some grew up in homes where conflict was explosive, so they learned to avoid it. Some developed coping mechanisms that helped them survive incredibly difficult experiences.
Those responses made sense. There was a payoff to the behavior and often the cost was relatively low.
Sometimes they were brilliant adaptations to terrible circumstances.
But something can make sense and still need to change. We can have a behavior that once served us that now needs to change.
That’s one of the harder truths of emotional health.
The behaviors that helped you survive one season of your life may prevent you from thriving in the next one.
Avoiding conflict might have protected you when you were eight years old and living with an explosive parent. At thirty-eight, that same avoidance might slowly destroy your marriage.
Hypervigilance may have helped you survive an unpredictable home. Years later, it might make it nearly impossible to relax around people who actually love you.
Shutting down emotionally may have protected you from being hurt. Eventually, it might prevent anyone from getting close enough to know you.
Understanding where those patterns came from is important. We should have compassion for the person who learned them.
But compassion isn’t the same thing as surrender.
We can understand why something developed while still deciding that it doesn’t get to control the rest of our lives.
This is why I’m increasingly uncomfortable when diagnoses become identities. I am especially bothered by how little thought we give to our language that reinforces this identity formation.
There’s an enormous difference between saying “I struggle with anxiety” and “I’m an anxious person.”
One describes an experience.
The other begins to describe a person.
No one says, “I am cancer.”
Language matters because the stories we tell about ourselves eventually shape the possibilities we imagine for ourselves. If something becomes part of who I believe I am, changing it can begin to feel like betraying myself rather than growing.
This extends far beyond clinical diagnoses.
“I am an introvert.”
“I am a people pleaser.”
“I am conflict avoidant.”
“I am just not disciplined.”
“I am bad with money.”
“I am an overthinker.”
“I am the kind of person who…”
Some of those descriptions may be accurate. A useful feature of labels is that they give us language for patterns, tendencies, struggles, and experiences.
They also make terrible prisons.
We should be able to say, “This describes something about me” without deciding, “This determines what is possible for me.”
A diagnosis should give you information that helps you and the people in your life understand you better.
It can help professionals know how to support you. It can help identify treatments, accommodations, strategies, medications, or skills that might make life significantly better.
But, as I tell my clients, “None of these things require the diagnosis to become your identity.”
In fact, the diagnosis should help you move forward in a new and healthier direction.
That’s why I sometimes think we’ve misunderstood what happens when someone receives a diagnosis. We talk about it as though they’ve reached the finish line.
Finally, we know what this is.
Good.
Now what?
Because a diagnosis isn’t the finish, it’s a data point on how to course correct.
Now that you know more about how your brain works, what are you going to do with that knowledge?
Now that you understand why certain situations are difficult for you, what skills can you develop?
Now that you recognize the patterns you learned years ago, which ones still serve you and which ones need to be challenged?
Now that you have language for your struggle, how will that language help you grow?
Those questions aren’t meant to create shame.
They’re meant to show possibilities. They are meant to reveal the truth that a diagnosis is simply information that can help us or enslave us.
You are more than the things you’ve experienced and the patterns that have developed over the years.
You’re more than the diagnosis that helped explain parts of your life.
Understanding yourself is important, but understanding itself isn’t the final goal.
The goal is deciding what you’re going to do with what you’ve learned.
A diagnosis can explain part of the person you’ve become.
It doesn’t get to decide who you’re becoming next.
Choose wisely.
