Someone on my facebook timeline posted "I'm so bored of hearing the ADHD label. seriously STOP IT."
I read the comments and they were mostly as expected.
"PREACH!" (hands clapping emoji)
"YES" (red hearts)
"Me too!" (hand up)
A few commenters asked if OP actually knew someone with said condition (no answer as yet).
A couple commenters wondered if the OP was in fact tired of the victimhood that often comes along with labels.
No, she clarified, she thinks that ADHD is a symptom of a deeper problem and that if the people experiencing said symptoms would just open up their minds and do the work, then they would experience the freedom beyond their diagnosis. However, she warned, the amount of work such freedom costs is apparently something that average person with ADHD would rather not do. She is also super anti-medication.
A few more comments (thoughtful, long) talked about how helpful the diagnosis has been in their life and perhaps OP might be less dismissive of those who use the acronym as part of their presentation and yes, even identity.
I suppose this breakdown of responses to one person's "controversial" hot take is inevitable, but it was a thread that stuck with me for several reasons.
One: very late in life I've realized that I'm neurodivergent, but I never had the tools or the awareness, let alone the label, when I was growing up. I wonder what might have been different/better if I had known?
Two: While I believe labels, diagnoses and categories can be tools to sow discord and to separate the unseparable, I also believe that labels, diagnoses, and categories can be incredible vehicles for self-knowledge, acceptance, and relief.
Three: I'm pretty much over petty, oversimplified declarations of any kind. Give me the meat, the nuance, the ugly, and the depth any time.
I'm not going to spend too much time on my own neurodivergence as it's a personal journey for me but I want to cover at least number two in today's missive.
As you know, I am a rebel mystic and perhaps you are too. We want to take the middle way and not fall prey to the black and white thinking that often keeps our human minds hamstrung in a false sense of this or that.
In my model, labels/categorization can kick us into left brained thinking and may activate fight/flight. So why then do I think labels like ADHD are ok?
Because they can help us!
Consider the process of healing from trauma- if you are geared towards codependency, one of the most important parts of the healing journey is establishing healthy boundaries (aka categories/labels) to remember where you end and another person begins.
If you've never had boundaries they can feel scary to assert. This is the phase too when anger can emerge quite strongly and the victim naturally expresses healthy indignation about what happened. Sometimes early in the healing journey it's easy to go overboard or let the pendulum swing hard one way. In my own healing I've lingered in the unfairness/indignation phases and spent a lot of time in rage. Also, in setting boundaries I felt more comfortable with very strict contact rules that, as I grew more capable, I was able to then relax.
Fluency with boundaries and recognizing one's victimhood are crucial steps in healing trauma and function like diagnoses, labels and categories- they all create a porous framework that allows for simultaneous containment and growth.
So back to ADHD as a hot topic right now on the interwebs- I think ADHD might just be the latest category that people identify with that provides such a porous framework.
And for those who self-identify as having or being ADHD, it can give them hope, affirmation, community, helpful tools, and yes even pharmaceuticals that help them feel better.
Other recent categories and labels that have been trending include: those who share their pronouns, autism, political affiliation (whether overt or implied), LGBTQIA+ and/or allies thereof, religion, parental status (#boymom is the one I see the most). Certainly you could add a whole range of others.
When we're talking more in terms of diagnoses, I often come across folks detailing their mental and physical health status (this is usually inside forums where we are gathered to address mental/physical health explicitly).
For the record, I have recovered from an ED, have CPTSD and PTSD, parent a child with chronic disease (PANDAS) and definitely am HSP and ND. hahahahahaha. I won't get into my bizarre mashup of religious beliefs today and their acronyms though.
I think humans love the containment that labels provide because they give us a short cut to comprehension- sort of like knowing where in the world someone grew up.
Labels are comforting because they give us a reason why we are the way we are (at least for now) and while some humans use labels to let themselves off the hook, plenty of others use the same exact diagnoses as a springboard towards greater healing and wholeness.
One of the most dismissive things I experienced as I began to share my own eating disorder struggles was to hear my parents tell me that they had checked with an expert (who didn't even speak to me) and she had confirmed for them that I did not, in fact, have an eating disorder.
Never mind that I was vomiting into plastic grocery bags in my room up to nine times a day because the closest toilet was a good 100 yards from my room and public.
I needed the label of eating disorder in order to start creating the boundaries that allowed me to get the right help, to find community and then to heal.
So when we bristle at someone else's adoption of a label, a category, a diagnosis, remember that it's probably doing a lot of heavy lifting for them. We don't know where they are in their journey or how they're deploying that label, category or diagnosis.
They get to have those labels for as long as they need and they get to change the label when the current iteration is no longer serving them. And if they desire to use their label for a lifetime, so be it.
I suspect, though, that much like the pendulum swinging hard in one direction and then the other before settling back into the middle, eventually those who strongly embrace labels and diagnoses and categories will also come to perceive both the power of their containment as well as the benefits of their permeability.
My friend who posted her rant-y perspective on ADHD seems to think that there is a field beyond/above labels like ADHD and that with work and healing we can all meet her there and that that place is categorically better than the level of consciousness that creates labels.
And she's not wrong- we are all of us more than any one experience, diagnosis, label or category of identification. We are, after all, all one.
But for my rebel mystic money, labels, diagnoses and categories can be the initial platform upon which we stand to access new levels of awareness and self-knowledge, to coalesce community and the right helpers, to start a new process of change.
Tomorrow I'll share with you my favorite assessments and quizzes (yes more labels) and how they help with everything in the above paragraph- lol until they don't.
In the meantime, what's your relationship to labels, diagnoses and categories? How do you feel about them for yourself? When others use them?
with love,
Lauren