Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses.

But there are a few things we can learn from this:

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves that makes them feel unique, they’ll take it.

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

- most mental disorders are an issue of degree and not something qualitatively different from a typical experience. People should use this to gain greater empathy for those who struggle.

> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok.

There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Many young people lean into this and label everything as a defensive tactic.

A while ago, one of the trends was “time blindness”. People who were chronically late, missed meetings, or failed to manage their time would see TikToks about “time blindness” as if it was a medical condition, and self-diagnose as having that.

It was bizarre to suddenly have people missing scheduled events and then casually informing me that they had time blindness, as if that made it okay. Once they had a label for a condition, they felt like they had a license to escape accountability.

The most frustrating part was that the people who self-diagnosed as having “time blindness” universally got worse at being on time. Once they had transformed the personal problem into a labeled condition, they didn’t feel as obligated to do anything about it.

I'm sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right?

https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-time-blindness.html

I don't watch TikTok videos, I don't use Instagram, but I have been plagued by these symptoms my entire life, and don't really care about others opinions on it. You probably don't have it if those symptoms don't resonate with you, but there are plenty of people who genuinely struggle, and there's likely some overlap with those who have undiagnosed ADHD.

“Time blindness” is not named anywhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5, 2013) nor in the DSM-5-TR (text-revision, 2022). It is not recognized as a stand-alone disorder or an official diagnostic criterion.

Because that's a colloquial name given to a range of specific symptoms people experience, and it is in the DSM, covered by 1.e.:

> Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities (e.g., difficulty managing sequential tasks; difficulty keeping materials and belongings in order; messy, disorganized work; has poor time management; fails to meet deadlines).

The DSM doesn't list all minutiae of every general problem.

You’re conflating symptoms with conditions.

Having a single symptom does not mean someone has the condition. The diagnostic criteria for the condition for which you took that quote (out of context) is more comprehensive. It’s not a simple matter of doing Ctrl+F on the DSM and seeing that something can be a symptom or something else.

This is more obvious when you start thinking of other conditions: Feelings of sadness are a symptom of depression, but not everyone who has feelings of sadness has depression.

The misuse and misinterpretation of the DSM has become commonplace in parallel with the use of therapy speak.