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Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

(www.freyaindia.co.uk)
540 points drankl | 1 comments | 06 Jul 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.227s | source
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parpfish ◴[07 Jul 25 01:05 UTC] No.44485690[source]▶
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.

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zug_zug ◴[07 Jul 25 01:17 UTC] No.44485765[source]▶
It's interesting because there are two diametrically opposed ways to interpret what you said

One is - everybody thinks they have disorders, so just ignore that feeling it'll mess with you.

The other is - everybody thinks they have minor version of disorders, because we all do, we live on continuums, and therefore we should probably all think about it more

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1. esperent ◴[07 Jul 25 05:32 UTC] No.44487076[source]▶
> everybody thinks they have minor version of disorders, because we all do, we live on continuums, and therefore we should probably all think about it more

I think this is subtly incorrect. I would phrase it this way:

> everybody thinks they have minor version of disorders, because we all do... And they think that makes them different and therefore deserving of special treatment.

We all live on continuums of mental health, and reflecting on that is important. But it's unrelated to what's happening here, there's not much reflection, just self labelling and demanding special treatment based on these labels.

Someone strongly on the autism spectrum absolutely needs special treatment, some just a little, some a lot.

But somebody who watches a TikTok about autism and recognizes, or thinks they recognize, similar behaviors in themselves, does not need it (except in the few cases where it is actually undiagnosed autism, of course, but that's a very small minority).