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.

That article is not claiming that “time blindness” is a real standalone condition. As the other commenter already explained, it’s not among the conditions with actual diagnostic criteria and agreed-upon symptoms.

The first sentence claims that it’s something people with ADHD might experience, not a specific condition. In other words, it’s just the therapy-speak way of saying “chronically late”.

Note that the date on the article is also very recent: Only a few months old. This date is after the trend was popular on TikTok. It was likely written in response to the trend, as a way of capturing search engine traffic from people searching for it.

This is representative of the issue I was describing: There’s a sense among some people that using the therapy-speak terminology for something transforms it into a different type of personality attribute, for which they can’t be held responsible. Saying “I have a problem with being on time” and “I have time blindness” are functionally equivalent, but some people want to believe they the therapy speak labeled version warrants different treatment.

So because those people are ignorant of the nomenclature, they must not really experience those issues? I never asserted that it was a standalone condition, in fact I attributed it as related to undiagnosed conditions that do have names.

Applying formal-sounding nomenclature does not transform accountability like you’re suggesting.

Also, being able to Google a TikTok-famous phrase and get hits from SEO-targeted blog posts like this doesn’t really make it official nomenclature. They’re just trying to capture traffic with trending keywords. This is a very obvious SEO article.

Saying “I have a problem with being on time” and “I have time blindness” are functionally equivalent. Applying therapy speak doesn’t change the situation.

This is all very much missing the point, though. Someone who believes they have “time blindness” should recognize that they have a higher need for additional measures to address their issue, including more use of time keeping aids, alarms, and even accountability from external parties. Trying to use a labeled condition to escape accountability for one’s actions is not only unhelpful, it goes against the entire purpose of therapy.

The problem becomes more clear when you imagine the same idea applied to other issues: If someone is constantly lashing out and yelling at people, they don’t get a free pass for saying they have “an anger issue”. They’re still accountable for the consequences of their actions, regardless of what name you put on it.

> Applying formal-sounding nomenclature does not transform accountability like you’re suggesting.

"You have an unlicensed condition, citizen!"

That's not what they said. Whether your condition is diagnosed or not, it's your responsibility to take care of it. If you're chronically late, you should set timers or write notes or whatever helps—whether you've got class-A ADHD and take meds or just assume there's something wrong with your sense of time.

Just saying "I'm time blind, sorry not sorry, deal with it" is not an appropriate reaction to causing trouble to your surroundings.

You're missing my point. I'm not trying to deal with the 'conditions' that individuals or groups say they have. My point is that if a group says a person has a condition it's considered real, but if an individual says so, it's not. It's a point about deferring to authority over what is existent or not.

Who defines conditions, says that ADHD is real, for example? It wasn't in earlier generations. The are terms of social (group) art - special names that are generally accepted as meaningful.