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.

When I first discovered that I suffered from a "new" condition called Prosopagnosia - by means of an online "Are you face blind?" test - everything about my life suddenly fell into place. It was a liberating self-diagnosis which gave me permission to admit that it was some small malformations in my brain that were the cause of my troubles, not some selfish malformations in my personality and social skills.

Of course a self-diagnosis is not enough. I discovered my condition while it was still in the early stages of research. I signed up to be a guinea pig for researchers, and got paid a handsome £20/hour to undertake various tests (including brain scans - I still have a 3d image of my brain stored in a box somewhere) to help people better understand the underlying causes of the condition. It was fun for a while, until some of the tests got more disturbing. I also got to learn about the coping strategies I had already developed, and how to use them in better ways to help lessen the impact of the condition on my social interactions.

Glad it somehow worked out for you. I find it very sad though that you felt somehow "guilty" (based on "selfish malformations in my personality and social skills"), which I would see as a toxic society pressure.

Not sure how, since as long as I can remember I thought all people are different, so it's just about finding some that you like and that can also accept you. I don't want to force my quirks and preferences on others, but they don't get to do that either. Of course that can mean some periods and/or situations when you are not part of "the group", but looking back, although it did not feel cool all the time, that was mostly beneficial, got to know more people and do more stuff while looking for people I like.

Developmental prosopagnosia wasn't recognised as a "thing" before the late 2000s. Before that, everybody assumed that being able to recognise someone was just something everyone, well, did. Failure to recognise a friend or relative in the street was seen as an affront, or a deliberate snub. Failure to recognise famous people in films or on the TV was something to be ridiculed. Prosopagnosiacs quickly learn coping strategies growing up in such a world, but those recognition mechanisms are significantly slower: they don't solve the problem.

It is amazing how upset even the most decent and understanding of people can get when they feel you've slighted them in some way. Having someone (you like/respect/love/etc) screaming abuse at you in the middle of the street because you failed to respond to their greeting, because you didn't recognise them and realise they were saying hello specifically to you ... is humiliating. Not knowing why this situation was happening on a regular basis - can you blame me for thinking that it was my fault? That I wasn't a reasonable, decent person? That the things being screamed in my face were accurate?

Hence my relief when discovering there was a label for my condition. Though, sadly, no cure.