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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: 0s | 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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Aurornis ◴[07 Jul 25 01:52 UTC] No.44485973[source]▶
> - 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.

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imetatroll ◴[07 Jul 25 06:29 UTC] No.44487322[source]▶
This is simultaneously funny and sad. I wonder when alcoholism will get a front row seat during zoom meetings (or even IRL meetings). "Can't help it hick I'm an alcoholic".

I think a lot of societal change these days can be summarized by the idea that self-labeling is seen as transforming something into "everyone else's problem".

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watwut ◴[07 Jul 25 14:47 UTC] No.44490945[source]▶
Modern treatments do actually treat alcoholism like a disease. The one that cant be cured, but can be managed.

It is trying to remove the shame from the equation, because it is not a productive emotion. It makes people postpone and avoid steps necessary for treatment.

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ViktorRay ◴[07 Jul 25 16:34 UTC] No.44492054[source]▶
Yes but the issue here is that treatments exist for alcohol use disorder and that one cannot use the simple presence of alcohol use disorder as an excuse to dodge accountability.

And yet people are using things like "time blindness" as excuses.

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1. const_cast ◴[07 Jul 25 19:40 UTC] No.44493909[source]▶
I think socially it's because addiction is stigmatized heavily. Despite having real psychological disorders that fuel it, addiction is still largely viewed as self-inflicted. Of course this stigma doesn't come out of nowhere - people who are addicts almost always devolve into dangerous and asocial behavior. If someone is an asshole who stole 50 bucks from you to shoot up, it's easy to think they're a heroin addict because they're an asshole. But really it's the other way around.