Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

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.

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.

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.

The problem is that many people incorrectly self-diagnose as suffering from conditions like time blindness. Which they do for a variety of reasons: To externalize accountability for why they're late, to feel special, and so on.

A comparison is the large number of people who claim "gluten sensitivity" and maintain special diets. Now there are serious medical conditions like celiac disease that require one to avoid gluten. But the vast majority of self-diagnosed "gluten sensitives" do not have such conditions. Researchers conclude that for many of them there is no physical basis for their self-diagnosis.

Among other things this phenomenon makes it harder for people with actual conditions to be taken seriously, because there are so many impostors.

Sadly this doesn't really work due to the current state of psychiatry where many people with legitimate issues are being denied a diagnosis and treatment (see for example: trans healthcare and gatekeeping, adhd healthcare, etc). It is even more weird because often when you go to two different doctors you will get different results.

Not to mention that usually to even explore the idea of getting an official diagnosis you start with a self diagnosis.

> But the vast majority of self-diagnosed "gluten sensitives" do not have such conditions.

If you believe that you have celiac but for whatever reason you haven't been able to test it yet, then there is no harm to try going glutten free. The real issue is how many people deny the very existence of glutten sensitivity and put these people in danger. If you look at communities of people with the disease you will see what I am talking about.