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.

If you know you have time blindness and you still arrive late it is worse, because you knew it will happen and did nothing to prevent it

Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what it's like to actually deal with this, at all. If I try to be on time to things, I will be stupidly early, or still think I have time to do tasks A & B before doing C, because they invariably take more or less time than I estimate. Or I start doing tasks X & Y, because I'm easily distracted, you know because it's a deficit in attention. Don't trivialise what you don't understand.

Your advice is as ignorant as saying 'just do more fun things' to someone with depression.

Do or do not, there is no "try". If you know you have to leave home at 7:00 AM to avoid being late then just set an alarm at that time. When it goes off then walk out the door, even if you're in the middle of some other task. Like if you're brewing coffee then just unplug the machine and leave: no coffee for you today. Don't allow yourself the opportunity to get distracted. Simple.

this response is like hearing someone has crippling depression and telling them "have you tried just thinking happy thoughts? have you tried thinking about things in a happier way?"

here's the real thought process (edit: the writing is all over the place but im not gonna spend more time editing)

it's the night before, you know you need to leave at 7am, you pick up your phone to set alarm, and you see a text from jimmy, you spend 3 minutes texting jimmy, put your phone down, and move on to something else completely oblivious to the fact that you didnt actually set an alarm. i never CHOSE to text jimmy, there was zero percent of my brain that said "i see a text from jimmy, but i should set my alarm first because i might forget otherwise, so im going to set an alarm and then text jimmy just to be safe". this is what it means to have lack executive functioning. I will find myself making actions i did not make a decision to do, and the smaller the action it is the more likely i will do it without having ever decided to do it. for example, i will be focused writing software at my desk. 30 seconds later im standing in the kitchen, looking in the fridge, pulling out a sandwich, and it occurs to me: i never decided to stand up and go to the kitchen. the decision making process literally never occurred. I have to literally TIE MYSELF TO MY DESK to stop myself from doing stuff like this.

luckily, you wake up accidentally at 6am. crisis averted! you still have 20 minutes before you need to get out of bed. no problem, scroll hacker news. it's now 6:35am and oh shit i should have been out of bed 15 minutes ago, i didn't set an alarm for that because i didn't think i would lose track of time when im literally staring at the time in the corner of my screen, i rush out of bed and jump in the shower thinking this will take a couple minutes, no big deal. however adhd makes you chronically underestimate how long something takes, because im generally really unaware of how much time elapses when i shower because i have time blindness. it's not 6:45am and i need to be leaving out the door, but my shower actually took 10 minutes, and im now soaking wet and still have to get on my clothes.

but wait, i need to take my meds, i really really cannot forget that. so i go grab my meds, but then wait i need water. so i go fill up my water bottle for the day like i always do, but its dirty, so i need to wash it first, and at this point im hyperfixating on doing what feels like a necessary step because part of adhd is losing bigger picture context and longer term rewards, my brain told me "i hve to take meds which means i need water which means filling water bottle which means washing it" and my brain literally doesn't ever take a step backwards until it's now 6:55am and i finally took my meds and FUCK i'm not 20 minutes late.

repeat at every single step of every single day for the rest of your life. this is also why people with adhd have the stigma of being lazy. the reality is that we can and often get less done when it's not something that intrinsically motivates us (most things) because everything is THREE TIMES HARDER. we're constantly stumbling, constantly having to set a million timers, having fatigue of so many timers, so sometimes we're over confident in not needing them because it's not reasonable to set 40 freaking timers every day, but then one in five times we slip up, and now im 5 minutes late for a meeting, and i show up and my boss is being pissy because he thinks im some self diagnosing tiktok idiot because has no idea what this looks like and how it impacts me despite trying really really fucking hard and absolutely hating it

>i never CHOSE to text jimmy

Yes you did. You are an adult human being with free will.