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.

The problem isn't that time blindness is a fake issue.

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.

i would encourage everyone to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. you interact with these people in passing, they deal with themselves all the time. you might find them grating or difficult to work with, and that's fair, but i would hope people wouldn't extend "i dont like this person" to "I dont believe this person has a disability and they're making it up and i assume this because i dont like them"

neurodivergence can and frequently is a real debilitating disability. it is really fucking hard to cope with in a society that actively punishes it, and is full of perspectives like yours that invalidate these very real conditions.

i understand it's a difficult thing to wrap your head around. it isn't super visible like someone missing their legs. it's a really complicated, nuance spectrum of problems that are also really difficult to understand by people who don't have it, and frequently the people who do have it also don't know they have or understand how it impacts them

You think that society now, more than ever, punishes this after what we've been discussing—numerous instances of people glorifying it and (attempting to) excuse poor behavior through it?