On labels
Why do we think the place we put people are the people we place? It is a continual amazement to me. And psychologists amaze me most. They have immense power and cloak themselves in scientific clothes to pass off what they say as the objective truth.
I have a friend who has come miles in recovery. Everyone I know thinks of her as a leader and a role model. She still struggles– sometimes a lot–but still the progress is real and amazing to those who know her. She has always wanted to go back to school. The mental health issues simply blew her out of the water early and finally after years she feels ready to try again.
She needs help from voc rehab to pay the cost. They sent her for an evaluation to find out the “real her.” It went badly. That was a day of a couple of panic attacks. Her anxiety was through the roof. The psychologist just thought she was weird.
She got the word today. The psychologist in his report basically said that his professional opinion was that she was “uneducable.” Voc rehab told her “no way.”
A bad day, may for her, become a life sentence. What she has worked years for now seems doubtful. There are still other avenues to pursue, but what once seemed a sure thing now only seems to be mocking her.
She is heartbroken. That is putting it mildly. She feels like crying. She feels like killing. Sometimes she feels like both. And she wants to know how 3 or 4 hours can be the verdict on the last 15 years of her life.
I dont know. You know you read a lot about the evils of medication and that is all well and good. Much of it needs to be said. I wish though we considered more the evils of diagnosis. No name, no title, no label, no diagnosis should ever become the verdict on a persons life. It just doesnt seem right.
On the limits of the way we make sense
I wonder if the way we make sense makes as much sense as we sometimes think it does. Fuzzy thinking leads to certainty that is often misplaced that leads to many problems.
To be diagnosed means to be put into a group of people with similar characteristics. It means you have been measured by some list of characteristics and based on that measurement placed in a group. It means someone has said, “They are like this.”
It may or may not be an accurate description. All of us belong to many groups to different degrees. Some of the groups we belong to are more important than others. Some are more important to who we are. But all of us are more, much more, than the groups we belong to.
The way we group people are never true. They are either helpful or not. They either help us see clearer or they provide blinders to our eyes. It is not true to say people are bipolar. It is not true to say people have bipolar either. Bipolar is a tool we use to understand someone. It is not the someone we understand. Useful diagnoses help people to understand what has happened, what to do, and what can happen if we do what needs to be done. If they do not help then they do more hurt than good.
We talk about diagnosis like they are things we have collected. They are not things. At best they are descriptions of the process of how we live. I remember an adolescent I worked with in a therapeutic wilderness program. She asked me one day, “Some people tell me I have major depression. Others tell me I have borderline personality. Some people have told me I have histrionic personality disorder. What do you think my major problem is?” I pointed at the sky slowly and replied, “None of those. It looks to me like its getting ready to rain really hard and neither of us have a really good way to stay dry. I think that is the major problem.”
I am not saying that diagnoses are unimportant or trivial. They most certainly are. And they can be very helpful. But they are not more than what they are. I wonder if we put as much energy into being what we can be, as we do in debating what we are called if all of our lives wouldnt be lot better.
Diagnosis
You are not the things
You are called
No matter how frequently
you are called them,
Or who calls
Or why they call.
You are not the things
you are like
regardless of how much
you are like them.
You are not
the things that measure you,
that place you
or limit you.
You are not
what you have,
how you look,
or how you feel.
You may be many things,
But no thing is all you are.
You are a gift
in a world needing gifts,
an opportunity,
a miracle,
in a world that often believes in neither.
You can care and be cared for,
Touch and be touched,
Laugh and cry,
Live and live for.
You can be alone or be with,
be brave or be scared.
Nothing is closed,
but nothing is free.
Close not your eyes
And reach to be all you can be.
On labels
Why do we think the place we put people are the people we place? It is a continual amazement to me. And psychologists amaze me most. They have immense power and cloak themselves in scientific clothes to pass off what they say as the objective truth.
I have a friend who has come miles in recovery. Everyone I know thinks of her as a leader and a role model. She still struggles– sometimes a lot–but still the progress is real and amazing to those who know her. She has always wanted to go back to school. The mental health issues simply blew her out of the water early and finally after years she feels ready to try again.
She needs help from voc rehab to pay the cost. They sent her for an evaluation to find out the “real her.” It went badly. That was a day of a couple of panic attacks. Her anxiety was through the roof. The psychologist just thought she was weird.
She got the word today. The psychologist in his report basically said that his professional opinion was that she was “uneducable.” Voc rehab told her “no way.”
A bad day, may for her, become a life sentence. What she has worked years for now seems doubtful. There are still other avenues to pursue, but what once seemed a sure thing now only seems to be mocking her.
She is heartbroken. That is putting it mildly. She feels like crying. She feels like killing. Sometimes she feels like both. And she wants to know how 3 or 4 hours can be the verdict on the last 15 years of her life.
I dont know. You know you read a lot about the evils of medication and that is all well and good. Much of it needs to be said. I wish though we considered more the evils of diagnosis. No name, no title, no label, no diagnosis should ever become the verdict on a persons life. It just doesnt seem right.
On the limits of the way we make sense
I wonder if the way we make sense makes as much sense as we sometimes think it does. Fuzzy thinking leads to certainty that is often misplaced that leads to many problems.
To be diagnosed means to be put into a group of people with similar characteristics. It means you have been measured by some list of characteristics and based on that measurement placed in a group. It means someone has said, “They are like this.”
It may or may not be an accurate description. All of us belong to many groups to different degrees. Some of the groups we belong to are more important than others. Some are more important to who we are. But all of us are more, much more, than the groups we belong to.
The way we group people are never true. They are either helpful or not. They either help us see clearer or they provide blinders to our eyes. It is not true to say people are bipolar. It is not true to say people have bipolar either. Bipolar is a tool we use to understand someone. It is not the someone we understand. Useful diagnoses help people to understand what has happened, what to do, and what can happen if we do what needs to be done. If they do not help then they do more hurt than good.
We talk about diagnosis like they are things we have collected. They are not things. At best they are descriptions of the process of how we live. I remember an adolescent I worked with in a therapeutic wilderness program. She asked me one day, “Some people tell me I have major depression. Others tell me I have borderline personality. Some people have told me I have histrionic personality disorder. What do you think my major problem is?” I pointed at the sky slowly and replied, “None of those. It looks to me like its getting ready to rain really hard and neither of us have a really good way to stay dry. I think that is the major problem.”
I am not saying that diagnoses are unimportant or trivial. They most certainly are. And they can be very helpful. But they are not more than what they are. I wonder if we put as much energy into being what we can be, as we do in debating what we are called if all of our lives wouldnt be lot better.
Diagnosis
You are not the things
You are called
No matter how frequently
you are called them,
Or who calls
Or why they call.
You are not the things
you are like
regardless of how much
you are like them.
You are not
the things that measure you,
that place you
or limit you.
You are not
what you have,
how you look,
or how you feel.
You may be many things,
But no thing is all you are.
You are a gift
in a world needing gifts,
an opportunity,
a miracle,
in a world that often believes in neither.
You can care and be cared for,
Touch and be touched,
Laugh and cry,
Live and live for.
You can be alone or be with,
be brave or be scared.
Nothing is closed,
but nothing is free.
Close not your eyes
And reach to be all you can be.