it’s really cool to see people engaging with my piece on narcissism/PDs and why it’s important to reflect on how we use these labels. i’m glad it resonates with people. i think the reason it bothers me so much is because these medical model labels (narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, etc) are so, so widely misused? and i see, and hear, people who consider themselves “woke” and full of empathy using them to deliberately put down another person. you can’t claim to be a mental health activist in one breath then attempt to denigrate someone for potentially having atypical (aka, not “neurotypical” or “normal”) neurological experiences. i just cannot take the hypocrisy of it, and neither should you, reading this.
labels can be limiting. and people who use them against you to perpetuate conservative ideologies of health and what is “normal” don’t have the intellectual depth to understand what they’re doing. or, maybe they do, but it’s unlikely they’ll bother to better themselves. but also, labels can be incredible! they help you realise that isn’t you, you aren’t defective or ‘wrong’. that thought, or that behaviour, belongs to your condition/label/disorder/etc. that’s not to say we can excuse ourselves for literally anything and blame it on the label, but it does allow you the chance to forgive yourself, and to try and understand yourself a little more. sometimes, being atypical is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle but you’ve never seen the complete picture of what you’re creating. it’s weird as hell. i like to focus on the things i can do and the achievements i have made, to remind myself that i am multidimensional. we all have the ability to do that, and that’s pretty goddamn amazing.
