Do labels hinder growth? If we get locked into ideas of a category assingment are we unable to reach new heights?
He's ADHD. She's Bi-polar. He's schizophrenic. She's over the hill. He's a lower beta. She's a cougar. He's a high alpha. She's a slut. He's a stud.
I work in a field of labels. The kids seeking our treatment arrive with pages sometimes in the hundreds identifying their diagnoses. If we simply looked at the pages of data and saw them as specimens we might as well shut our doors. If they come to us fully formed with no hope of change or deliverance why not dig trenches, line them up and put them out of their misery?
Those of us in the profession of human services do what we do as part of our desire to perform purposeful work. If you are your label there is nothing purposeful about trying alternative treatments, supporting best practice or even building relationships. You can't make a difference why try?
To lock yourself into your own label be it has-been or beta or whatever else you call yourself is self defeating. You've accepted you've lost before you've even started. You view the cup half empty to borrow an over used cliche. We all have the capacity to change how much is decided by your intelligence, your personality, your desire and the realization you can change.
I like Roissy's teachings because he suggests ways to change. He talks about base instincts and the differences between men and women, crudely but effectively. Why some men insist they are not able change frustrates me. This stuff simply has to be absorbed at a cognitive level and applied. If you know your mother likes when you hug her upon greeting you hug her if you value the relationship. Why is that different from understanding women you'd like to date want a dominant leader? Why can't you wear dominance like a coat? Why can't you in fact become dominant understanding those traits get your further along in life no matter what? What stops you? Don't tell me conditioning. Conditioning can be undone. When you know better you do better.
I had my mother on a pedestal for years. Years I tell you. She planted herself there and with much respect and a little fear I towed the family line and behaved as I was taught to do. As I grew older and recognized that a. she didn't follow her own preaching and b. her ideas were harmful to my view of self, I put her in her proper place - normal human being. I was able to set health boundaries without cutting her out of my life inappropriately. I shook of the labels she'd placed on me. Over sensitive, spacey, more recently she said bi-polar (I laughed btw and that's a whole n'otha story). I was shackled by my own choosing. When we know better we do better.
Why oh why do we still have men and women labelling themselves as if they were Petri dishes? We are human - we are capable - we are not flotsam waiting to be washed up on the shores of 'who cares'. Gawd it pisses me off. So much potential. Wasted.
