Labels

When I present a diagnosis to a client, I do it with hesitation. Honestly, I often pause before I say the words out loud. I know how heavy they can land. Sometimes a client hears it and their shoulders drop in relief—“That… that’s what’s wrong with me.” Other times, it’s like watching a curtain fall over their face “Oh no… that’s what’s wrong with me.”

And something interesting happens. After hearing a diagnosis, many people start to act more like it. Like they’ve been told, “This is who you are now.” It can start to feel less like an explanation and more like an expectation.

I work to clarify with them: this isn’t who you are. A diagnosis is just shorthand—a snapshot of the patterns and symptoms showing up right now. It shifts as behavior shifts. It evolves as we get more pieces of the puzzle. Aaron Beck, who founded cognitive therapy, said that *“the meaning people attach to their experiences determines how they respond emotionally.”*¹ If the meaning they give to a diagnosis becomes “this is who I am,” it shapes their whole sense of worth.

The diagnosis becomes a label that is attached to us and the danger is when a label stops being a description and starts becoming an identity. If I let that label become the foundation of my worth, my confidence will always depend on how the world views that group.

We use labels like membership cards for more than just mental health; political party, religious affiliation, the generation we were born in, the sports team we root for, even our favorite music artists.

I grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis, and for our family, church was everything. It was who we were. Faith shaped almost every part of my childhood. As any parent does mine worked feverishly to maintain my innocence and sanitize my view of the world.  

I never really was the odd kid out, but I often felt like I was, unless I could find a way to feel superior. If I could be “better” than someone, I wasn’t outside anymore, they were. I remember one Sunday at youth group, we sang a rewritten version of the Four Non Blondes song What’s Up? but with the words changed from “what’s going on” to “my guilt is gone.” I eventually heard the real version on the radio and thought someone had changed our worship song. I even argued with another kid about which version was correct. When I learned the truth, I felt embarrassed, and the bubble I existed in popped.

So much of my understanding of culture came through this sanitized lens. The intention of purity culture was to scrub secular music, movies, and art clean, or restrict them entirely. We were taught that liking those things made you “bad,” and avoiding them made you “good.”

Even who my heroes were had to be filtered through this. A persons religious affiliation was valued highly.  Naturally I would start to weigh those who believed the same thing as I did heavier, as they were acceptable.  It was “okay” to like them. I remember my parents talking about an athlete they disliked who became an Christian, and their frustration that now they “had to like him.” Years later, I made a comment about Kanye West’s mental health, and my father immediately replied, “You know he’s a Christian, right?”

It was subtle, but clear: if someone was “in the club,” you defended them. If they weren’t, you distrusted them.

Henri Tajfel and John Turner’s social identity theory explains why this runs so deep: we build part of our self-esteem from the groups we belong to.² Their success feels like our success, and their criticism feels like our rejection. Brené Brown writes in Braving the Wilderness that *“true belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”*³ But for a long time, belonging for me meant becoming whatever I needed to be to stay accepted or to feel I was accepted.  Many times this was found in who I disliked, who I avoided more than who I gravitated towards. 

We cling to groups that reflect us, and we fiercely defend them. Their reputation becomes tied to our worth. Any criticism of the group starts to feel like criticism of me. If they are wrong, then maybe I am too. My instinct is to defend them, overlook their mistakes, or compare their faults to their adversaries to protect the group. We stop questioning because questioning feels like betrayal.

That is where black-and-white thinking creeps in. David Burns calls this an “all-or-nothing” cognitive distortion, a mental filter that forces us to see things as either-or instead of both-and.⁴ Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) pushes back against this. Marsha Linehan, DBT’s founder, described dialectics as holding two truths at once.⁵ I can be generous and selfish. I can question something and still be respectful. It is not contradiction; it is complexity.

When we lose that complexity, we start following the unspoken rules of the group to stay safe. It convinces us that we cannot care for ourselves and others at the same time. But we can.

There was a process of detachment that I needed to move through. Jay Shetty writes in Think Like a Monk that *“Detachment is not that you own nothing. Detachment is that nothing owns you.”*⁶ For me, this meant loosening my grip on the labels and roles that I thought would finally prove I was “good.” I kept thinking I would find an oasis, “I will feel whole when I get this job, this title, this approval” and every time it turned out to be a mirage.

I see now that this pattern was about control. I moved through life with hesitation, calculating every risk. I avoided anything where failure was possible. If I wasn’t sure I would succeed, I didn’t try. If no one saw me doing it, it didn’t feel like it counted. I hid, then resented others who tried boldly and succeeded. My worth was tethered to outcomes, and every outcome felt like a referendum on who I was.

The more I tried to avoid failure, the more it seemed to find me. Because when our intention is to avoid something, it stays at the center of our focus. The only way out was to question the stories I was telling myself.

Man was created “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5), suspended between instinct and divine purpose. We are sinners and saints at the same time. C.S. Lewis called this the “weight of glory” that each of us carries.⁷ Dallas Willard wrote that spiritual formation is moving from “external performance to internal transformation.”⁸ Richard Rohr describes the True Self as something not created or achieved, but unleashed when we release our false identities.⁹

It comes from questioning, identifying why we believe the things we do. After spending years in the church, working for the church, and being hurt by the church, I reached a point where listening to Sunday sermons felt more like entertainment than something that built my faith. More often than not, I found myself critiquing the message, thinking about what I would have done differently, poking holes in their presentation or theology. It got to the point where my wife would hesitate to ask if I liked the sermon that morning.

I genuinely wanted to connect with her about what we were learning in that space, and I wanted to move from a deeper motivation than simply appearing “good” on the outside while feeling disconnected inside. Around that time, I started journaling. One Sunday I paused to ask myself why something the pastor said didn’t sit well with me. I worked it out on paper, whether my discomfort was theological, cultural, ethical, political, or rooted in how I viewed faith or even myself. I would ask whether this difference actually went against the core of my faith.

What this gave me was space. Space to question, to clarify, and to affirm what I believe and why I believe it. I realized I didn’t have to agree with the pastor in order to receive something meaningful. In that way, I could be grateful for them and their message, trusting that this might be exactly what God intended for that moment and I felt connected to something bigger than me, even in disagreement with the “group” I was in at that time.

We are not our labels. We are not our diagnoses. Our worth cannot be conferred by a group. Labels can offer community and connection, but they are not where our value comes from. Like designer brands, their worth depends on how often they are worn and how many people find them desirable. That is not how human worth works.

We are more than our roles.
We are more than our labels.

References (APA)

¹ Beck, A. T. (1979). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. New American Library.
² Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.
³ Brown, B. (2017). Braving the wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone. Random House.
⁴ Burns, D. D. (1989). The feeling good handbook. William Morrow.
⁵ Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press.
⁶ Shetty, J. (2020). Think like a monk: Train your mind for peace and purpose every day. Simon & Schuster.
⁷ Lewis, C. S. (1949). The weight of glory. HarperOne.
⁸ Willard, D. (2002). Renovation of the heart: Putting on the character of Christ. NavPress.
⁹ Rohr, R. (2013). Immortal diamond: The search for our true self. Jossey-Bass.