Quick summary: I am offering a discussion concerning the drive to label and how labeling impacts suffering. There is a heated debate in the field of psychotherapy as to whether psychiatric (DSM) labels help or hurt the client’s recovery. I am commenting on what encourages our emotional reactions and behavior related to the topic.
What questions might arise from such dichotomies concerning to label or not to label? Should psychotherapy be governed by modernist or post-modernist principles? There is the dialectic “and” that might surface here… this helps me to identify a label that could describe my own ego related to this subject (as my ego has a rather rigid view on the subject of labels). I hold my own dichotomous beliefs in awareness and attempt to grow from them… this subject finds me humbled… I strive to be open-minded as opposed to being dogmatic… and now I arrive at another false dichotomy and fool myself into believing that open-mindedness is simply the opposite of being dogmatic… do I strive for open-mindedness to a degree that I find myself dogmatically in favor of open-mindedness… dogmatically against dogma? Can I strive and still be truly open?
Existentialism would help this debate to arrive at a point of universality… what fear or anxiety drives us to such emotionally reactive views related to labels and the resulting intervention strategy? If we cannot find consistency must we live in chaos? Without stable labels can life avoid meaninglessness? Without having an indisputable knowledge and protocol, can we in this field still consider ourselves adequate or competent? The dialectic answer is a coexisting yes/no… And for the voice of yes let me propose an irony… isn’t it our ability to offer empathy from a place of acceptance which nurtures the therapeutic relationship, which is the most important variable in relation to outcomes? To be truly accepting do we need to accept that we don’t know… or to know that our labels are relative, transient, and infinitely tied to our own subjectivity? How do labels help us to know that we don’t know? Who are the labels for… the client or perhaps our own existential anxiety? Both?
When a human’s desire to label and quantify the environment leads them to act against their own best interest or the best interest of others, do they then have a personality disorder related to a lack of control surrounding judgments and projections? I say this in complete seriousness… if the subject is suffering, do we label hypo-control more than we label hyper-control? If control was put on a bell curve would we see equal amounts of suffering on both ends? Are labels a symptom of being overly concerned with controlling existence? Is life controllable or predictable? If life is neither controllable nor predictable than is our drive to label (ironically) pathological?
Is labeling a symptom of our existential anxiety? Is labeling a behavior of avoidance? If we have failed for centuries to find a universal truth and yet we persist in our search using primarily the same methods, what label could be used to describe this search for absolute?
I believe that therapists have the good intentioned goal of reducing suffering and I struggle with the realization that labeling might be our way of avoiding or resisting the suffering which arises from our own relationship with meaninglessness… which arises when we attempt to quantify the unexplainable…. when we attempt to know and do not allow ourselves to simply be. Perhaps there is both hope and nurturance within the presence of acceptance… perhaps the felt sensation of healing arrives in this space.
Tag: Postmodernism
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pathologizing, labels, dichotomies, existentialism and acceptance
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Postmodernism – making an ‘out there’ philosophy useful
Quick summary – By allowing yourself to investigate how your relationships, actions and emotions are governed by your perceptions you may find that by offering yourself a freedom of perception you can change the way in which you are impacted by your reality. – By using open-mindedness and an adaptability in relation to your beliefs and ways of perceiving, you free yourself from patterns of seemingly automatic reaction. Postmodernism suggests that reality does not exist… it is a construct of your belief system… a radical postmodernist would say that if you believed that you could walk through a wall, then you could walk through a wall… perhaps this is not particularly helpful to the masses, but what if we took this down a notch… what if you allowed yourself the freedom to perceive a situation differently so as to reduce your discomfort related to the subject? What would be the benefits of letting go of some of your deterministic thinking (‘when this happens I must feel this’ ‘If I did that I would be bad’ ‘I should_______ because _______)? Sometimes we trap ourselves in suffering by rigidly holding on to what we label to be objectivity… postmodernism suggests that objectivity does not exist – there are not facts. Perhaps if we took a small piece from postmodernist thinking we could all say that “I don’t have to feel or behave in a set way… my reactions do not have to be predetermined… I have a consciousness which is evolved enough to allow me to live without being controlled by my environment… I can choose to perceive or believe my reality to be different.” Embracing your subjectivity is an emancipation from atomization.
According to the philosophies inherent in postmodernism reality is a construct which is ever changing… reality is simply what we have chosen to believe… anything can be a fact if you believe it to be a fact… and facts become more factual when we use communication to get others to believe that those facts actually exist. According to postmodernism, if everyone believes the world to be flat… then the world is flat.
Through language we allow the collective to live within a reality which appears to have objectivity and continuity… a radical postmodernist would suggest that if you want a different reality you must simply believe that a different reality exists.
Now this theory might be fascinating to certain people (such as myself) but it is not particularly useful for a society which still seems reluctant to accept modernism (modernism basically states that the world is governed by logic – math and other sciences can accurately depict and explain reality… reality is quantifiable).
Our reactions and actions are related to the beliefs which we project onto a stimuli or event etc. I view postmodernism to be useful if it is used as a means of increasing adaptability related to perceiving… this could make a person less reactive and perhaps more content with the random happenings of existence.
As a therapist there are many themes that I have seen surrounding the subject of deterministic thinking.
Here are some very common examples of rigid deterministic thinking patterns that often create unnecessary suffering in people’s lives. (Remember to be nice to yourself… I am well aware of all the below cognitive distortions and I still find myself caught up in them anyway… this is not an exercise intended for you to cast negative judgment on yourself… notice which phrases you use and explore the subject with open curiosity.)
“I have this characteristic so I should to this.”
“I am a ________ so I must ___________ .”
“Anyone who __________ is a _____________ and must __________.”
“This happened with a family member so I must do this.”
“I have to feel this way because this happened.”
“Bad things never happen if you do things the right way.”
“I can’t do it that way or else I would not be me.”
“He did this so he needs to do this.”
“When someone does this the only solution is to do this.”
“We don’t do that or we don’t emote like that or we don’t think like that in my family/culture/community/country.”
“I should _________because ________.”
“I can’t support her because she is a ________.”
“___________ is always wrong or bad.”
“If I did that then I would be a __________.”
“I am a _______ and we believe _______ should always be handled by ______.”
We all have intuition and we all have subjectivity… countless times I have witnessed people fall hopelessly into suffering because of an inability to overcome their rigid ‘shoulds’.
What would happen if you allowed more of your actions to be governed by what felt right in the moment as opposed to adhering to a rigid ideology which states objectively what you should do?
Postmodernism is then useful to every one if we use it as a tool to better understand how our lives can benefit from lessoning our grasp on deterministic thinking… lessening the degree to which we are controlled by the ‘shoulds” in our lives…lessening the degree to which we believe that we must react a certain way to certain stimuli.
This process will also likely have a nice affect on your relationships… people don’t generally like it when you force your own subjective reality onto them… people tend to get along better when they are less concerned with proving objectivity… proving that someone is right and someone else is wrong.