If You Can't Be Labelled, You Can't Sit With Us

 There have always been labels to describe people.  These were generally physical descriptors: man, woman, child, fat, thin, tall, short, brunette, blonde, redhead.  Then there were ones for personality, a funny man, a confident woman.  Or for your interests.  A bookworm, a rocker, an emo, a gym bro (or bunny!).  When you were in school, whether you were a cool kid, or not.

All of these labels were true to you and gave a good description of you should someone ask.  To describe me for example, a short brunette who loves writing and 90s dance music.  I have never been cool sadly.

But now, everything has changed.  In order to be cool, you must be damaged in some way.  If you aren't, make it up.  The more labels the better and they have become the forefront of some people's personalities.

Remember when someone used to joke that they were a little "OCD" because they liked to clean?  This exaggeration has now been extrapolated by a thousand.  

You like to clean?  You have OCD.  Your girlfriend cheated on you five years ago?  You have past trauma and PTSD.  You are never on time for anything?  You have ADHD.  You have a naughty child who is combative? Must be autism.  You are a moody teenager?  You have Bipolar.  Your 5 year old daughter likes trucks?  Must be transgender.

Yes, I went there.  And?

People are collecting these labels to represent them, the more the better and they use them as their personality and their excuse for not dealing with life.  Look at Twitter bios for example, you have the user name, then the pro nouns, then the long list of everything that is wrong with them.

I am a Reddit user and day after day I see the people that describe themselves in their stories.  "I (23F) have depression, CPSTD, Bipolar and my boyfriend (25M) has PTSD, past traumas and ADHD".

I am just going to come out and say it.  No.  You don't.  Many if not the majority of these people have not been diagnosed with anything at all.  Yet they collect them like charms on a bracelet.

Diagnosis itself these days is also getting more and more extreme and overused.  Especially with children.  The amount of children, especially boys who are diagnosed and then medicated for autism is through the roof.  Boys are three times more likely to be diagnosed than girls.

Over 224,000 people were on the waiting list for autism assessments in March 2025.  The numbers of diagnoses have risen 175% in the last ten years with researches suggesting that at least 30% of diagnosed children being on at least one psychotropic drug.

That is before we get to the horror of what has been and is being done to children and the transgender debate.

We are raising generations of medicated children who will never be there real selves.

More than the use of these labels though, is the way that using them is enabling people to check out of life and responsibilities, because "label".  The labels have also become weaponized.  The people become childlike.

You have a problem showing up on time to work?  Well I have time blindness so accommodations must be made.  Instead perhaps suggesting that you set more alarms and put more systems in place to ensure you do get to work.

You can't be bothered to clean, do your laundry or cook and want to get your partner to do it all?  Claim ADHD and you can get a hall pass into not doing anything.  Instead of setting reminders, putting notes in your calendar, opening your damn eyes.

You are a rude person?  Sorry, I am autistic.   You just have to accept me.

You want to do only the fun things and nothing you do not want to do?  You can claim depression. (This one is a personal one for me as it hits the closest.  Depression can absolutely hit in different ways, but for me, I got up, I went to work and earned money because I needed to live.)  Now some use the word as an excuse to not work and yet still manage to find the energy to do the fun stuff.

No.  No.

I know people who have depression, have autism, have ADHD.  All of these people work with their diagnoses, they don't rely on them for an excuse.  They have routines in place, reminders are set, they go to therapy, they work on themselves and look at their behaviours and see what they can work with and try to improve.  They do not sit back and simply say, I can't.

When I went to a counsellor a couple of years ago, she told me that she believed that I had PTSD.  I have never told anyone that before.  I have never used that label in connection with myself.  Because it is a private thing and something that I worked on, behind closed doors.  I did not celebrate it on Twitter or talk about it on Tiktok.

There is something wrong on a world where anything that can or may hold you back in life is something that you use as your whole personality.  That you rely on to check out of life and responsibilities.

Mental health labels in particular have become a competition.  How many do you have?  Well I have x, y and z.  Plus potential a, d and s.  The more labels, the more interesting you are.

I weep for Gen Z and the generations after them.  They have grown up with the internet, with influencers, through Covid.  Their whole lives are online and now, everyone has to have a thing.  As I have said previously in another post, when in school, there is no escape from the bullies now.  You used to go home and that was your sanctuary.  Now you go home and social media is ten times worse than what is said in the playground.

The only way around this is to conform.  Be damaged, be cool. Check out of life, but make sure people know about it.

It is funny really. no matter who is on top of the social hierarchy, conformity still matters.  There is no escape.  Conforming to anything you do not agree with is wrong, but creating issues about yourself to fit in is not healthy.  

The thing is, before, you could grow up and mature.  The bad choices you made, the way that you may have once acted, you can change.  But the choices being made now, including those choices that parents are making for their children (Tom likes dolls therefore he is a girl and I will now act like he is), can have lifelong effects.  Especially when those choices include medication.

In the end, if it takes a dozen labels to explain you, maybe the most radical thing left, is to be interesting enough not to need them.

Perimenopause and the Hormone Hurricane - Trying to Find the Calm in the Storm

 So as I have talked about previously on this blog, I had a full hysterectomy in late December, leaving my ovaries.

For the first few weeks my hormones were all over the place.  I wrote previously about the cat making me cry because he wouldn't leave me alone in the kitchen.  Full on meltdown....

But those feelings faded and up until the last couple of weeks, I have been fine.  Healing very well, no pain; getting on with life.  But then, the hormones hit again.

It appears that perimenopause is knocking on my door.  I have no other symptoms, no hot flashes etc.  But the mood swings are a killer.

My first indication was a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday.  I was sat on the couch watching tv when a sudden feeling of anxiety hit me and it felt like someone was sitting on my chest.  Then, sadness.  Then, tears.  

Another day, irritability, then rage.  I was a storm cloud that could not settle and woe betide anyone who crossed my path. 

My mood swings seem to go sadness, rage, sadness, rage.  I have continued on this cycle every few days ever since.  

I am grateful that I have done so much work on myself because it crosses off that there is something troubling me or making me feel this way.  Those days are gone.   But just because they are gone does not mean that I do not remember them.  And therein lies the problem.

The anger, the rage I can deal with.  But the sadness, the pain of it; that is hard to bear.  Because it is for me, an all too familiar feeling.   

I have experienced pain and sadness in my past to the point where I wanted to die.  It is a feeling that I have never felt since that period of my time.  It not something I dwell on or ever dip back into, but when you have been on the brink, when you have felt a pain that is all consuming, you never truly forget.

This is again why I am grateful that those days are behind me, because I know without a doubt that these feelings are hormones and nothing more.   But the familiar feeling of such sadness is a dog whistle for me.  It takes me right back to that time in my life.  Where hope was only a dream and pain was my reality.  

The feelings that I have from my hormonal swings are nowhere near how I used to feel.  But there is a glimmer.  There is a familiarity to it that I recognise instantly.  Because whether it was 20 years ago or yesterday, you never forget that feeling.

It terrifies me.

But I am not the girl I once was.  I was alone then.  Lost.  I did not seek help because I did not believe myself worthy of it.  That is no longer me and the feelings are not real.  The pain and the root of that pain has been purged.

So instead, I look for what I can do to combat.  I have started taking evening primrose and star flower.  I have been told that this helps a lot when your hormones go array.  If they do not work, I will look at other options.

I mainly wrote this post today because I realised that there must be so many other women like me.  Who have been to the brink and pulled themselves back.  Who have experienced depression and thought it long gone, only for that old familiar feeling to come back, like a ghost from your past walking right in front of you.

I rely on my partner to remind me that these feelings are hormonal when the sadness hits.   That I am not returning back to sadness, but am just moving into another stage of the physical life of my body and that this is temporary.

If anyone reading this has gone through, or is going through the same; I would love to hear from you.