Being Labelled Saved Me

Labels. A current social stigma that many people despise. But not me. No way and please don’t even question me unless it’s for positive conversation.

I have struggled with myself since I was beginning to be self-aware around aged 12. I felt weird. Different. Not like the other kids. Why, I didn’t know. So I got on with life and my education as a whimsical girl who loved firing up my imagination and feeling like a flapping bird inside desperate to fly. But something was clipping my wings.

The teen years started and since then it’s been a dizzying time frame of various GP appointments, psychotherapy, counselling and antidepressants.

But I knew I wasn’t depressed. I was… what?

Roll on until my late 30s and eventually my local London Borough MHS sat me down and concluded I had Borderline Personality Disorder. YES!!!! I thought. Ahhh what a relief. That something is now, well, something. A tangible actual diagnosis that helped me and my family finally make sense of my surreal inner Wonderland.

And so we come to the conclusion of the word “label”. How is a medical or psychological diagnosis a label that boxes you in socially? I don’t fucking buy it one bit. If people feel they can’t talk to others due to their health then there’s something really wrong with society.

Maybe I’m old. Traditional. Retro. Old fashioned. Dumb.

Whatever your physical and mental health may be, you are not then filed into a stigmatising filing cabinet. Do not allow that awful concept to render you a stigma. You are still you whether you have arthritis, depression, hip pain, acne and so on. You are not labelled and stashed in a pigeon hole.

I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Now Alice is dancing on the table at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, twirling around in with self-acceptance… Thanks to a whopping great label.

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