Self-Labelling

The inspiration for this article comes from one of our trainee life coaches who posted a question on our Forum about how to deal with a client of his who was struggling to make changes in her life … and who claimed to be suffering from a mental illness.

Let me say, right at the outset, that New Insights strongly discourages its certified and trainee life coaches from coaching people with mental illnesses unless they do so under the guidance of a qualified mental health professional.

Nonetheless, in this case I detected some strong clues that mental illness was not an issue (although it is clear that such a condition that had been diagnosed and treated many years ago); rather the issue was one of \’convenient self-labelling\’.

[box type=\”shadow\”]“You may affix a label of convenience to yourself today only to find it won’t come unstuck tomorrow.”

– Yours truly[/box]

 

 

Self-labelling (continued)

 

A handy excuse

Research the term ‘self-labelling’ and you may wish you hadn’t as it is quite a complex field in human psychology and ‘self-labelling theory’ is often referred to in relation to psychiatric conditions and deviant behaviour.

When I refer to self-labelling here, I use the term in connection with mentally well people who use labelling, not in order to acknowledge some condition they may have and are dealing with (which is an admirable quality), but rather as a handy excuse for not taking actions required to bring about the changes they desire at a deeper level.

The labels they apply to themselves may have emanated from some previous diagnosis that no longer affects their ability to change, may have been assimilated from labels that they have heard their parents or other people apply to them, or may be entirely made up.

Some examples

Here are a few examples:

“I am a procrastinator”
“I am a hoarder”
“I am ADD/ADHD”
“I am manic depressive”
“I am an introvert”
“I am an extrovert”
“I am a comfort eater”
“I am bi-polar”
“I am a couch potato”
“I am a loner”
“I am depressed”
“I am a social outcast”
“I am a womaniser”
“I am a controlling type”

In life coaching, we frequently come across clients who use labels as a means to excuse their own self-defeating behaviour.

Wearing a label

By ‘wearing a label\’ the client gains access to a convenient and easy way out of having to take what can seem like difficult action to bring about change in his or her life.

I’m sure you’ve heard the likes of this before:

“You don’t understand, I am a chronic worrier. If I leave my children and go on holiday I might suffer a breakdown.”

“I am an attention span deficit sufferer, there’s no way I could study for a new qualification.”

“My hypertension would never allow me to exercise like that.”

“I am sleep deprived. I have to get to bed very early in the evening, so working in the evenings is out of the question”.

Self-labelling, without any real medical or psychological justification, is often done in order to attract attention and/or pity and to create a focal point for social conversation that makes the individual feel more needed.

When self-labelling becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-labelling can also become a self-fulfilling prophesy. When someone becomes so used to hiding behind a label, they can actually become that label! What was a convenient excuse can become a genuine excuse … and a serious problem at the same time.

Bringing the issue into conscious awareness

In life coaching, the key to helping someone overcome the inertia that they create through self-labelling and the excuses that go with it, is to bring what is, in effect self-deceit, into their conscious awareness.

By this I mean get them to identify and verbalise the short-term payoff that they are getting from self-labelling and then contrast this with the long-term damage that they are doing to their ability to live the life they (deep down) really want.

Sometimes helping people to move forward requires opening their eyes to their own lies!

 

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