Labels Have Legs — Finding PTSD after decades of blaming ADHD
A PSA for a Neurodivergent Age
Labels have legs.
That’s the best way I can say it.
The legs of labels carry people in a variety of directions along infinite paths.
But don’t ever question whether or not labels have legs because I’m here to tell you they always have.
Now, that’s not to say that labels are bad. Labels provide access. Labels provide potential resources. Labels allow people to understand their differences and find people that get them.
But labels are so often used to define and inadvertently put into a box that which can never be boxed.
Because where there’s one label, there are 1 million labels yet to be defined. And there’s still only one of you. And if you let a label get away from you and run rampant through your life, you will know that labels have legs and they do not always wander the path of least resistance.
No. They wander where they wander.
And I wonder why I wonder.
Is it my ability to understand complex concepts (+5 points for a giftedness label)? Is it the jumping around and stimulation-seeking ADHD?
Because it usually was the ADHD. That is, for the thirty-one years up until the day I realized it wasn’t.
That ADHD label was a driving force in my life. That label was an answer when I didn’t have other answers. That label was something definitive to hold on to.
To know myself, I would have to know my label.
And then I would label myself over and over.
While that label had been the answer to questions, it never rang true in my heart.
When I found out I had been blindly living with PTSD and aloof to its impacts, my world erupted.
I already had a label. I knew what I was.
It was everything else on the outside I had to understand, and then I would finally make sense.
But that wasn’t it. I would never make sense through the distorted lens of a label.
I would only make sense when I could let all the labels go away and get down to the root of the feelings and experiences that made me who I was.
And I didn’t find labels.
And I didn’t find shame.
I found fear. Love. Protection.
I found grief and confusion.
I found hypervigilance, flashbacks, and dissociation.
I found another label.
I found freedom — through another label.
I found PTSD. I’d seen it before, but it was just another rock along the path.
This time it was different. It answered questions to which my previous answers never rang true.
And now they did. And there was hope. And there was help. And there were a lot more labels.
And so this is not about whether labels are inherently good or inherently bad, or how we need new labels or should get rid of the old.
I am compelled to establish, with clarity, for anybody that will listen, that labels have legs, and so they should be treated accordingly.
What does that mean?
It means it matters how you talk about them.
It means it matters how you don’t talk about them.
It means it matters to talk about them.
And it matters to acknowledge the impact of simply assigning labels.
Because if it is done in a hasty, reckless manner, it can do a lot of harm.
But, if it is done with foresight, compassion, humility, and a bit of a plan, these labels that previously caused havoc without guardrails start to take root and can become stepping stones along the path to self-actualization.
A label’s not the answer to a symptom.
A label is not the reason for a trait.
A label is a trail book for my journey.
A label in its place is pretty great.
