Beyond the Label: The Dance Between Knowing and Becoming

Continuing from my earlier post/entry:  Between Discipline and Drift

I’ve noticed this same tension appear in another form:
Diagnosis. Evidence-based frameworks. Labels.

As a clinician and consultant, I’ve never been against science.
I respect the clarity a diagnosis can bring:
It gives language to suffering. Helps professionals communicate. Sometimes even brings relief to a client: “Ah, that’s what this is.”

And yet … part of me hesitates.

Not because I reject science – but because I’ve seen how easily a label becomes a prison.

“I am depressed.”
“I am anxious.”
“I have low self-worth.”

Words meant to name an experience start to define the person.
The client stops seeing depression as something moving through them – and begins to see it as something that is them.

 

I remember debating this during my clinical psychology training:
Yes, diagnosis helps. But doesn’t it also risk pathologizing what might simply be a very human response to pain, loss, or uncertainty?
Doesn’t it risk quietly whispering: “You are broken.”

And yet, aren’t we all broken – sometimes?
Or perhaps more truthfully: aren’t we all becoming – always moving, always more than any single name or frame could hold?

 

Just like my love of military precision isn’t really about wanting rigidity …
My hesitation around labels isn’t about rejecting science.
It’s about refusing to let the map become the territory. (This is a reference to one of my favourite NLP presuppositions: The Map is not the Territory)
I do not wish to let the description replace the living, breathing, becoming person in front of me.

 

Maybe this is the deeper lesson life keeps teaching me, in different forms:

Structure isn’t wrong.
Diagnosis isn’t wrong.
But they must remain gentle containers – not cages.

Use them to hold.
Never to bind.

 

In the end, perhaps real discipline isn’t about freezing the dance.
It’s about keeping the floor steady enough … so the dance can continue.

To let knowing serve becoming – without  ever replacing it.

And maybe that’s what I wish for everyone I work with, and for myself:

To remember:
We are never just a label.
We are always a living question, a changing story, a work in progress.

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(Reflection born in conversation with my MI — my mirror within).