Labels...

'My name's Helen and I'm.....'

Fill in the gap according to context - single, minister, Gabi's owner, late, lost, depressive ....

Labels are useful, it is a shortcut to what you need to know, or have others know about you. Yes  I am /am not the person you need to speak to. This and not that is why I am here talking to you.

They can be affirming - 'My name's Helen and I'm ordained'
After years of delays, and illness, and times when I thought it would never happen it was a good feeling to reach that point.

They can be releasing - 'My name's Helen and I'm a depressive'
I remember when months after my breakdown 5 yrs ago and finally at the doctors for help someone officially wrote the D word.  I came home strangely happy to have the label, 'I'm not loosing it I'm depressed'  - I wanted to to tell everyone about it.  Oddly looking back over journals of the time, even months before 'crash day' I was referring to being in a depression, and to previous years when similar had happened.  So why it was so significant the day the doctor used I don't know, but it was like a release, permission to declare I was ill person, rather than a failed human.

For others though a diagnostic label is something to be feared within mental health. Conditions are not as neatly measurable as many aspects of physical health are, people are moved between diagnoses as the experts try to work out which label fits best.  And people don't fit in neat boxes - mental health diagnoses have a habit of ending up as x with a hint of y and aspects of a and b - we are all on a spectrum. Well lots of them really - multi dimensional axes covering the many aspects of life.  But labels put us into categories, and categories can divide.  Labels can feed stigma and discrimination.  How many sick notes sent to workplaces have referred vaguely to 'stress' rather than depression to avoid the official label going on file?

Yet, I recall from biology days how important classification is in trying to understand - seeing what is similar between some things and different from others.  And as I am exploring aspects of my depression that might give me an added 'hint of' label that is how I see it.  I won't have changed, treatment probably won't, but the label would help me understand myself better and maybe cope with the ebb and flow of depressive life.