LABELS
e.g,
Sticking a little tag on your food containers can prevents you from cooking blunders.
Same with little label on files at work can save you from work gaffes.
A label in your drug bottle can help you look at possible side-effects, ideal time to take medication, expiry date of the drug & so on.
POWER & NECESSITY OF LABELS-
Let's name a few advantages;
It helps us organizing things.
Give us quick description.
Help us sort out mess.
It provides identification.
Gives comparision between two products.
Moving on to an academic perspective;
Labels help us categorise & characterize.
Biological classification of species: plants, animals, algae, fungus, humans, birds, what are these? Labels.
Whole calculus is made of labels. Addition, substraction, multiplication, division, differentiation, integration!
Can you do accounts without labels? Credit, debit, cash, depreciation, assets, liabilities?!
In psychology, labeling people with specific disorders help us providing them optimal treatment, good psychiatric care & also help us study further complications & causes of the disorder.
So it's pretty clear that labels are required & of great value. This was all about labels that exists on paper. What about the labels that exists on top of your head? Are they as helpful as other labels?
WHAT ARE PSYCHOLOGICAL LABELS-
Psychological labels here refer to labels in your head.
Labels that help you categorise people, help you differentiate between certain group of people or a person from other.
Is that always helpful?
Yeah it can be helpful to you, but what about the person you label?
Are they always comfortable to live inside that label?
Look upon the example of a person with psychiatric disorder or a person of colour in foreign country or a person with STDs.
Do you think they're always comfortable inside with that label?
Will you feel comfortable defined by only one particular thing about you?
And in most cases, one odd thing about you.
LABELS VS. ACTUAL WORDS-
Labels sometimes change identity. They sometimes highlight such a things that aren't natural characteristics of the product or a person.
Remember, what you say when you wanna eat chips or need a cold drink.
"Can you pass me those Pringles/Lays?"
"Can you pass me the Coke?"
Underlined words explains common substitution of labels in place of actual words.
Before you'd understand or notice, this substitution happens.
No wonder how marketing strategies altered your words.
IMPACT OF LABELS-
Do you remember August from novel WONDER by R.J Palacio?
August was constantly being differentiated by others cause of his unusual looks due to a genetic condition. His unusual looks were great barrier for people to look inside him.
August without a doubt was a bright child with good sense of humor (such a rare quality these days!)
Labels can be that barrier for you to look into someone else.
You can think of many examples here,
A child always complaining his mother about everyone in school picking up on him for his obesity or stutter while speaking or his short height or his colour etc.
"Mom they call me Fat"
"Mom they said I'm Mr.Lousy Tongue"
"Mom they call me Black/Brown"
Underlined words are common examples of some labels.
Another classic example could be of people with mental disorders.
People diagnosed with mental disorders often face harsh judgement & have to fight stereotypes such as being labeled Mental.
Others often refrain from such labels & thus maintain distance instead of establishing empathy & reaching out as a hand for help.
Many mental disorders such as Schizophrenia have onset age of 16-20 years. Youngsters with such psychological conditions try to hide their illness in fear of getting labelled.
Often they've to hide their symptoms to cope up with this fear.
Of course there are other examples too where people have to face difficulties with labels but according to me, psychological labels about mental disorders are worst. Cause one has to suffer & they can't even tell about it to anyone.
HOW CAN WE OVERCOME LABELS?
There's no great science in answering this question. Just think about the use of labels.
And try to use it where it's required.
Like food labels are required in supermarket & kitchen, Drug label required when dealing with drugs and labels defining someone's mental or physical illness should be used when defining their condition; not to define the person with their illness.
Labels do help us in many ways & sometimes it only help us to act in a certain manner to certain people (like with empathy to person with medical conditions)
It's upto us, how & where we use it. Either we are defining someone's mere elegance or substituting it with their real quality, choice is ours.
After all, labels don't define us.
Thank you for reading till the end, do leave a comment to let me know your views.
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