What’s an “identification label?” It’s a phrase that stands to signify part of ourselves and our shared experiences with others. Such phrases are important elements of communication, however they’re additionally restricted. The phrase isn’t the expertise itself however, slightly, is shorthand to specific that have.
For my psychological well-being, I’ve discovered it essential to domesticate a way of who I’m previous the boundaries of language and, when it comes to identification particularly, to see myself as extra advanced than any single phrase or phrase can seize. Whereas it may be therapeutic to embody an identification label to really feel that sense of belonging, it will also be constricting.
After I at all times introduce myself with a listing of phrases pertaining to gender, race, potential, and so forth, I begin to really feel pigeonholed, as if I’m not giving others an opportunity to see me as a person however as a listing of preconceived notions. Letting go of identification labels, then, is a observe that helps me perceive when you will need to identify identification and when it’s extra helpful for these elements of who I’m in society to go unsaid. By witnessing my attachment to my labels, I can deepen my relationship to them and to the individuals who share them.
This observe additionally helps me in difficult tokenization, whether or not it’s my tokenization or my potential to tokenize others. Do I need each story about my identification to heart on being nonbinary, biracial, or disabled in a number of methods? No, as a result of this will dilute folks’s understanding of who I’m. It will possibly additionally flip me into an instance of how all bipolar persons are, for instance, when that’s not at all times greatest for me or for different bipolar people. Realizing in regards to the issues with tokenization, I attempt to watch out about how I communicate on my experiences of identification in case I’m performing as a false knowledgeable, believing that my expertise represents and captures the totality of everybody in that group’s expertise.
It may be releasing to easily communicate as me and never as a member of one among my communities, and this observe of letting go of identification labels—briefly and with clear intentions—provides me perception into when to embody my individuality and when to function a group consultant.
Step 1: Acknowledge limitations
Are there elements of your lived expertise that don’t neatly match inside the bounds of what an identification label communicates? What different phrases, photographs, or sounds enable you convey this expertise? What produce other folks with this identification shared that you don’t relate to?
By witnessing the restrictions of identification as a phrase, you possibly can start to glimpse your private definition of it, evaluate that to the broader definition, and maybe see the way it works for you and in your group—and the way it doesn’t. This exhibits up for me in being a South Asian yoga trainer. It may be extremely essential to call my racial identification in an area that’s cultural, however once I at all times put that identification first in my yoga observe, it limits my expertise.
Step 2: Domesticate the sense of being past labeling
My yoga observe is a superb area to let go of the messaging—phrases, photographs, something that proves your sense of self to others—and study to easily be.
Do you have got cultural practices the place you possibly can witness the distinction between shifting in it as a [insert identity label here] and letting go of that label? For instance, when I’m working towards yoga, I don’t at all times want to think about myself primarily as South Asian. There are moments once I can simply transfer my physique intuitively or meditate while not having to outline who I’m in society.
This potential to be who I’m past the labeling applies to diagnostic labels too. When I’m cleansing, do I should be outlined as an individual with OCD who’s cleansing? Can I simply placed on some music and get the job executed with out contemplating my nervousness degree, or noticing what number of instances I wash my arms and questioning if it’s clinically thought-about an excessive amount of? Sure, I’m pleased to share that I can!
Step 3: Return to your relationship with an identification label
When you launch the label, or broaden your perspective of it, then you possibly can come again with a renewed understanding of why it issues to you. Is there a way of spaciousness, impermanence, and surprise?
Maybe you possibly can uncover new layers of which means that didn’t happen to you earlier than difficult the attachment to your identification label. Sure, the phrases for gender, race, sexuality, potential, temper, and many others., are essential, but in addition they can’t outline every part about who you might be. Phrases for psychological well being, particularly, exist to pinpoint issues and map an individualized therapeutic plan—to not predict who you’ll grow to be sooner or later.
Conclusion
Being in your expertise, with out attaching to a message, doesn’t negate the expertise. I discover silence to be an area that honors complexities there aren’t any phrases for. This may additionally open up connection to others who relate with the expertise with out essentially referring to the identification label—and that features individuals who got here earlier than us, within the instances earlier than these social constructs like race, gender, sexuality, faith, and behavioral diagnostics existed. Personally, I really feel extra peace and calm by connecting to those folks and remembering that I exist as who I’m as a result of they existed as who they have been.
