labeling - Back in Control https://backincontrol.com/tag/labeling/ The DOC (Direct your Own Care) Project Sat, 18 Dec 2021 13:24:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Not Being Judgmental–Not Possible https://backincontrol.com/not-being-judgmental-not-possible/ Sat, 18 Dec 2021 13:24:53 +0000 https://backincontrol.com/?p=20660

  Objectives Human consciousness precludes suppressing thoughts and emotions without experiencing physiological consequences. You may intellectually understand that being judgmental is unkind, but it is universal and embedded in our existence. Judgements of others, positive or negative, are projections of our own self-opinion, much of which is based on cognitive … Read More

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Objectives

  • Human consciousness precludes suppressing thoughts and emotions without experiencing physiological consequences.
  • You may intellectually understand that being judgmental is unkind, but it is universal and embedded in our existence.
  • Judgements of others, positive or negative, are projections of our own self-opinion, much of which is based on cognitive distortions.
  • But when you try to become “enlightened” or non-judgmental, you have made the problem worse as thought suppression fires up your nervous system even more.
  • Endless judgment (or suppression) becomes tedious.
  • Simple awareness of these disruptive thoughts allows you to separate from them and learn to move past them in a powerful way.

 

The psychological process of projection is an aspect of human conscious where we transfer our personal life outlook onto another person. Whether the projections are positive or negative, it is the same process. We see the world through our ow lens, which has been programmed into us from birth. This mental “filter” is embedded in our brains as concretely as our physical perceptions of our environment.1 Our ideals and life outlook are our version of reality.

For example, a person who is highly critical of others may feel fearful, agitated, and negatively judge him or herself. Another self-confident and secure person may view the world in a similar positive manner but may not be able to see or understand darker characteristics in others. It sounds better than negative judgment, but he or she may be prone to being taken advantage of.

When we judge people around us—either positively or negatively—we are projecting aspects of ourselves onto them and have lost awareness of the details.

 Desperate

I had my first personal insight into this phenomenon a few years ago, after I emerged from a severe depression and burnout. While I was deep in the Abyss, I experienced an endless barrage of negative self-judgments. With repetition they became my “story,” my identity. My assessments of everyone else was also not great and my personal life fell apart. Of course, I blamed everyone else but me. All I wanted was to have a few positive thoughts about myself—any would do.

A few years after my life turned around, I realized that positive self-judgment was almost as disruptive to my peace of mind as negative self-judgment. My mind was still racing. Like negative thinking, it prevented me from experiencing the present moment. That realization was a major shift for me. After I had worked so hard to be successful and to acquire the things that would allow me to view myself in a more positive light, I realized that any judgment is still judgment. They are two sides of the same coin.

Awareness

Anthony De Mello, in his book, The Way to Love,2 points out that as soon as you have labeled anyone—either positively or negatively—you have lost awareness. You can no longer see who he or she is. A comment, appearance, or opinion has triggered a reaction in you, and your response has little to do with who the person is. How well do you know them? What is going on in their life? What reasons do they have for feeling the way they do?

Going back in time a couple of thousand years, the Greek Stoic philosopher (and Roman slave), Epictetus, observed that it is different to call someone a drunk, as opposed to saying, “This is a person who drinks too much.”3 One is a disparaging label while the other is merely a description. Think about your experience about being labeled a “pain patient.” It would be more appropriate for the medical profession to consistently use the phrase, “This is a person who is suffering from chronic pain.”

Joy?

It is impossible to experience joy when you are in a judgmental state of mind. If you really stopped and took stock while you are judging someone, you might eventually notice how tedious and joyless you feel. You are merely endless projecting the same views—yours—onto others.

Yet, judgment is and always has been necessary for our survival in order to assess safety vs. danger. So, judgment is here to stay; you cannot stop judging. What can you do to keep judgment from robbing you of the joy that is your birthright? Become aware. De Mello’s solution is simply to become aware of the effect your judgmental nature is having on your quality of life and relationships. Awareness not only dissolves judgement, it is the only effective option.

Not being judgmental

An exercise that I offered my patients in the office was to think about someone they really disliked. (It usually doesn’t take long.) I said, “Look, you now understand the effects of labeling, and you no longer want to judge this person. What happens when you try to stop being judgmental? They would look at me and quickly realize that this was a form of thought suppression, which makes us even more judgmental.” They were often perplexed.

I pointed out that one of the major benefits of writing down these judgements and immediately destroying them was that they were separating from their thoughts instead of reacting to them. They were being “de-energized.” Although they may have still disliked this person, possibilities could open up for more careful listening and greater understanding of the other’s perspective. Being no longer trapped by your thoughts opens the door for more joy to enter your life. It  is a great feeling to find common ground with someone you historically regarded as an adversary.

I have also occasionally written down in detail what I think about a specific person – positive and negative; and then in the next column note how I feel about myself on these same topics. It’s enlightening and humbling.

Peace??

The great majority of us want peace in this world, but peace is improbable unless each person takes responsibility for his or her contribution to the collective consciousness. Is your consciousness one of peace or war? No matter how justified you feel about your position, anger is still anger and labeling is still labeling. Those behaviors are far more combative than merely liking or disliking a behavior, viewpoint, or person.

 

 

Why am I writing about being judgmental? Because ongoing judgments will keep you in a state of agitation. The adverse effects on your body’s chemistry increases your physical and mental pain4  with the additional ongoing pain being even more upsetting.

You don’t have a choice about being judgmental and suppression is even worse. You do have a choice of becoming aware and learning strategies to separate from and process it. As you move forward, it builds on itself, and positively affects your close relationships. Becoming aware is the one contribution each of us must offer to the human experience to move it to the next level.

Recap

Judgements of others reflect our internal view of ourselves. It unavoidable, as we must make endless assessments to remain alive. Most judgments are negative and are disruptive to our capacity to enjoy our day. By trying not to be this way worsens the situation in that suppression of thoughts activates your threat physiology even more.

So, what can you do? Just becoming aware of your inherent judgmental nature, will open up your thinking to endless possibilities. Then you can proceed along your healing journey. The definitive answer for chronic pain is embracing joy. Again, you must break loose from your established reactive patterns in order to move forward.

Questions and considerations

  1. Self-awareness is challenging because thoughts are suppressed for a reason. Many of them are extremely unpleasant and don’t fit the image of who we want to be. They are there and are playing havoc with your body’s neurochemistry.
  2. Suppression is a conscious effort to keep thoughts at bay and repression is an unconscious automatic process. Both require specific stepwise approaches in order to become aware of them and assimilate these unpleasant repetitive thoughts into your daily life.
  3. Expressive writing is the one mandatory step to begin the separation process so you can head in the direction you choose. Healing occurs with moving forward, not with “fixing.”
  4. Have you considered that positive judgments also block true awareness? They consume a lot of energy that detracts from you just living your life.

References

  1. Feldman Barrett, Lisa. How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing, New York, New York. 2017.
  2. DeMello, Anthony. The Way to Love. Bantam, Doubleday, Dell. NY, New York, 1995.
  3. Lebell, Sharon. The Art of Living: Epictetus. Harper Collins, NY, New York, 1994.
  4. Chen X, et al. Stress enhances muscle nociceptor activity in the rat. Neuroscience (2011); 185: 166–173.

 

 

 

 

 

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Labeled “Drug Seeker” and Almost Died https://backincontrol.com/labeled-drug-seeker-and-almost-died/ Sat, 21 Apr 2012 05:06:48 +0000 http://www.drdavidhanscom.com/?p=3632

One of the core concepts of the human condition is labeling experiences, trends, groups or people. It comes along with having the capacity to communicate through language. Yuval Noah Harari in his book, Sapiens, pointed out that the cognitive revolution for Homo Sapiens occurred about 70,000 years ago with the advent of … Read More

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One of the core concepts of the human condition is labeling experiences, trends, groups or people. It comes along with having the capacity to communicate through language. Yuval Noah Harari in his book, Sapiens, pointed out that the cognitive revolution for Homo Sapiens occurred about 70,000 years ago with the advent of language. It began with gossip. Labeling is essential for survival, with the most basic category being safe or unsafe.

It is also a block to awareness. Once you have labeled someone, you have projected your view of the world onto that person. Anthony de Mello in his book, The Way to Loveteaches that it doesn’t matter whether the label is a positive or negative one. You can no longer see the person for who they are or a situation from their perspective. You are no longer able to really hear them or meet their needs.

 

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When suffering from chronic pain, you are often labeled by almost everyone and anyone, including your doctors and other health care providers. “You are a difficult patient.” Isn’t everyone challenging when basic needs aren’t being met. “You don’t really have anything wrong with you. The pain is in your head.” Really?? Neuroscience research has revealed chronic pain is memorized by the brain (1) and can’t be erased. Unfortunately, mainstream medicine hasn’t assimilated this knowledge and continues to offer ineffective treatments. “You are just looking for drugs to get high or to relax.” First of all, the vast majority of patients on chronic opioids don’t get high and they barely get pain relief. The side effects are often unpleasant. I have seen few people who like being dependent on any medications. People just want some pain relief.

Labeled

Here is an excerpt from an email I received from a reader. She has been working hard with the DOC process and is moving forward.

“My pain doctor told me it’s people like me who caused all this opioid crisis.”

It’s the physician’s responsibility to treat each patient with compassion regardless of the situation. Nurturing a supportive patient-physician relationship is the essence of being a physician. For many reasons, beyond the scope of this discussion, this interaction is often less than ideal. So, not only do many patients in pain not feel safe, they feel like they are under attack from many directions. This creates more anxiety and physically exacerbates the pain. (2) Another risk is that your physician may not see your whole picture and an important diagnosis may be missed. This letter is one patient’s story.

Mary’s Letter

Hi Dr. Hanscom,

I know that you had asked me to send you an email telling you how it made me feel when L&I (WA Dept. of Labor and Industries) “stereotyped/categorized/labeled” me.

The First Surgery

I know that you had asked for another story, but I felt compelled to tell you about the first time I was stereotyped after my injury. It happened in an emergency room in Everett and was about one week after my first back fusion. I had only been home from the hospital for two days when I started getting back spasms. Initially the spasms were very bad but they had progressed to the point where I couldn’t even stand.  I ended up falling to the floor because my legs would not hold me up. It felt as though the muscles in my back where trying to bend me in half backwards. On the third day I couldn’t stand it anymore as the spasms were happening very frequently and I felt almost delirious.

Emergency Room

My oldest daughter called for an ambulance that transported me to the hospital emergency room. I spoke briefly with a nurse about what was going on and then to the doctor. I overheard them talking and saying that they felt there was NOTHING wrong with me, but rather I was there looking for pain medication. Meanwhile I became upset and was telling my oldest daughter about what I had heard. She reached up and put her hand on my forehead and said, “Oh my God Mom you are burning up!” She proceeded to grab a thermometer and stick it in my mouth. After seconds she was freaking out and yelling for a nurse to get in there because I was burning up. The nurse didn’t even believe her so she herself took it again and my temperature was 103 degrees. About this time my younger of the adult daughters arrived.  My two daughters talked about the situation. The younger one grabbed my purse, which had ALL my medications in it, dumped it on the bed, and told the nurse to look at it! She told her that she too had witnessed me falling and that I had NO NEED for any more pain medication. I had more than enough and that they had better do something!

Sent Home with a 103 degree fever

After that they did some blood work, an X-ray, and wrote me a prescription for muscle relaxers. I was basically patted on the head, told me they found nothing, and sent me home. That was on a Wednesday. On Friday morning my phone rang and it was the hospital telling me that I needed to come in and be checked. I had a very serious infection, which was in my spine and my blood and I needed IV antibiotics!

Labeled

I won’t take up more of your time telling you the rest of the nightmare, but I felt like you should know this, BECAUSE they decided what kind of a person I was BEFORE gathering all the facts. It almost cost me my life. If my two adult daughters had not been there to advocate for me, I would be dead. I honestly believe they would have not done or checked anything. They probably would have just sent me home saying it was nothing!

I will guess that by now you can understand why when we first met I was so “angry.” Part of my anger stemmed from my nightmare experience that almost cost me my life. There is also about a six-week window during that time that I don’t remember a lot without help from my kids!

I am SO GRATEFUL that I was sent to you and that you decided to help me! I know that I am probably not as far a long with my entire recovery process as you had hoped. But I know that I wouldn’t even be this far if it wasn’t for YOU!

Sincerely,

Mary

My Perspective

Mary is a patient on whom I have performed two low back surgeries. The second was a fusion that went very well. However, the amount of family stress she has been under is beyond description. When I first met her over two years ago, she was one of the most angry patients I had ever met. I did not think she would return. She has made remarkable progress and is now just on minimal pain meds. I thoroughly enjoy my visits with her.

Her stresses continue, but she’s now trying to find a job, which in this economy is no small task. She has been consistently treated poorly by her claims examiner, and we have had to fight for every bit of her treatment. The subject of labeling came up, and I asked her to share part of her story.

You aren’t going to stop labeling

It isn’t possible or necessary to stop labeling. The key is to be aware when you are doing it, and name the labels to yourself. Once you recognize the label, then you have the capacity to know the person behind it. Recognizing your language makes a difference is also helpful. Epictetus, was a Greek Stoic philosopher, who pointed out that it is one thing to call a person a drunk as opposed to saying that this is a person who drinks a lot. It’s similar to being labeled a “chronic pain patient” versus being described as a person who is suffering from chronic pain. None of us like being labeled. How do you react? What are the labels that you place on others? How are they interfering with your relationships? Are they helping you heal from your pain?

 

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Becoming aware of your inherent need to label, what the labels are, and your reactions to being labeled is an important aspect of your healing journey.

The Cry of Chronic Pain: No one is Listening. WSMA Preceptor, August 2011.

  1. Mansour AR, et al. Chronic pain: The role of learning and brain plasticity. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience (2014); 32: 129-139.
  2. Chen X, et al. “Stress enhances muscle nociceptor activity in the rat.” Neuroscience(2011); 185: 166-173.

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