Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels
55 comments
·July 6, 2025hresvelgr
The lovable aphorisms we had for people with character quirks were largely from our original support systems. What no one is talking about is the reason therapy-talk has become so pervasive is because all those support systems: family, friends, and local communities (religious or otherwise), have all degraded so severely for most that therapy is the only option for reaching out and getting help.
_benton
Fascinating article. It's think the author's experiences are fairly context-dependant, with where you live, the political leanings of your social circle, your online community etc. But I have noticed an increase in the pathologizing of normal human behaviours and traits. Maybe not all character flaws should be fixed.
supportengineer
You mention a resistance to pathologizing normal human behaviors. That could stem from early experiences where you were perhaps judged or misunderstood for simply being yourself by caregivers, teachers, or peers. If, as a child, you were expected to conform tightly to rules or suppress emotions, you might now feel protective of traits that others try to label or correct. Therapy can be a space where that defensiveness is explored gently, not to shame you, but to give voice to the younger parts of yourself that may have gone unheard.
_benton
Hahahaha this got me. My sarcasm/satire detectors are clearly malfunctioning today...
8n4vidtmkvmk
This response sounds kind of effed up in the context of the article. I don't think everyone needs therapy, especially not if they're happy. Leave them be.
shermantanktop
I really hope there was a missing /s.
dgfitz
Having gone through therapy for 10 years, nah. Having someone tell you what you already know isn’t helpful, unless you have a need to feel heard. Most people just know the bottom line.
I still go to therapy. It isn’t helpful.
yoz-y
Why go then?
barry-cotter
That was hilarious. Perfect, absolutely pitch perfect, therapy brain. You are a gifted satirist. I love how you end on the part that’s most important to the character of the therapy worshipper, the defence of the core of their identity, that therapy is an unalloyed good.
rtpg
I think "normal" is the tough part.
I dislike the "you don't have adhd, you live in capitalism" meme in general, but there is a big difficulty in knowing how much you might be overloading yourself, trying to get to an unattainable normal because your actual material conditions are not normal.
If you're working 60 hour weeks for most people there's not much saving you from having a very messy life! But your peers might all also be in that environment, and you will see people who navigate that somewhat successfully.
Of course you could be working much less and simply "be lazy" and suffer downstream of that. You might be two mindset changes away from being a lot less stressed.
Or you might have a medical condition that makes certain things harder! Or you might not.
At the end of the day there are medical conditions that exist and are fairly scientifically proven to exist in some form and have treatment. And plenty of people who spend time saying that stuff doesn't exist, so there's vocal pushback against that which rubs some people the wrong way.
But there's also just human introspection (which is part of how we grow). The new thing is that this introspection often happens more in the open, a lot of times with the whole world watching.
Even 20 years ago you might talk with other people around the world but it would at least be in more closed spaces.
Gigachad
To some extent I think it’s valid though. The inability to want to sit in a chair and reorganise spreadsheets for 8 hours straight isn’t a disability, it’s a natural response of your brain telling you that this activity sucks and you should get up and move.
Combined with the change in society where most active jobs are being replaced with sitting down at a computer.
rtpg
This isn't really my original point but the reason I dislike the "you don't have ADHD you have capitalism" meme is that ADHD's intentionality symptoms isn't about attention but about self control[0]
So if you "really actually" have ADHD[0], that isn't just manifesting in not getting work done, it's manifesting in saying things before speaking, issues with addiction, issues with self-management leading to hygiene issues etc.
Loads of social effects that go beyond "don't want to work".
Me having a job or not isn't what's causing me to insult a friend by snapping back at them in a way that I _know_ is wrong. It's not causing lasting damage to social relationships because of my behavior. Capitalism isn't causing that.
And hey, meds help my management of those things. Even if I had all the money in the world these are things I would like to continue managing.
Bit of a glib opinion, though.
[0]: Not a doctor, etc.
api
ADD / ADHD denial is a pet peeve of mine because I know people with it who have experienced before and after treatment. It’s absolutely real. It’s not a consequence of “capitalism” or screens or anything else circumstantial.
Why is it everywhere now? Because we diagnose and treat it. In the old days what did we do with ADD kids? Hit them. What did we do with ADD adults? Call them stupid and lazy.
nemo
I'm suspicious of the use of "we" here since I don't feel like I'm a part of this discourse. Also:
>Now you are always late to things not because you are lovably forgetful
In the past from, say, 30-40 years ago, if you failed to arrive at appointments and meetings on time you probably weren't labeled "lovably forgetful," and you probably would face punishments for having certain personality traits. We're changing in how we understand those kinds of differences now, and it's not all for the better, but in general the discourse now is better than how things were in the past when neurodiverse folks tended to receive a lot of punishment, invective, bullying, and ostracism.
I've been autistic my whole life, but I'm from the older set where there was no understanding of such things, we used to get bullied a lot, sometimes quite violently, and social ostracism was typical then for folks on the spectrum. I'd be thoughtful about romanticizing the past or get taken in by the false feelings of nostalgia - it's wrong to imagine people used to deal with the neurodiverse in glowing light and thoughtful acceptance, no one ever said I was "lovably forgetful."
Azek
Mirroring this, I have ADHD and experienced a lot of harsh judgment as a kid for my behavior at home, and in school. And the resulting shame from that judgement stuck with me for a long time, I was even diagnosed early but didn't accept the label until adulthood, and didn't work through the reality of my differences, and remedy the shame until recently. The label of ADHD helped me immensely, to connect with others and to understand and be sympathetic to myself.
If labels make you uncomfortable maybe that aversion itself is something worth holding and looking at.
kshahkshah
> This is part of a deeper instinct in modern life, I think, to explain everything.
To explain everything shallowly by looking for direct cause and effect and not a multitudes of causes and effects. That complexity is too much to think through comfortably whilst living within it and having an unreliable experience of the self, especially in the younger years. Labeling causes with an easy broad moniker provides temporary comfort, relieving the individual of the burden of deeper reflection.
colechristensen
They're trying to explain everything but what they're actually doing is labelling everything with dubious labels and then putting social pressure on people to act like their labels. Under the guise of acceptance they're alienating everybody from each other by trying to put everybody into a bucket. It's best to notice this kind of thing but not put too much energy into refuting it because it's just not where conversations or attention should be, this kind of thought should wither in obscurity instead of seeking some kind of victory over it.
jowea
Interesting article. It reminds me of TVTropes. It's the most systematizing (as opposed to holistically) way of looking at media, decompose it into parts (tropes) that are shared with other media. It feels like approaching the ultimate in the Western scientific orderly systematizing thought.
Anyway here's the relevant trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MeasuringTheMari...
armchairhacker
IIRC a "disorder" is a personality trait that is extremely strong; specifically, strong enough to significantly negatively affect one's life and relationships without medication or therapy (real therapy, not "talk to someone" therapy).
For example, sometimes people talk about lowercase "t" and capital "T" trauma. Lowercase "t" is when something affects you enough that recognizing it elicits an emotion, e.g. some people fell uneasy when smelling saline because they associate it with getting shots when they were young. Uppercase "T" is when the emotion is overpowering, e.g. soldiers who wake up screaming or experience lifelike flashbacks when they see military equipment, or people who can't visit a location without panicking because it reminds them of a negative experience. Only uppercase "T" is diagnosed PTSD, although that doesn't mean lowercase "t" is never a problem, it's just not life-altering and can be worked around without medication or therapy.
We have regular adjectives for the manageable "lowercase" version of disorders. "Obsessive" for OCD, "antsy" or "trouble focusing" for ADHD, "strange" or "peculiar" for Autism. I do think someone can be "manic" or "depressed" without having diagnosed Bipolar or Depression. Unfortunately, language is defined by how it's used in practice, so if most people call themselves "ADHD" when they don't have real diagnosed ADHD, you'll have to use their meaning to understand them, and eventually it'll become the norm; but you can speak and write the non-disorder adjective to help counter it. Worst case, we still have "diagnosed X" to distinguish from "X" (unless people start using it like "literally" to mean figuratively...)
stanislavb
I'd say - everybody has a personality which is not who they really are. The personality is "simply" the response and defence mehanism of the ego of trauma inflicted during the early formatory years during childhood. It's really interesting what an automatic-machine a person is. Unaware that he is acting machanically in most cases. Source - the Enneagram and Gurdjieff.
brookst
We are what we pretend to be — Kurt Vonnegut
satisfice
We all have a personality and it IS who we “really are.” We also all have the ability to construct personalities that misrepresent our inner lives. Doing so creates a certain kind of stress and relieves other kinds of stresses.
Over the course of our childhoods we experiment with personality, and discover the elements that allow us to have stable and satisfying dealings with the world. We may cultivate several different personalities— each of them the real us in some respect.
Of course there are many elements of personality that are autonomic or otherwise habitual. That doesn’t mean personality is somehow not real.
A con artist or an actor can don a fake personality, but all that means is they are telling a kind of systemic lie to the world. This requires a lot of energy to maintain. Your real personality is that which minimizes required energy.
stanislavb
Are you the clothes you wear? No you are not. In a similar manner - your personality is what you show to the world. A construct based as a response to some trauma (or something else very influential, but usually trauma) inflicted on you as a child. i.e. your personality is the clothes your real self wears. It doesn't mean it's not part of you - it is.
tmseidman
I always feel like these "We do this new horrible thing that's taking over" articles are always blown out of proportion- sure, _some_ people talk that way, maybe it's even trending to talk that way for a significant group of people, but it's not true of everyone, all the time. To me, this trend seems largely confined to youth culture and social media.
I also found it ironic that part of the OP's argument was that nobody has personality anymore, they just have problems to solve, and this article seemed to be doing the same thing, but for culture at large; reducing it to a problem to be solved.
idontwantthis
Yeah, this is seriously WTF. OP please read a book or go stare at clouds. "We" are not anything.
colechristensen
In other news "there's a whole new way young people are annoying! more at 11"
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kylehotchkiss
The screwtape letters for 2025: how to completely freeze a generation from having any impact. Oof. This hit hard.
I like this article, and I’ve felt it firsthand.
With mental health, it’s harder to verify the labels social media suggests are even accurate. Conformation bias? And for the bajillion things that happen in life, if everything becomes a problem it probably puts you in a “why” loop, that you actually you don’t have to answer to move forward.