When Understanding Becomes a Label
Names. Labels. Categories.
As humans, we use words as a way of understanding ourselves. Who am I? What can I do? What are my limitations?
I often hear statements like, “I have ADHD, therefore I can't focus,” or someone describing a particular behavior as, “That's my OCD.” These words can become shorthand for explaining something about ourselves.
But what happens when that shorthand starts becoming the definition of the person?
I don't like those simplifications. Human beings are far too different from one another to be completely explained by a single word. You may have ADHD. You may identify as neurodivergent. But do we really want one word determining what you can and cannot do?
A label can give us language for something we have struggled to understand. It can bring relief. It can help us find treatment, accommodations, community, or strategies that work better for us. That matters.
But somewhere along the way, “this helps explain something about me” can become “this determines what is possible for me.”
Those aren't the same statement. And that is where I think we need to be careful.
When someone tells me, “I can't focus because I have ADHD,” the diagnosis itself isn't the part I'm most curious about as a coach. I want to know what “I can't focus” actually means for this particular person.
Can you focus on some things but not others? Is getting started difficult, or is staying with something difficult? Does it change when you're tired, interested, overwhelmed, or under pressure? What happens when someone is working beside you? What about when your environment is quiet? What have you already discovered that helps?
The label may help explain why some of these patterns exist. But it doesn't tell me what your pattern looks like.
And that distinction matters, because support cannot be built around a category. It has to be built around the person standing in front of us.
A diagnosis may be extremely important to you and to the clinicians involved in your care. But in a coaching conversation, knowing the name doesn't tell me everything I need to know about how you experience your life.
Instead of allowing the label to answer the question of capacity, what if we became curious about capacity itself?
I might start by asking: What does being neurodivergent mean to you? Where do you feel limited in your daily life? What are you already doing to work with those limitations? What helps? What's missing?
Those questions begin to unravel something a label alone cannot tell me: Who are you? What can you do? Where are you struggling? And what is getting in your way?
To me, that is a much more productive way for us to spend our time together. Because now we can start looking for tools and strategies that might actually help you move forward.
“I have ADHD, so I can't focus” doesn't tell me how you're struggling. What does focus even mean to you? Is it difficult to organize yourself? To begin a task? To stay with it? To return after being interrupted? There is a spectrum of possibilities contained inside that one sentence, and the word ADHD doesn't tell me which one belongs to you.
But perhaps more importantly, it doesn't tell you.
If “I have ADHD, therefore I can't focus” becomes the end of the conversation, you may never become curious about the places where you can focus, the conditions that make focusing easier, or the supports that change what is possible for you.
The label that once helped you understand yourself can accidentally become a boundary around what you believe you can do.
The question isn't whether the label is true. The question is whether we've asked it to tell us more than it can.
What does this actually look like in your life? What are your strengths? Where do you struggle? What conditions allow you to function at your best? And how can we use what we learn to help you move forward?
There is so much more to you than a diagnosis.
And you deserve to be understood with that depth.
Art Prompt
Paint or draw: What is something about you that cannot be captured in a single word?