When Words Help and When They Don’t
The Line Between Diagnosis and Therapy
Let’s start with the obvious: I’m a therapist, not a diagnostician. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and doctors handle medical or formal diagnostic work. Therapy, though, is about what happens after the label — how you make sense of it, how it shows up in your relationships, and what it means in your day-to-day life.
A diagnosis can give clarity, but it can’t tell the whole story. Two people with the same diagnosis can live entirely different realities. That’s where therapy steps in — not to name the condition, but to listen to the experience behind it.
At a glance
- Therapists don’t diagnose; psychologists, psychiatrists, and doctors do.
- Therapy focuses on lived experience — how something feels and functions in real life.
- Labels and diagnoses can guide understanding but shouldn’t define the whole person.
- Language evolves; what feels accurate today might change tomorrow.
- In Safe Spaces, labels are used as shorthand — not as cages.
My own background plays a part here too. I’ve lived through more than a few systems and labels — gay, neurodivergent, HIV positive, and human, all at once. Those experiences taught me that lived insight often fills the gaps that clinical language can’t reach. I don’t work through a medical lens, but I do work with a grounded one — human, relational, and informed by both study and survival.
Words Are Tools, Not Walls
Language is how we make sense of complexity, but it’s also how we limit it. Labels like autistic, anxious, ADHD, traumatised, or depressed can open doors — or close them. Used well, they can help someone finally understand what’s happening inside them. Used carelessly, they can shrink a life into a paragraph.
Labels help us find each other. They only become a problem when we stop looking beyond them.
I think a label is more like a comma, it’s not the end of the story, it’s only a part of it.
In therapy, language works best when it’s descriptive, not prescriptive. The aim isn’t to decide who you are but to explore what’s happening for you — without the pressure to perform the label. I use diagnostic terms when they help understanding, but never as boxes to live in.
It’s why I tend to treat every label as shorthand — a way to open a conversation, not to end it. If a term feels right, we use it. If it doesn’t, we find language that does.
The Lifecycle of a Label
If you’ve ever worked in or around mental health, you’ll know that words don’t stay still for long. Language evolves because people evolve. A term that once carried validation can, a few years later, feel loaded or outdated.
Take neurodivergent — a word that once lived mostly in advocacy circles. Now, it’s mainstream, empowering for some, limiting for others. That doesn’t make it wrong; it makes it alive.
Therapeutically, the goal isn’t to keep up with linguistic trends but to stay connected to meaning. What does this word mean for you? Does it give you relief, pride, clarity, frustration? If it helps you speak more freely, we keep it. If it creates pressure to fit, we gently put it down.
The language that helps you today doesn’t need to be the language you keep forever.
Have you ever looked in an old diary – and you read about your younger self, and you realise how different you are now? It’s the same with labels – their meaning, applicableness and intensity changes with time.
My View — and How It Shapes Safe Spaces
I often describe labels as brown paper bags — tidy, functional, but impossible to live in for long. I’ve never been one for staying inside them.
In practice, that means I write and work in ways that prioritise understanding over terminology. The site includes content on identity, neurodivergence, trauma, sexuality, and relationships, but you’ll notice I don’t flood it with definitions or checklists. That’s intentional. Safe Spaces isn’t a taxonomy — it’s a human archive.
Each topic acts as a doorway, not a destination. You’ll see words like anxiety, autism, or identity used in their most accessible form — as familiar entry points. The detail that matters isn’t how they’re defined in a textbook, but how they show up in real life: how they shape connection, safety, and meaning.
That’s also why I use “we” language. Safe Spaces isn’t about “us and them.” It’s about how we all find ways to live with our wiring, our histories, and our stories.
The Real Work Behind the Words
Therapy isn’t about perfect language; it’s about building safety through shared meaning. Sometimes that means starting with a label and peeling it back. Sometimes it means sitting in silence until a new word emerges. Both are valid.
Labels, diagnosis, and language will always have a place — they give shape to experience. But they’re only helpful when they serve the person, not the system.
So when you read through Safe Spaces, you’ll find diagnostic terms used sparingly, carefully, and contextually. They appear where they clarify, not where they constrain. Because the moment a word starts defining more than it describes, it’s lost its value.
