What If the Labels That Explain You Are Also Limiting You?
Oct 26, 2026
We human beings love a label.
And I understand why. Labels can help us make sense of experiences we’ve struggled to understand.
Myers-Briggs tells me I’m a INFJ. The Enneagram helps us discover our “true selves”.
There are so many systems and frameworks available to help us understand ourselves, our personalities, our relationships, and the ways we move through the world.
Lately, I see people revising their entire lives according to Human Design, or expecting their partners to live up to a specific “Love Language.”
Now, all of these systems are genuinely interesting to me. I think they can offer valuable perspectives and help us understand aspects of ourselves we may not have recognized before.
But here’s the thing: human beings are extraordinarily complex.
Can we really be grouped into a single category or reduced to a few letters on a page, alongside billions of other people?
I don’t think so.
One thing I’ve said often about labels and frameworks is that their real value lies in how they help you make deeper contact with your own experience.
Everything should ultimately bring you back to your own experience. To a deeper understanding of yourself, how you relate to others, and how you move through the world.
And it really doesn’t help to simply put yourself in a box.
Personality tests are one thing, but I think this becomes an even more important conversation when we enter the realm of medicine and psychological diagnoses.
When I was working in clinical practice, people would come in and say (with absolute conviction), “I have this.”
Or sometimes, “I am this.”
And they could list their diagnoses, symptoms, and conditions, from anxiety to arthritis, autoimmune conditions, ADHD, and any number of other experiences they were living with.
And of course, diagnoses can be incredibly valuable. They can help us understand what’s happening, access appropriate treatment, and make informed choices.
But I’ve also seen what happens when a diagnosis becomes the entirety of how someone understands and relates to themselves — or becomes their identity.
Instead of opening possibilities, we can allow it to define the limits of what’s possible.
And that’s where I become concerned.
Because understanding what you’re experiencing should help you develop a wiser relationship with yourself, not reduce you to a category.
At worst, a label becomes another box we place ourselves in, something we identify with so completely that we stop exploring what else might be possible.
Like a dusty box on a shelf.
And this brings me to something I talk about often, which is shame.
Shame isn’t simply feeling bad about something you’ve done. It’s a deeply felt sense, experienced in the body, that there is something fundamentally wrong with who you are.
For many of us, that felt sense began very early in life. We made a mistake, did something embarrassing, were corrected, reprimanded, or met with disapproval. Sometimes it wasn’t even what someone said; it was their expression, their tone, or how they responded to us.
And sometimes it was about what we didn’t receive. When the people we depended on for survival weren’t emotionally available or couldn’t meet our needs, we could instinctively experience that disconnection as a reflection of our own worth — as though somehow we weren’t important enough, valuable enough, or worthy of being cared for.
These responses can develop long before we have the words or understanding to make sense of what’s happening.
Somewhere in those experiences, something we did, something that happened to us, or something we needed and didn’t receive became associated with a deeply felt sense that something was fundamentally wrong with who we are.
But that is a mistake.
Ultimately, at the core of my work — whether we’re talking about physical health, psychological and emotional development, relationships, or cultivating a more vibrant and fulfilling life — is something I deeply know.
Life has inherent value and dignity.
A tree doesn’t need to earn sunlight, water, or the soil it needs to grow. It’s alive. It’s life, and it has inherent value. I know that the same is true of us, whether you understand life through the lens of biology, consciousness, spirituality, God, or the divine.
There is something extraordinary about the intelligence of living systems. Think about it: The same intelligence that birthed this universe, this world, this atmosphere — from the union of two cells, an entire human being develops a nervous system, spine, a brain, and then an extraordinarily complex and interconnected body.
I call it a supercomputer.
This inherent intelligence doesn’t simply disappear when we’re born. Throughout our lives, our bodies retain remarkable capacities for adaptation, repair, learning, and development. When we cultivate supportive conditions physically, psychologically, emotionally, relationally, and environmentally, we create more opportunities for those capacities to express themselves and for that innate intelligence to self-regulate and self-heal.
Of course, that does not mean we don’t need medical care, support, treatment, or intervention.
We absolutely do, but it does mean that we can approach health and human development from a fundamentally different orientation: not as a lifelong project of correcting something inherently wrong with us, but as an ongoing process of understanding, supporting, and developing the life that is already here, providing the conditions to thrive.
That changes our relationship with ourselves because our fundamental dignity is not something we have to earn through healing, achievement, or becoming a better version of ourselves.
The point I’m making here is that all healing — whether it be personal development, holistic health, or medicine — really is, in its essence, about improving human well-being, removing interference, and empowering that innate intelligence, that self-healing mechanism: that power of the body to heal and thrive that’s inherently there.
So, if you take anything from this message today, let it be this:
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with your nature.
Of course, we have patterns, distortions, misunderstandings, and adaptations that can create tremendous difficulty in our lives.
But when we begin to understand how those patterns developed, we often discover that they made sense in the circumstances in which they originated.
Something in us was trying to protect us, help us belong, preserve connection, survive or find a way to navigate experiences we didn’t yet have the capacity to understand or manage.
And over time, those adaptations can become so deeply ingrained that we no longer recognize them for what they are. They simply feel like who we are.
This is part of what I find so fascinating about human development.
We get to begin untangling all of this.
We can explore the beliefs we’ve formed, the ways we’ve learned to protect ourselves, the experiences we’ve misunderstood, and the parts of ourselves we’ve learned to suppress or override.
And as we begin to understand what’s happening, we can create the conditions for something different to emerge.
Our bodies and minds have remarkable capacities for adaptation, learning, repair, and reorganization. That innate intelligence is still available to us, even when our systems have been shaped by difficult experiences.
I think there’s something incredibly beautiful about recognizing that.
We can begin to work with ourselves, with the intelligence of our bodies, and with the natural processes of growth and development, rather than continually relating to ourselves as though we’re fundamentally defective.
And yes, there may be a great deal to work through. We may need to develop capacities we never had the opportunity to develop, take responsibility for behaviors that have caused harm, and learn entirely new ways of relating to ourselves and others.
But none of that needs to be accompanied by shame.
Our inherent dignity was never dependent on how well-developed, healed, or organized our systems happened to be.
So, be careful not to put yourself in a box.
Use the models. Explore the frameworks. Learn everything you can about yourself. I certainly do, and I find them fascinating.
And keep coming back to your actual experience. Stay curious about what’s happening within you, how you’re relating to the world, and what might become possible as you continue to develop.
There’s so much more to us than the categories we’ve learned to identify with.
And there’s no need to endlessly fix what was never fundamentally broken.
Love and Blessings,
P.S. One of the reasons I feel so passionate about this is that I’ve seen how women can spend years working on themselves and still feel like an endless improvement project.
And that’s not what human development needs to be.
This is part of why I’m creating Blossoming Lotus, an intimate developmental space for women to come together, explore, and grow.
A space where there is no shame. Where we can reconnect with all the different parts of ourselves, including those we’ve learned to hide, suppress, or override, and discover what becomes possible when we bring more of ourselves into our lives and relationships.
There’s something powerful about doing this work together as women. Being seen, supported, challenged, and encouraged by one another as we explore who we are, how we’ve been shaped, and who we’re becoming.
Blossoming Lotus begins November 4th, and I’m offering a special founding-round rate for the women joining this first group.
If you’d like to explore whether Blossoming Lotus is right for you, simply reply BLOSSOMING, and I’ll walk you through the details.
