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What Happens When You Label Your Child as Anxious, or Your Mother as Selfish?

How labels lead to stuckness in relationships.

Kathleen Smith

Feb 18

READ IN APP

Cheetah cub with its mother. Source: Shutterstock.

The paperback version of True to You is out March 5th! Check out my news at end of the post for info about the bonus digital journal you can get with your copy. - K

When therapy clients tell me about their family, or their colleagues, I pay attention to the adjectives used to describe others. Words like anxious, stubborn, distant, or helpless provide clues to where the tension lives, and how it’s being managed.

The goal is never to convince someone their mother isn’t a narcissist. Who am I to make such an assumption? I don’t have to deal with this lady.

But the challenge is to take a label and figure out the patterns shaping it. What do you do once you’ve slapped a sign on someone’s forehead that says SENSITIVE! Or DIFFICULT! What do you see and not see?

Let me give you some examples.

Label: I have an anxious child.

Pattern: I look for signs of distress in my child, and rush to calm them. Which brings a lot more anxiety in her direction.

Useful Question: How does some of the tension in the family end up living in a child?

Label: I supervise an incompetent manager at work.

Pattern: I scan for his weaknesses, recruit others to scan for his weaknesses, and he shuts down when he feels everyone laser-focused on him.

Useful Questions: How has it been useful to the system to have somebody to pick on? What are the costs?

Label: My mother is so selfish and never has time for me.

Pattern: I stop calling her and inviting her to see the grandkids, because I assume she doesn’t have time for us.

Useful Questions: What do I think is my responsibility in staying connected?

Label: My wife is so bossy.

Pattern: I stop doing chores because I know she’ll critique whatever I do anyway.

Useful Questions: How is this label getting in the way of me being more responsible?

Label: My brother is such a narcissist. He is not interested in me at all.

Pattern: I stop talking about myself, and he fills the space with his own thoughts. When he makes an ask, I always give in to keep from upsetting him.

Useful Questions: What am I willing to do and not do? What’s my definition of being reasonable?

I’m not saying that the labels aren’t accurate. I’m asking you to consider how the process of labeling influences what you see and don’t see in the other. How you adjust YOURSELF in ways that aren’t helpful to you, or the relationship?

Adjectives shut down curiosity. They ignore the back and forth in the relationship. They lead us to be shaped by our own reactivity, and not our best thinking.

Seeing the pattern isn’t about changing the other. It’s about keeping yourself from shifting in ways that aren’t true to your best thinking. If you have principles to treat your child like they’re capable, to invite family to be a part of your life, or to try to be objective about a colleague’s work, then an anxious focus on the other can send those principles flying out the window.

Your child will still get anxious. Your brother might still love talking about himself. Your wife may continue to tell you how to organize your closet. But are you the person you want to be when they throw you a challenge?

When people can get interested in this work, they may become less sensitive to the other. They may be able to see strengths and capabilities in the other they hadn’t seen before. And they let a relationship live outside the adjectives that hold everyone back.

Questions for you:

How are labels shaping how I treat others?
How do labels contribute to the stuckness in a relationship?
Who do I want to be when people act predictably?

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News from Kathleen

**BONUS JOURNAL FOR TRUE TO YOU paperback! I’ve created a digital bonus journal to accompany the paperback launch of True to You (March 5th). Email me a copy of your receipt and I’ll send it to you.

Email me if you want me to speak to your group or are interested in doing family systems work with me.

Buy my books True to You and Everything Isn’t Terrible for more in-depth stories of people working on their relationships and themselves. If you love them, consider giving them a review on Amazon so other folks can find them. If you haven’t gotten the free digital workbooks for them, email me.