Beyond the Labels: Not Broken, Not Fixed – Just Unfolding

Walking through the Valley of Desolation in North Yorkshire, I was reminded how nature holds both the memory of the storm and the beauty of renewal. This reflection explores how the labels we carry - from diagnoses to the stories we tell ourselves - can shape, limit, or liberate us. Drawing on my own experience of C-PTSD recovery and my work in men’s mental health, I look at how we can honour our past without being defined by it, and how healing begins when we remember who we are beneath the words.

The Valley of Desolation: A Lesson in Renewal and Perspective

Earlier this week I was walking through the Valley of Desolation yet I was brimming with childish excitement. It led me to reflect on labels: how they arise; how they are time-specific and that they have the potential to hold us back and limit our perception. 

The Valley of Desolation, near Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire, is so-named because of the ‘Great Storm’ of 1826 which uprooted many of the oak trees and caused flash flooding and landslides. Today though it is a beautifully tranquil place - especially in Autumn. As I tuned into my senses and opened myself to the glimmers, I was once again struck by change: the rustling sound of the pheasants in the bracken became startled calls as I passed by; the intense noise of the waterfall and the feeling of the 9º water as it bounced off my shoulders against the gentle falling away of the sound as I climbed out of the valley bottom. I felt the crunch of the mast-year acorns under my feet and the smoothness of the horse chestnut in my pocket. My eyes were drawn to the vast range of colours of the autumn leaves and then the pop of red of a fly agaric mushroom on the slope, which then became a translucent glow when I looked from below. I was reminded how a different viewpoint; a focusing in or a sense of distance can change our perception.

How Nature Mirrors Our Inner Landscape

At the same time I reflected on how things have changed for me since my diagnosis with C-PTSD almost a decade ago. At the time it was like a lead weight around my neck. But, as I learnt to understand more about myself, my childhood and the way that trauma has impacted my life, I recognised that whilst I’ve changed, at times I'm still held back by the stories I tell and labels I put on myself. 

I also started reflecting on how people can either be limited by or validated by their labels. There’s huge power that comes with knowledge - and having a diagnosis can help someone to make life-saving changes, or understand themselves in a way that brings relief and clarity. As Dr Alex George said in his fireside chat with Neil Smith at the Men's Mental Fitness Summit earlier this week, 'insight can transform lives.’

But I’ve also seen how easily people can start to reduce themselves to that label:

• I am autistic.

• I am ADHD.

• My PTSD.

Nobody is a disorder!

Understanding can help us to find tools, language, and community - but we should never be defined or confined by those words.

Living with Labels: Understanding Without Becoming Them

The problem with labels is that they can create both clarity and confinement. They give language to our experience - but they can also become a cage that we forget we’ve walked into. Once we attach a label to ourselves, our brains start searching for evidence to confirm it. We narrow our focus on the ways it fits, and miss the moments when it doesn’t.

For some, that label becomes a suit of armour - protection against misunderstanding and a way to say, 'This is why I am the way I am.' For others, it becomes a weight - a narrative that whispers, 'You’ll never be free of this.' The reality is both can exist at once.

Recovery and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

What I’ve come to realise - both personally and through my work with men - is that healing begins when we start to separate the experience from the identity. Trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction - they are experiences that shape us, but they are not who we are. It can help to see them as chapters, not titles.

When we do loosen our grip on the labels, we make space for movement, for growth, for contradictions. We become less invested in being consistent and more curious about being real. Nature models this so perfectly - the valley no longer bears the scars of the storm; yet its history lives within the soil. It doesn’t deny its past; it just doesn’t live trapped within it.

The same applies to us. We can acknowledge our stories without being confined by them. We can hold our pain without being defined by it.

Beyond the Words: Letting Go of What No Longer Fits

Maybe the invitation, then (for me as much as you) is to start asking:

• What labels am I still carrying that no longer fit?

• What names have I been given that served me once but now limit who I’m becoming?

• What would happen if I let them go - or at least loosened my grip, just a little?

Maybe that’s the real work of healing - learning to see ourselves as more than the names we’ve been given. Not trying to erase the past, but to breathe into it and meet it with compassion. To look at the parts of ourselves we once hid behind or apologised for, and recognise they were simply trying to protect us.

We can be both the storm and the regrowth. The valley and the waterfall. Not broken, not fixed - just human, and still unfolding.