Not Every Wound Needs an Identity
As a person who grew up with her grandparents rather than her actual parents, the way I see the world and how to act accordingly is kinda different. But it doesn’t mean I am that special. I was a special grandchild to my grandparents; when they were gone, the specialness of me went with them.
It took almost a year for my psychologist to finally give me her first diagnosis, back in mid-2012. Two to three times a week, we sat down and unpacked everything that had been lying underneath my skin and was still actively taking part in my subconscious. The second diagnosis came three years after the first, and the third diagnosis came four years after the second. It all came from what she called the “core tree.” The first diagnosis is the tree, and the last two diagnoses are the branches.
My head still hurts every time I remember that moment and try to place it neatly in chronological order, as if understanding could somehow make it lighter.
And it took me almost fourteen years to finally be able to hear and use my own voice.
I went to hell and back alive countless times simply because I couldn’t hear or use my own voice to articulate my pain and struggles. It turned out I had been living in my grandparents’ voices, my parents’ voices, past wounds, and unfinished battles that they themselves might not even recognize.
After almost fifteen years of learning about all of this shit (and I probably won’t stop until I’m six feet underground), seeing people nowadays throwing mental-health terminologies around as identities just doesn’t sit right with me.
We consume tons of content every day with our own hands, consciously choosing it and normalizing it:
“Doom scrolling to gather my sanity back after a long day.”
“Just taking a break.”
“This is the escapism that I need.”
Slowly but surely, it shortens our attention span for things that are actually important and shapes the kind of stress we didn’t even need to add to our lives in the first place.
Hey, don’t be mad at me yet. You and I are both part of this equation. I do that too from time to time. I’m not judging you (well… maybe a little) and your life choices.
But two nights ago, I watched this video and found myself agreeing with most of the points:
It talks about the paradox of self-awareness: the idea that the more aware we become of our own thoughts, patterns, and wounds, the easier it is to fall into a loop of observing ourselves instead of actually living our lives.
Psychology even distinguishes between reflection and rumination. Reflection helps us understand ourselves; rumination traps us in repetitive thinking that deepens emotional distress rather than resolving it. You can read more about that here.
I do have a bit of higher awareness about myself, specifically about my mental health, simply because what happened in the past forced me to learn and pushed me to choose to live more consciously.
But those things are not supposed to define me. And trust me, it’s beyond exhausting. But I have no other option except to keep moving forward. I believe most of you feel that way, too.
Humans always fascinate me, yeah? The way we comfortably put labels on ourselves after watching a series of mental-health content and spending hours doing self-diagnosis with our AI companions is just another way we slowly degrade ourselves.
Psychology even has a name for one of the mechanisms behind this: intellectualization, when we use analysis, concepts, or psychological language to distance ourselves from actually feeling the emotion underneath.
And I totally understand that not everyone has access to professional help. It’s expensive, and sometimes governments barely care about our health, not physical, and definitely not mental.
Just a reminder, not a sponsored post here. If you or someone you know needs professional help, there are actually more options than we often realize.
Indonesia
A list of mental-health support services and hotlines can be found here.
United States
United Kingdom
For other countries, you can check the global directory here.
Because yes, awareness is important, but awareness alone is not healing. Sometimes it simply traps us deeper inside our own heads.
I was reminded of that again tonight while listening to Elevator, a song that quietly tells the story of someone witnessing a tragedy — a body falling from a building — while the only response repeated over and over becomes, “Let’s forget this all, move on.”
That line stayed with me longer than I expected, maybe because it mirrors something about the way we deal with pain today.
We either dissect pain endlessly until it becomes an identity we carry everywhere, or we rush past it and pretend it never existed.
Both reactions miss the point.
Pain was never meant to become our brand, but it was never meant to be erased either.
The real work probably lives somewhere in between: acknowledging what happened, understanding how it shaped us, and slowly learning how to carry it without letting it carry us.
That is also where awareness becomes tricky.
Awareness is powerful when it opens doors to understanding ourselves. But it becomes something else entirely when it turns into quick labels we attach to our personalities.
A diagnosis is not a personality.
A psychological term is not an identity.
They are tools meant to guide deeper exploration, often with the help of trained professionals, not conclusions we reach after a few hours of scrolling through content and recognizing fragments of ourselves in someone else’s story.
Maybe the responsibility we share now, collectively, is to slow down with these words and treat them with the seriousness they deserve.
Mental-health language should help us understand ourselves better, not shrink us into categories we start living inside of.
Awareness should not become another cage we build around ourselves, but a light that helps us see where we are standing and where we might want to go next.
Once you start seeing yourself clearly, you cannot really return to the comfort of not seeing.
But maybe that is not a curse.
Maybe it is simply the price of becoming more honest with ourselves and with each other.
And if awareness is truly meant to help us live better lives, then perhaps the real challenge is learning how to carry that awareness lightly enough that it does not replace living itself.
And maybe that is enough for now, not perfect understanding, not perfect healing, but the willingness to stay human in a world that keeps asking us to categorize ourselves.
Ubud, 16th March 2026
“Elevator” - Box Car Racer
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