I’m a medical professional with a very particular neurology niche which I write about and practice in.
It’s one of these topics which has become popularised recently and the popularised version of it attributes labels to people and puts people in certain neuro boxes or categories. If I try and think of a well-known equivalent, I would say it’s a bit like astrology where you can be a Taurus or a Libra or any of the other “sun signs”, and there are personality profiles and they’re associated with different traits and looks and types.
I have written a few papers and been featured in some articles about it too.
Also due to research, my home is full of books relating to the specialism and there are little hints of it everywhere, purely because it has been such a huge part of my working life.
Whenever anyone - family, friend, acquaintance, stranger, workman - comes over to my house or sees any part of that life or that I do what I do, they ALL say, “oh, you MUST tell me about me...”
I shared a really important piece of research regarding the topic on social media the other day, and all the comments from people I knew were “you need to do me - you’ve never checked me.”
I wrote about it in a journal last year, and the response over text and email from friends was “why won’t you test me? I need that done.”
I won an award five years ago and guess what my family and friends response was? “Oh, you won it for that thing you do? I need you to do me sometime.”
It’s treated like some kind of party trick and not my job or something for people who have quite serious problems. At weddings people bring it up. The last wedding I went to someone said “gimme strengf diagnoses X conditions.
Go round the table and tell us all what we are. Come on! It’s so and so’s wedding day!”
It drives me completely mad that people’s first response to something which is actually quite complex to diagnose, often inaccurate and defining it is actually only relevant to certain people with much bigger problems my friends can imagine is: “ME. What about me? What type am I? What category am I in? can you just take a quick guess? Go on -I’m your friend/relation/builder. But you see me every day! Surely you must have noticed what type I am?”
I’ve had friends be upset with me for not examining them, or after a few drinks at a party drunkenly imply I am withholding information about them like a power trip. One friend stole some of my textbooks off my shelf to try and diagnose herself and then presented me the next week with various pages bookmarked where she had tried to narrow her “type” down and wanted me to confirm yes or no.
Another filled in one of these popular internet questionnaires about the topic and sent me 6 screen shots of her answers over wats app, and said she was confused about her “result,” and posed it like it was some intellectual question and she’d already done most of the legwork for me and I just had to say yes or no, X or Y. Another friend after doing something similar now uses a hastag on all social media posts after self diagnosing her type. For eg, the astrology equivalent would be #libra #libragoals #libralife #thelibrastruggle #librasurvivor #libradiagnosis
From strangers and people I meet in a functional way I get “I bet you’ve already seen what i am haven’t you? I’m a type A aren’t I? Funnily enough we always suspected old aunt jean was a type A. It’s An interesting story actually. Oh that’s a funny face! Must be a bad thing then. Is it bad?”
I know it is normal human curiosity. I know it is the fault of popularised science that people see quite complex, pathological things as fitting neatly into types and boxes and having some personal relevance to them, but it is so self absorbed.
I am kind and friendly about it on the surface. I try and help people if I can. In the past and in the beginning when I had more tolerance for it, I would actually make a few educated guesses with disclaimers when asked questions, but guess what? It’s not that easy and it would never stop there. “But surely i’m not bordering on A? I don’t fit the (google/Wikipedia) description of that type at all. I always thought I was B. Why am I A and not B? Did I tell you about great uncle sammy who always did X?”
But it makes me internally bang my head against the wall about humanity, the complete and utter self obsession of it all. And even worse, even if people are completely self obsessed, that they are not self aware enough to try and tone it down?
Imagine if the only response your best friend or family members ever had to your lifelong career achievements was “but what about me? You must tell me about me!”
To me this is my life’s work. It tires me and frustrates me and it is terribly under researched and inaccurate and not like the popular version at all. I tell people that but it doesn’t put them off. And I know that all I am ever going to get for the rest of my life from people I know is “please tell me what I am.”
I’m looking really, to know whether AIBU. But also to understand more what gets my goat about this so much. Would it bother you if that was all people were ever asking you for?