Identity satiation and the prevalence inflation hypothesis
By Alberto Moreno Gámez · 9 diciembre 2024
How psychological labels expand and what happens when human experiences become identities.
Identity satiation and the prevalence inflation hypothesis
Alberto Moreno Gámez
9 December 2024
How is it possible that the mental health of the population has worsened despite the rise in outreach on psychology, self-care and self-knowledge? And why do people with the greatest tendency to focus on their identity and self-knowledge seem to be the most distressed, confused and emotionally unstable? Could this new culture of therapy and focus on introspection be making things worse?
Semantic satiety is that strange feeling that occurs when we repeat a word many times without stopping, until it ends up losing its meaning for those who pronounce it. This phenomenon has been very studied and is quite easy to test. Try to repeat a word quickly and aloud, and you will see how a time comes when the word will cease to make sense and it will seem even strange, as this is experiencing semantic satiety.
Without any doubt, the possibility of speaking more freely and openly about sexuality or identity is something that should favor those who already struggle with gender confusion. But it is very likely that other children and adolescents are being strengthened to ruminate and confuse with the satiety of identity, causing the spectacular increase we observe in the number of people who identify themselves as non-binary or transgender.
I do not intend to simplify the phenomenon of the rise of transgender identities, although I do point out the possible rebound effect of this current of thought established in our societies, which encourages and encourages young people to make efforts to ruminate on concepts of themselves with which most would not have had problems in any other way, being able to doubt their own intuitions about who they are, by reflecting on nothing neutral questions such as: “Do I feel like a boy?” “What does it mean to feel like a boy?” and “I thought I was a boy, but what if I am not?”
These types of questions are often confusing and difficult to answer, even for adults who are not affected by gender dysphoria. So asking children to ruminate in this way can lead to confusion and depersonalization or derealization through the mechanisms I have already talked about. The satiety of identity can lead them to decide that they are non-binary or transgender, especially when also identifying in this way is rewarded and rewarded with recognition and social support.
As especially social animals, our identities are negotiated socially. Our social interactions and with the outside world provide most of the relevant information about our self-concept, who we are. Therefore, we should encourage young people to simply be, and allow their identities to emerge through their interactions with the world, through play and social interaction with others, and with timely introspection and some self-knowledge exercises. Spending time with friends and family, exercising and keeping busy are often more useful than long conversations about one’s own anxieties and complaints. For most people, identity formation is a natural and automatic process, and so it should remain.
The rise of awareness about mental health and the population's greater awareness of self-care, especially after the pandemic, can cause many behaviors, thoughts or emotions to be included in some way in the realm of mental disorder, and this in turn increases self-diagnosis.
On the one hand, mental health literacy improves; on the other, more people may mistakenly interpret their problems as pathological. In psychotherapy, we see how diagnostic labels can constrain people, limiting them by defining and psychologising their identity. They may come to see their problems as more stable, lasting and difficult to manage or change than they really are.
On the other hand, this unjustified self-diagnosis can lead people with a normal or moderate level of distress to seek unnecessary and ineffective therapeutic help. Not to mention when pseudotherapy, influencers, or charlatans are used. An Australian research of 2023 presents evidence on how when people with mild distress receive psychotherapy, we can generate more worsening than improvement.
In conclusion, we are going through a mental health crisis, and the current times of outreach on conventional media psychology and social networks may be expanding definitions of mental health often in a counterproductive manner. There is no doubt that some people have long benefited from the normalization of mental problems, reducing the stigma they still maintain. But we have to think calmly how we can continue talking about mental health without pathologicalizing the everyday or psychologicalizing everything, in order to avoid generating that unwanted effect, that of inflation of prevalence.
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