I also agree that the labels are arbitrary in many respects, but they are what we have and once we have been given a label it is bound to affect how we experience life too.

In my mind, unlike the body where we can experience pain in different parts at different times, I only get one experience out of my mind at a time. I don't think my hippocampus is in pain. I think I am in pain, or anxious, or paranoid.

I also wonder the degree to which I was already bipolar before my first breakdown in my 40s. I don't think it sprung out of nowhere. I was already ill but functioning as a productive member of society. Now i am not, partly as a result of getting all these labels. Once my psychiatrist wrote in a letter that I saw later that I had 'traits of histrionic personality disorder'. When I asked him about it he said that traits mean you don't have the personality disorder, you just have traits. So I didn't get that label but it is in my copious notes if anyone were to look.

But I also don't think I am the sum of all that is in those notes or that knowing what is in there will help me get to healing.

I appreciate everyone's perspective. It helps me understand my own. I think how we think about mental illness(es) affects how we experience our own.

My overwhelming experience is that it is one state of consciousness that I have and one focus of attention at each moment so i don't know how to parse that time series into distinct, disparate categories of mental illness.