In my work and daily life, I frequently hear people describe themselves by their professions or hobbies. For instance, I describe myself as a social worker and runner. But some people use other terms to describe themselves, some that can be self-stigmatizing and that can impact the way they ultimately think about themselves as people.

Why, I often wonder, do we who live with mental illness define ourselves as “bipolar,” “depressed” or “anxious.” How we describe ourselves matters. Someone living with cancer does not self-describe as saying, “I am cancer.” Same goes for people living with diabetes or heart disease. One likely would not describe oneself as saying, “I am diabetes” or “I am heart disease.” Why, then, do people living with mental illness so frequently say, “I’m bipolar” or “I’m anxious” or “I’m depressed.” These are illnesses we have, not things we are.

How we describe ourselves matters, the words we use to define our conditions matters. Referring to ourselves as “bipolar” or “depressed” sticks labels on us and to some extent defines who we are. But we are so much more than the illnesses with which we live. We who live with mental illness are so much more than the conditions with which we have been struck. We are more than the up and down episodes of bipolar disorder, more than the dark days of depression, more than the sometimes crippling panic of anxiety disorder. We are people first, human beings worthy of love and belonging first. Our conditions, our illnesses should not and do not have to define us. How we self-describe matters. We live with mental illness, we are not the illness itself.

When I am working with people living with mental illness and/or substance use disorder, I always try to remind them that they are more than the illness with which they live. Human beings are complicated creatures, but defining a person by one specific aspect can limit that person’s ability to see beyond that label. People are multi-faceted and complicated and wonderful. Labels tend to put people in boxes and stifle personal growth. Those who are labeled with mental illness or substance use diagnoses can find themselves slaves to the symptoms of their particular disorder, when in reality, those symptoms are but a wee fraction of who they really are.

What if we changed the way we talk about mental illness and the people who live with them so that they no longer become their diagnoses, but become people living with a treatable medical condition? What if we moved away from stigmatizing language and labels and focused instead on the person, rather than the symptoms? What if instead of defining a person by her illness, we looked beyond the illness to see who the person truly is? The language we use matters.