For me, one thing about labels is that in my head they become global, permanent, like a sentence.
(I mean a prison sentence.)
I think that's because of the very fundamentalist, hellfire-and-brimstone religion of my grandfather, that filtered down through my mother, and that was added to in church. You're good or bad, saved or damned. It was a black and white religion.
So when I have a negative word come into my head about myself: selfish, Nspot, intrusive, whatever it is I'm catching myself at...it really shakes me. It takes some effort to calm down and get balanced about it, because the word itself strikes fear the way "hell" "unsaved" "evil" "wicked" and "sinner" did when I was a little girl.
I think the truth of it is more that there are streams of things going through me and my behavior. Just as many good as bad, healthy as unhealthy, loving as selfish. But I overlook or discount the positive ones (after all, they would represent "pride"--another sin), and when a negative one comes along, there's fear.
Make any sense to anybody?
Hopalong