Habitual Misappropriation

I routinely experience rage at work. This particular time, it was at the words of a person, not the bleep of an analyzer, and I like this person very much, so I made an effort and kept it to myself (sort of); my abrupt departure from the room may have been a tell. This happened a little while back, but I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot.

I don’t even remember what the overall conversation was about, but the switch flipped when the co-worker put on their wisest face and said, “Everybody’s a little bipolar.” I looked at them. “No,” they said, looking even wiser. “I mean it.”

I work in a field that attracts social misfits, recluses, and scientific types with organized and exacting tendencies. Often, all in the same individual. We laugh, we suffer, we generally understand each other, and I know that no offense was meant. I said nothing, only got up and left. “Slacking in the break room,” and all that. So perhaps I overreacted.

Now I get that the word “bipolar” means two-sided. Everyone does have their two sides, their ups and downs. That might make one, in fact, “a little bipolar.” So they weren’t wrong. People living with bipolar disorder do not own the word. But it did hit a nerve. Because when the term is used casually, as a joke or an insult or to talk down about oneself, it references the disorder and contributes to stigma.

And it brought to the fore an even more common one, because I so often hear it: “I’m so OCD about this.” Every time I hear this, I swear that the next time someone says it, I’m gonna ask.

“Do you know what OCD stands for? You’re literally using a condition, which can ruin lives if severe enough or untreated, as a casual adjective. Worse, you’re using this adjective for a slight self-deprecation. You absolutely cannot do that.” Well, everyone, as it seems to me in the moment, does!

We have sensitivity trainings galore. About race, culture, gender, religion … why not about mental health? You wouldn’t say a company meeting is a pow-wow. How is it any more acceptable to say anyone is “OCD about” anything? I would argue that it is not. That’s misappropriation too. Besides being terrible grammar, once you spell it out.

Sure, I’m grinding on something here. There are probably many of us living with these challenges who don’t get offended by this language, or are inured to it, or use it this way themselves, because they can. But I suspect there are many others, like me, who are disturbed or triggered. Use of these terms in casual conversation seldom lands as complimentary. Think about that. It’s a symptom of the stigma, deeply entrenched.

I don’t think it would be a terrible idea to educate the workplace about use of these terms.