New Label, Same Concept — Anyone Else Exhausted From All The Jargon?

Does anyone else feel like they're drowning in new labels for old ideas?

I'm a life coach with a master's in counseling and I've been noticing something for a while that honestly frustrates me.

It feels like every other week there's a new term for something humans have understood for a long time: "Nervous system regulation" is learning how to calm down and breathe; "Dopamine detox" is taking a break from overstimulation; "Shadow work" is looking at the parts of yourself you'd rather not look at.These things have been known for a long time some of it is common sense and learning how to take care of yourself.

So why do I think this keep happening?

Because there's a whole industry built on making old wisdom sound new. Brand identity folks and marketing folks tell you that if you're a coach, therapist, author, etc. trying to stand out, you need a "thing”, something that sounds original, something you can put on a book cover or build a program around. The problem is that many of these “new” ideas have been around a long time. So what do they do? They repackage it. Give it a catchy name. Build a brand around it. Write a book. Launch a course. And suddenly they’re the person who "discovered" something that poets and philosophers and elders have been saying for centuries.

Look at Mel Robbins and the whole "Let Them" phenomenon. She and her daughter wrote a book around this idea of letting go of trying to control what other people do, which is a useful concept, except a poet, Cassie Phillips https://www.cassie-phillips.com , wrote about the concept years before they did, and as far as I know, they gave her no credit for her idea. Although, the concept didn't originate with Mel Robbins, now it's "her" thing because she had the platform and the marketing machine to claim it.

And that's the pattern. The person who packages it/renames it gets the credit, not the person who came up with the idea first.

Stolen ideas are being rewarded rather than wisdom and originality. The marketing sends a message to people that they need to keep buying the next book, the next course, the next framework, because surely THIS one has the answer that all the others were missing.

Most of the time, it doesn't. It's the same truth in a new outfit without credit to the idea or concepts original discoverer.

Here is what really concerns me…it’s not just the jargon itself; it’s what happens when people turn these labels into identities.

Take "attachment styles," the way it gets talked about most of the time, you'd think your attachment style is some fixed thing that defines who you are. "I'm anxious attachment, so..." But that's not what it actually is. It's a coping mechanism. It developed in response to your early experiences, and it changes as you grow and as life happens to you. It's not a permanent diagnosis. It's a snapshot of how you learned to protect yourself at a certain point in your life. And yet people grab onto it like it's written in stone.

Boxing yourself with a label can be heard everywhere, "Well, I'm a 2 on the Enneagram, so that's just how I am." "I'm a Pisces with a moon rising, so..." And too often, these labels become excuses for behavior that people don't want to change, or worse, they convince themselves they can’t change because of who they've been told they are.

The label that was supposed to help them understand themselves ends up boxing them in.

I want to be careful here because I'm saying this in an ADHD community, and I do believe that understanding you have ADHD can be genuinely life-changing. There's real relief in finally understanding why your brain works the way it does. But there's a difference between using that knowledge as a flashlight to see the path more clearly rather than using it as a box that keeps stuck in it rather than learning to work with it and improving. We need to be very careful attaching labels to ourselves so that we don't box ourselves in so tight we aren’t free.

I want to be clear about something. I'm not talking about Jim or this program. Actually, Jim is a great example of how to do it right. He's transparent about where his ideas come from. He credits the people and books that shaped his thinking, like James Clear's Atomic Habits framework. He's not pretending he invented something new. He's taken real, proven concepts and built a system that actually works for ADHD brains, and he tells you where it all comes from. That's integrity. That's the difference between sharing wisdom and claiming it.

My frustration is with the broader industries that do the opposite.

I have clients who come to me loaded with vocabulary from podcasts, Instagram, and sometimes books, convinced they need to understand all these concepts before they can heal or improve their lives. But when they start talking, I realize what they're dealing with isn't too complex; it's just buried under layers of the latest lingo and labels.

My brain works in a down to earth, person to person, direct kind of way. I don't collect jargon. I'd rather sit with someone and ask, "What's actually going on with you?" and get to something real.

I think especially for those of us with ADHD, the flood of terminology can become its own form of overwhelm. We start collecting vocabulary instead of actually doing the work. We know all the terms but nothing has changed in our daily lives.

I’m curious if learning some of the latest terms or concepts shifted something for you? And on the flip side, have you ever gotten lost in the labels, terms, and information and realized it was keeping you stuck instead of moving you forward? I'm curious what you all think.

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