People love putting labels on themselves.
They do it all the time.
Be it a “proud dad”, “good wife”, feminist, vegan, “I am green”, democrat, republican, climate whatever, or even the bad one like a dumbass, “I am bad at math”…
And then they don’t realize those have a negative effect on them too.
It’s the dark side.
Sadly, folks only want to see the light side. They want to be the Jedi.
At least when the labels are perceived as positive.
The good thing with such labels is that they can actually help you to change things with you that you don’t like and wanna change.
If you’re labeling yourself a good dad, you start behaving like one. You’ll do more of the thing you perceive that a “good dad” does and will do less of the non-fitting stuff.
Or, and here we enter the dark side, you still do the “bad” stuff and suddenly get into an internal dissonance. There’s a conflict between your perception of a “good dad” and your behavior that contradicts this perception.
Now you’re in conflict. Conflict always brings trouble. You might start to hide your “bad behavior,” or you might even start to attack those that point this contradiction out.
Without the label, there would be no conflict.
But that’s not the only downside of those labels. It also changes your perception completely and sometimes even contradicts what you believe is right.
And then you can’t do or even think the right thing in your opinion because it does not fit with your label.
And every time that topic comes up, it causes this dissonance in yourself again.
And this grows to a point where you start hitting on those that bring up this dissonance. Even when you agree with them. Simply to remove your internal conflict.
Or better, not to get reminded of this conflict.
You can see that in the media all the time.
So, be aware that there’s a dark side to labeling yourself too.