Naming something acknowledges it as a class, as a pattern.
That’s good because it gives it some flesh, some body. You can recognize it, you can build some knowledge of it. You can act accordingly.
But at the same time it reduces the thing. It makes it generic and devalues its own uniqueness.
When you name an emotion—*sadness*—, it helps but it diminishes it—you can’t reduce the pain of a big loss to a word.
What to make of this? Is naming things good or bad?
I guess naming things is helpful to make sense of the world when the world is too complex and overwhelming. But once you’ve built your mental models, it’s necessary to move past the words and into the world, a much richer, deep realm.
Getting stuck in the word will limit your own development.