I am in school for human services (social work) and one of my instructors told us to never label people because it takes their humanity away...ie.-"homeless" as opposed to "individual without a place to live"...."crackhead" as opposed to "individual with a substabce abuse problem".
I always was so conscious to not label. Eventually I got soooo mad at the ex that I started to call him a crackhead.
In our better moments, I would tell him that he was a good person who had a problem...I would say , "you know, you really just have this ONE problem, and if you could just eliminate this ONE problem, your life would be so much better."
I tried every kind of reasoning, it just didn't work....