Swift UITextView Delegate

Question

I am having a problem and have searched all across StackO and did not see a solution.

I have a UITextview extension with TextViewDelegate that I call inside of my VC so that i can have a placeholder label. The problem is i now need to add a func that checks for remaining chars in that same textView which i am able to get to work properly. But i cant grab a label to present it on the VC from that extension. I have been trying delegates but since it is a delegate itself i cant use my normal methods. What is the best route to go about this? Thank You for your help!

Here is the code. The placeholder label code is left out since it will make everything longer and I do not feel its needed for a solution. But I can add if necessary. And i can not move this code straight into VC as i need this extension to stay like this.

extension UITextView: UITextViewDelegate {


/// When the UITextView change, show or hide the label based on if the UITextView is empty or not

public func textViewDidChange(_ textView: UITextView) {
    if let placeholderLabel = self.viewWithTag(100) as? UILabel {
        placeholderLabel.isHidden = !self.text.isEmpty
    }
    checkRemainingChars(textView: textView)

}

func checkRemainingChars(textView: UITextView) {
    let allowedChars = 140
    
    if let charsInTextField = textView.text?.count {
        
        let charsInLabel = charsInTextField
        
        let remainingChars = charsInLabel
        
        if remainingChars <= allowedChars {
            
            //Need to grab this label
           charsLeftLabel.textColor = UIColor.lightGray
        }
        
        if remainingChars >= 120 {
            //Need to grab this label
            charsLeftLabel.textColor = UIColor.orange
            
        }
        
        if remainingChars >= allowedChars {
            //Need to grab this label
            charsLeftLabel.textColor = UIColor.red
        }
        //This prints fine
        print("Remaining chars is \(remainingChars)/140")
        //Need to grab this label
      charsLeftLabel.text = String(remainingChars)
       
    }

}

Thanks again.