"A 19-year-old on TikTok might look at her peers and their talk of borderline personality disorder and see glamour and a kind of pain that society might recognize."
This is to understand what causes ROGD. It's not a wild conspiracy theory.
I pulled that quote too. Part of the experience of youth, as far as I am concerned, for the last 70 years in western cultures is not comparable to any other time in human history. Poverty during our lifetime doesn't match historical levels of poverty. This degree of "wealth and comfort" have allowed the rot of man to spread throughout the culture.
If a fresh slab of meat is comingled with a rotting slab of meat, the rotting slab won't lose its rot; instead, the fresh slab will be contaminated by the rotting slab. The same is true for young people. When they are exposed to a rotting culture they will be contaminated and join in on the rot. So, if a genuine mental health issue exist the rot has the potential to accelerate the underlying issues that already exist. And since humans live to make things complicated it makes addressing the situation all the more difficult.
As a Christian I believe there are many times when individuals might be better off if, instead of turning to someone else for advice, they look around themselves, avoid the noises around them and see what is actually going on. It's possible, once the noise goes away, their clearing mind and vision will allow them to see where they actually stand in this world; and they can shed their degree of mass formation psychosis. It might be quite simple actually.
The response you get for coming out as nonbinary or trans is incredibly attractive to angsty teenagers. Affirmation, support, community, adults who listen and validate you. Plus a new identity and appearance.
Real gender dysphoria exists, but it’s bananas that we have to pretend no troubled young person would ever respond to these incentives unless they genuinely had GD.
Not sure if you ever read The Last Psychiatrist (this is from his secondary blog), but this one is so good I've lost track of how many people I've sent it to who both struggle with their own mental health but sense that there is something dangerous in the modern / millennial / woke mindset around mental health.
It only came out recently, I think. He does have a lot to say about the phenomenon Freddie and the reddit post are describing. People who immediately thought of him when they read this post are definitely not off-base.
Is Hotel Concierge The Last Psychiatrist? (Also lol at how meaningless that sequence of words is out of context.) I had read they were different people (although obviously with a similar style, my understanding was that TLP had influenced HC).
Oh interesting! I do not know for certain that they are the same person - I had read somewhere (don't remember where) that they were the same person and just assumed it to be true based on the similar style.
Also I don't think the resemblance is all that close...HC is much more direct and lucid than TLP ever was (including in his book, to judge from reviews).
Hotel concierge has appreciably less directly-insulting-the-reader than TLP ever did, which convinces me they're completely separate people (and I *liked* TLP, I just knew how many scoopfuls of salt I had to take him with)
Wow I think that explains the problems I've had getting my wife to anything other than Accept Them For Who They Are when our kids are going through mental problems
Huh, is this the next recurrence of Nietzsche's master-slave morality? I had never thought about it in those terms before, but the post and your comment reminded me of it.
I'm not smart enough to fully parse On the Genealogy of Morality and make the argument myself. But maybe someone else has.
It’s absolutely true that the ideas in that book — master morality vs slave morality, + ressentiment — are a very useful lens through which to understand today’s IdPol/SocJus movements. I’d argue in fact a definitive lens.
Definitely. It's something a friend and I were discussing a few months back - although I too don't feel well read enough in Nietzsche to explore the nuance of it. One to read I think!
This whole thought partly came to me while I was doing a "mental health first aid" course (very much of my volition).
In one exercise we were asked to rank what was positive language to use and negative language to discuss people with mental illness. Most of it was really easy like "he's on happy pills" being seen in the inappropriate category. I was pretty sure that the word "victim" was another word to avoid. That's very much what the host thought.
However a trainee HR person on the course with me had put it in the positive column. When asked about this she said "but being a victim is good right?" She did not strike me as especially brilliant which made it all the more chilling.
Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have made some interesting insights into that cultural shift. I found the different kinds of moral cultures particularly illuminating.
Yeah, that was four years ago, and victimhood culture hadn't permeated the mainstream as much yet, which is why they mostly talk about it in relation to college campuses, but it explains a lot. I tend to agree that wokeness (or whatever we're supposed to call it) really does represent a substantially new moral framework.
I was just thinking this. People who are privileged, happy, and well-adjusted are the new evil. Sometimes I think the goal of woke culture is to make everyone equally miserable instead of lifting everyone up so they can be equally happy. Look at the focus on incompetence that is currently in vogue. Don't meet standards, don't try to build competence. Instead, force the system to accomodate your incompetence. Won't end well, that's for sure.
Agreed. I like "scene" and I will shift my internal narrative to use this term. It's good and provides some needed clarity.
And, yes. How much of the current mental stress is being caused by "not having your boots in the mud?" How invigorating and satisfying is it actually achieve concrete outcomes? Most of what is happening online is akin to mental masturbation—emotionally satisfying but it achieves nothing in meat space—where actual change is needed.
Perhaps younger generations are exchanging posturing and being seen for getting things done. And why wouldn't they. The internet is a siren song calling them to spend their lives glued to a screen where nothing of true value can be accomplished—unless you are a web dev like me ;-). And not everyone can push pixels for cash.
Yes and among the upper middle classes a lot of it started in childhood. I have teenagers now but starting when they were in preschool, the race for the "right" diagnosis was everywhere. "My 4yr old has anxiety so I have to stay with him all day at school and he needs to bring four stuffed animals and a lego castle for comfort." "Sammy has visual processing disorder so he needs extra time on tests," "Katy just can't control her tantrums, she has ODD, it isn't her fault." My friend, who is a former preschool teacher, told me that at one point she had 20% of her class with some kind of ASD diagnosis and another 20% with ADHD.
So when you're little and your diagnosis makes you special, why not compound that as you grow?
I see this a lot with work. Maybe it's not mental health or burnout or a toxic environment or not being seen or systemic ____ism. Maybe work kinda sucks, and we should try to improve that
If we can try and pre-emptively move the discourse away from "the kids fucked everything up" that would be great. Not that Freddie is saying that, the reddit post maybe a little, and the general impulse of commenters in general to turn the comment section into a list of anecdotes.
Because really its a backlash right? We (my generation, people in their 30s now) all grew up around adults who famously were not taught how to process their feelings or do basic maintenance on their emotional processes and it was not a fun time. Probably most of those people don't meet the standard for mentally ill, but we have yet invent a set of guidelines for taking care of your mental health and expressing your emotional weaknesses that falls short of diagnosable event. So the kids who don't want to grow up like their parents bottling everything up claim perpetual diagnosable events.
I guess back in the day this is what going to Church was supposed to be for. You could talk about your problems in small-group, if things were really bad you could confess your worries to a pastor and get some guidance, some community support, some prayer. But the flipside of that was a lot of moral hypocrisy and arbitrary ostracization, plus you had to get up early on Sunday. So that's gone, now everyone is seeking communal support systems and the only way they know to ask for them is by claiming to be bi-polar, whether they are or not. I don't have a good solution to this.
Edit: I think I meant this comment for someone else but I can’t now figure out who I meant to respond to so I’ll leave it here.
I don’t actually believe the glamorization of mental illness is a new thing, I just think it’s effective in a new way and has a new manifestation thanks to the internet. I was a teenager in the 1990s and certainly back then Sylvia Plath and Angelina Jolie in the movie Girl, Interrupted, both served as a sort of ideal girl for a lot of women my age. Heck, the entire Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope is not a little bit tinged with a hint of mental instability. One reason for this is that a lot of artists suffer from mental illness and are also cool geniuses and so of course young people are drawn to them. Another is that being an adolescent IS sort of akin in an oblique way to mental illness (I really hope that’s not offensive to say) because for a finite period of time your hormones and brain chemistry are in flux, you feel completely misunderstood and like you see things differently from everyone else, and so I think it’s normal to idolize and imitate people who you see manifesting that feeling in a way that seems, well, cool. And lastly a lot of people have mental illnesses and it’s still really hard to cope with and so seeing positive portrayals that make you feel special, important or just basically worthy and valid (in the parlance of our times) can be very comforting. I’m not sure the internet really did much besides put this already existing phenomenon on steroids.
I think You make a good point. Yeah, internet put it on steroids and everything else You wrote.
Most everybody hated our parents to some extent or another. Most grow outta it. Find their parents, most-a them, have faults and good attributes. At a certain age, that doesn't have much-a any effect on the kid. They live their own life, unencumbered by all that drama. I went through a phase of ACOA. Moved on. Grew up.
Obesity, grip strength - the list of maladies is very long and speaks very poorly of the society that's not only let it happen but called you a fascist if you resisted it.
That is a good point. In the US at least we have such an atomized society with minimal social support. Professional mental health care cannot fill the void but that is all there is, at least for the non-religiously affiliated. There used to be all of those bowling leagues, elks/shriners/masons/VFW, women's societies, and so forth, ways to be connected to people. Now if it requires serious-diagnosis-X to have someone to talk to, it isn't surprising everyone wants one.
Yup. My own breakdown occurred because I am living in a foreign country with virtually no social connections and where I do not speak the language. What would have been an unpleasant situation at home around familiar people became a full blown mental breakdown. Many young people, I believe, live isolated, as strangers, in their own “communities”.
ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
I'll do You a favor, M. Kamateur, if You do me one. I won't say "the kids fucked everything up," if You'll try not to write off what I say as a bunch of BS because I'm 67. But, as You'll see, it doesn't matter to me if You write me off or not. I'm easy.
Obviously, I dunno what You, individually, or Your generation(s) went through.
What I can state for a FACT is that all parents are screwups. Granted, I'm not a parent, so mebbe that disqualifies me to some. Buy MY parents. Never showed emotions. Any. Now my particular case was extreme. But the stupid Boomers? (Me mebbe foremost. ;)
We were raised by THE GREATEST GENERATION. They went through the Depression. Great Recession? They would-a handled that over a weekend. Then they took on one-a the worst evils of ALL time, the first truly global war. And aced the exam with flying colors. From what I've heard, I think my experience was pretty typical. The Greatest Generation never even TALKED about the war. They were a truly class act. And I think most-a us boomers knew we couldn't possibly live up to their standards. Had SOME character, but not like them.
I'll sum it all up by saying The Greatest Generation was.. uh.. Not overly emotional, if at all. Dad's weren't EXPECTED to have any deep connections in those days. They just struggled to pay the bills. Pretty much like everybody in every generation. Like everything, they didn't make a big deal outta it.
To put a nail in it, my Mom was an alcoholic when I went through puberty, and I lived in a Matriarchal household with two Sisters when the Second Wave of feminism came rumbling through.
I'll skip the story of my mental issues. Just to say I've been on meds for 45 years. I'm unbelievably lucky that I do more than survive now.
POINT, You wonder? ALL parents suck. ALL lives have a great deal of suckness in them. If You get technical about it, Buddha said that ALL life IS suffering, because we suffer the ailment of having desires. That's above my pay grade. In any event, recommend meditating, tho I was always a lousy meditator myself. "Do as I say.." and all that.
Finally, a word to the wise. Keep in mind, I never HEARD-a the Stoics until a year or two ago. HARD discipline to learn.
Epictetus:
Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.
I dunno anything about outer effectiveness. But inner tranquility is a nice side-effect.
What somebody else things about me? OUTTA MY CONTROL. Don't ignore. I process it, try to learn. But what somebody else THINKS about me? Doesn't effect who I am to myself. Not my concern. And a whole host of symptoms disappear.
Eventually.
Thank You.
[Edit: Arrgh. ALWAYS mistakes. M. DeBoer. One-a Your best. Nice catch on the Reddit, OUTSTANDING essay on ALL points. If I COULD-a found something to disagree with, which I didn't, I wouldn'a anyway, It was THAT good. TYTY.]
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This works pretty well for me.
It's even more our generation's fault because we built the social networks that these kids are now growing up in. The re-creation of social situations and support systems not based on "likes" may not be a solution, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
I don't think you even needed church. You needed a civic and social life of some kind, and yes, realistically church would be in the mix for most people, but in general the social bonds that held America together - for both good and ill! - from the fraternal organizations to service clubs to bowling leagues have been eroding for decades. For people in the lowest economic strata, they are almost entirely gone. (See "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray.) And for the young, other than things organized by school or church, they're again eroding very quickly.
If the kids are indeed fucking everything up, it's because they're growing up in a social and cultural void, one which adults have largely abdicated. There's no "there" for a lot of kids - especially poorer kids - to go to that isn't school. Richer kids are, on the other hand, funneled through schools and colleges that if anything are oversocialized, but that's a whole other post that I won't go into.
Essentially, this country - really an open-air shopping mall rather than a country, if we're being honest - has long since given up even the pretense of a shared, communal experience, a shared conception of the good, of anything resembling a virtuous life and a nurturing civilization. Inasmuch as this exists at a local level, it's only for the rich and highly-educated. At the other levels there is nothing. And in the absence of virtue there is victory through oppression. No wonder the kids are the way they are. It's the fault of those who came before them for setting up such a horrific husk of a society.
This is apt. I found a way to stay connected to a community by owning my own business. I network and socialize through business networking groups like chambers, women's groups, rotary and things like that. There are norms that you must abide by in the business community that set healthy boundaries and business goals that keep you focused and creative.
I think having goals is very important for keeping us centered. It gives us purpose and ascribes meaning to our choices. If societal fragmentation is making it less likely for people to find something that grounds them, then it's time to get creative and find new ways to achieve this. No generation has ever had more powerful tools at their disposal. I think what they need is someone to challenge them to greatness.
The people with the time, inclination, resources, and derring-do needed to blaze a trail in our fragmented world are disproportionately wealthy and educated already - the ones with the least need of it. (Not to say they don't have need of it, but they probably already have professional and familial fulfillment; certainly they're far more likely to than people with lower education and income.)
I recommended it in my post and I'll do so again: "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray is absolutely required reading here. The people most in need of a solid society, a solid civilization, a solid neighborhood, a solid role to play, have been left to their own devices and by and large have been unable to provide for themselves. You are 100% right that we need to think creatively to get around this issue because received wisdom ain't cutting it.
I wonder how much not taking responsibility for or feeling you are in control of your own life plays into mental health issues? If you feel that you are trapped and can't enact change in your own life, that must be stressful. Especially if you feel that your life is supposed to be handed to you.
I've never had the problem because my tribe ousted me early on and I quickly learned that if I wanted anything, I was going to have to achieve it myself. I literally had to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I suppose it helps that I am driven and very creative. Not everyone is although I think creative thinking is a technique that can be honed.
Still, why don't we emphasize risk-taking? Isn't creating something new the best way to work around systemic obstacles? Why complain the system is broken? Because it doesn't hand you an easy ride? Screw the system. Create your own way forward and ignore or work around the obstacles. There is nothing so powerful as focused human will. We should be teaching our kids how to exercise theirs for more than just political causes.
Third Place is the concept you’re describing (see also Bowling Alone). They are going away because Third Places tend to not be profit-driven, and thus are squeezed out in an unrestrained capitalist socioeconomic order.
A huge number of third-places are non-profit and non-commercial. Come to think of it, all but one of the voluntary/extracurricular groups I'm involved in is non-profit and non-commercial, and in the vast majority of those cases there's no paid employees or stipends at all, only expenses. That's not to say there aren't commercial concerns around rent, dues etc. but there just isn't a profit motive on the part of the people running them.
Howard Kunstler's excellent book-length screed against the automobile "The Geography of Nowhere" also astutely ascribes part of the death of the Third Place to, well, automobiles. If your twice-daily commute involves 45 minutes on a suburban highway, you're not going to pop in to the local pub or barbershop on the way home the same way someone who walks or takes a trolley in a denser environment might.
Inasmuch as capitalism is to blame, the geographical atomization is surely part of the problem. But it's only part of the problem. The leafy suburbs, as I mentioned, do have an active civic life, as long as the population is rich and educated enough to sustain it. Crowded inner cities, by and large, do not.
I hate to break it to you but the era of the decrepit inner city surrounded by a prosperous suburb died a few decades ago. Supercharged urban development has been pushing poverty into outlying suburbs for quite some time.
You don't hate to break it to me; you type with a joyless smirk.
I can tell you in my metro area it's very much alive and well, and the poorer the neighborhood, the greater its density, with only a few exceptions - regenerated urban neighborhoods populated by young professionals. Here the shotgun house neighborhoods and projects are cheek-by-jowl and the suburbs are wide open. I'm not going to risk self-outing by saying what metro area it is except to say it's top 25.
I guess I'm an absolute weirdo that is glad I'm able to self-determine my own role, find my own groups, and is so glad that church is a thing of the past.
I moved a lot in my 20s and 30s and was always able to meet people through meetup, facebook groups, hobby groups, and work connections. And I'm a weirdo introvert. I guess I'm invalidating you, but it really is possible to connect with people. (There is also volunteering, which is great for lots of people; join a political campaign in the right season - just so many opportunities to stay connected!).
I couldn't agree more although I also see the atomization of culture and community that others have posted about. Not sure why people can't create connection for themselves, if this is indeed the problem. I have always been like you - going out and building what bridges I needed. Except that I'm an extrovert. So, you get extra points because it was harder for you. For me, it's like breathing. LOL!
I don't remember who did the song. "People who love people... Are the LUCKIEST people of all!" I thin' that's close. I always had envy, couldn't grasp the notion. But eventually found my way despite being blind.
I'm also an introvert, almost comically so. I can happily go weeks if not months talking only to my family and the people at my local butcher and store. And I grew up in a church - very glad that that particular church is gone.
But this doesn't invalidate what I said. For every one like you and me there are twenty more who either need the connections but can't find them, or have the wrong connections. I believe the data bears this out. Happiness is in freefall. Life expectancy is dropping. Indicators of an active civic life - which, yes, include church membership - have already cratered everywhere except wealthy, well-educated areas.
And let's not even restrict it to organizations like churches, fraternal groups etc. Let's make it one step simpler. Let's say an average American needs either someone to feed their pets for the weekend, pick them up from the airport, or even just sign for a package. Do you think the percentage of people who could achieve that right now is higher or lower than it used to be? I will say without a picosecond's hesitation that it's lower.
I didn't grow up in the US but from talking to Americans they share this experience: growing up I knew *every family* on my street. I knew which house they lived in. I knew in most cases, what the inside of that house looked like (and smelled like!) Did this have its negatives? Certainly. The fishwife archetype is real - and not restricted to women, either. The lace-curtain-twitching gossip and judgement and intrigue is corrosive. But by banishing it, I think we've lost a lot more than we bargained for.
This, more than simple self-determination, is what I'm talking about. There are dangers in rigid, the-walls-have-ears societies, absolutely. They are bad for nonconformists. They can be stultifying. I don't deny this at all. But they also offer preset roles and groups, and what we've seen absolutely undeniably over the past three quarters of a century is that most people simply need these because the lower down the scales of intelligence, wealth, and education you go, the less likely people are to find their own productive, happy, family-building role. Again, "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray explains this better than I could.
tl;dr: self-determination is missing the point because those who determine themselves are outliers and those most needing determination are those least apt in our society to achieve it, and for all that rigid social roles and moral guidance from society have their drawbacks, they are far better than what we have now.
Very insightful. Your comments often make me think. Thanks for that.
I am definitely a non-conformist and hated Mrs. Grundy and her lace curtains and loved the free-love movement in the 60s. But, even I have to admit your assertions have a grain of truth and the push by the left to weaken all of these structures has left a mess in its wake.
Some people appear to need structure more than others. I would that we could create a social order that allows for at least some non-conformity so that non-conformists don't have to forever be pariah. Perhaps a tolerant stance toward us oddballs could be encouraged. The mavericks in any society keep things fresh and prevent it from becoming moribund. I think both structure and fresh ideas are needed. The key is the proportion possibly.
Thank you! This is one of a tiny number - less than five - of internet places I post on, because the standard of conversation here is high and people are willing to listen and engage to those with whom they disagree.
You have the crux of my point exactly right: some people need structure more than others. My further contention is that those who need it most are those who are also given it the least. Our society, further, is governed by elites. These elites can do two things simultaneously: they can take risks and stand out from the herd, while also knowing when and when it's not safe to dissent. That is, they can be non-conformist in some ways while conforming in others. (During the Trump presidency, this manifested itself in the #resistance.) A lot of these elites are also - and let's not beat around the bush here - embittered nerds, incorrigible perverts, or women, who tend to be blessed with a surfeit of empathy. They are going to gravitate towards society's underdog. And, bringing it back to the article, is there any bigger underdog than someone with six mental illness badges arrayed across their chest like war medals?
Precisely as you say, we need a structured society - and a structured approach to mental health, one built on reality and not on airy-fairy notions of 'recovery' and hashtags - but one with enough room to breathe. One where people can step out of line now and again. And - again, exactly as you say - one to stop society from choking on its own orthodoxy.
The problem is that we have the worst of both worlds. The people who run this country have as rigid a moral view as anyone who ever lived. It just so happens to glorify terrible behavior (see: the entire state of California) and reject any values that might work to improve the lot of a people long since pummeled into drugs and an early grave by the apathy of a society that's been on casual Friday protocol since fucking Woodstock.
Again, insightful comments by both-a You. Going back above, You said M. Adblock: "I believe the data bears this out. Happiness is in freefall. Life expectancy is dropping. Indicators of an active civic life - which, yes, include church membership - have already cratered everywhere except wealthy, well-educated areas."
I think that's cause and effect. Active civic life, active family life, active personal life. I think this is what makes a lotta people wealthy and well-educated. The elites are trained up to it from birth. The rest-a us hafta learn the hard Way. Some, like You all say, mainly the non-conformists, manage to learn.
When face-to-face became a learned life-skill?
Me? Still learning. I'm uber-introvert that went years mostly alone. Them were dark daze.
Yes. The left is proving just as rigid of the old and parts of the current right. That said, you are generalizing rather prolifically; or simply being cynical. I can't decide.
Some relaxation of the rules was necessary in the 60s and 70s. I think things were TOO bound up in propriety before this. Perhaps you could argue it has gone too far. But, I like that things are less formal - particularly sartorially. I'd like to see hair make a come back.
We can still be moral people without all of the stricture and etiquette - which takes much time away from other, more desirable pursuits. Imho.
To be fair, “moral hypocrisy and arbitrary ostracization” is a big part of the counter culture right now as well.
I do agree that most of this is a natural correction to past cultural deficiencies. However that doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as overcorrection and I do think we may be entering that territory. The thing isn’t to complain about kids these days AT ALL, it’s to give people of all ages the best chance of living a functioning and fulfilling life and I genuinely and deeply believe internet culture around MI is greatly hindering that.
I was going to write something along these lines but you said it better. I think that finding a way to inculcate resilience while at the same time addressing MI in a healthy manner is probably the best balance. If our generation has set an expectation that life should never be painful, that is unrealistic and it's not helping our younger generations at all.
Well, then maybe not make it the older generations fault either. Life was tougher back then, and to a certain extent, that emotional toughness got people through things. Additionally, there was much less information about emotions back then. You are lucky that so many in the older generation worked to bring you new information about emotions and social interactions. Where do you think that knowledge and education came from?
Besides, part of adulthood is taking responsibility for things that aren't your fault, not continuing to try to pin blame on who's fault "it really is."
My parents were shit. I still had to take responsibility for my life so I wasn't miserable. I can't help them or change them. If I had stayed in a place where I wrote essays for the rest of my life saying why its their fault, I'd never had changed.
Which is all to say: no one ever takes the advice that they need. Maybe older generations do need to grow emotionally; but maybe younger generations need to be accountable for adulting.
To me? All the Way around it's not to anyone's benefit to even try to DETERMINE "fault."
If it's something You can do something about, then DO! If not, accept. Ya know? JFK? The one about "and having the wisdom to know the difference."
If Ya wanna get technical about it, the only thing You CAN actual change is You, Yourself. Hard, but luckily nobody can FORCE You to change either, so there is that.
So, my comment unintentionally kicked off a generational-divide conversation which was not what I was intending. My point wasn't that older generations suck, please calm down. It was that each generation has its own way of coping with things. I don't honestly think past generations did a great job, but more importantly they just dealt with things differently. Even if millennials and zoomers wanted to go back to those strategies, they are gone. Church is gone. Society doesn't reward stoicism, which is why even most presidential candidates parade around like cartoon characters. We have to figure out new internet-adaptive ways of doing things. We probably won't though. We'll collectively fail and then our kids will hate us and the cycle will continue.
I would love for stoicism to come back. I'm tired of everyone always talking about their feelings. Sure, talking things out can help and maybe it does in most cases, but talking about feelings ad nauseam does not help. My grandmother used to use a saying that doesn't translate well into English but essentially said one's lot in life is to bear and to withstand. It's all a pendulum and now it's swung too far in one direction.
Yeah, I think, Kamateur, I agree with much of your original comment. Late 30s here. The generation that raised me were often raised by people themselves seriously scarred by World War and The Depression, and emotional expressiveness and extensive introspection was pretty low on the list of traits valued in those situations, for good and ill.
I do think the pendulum has swung too far towards florid, neo Byronic, Romantic self realization; perhaps we need a little 18th century neoclassicism and emotional continence in our collective lives. Interestingly, the 18th century, which I study, considered restraint manly, and losing one's temper more an effeminate characteristic, while many of the working class 20 yr old truck guys I know/teach act as though aggression and weird displaced anger towards little old ladies in Volvos is manly, and restraint is effeminate.
I just reread Your previous post. I'm sure You didn't intend to kick off a generational divide. Part of being an adult is not kicking off things You didn't intend. WHen You say "society doesn't reward stoicism," You're generation is part-a society. What You reward or don't reward is a choice. Mebbe all generations should make a different choice. Instead-a everybody slobbering over billionaires and sexy bodies, the value something deeper. Like stoicism.
Generations don't make choices. Individuals do. And one thing ANYbody can do is not wrap their lives and their identities around the internet. I think anybody who made the attempt, would find non-internet-adaptive ways of doing things.
Like go outta Your way, and do something for someone else. Cures most all ailments. For someone else, not for any social status or money or anything. Just for helping out someone who could use it. Known cure-all.
I'm not sure what you mean about adults famously not processing their feelings, is that a thing? That's probably partially true for many over 40; but a) I hardly think that is something unique to Xers or Boomers, and b) you're implying that NOT being overly vocal about ones own feelings is somehow unhealthy.
The reddit article wasn't about not being able to talk about your feelings (which every generation does but perhaps in different ways), rather it was about not only blowing things out of proportion, but also thinking those things somehow need to be publicly validated to the nth degree. The first one is a matter of degrees, the second a matter of...well I don't know what you would call that. Vice signaling? No one needs to wear their problems emblazoned across their chest in order to be validated as a person. It's perfectly normal (and I would argue much better) to keep your personal business personal. And you don't just need a church for talking about it. There are hundreds of ways to come to terms with your inner demons that don't involve announcing it to the world, and many of those can also be done via the internet...yet still be somewhat private: chat rooms, mental health forums, one-on-one counseling, etc.
The article was also about having a bare minimum of personal accountability in the mix at least somewhere. Those three things together I think is what the author is talking about. He or she is lamenting the fact that, for whatever reason, a lot of people in younger generations tend to 1) inflate mental issues, 2) think those issues should be front and center of their public identity - whatever that is, and 3) seem to be unusually unwilling to hold themselves accountable for any of it.
Personally I would agree with the authors first two premises. The third somewhat agree...but I just don't think it's that simple. It's always important to own it. But dwelling too much on the blame leads to regret, and regret has a funny way of handicapping you for years or even decades.
I agree with the need for personal accountability, believe me. I think that's the most important part of the post.
That said, I also think pretty much everyone needs more help than they are getting from their community. These "not-actually-schizoid" people are still struggling in ways that could probably be addressed better The problem is we don't have an easy societal construct for being an essentially functional human being who still feels a lot of psychic pain or discomfort. Basically as long as you are productive under capitalism people assume you are fine.
And that's hard in a weird way people don't talk much about! I'm by any objective measure a successful, hard-working person, and consequently any issues of loneliness or despair I feel? Pretty invisible. Even when I mention them they're invisible, because people just don't generally have the bandwidth for stuff like that, its a triage system here in America in terms of empathy and compassion. So I've stared down the paradox of knowing that if anyone else was really going to give me any kind of attention or support, I would first have to have a public breakdown of the sort that would throw my entire life out of balance and make people seriously concerned for my well-being. And I'm not gonna do that, but I sympathize with people who are struggling even a little more who are tempted to go that route.
There appear to be plenty of good studies proving an increase in mental health diagnosis of young people. If I remember correct it is skewed toward female and those that claim to be left of liberal.
My natural father was/is paranoid and slightly schizophrenic. It hit him in his 20s and he was homeless for 40 years because of it.
However, I have a 20-something nephew that started having psychotic episodes. In his case his parents and I are absolutely certain that his problems are at least exacerbated by his excessive cannabis consumption. Other young men I know have similar issues.
And now we have a critical theory fake scholarship mythology that rejects objective truth, science and history. And Zuckerberg wants us all to live in the Metaverse.
Seems to be that there are multiple reasons we are seeing more mental health challenges in people. Ironic that in my early computer career we talked about too much CRT time causing brain problems.
I was appalled by how often and casually the recent former Slate Dear Prudence (Ortberg) counseled people to cut off their families and loved ones over perceived failures to validate woke-identity-x.
So like KT I am completely cut off and estranged from my family of origin. I have not seen or spoken to them in 12 years. They’ve never met if acknowledged one of my children and the first only as a baby. I don’t have the same feeling about it as them though. I do acknowledge that it was necessary but being better than the alternative is a very low bar. It’s incredibly painful to live this way and to use a cliche, it really does feel like a wound that never heals and never gets closure. It’s like having a family who is dead but they aren’t dead. There was no publicly acceptable way to mourn, no ritual to mark the beginning of a life alone without parents or siblings. Because if this I think the the wanton counseling to cut off family members is often harmful unless there is truly no hope in reconciliation. Only the people involved know that for sure and must do what they need to. But I don’t feel like it’s compassionate to tell people that life without a family, even as an adult, is some kind of happy solution.
I get you and yes, it is painful - at least at first. But, sometimes, separation is the only way to get clear on your own values and priorities if they deviate from your family's norms. You can lose yourself in your family's beliefs or prejudices. If I had stayed, I would have been bullied and subsumed (made invisible). By leaving, I was able to create a "self" that I am happy with. Yes, it cost me much in suffering - I wanted to belong to a family as much as the next person. I wanted to be nurtured and valued. But, it was worth it because I like who I am and the life that I have created. I have become myself.
And recently, miracle of miracles, one of my abusers actually admitted to the abuse because he was so floored by what I've been able to create and the success I've been able to achieve in spite of not having family support. So, in my case, it was a happy solution. In fact, years ago, in therapy, one of my shrinks suggested that I divorce my family and I thought he was crazy. But, I see the wisdom in that choice now.
Sometimes our families are stuck in a belief system that requires us to be smaller than who we really are if we want to stay connected. Sometimes leaving is healthy. I don't know if it's always the best solution. But, I strongly believe that if something is in the way of you self-actualizing, you have to move beyond it. YMMV.
I want to be really clear. My comment is specifically about the way advice-givers on the internet, whether in advice columns or forums like Reddit are often very quick to encourage people to cut off their families with very little information to go on. I had in mind a very specific internet board I used to frequent. I certainly understand, in a very real way, why some people make that decision or why a mental health professional with knowledge of their patient would give that advice.
Like a lot of people here I've been on the web since almost the start; this was (now that I look back on it) a startlingly common recommendation even when virtually the entire internet was white guys in the US or northern Europe or the antipodes. "Sever" was a word of choice for many years about relationships; "ATD" remains earthily vindictive to this day. That it's extended to the nuclear family over time is inevitable.
And yes, it absolutely makes sense why some people - including some in this very comment page - would do it. It also makes sense why perfect strangers a thousand miles away can fire off such life-changing commands so airily - there's no consequence for those who issue the edicts.
I wonder how much the apparently increasing professional leniency as to what constitutes mental illness might contribute.
I have been formally diagnosed with autism. I am a mostly pretty normal adult who owns her own house, holds down a well-paying job, and takes care of her family/friends. My autism is confined to clumsiness, chronically missing social cues, and an intense sensitivity to certain stimuli. I worked as a nanny throughout college, and one of the boys I took care of was also autistic. His autism manifested as an inability to learn language, almost no control of fine motor skills, and mental retardation. Giving these conditions the same name just seems...wrong.
Turning it into an identity then allows people to 'steal' the agony of the more-afflicted. It's no different than a woman who's been in the US her whole life claiming oppression because little girls are sold into marriage in other countries, or a wealthy Indian immigrant claiming oppression because Africans were enslaved in the US in the past. Mental illness is crippling at its extremes, and when "I get a little nervous in crowds" and "I haven't left my house in twelve years because I'm afraid I'll get trampled" are given the same name, it invites exaggeration.
Not to mention that an official diagnosis is highly stigmatizing and can really limit what you can do in life. I don't get the criticism of self-diagnosis. Read the DSM, see if you fit the criteria. It's not rocket science.
Web-MDing your way to mental health is not going to get it done. That's part of the problem is self-diagnosing and then thinking that you don't need medical/mental health services. It's like the old adage, If you're asking yourself if you're crazy then you're not crazy. There are a lot of people out there looking for reasons and excuses which makes it harder to get the help for those who truly need it.
It's a complicated thing this mental health stuff. I ask myself all sorts of troubling questions and scenarios like "could I be a serial killer?" or "what happens if I drive off this bridge into the lake or off the mountain side" and then think something must be wrong because a normal person doesn't ask themselves those questions and then I have a cold beer and play with my kids. So I'm not sure what to think.
The assumption being, of course, that if you are a privileged white person, you have no real or legitimate problems. It's a type of erasure; a type of dehumanization.
Actually, I misread your comment. That said, I'm tired of all of the dehumanization going on on any and all sides. I want a return of the benefit of the doubt. Society is just more pleasant when we apply this "golden rule" to human relations. Can we just get back to seeing each other as "well meaning?" Or, has the internet destroyed this forever?
Libby Watson wrote of this issue very well (vis a vis all those telehealth pill mills that have been advertising across social media lately) in a recent post on her "Sick Note" health care blog:
"To have an easy time getting healthcare in America, you need to have two things: A lot of money, and good health. You don’t have to be poor to struggle to access care. If you make, say, $40,000 a year and live in an expensive city, you’re not necessarily in poverty, but you’re also probably not making ends meet with any sort of comfort. You’re likelier to have high-deductible health insurance that makes it hard to go see the doctor, let alone find one who has time to care about you. If you strike out at one doctor, it could be another few hundred to see the next one, and the next, and the next. When it comes to finding a psychiatrist in-network, forget about it. You’d have an easier time finding an old dine-in Pizza Hut with the good cups."
Also, I have multiple professional diagnoses that come to wildly different conclusions and seem to mostly be bullshit. It's surprising how many mental health professionals (even highly qualified ones by any conventional metric) seem to have no idea what they're doing when dealing with actual patients and are super reckless with prescriptions etc.
The main conclusion I've come to over the past 24 months is that most people who speak authoritatively about medical matters are completely and totally full of shit, and if I have a physical malady, unless the person diagnosing me is a picture of glowing, physical health, they're probably wrong.
This intersects with mental health in that the people whom I see pontificating on matters of the mind online - for I have no need to seek them out in person (and there but for the grace of God goeth I)*, this is where I see them - are by and large colossal fuck-ups with awful, grating, wild-eyed personality flaws.
*This is why I appreciate this article of Freddie's so much. There are people hurting and seeking guidance in the place they are - the Internet. The people they find to guide them range from the benign to the well-meaning-but-misguided to the actively demonic. In few cases is their advice efficacious; when it is, it's probably politically incorrect.
"unless the person diagnosing me is a picture of glowing, physical health, they're probably wrong."
I have had almost the opposite experience. People in great health are often in great health due mostly to luck, whether through good genes or other positive breaks of circumstance. It creates little provocation for them to really dig in and understand the tricky parts.
Certainly, there are people in great health who have much to add; I'm not trying to deny that in any way. But it has been my experience that people who have experienced affliction themselves, or whose loved ones have, are the most truly knowledgeable. Necessarily, such people have more cause to become well-acquainted with the details of the thing. Suffering, when it doesn't prevent action, tends to be extremely motivating.
It also waters mental illness down for people who actually have it. Every extra person who claims to have crippling anxiety because they get a little nervous on airplanes is making it harder for the people who actually need to manage panic disorder, for example. "I was sad one time so I have depression" cheapens it for those of us who haven't cleaned the house in months.
I have fairly moderate anxiety and depression, but they're not things I'm proud of, they're irritating problems that interfere with my life that I wish would go away, much like my acid reflux. If you don't make GERD or hemorrhoids or high blood pressure part of your identity, why would you do that with mental illness? "Hi, I'm Maddox, they/them, and I need extra time on this test because of my massive hemorrhoids. I mean, they hang like bunches of grapes, they're so bad. Anyway, kindly validate my itchiness or I'm going to tweet."
Well, agony itself isn't really the valuable thing -- the perceived value, I think, is in others' reactions to it: sympathy, understanding, attention, etc. Those are obviously valuable, at times, to almost all of us. The disturbing thing is that appropriated agony is seen as a good or acceptable way to get those things.
Wait, what is the mechanism whereby you think those using the watered-down definition is making it harder for those with a "real" disorder? I actually think the opposite, that using the watered-down definition helps to fight stigma, because it recognizes mental illness as just the extreme parts of a spectrum everyone is on. So, I don't have diagnosable OCD just because I like to alphabetize my spices, but the person who alphabetizes their spices is in fact more compulsive than most, and everyone is at some more or less "normal" part of that spectrum of compulsivity.
Same thing with autism. The person who identifies as autistic despite having pretty mild "symptoms" isn't taking anything away from a severely autistic person. They're just at different points on the spectrum.
I think it's unhelpful because if mental health disorders are a deviation from what is "average" (in the absence of some sort of physically identifiable cause), then, when everyone has a mental disorder, no one does. I think it makes it more likely that people won't take an actual mental illness, one that has a negative impact on your life and not one that just makes you update your Twitter bio, seriously. Because if you flubbed your lines in a play and now you're "traumatized", people think "that's not trauma, that's just ridiculous". But actual trauma exists: like for people who are abused or participate in combat. My fear is that, over time, as more people claim and even champion mental illness labels that they shouldn't, people will become desensitized and take those labels less seriously. I agree with Freddie in that I don't like to question or police people's diagnoses, but in the absence of any kind of checks or balances, people can claim any illness they want, especially when they're socially incentivized to do so. It feels like the pendulum swung too far past "acceptance" and into "ruthlessly unquestioning" territory.
Of course, I don't have any kind of surveys or something to back this up. It could very well be a just-so story. But, anecdotally, I'm sorry to say that I know several people whom I secretly suspect of manufacturing all kinds of labels like this for themselves, who speak the victimhood language of the left, who are incentivized and socially pressured by their friends and institutions to adopt illnesses and identities that they don't perhaps don't actually have. So now, when someone tells me they have anxiety, a part of me thinks: "Do you really?" Which is horrible! But what else do you expect when the current milieu prioritizes and celebrates things like mental health issues?
"People can claim any illness they want, especially when they're socially incentivized to do so."
I think the problem there is not those who self-diagnose, but rather the social incentives for people to portray themselves as the victim. The point you are making is that some people truly need support and help ("reasonable accommodation" if you will) and others do not, but there certainly isn't a perfect correlation between needing help and an Official Diagnosis. Lots of people have Official Diagnoses and are doing fine and don't need any particular accommodation, while lots of other people lack Official Diagnoses and still need support.
In answer to this, I appreciated what Freddie described in yesterday’s post, about people pointing to particularly ugly/harmful/unpalatable expressions of mental illness and saying, “That’s not what mental illness looks like”. I would agree that somebody taking Prozac for crappy-but-manageable depression is not taking anything away from someone with treatment-resistent major depressive order. I also agree that sometimes it helps reduce stigma.
But I think maybe an example of the watered-down definition making it harder for people is something I’ve observed when people talk online about incels. Most profiles on the community agree a disproportionate number of them are somewhere on the autism spectrum, and they characterize their own community that way, too. Whatever their other issues, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say that some of the possible expressions of autism, including a tendency toward black-and-white thinking, trouble with social cues, and less ability to emotionally stand in other people’s shoes, might be contributing factors to the attraction of that ingroup for those people, and their behavior once inside it.
But people constantly say it’s as good as excusing their beliefs and behavior to point out that a diagnosable condition might be a contributing factor in their feelings of isolation, social confusion, and anger. And you definitely see people whose autism does not affect their daily life in that way saying, “I have autism, and I’m not spouting misogynistic rhetoric or treating women like my enemies. Therefore that’s definitively not autism, it’s just them being horrible, unlikeable people.“ 
So, while I don’t think anyone on the mild end of the autism spectrum is stealing resources that could be better-used to help an incel function in society, or whatever, I do think there’s a danger of people on the “milder” end of the mental illness spectrum going too far in cutting off association with people on the more severe end, to the point that we won’t talk about mental illness as a real influence on harmful behavior.
An analogy might be the people who self-diagnose as having gluten sensitivities. Controlled experiments usually indicate that these people don't have any adverse reactions to gluten, but they've created a demand for gluten-free products that is really helpful for people who actually have celiac disease.
I’ve seen this called the “curb-cutter effect” - curb cuts in sidewalks are required by the ADA for people using mobility devices and people with visual impairments, but it turns out they’re safer and more convenient for able-bodied people with strollers and on bicycles, too.
As a technical point, your motivation for alphabetizing your spices is critical for understanding whether or not your behavior in this example is meaningfully on a spectrum with OCD. If you do it because it offers you brief relief from a repetitive dread that you know makes no sense but you can't stop thinking about, maybe it is subclinical OCD or what have you.
If, however, alphabetizing spices is very satisfying to you, even if you can't explain why, this is not meaningfully related to the experience of OCD and I would push back hard against the spectrum idea applying
"what is the mechanism whereby you think those using the watered-down definition is making it harder for those with a "real" disorder?"
I think there's a definite boy-who-cried-wolf effect, except instead of operating within one person, across time (the boy cried wolf to the town so many times that by the time he really saw a wolf, no one in the town believed him) it operates across persons (so many different boys pretended there were wolves that the townsfolk stopped believing them, so when the last truthful boy did indeed see a wolf, no one in the town believed him).
There's also a compassion-fatigue effect. There was a year in my life when I sank so much time and energy into a person who (in retrospect) was using helplessness to manipulate me that I was unable to give time and energy to a less-manipulative friend who needed me much more. It still angers me to think about.
I think this happens kind of a lot. After I saw it playing out with those two friends (and fixed my error), I suddenly started seeing it playing out all around me, across multiple social contexts. Once I watched a young nonbinary person leveraging their mental illness etc to recruit allies in a fight with an elderly man in poor physical health. I was briefly drawn in, and then appalled at myself once I cleared my head.
Tl;dr: I want to maximize my support of my honestly struggling friends. The most consistent way that I get fouled up is by incorrently sinking resources into a manipulator. I think I am currently doing my best to thread this needle, but damn it would be easier if there weren't such a current trend towards fashionable and performative illness.
People are always going to self-dramatize. But now there doesn’t seem to be a countervailing “oh get over it — others have it so much worse” narrative. Plus the “rugged American values” (I say that slightly tongue in cheek), self-reliance, grit, etc — well, there isn’t one that hasn’t been decried somewhere as either a) toxic masculinity or b) white supremacy. So the reigning liberal (usually affluent as FdB points out) narrative is unopposed in certain circles — and those circles are ideologically powerful.
It's difficult, for me, because I do think things like "oh, just get over it" are not, in and of themselves, helpful. But, and this applies not just to mental healthcare, you DO have to make an effort and take some responsibility to get better to actually get better. It isn't easy, but who else is going to make you seek help (without someone exercising some legal rights to do it by force, which is never pleasant)? I think there are compassionate ways to remind people that they have some agency in their lives.
I want a message more along the lines of: "This sucks, and it's not your fault, but you are the only one responsible for fixing it." It's like having a job you hate or that doesn't pay enough. Realistically, you have the most power to make changes in your life. Is it always easy or fair? No, not always, but that's moot if you just sit there.
Yes, that’s a fair point. In fact I’m having somewhat of a facepalm moment here. Of course I would never say, oh just get over it. However, it seems useful to me to impart the idea that you can, if not get over it, at least persevere. As opposed to imparting, “you’ve fallen and you can’t get up.” Maybe that expresses it better. In short I take your point.
No worries. Your reaction highlighted something useful. Difficult problems are difficult both for the people who have them and the people who would like to help the people who have them!
Years ago I was struggling emotionally and a friend (who had struggled herself) gave me a copy of Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” She said it had made a big difference to her. Out of anyone, because of what he overcame, he can describe the path he took and the conclusions he drew to get through adversity.
Motivational speakers are also great for this. They might not directly say “I did this, look what I got through, you can too” but that is the implication. Yes, encouragement to persevere.
I couldn’t grab on to the book but I appreciated her gift and knew it meant she had persevered and was overcoming.
Notoriously uncontroversial Amy Wax—aka America’s grandma—has talked about accidents of birth and circumstances with the analogy of someone having their leg broken by someone else. Even if it was purposeful, or unjust, or random, the only person who has the agency to get better is the person with the broken leg. Which is just true. I’d say that reasonable accommodations and compassion are important support structures, but only the person with the broken leg/mood disorder has any real ability to cause the recovery.
As a teacher we get accommodation letters for students with mental issues increasingly these days. The recommended solution is to give the person more time and not be strict abt deadlines. Sometimes 1/3 of the class is in this category and it is increasingly difficult to teach with any organization or structure. I don't know what to do so I accommodate but sometimes I feel like I could help in a different way, but I don't know what that would be and the office that issues the letters to accommodate isn't much help. I am sure many people who teach grapple with this.
Simple, just teach half a dozen boutique versions of each of your courses at the same time, oh, and don't forget to carve out time for your own mental health.
Not to sound like a downer but this is another indication that our public school system is on the way out unless it is seriously revamped. There have been failures on all sides and when parents are making excuses for their children (I know not always) that’s not fantastic for a struggling system.
I teach grad.school-- It used to be pretty much sink or swim..but we've ended GRE, undergrad scores are inflated so there isn't much of a filter. Most students are terrific but there are lots more requiring accommodations and to be truthful as a teacher I have pretty much had to figure out how to help people needing accommodations on my own. The bigger issue, I think, is that when the graduates hit the job market there are different requirements. You'd think that punctuality and showing up for work were no longer important today, but that's often the first thing I am asked about candidates for jobs. And then I am sort of stuck. I don't misrepresent to employers but I find I often demur. And that is a reason I worry.Schools accommodate, most workplaces don't. Are we giving people an unrealistic sense of what it is like to take jobs where they aren't accommodated?
The accommodation letters are driven by the need to get extra time so they increase their chances of getting a better grade. It's about gaming the system. Everything starts out well-meaning but then gets expanded and manipulated. I can't say I find this surprising.
I have checked my records...it's more like 10%. I guess it "seems" like more because of the time I spend on those in this category.Did not want to let this go uncorrected.
In earlier times, if you didn't exercise your agency, you starved. It was that simple. I think the current ease of feeding oneself (given a minimum income or government assistance) combined with coddled childhoods contributes to some of our younger generations’ inability to exercise agency.
And I think it does feed identity distortions. The internet is a giant amplifier that alters norms and expectations and also how we perceive norms and expectations. All of this contributes to the burgeoning victim culture—the competition to be the most desperately harmed human being. Because then you get the most attention; you are the star of the show. It's how we get sideshows like Jussie Smollett.
It is cultural narcissism. Character-building matters not. Integrity matters not. Authenticity is redefined as your worst self instead of your best self. Pain becomes a ticket to power, to attention, to fame, and even to riches. This is a good article that provides some insight: https://www.drgeorgesimon.com/cultural-narcissism-fosters-character-disturbance/
I would argue that there is a serious class problem in mental health treatment, which disproportionately screws over people who are poor enough to be getting government assistance. It is insanely difficult to get on disability for debilitating mental issues. It is still expensive and time consuming to seek treatment for those things, even if you are on government health benefits. I think there are infinitely more poor people, at least in the United States, struggling every day with mental illnesses that will never be accommodated by the kinds of jobs they can work in than we care to think about. In our current healthcare system, we have the most information about the diagnoses of people who can access our expensive private diagnostic systems and afford exorbitant name-brand drugs.
I would agree that mental illness has become part of the ecosystem of identity distortion in present culture, especially among the post-secondary-educated and professional classes. But I think the idea that “the current ease of feeding oneself“ is causing this is ridiculous. The millions of people on government assistance who do not find it easy to feed themselves and their families are not using their luxurious hours of leisure time to craft mental-health-based victim identities. And the people able to go to weekly therapy, whatever their diagnosis, are not on government assistance.
Not causing. Enabling. And basically I feel that the lack of resilience in younger generations is enabled by the fact that they don't have to work so hard to survive (like our ancestors did). All of the modern infrastructure doesn't require them to exercise the kind of agency that had to be exercised to procure food in the past. There are things about life in the past that built grit and character whether you liked it or not. Things are super easy now. And so there is not as much challenge.
I would bet that the kind of mental illness that was discussed in the post - the potentially performative kind - is not as common in lower income cultures because there is no room for that type of silliness. I am guessing that if you could chart it, it would be correlated to higher incomes - where life is less challenging. As you said, the PMC. That's all I'm saying.
Some people /can/ just "get over it", and should. Some people canniot, and they need our compassion and help.
There /is/ a meaningful difference between these two groups, and that's what we've forgotten - that it is ok to say "get over it" to some people, just not everybody.
Just because no one individual is identifiably "the best" at making that important and valid distinction is not sufficient reason to rule that no one should /ever/ try to make that valid and important distinction.
Yeah everything is a spectrum now. A few months ago I was at my GP and she was talking about how adhd should be thought of as a spectrum and that I would probably be on it. I really didn't know what to do with that info.
Personality involves five factors (OCEAN): openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. To me, this always looked like high N low C behavior.
Interestingly enough, I get weird Instagram adds all the time selling some sort of influencer crap about managing ADHD that usually involve some kind of three question quiz about whether you may have ADHD. Mental illness is a commodity being sold as a lifestyle for money. And I think a lot of people buy it because they want an explanation for their pain besides “life is pain, anyone who tells you differently is selling something”.
My father-in-law is a psychologist who diagnoses children w/ learning disabilities for the state he lives in and he's told me the the definition of autism is effectively non-useful but instead you're identifying people upon the autism spectrum. In his practice he doesn't even use the word autism for the very reasons you cite but has to clearly define the issues of the children he's evaluating for disability and education benefits. He has a nephew that is on the high functional autism spectrum. The kid has gone to college, can interact w/ people in the right setting, but is obsessed with football statistics but can't maintain direct eye contact for very long and will live with his parents the rest of his life.
I think what has done a lot of damage that isn't mentioned is the WebMD phenomenon whereby people are taking on-line tests and then diagnosing themselves and then demanding recognition of that self-diagnosis which is vastly different than someone who has to have continuous professional services and medication.
I really worry about the professional leniency angle. Of course people can deeply struggle and it’s not obvious to people outside their own head. I also think coping mechanisms for stuff like ADHD-tendencies can take a lot more mental energy to maintain than is obvious to outsiders. But I do worry about the fact that it feels like majority women getting diagnoses for not-outwardly-debilitating problems, at least in my own life.
I get suspicious, because everything else in a woman’s life is marketed toward pointing out her flaws and offering her a way to fix them for money, about how often an ADHD diagnosis for a smart, creative woman who feels unable to concentrate working from her living room at a dull, busy, unstimulating job is like bored housewives getting prescribed Valium for their anxiety. It can’t be the job itself, the complete lack of in-person social interaction, the isolation, or the constant stream of asynchronous communication from multiple channels making it hard to get things done; it must be your broken brain. Thank god, now you can fix it and stop being so useless and feeling so inadequate.
I think the pendulum of professional leniency is swinging in some respects but there is also the reality that the system is overloaded with people who don't have the coping mechanisms or can't get help or don't have a solid support system (family/friends) or all 3 of those. My FIL told me that you can't diagnose ADHD or autism in one visit. You can run simply tests and make initial observations but sometimes it requires more time w/ some individuals. The communication and personal interaction changes that Covid created are going to take a while to work through. My wife has been working from home for 2 years and she misses the inter-office chit chat but at the same time has no desire to return to the office. She enjoys her work as an architect but she also makes time to get together with friends and family to avoid the pitfalls you mention.
I think the professional leniency coupled w/ patients who self-diagnose makes for a bad combination of over-worked professionals processing patient requests for drugs.
Yes! I think there are a lot of perfectionists under a lot of pressure to succeed under very difficult conditions, for whom the only socially acceptable reason *not* to succeed is a diagnosis. Everyone I knew at college who had a semester where they struggled with grades or activities emerged with a diagnosis--and I'm not saying they were faking at all, just that there was only one narrative available to explain failure to thrive at a prestigious, competitive college.
(And yet at the same time at the same college it was widely known that if you told your school-provided therapist you were suicidal, the school would require you to take a leave of absence and you might never be allowed to come back. Diagnoses proliferated widely and casually and at the same time they had the power to ruin your life--no wonder we were all so obsessed with them.)
That reminds me of grad school when several classmates were taking Adderall to help them concentrate. It did seem for a while that there were a lot of people with ADHD in college who were cured once they graduated. I recall having to pull several all-nighters for design studio and a friend offered me half a pill to help me concentrate. I spent 3 hrs cutting the same model pieces over and over again but boy oh boy I sure could concentrate on that one task at hand. I realized at 3 am that it wasn't a lack of concentration but a lack of sleep.
I think this is such a great way to draw the distinction. I really, really don’t intend to disdain people who seek diagnoses for their distress. I think “faking it” is a useless and inaccurate way to describe any of it. But the idea of “only one narrative available to explain failure” is such an important one.
I know some people who figured out pretty early on that the way their minds worked, diagnosable or not, was incompatible with the structure of the conventional white-collar workplace. Some of those people were able to get into more free-wheeling, self-structured work that worked for them better; some were able to get accommodations at work to mitigate the problem, like flexible schedules or assignments better-suited to their skills; and some are just stuck grinding through the best jobs available to them, which pay the bills but will always feel like a miserable struggle.
Also great to point out the difference between a diagnosis that helps you explain your situation to yourself and others, and one that can ruin you. I believe it’s still the case - though thankfully less so - that certain diagnoses, or a medical history of involuntary treatment, can show up when you apply to bar associations. You can make it all the way through law school, but if you had a past suicidal episode or police involvement for a mental health reason, you can be locked out of your credentials regardless of how well-managed your illness is years later. Not to mention the humiliation of having it disclosed and discussed.
I was going to say something similar, but you've said it better, I think.
But I'd like to add: I think there's a tendency to conflate certain things that ought to simply be considered "personality traits" with "mental illnesses."
Speaking for myself for example, I am fairly certain that I could be diagnosed with ADHD. I plan to seek such a diagnosis soon. I hope to benefit from medication. My ADHD symptoms noticeably affect my life in some negative ways, particularly my performance at work and my management of household chores. I also experience noticeable seasonal depression symptoms every year, and I plan on seeking treatment for them, too.
But I really don't think I should be considered "mentally ill." I have a good job, I have a healthy marriage, I own a house, and I have stable friendships and other relationships. I am working toward financial stability. I am doing pretty darn good, by all practical American middle-class standards. I'm not really worried about my future, and I'm pretty confident that if for some reason I end up being unable to get any treatment or medication, I'll continue to be pretty much okay, just like I have been so far.
I think that there are really wide gray areas between simply having certain personality traits --- traits which are not at all uncommon! -- and having harmful mental illnesses. I don't think that these gray areas are acknowledged enough. Many classified mental illnesses seem to simply be very extreme versions of personality types (or complexes of traits, if you don't like the idea of types).
I have recently been diagnosed with ADHD, but similarly to you, I am from the outside a very high achieving person. But, similarly to you, I have an inability to focus and keep up with things, as well as self control issues, that feels pathological to me. I told a few friends and coworkers, but they don't understand this diagnosis and how it fits me at ALL (I just have to trust how I feel on the inside).
I do not feel "mentally ill" or even "neuro-atypical" or like I have a "disability." I feel like I have mild ADHD which is benefiting from medication already. I was able to function without it, but I am functioning better with it. I am so interested in the jump from "I have X mental issue" to "I am a mentally ill person" or "I am neurodivergent" as an identity, because I can't seem to muster putting that label on myself.
"Giving these conditions the same name just seems...wrong."
I wouldn't go that far. I'm autistic in about the same way that you are. My brother, on the other hand, is far more severe and closer to the autistic boy that you just described. As different as these manifestations of autism seem to be, they seem to be related genetically, with both kinds often running in families.
"Mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility" is the mantra of Marcus Parks over at the Last Podcast on the Left. Social media culture doesn't necessarily award responsibility though, instead everyone needs to pretend to be unique. In some ways the "responsibility free" approach to mental health may even be a reaction to how large the world feels these days. The only way to stand out is to be extreme.
To be all too speculative, I imagine everyone has a greater or lesser part of Bartleby the Scrivener in them, an inner voice whispering "I prefer not to." This refusal, being neither useful in living in nor changing society, is not something that can be justified, hence why Bartleby is so alien, unless of course you can replace "I prefer not to" with "I cannot," which is precisely what a (self-)diagnosis permits.
Losers teaching young people how to lose. Sincerely, beware, your progeny is being miseducated, they could be destroyed by this well meaning gibberish. The Gnosticism of postmodern relativism is a virus, a bug and junior is in grave danger. Maybe you are as well, maybe losing has been put in you.
Naw. I've known RJF INTIMATELY (as intimately as two strangers who know nothing about each other CAN)... Well, he's not usually far off the mark. And, believe it or not, speaking hard home truths can take a lotta both compassion and courage (these days anyWay).
Ah. I see. I'd say it took some courage, knowing somebody like You can come along and act like You know everything.
You think MY age is a problem?! GO for it. But Your no more brave than RJF. Or it doesn't SEEM like bravery to me. ICBW, of course, so there is that. Is it POSSIBLE for You to be wrong, M. KT??
I just now saw this. LOL! You and me in same boat then. Up #(@# creek, as they used-ta say.
But seriously, I thought we were on a different Substack. I didn't know You thought THIS forum was mostly conservative. Is it?!?
Who knew. You didn't see my other post. I'm 67 going on 3. So it wasn't a "Kids these days" thing at all. Or from what I recall of it, which... What were You saying?
Agent provocateur I don’t want to be courageous, I want to fuck with people, they deserve to be upset/. This is an age of idiocy, our grandparents would be ashamed of us.
I agree with your general notion but do really think it’s older conservatives who follow Freddie? He seems kinda avant- garde, marxist, intellectual and lefty, so I’m not sure if that’s correct.
It is an interesting thing to consider, next time he lets ask questions I will ask him what he thinks his demographic to be. I assumed it was young hipsters. I’m 58, white male heterosexual.
I don't think that's ALL-a it, Sir RJF. I think the Boomers, and I assume Gen-Xers, decided they were gonna best The Greatest Generation by being THE BEST GENERATION OF PARENTS EVER!
Results were as You would expect. You read and helicopter parent and try to raise the "perfect" child. And try to be their FRIEND, like their parents (The Greatest Generation) could never be!
EVERYTHING to get in the best schools, the best university, the best career, the best spouses and cars and the kids would have the best of EVERYTHING.
Except learning how to FAIL. Fail time and again and RECOVER each time, and getting stronger and more resilient.
You gotta risk something, if You want Your life to mean much of anything, right? Otherwise, no risk, no challenge other than those You make up in Your head? You risk something of Yourself and You can feel things deeper. That's my limited experience anyhoo.
In the end, everyone fails: You die. If You take it that way.
Hi jt very solid, I think you capture the zeitgeist of good intentions gone wrong or at least too far. That’s actually why I chose the word losers. It’s a viciously competitive world and teaching kids intersectionality, micro aggressions, safe spaces et al is a great disservice, it misapprehends the race. The human race.
Boethius is one of my go-tos when I’m deeply depressed. I drink too much, stare off into space, and hold my copy of “Consolation” in one hand while pretending I have the ability to concentrate on anything at all.
I think there is also something about the culture of social justice that like, reifies and validates a world view and behaviors that are antithetical to stable mental health. Perceiving every slight as a catastrophic and phobic event representative of a hostile world, etc.
I know a they/them, pillar of the LGBTQ community they live in, who posted recently about how dreamy it was to go to a “gay steakhouse”. In the comments, it was revealed that the steakhouse was owned by gay people, and that made them feel “safe.” A supportive friend said, You’re safe everywhere around here. And they responded, “But I don’t feel comfortable everywhere.”
That conflation of discomfort with unsafe is so dangerous to people’s mental health, and it’s supported by the idea that anything that makes, say, a trans person uncomfortable is a manifestation of a morally corrupt transphobic society, and this it’s only reasonable to respond to that discomfort by labeling it as egregious and responding with more intensity than the event merited.
Phew! Yeah, I've seen that but not in those words. TYTY. It goes along with "words are violence." They actually take things said as a PHYSICAL assault. Dunno how they never learnt "Sticks and stones.." and all those kind-a hard home truths.
I do think it’s intertwined with a sense of “justice”. Letting a slight go unremarked is somehow viewed as enabling the oppressors. But when you internalize it like that, all you see in life are hostilities toward your identity group, and an attendant inability to discern between people responding negatively to your personality and not your identity marker.
I used to respond pretty militantly to anything I perceived as a sexist interaction. It didn’t feel good after a while—I felt trapped. Now, when someone jokingly calls me a bitch, I don’t filter it through the whole misogyny lens, I just say I don’t like to be called that and let it go. Just a personal preference.
David Burns wrote the most famous and arguably best self help book on CBT, “Feeling Good”. He has a new one out called “Feeling Great”.
It’s basically the same old CBT stuff, and still written by a very goofy and uncool guy. The main new idea is that before trying to dismantle your cognitive distortions, you’re now supposed to list and think very clearly about all the ways that your distorted beliefs and symptoms are beneficial to you and reflect positive aspects of yourself. Then, you consciously choose whether and how much to leave these things behind.
I find it is a powerful technique for anyone, and likely particularly helpful for people stuck in the type of trap described in this post. Highly recommend “Feeling Great” by David Burns.
One of the things I appreciated the most about the CBT I did years ago was how much agency it gave me. No longer was I at the mercy of maladaptive coping mechanisms like worry. By changing how I think (albeit with some difficulty), I could change how I felt. "Anxiety and worry are different. Anxiety is something you have that you probably can't control, but worry is something you do that you absolutely can control." That was day one, and it immediately changed my perspective. Still not an easy road, but it was eye-opening just to hear someone say "no, you can totally fix this".
This reminds me of the recent CAP survey of LGBTQ adults that found abysmal mental health among younger people. For example:
“82 percent of Gen Z [queer] respondents reported feeling so sad that nothing could cheer them up to some degree in January 2020, compared with 64 percent of Millennials, 46 percent of Gen X, and 30 percent of Baby Boomers.”
Younger people consider themselves more enlightened on these topics, but the mentality described in the Reddit post (which fits my observations) is toxic and terrible for mental health.
They tell each other the whole world must accommodate their disorders—they can’t be expected to function at work, to adhere to social norms, etc. and anyone who disagrees is an oppressor. I really worry for them in the real world, where “likes” don’t pay the rent.
Young people are growing up in a world where they believe science is saying that civilization is threatened by climate change, and yet those in power do nothing to avert that outcome. Is it any wonder they don't feel happy or hopeful?
There was an interesting Hidden Brain podcast referencing a study showing that people who live under more objectively oppressive conditions profess to much lower levels of oppression than people in freer societies. A lesbian in Russia, I think it was, felt way less oppressed than an American lesbian. Makes you wonder.
This comment seems to unintentionally paint a kind of hierarchy—where if you can get shot for speaking freely, whether you’re targeted for being gay doesnt matter. But absent a general hostility, feeling persecution for being gay becomes more important.
That raises the question, if it wasn’t very important in the first case, why should it be more important in the second?
I mean, in the example I mentioned above, we’re talking about a lesbian who in one country literally does face the prospect of jail or death *because she is gay*, versus a lesbian in the US who does not realistically face either of those things, especially from the state.
It’s clear that the sense of oppression is objectively murkier for the US lesbian, even if it is true that there is *some* hostility from *some* people in the US to being gay.
A very small minority of people are journalists or dissidents. There are a lot of gay people. Realistically in countries like Russia unless you're a public figure you can talk shit about the government among friends. But homophobia is very widespread at all social levels, not just coming from the government.
"A 19-year-old on TikTok might look at her peers and their talk of borderline personality disorder and see glamour and a kind of pain that society might recognize."
This is to understand what causes ROGD. It's not a wild conspiracy theory.
I pulled that quote too. Part of the experience of youth, as far as I am concerned, for the last 70 years in western cultures is not comparable to any other time in human history. Poverty during our lifetime doesn't match historical levels of poverty. This degree of "wealth and comfort" have allowed the rot of man to spread throughout the culture.
If a fresh slab of meat is comingled with a rotting slab of meat, the rotting slab won't lose its rot; instead, the fresh slab will be contaminated by the rotting slab. The same is true for young people. When they are exposed to a rotting culture they will be contaminated and join in on the rot. So, if a genuine mental health issue exist the rot has the potential to accelerate the underlying issues that already exist. And since humans live to make things complicated it makes addressing the situation all the more difficult.
As a Christian I believe there are many times when individuals might be better off if, instead of turning to someone else for advice, they look around themselves, avoid the noises around them and see what is actually going on. It's possible, once the noise goes away, their clearing mind and vision will allow them to see where they actually stand in this world; and they can shed their degree of mass formation psychosis. It might be quite simple actually.
The response you get for coming out as nonbinary or trans is incredibly attractive to angsty teenagers. Affirmation, support, community, adults who listen and validate you. Plus a new identity and appearance.
Real gender dysphoria exists, but it’s bananas that we have to pretend no troubled young person would ever respond to these incentives unless they genuinely had GD.
If this stuff was around 25 years ago I could totally see myself jumping on it in one of my darker moods.
The definitive essay on this topic: https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/116790700524/we-need-to-sing-about-mental-health
Not sure if you ever read The Last Psychiatrist (this is from his secondary blog), but this one is so good I've lost track of how many people I've sent it to who both struggle with their own mental health but sense that there is something dangerous in the modern / millennial / woke mindset around mental health.
Whatever happened to that guy? I was so eager to read his book on (and of) pornography. He certainly had some creative and interesting film analyses.
That book is out. Its...a ride. https://www.amazon.com/Sadly-Porn-Edward-Teach-MD/dp/1734460822
Wow, I had no idea. I thought he had vanished from the internet back in 2014. I am clearly well out of the loop.
It only came out recently, I think. He does have a lot to say about the phenomenon Freddie and the reddit post are describing. People who immediately thought of him when they read this post are definitely not off-base.
Is Hotel Concierge The Last Psychiatrist? (Also lol at how meaningless that sequence of words is out of context.) I had read they were different people (although obviously with a similar style, my understanding was that TLP had influenced HC).
Oh interesting! I do not know for certain that they are the same person - I had read somewhere (don't remember where) that they were the same person and just assumed it to be true based on the similar style.
They're not known to be the same. It's just speculation which unfortunately people keep repeating as fact.
Also I don't think the resemblance is all that close...HC is much more direct and lucid than TLP ever was (including in his book, to judge from reviews).
Hotel concierge has appreciably less directly-insulting-the-reader than TLP ever did, which convinces me they're completely separate people (and I *liked* TLP, I just knew how many scoopfuls of salt I had to take him with)
Wow I think that explains the problems I've had getting my wife to anything other than Accept Them For Who They Are when our kids are going through mental problems
Victim good. Oppressor bad.
To be good, I must be victim. To not be victim is to be oppressor.
It's increasingly difficult *not* to see that this insidious binary model is the dominant ethical idea of our times.
Huh, is this the next recurrence of Nietzsche's master-slave morality? I had never thought about it in those terms before, but the post and your comment reminded me of it.
I'm not smart enough to fully parse On the Genealogy of Morality and make the argument myself. But maybe someone else has.
It’s absolutely true that the ideas in that book — master morality vs slave morality, + ressentiment — are a very useful lens through which to understand today’s IdPol/SocJus movements. I’d argue in fact a definitive lens.
it's been my frame for understanding all this as well.
Definitely. It's something a friend and I were discussing a few months back - although I too don't feel well read enough in Nietzsche to explore the nuance of it. One to read I think!
This whole thought partly came to me while I was doing a "mental health first aid" course (very much of my volition).
In one exercise we were asked to rank what was positive language to use and negative language to discuss people with mental illness. Most of it was really easy like "he's on happy pills" being seen in the inappropriate category. I was pretty sure that the word "victim" was another word to avoid. That's very much what the host thought.
However a trainee HR person on the course with me had put it in the positive column. When asked about this she said "but being a victim is good right?" She did not strike me as especially brilliant which made it all the more chilling.
Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have made some interesting insights into that cultural shift. I found the different kinds of moral cultures particularly illuminating.
https://quillette.com/2018/05/17/understanding-victimhood-culture-interview-bradley-campbell-jason-manning/
Thanks for the link - insightful.
Yeah, that was four years ago, and victimhood culture hadn't permeated the mainstream as much yet, which is why they mostly talk about it in relation to college campuses, but it explains a lot. I tend to agree that wokeness (or whatever we're supposed to call it) really does represent a substantially new moral framework.
Fantastic link! Thank you.
I was just thinking this. People who are privileged, happy, and well-adjusted are the new evil. Sometimes I think the goal of woke culture is to make everyone equally miserable instead of lifting everyone up so they can be equally happy. Look at the focus on incompetence that is currently in vogue. Don't meet standards, don't try to build competence. Instead, force the system to accomodate your incompetence. Won't end well, that's for sure.
Agreed. I like "scene" and I will shift my internal narrative to use this term. It's good and provides some needed clarity.
And, yes. How much of the current mental stress is being caused by "not having your boots in the mud?" How invigorating and satisfying is it actually achieve concrete outcomes? Most of what is happening online is akin to mental masturbation—emotionally satisfying but it achieves nothing in meat space—where actual change is needed.
Perhaps younger generations are exchanging posturing and being seen for getting things done. And why wouldn't they. The internet is a siren song calling them to spend their lives glued to a screen where nothing of true value can be accomplished—unless you are a web dev like me ;-). And not everyone can push pixels for cash.
Yes and among the upper middle classes a lot of it started in childhood. I have teenagers now but starting when they were in preschool, the race for the "right" diagnosis was everywhere. "My 4yr old has anxiety so I have to stay with him all day at school and he needs to bring four stuffed animals and a lego castle for comfort." "Sammy has visual processing disorder so he needs extra time on tests," "Katy just can't control her tantrums, she has ODD, it isn't her fault." My friend, who is a former preschool teacher, told me that at one point she had 20% of her class with some kind of ASD diagnosis and another 20% with ADHD.
So when you're little and your diagnosis makes you special, why not compound that as you grow?
I see this a lot with work. Maybe it's not mental health or burnout or a toxic environment or not being seen or systemic ____ism. Maybe work kinda sucks, and we should try to improve that
If we can try and pre-emptively move the discourse away from "the kids fucked everything up" that would be great. Not that Freddie is saying that, the reddit post maybe a little, and the general impulse of commenters in general to turn the comment section into a list of anecdotes.
Because really its a backlash right? We (my generation, people in their 30s now) all grew up around adults who famously were not taught how to process their feelings or do basic maintenance on their emotional processes and it was not a fun time. Probably most of those people don't meet the standard for mentally ill, but we have yet invent a set of guidelines for taking care of your mental health and expressing your emotional weaknesses that falls short of diagnosable event. So the kids who don't want to grow up like their parents bottling everything up claim perpetual diagnosable events.
I guess back in the day this is what going to Church was supposed to be for. You could talk about your problems in small-group, if things were really bad you could confess your worries to a pastor and get some guidance, some community support, some prayer. But the flipside of that was a lot of moral hypocrisy and arbitrary ostracization, plus you had to get up early on Sunday. So that's gone, now everyone is seeking communal support systems and the only way they know to ask for them is by claiming to be bi-polar, whether they are or not. I don't have a good solution to this.
Edit: I think I meant this comment for someone else but I can’t now figure out who I meant to respond to so I’ll leave it here.
I don’t actually believe the glamorization of mental illness is a new thing, I just think it’s effective in a new way and has a new manifestation thanks to the internet. I was a teenager in the 1990s and certainly back then Sylvia Plath and Angelina Jolie in the movie Girl, Interrupted, both served as a sort of ideal girl for a lot of women my age. Heck, the entire Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope is not a little bit tinged with a hint of mental instability. One reason for this is that a lot of artists suffer from mental illness and are also cool geniuses and so of course young people are drawn to them. Another is that being an adolescent IS sort of akin in an oblique way to mental illness (I really hope that’s not offensive to say) because for a finite period of time your hormones and brain chemistry are in flux, you feel completely misunderstood and like you see things differently from everyone else, and so I think it’s normal to idolize and imitate people who you see manifesting that feeling in a way that seems, well, cool. And lastly a lot of people have mental illnesses and it’s still really hard to cope with and so seeing positive portrayals that make you feel special, important or just basically worthy and valid (in the parlance of our times) can be very comforting. I’m not sure the internet really did much besides put this already existing phenomenon on steroids.
I think You make a good point. Yeah, internet put it on steroids and everything else You wrote.
Most everybody hated our parents to some extent or another. Most grow outta it. Find their parents, most-a them, have faults and good attributes. At a certain age, that doesn't have much-a any effect on the kid. They live their own life, unencumbered by all that drama. I went through a phase of ACOA. Moved on. Grew up.
Obesity, grip strength - the list of maladies is very long and speaks very poorly of the society that's not only let it happen but called you a fascist if you resisted it.
That is a good point. In the US at least we have such an atomized society with minimal social support. Professional mental health care cannot fill the void but that is all there is, at least for the non-religiously affiliated. There used to be all of those bowling leagues, elks/shriners/masons/VFW, women's societies, and so forth, ways to be connected to people. Now if it requires serious-diagnosis-X to have someone to talk to, it isn't surprising everyone wants one.
Yup. My own breakdown occurred because I am living in a foreign country with virtually no social connections and where I do not speak the language. What would have been an unpleasant situation at home around familiar people became a full blown mental breakdown. Many young people, I believe, live isolated, as strangers, in their own “communities”.
ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
I'll do You a favor, M. Kamateur, if You do me one. I won't say "the kids fucked everything up," if You'll try not to write off what I say as a bunch of BS because I'm 67. But, as You'll see, it doesn't matter to me if You write me off or not. I'm easy.
Obviously, I dunno what You, individually, or Your generation(s) went through.
What I can state for a FACT is that all parents are screwups. Granted, I'm not a parent, so mebbe that disqualifies me to some. Buy MY parents. Never showed emotions. Any. Now my particular case was extreme. But the stupid Boomers? (Me mebbe foremost. ;)
We were raised by THE GREATEST GENERATION. They went through the Depression. Great Recession? They would-a handled that over a weekend. Then they took on one-a the worst evils of ALL time, the first truly global war. And aced the exam with flying colors. From what I've heard, I think my experience was pretty typical. The Greatest Generation never even TALKED about the war. They were a truly class act. And I think most-a us boomers knew we couldn't possibly live up to their standards. Had SOME character, but not like them.
I'll sum it all up by saying The Greatest Generation was.. uh.. Not overly emotional, if at all. Dad's weren't EXPECTED to have any deep connections in those days. They just struggled to pay the bills. Pretty much like everybody in every generation. Like everything, they didn't make a big deal outta it.
To put a nail in it, my Mom was an alcoholic when I went through puberty, and I lived in a Matriarchal household with two Sisters when the Second Wave of feminism came rumbling through.
I'll skip the story of my mental issues. Just to say I've been on meds for 45 years. I'm unbelievably lucky that I do more than survive now.
POINT, You wonder? ALL parents suck. ALL lives have a great deal of suckness in them. If You get technical about it, Buddha said that ALL life IS suffering, because we suffer the ailment of having desires. That's above my pay grade. In any event, recommend meditating, tho I was always a lousy meditator myself. "Do as I say.." and all that.
Finally, a word to the wise. Keep in mind, I never HEARD-a the Stoics until a year or two ago. HARD discipline to learn.
Epictetus:
Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.
I dunno anything about outer effectiveness. But inner tranquility is a nice side-effect.
What somebody else things about me? OUTTA MY CONTROL. Don't ignore. I process it, try to learn. But what somebody else THINKS about me? Doesn't effect who I am to myself. Not my concern. And a whole host of symptoms disappear.
Eventually.
Thank You.
[Edit: Arrgh. ALWAYS mistakes. M. DeBoer. One-a Your best. Nice catch on the Reddit, OUTSTANDING essay on ALL points. If I COULD-a found something to disagree with, which I didn't, I wouldn'a anyway, It was THAT good. TYTY.]
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This works pretty well for me.
yeah, in almost ALL situations
“Of”’s not such a bad guy. Honest.
“Of”’s ??
It's even more our generation's fault because we built the social networks that these kids are now growing up in. The re-creation of social situations and support systems not based on "likes" may not be a solution, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
It's ONE-a the solutions. And one BIG one. TYTY.
Face to face will cure a lotta ills. In my limited experience.
I don't think you even needed church. You needed a civic and social life of some kind, and yes, realistically church would be in the mix for most people, but in general the social bonds that held America together - for both good and ill! - from the fraternal organizations to service clubs to bowling leagues have been eroding for decades. For people in the lowest economic strata, they are almost entirely gone. (See "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray.) And for the young, other than things organized by school or church, they're again eroding very quickly.
If the kids are indeed fucking everything up, it's because they're growing up in a social and cultural void, one which adults have largely abdicated. There's no "there" for a lot of kids - especially poorer kids - to go to that isn't school. Richer kids are, on the other hand, funneled through schools and colleges that if anything are oversocialized, but that's a whole other post that I won't go into.
Essentially, this country - really an open-air shopping mall rather than a country, if we're being honest - has long since given up even the pretense of a shared, communal experience, a shared conception of the good, of anything resembling a virtuous life and a nurturing civilization. Inasmuch as this exists at a local level, it's only for the rich and highly-educated. At the other levels there is nothing. And in the absence of virtue there is victory through oppression. No wonder the kids are the way they are. It's the fault of those who came before them for setting up such a horrific husk of a society.
This is apt. I found a way to stay connected to a community by owning my own business. I network and socialize through business networking groups like chambers, women's groups, rotary and things like that. There are norms that you must abide by in the business community that set healthy boundaries and business goals that keep you focused and creative.
I think having goals is very important for keeping us centered. It gives us purpose and ascribes meaning to our choices. If societal fragmentation is making it less likely for people to find something that grounds them, then it's time to get creative and find new ways to achieve this. No generation has ever had more powerful tools at their disposal. I think what they need is someone to challenge them to greatness.
You said it, Lightwing! Work, as much as anything, kept me (somewhat) grounded.
The people with the time, inclination, resources, and derring-do needed to blaze a trail in our fragmented world are disproportionately wealthy and educated already - the ones with the least need of it. (Not to say they don't have need of it, but they probably already have professional and familial fulfillment; certainly they're far more likely to than people with lower education and income.)
I recommended it in my post and I'll do so again: "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray is absolutely required reading here. The people most in need of a solid society, a solid civilization, a solid neighborhood, a solid role to play, have been left to their own devices and by and large have been unable to provide for themselves. You are 100% right that we need to think creatively to get around this issue because received wisdom ain't cutting it.
I wonder how much not taking responsibility for or feeling you are in control of your own life plays into mental health issues? If you feel that you are trapped and can't enact change in your own life, that must be stressful. Especially if you feel that your life is supposed to be handed to you.
I've never had the problem because my tribe ousted me early on and I quickly learned that if I wanted anything, I was going to have to achieve it myself. I literally had to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I suppose it helps that I am driven and very creative. Not everyone is although I think creative thinking is a technique that can be honed.
Still, why don't we emphasize risk-taking? Isn't creating something new the best way to work around systemic obstacles? Why complain the system is broken? Because it doesn't hand you an easy ride? Screw the system. Create your own way forward and ignore or work around the obstacles. There is nothing so powerful as focused human will. We should be teaching our kids how to exercise theirs for more than just political causes.
I don't disagree. Learned helplessness, they call it.
However, I'm getting a bit away from the premise of the article here, in that a lot of people just don't know they're not in control.
I think they are related. What if learned helplessness is one of the things that is feeding this explosion in mental illness?
Yours and M. Adblock post above it are REALLY.. ..
Real, I guess, Lightwing!
Oh, and I'll add the book to my list!
Third Place is the concept you’re describing (see also Bowling Alone). They are going away because Third Places tend to not be profit-driven, and thus are squeezed out in an unrestrained capitalist socioeconomic order.
A huge number of third-places are non-profit and non-commercial. Come to think of it, all but one of the voluntary/extracurricular groups I'm involved in is non-profit and non-commercial, and in the vast majority of those cases there's no paid employees or stipends at all, only expenses. That's not to say there aren't commercial concerns around rent, dues etc. but there just isn't a profit motive on the part of the people running them.
That is exactly my point.
What is? I said four different things.
I said that third places tend not to be profit-driven. You agreed, just with more words.
Howard Kunstler's excellent book-length screed against the automobile "The Geography of Nowhere" also astutely ascribes part of the death of the Third Place to, well, automobiles. If your twice-daily commute involves 45 minutes on a suburban highway, you're not going to pop in to the local pub or barbershop on the way home the same way someone who walks or takes a trolley in a denser environment might.
Inasmuch as capitalism is to blame, the geographical atomization is surely part of the problem. But it's only part of the problem. The leafy suburbs, as I mentioned, do have an active civic life, as long as the population is rich and educated enough to sustain it. Crowded inner cities, by and large, do not.
I hate to break it to you but the era of the decrepit inner city surrounded by a prosperous suburb died a few decades ago. Supercharged urban development has been pushing poverty into outlying suburbs for quite some time.
You don't hate to break it to me; you type with a joyless smirk.
I can tell you in my metro area it's very much alive and well, and the poorer the neighborhood, the greater its density, with only a few exceptions - regenerated urban neighborhoods populated by young professionals. Here the shotgun house neighborhoods and projects are cheek-by-jowl and the suburbs are wide open. I'm not going to risk self-outing by saying what metro area it is except to say it's top 25.
I guess I'm an absolute weirdo that is glad I'm able to self-determine my own role, find my own groups, and is so glad that church is a thing of the past.
I moved a lot in my 20s and 30s and was always able to meet people through meetup, facebook groups, hobby groups, and work connections. And I'm a weirdo introvert. I guess I'm invalidating you, but it really is possible to connect with people. (There is also volunteering, which is great for lots of people; join a political campaign in the right season - just so many opportunities to stay connected!).
I couldn't agree more although I also see the atomization of culture and community that others have posted about. Not sure why people can't create connection for themselves, if this is indeed the problem. I have always been like you - going out and building what bridges I needed. Except that I'm an extrovert. So, you get extra points because it was harder for you. For me, it's like breathing. LOL!
I don't remember who did the song. "People who love people... Are the LUCKIEST people of all!" I thin' that's close. I always had envy, couldn't grasp the notion. But eventually found my way despite being blind.
Haha! Who am *I* kidding! STILL finding my Way.
I'm also an introvert, almost comically so. I can happily go weeks if not months talking only to my family and the people at my local butcher and store. And I grew up in a church - very glad that that particular church is gone.
But this doesn't invalidate what I said. For every one like you and me there are twenty more who either need the connections but can't find them, or have the wrong connections. I believe the data bears this out. Happiness is in freefall. Life expectancy is dropping. Indicators of an active civic life - which, yes, include church membership - have already cratered everywhere except wealthy, well-educated areas.
And let's not even restrict it to organizations like churches, fraternal groups etc. Let's make it one step simpler. Let's say an average American needs either someone to feed their pets for the weekend, pick them up from the airport, or even just sign for a package. Do you think the percentage of people who could achieve that right now is higher or lower than it used to be? I will say without a picosecond's hesitation that it's lower.
I didn't grow up in the US but from talking to Americans they share this experience: growing up I knew *every family* on my street. I knew which house they lived in. I knew in most cases, what the inside of that house looked like (and smelled like!) Did this have its negatives? Certainly. The fishwife archetype is real - and not restricted to women, either. The lace-curtain-twitching gossip and judgement and intrigue is corrosive. But by banishing it, I think we've lost a lot more than we bargained for.
This, more than simple self-determination, is what I'm talking about. There are dangers in rigid, the-walls-have-ears societies, absolutely. They are bad for nonconformists. They can be stultifying. I don't deny this at all. But they also offer preset roles and groups, and what we've seen absolutely undeniably over the past three quarters of a century is that most people simply need these because the lower down the scales of intelligence, wealth, and education you go, the less likely people are to find their own productive, happy, family-building role. Again, "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray explains this better than I could.
tl;dr: self-determination is missing the point because those who determine themselves are outliers and those most needing determination are those least apt in our society to achieve it, and for all that rigid social roles and moral guidance from society have their drawbacks, they are far better than what we have now.
Very insightful. Your comments often make me think. Thanks for that.
I am definitely a non-conformist and hated Mrs. Grundy and her lace curtains and loved the free-love movement in the 60s. But, even I have to admit your assertions have a grain of truth and the push by the left to weaken all of these structures has left a mess in its wake.
Some people appear to need structure more than others. I would that we could create a social order that allows for at least some non-conformity so that non-conformists don't have to forever be pariah. Perhaps a tolerant stance toward us oddballs could be encouraged. The mavericks in any society keep things fresh and prevent it from becoming moribund. I think both structure and fresh ideas are needed. The key is the proportion possibly.
Thank you! This is one of a tiny number - less than five - of internet places I post on, because the standard of conversation here is high and people are willing to listen and engage to those with whom they disagree.
You have the crux of my point exactly right: some people need structure more than others. My further contention is that those who need it most are those who are also given it the least. Our society, further, is governed by elites. These elites can do two things simultaneously: they can take risks and stand out from the herd, while also knowing when and when it's not safe to dissent. That is, they can be non-conformist in some ways while conforming in others. (During the Trump presidency, this manifested itself in the #resistance.) A lot of these elites are also - and let's not beat around the bush here - embittered nerds, incorrigible perverts, or women, who tend to be blessed with a surfeit of empathy. They are going to gravitate towards society's underdog. And, bringing it back to the article, is there any bigger underdog than someone with six mental illness badges arrayed across their chest like war medals?
Precisely as you say, we need a structured society - and a structured approach to mental health, one built on reality and not on airy-fairy notions of 'recovery' and hashtags - but one with enough room to breathe. One where people can step out of line now and again. And - again, exactly as you say - one to stop society from choking on its own orthodoxy.
The problem is that we have the worst of both worlds. The people who run this country have as rigid a moral view as anyone who ever lived. It just so happens to glorify terrible behavior (see: the entire state of California) and reject any values that might work to improve the lot of a people long since pummeled into drugs and an early grave by the apathy of a society that's been on casual Friday protocol since fucking Woodstock.
Again, insightful comments by both-a You. Going back above, You said M. Adblock: "I believe the data bears this out. Happiness is in freefall. Life expectancy is dropping. Indicators of an active civic life - which, yes, include church membership - have already cratered everywhere except wealthy, well-educated areas."
I think that's cause and effect. Active civic life, active family life, active personal life. I think this is what makes a lotta people wealthy and well-educated. The elites are trained up to it from birth. The rest-a us hafta learn the hard Way. Some, like You all say, mainly the non-conformists, manage to learn.
When face-to-face became a learned life-skill?
Me? Still learning. I'm uber-introvert that went years mostly alone. Them were dark daze.
Yes. The left is proving just as rigid of the old and parts of the current right. That said, you are generalizing rather prolifically; or simply being cynical. I can't decide.
Some relaxation of the rules was necessary in the 60s and 70s. I think things were TOO bound up in propriety before this. Perhaps you could argue it has gone too far. But, I like that things are less formal - particularly sartorially. I'd like to see hair make a come back.
We can still be moral people without all of the stricture and etiquette - which takes much time away from other, more desirable pursuits. Imho.
To be fair, “moral hypocrisy and arbitrary ostracization” is a big part of the counter culture right now as well.
I do agree that most of this is a natural correction to past cultural deficiencies. However that doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as overcorrection and I do think we may be entering that territory. The thing isn’t to complain about kids these days AT ALL, it’s to give people of all ages the best chance of living a functioning and fulfilling life and I genuinely and deeply believe internet culture around MI is greatly hindering that.
I was going to write something along these lines but you said it better. I think that finding a way to inculcate resilience while at the same time addressing MI in a healthy manner is probably the best balance. If our generation has set an expectation that life should never be painful, that is unrealistic and it's not helping our younger generations at all.
Well, then maybe not make it the older generations fault either. Life was tougher back then, and to a certain extent, that emotional toughness got people through things. Additionally, there was much less information about emotions back then. You are lucky that so many in the older generation worked to bring you new information about emotions and social interactions. Where do you think that knowledge and education came from?
Besides, part of adulthood is taking responsibility for things that aren't your fault, not continuing to try to pin blame on who's fault "it really is."
My parents were shit. I still had to take responsibility for my life so I wasn't miserable. I can't help them or change them. If I had stayed in a place where I wrote essays for the rest of my life saying why its their fault, I'd never had changed.
Which is all to say: no one ever takes the advice that they need. Maybe older generations do need to grow emotionally; but maybe younger generations need to be accountable for adulting.
To me? All the Way around it's not to anyone's benefit to even try to DETERMINE "fault."
If it's something You can do something about, then DO! If not, accept. Ya know? JFK? The one about "and having the wisdom to know the difference."
If Ya wanna get technical about it, the only thing You CAN actual change is You, Yourself. Hard, but luckily nobody can FORCE You to change either, so there is that.
Nice.
So, my comment unintentionally kicked off a generational-divide conversation which was not what I was intending. My point wasn't that older generations suck, please calm down. It was that each generation has its own way of coping with things. I don't honestly think past generations did a great job, but more importantly they just dealt with things differently. Even if millennials and zoomers wanted to go back to those strategies, they are gone. Church is gone. Society doesn't reward stoicism, which is why even most presidential candidates parade around like cartoon characters. We have to figure out new internet-adaptive ways of doing things. We probably won't though. We'll collectively fail and then our kids will hate us and the cycle will continue.
I would love for stoicism to come back. I'm tired of everyone always talking about their feelings. Sure, talking things out can help and maybe it does in most cases, but talking about feelings ad nauseam does not help. My grandmother used to use a saying that doesn't translate well into English but essentially said one's lot in life is to bear and to withstand. It's all a pendulum and now it's swung too far in one direction.
that's very defeatist.
Everything isn't that terrible. I promise.
Yeah, I think, Kamateur, I agree with much of your original comment. Late 30s here. The generation that raised me were often raised by people themselves seriously scarred by World War and The Depression, and emotional expressiveness and extensive introspection was pretty low on the list of traits valued in those situations, for good and ill.
I do think the pendulum has swung too far towards florid, neo Byronic, Romantic self realization; perhaps we need a little 18th century neoclassicism and emotional continence in our collective lives. Interestingly, the 18th century, which I study, considered restraint manly, and losing one's temper more an effeminate characteristic, while many of the working class 20 yr old truck guys I know/teach act as though aggression and weird displaced anger towards little old ladies in Volvos is manly, and restraint is effeminate.
And so the vast human comedy rolls on....
I just reread Your previous post. I'm sure You didn't intend to kick off a generational divide. Part of being an adult is not kicking off things You didn't intend. WHen You say "society doesn't reward stoicism," You're generation is part-a society. What You reward or don't reward is a choice. Mebbe all generations should make a different choice. Instead-a everybody slobbering over billionaires and sexy bodies, the value something deeper. Like stoicism.
Generations don't make choices. Individuals do. And one thing ANYbody can do is not wrap their lives and their identities around the internet. I think anybody who made the attempt, would find non-internet-adaptive ways of doing things.
Like go outta Your way, and do something for someone else. Cures most all ailments. For someone else, not for any social status or money or anything. Just for helping out someone who could use it. Known cure-all.
Me? I could stand to do more myself.
I'm not sure what you mean about adults famously not processing their feelings, is that a thing? That's probably partially true for many over 40; but a) I hardly think that is something unique to Xers or Boomers, and b) you're implying that NOT being overly vocal about ones own feelings is somehow unhealthy.
The reddit article wasn't about not being able to talk about your feelings (which every generation does but perhaps in different ways), rather it was about not only blowing things out of proportion, but also thinking those things somehow need to be publicly validated to the nth degree. The first one is a matter of degrees, the second a matter of...well I don't know what you would call that. Vice signaling? No one needs to wear their problems emblazoned across their chest in order to be validated as a person. It's perfectly normal (and I would argue much better) to keep your personal business personal. And you don't just need a church for talking about it. There are hundreds of ways to come to terms with your inner demons that don't involve announcing it to the world, and many of those can also be done via the internet...yet still be somewhat private: chat rooms, mental health forums, one-on-one counseling, etc.
The article was also about having a bare minimum of personal accountability in the mix at least somewhere. Those three things together I think is what the author is talking about. He or she is lamenting the fact that, for whatever reason, a lot of people in younger generations tend to 1) inflate mental issues, 2) think those issues should be front and center of their public identity - whatever that is, and 3) seem to be unusually unwilling to hold themselves accountable for any of it.
Personally I would agree with the authors first two premises. The third somewhat agree...but I just don't think it's that simple. It's always important to own it. But dwelling too much on the blame leads to regret, and regret has a funny way of handicapping you for years or even decades.
Well, also vocalizing your feelings very loudly is not the same as processing them.
I agree with the need for personal accountability, believe me. I think that's the most important part of the post.
That said, I also think pretty much everyone needs more help than they are getting from their community. These "not-actually-schizoid" people are still struggling in ways that could probably be addressed better The problem is we don't have an easy societal construct for being an essentially functional human being who still feels a lot of psychic pain or discomfort. Basically as long as you are productive under capitalism people assume you are fine.
And that's hard in a weird way people don't talk much about! I'm by any objective measure a successful, hard-working person, and consequently any issues of loneliness or despair I feel? Pretty invisible. Even when I mention them they're invisible, because people just don't generally have the bandwidth for stuff like that, its a triage system here in America in terms of empathy and compassion. So I've stared down the paradox of knowing that if anyone else was really going to give me any kind of attention or support, I would first have to have a public breakdown of the sort that would throw my entire life out of balance and make people seriously concerned for my well-being. And I'm not gonna do that, but I sympathize with people who are struggling even a little more who are tempted to go that route.
There appear to be plenty of good studies proving an increase in mental health diagnosis of young people. If I remember correct it is skewed toward female and those that claim to be left of liberal.
My natural father was/is paranoid and slightly schizophrenic. It hit him in his 20s and he was homeless for 40 years because of it.
However, I have a 20-something nephew that started having psychotic episodes. In his case his parents and I are absolutely certain that his problems are at least exacerbated by his excessive cannabis consumption. Other young men I know have similar issues.
And now we have a critical theory fake scholarship mythology that rejects objective truth, science and history. And Zuckerberg wants us all to live in the Metaverse.
Seems to be that there are multiple reasons we are seeing more mental health challenges in people. Ironic that in my early computer career we talked about too much CRT time causing brain problems.
I was appalled by how often and casually the recent former Slate Dear Prudence (Ortberg) counseled people to cut off their families and loved ones over perceived failures to validate woke-identity-x.
Certainly there are cases where such a drastic step is necessary. But Prudence dished it out like candy.
Prudence dished it out in many cases when it was completely unnecessary and inappropriate. Glibly.
All she and the rest of had to go on, as far as I know, was what was in the letters. In fairness, her reading comprehension skills were terrible.
So like KT I am completely cut off and estranged from my family of origin. I have not seen or spoken to them in 12 years. They’ve never met if acknowledged one of my children and the first only as a baby. I don’t have the same feeling about it as them though. I do acknowledge that it was necessary but being better than the alternative is a very low bar. It’s incredibly painful to live this way and to use a cliche, it really does feel like a wound that never heals and never gets closure. It’s like having a family who is dead but they aren’t dead. There was no publicly acceptable way to mourn, no ritual to mark the beginning of a life alone without parents or siblings. Because if this I think the the wanton counseling to cut off family members is often harmful unless there is truly no hope in reconciliation. Only the people involved know that for sure and must do what they need to. But I don’t feel like it’s compassionate to tell people that life without a family, even as an adult, is some kind of happy solution.
I personally hate it when people say “sorry that happened to you” on the internet but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m truly and genuinely sorry.
I get you and yes, it is painful - at least at first. But, sometimes, separation is the only way to get clear on your own values and priorities if they deviate from your family's norms. You can lose yourself in your family's beliefs or prejudices. If I had stayed, I would have been bullied and subsumed (made invisible). By leaving, I was able to create a "self" that I am happy with. Yes, it cost me much in suffering - I wanted to belong to a family as much as the next person. I wanted to be nurtured and valued. But, it was worth it because I like who I am and the life that I have created. I have become myself.
And recently, miracle of miracles, one of my abusers actually admitted to the abuse because he was so floored by what I've been able to create and the success I've been able to achieve in spite of not having family support. So, in my case, it was a happy solution. In fact, years ago, in therapy, one of my shrinks suggested that I divorce my family and I thought he was crazy. But, I see the wisdom in that choice now.
Sometimes our families are stuck in a belief system that requires us to be smaller than who we really are if we want to stay connected. Sometimes leaving is healthy. I don't know if it's always the best solution. But, I strongly believe that if something is in the way of you self-actualizing, you have to move beyond it. YMMV.
I want to be really clear. My comment is specifically about the way advice-givers on the internet, whether in advice columns or forums like Reddit are often very quick to encourage people to cut off their families with very little information to go on. I had in mind a very specific internet board I used to frequent. I certainly understand, in a very real way, why some people make that decision or why a mental health professional with knowledge of their patient would give that advice.
It would be very nice to find a way to solve the context deficit that the internet encourages - for sure.
Like a lot of people here I've been on the web since almost the start; this was (now that I look back on it) a startlingly common recommendation even when virtually the entire internet was white guys in the US or northern Europe or the antipodes. "Sever" was a word of choice for many years about relationships; "ATD" remains earthily vindictive to this day. That it's extended to the nuclear family over time is inevitable.
And yes, it absolutely makes sense why some people - including some in this very comment page - would do it. It also makes sense why perfect strangers a thousand miles away can fire off such life-changing commands so airily - there's no consequence for those who issue the edicts.
I wonder how much the apparently increasing professional leniency as to what constitutes mental illness might contribute.
I have been formally diagnosed with autism. I am a mostly pretty normal adult who owns her own house, holds down a well-paying job, and takes care of her family/friends. My autism is confined to clumsiness, chronically missing social cues, and an intense sensitivity to certain stimuli. I worked as a nanny throughout college, and one of the boys I took care of was also autistic. His autism manifested as an inability to learn language, almost no control of fine motor skills, and mental retardation. Giving these conditions the same name just seems...wrong.
Turning it into an identity then allows people to 'steal' the agony of the more-afflicted. It's no different than a woman who's been in the US her whole life claiming oppression because little girls are sold into marriage in other countries, or a wealthy Indian immigrant claiming oppression because Africans were enslaved in the US in the past. Mental illness is crippling at its extremes, and when "I get a little nervous in crowds" and "I haven't left my house in twelve years because I'm afraid I'll get trampled" are given the same name, it invites exaggeration.
Not to mention that an official diagnosis is highly stigmatizing and can really limit what you can do in life. I don't get the criticism of self-diagnosis. Read the DSM, see if you fit the criteria. It's not rocket science.
Web-MDing your way to mental health is not going to get it done. That's part of the problem is self-diagnosing and then thinking that you don't need medical/mental health services. It's like the old adage, If you're asking yourself if you're crazy then you're not crazy. There are a lot of people out there looking for reasons and excuses which makes it harder to get the help for those who truly need it.
It's a complicated thing this mental health stuff. I ask myself all sorts of troubling questions and scenarios like "could I be a serial killer?" or "what happens if I drive off this bridge into the lake or off the mountain side" and then think something must be wrong because a normal person doesn't ask themselves those questions and then I have a cold beer and play with my kids. So I'm not sure what to think.
The assumption being, of course, that if you are a privileged white person, you have no real or legitimate problems. It's a type of erasure; a type of dehumanization.
Actually, I misread your comment. That said, I'm tired of all of the dehumanization going on on any and all sides. I want a return of the benefit of the doubt. Society is just more pleasant when we apply this "golden rule" to human relations. Can we just get back to seeing each other as "well meaning?" Or, has the internet destroyed this forever?
Libby Watson wrote of this issue very well (vis a vis all those telehealth pill mills that have been advertising across social media lately) in a recent post on her "Sick Note" health care blog:
"To have an easy time getting healthcare in America, you need to have two things: A lot of money, and good health. You don’t have to be poor to struggle to access care. If you make, say, $40,000 a year and live in an expensive city, you’re not necessarily in poverty, but you’re also probably not making ends meet with any sort of comfort. You’re likelier to have high-deductible health insurance that makes it hard to go see the doctor, let alone find one who has time to care about you. If you strike out at one doctor, it could be another few hundred to see the next one, and the next, and the next. When it comes to finding a psychiatrist in-network, forget about it. You’d have an easier time finding an old dine-in Pizza Hut with the good cups."
https://www.sicknote.co/p/telehealth-startups-get-scary?s=r
Also, I have multiple professional diagnoses that come to wildly different conclusions and seem to mostly be bullshit. It's surprising how many mental health professionals (even highly qualified ones by any conventional metric) seem to have no idea what they're doing when dealing with actual patients and are super reckless with prescriptions etc.
The main conclusion I've come to over the past 24 months is that most people who speak authoritatively about medical matters are completely and totally full of shit, and if I have a physical malady, unless the person diagnosing me is a picture of glowing, physical health, they're probably wrong.
This intersects with mental health in that the people whom I see pontificating on matters of the mind online - for I have no need to seek them out in person (and there but for the grace of God goeth I)*, this is where I see them - are by and large colossal fuck-ups with awful, grating, wild-eyed personality flaws.
*This is why I appreciate this article of Freddie's so much. There are people hurting and seeking guidance in the place they are - the Internet. The people they find to guide them range from the benign to the well-meaning-but-misguided to the actively demonic. In few cases is their advice efficacious; when it is, it's probably politically incorrect.
"unless the person diagnosing me is a picture of glowing, physical health, they're probably wrong."
I have had almost the opposite experience. People in great health are often in great health due mostly to luck, whether through good genes or other positive breaks of circumstance. It creates little provocation for them to really dig in and understand the tricky parts.
Certainly, there are people in great health who have much to add; I'm not trying to deny that in any way. But it has been my experience that people who have experienced affliction themselves, or whose loved ones have, are the most truly knowledgeable. Necessarily, such people have more cause to become well-acquainted with the details of the thing. Suffering, when it doesn't prevent action, tends to be extremely motivating.
It also waters mental illness down for people who actually have it. Every extra person who claims to have crippling anxiety because they get a little nervous on airplanes is making it harder for the people who actually need to manage panic disorder, for example. "I was sad one time so I have depression" cheapens it for those of us who haven't cleaned the house in months.
I have fairly moderate anxiety and depression, but they're not things I'm proud of, they're irritating problems that interfere with my life that I wish would go away, much like my acid reflux. If you don't make GERD or hemorrhoids or high blood pressure part of your identity, why would you do that with mental illness? "Hi, I'm Maddox, they/them, and I need extra time on this test because of my massive hemorrhoids. I mean, they hang like bunches of grapes, they're so bad. Anyway, kindly validate my itchiness or I'm going to tweet."
I know what you mean here, but the idea that agony is a thing of value to be appropriated seems disturbing to me.
Well, agony itself isn't really the valuable thing -- the perceived value, I think, is in others' reactions to it: sympathy, understanding, attention, etc. Those are obviously valuable, at times, to almost all of us. The disturbing thing is that appropriated agony is seen as a good or acceptable way to get those things.
Wait, what is the mechanism whereby you think those using the watered-down definition is making it harder for those with a "real" disorder? I actually think the opposite, that using the watered-down definition helps to fight stigma, because it recognizes mental illness as just the extreme parts of a spectrum everyone is on. So, I don't have diagnosable OCD just because I like to alphabetize my spices, but the person who alphabetizes their spices is in fact more compulsive than most, and everyone is at some more or less "normal" part of that spectrum of compulsivity.
Same thing with autism. The person who identifies as autistic despite having pretty mild "symptoms" isn't taking anything away from a severely autistic person. They're just at different points on the spectrum.
I think it's unhelpful because if mental health disorders are a deviation from what is "average" (in the absence of some sort of physically identifiable cause), then, when everyone has a mental disorder, no one does. I think it makes it more likely that people won't take an actual mental illness, one that has a negative impact on your life and not one that just makes you update your Twitter bio, seriously. Because if you flubbed your lines in a play and now you're "traumatized", people think "that's not trauma, that's just ridiculous". But actual trauma exists: like for people who are abused or participate in combat. My fear is that, over time, as more people claim and even champion mental illness labels that they shouldn't, people will become desensitized and take those labels less seriously. I agree with Freddie in that I don't like to question or police people's diagnoses, but in the absence of any kind of checks or balances, people can claim any illness they want, especially when they're socially incentivized to do so. It feels like the pendulum swung too far past "acceptance" and into "ruthlessly unquestioning" territory.
Of course, I don't have any kind of surveys or something to back this up. It could very well be a just-so story. But, anecdotally, I'm sorry to say that I know several people whom I secretly suspect of manufacturing all kinds of labels like this for themselves, who speak the victimhood language of the left, who are incentivized and socially pressured by their friends and institutions to adopt illnesses and identities that they don't perhaps don't actually have. So now, when someone tells me they have anxiety, a part of me thinks: "Do you really?" Which is horrible! But what else do you expect when the current milieu prioritizes and celebrates things like mental health issues?
"People can claim any illness they want, especially when they're socially incentivized to do so."
I think the problem there is not those who self-diagnose, but rather the social incentives for people to portray themselves as the victim. The point you are making is that some people truly need support and help ("reasonable accommodation" if you will) and others do not, but there certainly isn't a perfect correlation between needing help and an Official Diagnosis. Lots of people have Official Diagnoses and are doing fine and don't need any particular accommodation, while lots of other people lack Official Diagnoses and still need support.
In answer to this, I appreciated what Freddie described in yesterday’s post, about people pointing to particularly ugly/harmful/unpalatable expressions of mental illness and saying, “That’s not what mental illness looks like”. I would agree that somebody taking Prozac for crappy-but-manageable depression is not taking anything away from someone with treatment-resistent major depressive order. I also agree that sometimes it helps reduce stigma.
But I think maybe an example of the watered-down definition making it harder for people is something I’ve observed when people talk online about incels. Most profiles on the community agree a disproportionate number of them are somewhere on the autism spectrum, and they characterize their own community that way, too. Whatever their other issues, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say that some of the possible expressions of autism, including a tendency toward black-and-white thinking, trouble with social cues, and less ability to emotionally stand in other people’s shoes, might be contributing factors to the attraction of that ingroup for those people, and their behavior once inside it.
But people constantly say it’s as good as excusing their beliefs and behavior to point out that a diagnosable condition might be a contributing factor in their feelings of isolation, social confusion, and anger. And you definitely see people whose autism does not affect their daily life in that way saying, “I have autism, and I’m not spouting misogynistic rhetoric or treating women like my enemies. Therefore that’s definitively not autism, it’s just them being horrible, unlikeable people.“ 
So, while I don’t think anyone on the mild end of the autism spectrum is stealing resources that could be better-used to help an incel function in society, or whatever, I do think there’s a danger of people on the “milder” end of the mental illness spectrum going too far in cutting off association with people on the more severe end, to the point that we won’t talk about mental illness as a real influence on harmful behavior.
An analogy might be the people who self-diagnose as having gluten sensitivities. Controlled experiments usually indicate that these people don't have any adverse reactions to gluten, but they've created a demand for gluten-free products that is really helpful for people who actually have celiac disease.
I’ve seen this called the “curb-cutter effect” - curb cuts in sidewalks are required by the ADA for people using mobility devices and people with visual impairments, but it turns out they’re safer and more convenient for able-bodied people with strollers and on bicycles, too.
As a technical point, your motivation for alphabetizing your spices is critical for understanding whether or not your behavior in this example is meaningfully on a spectrum with OCD. If you do it because it offers you brief relief from a repetitive dread that you know makes no sense but you can't stop thinking about, maybe it is subclinical OCD or what have you.
If, however, alphabetizing spices is very satisfying to you, even if you can't explain why, this is not meaningfully related to the experience of OCD and I would push back hard against the spectrum idea applying
"what is the mechanism whereby you think those using the watered-down definition is making it harder for those with a "real" disorder?"
I think there's a definite boy-who-cried-wolf effect, except instead of operating within one person, across time (the boy cried wolf to the town so many times that by the time he really saw a wolf, no one in the town believed him) it operates across persons (so many different boys pretended there were wolves that the townsfolk stopped believing them, so when the last truthful boy did indeed see a wolf, no one in the town believed him).
There's also a compassion-fatigue effect. There was a year in my life when I sank so much time and energy into a person who (in retrospect) was using helplessness to manipulate me that I was unable to give time and energy to a less-manipulative friend who needed me much more. It still angers me to think about.
I think this happens kind of a lot. After I saw it playing out with those two friends (and fixed my error), I suddenly started seeing it playing out all around me, across multiple social contexts. Once I watched a young nonbinary person leveraging their mental illness etc to recruit allies in a fight with an elderly man in poor physical health. I was briefly drawn in, and then appalled at myself once I cleared my head.
Tl;dr: I want to maximize my support of my honestly struggling friends. The most consistent way that I get fouled up is by incorrently sinking resources into a manipulator. I think I am currently doing my best to thread this needle, but damn it would be easier if there weren't such a current trend towards fashionable and performative illness.
“Turning it into an identity then allows people to 'steal' the agony of the more-afflicted.”
I love this. So true.
People are always going to self-dramatize. But now there doesn’t seem to be a countervailing “oh get over it — others have it so much worse” narrative. Plus the “rugged American values” (I say that slightly tongue in cheek), self-reliance, grit, etc — well, there isn’t one that hasn’t been decried somewhere as either a) toxic masculinity or b) white supremacy. So the reigning liberal (usually affluent as FdB points out) narrative is unopposed in certain circles — and those circles are ideologically powerful.
It's difficult, for me, because I do think things like "oh, just get over it" are not, in and of themselves, helpful. But, and this applies not just to mental healthcare, you DO have to make an effort and take some responsibility to get better to actually get better. It isn't easy, but who else is going to make you seek help (without someone exercising some legal rights to do it by force, which is never pleasant)? I think there are compassionate ways to remind people that they have some agency in their lives.
I want a message more along the lines of: "This sucks, and it's not your fault, but you are the only one responsible for fixing it." It's like having a job you hate or that doesn't pay enough. Realistically, you have the most power to make changes in your life. Is it always easy or fair? No, not always, but that's moot if you just sit there.
Yes, that’s a fair point. In fact I’m having somewhat of a facepalm moment here. Of course I would never say, oh just get over it. However, it seems useful to me to impart the idea that you can, if not get over it, at least persevere. As opposed to imparting, “you’ve fallen and you can’t get up.” Maybe that expresses it better. In short I take your point.
It's okay. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that's what you were saying. Mine was somewhat of a kneejerk reaction.
No worries. Your reaction highlighted something useful. Difficult problems are difficult both for the people who have them and the people who would like to help the people who have them!
Years ago I was struggling emotionally and a friend (who had struggled herself) gave me a copy of Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” She said it had made a big difference to her. Out of anyone, because of what he overcame, he can describe the path he took and the conclusions he drew to get through adversity.
Motivational speakers are also great for this. They might not directly say “I did this, look what I got through, you can too” but that is the implication. Yes, encouragement to persevere.
I couldn’t grab on to the book but I appreciated her gift and knew it meant she had persevered and was overcoming.
Notoriously uncontroversial Amy Wax—aka America’s grandma—has talked about accidents of birth and circumstances with the analogy of someone having their leg broken by someone else. Even if it was purposeful, or unjust, or random, the only person who has the agency to get better is the person with the broken leg. Which is just true. I’d say that reasonable accommodations and compassion are important support structures, but only the person with the broken leg/mood disorder has any real ability to cause the recovery.
As a teacher we get accommodation letters for students with mental issues increasingly these days. The recommended solution is to give the person more time and not be strict abt deadlines. Sometimes 1/3 of the class is in this category and it is increasingly difficult to teach with any organization or structure. I don't know what to do so I accommodate but sometimes I feel like I could help in a different way, but I don't know what that would be and the office that issues the letters to accommodate isn't much help. I am sure many people who teach grapple with this.
Simple, just teach half a dozen boutique versions of each of your courses at the same time, oh, and don't forget to carve out time for your own mental health.
It is exhausting and you are correct...each of these accommodations does require considerable extra time over and beyond what I used to do.
Not to sound like a downer but this is another indication that our public school system is on the way out unless it is seriously revamped. There have been failures on all sides and when parents are making excuses for their children (I know not always) that’s not fantastic for a struggling system.
I teach grad.school-- It used to be pretty much sink or swim..but we've ended GRE, undergrad scores are inflated so there isn't much of a filter. Most students are terrific but there are lots more requiring accommodations and to be truthful as a teacher I have pretty much had to figure out how to help people needing accommodations on my own. The bigger issue, I think, is that when the graduates hit the job market there are different requirements. You'd think that punctuality and showing up for work were no longer important today, but that's often the first thing I am asked about candidates for jobs. And then I am sort of stuck. I don't misrepresent to employers but I find I often demur. And that is a reason I worry.Schools accommodate, most workplaces don't. Are we giving people an unrealistic sense of what it is like to take jobs where they aren't accommodated?
The accommodation letters are driven by the need to get extra time so they increase their chances of getting a better grade. It's about gaming the system. Everything starts out well-meaning but then gets expanded and manipulated. I can't say I find this surprising.
Why, it's almost that a series of increasingly perverse incentives inevitably yielded to a series of increasingly perverse results.
I have checked my records...it's more like 10%. I guess it "seems" like more because of the time I spend on those in this category.Did not want to let this go uncorrected.
In earlier times, if you didn't exercise your agency, you starved. It was that simple. I think the current ease of feeding oneself (given a minimum income or government assistance) combined with coddled childhoods contributes to some of our younger generations’ inability to exercise agency.
And I think it does feed identity distortions. The internet is a giant amplifier that alters norms and expectations and also how we perceive norms and expectations. All of this contributes to the burgeoning victim culture—the competition to be the most desperately harmed human being. Because then you get the most attention; you are the star of the show. It's how we get sideshows like Jussie Smollett.
It is cultural narcissism. Character-building matters not. Integrity matters not. Authenticity is redefined as your worst self instead of your best self. Pain becomes a ticket to power, to attention, to fame, and even to riches. This is a good article that provides some insight: https://www.drgeorgesimon.com/cultural-narcissism-fosters-character-disturbance/
It is a very strange reality indeed.
I would argue that there is a serious class problem in mental health treatment, which disproportionately screws over people who are poor enough to be getting government assistance. It is insanely difficult to get on disability for debilitating mental issues. It is still expensive and time consuming to seek treatment for those things, even if you are on government health benefits. I think there are infinitely more poor people, at least in the United States, struggling every day with mental illnesses that will never be accommodated by the kinds of jobs they can work in than we care to think about. In our current healthcare system, we have the most information about the diagnoses of people who can access our expensive private diagnostic systems and afford exorbitant name-brand drugs.
I would agree that mental illness has become part of the ecosystem of identity distortion in present culture, especially among the post-secondary-educated and professional classes. But I think the idea that “the current ease of feeding oneself“ is causing this is ridiculous. The millions of people on government assistance who do not find it easy to feed themselves and their families are not using their luxurious hours of leisure time to craft mental-health-based victim identities. And the people able to go to weekly therapy, whatever their diagnosis, are not on government assistance.
Not causing. Enabling. And basically I feel that the lack of resilience in younger generations is enabled by the fact that they don't have to work so hard to survive (like our ancestors did). All of the modern infrastructure doesn't require them to exercise the kind of agency that had to be exercised to procure food in the past. There are things about life in the past that built grit and character whether you liked it or not. Things are super easy now. And so there is not as much challenge.
I would bet that the kind of mental illness that was discussed in the post - the potentially performative kind - is not as common in lower income cultures because there is no room for that type of silliness. I am guessing that if you could chart it, it would be correlated to higher incomes - where life is less challenging. As you said, the PMC. That's all I'm saying.
Some people /can/ just "get over it", and should. Some people canniot, and they need our compassion and help.
There /is/ a meaningful difference between these two groups, and that's what we've forgotten - that it is ok to say "get over it" to some people, just not everybody.
Just because no one individual is identifiably "the best" at making that important and valid distinction is not sufficient reason to rule that no one should /ever/ try to make that valid and important distinction.
Nuance on social media – news at 11! ;)
Yeah everything is a spectrum now. A few months ago I was at my GP and she was talking about how adhd should be thought of as a spectrum and that I would probably be on it. I really didn't know what to do with that info.
At some point I think some of these spectrums are so encompassing that we’re talking about a personality type, not a mental illness.
Personality involves five factors (OCEAN): openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. To me, this always looked like high N low C behavior.
Yep. The so-called "personality disorders," as well as high-functioning autism, are better thought of as personality types than as "illnesses."
Knowing I'm slightly more likely to have a heart attack means it's more important for me to eat my vegetables.
Knowing that I have something in my DNA that impacts my attention makes it more important for me to stay off the Internet
Interestingly enough, I get weird Instagram adds all the time selling some sort of influencer crap about managing ADHD that usually involve some kind of three question quiz about whether you may have ADHD. Mental illness is a commodity being sold as a lifestyle for money. And I think a lot of people buy it because they want an explanation for their pain besides “life is pain, anyone who tells you differently is selling something”.
I started getting targeted ads for ADHD-diagnoses-plus-meds-by-mail constantly a few months back. Really, really skeeves me out.
Bonus points for the Princess Bride reference! :-)
My father-in-law is a psychologist who diagnoses children w/ learning disabilities for the state he lives in and he's told me the the definition of autism is effectively non-useful but instead you're identifying people upon the autism spectrum. In his practice he doesn't even use the word autism for the very reasons you cite but has to clearly define the issues of the children he's evaluating for disability and education benefits. He has a nephew that is on the high functional autism spectrum. The kid has gone to college, can interact w/ people in the right setting, but is obsessed with football statistics but can't maintain direct eye contact for very long and will live with his parents the rest of his life.
I think what has done a lot of damage that isn't mentioned is the WebMD phenomenon whereby people are taking on-line tests and then diagnosing themselves and then demanding recognition of that self-diagnosis which is vastly different than someone who has to have continuous professional services and medication.
I really worry about the professional leniency angle. Of course people can deeply struggle and it’s not obvious to people outside their own head. I also think coping mechanisms for stuff like ADHD-tendencies can take a lot more mental energy to maintain than is obvious to outsiders. But I do worry about the fact that it feels like majority women getting diagnoses for not-outwardly-debilitating problems, at least in my own life.
I get suspicious, because everything else in a woman’s life is marketed toward pointing out her flaws and offering her a way to fix them for money, about how often an ADHD diagnosis for a smart, creative woman who feels unable to concentrate working from her living room at a dull, busy, unstimulating job is like bored housewives getting prescribed Valium for their anxiety. It can’t be the job itself, the complete lack of in-person social interaction, the isolation, or the constant stream of asynchronous communication from multiple channels making it hard to get things done; it must be your broken brain. Thank god, now you can fix it and stop being so useless and feeling so inadequate.
I think the pendulum of professional leniency is swinging in some respects but there is also the reality that the system is overloaded with people who don't have the coping mechanisms or can't get help or don't have a solid support system (family/friends) or all 3 of those. My FIL told me that you can't diagnose ADHD or autism in one visit. You can run simply tests and make initial observations but sometimes it requires more time w/ some individuals. The communication and personal interaction changes that Covid created are going to take a while to work through. My wife has been working from home for 2 years and she misses the inter-office chit chat but at the same time has no desire to return to the office. She enjoys her work as an architect but she also makes time to get together with friends and family to avoid the pitfalls you mention.
I think the professional leniency coupled w/ patients who self-diagnose makes for a bad combination of over-worked professionals processing patient requests for drugs.
Yes! I think there are a lot of perfectionists under a lot of pressure to succeed under very difficult conditions, for whom the only socially acceptable reason *not* to succeed is a diagnosis. Everyone I knew at college who had a semester where they struggled with grades or activities emerged with a diagnosis--and I'm not saying they were faking at all, just that there was only one narrative available to explain failure to thrive at a prestigious, competitive college.
(And yet at the same time at the same college it was widely known that if you told your school-provided therapist you were suicidal, the school would require you to take a leave of absence and you might never be allowed to come back. Diagnoses proliferated widely and casually and at the same time they had the power to ruin your life--no wonder we were all so obsessed with them.)
That reminds me of grad school when several classmates were taking Adderall to help them concentrate. It did seem for a while that there were a lot of people with ADHD in college who were cured once they graduated. I recall having to pull several all-nighters for design studio and a friend offered me half a pill to help me concentrate. I spent 3 hrs cutting the same model pieces over and over again but boy oh boy I sure could concentrate on that one task at hand. I realized at 3 am that it wasn't a lack of concentration but a lack of sleep.
I think this is such a great way to draw the distinction. I really, really don’t intend to disdain people who seek diagnoses for their distress. I think “faking it” is a useless and inaccurate way to describe any of it. But the idea of “only one narrative available to explain failure” is such an important one.
I know some people who figured out pretty early on that the way their minds worked, diagnosable or not, was incompatible with the structure of the conventional white-collar workplace. Some of those people were able to get into more free-wheeling, self-structured work that worked for them better; some were able to get accommodations at work to mitigate the problem, like flexible schedules or assignments better-suited to their skills; and some are just stuck grinding through the best jobs available to them, which pay the bills but will always feel like a miserable struggle.
Also great to point out the difference between a diagnosis that helps you explain your situation to yourself and others, and one that can ruin you. I believe it’s still the case - though thankfully less so - that certain diagnoses, or a medical history of involuntary treatment, can show up when you apply to bar associations. You can make it all the way through law school, but if you had a past suicidal episode or police involvement for a mental health reason, you can be locked out of your credentials regardless of how well-managed your illness is years later. Not to mention the humiliation of having it disclosed and discussed.
Or as David Mitchell put it: "Women, sort yourselves out":
https://youtu.be/85HT4Om6JT4
I was going to say something similar, but you've said it better, I think.
But I'd like to add: I think there's a tendency to conflate certain things that ought to simply be considered "personality traits" with "mental illnesses."
Speaking for myself for example, I am fairly certain that I could be diagnosed with ADHD. I plan to seek such a diagnosis soon. I hope to benefit from medication. My ADHD symptoms noticeably affect my life in some negative ways, particularly my performance at work and my management of household chores. I also experience noticeable seasonal depression symptoms every year, and I plan on seeking treatment for them, too.
But I really don't think I should be considered "mentally ill." I have a good job, I have a healthy marriage, I own a house, and I have stable friendships and other relationships. I am working toward financial stability. I am doing pretty darn good, by all practical American middle-class standards. I'm not really worried about my future, and I'm pretty confident that if for some reason I end up being unable to get any treatment or medication, I'll continue to be pretty much okay, just like I have been so far.
I think that there are really wide gray areas between simply having certain personality traits --- traits which are not at all uncommon! -- and having harmful mental illnesses. I don't think that these gray areas are acknowledged enough. Many classified mental illnesses seem to simply be very extreme versions of personality types (or complexes of traits, if you don't like the idea of types).
I prefer the more traditional label for my non-neurotypical personality: "eccentric."
I have recently been diagnosed with ADHD, but similarly to you, I am from the outside a very high achieving person. But, similarly to you, I have an inability to focus and keep up with things, as well as self control issues, that feels pathological to me. I told a few friends and coworkers, but they don't understand this diagnosis and how it fits me at ALL (I just have to trust how I feel on the inside).
I do not feel "mentally ill" or even "neuro-atypical" or like I have a "disability." I feel like I have mild ADHD which is benefiting from medication already. I was able to function without it, but I am functioning better with it. I am so interested in the jump from "I have X mental issue" to "I am a mentally ill person" or "I am neurodivergent" as an identity, because I can't seem to muster putting that label on myself.
"Giving these conditions the same name just seems...wrong."
I wouldn't go that far. I'm autistic in about the same way that you are. My brother, on the other hand, is far more severe and closer to the autistic boy that you just described. As different as these manifestations of autism seem to be, they seem to be related genetically, with both kinds often running in families.
"Mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility" is the mantra of Marcus Parks over at the Last Podcast on the Left. Social media culture doesn't necessarily award responsibility though, instead everyone needs to pretend to be unique. In some ways the "responsibility free" approach to mental health may even be a reaction to how large the world feels these days. The only way to stand out is to be extreme.
To be all too speculative, I imagine everyone has a greater or lesser part of Bartleby the Scrivener in them, an inner voice whispering "I prefer not to." This refusal, being neither useful in living in nor changing society, is not something that can be justified, hence why Bartleby is so alien, unless of course you can replace "I prefer not to" with "I cannot," which is precisely what a (self-)diagnosis permits.
Compassion, don’t fail me now 🤞.
Losers teaching young people how to lose. Sincerely, beware, your progeny is being miseducated, they could be destroyed by this well meaning gibberish. The Gnosticism of postmodern relativism is a virus, a bug and junior is in grave danger. Maybe you are as well, maybe losing has been put in you.
It always does.
Just show me where I can get some on the gray market, and I'll love Ya forever.
I think I’m contrarian my wife says I’m an asshole, hum?
I think You're both right.
Naw. I've known RJF INTIMATELY (as intimately as two strangers who know nothing about each other CAN)... Well, he's not usually far off the mark. And, believe it or not, speaking hard home truths can take a lotta both compassion and courage (these days anyWay).
Ah. I see. I'd say it took some courage, knowing somebody like You can come along and act like You know everything.
You think MY age is a problem?! GO for it. But Your no more brave than RJF. Or it doesn't SEEM like bravery to me. ICBW, of course, so there is that. Is it POSSIBLE for You to be wrong, M. KT??
I just now saw this. LOL! You and me in same boat then. Up #(@# creek, as they used-ta say.
But seriously, I thought we were on a different Substack. I didn't know You thought THIS forum was mostly conservative. Is it?!?
Who knew. You didn't see my other post. I'm 67 going on 3. So it wasn't a "Kids these days" thing at all. Or from what I recall of it, which... What were You saying?
I'll give Ya points for like my joke tho, so there is that, too.
Agent provocateur I don’t want to be courageous, I want to fuck with people, they deserve to be upset/. This is an age of idiocy, our grandparents would be ashamed of us.
Even our parents would be. Grandparents! Still send shivers down me.
The greatest generation
I agree with your general notion but do really think it’s older conservatives who follow Freddie? He seems kinda avant- garde, marxist, intellectual and lefty, so I’m not sure if that’s correct.
It is an interesting thing to consider, next time he lets ask questions I will ask him what he thinks his demographic to be. I assumed it was young hipsters. I’m 58, white male heterosexual.
I don't think that's ALL-a it, Sir RJF. I think the Boomers, and I assume Gen-Xers, decided they were gonna best The Greatest Generation by being THE BEST GENERATION OF PARENTS EVER!
Results were as You would expect. You read and helicopter parent and try to raise the "perfect" child. And try to be their FRIEND, like their parents (The Greatest Generation) could never be!
EVERYTHING to get in the best schools, the best university, the best career, the best spouses and cars and the kids would have the best of EVERYTHING.
Except learning how to FAIL. Fail time and again and RECOVER each time, and getting stronger and more resilient.
You gotta risk something, if You want Your life to mean much of anything, right? Otherwise, no risk, no challenge other than those You make up in Your head? You risk something of Yourself and You can feel things deeper. That's my limited experience anyhoo.
In the end, everyone fails: You die. If You take it that way.
Hi jt very solid, I think you capture the zeitgeist of good intentions gone wrong or at least too far. That’s actually why I chose the word losers. It’s a viciously competitive world and teaching kids intersectionality, micro aggressions, safe spaces et al is a great disservice, it misapprehends the race. The human race.
Yeah, losers raisin' losers I guess. I wonder if it's always been like that?
Very solid, indeed.
“suffering itself is not a rare condition, but a universal one”
You know what these kids need is some Boethius.
Boethius is one of my go-tos when I’m deeply depressed. I drink too much, stare off into space, and hold my copy of “Consolation” in one hand while pretending I have the ability to concentrate on anything at all.
It’s good times, folks, it’s good times.
Thank you for this reference, I don't know why I hadn't heard of him before.
I think there is also something about the culture of social justice that like, reifies and validates a world view and behaviors that are antithetical to stable mental health. Perceiving every slight as a catastrophic and phobic event representative of a hostile world, etc.
VERY (italics) much.
I know a they/them, pillar of the LGBTQ community they live in, who posted recently about how dreamy it was to go to a “gay steakhouse”. In the comments, it was revealed that the steakhouse was owned by gay people, and that made them feel “safe.” A supportive friend said, You’re safe everywhere around here. And they responded, “But I don’t feel comfortable everywhere.”
That conflation of discomfort with unsafe is so dangerous to people’s mental health, and it’s supported by the idea that anything that makes, say, a trans person uncomfortable is a manifestation of a morally corrupt transphobic society, and this it’s only reasonable to respond to that discomfort by labeling it as egregious and responding with more intensity than the event merited.
Phew! Yeah, I've seen that but not in those words. TYTY. It goes along with "words are violence." They actually take things said as a PHYSICAL assault. Dunno how they never learnt "Sticks and stones.." and all those kind-a hard home truths.
I do think it’s intertwined with a sense of “justice”. Letting a slight go unremarked is somehow viewed as enabling the oppressors. But when you internalize it like that, all you see in life are hostilities toward your identity group, and an attendant inability to discern between people responding negatively to your personality and not your identity marker.
And some inability to see that what are foibles are not necessarily (if at all) an attack on one's personhood.
I used to respond pretty militantly to anything I perceived as a sexist interaction. It didn’t feel good after a while—I felt trapped. Now, when someone jokingly calls me a bitch, I don’t filter it through the whole misogyny lens, I just say I don’t like to be called that and let it go. Just a personal preference.
You've got the right of it there, ... Naw, won't make the obvious joke that starts with a "b." Because, yeah.
David Burns wrote the most famous and arguably best self help book on CBT, “Feeling Good”. He has a new one out called “Feeling Great”.
It’s basically the same old CBT stuff, and still written by a very goofy and uncool guy. The main new idea is that before trying to dismantle your cognitive distortions, you’re now supposed to list and think very clearly about all the ways that your distorted beliefs and symptoms are beneficial to you and reflect positive aspects of yourself. Then, you consciously choose whether and how much to leave these things behind.
I find it is a powerful technique for anyone, and likely particularly helpful for people stuck in the type of trap described in this post. Highly recommend “Feeling Great” by David Burns.
One of the things I appreciated the most about the CBT I did years ago was how much agency it gave me. No longer was I at the mercy of maladaptive coping mechanisms like worry. By changing how I think (albeit with some difficulty), I could change how I felt. "Anxiety and worry are different. Anxiety is something you have that you probably can't control, but worry is something you do that you absolutely can control." That was day one, and it immediately changed my perspective. Still not an easy road, but it was eye-opening just to hear someone say "no, you can totally fix this".
This reminds me of the recent CAP survey of LGBTQ adults that found abysmal mental health among younger people. For example:
“82 percent of Gen Z [queer] respondents reported feeling so sad that nothing could cheer them up to some degree in January 2020, compared with 64 percent of Millennials, 46 percent of Gen X, and 30 percent of Baby Boomers.”
Younger people consider themselves more enlightened on these topics, but the mentality described in the Reddit post (which fits my observations) is toxic and terrible for mental health.
They tell each other the whole world must accommodate their disorders—they can’t be expected to function at work, to adhere to social norms, etc. and anyone who disagrees is an oppressor. I really worry for them in the real world, where “likes” don’t pay the rent.
Survey source:
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/lgbtqi-members-of-generation-z-face-unique-social-and-economic-concerns/
Young people are growing up in a world where they believe science is saying that civilization is threatened by climate change, and yet those in power do nothing to avert that outcome. Is it any wonder they don't feel happy or hopeful?
I grew up fearing nuclear apocalypse (and still do!) but that doesn’t pay the rent either.
There was an interesting Hidden Brain podcast referencing a study showing that people who live under more objectively oppressive conditions profess to much lower levels of oppression than people in freer societies. A lesbian in Russia, I think it was, felt way less oppressed than an American lesbian. Makes you wonder.
This comment seems to unintentionally paint a kind of hierarchy—where if you can get shot for speaking freely, whether you’re targeted for being gay doesnt matter. But absent a general hostility, feeling persecution for being gay becomes more important.
That raises the question, if it wasn’t very important in the first case, why should it be more important in the second?
I mean, in the example I mentioned above, we’re talking about a lesbian who in one country literally does face the prospect of jail or death *because she is gay*, versus a lesbian in the US who does not realistically face either of those things, especially from the state.
It’s clear that the sense of oppression is objectively murkier for the US lesbian, even if it is true that there is *some* hostility from *some* people in the US to being gay.
A very small minority of people are journalists or dissidents. There are a lot of gay people. Realistically in countries like Russia unless you're a public figure you can talk shit about the government among friends. But homophobia is very widespread at all social levels, not just coming from the government.
do you know which episode?
Just spent way too much time digging around trying to find it, and can’t seem to locate it.