"Having dealt with" a person who has a "condition" that didn't exist before something like 1990, doesn't give you special insight into the particulars of whatever it is that ails that person.
There isn't any such thing as "bipolar." Look at the word. "Bipolar." Two ends. Two ends of what, exactly? It literally means vascillating between two endpoints, and as I already said, those points used to be described as "manic" (positive) and "depressive" (negative). It literally means you got a case of the sometimes-happy-sometime-sads.
This doesn't mean that the person who gets this diagnosis is just fine and should suck it up. It means that this particular way of describing human activity, human dealing with emotion, isn't correct. It's a catch-trap that ends up more conforming-to-standard than it does actually helping people deal with their shit.
Then say that, instead of adhering to a stupid term that means "case of the happy-sads," which is what "bipolar" means.
Except that this doesn't happen, because it means acknowledging that the problem isn't an illness that just blows in from the fucking Western winds, but an irregularity in a person's capacity for emotional regulation, which starts to touch the third rail of psychology, which is that people have the ability to affect their own emotional state and resultant reactions.
And we can't have that. Because why? Because fuck-all.
I have a parallel issue with people who say they "have" something. They "have" depression (more often than not, neuroses). They "have" anxiety. No, "you are [depressed]". It's not an alien inside of you. It's you. Sounds petty, and maybe it is irrelevant, but language is important and that type of language helps take a certain responsibility off of them.
Yes, this, very much this. We've been caught in a disturbing, escalating trend, of trying to capture more and more rather bog-standard human diversity of behavior, as pathology. All of this gender-confusion garbage is a wing of this trend. You've got 16-year-olds talking about their "PTSD" like they did 2 tours in Vietnam. As must happen, the creation of all these "problems" has given rise to the increasingly omnipresent administrative medical State.
the third rail of psychology, which is that people have the ability to affect their own emotional state and resultant reactions.
100%. Psychological diagnosis isn't inherently useless, it just needs to encourage people deal with their shit instead of enabling it by suggesting they're victims without agency.
Society needs to focus on mental health, not mental illness.
I agree with this, except that the term "mental health" has been hopelessly compromised. I don't think it's possible to do what needs to be done--which is to encourage and teach self-directed control over behavior, if not (but hopefully yes) state of mind. "Mental health" is indelibly now something we treat with quacks, social workers, and pills.
"Having dealt with" a person who has a "condition" that didn't exist before something like 1990, doesn't give you special insight into the particulars of whatever it is that ails that person.
There isn't any such thing as "bipolar." Look at the word. "Bipolar." Two ends. Two ends of what, exactly? It literally means vascillating between two endpoints, and as I already said, those points used to be described as "manic" (positive) and "depressive" (negative). It literally means you got a case of the sometimes-happy-sometime-sads.
This doesn't mean that the person who gets this diagnosis is just fine and should suck it up. It means that this particular way of describing human activity, human dealing with emotion, isn't correct. It's a catch-trap that ends up more conforming-to-standard than it does actually helping people deal with their shit.
Then say that, instead of adhering to a stupid term that means "case of the happy-sads," which is what "bipolar" means.
Except that this doesn't happen, because it means acknowledging that the problem isn't an illness that just blows in from the fucking Western winds, but an irregularity in a person's capacity for emotional regulation, which starts to touch the third rail of psychology, which is that people have the ability to affect their own emotional state and resultant reactions.
And we can't have that. Because why? Because fuck-all.
I have a parallel issue with people who say they "have" something. They "have" depression (more often than not, neuroses). They "have" anxiety. No, "you are [depressed]". It's not an alien inside of you. It's you. Sounds petty, and maybe it is irrelevant, but language is important and that type of language helps take a certain responsibility off of them.
Yes, this, very much this. We've been caught in a disturbing, escalating trend, of trying to capture more and more rather bog-standard human diversity of behavior, as pathology. All of this gender-confusion garbage is a wing of this trend. You've got 16-year-olds talking about their "PTSD" like they did 2 tours in Vietnam. As must happen, the creation of all these "problems" has given rise to the increasingly omnipresent administrative medical State.
Some people have a genuine condition and it can be treated with medication. But that's what it is, a condition.
debatable, this is like the depression and SSRI argument.
Yeah, and that goes great--often up to the point where they kill themselves.
100%. Psychological diagnosis isn't inherently useless, it just needs to encourage people deal with their shit instead of enabling it by suggesting they're victims without agency.
Society needs to focus on mental health, not mental illness.
I agree with this, except that the term "mental health" has been hopelessly compromised. I don't think it's possible to do what needs to be done--which is to encourage and teach self-directed control over behavior, if not (but hopefully yes) state of mind. "Mental health" is indelibly now something we treat with quacks, social workers, and pills.
And I'm not speaking to you specifically, but to the trend, the zeitgeist of how these issues are packaged.