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Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

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Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#101

Post by Aurornis »

parpfish wrote: post #63

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses. But there are a few things we can learn from this: - if you give people th…

> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok.

There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Many young people lean into this and label everything as a defensive tactic.

A while ago, one of the trends was “time blindness”. People who were chronically late, missed meetings, or failed to manage their time would see TikToks about “time blindness” as if it was a medical condition, and self-diagnose as having that.

It was bizarre to suddenly have people missing scheduled events and then casually informing me that they had time blindness, as if that made it okay. Once they had a label for a condition, they felt like they had a license to escape accountability.

The most frustrating part was that the people who self-diagnosed as having “time blindness” universally got worse at being on time. Once they had transformed the personal problem into a labeled condition, they didn’t feel as obligated to do anything about it.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#102

Post by Tijdreiziger »

benreesman wrote: post #88

Just earlier this evening I had not one but two commenters issue replies to the effect that successful deception in the public sphere, business and politics, is a marker of high intelligence. And that's just a depressingly direct example of what really seems to be a profoundly entrenched worldview "coming out of the closet" in the last decade or so especially. The thing is, when you can't talk about seriously antisoc…

> but like grinding everyone into poverty and pushing the world into avoidable war is just, how the world works.

Even the Romans went to war and held slaves, so that seems true enough to me.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#104

Post by borski »

DHPersonal wrote: post #66
iambateman wrote: post #14

As a child, my dad’s brother fell out of a bunk bed and got a traumatic brain injury that would kill him 15 years later. My dad experienced real trauma but was told to bottle it up. After 30 years, he finally went to counseling and it was transformational for him. By contrast, I had some mean fifth grade classmates who still live in my head in uncomfortable social situations… Did my dad have trauma and need to put a…

Isn’t the point of labeling something as a “trauma” to be a signifier for the moment or behavior that affected you greatly and not something that meets an arbitrary level of awfulness, especially by way of comparison? Your father lost a brother, which is definitely certainly traumatic, but my grandfather lost a son. Does that equate to a greater trauma, therefore nullifying your father’s loss? I would say no! Compari…

Not all bad things are trauma. According to the APA: “Any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. Traumatic events include those caused by human behavior (e.g., rape, war, industrial accidents) as well as by nature (e.g., earthquakes) and often challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place. Any serious physical injury, such as a widespread burn or a blow to the head.”

It’s not useful to compare trauma, but not all negative things that happen are trauma.

And perhaps more importantly, not all trauma causes PTSD, which is a defined set of symptoms later in life.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#105

Post by Aurornis »

hresvelgr wrote: post #53

The lovable aphorisms we had for people with character quirks were largely from our original support systems. What no one is talking about is the reason therapy-talk has become so pervasive is because all those support systems: family, friends, and local communities (religious or otherwise), have all degraded so severely for most that therapy is the only option for reaching out and getting help.

I don’t see these as opposing ends of a spectrum. I think they’re largely independent variables.

Anecdotally, the people I know who have become most immersed in therapy speak are also the most socially connected. The therapy speak and associated language have become tools for establishing themselves within their social support system, communicating cries for help, and even trying to use therapy terms to shield themselves from accountability for their actions by transforming it into a therapy session.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#106

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #78
deanCommie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except they weren't really "support systems" i mean they were, if you got lucky. If you were neurotypical; if you bought in to the local religious sect's particular flavour and embraced it wholeheartedly; if you followed the other local cults of sports fandoms; if you were lucky enough to either have family without their own trauma that didn't take it out on you OR decided to repress it in exactly the same way that t…

I agree with everything you said except for the last paragraph. The people who, according to your theory, want to reverse the tolerance trend and slide towards fascism/authoritarianism didn't pop out today. They existed and lived in society in the 2010s too. So, from a logical standpoint, what changed?

The parent comment didn’t even pose a theory as to why. People can change beliefs over time. Weimar Germany had less Nazis in it than Nazi Germany, which would be equally confusing under your framing.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#107

Post by ianbicking »

Arainach wrote: post #3

There are some interested points hidden in a of projection from the author here. >We can’t talk about character either. There are no generous people anymore, only people-pleasers. There are no men or women who wear their hearts on their sleeves, only the anxiously attached, or the co-dependent. There are no hard workers, only the traumatised, the insecure overachievers, the neurotically ambitious. We even classify pe…

Yes, the author is deciding How People Really Are by looking online, when the distortions of online discourse are also what she is complaining about.

On the other hand, most interactions I have with people are devoid of this kind of involved emotional inquiry. There is neither the non-psychological characterization of people ("he wears his heart on his sleeve") nor the psychological characterization ("he is anxiously attached"). I talk about these things with some of my family, some of my friends. Never with acquaintances. That is: in normal (not online) life people don't generally talk about having ADHD until they've reached a significant level of trust; and ADHD is about the easiest thing to talk about compared to any other issue.

Maybe this an artifact of the more reserved WASPish circles I run in. We're all very polite. We don't give each other nicknames. We don't gossip. We avoid making assumptions about a person's character. I don't think this serves us particularly well... and maybe therapy talk is our way of getting past this, couching these ideas in acceptably academic language. But without that language (and even with that language) we mostly just don't talk about it.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#108

Post by benreesman »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #102
benreesman wrote: post #88

Just earlier this evening I had not one but two commenters issue replies to the effect that successful deception in the public sphere, business and politics, is a marker of high intelligence. And that's just a depressingly direct example of what really seems to be a profoundly entrenched worldview "coming out of the closet" in the last decade or so especially. The thing is, when you can't talk about seriously antisoc…

> but like grinding everyone into poverty and pushing the world into avoidable war is just, how the world works. Even the Romans went to war and held slaves, so that seems true enough to me.

It's true that the fortunes of humanity go through better and worse seasons, but the fact that it's been winter before doesn't make me any less eager for spring.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#109

Post by geerlingguy »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #93
WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's why there's now suddenly an influx of ADHD and Autism diagnosis - because in the past anyone outside of the norm who wasn't lucky to do one of the things above was simply ignored, beaten, or died. I think you're understating how well those people were incorporated into society. My grandfather was born in the 20s and was described as quite "high strung", was amazing with technology, would repair anything, and e…

Sorry, but are you arguing that autistic folks can’t be part of a community, farm, or build a family?

I saw it as arguing that people with autism, ADHD, etc wouldn't be ignored, beaten, or killed, as seemed to be the argument in the parent comment?

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#110

Post by rf15 »

zug_zug wrote: post #76
parpfish wrote: post #63

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses. But there are a few things we can learn from this: - if you give people th…

It's interesting because there are two diametrically opposed ways to interpret what you said One is - everybody thinks they have disorders, so just ignore that feeling it'll mess with you. The other is - everybody thinks they have minor version of disorders, because we all do, we live on continuums, and therefore we should probably all think about it more

there's a third: everyone wants to feel special and also takes any excuse to not have to work on their flawed habits
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