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Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

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Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#161

Post by watwut »

xyzelement wrote: post #67
krapp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe atheists are incapable of recognizing the significance of children or of caring about them?

No, I don't believe that. I valued children just as much when I was an atheist as when I became religion. What's significant though is the PREVALENT opinion. 100% of my religious friends want and have kids, while the majority of my secular friends do not. I work in FAANG and previously in finance, so my peers are people who can certainly afford kids and are positioned to take care of them - and yet literally most are…

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Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#162

Post by isk517 »

watwut wrote: post #156
isk517 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dilution by people with no formal diagnosis become more common is scary because of how it normalizes not seeking help, which is the hardest part of actually having these issues. It creates this illusion that one should be able to treat themselves and that things like sitting at your desk all day thinking it wouldn't be that bad if you died in a car accident, or having your heartrate spike and sweating profusely w…

Standard among previous generation was to not seek help, stigmatize those who do, mock the issues and generally not even have vocabulary to talk about them.

This is very true, we are in a better place than the previous generation but there is still room for improve and a over abundance of something can be a problem just as easily as the absence of something.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#163

Post by autoexec »

cardanome wrote: post #154
anal_reactor wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many will have no formal diagnosis at all or even proudly claim that they don’t trust the medical system, they’re just diagnosing themselves. The thing is, many people have valid reasons not to trust the medical system. Not so long ago: 1. Homosexuality was considered a mental disease 2. Forced sterilization of minorities was good medical practice 3. FDA ignored warnings about pesticides being potentially harmful b…

I mean I live in Germany where Hans Asperger oversaw the mass killing of autistic children. He decided which one were to be murdered or which had the "right kind of autism" i.e. Asperger syndrome and could serve the fatherland. (Just to be clear, the differentiation between autism and Asperger has not and had never any scientific leg to stand on.) The term Asperger syndrome was only removed from the DSM in 2013. For…

Germany is notorious for being shitty to people with mental illness. Even people with something as common as ADHD struggle to get the care they need there!

On the subject of Asperger syndrome, after learning about the history I was surprised that there are people previously diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome who were (and still are) very angry about the term being removed resulting in them being lumped in with everyone else diagnosed as autistic.

Being labeled as "autistic" could mean anything from seeming a bit strange but being highly intelligent and perfectly capable, to being totally non-communicative, being drastically intellectually and emotionally underdeveloped and being unable to function requiring 24 hour care. Some "Aspies" saw Asperger's as a very convenient way to differentiate their particular flavor of autism. Convenient enough that the usefulness of that distinction far outweighed the shadow of the terrible origin of the name itself and also the fact that it hilariously sounds like "ass burgers".

Personally, I'm glad that Asperger's was removed but I have to agree with the Aspie crowd that they got screwed over when no new term was given to replace what they had. The still grossly overbroad "3 level" system is trash. The spectrum of autism is so wide that the term is nearly useless.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#164

Post by mnky9800n »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #98
mnky9800n wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very american trend in my experience. Americans are quite happy to tell you their long list of diagnoses, how that some how gives them some kind of exception to the rule, and how this is some how part of their identity. This kind of oversharing is common across topics from Americans but in particular oversharing of and obsession with psychological conditions seem to be a common modern stereotype of american…

I mean, I have no data for this, but I think it's a combination of two factors: - Access to mental healthcare here is HEAVILY gate-kept by a combination of it often costing quite a lot of money, generally having longer waits than most healthcare services, heavy variability in availability by location, and insurance coverage runs the gamut between great or utterly absent, sometimes even in the same policy depending on…

Americans, and I am speaking in stereotypes and not about a particular person, don't respect personal boundaries on topics that other cultures would not discuss openly with someone they don't know well. Like for example, you tell me, a stranger on the internet, that your wife has borderline personality disorder. That would be oversharing if we had just met in a social setting and were discussing this topic together.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#165

Post by roughly »

spyckie2 wrote: post #125
roughly wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She is doing as well as one can be for how much she loved Jake and how much she misses him. Again, my point is that that statement is absolutely true and also does not preclude the notion that additional professional help may be warranted. I went on Prozac earlier this year after a conversation with my doctor that went, roughly: “I think you’ve got anxiety” “well yeah, look at the fucking world!” “…right.” Just bec…

Usually I would agree with your points, especially that wounds on the soul should be treated like wounds on the body - objectively, and with the best practice medical support for proper healing to minimize adverse effects. But as she so eloquently puts it, the grief is not just a wound, its a lifestyle change. Its the repetition of existing expectations and systems that have to be retrained and rewired. Professional…

To be clear, I'm not advocating for chemical intervention - I think a competent therapist/grief counselor can help process and metabolize the change. I also am not suggesting that the ideal goal is that the author feels no grief, rather that she is able to move in a productive and healing direction, as opposed to feeling like she's being battered beyond her control.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#166

Post by roughly »

munificent wrote: post #110
roughly wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She is doing as well as one can be for how much she loved Jake and how much she misses him. Again, my point is that that statement is absolutely true and also does not preclude the notion that additional professional help may be warranted. I went on Prozac earlier this year after a conversation with my doctor that went, roughly: “I think you’ve got anxiety” “well yeah, look at the fucking world!” “…right.” Just bec…

Consider that the author may elect to this suffering as a testament to her love for her partner and as a way to memorialize what he meant to her. If your partner died and the very next day a doctor said, "Here's a pill that will make you forget you were ever together and erase 100% of the pain. You'll feel amazing." Would you take it?

I would very much like for the author to be able to memorialize her partner in a way that she feels offers a testimonial to someone who was such a big part of her life. If she's able to do that right now, that's fantastic (and this post is certainly a well-rendered testimonial). The point of getting additional help (and, again, as stated above, I mean therapy, not necessarily drugs) is to ensure she can do that - to provide the support, structures, framework, and understanding that she can make those choices consciously and in a way that allows her to feel as though she's honoring his memory in the best way she can.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#167

Post by djoldman »

swores wrote: post #41
Aurornis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in The problem is that medical diagnoses and therapy speak have spilled over into common language where they’re so diluted that they’re not accurate any more. For many there is no line drawn anywhere because they are self-diagnosing based on flawed understandings as soon as any feeli…

I'm sure the numbers of people wrongly using those terms has risen at least a bit, but I think the anecdotal evidence you have is likely to be a mixture of that and also not that. Similar to how some people look at raw stats of autism diagnoses and think hugely more people are becoming autistic when in reality it's that we've got better at diagnosing autism; I think we (society, in at least some countries) have got b…

Assuming the days you took off from work because of depression were unexpected and not planned in advance, why did you feel you had to explain anything?

Why couldn't you say: "I'm sick and won't be at work today."

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#168

Post by roughly »

hansvm wrote: post #137
paddleon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the reason to NOT have a DSM-recognized diagnosis on your medical record is it can be used to disqualify you for things later in life. And we cannot predict all of these future changes, either in our interests and/or the law. "We don't want pilots with depression or anxiety, because duh obvious reasons" and there goes a career option for you. (something very like this happened to my cousin)

That's an interesting example. On the one hand, we really don't want actively suicidal pilots. On the other, are the current guidelines too stringent? I can't imagine you're saying that actively suicidal pilots should be allowed to fly hundreds of people, so the argument seems to be more that private corporations have too much information and too much power and are willing to blacklist qualified candidates just to re…

> we really don't want actively suicidal pilots

We do not, and so providing pilots with the ability to seek help and support seems like what we'd want to do.

The degree to which mental health has been pathologized is unhealthy for those in need and for society at large.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#169

Post by zenoprax »

aeturnum wrote: post #17

> We medicalize grief because we fear it. I think this is just incorrect. You are not obligated to seek treatment for most medical problems[1]. The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in and when people enter a situation where they may need external help. One of the diagnostic criteria, which this article mentions, is that y…

Agreed. I think the word "disorder" in DSM terminology is commonly misunderstood/trvialized by lay people. Being forgetful, sad, or tired is just part of life. If it becomes your whole life then you likely need help but an orderly life will contain pain, joy, pride, shame, boredom...

We are always at risk of medicalizing discomfort. Allowing oneself to be miserable for a while can be therapeutic alongside patience, forgiveness, and compassion.

Edit: after a re-read I noticed that she says she feels most of the symptoms daily a year later. That does feel pretty disruptive on its own but the definition is a bit tautological in that case.

Regardless, what she's going through sounds really hard.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#170

Post by anonymars »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #92
graemep wrote: post #2

There is a problem with rigid medical definitions. There is a huge difference between the author of this, a young pregnant woman losing her husband, and say, something like a middle aged person losing an elderly parent (as I did earlier this year). Of course it will take her far longer to recover (if at all). I would guess her grief is not "disordered" though. As she says she functions - she works, she looks after he…

>a young pregnant woman losing her husband, and say, something like a middle aged person losing an elderly parent This isn’t really your point, but this person lost their husband at 40. By some definitions, that is middle aged. In the general view of things, not young. That doesn’t really change much, but I was thinking of a mid-twenties before I realized who it was.

Don't take this the wrong way, but what point are you trying to make? What was your goal here?
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