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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32930 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Ironically, support groups where people confirm and commiserate seem to make the issue worse. In fact, many modern studies on pain recommend not even using the word "pain" and replacing it with something else to trick your mind into understanding that your pain doesn’t have an acute physical cause.

And, to add a button to this dynamic, the mode of therapy for these kinds of issues seems to have changed from correcting them -- aiming to help the patient reconcile their delusions with reality -- to normalizing the delusions, including cultural reinforcement of this normalization.

Is that true?

I assume you’re thinking of trans issues. That’s the only thing on OP’s list where I’ve seen treatment focused on bringing the physical in line with the mental. Well, there’s physical therapy and prosthetics, but that’s beside the point. Anxiety, depression, et cetera…the intent is to mitigate them.

DBT was developed for people who experience extreme emotional responses to certain situations. “It’s essentially about learning how to think in a way that calms you down in moments of crisis,” explains Johnsen. “The goal is to center yourself so that you can get back to rational thought and behavior more quickly. Eventually, you should be able to catch yourself and learn to curb overreaction before it occurs.”

DBT is a “gold standard” in treating conditions like borderline personality disorder (a chronic behavior pattern that may include mood instability, difficulty with interpersonal relationships, and self-injury) and histrionic personality disorder (which entails constant attention-seeking, emotional overreaction, and seductive behavior) but can be used to treat anyone who experiences over-reactivity in certain scenarios. “It’s an in-the-moment technique that a person can use to regulate super-strong emotions, and get to a place where those emotions are bearable and surmountable.”

Source. The last couple options on that page lean away from coping strategies, but they still aren’t normalizing the symptoms.

It might also be worth noting that the response to mental illness isn’t exactly coordinated. Political slogans, softball media coverage, and Twitter—avenues of cultural reinforcement—don’t fall in line with therapists. Arguably, it’s the other way around, since motivated patients can select their way to a sympathetic therapist.

Anxiety, depression, et cetera…the intent is to mitigate them.

I'm not sure exactly what the modes of mitigation are, and if they're applied consistently. I guess I'm reacting more to the "pop psychology" reaction to these issues that you see in the media, and the effusive affirmations that now greet announcements of mental illness.

For anxiety and depression, my assumption is that the treatment for these has at least shifted from a "get over it" approach to a "this is very normal and valid" approach, even if the latter was originally intended as a way to end-run around the obvious objections to "get over it" while still helping them get over it. Now, the mode seems to be helping the patient feel better about their affliction rather than removing the affliction, as if the stigma of a mental health problem is more important than the mental health problem.

I'm wondering if it might also depend on the demographics of the patient. I have a hard time imagining that the treatment approach (across a broad swath of therapists) would be the same for a middle-aged white man who feels paranoid anxiety over romantic issues with women and a young black woman who feels paranoid anxiety over racial discrimination. Is one more likely to be asked to look for internal causes/solutions to their predicament while the other is tasked with better coping skills in the face of injustice? Is a profession that has fallen almost completely in-line with a radically progressive approach to trans issues not going to see that same context start to inform their other treatments?

hasn't it mostly transitioned to therapy and maybe prescribing antidepressants?

And even create them. Modern therapeutic culture absolutely creates the preconditions for getting a mental illness. We teach through culture that you’re supposed to be happy and healthy and successful and that failure to achieve a life like that is a failure mode of life. And expectations are absurdly high. You have been told to get rich doing a job you love, to find a soul mate, and hobbies you’re passionate about, lots of friends, and be absolutely authentic all the time. Nobody actually has a life like that, or at least not anyone born into the leisure class. And worse, when the failures come and you feel bad, the general message is to focus on that one thing that’s broken. Incels are doing exactly what the culture has taught them, in a sense. They are supposed to have a wife, or at least date. But, for various reasons it isn’t working. So they focus on it. And they focus on how bad it feels to not only not date, but how bad it feels to feel that bad. If I wanted to create a toxic brew for mental illness, this is how I’d do it. Create absurdly high expectations, blame the victim for failures, and tell them to focus on their failures and how bad they feel as a failure. If I could do that, I guarantee I can create anxiety and depression.

Incels are doing exactly what the culture has taught them, in a sense. They are supposed to have a wife, or at least date. But, for various reasons it isn’t working. So they focus on it. And they focus on how bad it feels to not only not date, but how bad it feels to feel that bad. If I wanted to create a toxic brew for mental illness, this is how I’d do it.

How would this square with the fact that polygamous societies are less stable due to the issues caused by unhappy, unmarriageable young men?

Are lower-class Somali men steeped in the over-ruminating logic of (bad) Western psychiatry?

Man, that reminds me of an exchange I got into on Discord. I probably should have known better, but for whatever reason this discord about funny youtube videos devolved into everyone talking about their mental illnesses and describing their therapy and self help books.

I said mine was "Shut The Fuck Up" By Dr Denis Leary. Nobody got the joke. People said they'd never heard of it, so I posted the bit. It was a joke. I was making a joke. This being a discord for funny youtube videos and all.

It.... did not go well. One person was especially triggered, accusing me of attacking them and wanting them to die. The mods eventually had to step in and make peace.

I don't understand the neurotic wound picking that seems to have become the predominant culture on nearly every web based community I traverse.

I would assume something like that was an attack, to be quite honest. The alternative interpretation is that you were trying to change the subject to funny youtube videos when people want to wallow (already a faux pas), and just by accident picking the one that looks exactly like an attack on the wallowing people. Unless I knew you to be extremely socially unaware I wouldn't assume such an unlikely scenario.

That might be a more effective response than my go to, which is “uh…y’all having fun in here?”

For some reason the people who want to broadcast their home/romance/gender struggles in #offtopic don’t tend to take that hint.

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