I think I disagree about trauma - or, at least, I tentatively think I've benefited from the availability of the trauma lens in the kind of mental health posts I read, and from trying on that lens even though it didn't seem like an obvious fit.
Otoh I SO strongly agree with the stuff in the last paragraphs about incentives to be sad, especially when world events seem to point that way. I saw an extra strong version of that for most of 2022 among online anti-war Russians, where like, you were kind of supposed to signal that you're Not Okay because if you're somehow okay in these circumstances how can you be one of the good ones? but of course this comes up in US political/activist discourse as well. and like, fuck that, I intend to be okay even if the world is not, I can't wait for the world to be okay, that'll take too long
My experience of internet mental health culture is that it gives the part of me that wants to do less and quit faster a lot of tools to use to fight the part of me that wants to accomplish things, and so it causes me to accomplish less and thereby be more miserable. I think I'd be better off and happier and be better at doing things if I accomplished things, and as a result arguments that make the metaphorical devil on my shoulder better at whispering that I should quit make me worse off.
This is just one person, of course, and other people get the opposite result. Which is always the hard part of giving and receiving advice.
I feel a lot of the same concerns. It bugs me that for every piece of advice, some people need the opposite, and that's really true on all sides - "Get yourself together and start meeting your obligations" is also good advice for some people and bad for others. Ugh, this life.
The idea that the need to do things is some kind of failure of capitalism angers me. Until the AI decide to benevolently take over our whole lives, any economic system is going to require that fruits and vegetables be harvested, buildings be built, children be taught, elders be cared for, and that just in general a lot of work be done. It's kind of on you to do your part (as able) even if you're not in an ideal structure.
Seems to me there is a more fundamental problem here: the fact that we treat mental health conditions differently than merely being lazy or worried or the rest.
The human condition comes in a huge range of variation and the same task can be much harder for some people than others. In an ideal world we just take into account the level of difficulty for the person at issue. In the actual world we are harsher and harsher to people until that difficulty gets classified as a mental health condition at which point we give them a pass or allow them to use meds or whatever. That leads to fundamentally broken system of incentives.
To illustrate my point, I had a really difficult time staying awake in lectures in college. I could get 10 hours of sleep every night and drink plenty of coffee and exert all my willpower but I'd fall asleep in every last lecture. That sucked but luckily my college didn't care and I just didn't go to lecture and learned from the book. Unfortunately, there is a tendency of people to instead just yell at people like me and impose harsh consequences on them until the condition is so extreme there get a narcolepsy of ADHD diagnosis at which point instead of getting berated people get accomodations.
This is broken -- on both sides. We should try and be as flexible as we can with people whether they have a condition or not. If someone can't get anything from lectures but can learn the material some other way let them. You don't need to judge them on how they do it just that they do it. OTOH the fact that it gets diagnosed with a name doesn't change the circumstances. If you can't do the task the company needs done in the time given -- even when reasonable considerations are given for your individual needs -- then it shouldn't matter that the reason you can't has a name.
Of course in practice this is hard because individualized attention is expensive but if we understand it as the framework I think it does alot to fix the discourse.
Just on the specific point of bad-but-not-actually-traumatic things getting lumped together with actually-traumatic things-- I was surprised by some of the things you dismissed as not actually traumatic, so I did a quick google on the one I was most surprised by, being trans (in a current society). I haven't dug into these numbers at all, but the quick google gave me an odds ratio of PTSD for trans ppl of OR: 2.52 [95% CI: 2.22; 2.87].
Where for comparison, also via quick google, for sexual abuse (I think at any age?) I found an odds ratio for lifetime diagnosis of PTSD of OR: 2.34; 95% CI: 1.59-3.43
So the trans one was actually a bit *higher*, (though only by a little bit and there's big confidence intervals on the sexual abuse one, plus I haven't dug into the numbers, so I wouldn't put much weight on it actually being higher rather than just similar)
So on the face of it they look about the same?
Of course a lot of this could be because trans people are way more likely to have various traumatising experiences than cis people, in current societies. But I would be hesitant to dismiss it based on that, because I think that's a lot of what people *mean* when they say "being trans in a current society is traumatising" anyway.
"If you don’t do that, you’re going to be depressed, because your life will be depressing." Well, okay, you need to work so you have money, do the dishes so you have clean dishes, and tolerate mildly annoying people so you're not constantly having fights. But once that's done you can go back to lying in bed and watching stuff, right?
What does the good life look like? Is it a series of chores and duties, that brings you to your death bed going "oh thank fuck that's over"? Is it getting the chores and duties out of the way as fast as possible so you can go back to slacking off? Are there other options? Actually asking, I'm confused.
It occurs to me that your scheme also contains incentives to be miserable: if being able to have discipline means you must, then there's a huge incentive to become genuinely unable to do anything and then you can't be forced to.
Relatedly, it's important to rest when you could still work: if you only rest when your ability to work five more minutes runs out, then you're going to burn out.
Various nitpicks:
The "it's just the human condition" thing always confuses me: sure, the average person cares kind of a lot about being liked, but some people are utterly crushed by the very prospect of a mild rebuke: how to describe the difference? at the other end, some people have extremely thick skin and don't care about a party-invite snub (hi): does that rule out ADHD entirely?
The trauma thing is related: people certainly have effects from bad events that fall well short of PTSD but are noticeable. I don't know if that's a useful observation, though, since I don't know what to do about it.
> mild physical health conditions, caring a lot about being liked, occasional dissociation, poor coping mechanisms for stress, and taking good things for granted are all a normal part of life for most people
reading this list, I was like, "yes, yes, what? ... yes, yes". Do most people actually have occasional dissociation? I do, but I'm not sure I always did, and also I link mine to some quite specific and intense stress that I get, that I'm sure many people don't. Curious if other people have intuitions or data about this.
I think I disagree about trauma - or, at least, I tentatively think I've benefited from the availability of the trauma lens in the kind of mental health posts I read, and from trying on that lens even though it didn't seem like an obvious fit.
Otoh I SO strongly agree with the stuff in the last paragraphs about incentives to be sad, especially when world events seem to point that way. I saw an extra strong version of that for most of 2022 among online anti-war Russians, where like, you were kind of supposed to signal that you're Not Okay because if you're somehow okay in these circumstances how can you be one of the good ones? but of course this comes up in US political/activist discourse as well. and like, fuck that, I intend to be okay even if the world is not, I can't wait for the world to be okay, that'll take too long
My experience of internet mental health culture is that it gives the part of me that wants to do less and quit faster a lot of tools to use to fight the part of me that wants to accomplish things, and so it causes me to accomplish less and thereby be more miserable. I think I'd be better off and happier and be better at doing things if I accomplished things, and as a result arguments that make the metaphorical devil on my shoulder better at whispering that I should quit make me worse off.
This is just one person, of course, and other people get the opposite result. Which is always the hard part of giving and receiving advice.
Was there supposed to be a selection of quotes after "She quotes some very annoying people:" ?
I feel a lot of the same concerns. It bugs me that for every piece of advice, some people need the opposite, and that's really true on all sides - "Get yourself together and start meeting your obligations" is also good advice for some people and bad for others. Ugh, this life.
The idea that the need to do things is some kind of failure of capitalism angers me. Until the AI decide to benevolently take over our whole lives, any economic system is going to require that fruits and vegetables be harvested, buildings be built, children be taught, elders be cared for, and that just in general a lot of work be done. It's kind of on you to do your part (as able) even if you're not in an ideal structure.
Seems to me there is a more fundamental problem here: the fact that we treat mental health conditions differently than merely being lazy or worried or the rest.
The human condition comes in a huge range of variation and the same task can be much harder for some people than others. In an ideal world we just take into account the level of difficulty for the person at issue. In the actual world we are harsher and harsher to people until that difficulty gets classified as a mental health condition at which point we give them a pass or allow them to use meds or whatever. That leads to fundamentally broken system of incentives.
To illustrate my point, I had a really difficult time staying awake in lectures in college. I could get 10 hours of sleep every night and drink plenty of coffee and exert all my willpower but I'd fall asleep in every last lecture. That sucked but luckily my college didn't care and I just didn't go to lecture and learned from the book. Unfortunately, there is a tendency of people to instead just yell at people like me and impose harsh consequences on them until the condition is so extreme there get a narcolepsy of ADHD diagnosis at which point instead of getting berated people get accomodations.
This is broken -- on both sides. We should try and be as flexible as we can with people whether they have a condition or not. If someone can't get anything from lectures but can learn the material some other way let them. You don't need to judge them on how they do it just that they do it. OTOH the fact that it gets diagnosed with a name doesn't change the circumstances. If you can't do the task the company needs done in the time given -- even when reasonable considerations are given for your individual needs -- then it shouldn't matter that the reason you can't has a name.
Of course in practice this is hard because individualized attention is expensive but if we understand it as the framework I think it does alot to fix the discourse.
Just on the specific point of bad-but-not-actually-traumatic things getting lumped together with actually-traumatic things-- I was surprised by some of the things you dismissed as not actually traumatic, so I did a quick google on the one I was most surprised by, being trans (in a current society). I haven't dug into these numbers at all, but the quick google gave me an odds ratio of PTSD for trans ppl of OR: 2.52 [95% CI: 2.22; 2.87].
Where for comparison, also via quick google, for sexual abuse (I think at any age?) I found an odds ratio for lifetime diagnosis of PTSD of OR: 2.34; 95% CI: 1.59-3.43
So the trans one was actually a bit *higher*, (though only by a little bit and there's big confidence intervals on the sexual abuse one, plus I haven't dug into the numbers, so I wouldn't put much weight on it actually being higher rather than just similar)
So on the face of it they look about the same?
Of course a lot of this could be because trans people are way more likely to have various traumatising experiences than cis people, in current societies. But I would be hesitant to dismiss it based on that, because I think that's a lot of what people *mean* when they say "being trans in a current society is traumatising" anyway.
Trans source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10387489/
Sexual abuse source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894717/
The penultimate paragraph is particularly important and pretty destructive to many a lost young person.
"If you don’t do that, you’re going to be depressed, because your life will be depressing." Well, okay, you need to work so you have money, do the dishes so you have clean dishes, and tolerate mildly annoying people so you're not constantly having fights. But once that's done you can go back to lying in bed and watching stuff, right?
What does the good life look like? Is it a series of chores and duties, that brings you to your death bed going "oh thank fuck that's over"? Is it getting the chores and duties out of the way as fast as possible so you can go back to slacking off? Are there other options? Actually asking, I'm confused.
It occurs to me that your scheme also contains incentives to be miserable: if being able to have discipline means you must, then there's a huge incentive to become genuinely unable to do anything and then you can't be forced to.
Relatedly, it's important to rest when you could still work: if you only rest when your ability to work five more minutes runs out, then you're going to burn out.
Various nitpicks:
The "it's just the human condition" thing always confuses me: sure, the average person cares kind of a lot about being liked, but some people are utterly crushed by the very prospect of a mild rebuke: how to describe the difference? at the other end, some people have extremely thick skin and don't care about a party-invite snub (hi): does that rule out ADHD entirely?
The trauma thing is related: people certainly have effects from bad events that fall well short of PTSD but are noticeable. I don't know if that's a useful observation, though, since I don't know what to do about it.
> mild physical health conditions, caring a lot about being liked, occasional dissociation, poor coping mechanisms for stress, and taking good things for granted are all a normal part of life for most people
reading this list, I was like, "yes, yes, what? ... yes, yes". Do most people actually have occasional dissociation? I do, but I'm not sure I always did, and also I link mine to some quite specific and intense stress that I get, that I'm sure many people don't. Curious if other people have intuitions or data about this.