some coverage of this over on dailydot as well now!
As I was reading some of the featured posts and messages listed in the first link, it really became clear to me some of our hypocrisy in progressive spaces. Specifically, our demonization of fat people and people with personality disorders. I've been talking about this issue for a long time, but seeing these two posts really put the problem into perspective:
Both of these posts are of alt-right bigots using fatphobia and sanism against people with personality disorders (in this case, people with NPD) to further their cause and paint progressive people as inferior. Hey, that sounds kind of familiar! Maybe because we as progressive people do that too.
I can't even count how many times I have had to see people who claim to be progressive use fat bodies as symbolism for their political comics and claim every republican in the world has a personality disorder. If someone doesn't have progressive views, we immediately label them as either "a narcissist" or "delusional," the latter being sanism against people with mental disorders that cause them to experience psychosis.
I see this demonization of fat people and mentally ill people CONSTANTLY in progressive spaces despite people claiming that they care about and are fighting for equality. Literally yesterday, I had to fight with a fatphobe who tried to claim it's okay to portray all bigoted conservatives in political comics as fat because "Most bigots are fat." They then tried to back up their claim by showing me a picture of a few dozen people who had been arrested after participating at the January 6th riot, most of the people in the photo not even being fat in the first place.
When you're fat or mentally ill, your body and disorders are frequently weaponized by both people against equality as well as the people on the other side who believe they're morally superior while still using the exact same tactics of weaponizing us. Fat people and mentally ill people are oppressed groups, yet we are still used as metaphors and something to mock in progressive spaces. I'm extremely tired of it. Conservatives portray all "undeserving" poor people as fat, lazy, and "delusional." Meanwhile, "progressive" people will portray all bigoted people and republicans as fat people with personality disorders and a MAGA hat.
The whole "neckbeard" shit that people joke about in progressive spaces? That's just stereotyping and mocking fat masc people for a characteristic of their fat body. People who think they're progressive will instantly believe any fat man is creepy and a predator, and this bias is even thrown at fat femme people who try to have sapphic relationships and are viewed as predatory or even not a "real woman." Fatphobia is weaponized against "transtrenders" who exclusionists believe are "obviously not actually trans" because the person is fat and has purple hair.
It's incredible how people in my own progressive communities will abuse fat people like this in the name of "activism" when what they're doing is literally no different than the transphobes who portray trans people as "gross and fat." It's no different than the terfs who portray trans women as "fat, ugly men in dresses." I am so fucking tired of this shitty hypocrisy and throwing oppressed groups under the bus as soon as it benefits you (general you, not aimed at the op).
If you're going to have progressive values, then actually fucking act like it and keep your word when you say you don't support oppression and discrimination. Educate yourself about fat people's oppression. We are incredibly fucking oppressed and deal with stuff like a wage gap, rampant medical abuse that often leads to our deaths, people justifying their abuse of us and even putting it on TV for your entertainment, continuing to spread myths and misinformation about fatness, coerced mutilation, forced starvation, an over 200 BILLION DOLLAR industry that makes dirty money off of fat people's oppression, and so much more.
We also need to stop demonizing mentally ill people, including people who experience psychosis or have personality disorders. Psychosis is not your funny joke and metaphor. Personality disorders are harmful to the people who have them and are often developed due to extreme childhood trauma. And since personality disorders are extremely stigmatized, demonized, mocked, and viewed as a justified excuse to harass the person who has the disorder, people with personality disorders have an extremely difficult time receiving support. How the fuck is someone with a personality disorder supposed to go to therapy when the whole world around them tells them they're a demon, inherently abusive, and almost certainly a murderer if they have a personality disorder? Can we please fucking stop harming vulnerable people who need help and compassion when we're supposedly the give-help-and-compassion community?
Every time you use fatphobia and sanism for your "activism," you are exactly the same as bigots who weaponize oppressed bodies and mental disabilities for their cause too. Think about that the next time you want to draw a fat person with a MAGA hat for your political cartoon or armchair diagnose a random politician you've never even met.
How to not respond to someone politely informing you about subconscious bias. The amount of ableism and sanism here is sad. I'm not going to say much about this response since I could write an essay about just how terrible it is, but this person saying their response was no different than my comment is almost comical considering that I chose my wording very carefully for this exact reason. I purposefully did not say anything about empathy and instead wrote "heart" because every living person has that organ, whereas some neurodivergent people (which is a term for everyone with any mental condition) struggle with empathy. That does not mean the people who struggle with empathy don't still feel compassion and aren't human, so I specifically chose to write my comment in a way that would hopefully not demonize fellow mentally disabled people. I can't say the same for that person who replied and felt the need to mention "ps*chopaths."
People need to stop acting like therapists and other mental health professionals all know everything there is to know about psychology and can never be wrong.
First of all, they can be (and many of them are) racist, sexist, ableist, etc either on a conscious or subconscious level. I've seen people say "I was denied an autism diagnosis because my psych didn't believe women could be autistic" and then there's dozens of comments saying "well they're a professional so they're obviously right!!! Just admit you don't have autism!!!" even when the person explicitly said they were denied a diagnosis because of a sexist and inaccurate stereotype.
And also, I guarantee you most psychs are not as educated as you think they are (which plays into the above point, they aren't educated enough so they have these biases). Despite how long they spend in school, they often come out knowing about MAD and GAD (without tangible causes) and CBT, and that's about it. Often times certain disorders get mentioned once for a single paragraph and that's it, and/or taught about incorrectly. I've heard people say that Split was shown as an accurate representation of DID in their psych class. Unless a psych has specialist knowledge in a certain disorder, it's safest to assume they barely know anything about it, unfortunately.
Even when it comes to well known disorders. I'd say most therapist are not trauma informed enough to treat PTSD and C-PTSD. I've had MULTIPLE therapists admit to me that they know barely anything about OCD and I had to explain to them how to treat me. They don't even know about PTSD and OCD, so how they hell do you expect them to know about dissociative and personality disorders???
This is not to say all therapists and mental health professionals are unqualified. This is to say that they have biases and prejudices, and that the psychology training system teaches you about depression and anxiety and not much else. So no, you shouldn't treat them like flawless gods that can never be wrong ever. So yes, sometimes they misdiagnose. Sometimes they fuck up. That DOESN'T mean that the patient is faking. And this ESPECIALLY means you shouldn't believe a therapist's take about a certain disorder just because they're a therapist. For example, all the therapists who are not qualified at all in personality disorders saying shit about "narcissists" and "sociopaths" (especially on social media, because they do that stuff for clout and don't care about facts).
So the bottom line is: stop assuming mental health professionals know everything. And if they don't specialize in a certain disorder, don't take their word as law. You wouldn't take a dentist's opinion on cardiology, don't take a depression/anxiety therapist's opinion on NPD.
This this this
I worry a lot about how the internet seems to believe psychiatrists are incapable of having biases, of making mistakes, of misdiagnosing or mismedicating patients. The reality is that psychiatrists fuck up allllll the time and more often than not, you're going to have to do a lot of self advocating. I've had psychiatrists who are super good about covering all bases and being able to spot symptoms and disorders without me having to say anything, but the VAST majority of the time I've always had to be the one to bring up my symptoms and potential diagnoses to them.
People tend to have a poor understanding of psychiatrists- I think a lot of people have this idea in their head that as long as you get a professional diagnosis, that is the correct diagnosis no matter what, but misdiagnosis is not only possibly, but common.
A study was conducted where they sent those who qualified for bipolar to go talk to psychiatrists and see what diagnosis they walk away from. Now, you'd hope the misdiagnosis rate was low, hopefully something like 5-10% at most. 25% is surely where I'd start having serious concerns.
60%. 60% of the time those who walk in to see a psychiatrist despite presenting with bipolar will not get a bipolar diagnosis. 60%. (Wolkenstein et al., 2011) And that's not even mentioning the fact that, on average, onset of bipolar symptoms to diagnosis is nine years. Nine YEARS. (Gruber & Weinstock, 2018) Psychiatrists are fucking up diagnoses regularly
The reality is that psychiatry is not perfect, and the internet seriously needs to stop acting like it's the only way to process mental illness
Christ. Thanks for the info, really sad but interesting.
I just wanted to add to this too
I'm doing a social work master's degree and specifically chose a university that has a macro social work program (macro is essentially large scale stuff like policy work) since I don't want to be a therapist, which is pretty much the most common social work job. I'm not kidding when I say that in any class I take, at most there will be like 3 students in the macro track. I think I was told 90% or more of the MSW students are doing the clinical program.
Even though I'm macro, I'm still required to take some basic clinical classes that are essentially classes on how to be a therapist. Please take what I say here with a grain of salt since I'm not in the clinical track, but at the end of these classes I'm always like "Wait, that's it?" I never feel actually prepared to do any therapy work or even talk to a client. For the intro class about doing one-on-one therapy, everything was lecture and discussion. We didn't actually practice doing therapy by roleplaying with each other until the very end. We had like two class meetings for roleplays and then immediately afterwards a final roleplay assignment that zero students felt prepared for. I kid you not, the roleplays we did in class were scenarios like "A client who is having difficulty with their boss" and then for the actual roleplay assignment my scenario was "A client who recently lost their house in a flood." The professor expected me to know how to help with trauma and loss when the few practice roleplays we did were about helping a client feel confident enough to do a work presentation.
A lot of classes are electives, which I guess is so you can choose what populations you want to focus on, but some classes that are electives I'm like...what?? Like the class on loss and bereavement is an elective. Human sexuality is an elective too (though we do talk about the LGBTQ+ community and queerphobia in other classes).
And again, take what I'm saying about the clinical track with some healthy skepticism since I'm not in it. We also have two internships and there is an extensive, long process to get licensed, which is a requirement to be a therapist. There are also more degrees than just social work that lead to a job in therapy, and you have to not only renew your license every few years (which requires taking more classes) but you also have to be licensed in every. single. state you offer your services in. However, I still am surprised how my clinical classes have been (My one good clinical class has been group therapy. I love it, and we actually were our own therapy group together in class, so we essentially got practice every single week plus "free" therapy. It's been amazing. 10/10 would take this class again.)
Another thing that really upsets me and rubs me the wrong way is how common ableist language is in my degree program. Not only the students but even my professors who are experienced therapists will use words like "cr*zy" or say insensitive stuff. The classes also hammer in the idea that empathy is everything instead of acknowledging that empathy is not a synonym for compassion. And I have had classes where (and I'm pretty sure this was not the professor's word choice but instead a requirement for the course) they would talk about "difficult clients" and show material that was super ableist about people who experience psychosis and personality disorders. My group therapy professor was wincing the entire time she had to discuss the "difficult client" chapter because of how awful it is, but I'm assuming she was required to discuss it because she visibly did not like the wording used and said to us that the terminology is bad. I can't find the powerpoint about the chapter for some reason, but here are some screenshots from my textbook of some of the most egregious pages of the chapter. Warning for a ton of ableism against people with psychosis, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and personality disorders in general:
Another thing is that science in general is not automatically correct or devoid of bias/oppression. The DSM-5 literally pretends that fat people can't have anorexia. If a fat person experiences every aspect of anorexia EXCEPT being thin, then they're categorized as having "atypical anorexia." The majority of the scientific/medical field is extraordinarily fatphobic and ignorant. Information and studies that disprove common bigoted beliefs about fat people/fatness are suppressed. The majority of studies about weight and nutrition are severely flawed, and that is still true even after taking my research course this semester that explained all about how to design a study and the types of threats to a study's validity. Almost every single flaw my professor said a study could have I was like "Yep, I've seen that in [blank] fatphobic weight study." And as for other oppressed groups, society used to believe that women had "female hysteria," that AIDS was "the gay disease," that gayness was a mental disorder, that different ethnicities were scientifically proven to be "inferior," etc. So even if a therapist knows everything about current therapy, they can still be wrong if the science is wrong.
One thing I can say is that we're taught to refer clients to other therapists and resources that can help them when we can't. So if your therapist isn't helping you, especially if they don't know anything about your mental illness, they were trained to help you find someone who CAN help. If they don't refer you, then they aren't even following what they were taught.
Anyways, I hope this doesn't make anyone too disappointed in humanity
So often I'll hear even in progressive/activist circles that every "bad person," every person who commits violence, every abusive person, every whoever must be mentally ill. Every abusive parent must secretly have a stigmatized mental disability. Every mass shooter "must have something wrong with their brain." Every politician who denies reality must experience delusions.
But we need to start acknowledging that disabled people, specifically mentally disabled people (mentally ill, neurodivergent, whatever term you want to use), are not responsible for all of the bad in this world.
People with narcissistic personality disorder are estimated to make up anywhere between 5% to as little as 0.5% of the American population. Is it really possible for 0.5 to 5% of the population to be responsible for ALL abuse in this country??
Does every single bigoted politician have a mental illness? Is every single Trump supporter neurodivergent? Did the over 70 million people who voted for Trump in 2020 all have a mental condition? (I would be surprised if they did considering how much ableism leads to mentally ill people disproportionately represented in prisons and thus unable to vote when they finally get to go home.)
Does every single person who goes to Trump rallies like in this video have a mental disorder? A rally of thousands of people all happen to be disabled? Every single person in that crowd?
Can we please stop with this nonsense of blaming everything wrong in the world on disabled people? I'm so fucking tired of it. Neurodivergent people are not the source of all evil. Mentally ill people are not the only people capable of harm and violence, and neurodivergent activists have explained over and over again that a lot of people with mental disorders are more likely to be the victims of abuse than the perpetrators of such in the first place.
I don't want to hear anymore what conservative politicians you think are "psychopaths" or "delusional" or "narcissists." I don't care whether or not Trump legitimately does have a personality disorder because not only is someone capable of doing harm without one, but I have personally seen the immense amount of harm that people AGAINST Trump have done to neurodivergent people by trying to diagnose him with a mental illness and use him as the poster boy for all people with personality disorders. He's even used as the poster boy for neurodivergent people in general since people who claim to care about ableism will constantly point out his lack of empathy for why he's a horrible person even though inability to feel other people's emotions is a trait of a multitude of different mental conditions outside of just personality disorders (plus the fact that empathy is not a synonym for compassion).
Stop calling bigoted people and politicians "cr*zy." And while you're at it, stop using that word in general. You all are so obsessed with equating bigotry and abuse to neurodivergence because you don't want to accept that ANYONE is capable of committing harm. You don't want to acknowledge that the "monsters" in this world sometimes look and act like puppies, and that they can even look and act no different than you.
We love to portray "bad people" as looking and being nothing like us, as if there is a literal gene for "evilness," so that we can fool ourselves into thinking that the people around us and even ourselves are not capable of doing harm. But that isn't true. It's time to face the fact that there isn't some condition that separates any one of us from people who do or can commit harm. And I can tell you right now that there are plenty of people who identify as progressive, leftist, an activist, etc. but have still harmed other people, even irreparable harm, and have done so without having a mental illness.
It's so horrific that the ableist concept of "narcissistic abuse" not only exists online and is perpetuated by random people but also apparently exists in literal therapy groups and perpetuated by people who are supposed to be educated, paid professionals on mental conditions. It really shows how fucked up mental health systems in society are.
I was looking up something else online for my class and the internet decided to recommend me a completely unrelated Quora page of someone asking “How do narcissists spot a good victim?”
Maim, bite, kill, burn the internet
The amount of disgusting ableism in seven words. I didn’t even know such a feat was possible! :)
People seriously think fellow human beings with mental disabilities are inherently abusive and evil and not actually disabled or deserving of compassion to the point that they ask how mentally disabled people fucking “choose their victims.”
It’s ironic that they demonize people with personality disorders for “lacking empathy” and then make horrific comments about them that completely lack any empathy, sympathy, or compassion for disabled people whatsoever. The percentages of people with NPD listed online are anywhere from 5% to as low as 0.5% percent, and yet people think all of the world’s woes and abuse are due to the less than one percent of people with this disability on planet Earth.