Phrenectomy

 I don’t think I’m a good person. I have a lot of moral shortcomings, and I ignore a lot of things that need attention. But I at least don’t try to hide it behind “setting boundaries” and “prioritizing my mental health”. I don’t like that therapy speak has made it into the general public. I “set boundaries” when they need to be set, I “prioritize my mental health” when I need to, but the way people these days lean into these terms and use them as scapegoats when partaking in behavior that goes against their morals really ticks me off. If you have to come up with an excuse as to why you’re partaking in behavior that you deem immoral all the time, or ignoring your moral obligations, I feel that some introspection would do you well. Social anxiety, for example. I find people with social anxiety go to great lengths to quell this anxiety. I’m no stranger to this; I have some pretty comical stories that have come out of the social anxiety I felt as a kid. But I’ve also avoided people; instead of being direct with them, I have made excuses when honesty would’ve done just fine, and I’ve opted out of certain actions that I know would’ve been the right thing to do. All of this was because I felt anxious. And instead of working on this anxiety, for a long time, I clung to it. I clung to it because it was a safety net of sorts, as in, I don’t have to do xyz because I have social anxiety. Which is completely false, by the way. The universe doesn’t give a single shit about your anxiety. Just because you have social anxiety doesn’t exempt you from the rest of the world when it comes to moral obligations. I don’t like the way that every single movement made by a person is instantly pathologized and made to be some sort of symptom or disorder or illness. What the fuck is an avoidant attachment style? I have no fucking clue. But I can tell you that probably 99% of people who claim to have this, or I guess in this case, diagnose others with this, probably don’t have it. Same with borderline personality disorder. That one really pisses me off, because have you seriously ever met someone with actual BPD? I see a lot of young girls fall for this one, and it makes me extremely sad. As a kid who was misdiagnosed with BPD, I could’ve definitely done without that experience. It made me hate myself in ways so insidious they still stick with me to this day. The vast majority of the time, a BPD diagnosis is false, especially when it’s been diagnosed before your mid-twenties. Anyway. Back to pathologizing every single movement someone makes. Do we not see how counterproductive this is? Most mental health diagnoses were created, much like gender, to categorize and control people. Now that’s not to say they don’t provide some benefit. I’m sure there are benefits that I’m just too narrow-minded to consider at this moment. But, in reality, who holds the power to decide whether someones really disabled? Doctors. And if you want to go deeper, medical practices, and mental health practices specifically, are derived from some really horrible shit meant to categorize those who are “functional” in society and kill off the ones who aren’t. I don’t know where I was going with all of this. I think I just want people to use their brains again and to think critically about everything they’re being fed on social media. Currently, my whole feed is loaded with posts steeped in therapy-speak from people online who claim to be therapists. And that’s not to say we shouldn’t trust therapists, but as I mentioned before, let’s think critically about this. Therapists are people too; they misjudge situations, they make mistakes, and some go into being a therapist because it offers them control over a weaker population. I think the first mistake these influencer-therapist hybrid accounts make is blanket statements. Any good therapist knows that blanket statements are not only ineffective but also cause great harm. As for the pathological aspect, I think we should just stop altogether. I think we should let humans be humans without trying to fathom their behavior from a DSM standpoint. And that goes for the self-diagnosers as well. Once again, self-diagnosis is not always or inherently a problem, but the vast majority of the time, it definitely is a problem. I see people log on to social media touting their diagnoses as badges or something else to be collected. But here’s the real question: are these labels you assign yourself making you feel safe? If your self-diagnosing charades go far enough, it’ll end up on your permanent record. Now, I’ll be honest, I am not formally (on record) diagnosed as schizophrenic. I would rather not get shot by the police. And this diagnosis, while originating from myself, was picked apart and worked through by multiple doctors over multiple years. Any diagnosis needs that amount of attention and care. Maybe not anxiety, but that’s because I’m not sure people without anxiety exist. But in a case as life-altering as a BPD diagnosis or a diagnosis of autism, I don’t think we should be throwing these terms around willy-nilly. At risk of sounding exclusionary or “gate-keepy”, not all of you can have autism. Like, a good chunk of people I know who have self-diagnosed themselves as autistic just don’t have it at all. Based solely on anecdotal evidence, someone’s gotta be either misunderstanding the severity of autism symptoms or they’re lying to gain another label they can attach to their belt of various other labels. Either way, I think I’ve popped off enough for now. Remember, kids. Labels were created to control you. Don’t let them. And also, for Christ’s sake, can we please start questioning everything again? Especially the things we agree with. Okay, bye.