Psychiatric terms like "autistic," "OCD," "paranoid," etc. have become part of the popular lexicon to describe mild personality quirks that most of us have to some degree. Nowadays, anyone who has some obscure interest and makes the mistake of getting excited about it in front of others who don't share that interest is described as "autistic." But it's a fairly common
rookie mistake by people who don't realize, "No one (especially the women you meet online) gives a shit about you. Your hopes, dreams or what makes you happy. No one. All they care about is what they can get from you and how you’ll make them feel."
Psychiatrists have a very limited understanding of how the brain works, but they've come up with a book anyway listing all the mental disorders, and with each edition they remove some disorders, add others, revise the diagnostic criteria, etc. This is not based so much on our expanding knowledge of the brain, though, but often rather on political considerations of what kinds of behavior and thought patterns society wants to put in a stigmatized or protected class. Hope Reese
writes:
Quote:Hope Reese Wrote:
The reason there haven't been any sensible findings tying genetics or any kind of molecular biology to DSM categories is not only that our instruments are crude, but also that the DSM categories aren't real. It's like using a map of the moon to find your way around Russia. . . . . I'd be willing to bet everything that whenever it happens, whatever we find out about the brain and mental suffering is not going to map, at all, onto the DSM categories. Let's say we can elucidate the entire structure of a given kind of mental suffering. We're not going to be able to say, "here's Major Depressive Disorder, and here's what it looks like in the brain." If there's any success, it will involve a whole remapping of the terrain of mental disorders.
But on the other hand, he notes that some of these labels can still affect people positively:
Quote:Hope Reese Wrote:
One of the overlooked ways is that diagnoses can change people's lives for the better. Asperger's Syndrome is probably the most successful psychiatric disorder ever in this respect. It created a community. It gave people whose primary symptom was isolation a way to belong and provided resources to those who were diagnosed. It can also have bad effects. A depression diagnosis gives people an identity formed around having a disease that we know doesn't exist, and that can divert resources from where they might be needed. Imagine how much less depression there would be if people weren't worried about tuition, health care, and retirement. Those are all things that aren't provided by Prozac.
So when we run into someone who has been diagnosed with autism or depression, we can either say, "Go get help from a doctor or an online community devoted to that disorder"; or we can say, "Go work on improving your life in ways x, y, and z, and then the problems that you're currently calling symptoms of a disorder will go away."
I notice that the manosphere doesn't mind saying, "
Stay away from girls who have signs of borderline personality disorder." We regard that disorder as real and dangerous, because we've seen what those girls are capable of. But if a man shows signs of having depression, or autism, etc. and asks what he can do, we're more likely to say, Godfather-style, "
You can act like a man!" In other words, use masculinity to overcome your psychiatric problems.
Why women like unemotional men notes:
Quote:SmellyJelly22 Wrote:
There is one thing that can conquer the weak emotions: masculinity. What is masculinity? It is difficult to describe any human emotion in words, but I will attempt to define masculinity as an emotion (or a series of emotions) that make a person feel powerful, confident, competitive, aggressive, focused, etc… In other words, masculinity is an energy that makes one feel they can overcome any obstacle life throws at them. It is probably the result of various chemicals in your body. The precise definition of masculinity is beyond the scope of this article, but you know it when you see it. The only thing that can conquer an emotion is a stronger emotion, and masculinity is stronger than the weak emotions so it can conquer and silence them. A person who can focus his masculinity with his logical brain can plow through the weak emotions, focus on his goals, feel powerful and dominant, and become successful. Masculinity clears all the emotional debris and useless thoughts floating in a person’s head and focuses them.
Psychiatry doesn't focus on masculinity as a way of conquering fear, anxiety, depression, angst, boredom, distraction, worry, etc., because to a large extent,
psychology is run by women. But it's important not to go too far and totally dismiss the possibility that mental illnesses could have effects that can't be countered solely through an effort of will.
Where I think people get confused is that they run into one person who has a mild case of a disorder, and says, "Hey, I had this disorder but I was able to totally overcome it by doing x." So then they run into someone with a more severe case and say, "Just do x." But the people with a more severe case might not be able to overcome it so easily.
Here's an example. There's a fairly common disorder, paruresis, that 7 percent of the population experiences. Scott Adams
suffers from it, and even did
a Dilbert strip about it. If you've ever had trouble urinating when there was a line of men behind you waiting to use the urinal, you may have paruresis. It's classified in the DSM as a social phobia.
A lot of people have mild cases of paruresis, so they will say something like, "It's no big deal; I just clear my mind and imagine I'm alone in a forest with a rushing waterfall nearby, and I'm able to pee." But for those who have a more severe case, that doesn't work. You remember how in
A Clockwork Orange, Alex was conditioned to become sick in the presence of boobs? Or how some Vietnam vets have a
conditioned response when they hear gunfire? Paruresis works the same way -- the person has been conditioned to not be able to pee in the presence of observers. Some of the muscles involved in peeing are under involuntary control, so they're subject to being conditioned, the same way the salivary glands are under involuntary control and therefore Pavlov's dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell.
A lot of times, the people with severe cases of paruresis aren't able to be completely cured, and they have to come up with workarounds. For example, a janitor with paruresis might put out a sign that says "bathroom closed" when he needs privacy in order to pee. Scott Adams says that when he's traveling, sometimes he deliberately dehydrates himself so that he won't need to pee, and he thinks that Hillary Clinton may have collapsed at a 9/11 memorial service for the same reason. Paruresis could also explain why she was late coming back from the bathroom at one of the Democratic debates. Of course, she's not going to admit that she has that problem, because people would probably mock her for it.
With regard to autism, there are some men who
say that the red pill cured it, but what worked for those men wouldn't necessarily work for all men. I'm a little surprised that there aren't any communities out there devoted to red pill autists, but maybe there aren't enough men falling into that category to support a community. When there are people around who haven't had the disorder and therefore can't relate to what that experience is like, they're probably going to default to saying, "Just man up and deal with it" the same way people will say to the paruretic, "Just pee!" (which ironically, in the case of the paruretic, can make it even harder for him to pee, because a sense of being under observation and pressure to pee is what triggers his symptoms).
I'm not saying it's totally hopeless, just that those with severe disorders sometimes need to find workarounds that people without the disorder don't need to bother with. It's like how if you're short, you may have to work harder on your game than if you were taller. A lot of the early pioneers of game were short, ugly, bald men looking for ways to compensate for their disadvantages, and they succeeded.
