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This is very interesting to me. I went to a psychiatrist last week and she told me I have "delusional thoughts about the government." She asked me what gives

This is very interesting to me. I went to a psychiatrist last week and she told me I have "delusional thoughts about the government." She asked me what gives me anxiety, and I told her that it freaks me out that the government collects all of our data and wants to take away encryption. She told me I am nuts and that the government doesn't do that. ce le vie!

ajmurmann 11y ago
This is the creepiest story I have heard in a while. I wouldn't be surprised if many psychiatrist would diagnose the average HN reader this way. Also makes me think of Terminator 2.
- hodwik 11y ago
  I think you overestimate how many of us agree with you.
  - williamcotton 11y ago
    It seems like many people on this forum would be considered by many psychiatric professionals to be suffering from delusions about the government, but perhaps there is a silent majority of HackerNews readers who are not as overtly paranoid about government surveillance. I doubt the actual levels of paranoia as well. These are Internet comment boards. There's a lot of huffing and puffing and general stage theatrics.
    - jkyle 11y ago
      > It seems like many people on this forum would be considered by many psychiatric professionals to be suffering from delusions about the government, The way the OP framed the therapist's response, sure. Of course, they're telling their perspective on what the therapist responded. Having worked with therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and studied it to some degree in my early college including internships the more typical concern of a therapist is not the veracity of your beliefs (they're largely irrelevant), but the degree to which they are causing distress and if that distress is to a level that it interferes with your ability to function in society and form meaningful relationships With 'meaningful' defined by your personal satisfaction with the relationships and the satisfaction of those you have relationships with. This is the criteria for all behaviors in the DSM that causes a spectrum of behaviors or beliefs to shift on the continuum of 'normal' to 'abnormal' for the purpose of diagnosis. In practice, that means they could care less if you think the government (or God, or FSM, or Xenu) is watching your every move...but only if that keeps you from leaving your house or causes you significant distress. Or kept you from forming relationships because you thought they were government agents. For example, here is the definition of delusion from the DSM V Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture* (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.* Emphasis mine. The point is by virtue of most people in the subculture of hackers believe this way means that, by definition, it is not delusional. But again, if it keeps you from getting to the grocery store it would likely be worth considering medication. ;)
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    That the government collects all of our data and wants to take away encryption that it can't break? You also agree with that, or you are in radical opposition to the government's opinion on its own positions.
    - solipsism 11y ago
      Maybe this is too fine a point for this discussion, but "the government" is not a single entity. It's many different entities, often with differing points of view on any given topic. Some parts of the government want to backdoor all encryption. Others state publicly that that would be a horrible idea.
      - zo1 11y ago
        When people say "the government", they mean the specific institution or individuals that this applies to and form part of the government. When it comes to the powers of "government institutions", it seldom makes a difference that only "parts" of the government believe/do what is being discussed. To say otherwise, I believe, is to try detract from the actual implications and make them seem more benign and less dangerous. I.e. "Oh, don't worry that the CIA is spying on you, the 'supreme court' will make sure your rights are upheld!"
        solipsism 11y ago
        it seldom makes a difference that only "parts" of the government believe/do what is being discussed If you believe that, then it doesn't seem like you understand the basic concept of checks and balances very well. The fact that checks and balances can be perverted and subverted and are imperfect doesn't imply they are completely ineffective and irrelevant. The fact that the FBI is fighting in court for the ability to command Apple to hack the iPhone is a perfect example of this. "The government" wants to force Apple. O..K... "the government" isn't going to let "the government" do that. This is a useful way to talk about things to you?
        zo1 11y ago
  - BEEdwards 11y ago
    It is a fact though, you disagree with it and you disagree with the statements and actions of our government. The question is how existentially frightening you think that fact is.
stray 11y ago
You can't tell that sort of stuff to a psychiatrist/psychologist!
specialist 11y ago
Move on. In my experience, as a patient, most in the profession are nuts. During the aughts, I was labeled a "sweaty paranoid kook", in the local press, for daring to explain our loss of privacy. I get the denial. The truth is scary, uncomfortable. The arcana is difficult to grasp for non-geeks. But it's not for a care provider to nark on their patients.
chatmasta 11y ago
What did you expect, going to a psychiatrist? They are drones programmed to tell you something, anything, about what's "wrong with you." Because of course if you're going to a psychiatrist something must be wrong with you. If she said "nope you're perfectly fine," you would never come back! Psychiatrists are disturbingly incentivized to overdiagnose.
- studentrob 11y ago
  Well they do have to take the hippocratic oath, and they're not all bad. But the OP's thoughts on privacy are definitely grounded in the real world and not made up. This scenario isn't too surprising given that about half the country still thinks the government should be allowed to write the rules on how software engineers design encryption protocols. I like to think the number of psychiatrists who consciously make stuff up are few, but yeah at the end of the day, even when you visit a doctor, you are the one who is most responsible for your own health. You alone decide whether to get a second opinion or ignore the doc altogether.
- derrickdirge 11y ago
  I have personally had the opposite problem. Multiple mental health professionals have told me there's nothing wrong with me. Yet I'm still desperately unhappy, completely beholden to my anxiety, and utterly unable to organize my thoughts, to the detriment of my career and personal life. In my experience it's difficult to find a professional who takes me seriously. I feel like I've been treated like a drug-seeker. It's all very demoralizing.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    I'm sorry you've had that experience. It sucks. Traditional medication used for anxiety include stuff like diazepam, lorazepam, tamazepam, etc. These all have some abuse potential, and some potential for addiction. If you decide that you still want to seek treatment here's some information from the UK "NICE" (the organisation that looks at cost-effectiveness of treatment and makes evidence based recommendations). http://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/generalised-anxiety-disorder http://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/generalised-anxiety-dis... https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53 https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/offer-psychological-interventions-for-anxiety-disorders https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/offer-psychological-int... https://www.nice.org.uk/news/press-and-media/new-nice-quality-standard-aims-to-improve-recognition-assessment-and-availability-of-treatments-for-anxiety-disorders https://www.nice.org.uk/news/press-and-media/new-nice-qualit... Hopefully this gives you some information that you can use if you decide to seek help in future.
ultramancool 11y ago
That's... quite literally what they do. So. At least if you're crazy you have friends there. :)
caseysoftware 11y ago
This line in the OP says it all: "I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience."
- hyperion2010 11y ago
  Anyone who has taken a psychology course can understand why this is the case: the only people who stay in psych are the ones that actually believe the bullshit that psychology teaches without questioning it. The entire psychology curriculum for years was (and still in many ways) is based on memorizing results from received authority, and not based on method like it is in the real sciences. Even biology, which is heavy on memorization explicitly deals with methods at every turn.
  - kpil 11y ago
    Psychology has always struck me as mostly boulder dash, but psychiatry is supposedly better. On the other hand medicine seems to be a very authorian discipline in general.
williamcotton 11y ago
She has a point. You might actually have delusional thoughts about the government if you spend too much time on the Internet, especially on forums like this. I mean, look at the support you're getting here! Pretty much every commenter is on your side with this. HackerNews isn't really known for being able to cater to outside opinions. What do you mean by "the government collects all of our data". What do you mean by "the government"? Do they come in to your house and go through your private photographs? Do they break in to your house and read your journal while you're at work? Or do you mean that the NSA intercepts electrical signals that you publicly broadcast from your house? Did you talk about the details of how the government collects all of our data? Perhaps you were both unable to disassociate your paranoid thoughts about a totalizing outside power from the reality of the situation. The reality is that the government is not collecting all of our data. It is collecting most of the data that we publicly broadcast. The politics of this are a totally separate concern from your feelings of anxiety. Maybe the problem is you spend too much time publicly broadcasting electrical signals and too little time dealing with your actual private thoughts and effects. Maybe write a poem that no one will ever hear outside of being recited in your own living room! Maybe keep a physical journal that you keep safely stored under your pillow! There are plenty of things you can be doing to convince yourself that the government is not collecting all of our data. Edit: facepalm...
- EdSharkey 11y ago
  I think this comment is not very compassionate/overly harsh. But you have some good nuggets in here ... > The reality is that the government is not collecting all of our data. It is collecting most of the data that we publicly broadcast. There are some recent troubling moves towards collecting "telemetry" about offline user actions in operating environments like Windows 10, but this observation largely rings true. Where I think you need some empathy is understanding how some people wrestle with the knowledge that "stuff I/family/friends broadcast is stored, indexed, and could be used against me/family/friends." The knowledge that to broadcast one's thoughts exposes one to possible tyranny can only squelch discussion, and that drives people apart. We're social creatures, so that's not healthy. Techies are especially cognizant of what "broadcasting" means in today's landscape. Celphones broadcast one's movements, audio, images, and store personal information that could be secretly stolen. Yeah, I can see why some people are anxious. You're absolutely right that people need to write down private thoughts on paper and keep journals that they don't share. That's good for mental health in any case.
snowwrestler 11y ago
I am concerned about the social and political implications of how the government is collecting more and more data, and trying to break encryption. I am not concerned that the government has taken a special interest in me, specifically, and is using these techniques to manipulate or harm me, specifically. It is the latter that starts to lean toward delusional thoughts. Some people, lik Edward Snowden or Glenn Greenwald, do have a reason to think that way. Most people do not. And I make a difference between concern and anxiety/freaking out. I have an anxiety disorder that is triggered by specific things. Government doesn't trigger it, but if it did, I would agree with a therapist it is a problem that needs addressing. Panic attacks are debilitating. All this is to say that the details matter, when it comes to diagnosing mental health.
- entropyneur 11y ago
  Well, being anxious about it is certainly not healthy. But it's denying the reality of mass surveillance and encryption ban attempts that fits the definition of the word "delusion" perfectly.
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  I agree with most of your premises and do agree that, unless you have real reason to believe so (a la Snowden) that the government is unlikely to be targeting you (or me specifically). Have said that, some degree of angst about inadvertently become a target, despite my relative unremarkable public presence, is warranted. Consider the following... On Facebook, I post a comment for my friends that says something like, "My kid walked an entire mile to the park and back all by himself, too! A good haul for a 10 year old!" The government comes and collects that semi-public posting. Some in the government may consider that abuse (there are cases where overzealous government officials have indeed made that determination). Guess what? If data collection and analytics are sufficient, I may well be referred to the local child protective services. While it's not the same as the directed anger of the United States government against Snowden, it would potentially cause irreparable harm to my family nonetheless. Technology has the potential to enable economies of scale in bringing unwarranted intrusions to the least of us. Connect that with an increasingly paternalistic government and even mere mortals like myself have real reason to be deeply concerned. TL;DR Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me :-) [Editted for spelling and minor clarity]
darkclarity 11y ago
Life's so much easier when you are plugged into The Matrix. Now take your drugs and return to complacency. Ahem.
joesmo 11y ago
She's an idiot, like most psychiatrists, usually relying on drug pushing to keep their clients. It's close to impossible to find a decent therapist and if they do both talk therapy and prescribe drugs, due to conflict of interest (my repeat business vs. me getting better), it's really a rarity more rare than love. Unless you actually need drugs, but you wouldn't be able to know that because no one will objectively tell you one way or the other. Isn't profiting off medicine (and by definition other people's suffering) fun?
whoopdedo 11y ago
Were those her exact words? I thought therapists weren't supposed to be directly confrontational? It sounds like the satirical doctor who when a patient says "It hurts when I do this." responds, "Then don't do that." If a psychiatrist trivialized my feelings like that I'd be asking for a new doctor, and perhaps who I can complain to about her poor performance. Or is not acquiescing to a physician considered unhealthy anti-authoritarian behavior?
- humbleMouse 11y ago
  Yes, I quoted her verbatim. I was quite surprised myself. It was my first time seeing a psychiatrist.
cylinder 11y ago
Your anxiety is actually quite reasonable; feeling comfortable with authorities having access to all your communications actually seems absurd to me. How can you be sure that one person won't abuse their power to entrap, blackmail, imprison, you even though you have done nothing "wrong?"
300baud 11y ago
Don't let that put you off. My experience was that I had to try several therapists before I found one that I connected well with. (The same was true with my normal medical doctor and my business lawyer; it's just hard to find good professionals that you can work well with.) I should also add that the psychiatrist could be wrong about the thoughts, but still might be correct about the feelings that flow from the thoughts. As I progressed in my treatment for social anxiety, I realized the more appropriate emotional reaction to generalized government data collection was not personal anxiety, in that nobody was actually likely to look at my data or use it against me. I still have my recognition that it's a political danger and my anger about government overreach, but in retrospect I see my anxiety about surveillance as inappropriate, and related to my generally excessive anxiety reactions.
Bluestrike2 11y ago
That doesn't surprise me. At all. Psychiatrists are trained to diagnose (and tools like the DSM and psychological testing) largely in terms of deviation from the norm. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the evidence suggests the majority of patients can often see significant improvements in quality of life through treatment and therapy, but it does predispose practicioners to believe that deviation itself represents disorder. That approach makes some significant errors in understanding statistics (no one says that the mean of a set of numbers is the "correct" number, for instance), but for most of the patients seen by psychiatrists, it doesn't negatively affect them. A more reasonable approach might be to ask whether that deviation is negatively impacting a patient's quality of life, such as you'll often get with depression. That would acknowledge the normal diversity of human moods, behavior, and minds while viewing psychiatric treatment as a means of empowering patients to improve their lives rather than just a means of "fixing" what a practicioner perceives to be broken. A lot of people, far more than those who actually seek treatment, could benefit from psychiatric tools, therapies, and treatments. That's not the same as saying they're broken or that they should be medicated. Anyhow, your experience would be a good example of how the normal approach can fail. With set theory, psychologists refer to something called a "perceptual set," which is just a series of predispositions that shape how we perceive external stimuli. Psychiatrists look back to past cases when they're diagnosing new patients, and they all draw parallels to them the same as others draw on past experience. It's a huge part of how we learn. Unfortunately for you, that means they're thinking of cases where the patient was anxious about various conspiracy theories. You managed to get lumped into that category because she's heard it before, and lacks the specific education to understand the difference between concerns about encryption/internet surveillance and conspiracy theories about NASA and the moon landing. Congratulations, you've been stereotyped and likely mis-diagnosed as having some (minor? major?) paranoid tendencies. If the root causes of your anxiety are misunderstood, it becomes more likely that th misunderstanding will negatively affect how it's treated. That's actually a huge part of the problem with the political fight over encryption. People don't understand it, so they fall back on analogies and ideas that they do understand and attempt to apply them to this new, unknown stimuli. It's a powerful method of learning, but when it fails, it can do so spectacularly. People see encryption like a lock on a safe or a sealed letter, not realizing the differences or the universality and negative consequences of things like backdoors. That said, don't give up on psychiatric help and therapy because of this one experience. Finding a psychatrist you connect well with isn't easy, and they understand perfectly well that there might be better options for their patients out there. It's possible that this experience has undermined your ability to work well together in the future. You never should have walked out of the room feeling like she's labeled you as "nuts" and that that was the end of it. In that respect, she failed you. Maybe it was word choice, or maybe she didn't explain certain things to you. Whatever the case, you might be better off seeing someone else.
alavrik 11y ago
If it makes any easier for you, you should know that this is what all governments do. Some governemnts are better at it than others. This is going to continue as long as governments are around. I'm not pro nor against. Just stating the fact.

ajmurmann 11y ago

This is the creepiest story I have heard in a while. I wouldn't be surprised if many psychiatrist would diagnose the average HN reader this way. Also makes me think of Terminator 2.

hodwik 11y ago
I think you overestimate how many of us agree with you.
- williamcotton 11y ago
  It seems like many people on this forum would be considered by many psychiatric professionals to be suffering from delusions about the government, but perhaps there is a silent majority of HackerNews readers who are not as overtly paranoid about government surveillance. I doubt the actual levels of paranoia as well. These are Internet comment boards. There's a lot of huffing and puffing and general stage theatrics.
  - jkyle 11y ago
    > It seems like many people on this forum would be considered by many psychiatric professionals to be suffering from delusions about the government, The way the OP framed the therapist's response, sure. Of course, they're telling their perspective on what the therapist responded. Having worked with therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and studied it to some degree in my early college including internships the more typical concern of a therapist is not the veracity of your beliefs (they're largely irrelevant), but the degree to which they are causing distress and if that distress is to a level that it interferes with your ability to function in society and form meaningful relationships With 'meaningful' defined by your personal satisfaction with the relationships and the satisfaction of those you have relationships with. This is the criteria for all behaviors in the DSM that causes a spectrum of behaviors or beliefs to shift on the continuum of 'normal' to 'abnormal' for the purpose of diagnosis. In practice, that means they could care less if you think the government (or God, or FSM, or Xenu) is watching your every move...but only if that keeps you from leaving your house or causes you significant distress. Or kept you from forming relationships because you thought they were government agents. For example, here is the definition of delusion from the DSM V Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture* (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.* Emphasis mine. The point is by virtue of most people in the subculture of hackers believe this way means that, by definition, it is not delusional. But again, if it keeps you from getting to the grocery store it would likely be worth considering medication. ;)
- pessimizer 11y ago
  That the government collects all of our data and wants to take away encryption that it can't break? You also agree with that, or you are in radical opposition to the government's opinion on its own positions.
  - solipsism 11y ago
    Maybe this is too fine a point for this discussion, but "the government" is not a single entity. It's many different entities, often with differing points of view on any given topic. Some parts of the government want to backdoor all encryption. Others state publicly that that would be a horrible idea.
    - zo1 11y ago
      When people say "the government", they mean the specific institution or individuals that this applies to and form part of the government. When it comes to the powers of "government institutions", it seldom makes a difference that only "parts" of the government believe/do what is being discussed. To say otherwise, I believe, is to try detract from the actual implications and make them seem more benign and less dangerous. I.e. "Oh, don't worry that the CIA is spying on you, the 'supreme court' will make sure your rights are upheld!"
      - solipsism 11y ago
        it seldom makes a difference that only "parts" of the government believe/do what is being discussed If you believe that, then it doesn't seem like you understand the basic concept of checks and balances very well. The fact that checks and balances can be perverted and subverted and are imperfect doesn't imply they are completely ineffective and irrelevant. The fact that the FBI is fighting in court for the ability to command Apple to hack the iPhone is a perfect example of this. "The government" wants to force Apple. O..K... "the government" isn't going to let "the government" do that. This is a useful way to talk about things to you?
        zo1 11y ago
- BEEdwards 11y ago
  It is a fact though, you disagree with it and you disagree with the statements and actions of our government. The question is how existentially frightening you think that fact is.

stray 11y ago

You can't tell that sort of stuff to a psychiatrist/psychologist!

specialist 11y ago

Move on. In my experience, as a patient, most in the profession are nuts. During the aughts, I was labeled a "sweaty paranoid kook", in the local press, for daring to explain our loss of privacy. I get the denial. The truth is scary, uncomfortable. The arcana is difficult to grasp for non-geeks. But it's not for a care provider to nark on their patients.

chatmasta 11y ago

What did you expect, going to a psychiatrist? They are drones programmed to tell you something, anything, about what's "wrong with you." Because of course if you're going to a psychiatrist something must be wrong with you. If she said "nope you're perfectly fine," you would never come back! Psychiatrists are disturbingly incentivized to overdiagnose.

studentrob 11y ago
Well they do have to take the hippocratic oath, and they're not all bad. But the OP's thoughts on privacy are definitely grounded in the real world and not made up. This scenario isn't too surprising given that about half the country still thinks the government should be allowed to write the rules on how software engineers design encryption protocols. I like to think the number of psychiatrists who consciously make stuff up are few, but yeah at the end of the day, even when you visit a doctor, you are the one who is most responsible for your own health. You alone decide whether to get a second opinion or ignore the doc altogether.
derrickdirge 11y ago
I have personally had the opposite problem. Multiple mental health professionals have told me there's nothing wrong with me. Yet I'm still desperately unhappy, completely beholden to my anxiety, and utterly unable to organize my thoughts, to the detriment of my career and personal life. In my experience it's difficult to find a professional who takes me seriously. I feel like I've been treated like a drug-seeker. It's all very demoralizing.
- DanBC 11y ago
  I'm sorry you've had that experience. It sucks. Traditional medication used for anxiety include stuff like diazepam, lorazepam, tamazepam, etc. These all have some abuse potential, and some potential for addiction. If you decide that you still want to seek treatment here's some information from the UK "NICE" (the organisation that looks at cost-effectiveness of treatment and makes evidence based recommendations). http://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/generalised-anxiety-disorder http://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/generalised-anxiety-dis... https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53 https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/offer-psychological-interventions-for-anxiety-disorders https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/offer-psychological-int... https://www.nice.org.uk/news/press-and-media/new-nice-quality-standard-aims-to-improve-recognition-assessment-and-availability-of-treatments-for-anxiety-disorders https://www.nice.org.uk/news/press-and-media/new-nice-qualit... Hopefully this gives you some information that you can use if you decide to seek help in future.

ultramancool 11y ago

That's... quite literally what they do. So. At least if you're crazy you have friends there. :)

caseysoftware 11y ago

This line in the OP says it all: "I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience."

hyperion2010 11y ago
Anyone who has taken a psychology course can understand why this is the case: the only people who stay in psych are the ones that actually believe the bullshit that psychology teaches without questioning it. The entire psychology curriculum for years was (and still in many ways) is based on memorizing results from received authority, and not based on method like it is in the real sciences. Even biology, which is heavy on memorization explicitly deals with methods at every turn.
- kpil 11y ago
  Psychology has always struck me as mostly boulder dash, but psychiatry is supposedly better. On the other hand medicine seems to be a very authorian discipline in general.

williamcotton 11y ago

She has a point. You might actually have delusional thoughts about the government if you spend too much time on the Internet, especially on forums like this. I mean, look at the support you're getting here! Pretty much every commenter is on your side with this. HackerNews isn't really known for being able to cater to outside opinions. What do you mean by "the government collects all of our data". What do you mean by "the government"? Do they come in to your house and go through your private photographs? Do they break in to your house and read your journal while you're at work? Or do you mean that the NSA intercepts electrical signals that you publicly broadcast from your house? Did you talk about the details of how the government collects all of our data? Perhaps you were both unable to disassociate your paranoid thoughts about a totalizing outside power from the reality of the situation. The reality is that the government is not collecting all of our data. It is collecting most of the data that we publicly broadcast. The politics of this are a totally separate concern from your feelings of anxiety. Maybe the problem is you spend too much time publicly broadcasting electrical signals and too little time dealing with your actual private thoughts and effects. Maybe write a poem that no one will ever hear outside of being recited in your own living room! Maybe keep a physical journal that you keep safely stored under your pillow! There are plenty of things you can be doing to convince yourself that the government is not collecting all of our data. Edit: facepalm...

EdSharkey 11y ago
I think this comment is not very compassionate/overly harsh. But you have some good nuggets in here ... > The reality is that the government is not collecting all of our data. It is collecting most of the data that we publicly broadcast. There are some recent troubling moves towards collecting "telemetry" about offline user actions in operating environments like Windows 10, but this observation largely rings true. Where I think you need some empathy is understanding how some people wrestle with the knowledge that "stuff I/family/friends broadcast is stored, indexed, and could be used against me/family/friends." The knowledge that to broadcast one's thoughts exposes one to possible tyranny can only squelch discussion, and that drives people apart. We're social creatures, so that's not healthy. Techies are especially cognizant of what "broadcasting" means in today's landscape. Celphones broadcast one's movements, audio, images, and store personal information that could be secretly stolen. Yeah, I can see why some people are anxious. You're absolutely right that people need to write down private thoughts on paper and keep journals that they don't share. That's good for mental health in any case.

snowwrestler 11y ago

I am concerned about the social and political implications of how the government is collecting more and more data, and trying to break encryption. I am not concerned that the government has taken a special interest in me, specifically, and is using these techniques to manipulate or harm me, specifically. It is the latter that starts to lean toward delusional thoughts. Some people, lik Edward Snowden or Glenn Greenwald, do have a reason to think that way. Most people do not. And I make a difference between concern and anxiety/freaking out. I have an anxiety disorder that is triggered by specific things. Government doesn't trigger it, but if it did, I would agree with a therapist it is a problem that needs addressing. Panic attacks are debilitating. All this is to say that the details matter, when it comes to diagnosing mental health.

entropyneur 11y ago
Well, being anxious about it is certainly not healthy. But it's denying the reality of mass surveillance and encryption ban attempts that fits the definition of the word "delusion" perfectly.
sbuttgereit 11y ago
I agree with most of your premises and do agree that, unless you have real reason to believe so (a la Snowden) that the government is unlikely to be targeting you (or me specifically). Have said that, some degree of angst about inadvertently become a target, despite my relative unremarkable public presence, is warranted. Consider the following... On Facebook, I post a comment for my friends that says something like, "My kid walked an entire mile to the park and back all by himself, too! A good haul for a 10 year old!" The government comes and collects that semi-public posting. Some in the government may consider that abuse (there are cases where overzealous government officials have indeed made that determination). Guess what? If data collection and analytics are sufficient, I may well be referred to the local child protective services. While it's not the same as the directed anger of the United States government against Snowden, it would potentially cause irreparable harm to my family nonetheless. Technology has the potential to enable economies of scale in bringing unwarranted intrusions to the least of us. Connect that with an increasingly paternalistic government and even mere mortals like myself have real reason to be deeply concerned. TL;DR Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me :-) [Editted for spelling and minor clarity]

darkclarity 11y ago

Life's so much easier when you are plugged into The Matrix. Now take your drugs and return to complacency. Ahem.

joesmo 11y ago

She's an idiot, like most psychiatrists, usually relying on drug pushing to keep their clients. It's close to impossible to find a decent therapist and if they do both talk therapy and prescribe drugs, due to conflict of interest (my repeat business vs. me getting better), it's really a rarity more rare than love. Unless you actually need drugs, but you wouldn't be able to know that because no one will objectively tell you one way or the other. Isn't profiting off medicine (and by definition other people's suffering) fun?

whoopdedo 11y ago

Were those her exact words? I thought therapists weren't supposed to be directly confrontational? It sounds like the satirical doctor who when a patient says "It hurts when I do this." responds, "Then don't do that." If a psychiatrist trivialized my feelings like that I'd be asking for a new doctor, and perhaps who I can complain to about her poor performance. Or is not acquiescing to a physician considered unhealthy anti-authoritarian behavior?

humbleMouse 11y ago
Yes, I quoted her verbatim. I was quite surprised myself. It was my first time seeing a psychiatrist.

cylinder 11y ago

Your anxiety is actually quite reasonable; feeling comfortable with authorities having access to all your communications actually seems absurd to me. How can you be sure that one person won't abuse their power to entrap, blackmail, imprison, you even though you have done nothing "wrong?"

300baud 11y ago

Don't let that put you off. My experience was that I had to try several therapists before I found one that I connected well with. (The same was true with my normal medical doctor and my business lawyer; it's just hard to find good professionals that you can work well with.) I should also add that the psychiatrist could be wrong about the thoughts, but still might be correct about the feelings that flow from the thoughts. As I progressed in my treatment for social anxiety, I realized the more appropriate emotional reaction to generalized government data collection was not personal anxiety, in that nobody was actually likely to look at my data or use it against me. I still have my recognition that it's a political danger and my anger about government overreach, but in retrospect I see my anxiety about surveillance as inappropriate, and related to my generally excessive anxiety reactions.

Bluestrike2 11y ago

That doesn't surprise me. At all. Psychiatrists are trained to diagnose (and tools like the DSM and psychological testing) largely in terms of deviation from the norm. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the evidence suggests the majority of patients can often see significant improvements in quality of life through treatment and therapy, but it does predispose practicioners to believe that deviation itself represents disorder. That approach makes some significant errors in understanding statistics (no one says that the mean of a set of numbers is the "correct" number, for instance), but for most of the patients seen by psychiatrists, it doesn't negatively affect them. A more reasonable approach might be to ask whether that deviation is negatively impacting a patient's quality of life, such as you'll often get with depression. That would acknowledge the normal diversity of human moods, behavior, and minds while viewing psychiatric treatment as a means of empowering patients to improve their lives rather than just a means of "fixing" what a practicioner perceives to be broken. A lot of people, far more than those who actually seek treatment, could benefit from psychiatric tools, therapies, and treatments. That's not the same as saying they're broken or that they should be medicated. Anyhow, your experience would be a good example of how the normal approach can fail. With set theory, psychologists refer to something called a "perceptual set," which is just a series of predispositions that shape how we perceive external stimuli. Psychiatrists look back to past cases when they're diagnosing new patients, and they all draw parallels to them the same as others draw on past experience. It's a huge part of how we learn. Unfortunately for you, that means they're thinking of cases where the patient was anxious about various conspiracy theories. You managed to get lumped into that category because she's heard it before, and lacks the specific education to understand the difference between concerns about encryption/internet surveillance and conspiracy theories about NASA and the moon landing. Congratulations, you've been stereotyped and likely mis-diagnosed as having some (minor? major?) paranoid tendencies. If the root causes of your anxiety are misunderstood, it becomes more likely that th misunderstanding will negatively affect how it's treated. That's actually a huge part of the problem with the political fight over encryption. People don't understand it, so they fall back on analogies and ideas that they do understand and attempt to apply them to this new, unknown stimuli. It's a powerful method of learning, but when it fails, it can do so spectacularly. People see encryption like a lock on a safe or a sealed letter, not realizing the differences or the universality and negative consequences of things like backdoors. That said, don't give up on psychiatric help and therapy because of this one experience. Finding a psychatrist you connect well with isn't easy, and they understand perfectly well that there might be better options for their patients out there. It's possible that this experience has undermined your ability to work well together in the future. You never should have walked out of the room feeling like she's labeled you as "nuts" and that that was the end of it. In that respect, she failed you. Maybe it was word choice, or maybe she didn't explain certain things to you. Whatever the case, you might be better off seeing someone else.

alavrik 11y ago

If it makes any easier for you, you should know that this is what all governments do. Some governemnts are better at it than others. This is going to continue as long as governments are around. I'm not pro nor against. Just stating the fact.