4 ms·

The de-facto inability to draw boundaries, especially towards people that one perceives to be dependent on, is one of the common symptoms of the large majority

The de-facto inability to draw boundaries, especially towards people that one perceives to be dependent on, is one of the common symptoms of the large majority of mental health disorders. People have massive difficulties to defend themselves against this kind of workplace abuse, their ability to say “No” is impeded to a point where any reasonable person with understanding of the situation would deem it deeply unjust. Meanwhile, it is known that people with dark triad personality traits - so people which fall more into the direction of very severe personality disorders such as ASPD or NPD, which have huge internalizing and externalizing costs and damage to society - are due to perverse incentives more often promoted into leading positions, from where they can further cause harm to the sick people below them. But they also get themselves further damaged as their promotions and monetary rewards don’t incentivize them to seek treatment, aggravating their pathology for decades, robbing them of meaningful and healthy lives. Any person with understanding of pathologies of mental health knows that their ability to simply stop abusing others is massively impeded to a point where objectively it appears like a perverse and cruel game to everybody involved. Both sick-abuser and the sick-abused are the victims in these dynamics and suffer massively. I hope that we as society will eventually reach a point, where the exploitation of sick people is not normalized anymore. There can be alternatives once we collectively incentivize compassion and empathy, but I dream - even Jesus tried to tell people this and look where we are today.

lazide 3y ago
The issue is, the wheel keeps turning. And these dynamics exists because they self-replicate. It sucks, but realistically we don’t even really understand what causes NPD for instance (or BPD), and since one of the core things with NPD is they will never admit they have a real problem, and are really good at manipulating people and hiding their problems….
- protoman3000 3y ago
  > but realistically we don’t even really understand what causes NPD for instance (or BPD) We actually do have much more insight on this than you might think, it's far from the black box that it used to be. If you look at how the new classification for personality disorders in the ICD11 was developed, they understand that one could for laymen say "Childhood neglect and abuse cause personality disorders". Of course risk there are many risk factors such as the environment, other traumatizations, epigenetics, temperament, toxins etc. and nobody can expect the common mother to be able to fend for herself and her child against this. But we know with large precision what they are. And still allow wars to happen.
  - lazide 3y ago
    That is vastly overstating the actual level of confidence we have in the face of actual data. For laymen? Sure I guess. But realistically, Nature vs nurture being a large part of it, correlation and causation being another. Many of these issues appear to have strong genetic influences. Some of them are pathological enough and recognition of them causes enough problems for people there are very strong incentives to hide them and/or attack anyone who would even attempt to diagnose them. So the only cases that show up got to such a bad state/decompensated so badly that all their attempts at hiding failed and they were FORCED into a situation where they would be unmasked. Which especially for NPD is going to mean the vast majority (90%+?) of them will never be seen by a diagnostician, no? Plenty of these folks came from environments where there was no unusual strife, plenty of resources, and supportive parents. Or at least appear so. Plenty of these folks came from environments where there was terrible strife, abuse, and neglect. Or at least appear so. There are also many folks who come from severe abuse, neglect, and strife who end up without NPD, BPD, or any cluster B issues at all. Or any diagnosable disorders of any kind. Could they be hiding it better, and actually they're even more dangerously pathological? Or actually perfectly fine? Good luck untangling the biases inherent in THAT situation! Especially considering how common undiagnosed mental illness is in the industry. It’s frankly as easy to say ‘these disorders cause childhood abuse and neglect’, many many times. Or ‘these disorders are magnified by specific types of childhood abuse and neglect.’. Or ‘abuse and neglect are comorbid with these disorders’. Or ‘there are likely inheritable risk factors for these disorders’. And wars/conflict are a fundamental part of the human experience. That is even ignoring that ‘abuse and neglect’ is a rather subjective judgement, with even a single societies ‘all good’ changing dramatically generation by generation for a number of reasons, and often varying wildly by region even within a single society. So any resolution requiring they never exist is doomed to failure from the start. Even trying to ‘stop war’ to remove NPD would for sure cause a war! Plenty of NPD folks in power, and they wouldn’t go quietly or be easy to remove. That’s part of the nature of NPD! And that’s without addressing the eugenics aspects of it all. There is a reason Psychology is focused on dysfunction, pain, harm - and reducing it. Mostly from the perspective of the patient. In that situation there is at least a feedback mechanism and a subjective scale they can provide that is aligned with treatment that 'things are getting better'. It's also fundamentally a reactive stance. If it's not "broken", it's not a problem.

lazide 3y ago

The issue is, the wheel keeps turning. And these dynamics exists because they self-replicate. It sucks, but realistically we don’t even really understand what causes NPD for instance (or BPD), and since one of the core things with NPD is they will never admit they have a real problem, and are really good at manipulating people and hiding their problems….

protoman3000 3y ago
> but realistically we don’t even really understand what causes NPD for instance (or BPD) We actually do have much more insight on this than you might think, it's far from the black box that it used to be. If you look at how the new classification for personality disorders in the ICD11 was developed, they understand that one could for laymen say "Childhood neglect and abuse cause personality disorders". Of course risk there are many risk factors such as the environment, other traumatizations, epigenetics, temperament, toxins etc. and nobody can expect the common mother to be able to fend for herself and her child against this. But we know with large precision what they are. And still allow wars to happen.
- lazide 3y ago
  That is vastly overstating the actual level of confidence we have in the face of actual data. For laymen? Sure I guess. But realistically, Nature vs nurture being a large part of it, correlation and causation being another. Many of these issues appear to have strong genetic influences. Some of them are pathological enough and recognition of them causes enough problems for people there are very strong incentives to hide them and/or attack anyone who would even attempt to diagnose them. So the only cases that show up got to such a bad state/decompensated so badly that all their attempts at hiding failed and they were FORCED into a situation where they would be unmasked. Which especially for NPD is going to mean the vast majority (90%+?) of them will never be seen by a diagnostician, no? Plenty of these folks came from environments where there was no unusual strife, plenty of resources, and supportive parents. Or at least appear so. Plenty of these folks came from environments where there was terrible strife, abuse, and neglect. Or at least appear so. There are also many folks who come from severe abuse, neglect, and strife who end up without NPD, BPD, or any cluster B issues at all. Or any diagnosable disorders of any kind. Could they be hiding it better, and actually they're even more dangerously pathological? Or actually perfectly fine? Good luck untangling the biases inherent in THAT situation! Especially considering how common undiagnosed mental illness is in the industry. It’s frankly as easy to say ‘these disorders cause childhood abuse and neglect’, many many times. Or ‘these disorders are magnified by specific types of childhood abuse and neglect.’. Or ‘abuse and neglect are comorbid with these disorders’. Or ‘there are likely inheritable risk factors for these disorders’. And wars/conflict are a fundamental part of the human experience. That is even ignoring that ‘abuse and neglect’ is a rather subjective judgement, with even a single societies ‘all good’ changing dramatically generation by generation for a number of reasons, and often varying wildly by region even within a single society. So any resolution requiring they never exist is doomed to failure from the start. Even trying to ‘stop war’ to remove NPD would for sure cause a war! Plenty of NPD folks in power, and they wouldn’t go quietly or be easy to remove. That’s part of the nature of NPD! And that’s without addressing the eugenics aspects of it all. There is a reason Psychology is focused on dysfunction, pain, harm - and reducing it. Mostly from the perspective of the patient. In that situation there is at least a feedback mechanism and a subjective scale they can provide that is aligned with treatment that 'things are getting better'. It's also fundamentally a reactive stance. If it's not "broken", it's not a problem.