For example, you may be reading a psychology textbook, of which you read it with great interest and enjoyment, but when you approach the part about personalities and psychological disorders, the textbook is starting to creep you out a bit, because the definitions and descriptions fit your personality so well, and then you start to wonder if you need to seek a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist, because you believe that you have a psychological or personality disorder, based on what you have read in the textbook, which describes your personality accurately and succinctly. Then, you try to examine your own personality in detail and attempt to change it, and if you cannot change it, inhibit the anti-social, unproductive personality from expression.
Or, perhaps, it’s best to say, “Forget about mental disorders! I do not have a mental disorder. However, I have been such a jerk to my family and friends and acquaintances and colleagues and co-workers and complete strangers that I seriously need to change my behavior! It’s all my fault; I admit it. Now, I need to make amends by serving the community and making everyone proud of my efforts.”
I think personality disorders describe a part of everyone’s psyche-to a degree. It is that degree which seperates a mentally ill person from a healthy one. So yes, I think it would be fairly common for someone to examine themselves in thought that perhaps they too suffered from the disorders of which they were studying.
When I took abnormal psych in college, we learned about personality disorders. The only one that reasonated with me was “schizotypal PD”, but I never believed it was something that I actually had. It was more like, “Well, if I had to choose which one of these descriptions fit me the most, it would be this one. Haha.”
Turns out I was wrong. Oh well.
As far as “correcting” yourself, that’s a lot easier said than done. The truth is that frequently people hurt others not because they are evil, but because they are in pain. The pain has to be dealt with somehow, and that often means getting help from someone who is objective and knows how to arm themselves against personality dysfunction.
I’ve taken those online tests and the results weren’t good. I have gone through hallucinations due to certain drugs and realized it myself and stopped taking them. The entire time I knew that none of it was real, although it absolutely seemed real.
As for all those who claim “Aspergers!” I don’t know. I developed fascinations early on as a child but they skipped from one to the next. They still do. One week I am absolutely immersed in heiroglyphs, the next it’s something else. And I know to bathe and not masturbate in class (a cousin of mine has this problem).
Yet, I do think there is something wrong with me. Because I would never divulge any of this to my doctor, and when I mention it to my family they don’t get it.
I think everyone worries about this at one time or another. My family has a history of mental illness, ranging from Asperger’s to schizophrenia. I’ve wondered if I might have Asperger’s, but ultimately I don’t much care. Whether I would get that diagnosis or not, I’m a lawyer with a stable job and a large circle of friends; I’m sufficiently high-functioning that I doubt I’d bother with treatment.
Actually… yes. I have some family history of bipolar disorder, and I know I’ve gone through manic/depressive phases in the past. I can indeed become reckless when happy and then plunge into self-immolating misery.
Truth be told, I’m not sure I want to found out for sure. If I have it, there’s not much medication do in a borderline case. And if I can’t really do anything about it, I’ll just have to suck it up, put myself together, and go do some work or something.
You’re doing it wrong. You’re supposed to diagnose your family and ex-spouses with the personality disorders and severe and persistent mental illness when reading such textbooks. Obviously, we who study such things are sane, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to study them. Or something like that.
Those books with the encyclopedic catalogs of mental disorders have something for everyone. Especially the DSM, the mother of all encyclopedic mental disorders for everyone catalog.
Here’s the way I grok that: There is some imaginary “Platonic Ideal” mentally healthy person, that is, the absolutely perfect-by-definition, against which all others are compared. Thus, what the DSM describes is a catalog of various deviations from that “Ideal”. Since nobody is perfect (indeed, the “Platonic Ideal” exists only as a conceptual perfection for the purpose of comparing all else against it), it follows that everybody in mentally imperfect, and thus diseased.
Yes, haven’t we all? I am pretty sure my mother was bipolar, or something along those lines, but we don’t go to mental health people in my family. I am sure in the years I was living with her I had more problems than just being a teen.
Now I’m quite sure I don’t have any major problems. Thank goodness! Trust me, those of you with depression or other chemical/hormonal/what-have you imbalances, I count my blessings every day.
When I was a teenager, I got spooked learning about the various mental disorders since I was going through an unhappy period of my life with our family moving and my parents’ marital problems. As I reached adulthood, I stopped caring about whether or not anything applied to me. I have an older sister who’s perfect and successful, and when I became unemployed, she diagnosed me as Assburgers even though she isn’t a psychologist, and I didn’t test positive on the online aspie test. Whatever happened to just being shy?
I had a couple of mental problems (social anxiety and depression) that were fixed with a combination of medication and working at it, but they were relatively minor. I still have to remind myself that I can deal with certain things.
I’m pretty sure my sister has some sort of personality disorder, but it’ll never get diagnosed. We have a ‘type’ in my family of my sister, one of my aunts, one of my cousins, etc. They act in the same disagreeable selfish way, to different degrees.
Usually when I read diagnoses though I apply it to the various characters I’m writing about.
Yes, trying to have a conversation with my mother was a nightmare, I couldn’t follow what she was talking about at all, and was convinced for many years that there was something wrong with me - although I had no idea what might be wrong with me, as I was able to follow conversations with other people no problem.
Eventually it dawned on me that what in fact was happening was my mother changing subject in mid sentence. She was subsequently diagnosed with a form of bi-polar disorder.
I was once seriously concerned that I had ADD. I was loaned a book about from a friend who has it pretty bad. The book convinced me a bit more, but I wasn’t sure. A therapist was positive that I don’t have it, sometimes I just lose fo ooh a penny!
Well, literally you’re almost right of course (but for those others mentioned by Silver Tyger a few posts up) – But I was actually referring not just to DSM, but also colloquially to those “psychology textbooks” mentioned by OP, not to mention all the Readers Digest personality self-quizzes.
