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540 points drankl | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.426s | source
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parpfish ◴[] No.44485690[source]
Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses.

But there are a few things we can learn from this:

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves that makes them feel unique, they’ll take it.

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

- most mental disorders are an issue of degree and not something qualitatively different from a typical experience. People should use this to gain greater empathy for those who struggle.

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Aurornis ◴[] No.44485973[source]
> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok.

There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Many young people lean into this and label everything as a defensive tactic.

A while ago, one of the trends was “time blindness”. People who were chronically late, missed meetings, or failed to manage their time would see TikToks about “time blindness” as if it was a medical condition, and self-diagnose as having that.

It was bizarre to suddenly have people missing scheduled events and then casually informing me that they had time blindness, as if that made it okay. Once they had a label for a condition, they felt like they had a license to escape accountability.

The most frustrating part was that the people who self-diagnosed as having “time blindness” universally got worse at being on time. Once they had transformed the personal problem into a labeled condition, they didn’t feel as obligated to do anything about it.

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Walf ◴[] No.44486445[source]
I'm sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right?

https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-time-blindness.html

I don't watch TikTok videos, I don't use Instagram, but I have been plagued by these symptoms my entire life, and don't really care about others opinions on it. You probably don't have it if those symptoms don't resonate with you, but there are plenty of people who genuinely struggle, and there's likely some overlap with those who have undiagnosed ADHD.

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nomdep ◴[] No.44486670[source]
If you know you have time blindness and you still arrive late it is worse, because you knew it will happen and did nothing to prevent it
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Walf ◴[] No.44486835[source]
Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what it's like to actually deal with this, at all. If I try to be on time to things, I will be stupidly early, or still think I have time to do tasks A & B before doing C, because they invariably take more or less time than I estimate. Or I start doing tasks X & Y, because I'm easily distracted, you know because it's a deficit in attention. Don't trivialise what you don't understand.

Your advice is as ignorant as saying 'just do more fun things' to someone with depression.

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osn9363739 ◴[] No.44487025[source]
You have to do something about it though. You either come up with strategies to work with the condition or what? Just give up?
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Walf[dead post] ◴[] No.44487094[source]
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1. sjsdaiuasgdia ◴[] No.44489036[source]
I think part of why time blindness / chronic lateness gets such visceral responses is that the behavior is a broken promise generator. The impact feels very personal.

Continuing with the walking stick metaphor...it'd be like if the person with the walking stick was frequently committing to go jogging, hiking, etc with others. They know the activity might be beyond their capabilities, but they keep saying they'll go on the difficult hiking trail or whatever. This impacts the plan for everyone else.

Saying you'll be somewhere at a particular time is a commitment to someone else. If you're making commitments and frequently breaking them, people will react badly to that.

Having had a number of chronically late people pass through my life, I've often heard "be there in a second", "I'm on my way", "5 minutes, max" and similar phrases once the person is late. What I rarely hear is proactive acknowledgement and ownership of the issue.

The commitments you make as a chronically late person need to include your chronic lateness as a factor, just as the mobility limited person should take their limitations into account before signing up for the group hike.

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2. Walf ◴[] No.44502924[source]
That's a good assessment, but it misses the fact that the person with the effective dysfunction genuinely believes they will 'be there in a second', because they cannot accurately assess time. The lack of forthcoming contrition is not difficult to explain, shame discourages people from drawing attention to their faults. If it's happening frequently, one would always be feeling 'faulty'. Aversion to that is expected.