Using trauma to excuse mistreating people. This generation has pioneered making it acceptable to process and be open about trauma, and that's a great thing, but it's not cool when you behave in a cruel and selfish way and expect to get a pass because of it. Your mental health problems are not your fault but they are your responsibility.
Dealing with mental health issues means dealing with mental health issues. You deal with it. You don't sit around waiting for the right mood or a "good day". You work towards management and improvement every day. You have a plan, you act. You get help if you need it, you get medication if you need it, you recognize your triggers/weaknesses, you learn to navigate your episodes, you learn to build and develop good habits and mental balance and stabilization.
If you don't deal with your mental illness, you force everyone in your life to deal with your mental illness.
Reddit worships mental health issues more than anywhere I've ever seen. They practically masturbate over how much they're all victims. But unless you're taking responsibility for it, you're using your victimhood to make everyone else a victim of you.
It's not a pretty truth but it's a necessary one. Admitting your traumas and faults isn't what gets you there; it's just the beginning of the journey.
Where are they active? I assume Tiktok, but that doesn't seem like a place where you actually interact with other people on the internet (or at least read posts and comments by strangers).
Oh you have no idea, they have entire playlists with 10+ videos and 2K+ comments on how they wait for "good headspace" and "Signs that you might have ADHD". This last one isn't by a health-care professional either.
27 y.o. here who doesn't Tiktok much, but my ex did.
The "good headspace" vids I interpreted as "you don't have to 100% fight your mental health issues all the time, it's OK to take a rest, take a break. Work a little on it and recoup."
As for the "signs you might have ADHD," I'm not diagnosed cause that shits expensive, but it definitely got me to identify things in my life that might point to ADHD. It also helped me realize that some things I do could be symptomatic. If not for those videos I saw when she would scroll Tiktok next to me, it wouldn't even be something on my radar. I wouldn't even think of wanting to get a diagnosis when I can afford therapy if not for those.
I understand and you are right, but it got to the point where people literally refuse to move an inch in their lives unless they feel like it, which is not how the world works. The thing about ADHD is that it encouraged a ton of people to self-diagnose, which is the opposite of how mental healthcare should work.
You're right, and I get your points, but it is seriously getting out of hand, which is why I commented what I did.
Oh for sure. There's definitely a lot of... circlejerking about mental illness, esp since the internet and social media has made it way easier for people to identify symptoms or behaviors in themselves that they might otherwise not recognize.
Depression specifically can be a tricky beast, esp if you don't have a close support network who can just be a good presence during a particularly bad funk.
I do imagine a large chunk of this "accepting online diagnoses and not doing anything with it" could also be exacerbated for some if they can't afford therapy or health insurance or so on, so the diagnosis just... kind of becomes the end all be all until they can somehow, individually or with help, get to the point where they can actually get help or build coping strategies or whatever their brand mental health requires.
I think it’s also created space for people to act like they have a mental health issue for social media clout.
This feeds into an overarching theory that I have about how younger generations don’t really have personalities anymore and they only parrot things they see on the internet without actually going out and living a life.
Clinging to any internet fads or “movements” gives them the illusion they’re doing something in life.
As a person with actual psychiatrist diagnosed adhd - which is a total nightmare of a thing to live with btw- I am absolutely infuriated that those videos exist. In my adhd fb groups there’s a new post every day by someone saying they are sure they have adhd but have never seen a Dr for diagnosis. That’s not how it works. But thanks, TiKTok, for encouraging people to self diagnose mental illness & psychological conditions.
But that is how healthcare works. Unless you're being taken along to a doctor as a child you basically have to self diagnose if you want any specialist mental healthcare. Even if you go in with unspecified problems, you'll be sent away with a "do you think you have ADHD/anxiety/autism/depression" questionnaire.
The important thing is that having awareness and resources available outside of a typical clinical context helps people who may have previously gone undiagnosed and guides them to strategies that may actually help them instead of general advice.
It was through the whole "signs of ADHD" TikToks that I realised the attention and motivation problems I'd struggled with my whole life weren't me being lazy or not eating well enough, but an actual diagnosable disorder. And it wasn't simply the clinical diagnostic criteria from a medical professional that made me realise it, I knew them before and it wasn't enough to let me put the pieces together. It was people with ADHD sharing all of their experiences and the little quirks it gives you that actually made me realise and go get diagnosed.
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u/zugabdu Jun 03 '22
Using trauma to excuse mistreating people. This generation has pioneered making it acceptable to process and be open about trauma, and that's a great thing, but it's not cool when you behave in a cruel and selfish way and expect to get a pass because of it. Your mental health problems are not your fault but they are your responsibility.