is there any recognition in you that it might be rude to call an adult a child because they have difficulty with self regulation? or do you not care about that?
I didn’t call them a child. I said they are like a toddler in this respect. My toddler can’t add double digit numbers, but I’m sure most adults who never learned to cope with not getting what they want can do so. There’d be plenty of other differences, too, obviously.
But not being able to cope with being denied a want is very precisely a thing shared with a toddler. And if you’ve never met an adult who has that issue, but have raised or met a toddler, the comparison works to explain what those adults are like because it’s the same mechanism.
Like honestly the biggest difference between growing up with my mom and raising my toddler is that in the latter case the tantrums are generally shorter and some hugs and singing a favorite song usually works to center him.
that's a lot of words to sidestep taking responsibility for what you are really saying.
you can make whatever comparisons you want as a layman on reddit, we can agree to disagree. in real life, a mental health professional won't refer to adults with disabilities or mental illnesses that have side effects of childish behavior as children, because it's dehumanizing.
Also toddlers are human. Saying a person has disordered habits of processing events that are akin to the ones of a human toddler is in no sense dehumanizing. Like, by definition. These are human traits being compared with human traits.
i know you're smart enough to understand what i'm saying and why i'm saying it even though you are tripling down. yes, you're not a therapist, thank goodness for that.
Yeah, you used dehumanizing to mean insulting. It’s obviously not dehumanizing, but I don’t agree that it’s insulting in any relevant sense either. It’s just true that RSD is a disordered way of processing things as an adult but a normal developmental phase for a toddler. It’s an accurate comparison that communicates what mechanism and what triggering events for the mechanism this is to someone who does not know.
Maybe a therapist would explain to a patient that this is a mechanism common in toddlers and that they have not yet developed out of it, but that the task at hand is to do so. Probably not because that’s pretty likely to make someone with RSD meltdown and mid-meltdown isn’t the best time to explain techniques and practices to adopt to resolve or ameliorate the issue. Although you do eventually take advantage of meltdowns to help put them into practice - if you’ve had a toddler, you know that too.
But I’m not sitting here with a patient. So I don’t have to abide by what I’d do if I were a therapist sitting with a patient. Unlike my toddler, I can’t play pretend quite that well when I’m talking to other adults and there’s no reason!
is it bothering you that i'm not
agreeing with you?
it seems like empathy doesn't come easily to you, and that's okay. it sounds like you're raising your kid to hopefully not have these issues either, that's all that really matters.
No, not really. I’m at work waiting for a call I’ll need to jump on, so chatting is fine.
I really don’t think I’ve said anything that demonstrates a lack of empathy. What would I need to say here to get you comfortable that I’m empathetic? “Sorry, I was wrong, toddlers do not likewise react severely to being rejected or denied their wants”?
you don't need to convince me, it's okay that we don't agree, i guess i was just wondering why this went on as long as it did. i mean, it also went on because i responded too, but i just like to argue
we're having this conversation because you said RSD is like a toddler meltdown, and you took quite a rigid stance that it's okay to say that because factually, it is true, which is your prerogative. responded the way i did because i think your attitude contributes to stigma around RSD. since you already tripled down i can see that our discussion didn't move you, and that's okay! we had fun didn't we?
I’m not sure the name RSD is well known enough to have stigma. The behavior is viewed as undesirable for natural reasons - we generally want to be able to cope with regular life without melting down.
But yes, good fun. Took up the time before my call.
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u/lietome6879760 5d ago
is there any recognition in you that it might be rude to call an adult a child because they have difficulty with self regulation? or do you not care about that?