THG fic: "Spin Control" [21/24]

[trovia]

Title: Spin Control
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing

Comments

[trovia]

I mostly get to see the BPD stereotypes from a distance on the internets, it's never been a big deal here. Though I'm amused how Americans seem to think that BPD'd people are all assholes? Since I tend to make people uncomfortable for fun, I can't even rightfully complain that they're wrong. :D It's different here. Up until recently, BPD was the better diagnosis to get compared to depression, because nobody was believing in the existence of depression and BPD sounded sufficiently exotic and scientific to be considered a real thing by at least some people. "Personality disorder" also sounds like a really serious condition, so people are more inclined to take it seriously in that way. But eventually it was stereotyped as a "teenager diagnosis" that you only get age 14 to 18 or something. And then it was being diagnosed so often that again you weren't taken seriously with it. I remember listening to some psych students in college chatting about how they'd just dismiss people with that diagnosis.

I'd like to hear your overview on personality disorders. I don't know much about them as such. (I go back and forth about how "personality disorder" sounds like something is wrong with you as a person and how that's both a helpful and a hurtful thing to be told about yourself) I've only read up on BPD for obvious reasons. I go at it for how people with BPD frame the world and how they invent a version of the world, and scripts for interacting with people, that chafe and end up making them unhappy. I'd say, PDs result in faulty interactions with other people while the other disorders don't do that?

And yeah, who the fuck knows what Collins was thinking, it's not like she could ever be arsed to research anything. :p

[roguedemon]

This question deserves a detailed answer, and I actually have some notes on this subject....which I forgot to bring with me. And I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, and I can't get my brain to work. But I will reserve some time to sit down and try to write you an overview. There are some wildly differing opinions on PDs. I think until relatively recently the BPD diagnosis was given to people deemed to have intractable problems, people that were almost untreatable. It was also kind of a wastebasket diagnosis given to people that were treatment resistant, were pissing their doctor off, whatever. I think that things are slowly changing, there have been significant advances in the theory and treatment of BPD. But depression is a lot more accepted as a treatable mental illness in the U.S. than it is in Germany, I guess. Not that there isn't a stigma in some circles, (fuck, in the U.S. some people don't think everyone deserves health care), but there is a lot more information out there and it's definitely seen as a valid illness. You would definitely been seen as better off with a diagnosis of Depression than BPD.

In general, saying someone has a personality disorder is saying that someone's overall personality/character has developed in such a way that said personality is actually causing their problems. And yes, they develop ways of framing the world that don't seem to gel with objective reality -- I would say that this does cause faulty interactions with other people. And yeah, it's hurtful and I think there are better ways of thinking about it. I think it ends up sounding like someone is a hopeless case and that's just not true. There are people with intractable PDs that seem to just get stuck and are unable to develop insight into the root of their problems and change things. But I think that there are plenty of other people that don't. I look at human personality structure as existing on a spectrum and there can be a very fine line between those that could be categorized as having a PD and those that couldn't. I think we have to look more at the theory of how people develop their personality, just checking off some behaviors on a list and slapping a label on someone is counterproductive. The term "Personality Disorder" is horrible, but we're stuck with it at the moment. Well, next time I will try to get more into actual theory. Right now I need to go help with dinner. :-/ I'm really looking forward to the next SC chapter btw, although I'm afraid you are going to drop an agonizing cliffhanger on us!

[trovia]

I think until relatively recently the BPD diagnosis was given to people deemed to have intractable problems, people that were almost untreatable.

Oooh, right, now I remember this. When I first was diagnosed with it and read up on it - I was sixteen - it said everywhere that BPD was considered, not untreatable, but incurable. I still found it all calming at the time. Here I was told that there was something wrong with me, so I could close that chapter of constantly wondering what was wrong with me and how I could change it. Probably not how most people react, but it worked for me in this fatalistic way.

It used to be that it was just the psychologists who had prejudice about BPD but none that I know of about depression - the plebs wouldn't ever have heard of it fifteen years ago. But everybody knows the word depression, of course. It was just that nobody believed it was a real disease. If you told people you're depressed and that's, for example, why you can't do something, what they would hear is, "I'm self-involved. I hyper-focus on myself in an unattractive way. I make up a ridiculous disease to cover up that I'm lazy and don't care about other people and then I have the guts of defending that as watching out for myself." It's still a problem now. My therapist told me she wouldn't advise anybody to admit to depression in a professional environment because the risk of career damage is too high.

(I'm feeling grumpy about this today. Earlier I saw a reblog on Tumblr saying, "If your friends don't take your mental health problems seriously, they aren't your real friends." And I thought geez, this just made it on the dash of a fourteen-year-old from a country without mental health support, who was just told that she has no real friends, and will never have friends. Great.)

In general, saying someone has a personality disorder is saying that someone's overall personality/character has developed in such a way that said personality is actually causing their problems.

It's such a weird idea, if you think about it. I have trouble wrapping my mind around that concept. I mean you could say the same thing about depression or PTSD or eating disorders as well. Or heck, untreated ADD. There are people whose personalities help them compensate for ADD, after all. You could as well call it a personality issue if they've not been able to come up with sufficient coping strategies on their own.

There are people with intractable PDs that seem to just get stuck and are unable to develop insight into the root of their problems and change things. But I think that there are plenty of other people that don't.

Yeah. That's definitely not an issue exclusive to people with mental health problems. Just look at issues like racism. Racists have that problem.

I look at human personality structure as existing on a spectrum and there can be a very fine line between those that could be categorized as having a PD and those that couldn't.

I like this. I just read a novel - just a light romantic novel, incidentally written by a psychologist - that walked this really fine line between "geez that character has issues" and "let's diagnose something". I think it's also a useful thing to keep in mind if you write. You don't have to make a thing pathological to give a character real struggles and issues on a psychological level.

Thank you for the little overview. :) I hope you'll like the next chapter! (right now, it looks like everybody is ignoring the agonizing cliffhanger in favor of talking about Peeta's badassery :p) And that you recover from that cold quickly.