Self fulfilling prophecy

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Szasz, Laing, Breggin, etc... I've never trusted them because they never fully critiqued the power structures that they were a part of. I'm far more interested in the real other psych survivors and what they have to say, rather than the doctors (often psychoanalytic people critiquing only biological aspects of psychiatry rather than the whole practice, therefore having a vested professional interest in maintaining certain power structures... see Judi Chamberlin's "On Our Own" for some really good critiques of that kind of crap) who seem to be self-serving more than anything.

Uhm, no? I picked three disabling psychological disorders that qualify as disabilities. In fact, I picked psychological disorders I was diagnosed with when I was put on disability benefits.

And how about bipolar? schizophrenia? autism? ADHD? A lot of disorders psychiatry claims under its umbrella aren't something you can recover from.

Could you point me to a reference that rejects psychological disorders as disabilities? I have really never heard of such a thing, except from those who feel that physical disabilities are more legitimate.



This is all good stuff. I had no intention of reading Szasz's work after getting a summary, but this other stuff sounds worthwhile.

I am not sure I understand what, exactly, you are taking from my statement. All I am saying is that disabling conditions interfere with self-help skills, sometimes to a dramatic extent. This shouldn't be a controversial statement, and if it doesn't apply to you, why would you respond as if it did?

The question is how do you know the statistics regarding self help skills? In order to trust the statistics you have to assume that whenever "bad self help skills" are reported, they are, in fact, bad. This assumption is not true. They might be reported by caregiver who WRONGLY decides their self help skills are bad because they "misunderstood" the patient, while patient knows they are good but they were never given a chance to practice them since "caregiver knows better". In general the reports ARE caregiver-based since patients are assumed to be "too encompetent" to evaluate themselves (as evidenced by the justification of treatments against patient's will).

How about:

I have been involved in the online disability community on some level, indirectly or directly, for the past three years, and I have read personal accounts by people with various disabilities and their described challenges with self help skills.

I do not care about what caregivers have to say.

If you look at my life, you would come to the same conclusion, and be wrong.

In my case, there was a 5 year pattern (from 2001 till 2006) when i was given chance after chance after chance in graduate school, and every time there was new reason why I would blow it. Then, finally, in 2006 they gave up and decided to expell me unless I find an advisor by June 1, and no one wanted to take me on because of my bad history. So I was set up to be expelled. Then a day before June 1 someone agreed to take me on just because he felt sorry for me. And guess what: I did a good job and got my phd in 2009.

Now, their logic seems to be justified. It wasn't just one bad semester or even bad year. It was a pattern that lasted FIVE YEARS (from 2001 till 2006) where I made zero progress. ON MY END OF A LINE I knew that it was a series of mistakes that held me back each semester. In fact I had a 20 page document outlining all of them in great detail, and explaining how I would never repeat any of them. But they didn't want to listen to it, since "from the outside" it is obvious that a five-year pattern is unlikely to stop. BUT I WAS RIGHT, NOT THEM: when i was given a chance I WAS in fact successfully graduated three years later!

The bottom line is that people can LEARN. Their past pattern doesn't tell anything about their ABILITIES. Sometimes it might be other things, like a person being stubborn for this reason or other (and a lot of my items on the long list WAS about my being stubborn), so after they realize they shouldn't be so stubborn ON THEIR OWN (as opposed to their caregiver harping at htem) they immediately begin to do a lot of things right.

Now, here is more recent example. Here, as a postdoc in India, I was scammed out of 8000 dollars. It wasn't a one time event. Each time I lost may be a thousand. Rather it was that every time I lost money I would chase after the money I have already lost and, therefore, do whatever the scammer said I should do that would get me htese money back (especially since the "new amounts" I had to pay were typically much smaller than the old ones that I would get back through paying new amounts).

Now, this story ended when finally the director of the institute I am working on decided to change the password to my email account so that I would stop communiction with scammer. ON MY END OF A LINE, I know that I would NEVER get involved with any new scammers. But one of the institute officials insisted that I ask for someone to pick me up at one of the confereneces (no, it is NOT the same incident as I was describing on previous response). Why? Because the pattern with the old scammer lasted a year so they "don't believe me" that I would stop that "pattern" now.

But on my end of a line, it is not my "personality"; rather it is the combination fo two things:

a) I didn't know about scammers before I got involved with that one scammer

b) After I got involved I kept getting sucked in deeper and deeper

Now the problem "a" was "fixed" few months after my involvement with the scammer when I started to become really suspicious he was one. Problem "b" got fixed when my password to email was changed. So, both problems are fixed, and now I know FOR SURE I will NEVER be scammed again. But other people don't know, since all they see is my "past history".

Maybe your assessment of your patients is also a "past history" that they had?

I guess the reason it is hard to swallow for most people is that most people know that there IS such a thing as scam since they are teens. The only reason they fall for scams is the temptation, not lack of knowledge. In my case I literally didn't kknow it exists until I was 29 -- the age when I encountered it! Now, if someone really REALLY encounters it for the first time in 29 years of their life, perhaps they WOULD have spent a year on steps a and b.

Now why do I lack knowledge about real world? The reason might be something as simple as having been sheltered by parents all my life. This, again, makes it into "self fulfilling prophecy": the REASON I was sheltered is my diagnosis!

Same with the Ph.D. example. The reason I made bad impression on everyone is that I am not being graded for my impression. So all I have to do is just do well in courses since that is the only thing that goes into my transcript. And then, when people decide to expell me despite A-/B+ GPA, I get surprised how come they are so "unfair" that htey "gossip" about me, let alone make official decisions based on such a "gossip".

Now, just with scamming, if I did something as simple as being exposed to the real world, I would have KNOWN that

a) In any place starting from mcDonalts to governmental jobs reputation DOES matter; college is a big exception when it isn't, while graduate school is somewhere between college and a real world in this respect

b) I would have interacted with fellow graduate students long BEFORE I started graduate school (which would have been easy to do since I took graduate courses as an undergraduate) and they would have told me that the rules WILL change once I make that step, enabling me to prepare myself for it

Now I didn't do either of these because I decided that interacting with people is unimportant, so I isoated myself in my studies and didn't do anything else. Yes, my mom kept urging me to make friends, and I stubbornly refused to.

Now why was I so stubbborn? Well, because I was sheltered all my life so I had every reason to be! Its like if I hear my mom scream "fire fire fire" every day why would I belive when there is a real fire? Now, why did my mom shelter me to make me that stubborn? Again, she is over protective because of my diagnosis. So, again, this makes it into self fulfilling prophecy.

Now, you might say "regardless of whom you blame, the end result is that right now you need help". No, wrong. Now that I am struggling fiding annother postdoc I called someone in USA asking "what to do what to do". THey said "attend conferences and develop social circle". So I started doing just that. But listen: my mom kept trying to get me to attend conferenes for AT LEAST 10 YEARS, and i kept brushing her off. And then all of a sudden I made 180 degree change within ONE MONTH as I have already attended like 8 conferences within the past year.

So the bottom line is this: when *I* "figure out" I need to change, I DO. I just don't trust it when other people TELL me to change, that is when I get stubborn. Then others mistake my stubborness for disability. And they shouldn't! If someone were to live in stone age they would learn things much slower than I do, I am sure. So my learning speed isn't the issue. My refusal to LISTEN is. And now, I "taught myself" a "hard way" that I SHOULD listen. So from now on I WILL listen, and will do just fine. But I am sure no one will believe me because of the "old pattern".

I'm not talking about the benefit system. The benefit system ideally should be asssessing peoples actual level of needs and providing accordingly. In theory, in practice they are certainly finding ever more subdue and covert ways of knocking people off their books as attributed to recent changes in the UK system which put people on the autistic spectrum at a disadvantage in ESA benefits.



Well I tell you what, why don't you actually go and read up about the recovery model? I'm not a mental health professional. But when I have encountered this model it tends to be the approach for services that are based around conditions not neccesarily of treatment and cure but of recovering from crisis to a point of functionality that the individual is then able to move on from. Traditionally what tends to happen is then the lack of post-discharge support leads to the so called "revolving door" issue

In my professional life i'm more concerned about preventing people getting that far that they need those kind of services to begin with.

That in contrast is to people on the autistic spectrum and/or ADHD or other PDD of your choice who will gain mental health problems as a secondary consequence of their initial differance. But dealing and intervening around their primary diagnosis of issues surrounding ASC and ADHD are going to be a different kettle of fish from their secondary mental health problems.

I am not talking about looking at anyone's life and making decisions on their behalf. I am talking about what people have said about the difficulties they, personally, have. I am sorry if this offends you, but since I am not talking about you, I do not understand why you are making it about you.

Okay, I read it. I don't particularly agree with what you. Recovery doesn't mean it's not a disability, it simply means you can recover from it.

How am i saying its not a disability? They are not treating those conditions like they are a disability they are treating them as mental health conditions. The way in which those mental health conditions present themselves pose a barrier to participating and functioning in society. Therefore as a consequence they disable the person who has them.

A disability, developmental or learning based, is not treated in the same way.

Thats all i'm saying.

A friend of mine has cerebral palsy. She had surgery as a child to help her walk more easily.

A woman I know was disabled and in a wheelchair for three years until she could get an MRI and get the cause of her inability to walk treated. She can walk now.

I mean, just for two examples. I have seen or heard of many people with disabilities treated with hopes of recovery, and some successfully.

At present, police lock you up or you get committed if you look a bit too wobbly.

Mental illness and self harm or harming others is real. It happens often.

Its their world, they work it everyday. Either retreat to your corner and live under their roof or escape the matrix to an isolated location.

Think were getting mixed up here.

Cerebral Pallsy is a life long condition. The surgery was to facilitate your friends ability to have access to greater life opportunities then she would of had with impaired mobility. No different to my friend who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy who had surgery to maintain his mobility to such an extent that he was one of the oldest people with the condition to still be able to walk independently. Regardless your friend is still going to have the aquired brain injury present throughout her life which has caused her to have the condition to begin with. The genetics of my friend's condition had long determined his fate before any such medical intervention became involved but helping him to maintain his mobility for a significantly longer period of time then he would otherwise had enjoyed enhanced his life experiances.

Therefore it is not recovery, it is an intervention to enable a person to participate and be included more in society. With the aim to improve quality of life.

A non- progressive disability of aquired brain injury, a disability of a degenerative genetic condition, a disability by an untreated physical ailment.

None of those are "developmental" or "learning" in nature. Only one of those had a recovery as such. That was because the cause was able to be treated by allopathic interventions. You can't cure someone of their genetics, you can't reverse aquired brain injury. You have to work with what you've got.

My point is I don't see how recovery rules out disability. This argument literally makes no sense to me.

I know you are not talking about me -- you don't even know me. The reason I am "making it about me" as you put it is that I believe others might be in the similar situation I am at and "wrongly" come across as disabled for the same reason I do.

I heard when you said that you are going off of what they said themselves. But still it is possible that the context in which these patients say what they do is something other than what you are applying it to. Case in point. Whenever I am looking for girls to date I go on and on about my poor social skills for days on. Then when they reject me I tell them "look I have a lot of potential to improve whatever it is that bothers you". They would often respond "You were telling us yourself you have poor social skills, we are simply agreeing with you". But see, the context in which I was saying it was "here is a problem that I have, I want a bridge OUT of it"; I weren't saying "this is the problem that I have and will ALWAYS have". On the contrary, I DON"T want a girl to "babysit" me (as evidenced by the fact that I left my first gf, Sarah, because she did). All I want is for them to overlook my problems, so I am trying to tell them ahead of time what they are so they know what to overlook. But on their end it sounds like I am saying I have these problems AND they are serious.

Now I know you said you weren't talking about me but about others. But you see they might be in the same situation. What if they wrote how miserable they are in their biographies because, for example, they are seeking SYMPATHY. But then it comes across as if they are seeking disability benefits which they aren't.

And you don't know me, so please don't try to insert yourself into material I've been reading over the past several years? Material written by people who describe themselves as disabled?

The disability blogosphere is a real thing. Also, several posters here have talked about their difficulties with self-help and self-care. I don't need a random guy on the internet to interpret it all for me, and generally speaking my reading comprehension is pretty good.