Yes. I've wondered about tattoos. I've heard girls say, "It hurts so good." That strikes me as not normal. I've privately thought it seems related to self harm.
The last two generations are a mess and they will make their own children worse. Someone needs to start telling them "no" when they are little so they can cope with adversity when they grow up, assuming they ever do. I have lived a long time and have found that the only time to cry is when someone is happy or someone dies.
I don’t think that shedding the occasional (or even frequent) tear of frustration, empathy, or disappointment, and then brushing oneself off and getting back to it, is necessarily unhealthy. There’s a difference between acknowledging your emotions and allowing yourself to express them, and allowing them to run your life.
This is so good and speaks to a lot of what I've been seeing and starting to write and speak about in my work as a trauma coach for women. There are a lot of cultural norms that are feeding internal instability and disorganization, particularly on the political left. Thank you for speaking to this - looking forward to diving more into your posts!
I definitely see tattoos as some desperate act. In the past, I saw pain, but more recently I see them as a desperate act to communicate identity. What’s fascinating is that I’ve never seen a beautiful tattoo.
Really? I've seen some pretty amazing tattoos, and they were on people who seemed pretty normal, at least in casual acquaintance. But I'm thinking here of the very high quality ones and they're usually on guys. Women seem to go in more for tiny little very cheap tattoos on wrists and ankles; those I do tend to associate with insecurity and weakness for some reason ... although I'm not quite sure why, because I haven't had any girlfriends with such tattoos that I remember.
Are you saying that our culture’s obsession with labelling relatives (esp patents) “toxic” and cutting them off might be harming some who need to learn healthy ways to maintain relational continuity?
Dr. Spier, I enjoy reading your work. I had a colleague back in the late 90's that believed the excessive piercings and tattoos were symptomatic of dysfunction even back then. Our broken culture is a good description, it's become an anything goes culture where we're expected to accept all types of dysfunctional behavior. Thanks for shinning a light on this important subject and I look forward to your next post.
Unfortunately, given the Zeitgeist of feminism, Marxism, and postmodernity, there is no grand narrative or coherent structure to society.
In the UK, even state sponsored suicide, and home abortions up to birth, even these have recently been legalised by a government that has a minister for women (read feminist Marxism).
I think we're fallen and generations will be largely wasted.
But spreading knowledge of "trauma stamps" will help restore red flag stigmergy.
We're in a world where Andrew Tate offers incisive commentary and a functional family life plan if you listen to his rhetoric.
But tiktok spreads post Christian moral degeneracy, asocial contagion, and subverts women's instincts for attention and belonging to encourage their deconstruction of what morality remains.
You go BPD girls. It's sexist to call you out. Keep paying iatrogenic, ideologically captured "psychotherapists".
Even though C.G. Jung said psychoanalysis is equivalent to supreme moral effort. That'd be to difficult.
That’s interesting, so histrionic attention seeking and narcissism lie within cluster B, and the reason I try using the term Cluster B condition is because individuals usual have some traits from each of the four disorders within Cluster B, rarely do they fall neatly into only BPD, HPD, NPD or APD.
I think the filming is: “Look how small I am, I am the BEST at being a victim”
I wonder about that, too. I am NOT a mental health professional but it seems like attention seeking behavior. I don’t think we live in a culture where being calm and having self-control is “rewarded” now. With social media, it is now possible to gain a lot of attention for what I would consider to be negative and self-destructive behaviors. I just feel embarrassed for the people when I see meltdowns from supposed adults in person and I simply cannot bear to witness it on social media so I don’t participate in it anymore.
This is 90% feminism in action. See what happens if a woman has a meltdown in the workplace and you ask why she hasn't been fired for it. More likely you get fired rather than her based on some mumbo-jumbo about psychological safety. The others see what gets rewarded and learn to copy it.
I’m a software engineer. I’ve seen men punch walls and launch tirades against other employees. I’ve never seen a woman in my job behave in that manner. I will admit to twice (over the course of 30 years) hiding in the bathroom stall crying for a few minutes before I could collect myself and go back to work. But no one knew.
This is brilliant! We need deep conversations about this. I encourage parents to home educate their children but most see it as a big inconvenience to their lives and careers.
“And until we’re ready to confront how easy it is to fail a child in our atomized, hyper-individualistic, productivity-obsessed culture, and begin to reckon with the psychological cost of simply not showing up, we will continue to underestimate how many are affected.”
Having been close to a diagnosed BPD, I can see the cultural shift normalizing the behavior.
Also, my BPD also changed treatment provider and the BPD was erased. They put her on Seroquel and it seemed they thought she was dissociative disorder.
I stayed with her prior therapist (we started as couples counseling before he split us into individual sessions) and he was disappointed at her subsequent treatment).
Really, really good article. I subscribed and restacked a paragraph. On tattoos, part of the problem is that the motivations can be multiple. How many guys have gotten a tattoo because some girl said it was hot? Not saying this is healthy, just that it's not necessarily an indicator of self-harm or problems with understanding long-term consequences.
good post! this is tangentally related, but i'd like to hear your thoughts.
i read an article talking about how there's a good chance that BPD in males is underdiagnosed, with some estimates going as high as ~25% of BPD cases being male. since the ways their symptoms manifest and how they behave are different than females AND these behaviors are poorly documented, even specialists can fail to recognize it.
what's your take on this? do you think that male BPD is very rare, more common than we think, tends to be less/more severe than female cases, etc? i'm curious.
PS - if you'd like more details, i can try to dig up the article; just ask. :)
I think the under-diagnosing in general also apply to men, there’s also the element of hyper feminization so we are seeing more feminine traits in young men, so it’s possible the prevalence is also increasing in men due to that.
That being said, it’s still majority female, and we have to be aware of the misandrist tendency in psychiatry to shift the focus on to men in disorders that are unfashionable, so studies on increased prevalence of BPD in men and ADHD in women are likelier to get funding. And of course, they tend to find what they set out to look for because as I point out it’s too easy to manipulate the inclusion criteria.
In men the aggression and impulse control tend to focus outward and that’s why it manifests as antisocial rather than borderline.
Yes. I've wondered about tattoos. I've heard girls say, "It hurts so good." That strikes me as not normal. I've privately thought it seems related to self harm.
You’re right, I think it’s unreasonable to exclude it
The last two generations are a mess and they will make their own children worse. Someone needs to start telling them "no" when they are little so they can cope with adversity when they grow up, assuming they ever do. I have lived a long time and have found that the only time to cry is when someone is happy or someone dies.
I don’t think that shedding the occasional (or even frequent) tear of frustration, empathy, or disappointment, and then brushing oneself off and getting back to it, is necessarily unhealthy. There’s a difference between acknowledging your emotions and allowing yourself to express them, and allowing them to run your life.
You are so right.
This is so good and speaks to a lot of what I've been seeing and starting to write and speak about in my work as a trauma coach for women. There are a lot of cultural norms that are feeding internal instability and disorganization, particularly on the political left. Thank you for speaking to this - looking forward to diving more into your posts!
“Broken culture”. It is indeed broken. Thanks for this essay.
I definitely see tattoos as some desperate act. In the past, I saw pain, but more recently I see them as a desperate act to communicate identity. What’s fascinating is that I’ve never seen a beautiful tattoo.
Really? I've seen some pretty amazing tattoos, and they were on people who seemed pretty normal, at least in casual acquaintance. But I'm thinking here of the very high quality ones and they're usually on guys. Women seem to go in more for tiny little very cheap tattoos on wrists and ankles; those I do tend to associate with insecurity and weakness for some reason ... although I'm not quite sure why, because I haven't had any girlfriends with such tattoos that I remember.
Are you saying that our culture’s obsession with labelling relatives (esp patents) “toxic” and cutting them off might be harming some who need to learn healthy ways to maintain relational continuity?
Exactly right
Dr. Spier, I enjoy reading your work. I had a colleague back in the late 90's that believed the excessive piercings and tattoos were symptomatic of dysfunction even back then. Our broken culture is a good description, it's become an anything goes culture where we're expected to accept all types of dysfunctional behavior. Thanks for shinning a light on this important subject and I look forward to your next post.
Thank you for that!
All women are BPD on a spectrum.
Unfortunately, given the Zeitgeist of feminism, Marxism, and postmodernity, there is no grand narrative or coherent structure to society.
In the UK, even state sponsored suicide, and home abortions up to birth, even these have recently been legalised by a government that has a minister for women (read feminist Marxism).
I think we're fallen and generations will be largely wasted.
But spreading knowledge of "trauma stamps" will help restore red flag stigmergy.
We're in a world where Andrew Tate offers incisive commentary and a functional family life plan if you listen to his rhetoric.
But tiktok spreads post Christian moral degeneracy, asocial contagion, and subverts women's instincts for attention and belonging to encourage their deconstruction of what morality remains.
You go BPD girls. It's sexist to call you out. Keep paying iatrogenic, ideologically captured "psychotherapists".
Even though C.G. Jung said psychoanalysis is equivalent to supreme moral effort. That'd be to difficult.
Why do individuals film themselves having a breakdown?
Narcissism?
That’s interesting, so histrionic attention seeking and narcissism lie within cluster B, and the reason I try using the term Cluster B condition is because individuals usual have some traits from each of the four disorders within Cluster B, rarely do they fall neatly into only BPD, HPD, NPD or APD.
I think the filming is: “Look how small I am, I am the BEST at being a victim”
I wonder about that, too. I am NOT a mental health professional but it seems like attention seeking behavior. I don’t think we live in a culture where being calm and having self-control is “rewarded” now. With social media, it is now possible to gain a lot of attention for what I would consider to be negative and self-destructive behaviors. I just feel embarrassed for the people when I see meltdowns from supposed adults in person and I simply cannot bear to witness it on social media so I don’t participate in it anymore.
This is 90% feminism in action. See what happens if a woman has a meltdown in the workplace and you ask why she hasn't been fired for it. More likely you get fired rather than her based on some mumbo-jumbo about psychological safety. The others see what gets rewarded and learn to copy it.
I’m a software engineer. I’ve seen men punch walls and launch tirades against other employees. I’ve never seen a woman in my job behave in that manner. I will admit to twice (over the course of 30 years) hiding in the bathroom stall crying for a few minutes before I could collect myself and go back to work. But no one knew.
Not much drama in mechanical engineering. I prefer it that way.
I worked in engineering. There was none of this. It’s why I chose engineering, though.
A woman has a meltdown in the workplace and she gets sympathy and support. Meanwhile the colleagues she abused get ignored.
It has become hard to give sympathy where it's due.
This is brilliant! We need deep conversations about this. I encourage parents to home educate their children but most see it as a big inconvenience to their lives and careers.
“And until we’re ready to confront how easy it is to fail a child in our atomized, hyper-individualistic, productivity-obsessed culture, and begin to reckon with the psychological cost of simply not showing up, we will continue to underestimate how many are affected.”
Having been close to a diagnosed BPD, I can see the cultural shift normalizing the behavior.
Also, my BPD also changed treatment provider and the BPD was erased. They put her on Seroquel and it seemed they thought she was dissociative disorder.
I stayed with her prior therapist (we started as couples counseling before he split us into individual sessions) and he was disappointed at her subsequent treatment).
Really, really good article. I subscribed and restacked a paragraph. On tattoos, part of the problem is that the motivations can be multiple. How many guys have gotten a tattoo because some girl said it was hot? Not saying this is healthy, just that it's not necessarily an indicator of self-harm or problems with understanding long-term consequences.
Men & women are not interchangeable categories, so male & female reasons for getting tattoos have to be looked at separately.
Word!
Dr Spier, you are really making me think. These articles are giving me some real insights into my own upbringing and family history. Thank you.
Thank you’
Such great food for thought. Thank you!
good post! this is tangentally related, but i'd like to hear your thoughts.
i read an article talking about how there's a good chance that BPD in males is underdiagnosed, with some estimates going as high as ~25% of BPD cases being male. since the ways their symptoms manifest and how they behave are different than females AND these behaviors are poorly documented, even specialists can fail to recognize it.
what's your take on this? do you think that male BPD is very rare, more common than we think, tends to be less/more severe than female cases, etc? i'm curious.
PS - if you'd like more details, i can try to dig up the article; just ask. :)
I think the under-diagnosing in general also apply to men, there’s also the element of hyper feminization so we are seeing more feminine traits in young men, so it’s possible the prevalence is also increasing in men due to that.
That being said, it’s still majority female, and we have to be aware of the misandrist tendency in psychiatry to shift the focus on to men in disorders that are unfashionable, so studies on increased prevalence of BPD in men and ADHD in women are likelier to get funding. And of course, they tend to find what they set out to look for because as I point out it’s too easy to manipulate the inclusion criteria.
In men the aggression and impulse control tend to focus outward and that’s why it manifests as antisocial rather than borderline.