Remote Diagnosis Disorder (Blog)

[Angela]

Originally Posted by yossarian

Depends what type of therapist!

Which one are you, moonlite?

[Khristine]

I love a good chuckle....Steve I love your sense of humor.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Khristine

I love a good chuckle....Steve I love your sense of humor.

That means you suffer from the disorder know as Excessive Awesomeness.

Treatment options include a smile, a high five, or a bear hug.

[davidclare]

RDD... Sounds lucrative.

Can I get a license to practice that?

By mail order of course.

[Khristine]

LOL! Those are the best treatments and should be applied to all other disorders.

[axis]

I have a feeling this post stems from the backlash Steve has been getting from his polyamory announcement. I understand that, it was quite a shocking post for me and rubbed me the wrong way. I have been a faithful reader for a couple years now, but that post made me think of Steve in different light.

My personal opinions aside, I will only read this feed when the title of the post has meaningful information for others personal growth. There has been so much info I have absorbed from this site and I am grateful, but the polyamory post came with a weird vibe and Steve didn't sound like it he normally does. All the best to him, but I wont be much of a reader anymore.

[Hunter Nuttall]

Axis, going from a "faithful reader for a couple of years" to "not much of a reader" because of one post is a pretty extreme reaction. What was it about that post that rubbed you the wrong way, when his other controversial posts did not?

As for Remote Diagnosis Disorder, I'm not sure I understand the problem. If Steve is not available for diagnosis in person, aren't people forced to diagnose him remotely? I mean, the only other option would be not to diagnose him at all...

[Jonathan Browne]

I think most of these "disorders" like ADHD (Attention Dialed to Higher Demension) etc. are just ways of labeling people who are different than the norm. The other day I was in borders books and I overheard an older couple having a conversation. The man saw a book on aspergers syndrome I guess and he said something about "Now aspergers syndrome what's that about?" and the woman responded "I think that's what bill gates has".

When I heard that I found it immediately hilarious. My intution said to me something like: "the peasants are trying to understand the kings, and the only way to do so is to say they have some sort of disorder".

They are afflicted with the "disease" of thinking differently than the rest of humanity. They "can't see the cues that define societal heirarchies". Neither could abolitionists. These are people who aren't easily molded into a perfect little robot conforming to the programming of society and it's priorities. We need these people. If society was filled with a bunch of "perfect specimen" sporty social valedictorians types as it seems psychologist want us all to be, I really don't think we would have a lot of inventors or artists.

Here's a portion of An article in wired about aspergers

"A recurring theme in case histories of autism, going all the way back to Kanner's and Asperger's original monographs, is an attraction to highly organized systems and complex machines. There's even a perennial cast of hackers: early adopters with a subversive streak. In 1944, Asperger wrote of a boy "chemist [who] uses all his money for experiments which often horrify his family and even steals to fund them." Another boy proved a mathematical error in Isaac Newton's calculations while he was still a freshman in college. A third escaped neighborhood bullies by taking lessons from an old watchmaker. And a fourth, wrote Asperger, "came to be preoccupied with fantastic inventions, such as spaceships and the like." Here he added, "one observes how remote from reality autistic interests really are" - a comment he qualified years later, when spaceships were no longer remote or fantastic, by joking that the inventors of spaceships might themselves be autistic. "

EDIT: This must have been a pretty good post because at the top of the screen it says "Welcome, Jonathan Browne.
You last visited: Today at 11:11 PM" :-)

[sk8joyful]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

No,
but it could mean you have ADD instead.

When it comes to the DSM, everyone gets a label!

Kewl! - ADD has proven a wonderful blessing to
the truly Intelligent, in achieving positive, constructive & Fun-goals.
and
the DSM? - most assigning the 'labels', need more HELP!! , than the asigned.

[ClareDragonfly]

Haha! Steve, this post cracked me up.

It also reminded me of a fairy tale, "The Goose Girl." (Actually, this device shows up in a number of fairy tales, but "The Goose Girl" is the only one I can quickly think of.) Basically, a servant blackmails a princess and steals her identity so she can marry a prince. The princess is given a job herding geese. The king ends up finding out about what happens, and one day at dinner he talks to the fake princess, saying he needs her help. He describes the situation (without naming names) and asks what she thinks would be an appropriate punishment for someone who did that. She specifies this horrible punishment, and he says, "Well, that was you, so that's the punishment you're going to get."

It's odd, because you would think she would recognize her own situation being described. You would also think that she would feel some remorse, since she obviously believes what she did was wrong or she wouldn't specify such a punishment. But she does neither. I guess that's just the way some people are.

[rangen]

Originally Posted by Jake Birkett

- Their behaviour has a direct effect on your life which is unpleasant. Is there a way to handle it without getting angry, or at least turning the anger into something productive?

The Work of Byron Katie is a method that helps you work with your judgments, and bring peace. With it you can see your projections clearly.

Related to your question, she says: "Defensiveness is the first act of war." For more info you can take a look at The Work of Byron Katie, which has all the required instructions available for free.

[moonlite]

Originally Posted by Angela

Hey, don't they teach you in therapist school that you can criticize people's thoughts and actions, but not the person personally?

Again - Steve Pavlina is not my patient, he even can't be one. So I'm free to criticize what he wrote. Is my statement about his possible BPD a critique of himself as a person or his thoughts or actions? As I stressed it before - my knowledge of his thoughts and actions is rather limited - I have only his writings before my eyes. So it's even more innocent

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by moonlite

Again - Steve Pavlina is not my patient, he even can't be one. So I'm free to criticize what he wrote. Is my statement about his possible BPD a critique of himself as a person or his thoughts or actions? As I stressed it before - my knowledge of his thoughts and actions is rather limited - I have only his writings before my eyes. So it's even more innocent

Since you and I have never met, our relationship (as you perceive it) exists entirely in your mind. Consequently, who's mind are you actually diagnosing? The most valid answer is that you're diagnosing the contents of your own mind. That's the only mind you have direct access to.

The solution in this case is to consider how you've been repressing your own BPD aspects, denying their existence, and decliining to accept them. By labeling someone you've never met with such a disorder (and a meaningless one at that), you're striving to distance yourself from those aspects... as a method of denial.

This practice, however, isn't aligned with Truth, so it's pointing you away from positive growth instead of toward it.

Try to accept that you're perfectly fine as you are. It's okay not to be normal. That's a false ideal you don't have to live up to. You just have to become comfortable in your own skin. Accept yourself as you are without worrying so much about how others perceive you.

As a means of realigning yourself with Truth, you can consider the symptoms of BPD and notice how you're been suppressing them in your own life. Given your training, this shouldn't be that difficult if you don't resist the process. Since you mentioned NPD earlier as well, you might want to do the same exercise for NPD as well, although I suspect that's not much of an issue for you.

Your initial reaction may be to defend yourself or to reassert your earlier diagnosis of me, but there's no need to defend anything because you aren't being attacked. Rather, consider that your request for help has been received and is being responded to.

Posting your diagnosis publicly instead of sending it privately is a rather obvious clue that you're seeking help. Trained professionals who are genuinely concerned for my psychological health don't diagnose me as having a mental disorder in a public forum for non-professionals, inviting others to discuss the issue right in front of me. What reputatable psychologist or psychiatrist would ever do such a thing? If you give it some thought, hopefully your logical mind can recognize the absurdity of this. At the very least, you must admit that such behavior would be rather unprofessional.

In truth you're using these forums to help you process some aspects of your shadow self. This allows those aspects to come to the surface where you can deal with them a little more consciously. I get the feeling, however, that you may not be congruent in your desire to resolve these issues. Part of you wants them resolved, but another part would prefer to continue repressing them.

There are a few other steps you can take, but I'd rather not discuss them with you publicly, as it can get rather personal, and a public forum isn't the right place for it if you're a fairly private person. So if you want help with the rest, feel free to PM me. But I think you get the basic idea. In essence all you really need to do to get started is to run yourself through a mirror exercise.

If you'd like to suggest that I do the same, the answer is that I already have. I do it quite often in fact. Whenever I'm inclined to diagnose others with some sort of disorder, including RDD, I interpret it as a self-diagnosis to see what comes up. In this case it points to an issue that I've known about for some time but which I'm still working to change. To put it simply, I want to be helping more people face-to-face and on a deeper level as opposed to working with people remotely over the Internet. From years of giving and receiving remote diagnoses, I've seen just how inaccurate they tend to be unless there's been a tremendous about of one-on-one communication.

In particular, plain text doesn't convey emotion. It isn't an emotionally expressive medium compared to audio or video. When people read a lot of text, they fill in the emotional void with their own emotions, and these emotions are different for everyone. Consequently, when such people form an opinion of the writer based on their impressions of the text, they're largely evaluating their own emotions, as they have no access to the writer's true emotions and motives. All they can do is make assumptions, which are frequently inaccurate. In such cases the best I can do is to keep nudging people back towards Truth.

[million]

Originally Posted by Angela

Hey, don't they teach you in therapist school that you can criticize people's thoughts and actions, but not the person personally?

this is a low way of talking to a forum member. I would call it bullying because he gave valid points which you couldn't answer through logical discussion

[oberlee]

Great post, Steve! I think it's right on the money. I'm skeptical of "disorders" anyway. Not to say they aren't real, but we try so hard to explain why people aren't "normal" like everyone else. Then kids grow up thinking they have X Disorder, and it screws them up. My partner's ex-wife keeps trying to diagnose their kids (one lives with us full time) with disorders because they're "too energetic" or they "don't listen" or they "forget things." Sometimes kids are kids, and people are people, and we just have to learn things like how to be considerate and responsible, etc. Or, just learn to love yourself and what you want to do, despite how much it goes against the grain of what is expected.

Anyway, yeah. I bet if you looked for a correlation between RDD and inadequately named penises, you might find something.

[allen080105]

I guess this had a different impact on me. After reading it, I now understand the importance of reading the first sentence in an article.

[million]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Since you and I have never met, our relationship (as you perceive it) exists entirely in your mind. Consequently, who's mind are you actually diagnosing? The most valid answer is that you're diagnosing the contents of your own mind.

I've never met osama bin laden, but I think he's a crook. does it mean i'm a crook?

If a human sees someone else eat a plant and die, he knows that the plant is poisonous even though he never tasted the plant himself. this is because human beings are complex, intellectual creatures who are also highly intuitive. We take cues from the information we get through our senses, and quite often those cues are correct. Therefore when we know the entire history of your life, we can make pretty accurate judgements about you steve.

Btw, your own wife claims to be a psychic and she gives readings to people she's never met, never even seen, only over a phone call. What do you have to say about how that's possible, if people criticizing you in the forums have a disorder? At least we've read 500 articles written by you and we know almost everything that happened in your life, while your wife has likely never met the person before.

I'll predict that your answer is, that erin has a 'psychic intuition'. If so, what makes you think she's the only person in the world with an intuitive ability?

By the way steve, i like your articles very much and i do admire you, but lately you've been reminding me a lot of Jim Jones.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by million

this is a low way of talking to a forum member. I would call it bullying because he gave valid points which you couldn't answer through logical discussion

You think so? Maybe you have RDD! Your diagnosis might be that I have Bullying Asking Disorder (BAD).

I wouldn't call it bullying, though -- I would call it asking a pertinent question, which (s)he graciously answered.

If you have a problem with a post, though, please feel free to report it, and the moderators will look at it -- even if it's a moderator's post!

Alternatively, you might want to try on the suggestions Steve outlined in his most recent post addressed to Moonlite. It seems to me to be a pretty good technique for any breakout of RDD.

[million]

Originally Posted by Angela

You think so? Maybe you have RDD! Your diagnosis might be that I have Bullying Asking Disorder (BAD).

I wouldn't call it bullying, though -- I would call it asking a pertinent question, which (s)he graciously answered.

If you have a problem with a post, though, please feel free to report it, and the moderators will look at it -- even if it's a moderator's post!

Alternatively, you might want to try on the suggestions Steve outlined in his most recent post addressed to Moonlite. It seems to me to be a pretty good technique for any breakout of RDD.

Actually your post did have a bullying tone to it, read it again if you can't see it.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by million

Actually your post did have a bullying tone to it, read it again if you can't see it.

Well, if you're looking for bullying, that's what you'll find. That wasn't my intent, though, as I mentioned. If moonlite feels bullied and needs me to clean something up, I totally trust herm to tell me -- (s)he seems like a very intelligent and straightforward person.

Again, if you feel a post breaks the forum rules, please feel free to report it.

[moonlite]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Since you and I have never met, our relationship (as you perceive it) exists entirely in your mind. Consequently, who's mind are you actually diagnosing? The most valid answer is that you're diagnosing the contents of your own mind. That's the only mind you have direct access to.

Since you and me have never met for me our relationship is almost nonexistent. Almost - as now some sort of communication is occurring. I want to stress again - I'm NOT diagnosing - I put forward some hypothesis. And yes, I am using my mind not some other. But your inference that I have access to the contents of my own mind only is rather weird, as I'm not enclosed in some box without any input.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

The solution in this case is to consider how you've been repressing your own BPD aspects, denying their existence, and decliining to accept them. By labeling someone you've never met with such a disorder (and a meaningless one at that), you're striving to distance yourself from those aspects... as a method of denial.This practice, however, isn't aligned with Truth, so it's pointing you away from positive growth instead of toward it.

I understand that you need to get rid of my hypothesis. Leave it in a box.
OK, let's say that it's entirely part of my mind and has nothing to do with you. It's possible. There still remains some problem though - it's really hard to distance yourself from BPD aspects and if it would be enough to write on some forum and then read your response to solve this issue my profession would be completely needless.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Try to accept that you're perfectly fine as you are. It's okay not to be normal. That's a false ideal you don't have to live up to. You just have to become comfortable in your own skin. Accept yourself as you are without worrying so much about how others perceive you.

well, there is a sort of joke among my colleagues that to become psychotherapist one even shouldn't be normal Again - as it is not well-defined what does it mean to be normal anybody would really get in trouble setting up this kind of ideal. My struggle with worries about how others perceive me has ended in my late adolescence. But anyway thanks for support.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

As a means of realigning yourself with Truth, you can consider the symptoms of BPD and notice how you're been suppressing them in your own life. Given your training, this shouldn't be that difficult if you don't resist the process. Since you mentioned NPD earlier as well, you might want to do the same exercise for NPD as well, although I suspect that's not much of an issue for you.

Here I must disagree with you - I have a strong narcissistic tone in my personality which is rather obvious for anyone who reads me. I'm a bit pretentious too. I try to put some restraint on it as I think that too much of it would make me boring even for myself, but anyway it's still there, that's the truth.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Your initial reaction may be to defend yourself or to reassert your earlier diagnosis of me, but there's no need to defend anything because you aren't being attacked. Rather, consider that your request for help has been received and is being responded to.

You mean my unconscious request for help, obviously... I try to be honest with myself so I sat for a long while and considered your words. No, I don't feel attacked. I feel rather that you try to be my therapist.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Posting your diagnosis publicly instead of sending it privately is a rather obvious clue that you're seeking help. Trained professionals who are genuinely concerned for my psychological health don't diagnose me as having a mental disorder in a public forum for non-professionals, inviting others to discuss the issue right in front of me. What reputatable psychologist or psychiatrist would ever do such a thing? If you give it some thought, hopefully your logical mind can recognize the absurdity of this. At the very least, you must admit that such behavior would be rather unprofessional.

I don't write here under my real name so my reputation remains intact. Yes, it's unfair - but it's you who is really exposed. But you chose it, didn't you?
Also - unprofessional sounds here almost like unethical - but what if it was the only effective way to pose some questions? I doubt there are any professionals that will offer you diagnose or mere hypothesis through an email or when you sip a juice with them at the party. They usually do not offer their help for free Anyway it seems to me that you put too much of weight on my opinion. Why bother? Why don't you simply ignore it? After all - who knows maybe I'm not even a psychotherapist? it's Internet - everybody can claim that he is a G-d himself. Does it make him more aligned with the Truth?

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

In truth you're using these forums to help you process some aspects of your shadow self. This allows those aspects to come to the surface where you can deal with them a little more consciously. I get the feeling, however, that you may not be congruent in your desire to resolve these issues. Part of you wants them resolved, but another part would prefer to continue repressing them.

I'm using these forum to learn. I love to discuss with people. "these issues" are really too difficult to be solved in this way (assuming that there are some)

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

There are a few other steps you can take, but I'd rather not discuss them with you publicly, as it can get rather personal, and a public forum isn't the right place for it if you're a fairly private person. So if you want help with the rest, feel free to PM me. But I think you get the basic idea. In essence all you really need to do to get started is to run yourself through a mirror exercise.

I really appreciate your concern and I'm not sarcastic. I know that you are a person who is genuinely interested in helping people. Thank you for your invitation but if I will need another therapist I will find one here where I live.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

If you'd like to suggest that I do the same, the answer is that I already have. I do it quite often in fact. Whenever I'm inclined to diagnose others with some sort of disorder, including RDD, I interpret it as a self-diagnosis to see what comes up. In this case it points to an issue that I've known about for some time but which I'm still working to change. To put it simply, I want to be helping more people face-to-face and on a deeper level as opposed to working with people remotely over the Internet. From years of giving and receiving remote diagnoses, I've seen just how inaccurate they tend to be unless there's been a tremendous about of one-on-one communication.

I can understand your frustration perfectly as I really love my job and wouldn't change it ever.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

In particular, plain text doesn't convey emotion. It isn't an emotionally expressive medium compared to audio or video. When people read a lot of text, they fill in the emotional void with their own emotions, and these emotions are different for everyone. Consequently, when such people form an opinion of the writer based on their impressions of the text, they're largely evaluating their own emotions, as they have no access to the writer's true emotions and motives. All they can do is make assumptions, which are frequently inaccurate. In such cases the best I can do is to keep nudging people back towards Truth.

I must disagree again - text does convey emotions. Of course nonverbal communication is important and nothing compares to real life contact but it's not true that text is a clean slate on which you can project anything you want. Or you can say exactly the same about face-to-face contact when the person with a strong projective identification mechanism can see hostility in the most innocent and helpful other. But the majority of people is not like that. Some people even are not that prone to projection as a defense - it's a rather low level defense anyway. So again - it depends on who reads. It's very important to be aware how biased and prejudiced someone can be but still sometimes one can guess right. From my point of view - the main problem with the text is that it's only substitute - and communication through writing doesn't seem real. Being aware of it makes it more like an intellectual game - emotions are still involved but distance is too big to build relationship that profoundly changes both parties.

[geekchic9]

Originally Posted by million

By the way steve, i like your articles very much and i do admire you, but lately you've been reminding me a lot of Jim Jones.

I don't see no stinkin' Kool-Aid . . . . </tasteless joke>

Seriously, comparing Steve to a crazy cult leader and saying he has BPD is not only inaccurate and slanderous, but just plain mean. If there's anyone I would compare Steve to is Dave Pelzer. They both went through a lot of personal trials before becoming successful (and controversial) motivational speakers and authors. Granted, Dave had it way worse in some ways because of the childhood abuse, but they both could have ended up in prison -- and they're not. They're successful, good people -- and that's why they're awesome.

[million]

Originally Posted by million

this is a low way of talking to a forum member. I would call it bullying because he gave valid points which you couldn't answer through logical discussion

Hey angela, i apologize about this comment, i didn't know the person actually went to a therapist school and i thought you were suggesting that he gets therapy in a hospital or something because he suffers from 'RDD'... lol. Sorry about that!

[Steve Pavlina]

@moonlite: No need to defend yourself or attack me because again, you aren't being attacked. You asked for help... and now the rest is up to you. The mirror exercise is still waiting. Lower your shields just a tad, and give it a try. You may find the results enlightening.

If the idea irks you at this time -- for whatever reason -- just set it aside for a week, and come back to it later. It should still be just as effective.

[Trezker]

Originally Posted by million

I've never met osama bin laden, but I think he's a crook. does it mean i'm a crook?

Yes, it does. Or rather, it means you think you're a crook. Also since I read your post, I too think I'm a crook. It reminds me of the few instances of shoplifting I've done...

The rest of your post also rings little bells of attention about beliefs I hold that are quite odd.

I think that everything I experience, everything I read, see and hear are projections of my beliefs. Nothing is irrelevant.

[Dan.Linehan]

I think you're all crazy.

[moonlite]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

@moonlite: No need to defend yourself or attack me because again, you aren't being attacked. You asked for help... and now the rest is up to you. The mirror exercise is still waiting. Lower your shields just a tad, and give it a try. You may find the results enlightening.

If the idea irks you at this time -- for whatever reason -- just set it aside for a week, and come back to it later. It should still be just as effective.

Well, what a scarcity of ideas! Not everything what people say of themselves is defensive and not everything what they say about others is an attack. I wonder if you can imagine different option than me looking for help (which obviously I can't get here). Using your schematic response I could infer that it is you who is desperately looking for help in places you can't get it. But of course I would not do it as I'm not going to be your "on-line therapist". It would be not only naive but also simply condescending. And I didn't agree that you would be mine, so I'm not going to take the role of "a patient". It's just a discussion not therapy or even diagnostic process.

Life is not that simple to explain everything through one single set of notions or ideas. Like for instance: "projection", "mirroring" or "defense". Describing your writings as having features of BPD is only one possible way and for sure it is a kind of reductionism even if accurate. I bite my tongue and leave my interpretations of your response for myself.

If I was good at astrology for instance I would write maybe something like - "Steve writes like Virgo with Sagittarius rising and Venus in conjunction with Pluto." I understand your problem - then you could simply despise me by telling me that my guess is wrong. Now you just can't prove that I'm wrong so you must "help me" to see it and make me nullify my opinion. But it is rather impossible that so intelligent person as you can seriously believe that I will just follow your advice and in case I won't you can easily explain it as a "resistance". Isn't it too shallow for you? And again - does it really matter what kind of opinion I have?

[Apollia]

Great blog post. I always love it when people criticize and/or make amusing parodies of psychology. I've known too many people who like to use diagnostic labels as a weapon, who act as if using such labels gives their negative personal judgments of other people unquestionable objective validity.

Some other diagnosis parodies I enjoyed:
THE ETIOLOGY & TREATMENT OF CHILDHOOD
Pseudo-Science 2 - Biopsychiatry Illuminated (Tiredness Disorder; and the rest of that page is quite interesting too)

Originally Posted by moonlite

If I was good at astrology for instance I would write maybe something like - "Steve writes like Virgo with Sagittarius rising and Venus in conjunction with Pluto."

Coincidentally, Steve actually does have Sagittarius rising. Steve's astrological chart Did you know?

Best wishes,
Apollia

[anamoly]

Does anyone else see Steve's new blog post as ironic? He's diagnosing people over the Internet with RDD!

[geekchic9]

Originally Posted by anamoly

Does anyone else see Steve's new blog post as ironic? He's diagnosing people over the Internet with RDD!

I think that's part of the joke.