alt Hacker NewsOur emotional pain became a product
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Although I think the phenomenon they write about is real, I have difficulty sympathizing with these types of essay because I see them as causing more harm than good.
Gatekeeping trauma with a broad brush is never good in my mind. Calling out specific performative or attention-seeking episodes? Sure. But it doesn't need to go beyond that, in my opinion.
I also think life is generally hard, and I don't begrudge anyone trying to get help in whatever form for whatever thing they might need. If you have a headache, maybe you reach for an analgesic. You don't shame people for reaching for analgesics because some others are in truly need of global anesthetic.
The pendulum keeps swinging
Trauma isnt real -> whats wrong with these kids -> we need to be more sensitive to their suffering -> everyone has trauma -> why are corpos using trauma to shovel snakeoil and coddling down everyones throat -> trauma isnt real
literally everyone and everything has had the shit traumatized out of it on a daily basis since forever , if anything this overpathologization seems to be increasing trauma and hypersensitization
> Dr Gabor Maté, a retired family physician and among the most respected trauma experts in the world, boldly diagnosed Prince Harry with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), during a live interview.
> Having read the Duke of Sussex’s ghost-written memoir, Spare, Maté said that he had arrived upon “several diagnoses” that also included depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr Gabor Maté is popular on social media, podcasts, TV, and other media, but as evidenced by his cavalier approach to over-diagnosing everyone with everything he’s not really a good source for medical information. He’s been riding the wave of popularization of psychiatric conditions for years, and at this point appears to be stuck in an audience capture loop wherein his broad diagnoses continue to bring him more followers and a wider audience.
Dr Gabor Maté is a good litmus test for seeing where someone falls on the divide between actual medical literature versus pop culture usage of medical terms. People familiar with the research, literature, and clinical practice will groan when his name comes up, while those immersed in the TikTok world of self-diagnosis see him as a leader in the field.
There has been a long line of people following similar career paths of popularizing these conditions through cavalier diagnosis and promoting self-diagnosis or alternative medicine diagnosis practices. A decade ago, Dr. Amen was becoming famous for pushing ADHD diagnoses everywhere and pushing his (expensive!) brain scans on patients despite no supporting evidence. The current wave has focused on pushing authors like Dr Gabor Maté who are simply selling books, which scales more than visits to in-person clinics.