Jan 11, 2023·edited Jan 11, 2023Liked by Athena Walker
I think you are correct. This happens in some support groups for “victims of Narcissistic abuse.” It probably could be avoided by having a trained leader who focuses each meeting on a different topic. A leader who gently, but firmly, shuts down repetitious complaining and reliving of traumatic events.
I've met someone who had that disease analyzing power before. I had some symptoms that I thought indicated a rotator cuff tear and arthritis in my right hand. She told me to have my neck checked so I did and found I have something called reverse lordosis in C6 and C7 at the base of my neck. Seems that I'd apparently broken my neck at some point though I can't recall the incident.
It was pretty amazing that she diagnosed me with so little information
This was a thought provoking piece, thank you. I've had to evaluate, very recently actually, the kinds of circles I'm moving in precisely for some of the reasons you outline. In my twenties, there were lots of NT friends who had much to bemoan but no motivation or will to enact change. Truthfully, I wasn't much better at the time; wallowing in my pain was all I was capable of. Glad that's changing.
Then, there was a partial inpatient day program. 5 days a week, 6 hours per day of what was supposed to be mental health education classes (and I did pick up some good insights along the way) but much of the time was spent listening to others' traumas. And then, at the time, I still smoked so folks would gravitate to me outside on breaks and tell me their life stories and deepest, darkest secrets. I started eating my lunch and taking breaks in my car across the street. Once I realized some of the patients had been in the program for years, I quickly realized it was time to leave. I learned a lot that month, but mostly that I don't need others to heal my own brain or body. I possess all the capabilities necessary to find my own way.
I'm becoming more careful online who I follow as well. Echo chambers are the epitome of egotisical "ew." I'd like to avoid that, because I know that my background, experiences, and viewpoints are far from singular or ideal. A circle I am choosing to remain in, albiet intermittently, is a fringe kind of 12 step program. It seems to be quite firmly based in rationality and positive-realism. Also it's structured as hell, and I love that. Folks in this group do share their struggles, but it's framed with perspective (as many have decades on me) and often comes with insight and actionable steps they're taking to heal.
My weird superpower is noticing fears people don't realize they have, based on what they don't say or how they act over time. I've heard many times, "I--uh, never thought about it that way," etc. It comes from being long-term bedmates with my own menagerie of fears, I'm well aware. And I don't use this skill as often as I used to, because, obviously, it can be more unsettling than enlightening and pretty much never comforting. Ah, well.
That was a really great well thought out piece that you wrote. My dad suffers from a mental illness, and people suggest going to support groups, but that's what I'm worried about, is people wallowing and just sharing misery. Which doesn't help at all. I really appreciate your perspective and world view. Please keep writing!
I remember having a friend in high school who did nothing but cry about their ex for six months. The thing is, they were only with her for three months. They would message me pretty much all of my free time, and if I didn’t answer right away, they would accuse me of ignoring them.
It was weird, they both wanted to get better and wanted to wallow in their own misery. They demanded my advice, and then ignored it. Admittedly my advice wasn’t that good due to being a teenager myself, but still I was exhausted after that.
After that I learned not to fall victim to someone else’s trauma.
People in support groups (and online spaces serving as virtual ones) seem to feed on one another’s agony until becomes a disorder of its own. There’s a compound interest of misery going on there. Been there, done that, never again.
I have had basically only one experience with a support group recommended to me by a therapist as a follow-up for after I stopped working with him. I was young - I guess I must have been 16 or so.
I didn't stick around long enough to find out whether these people wallowed in their misery or not. I went perhaps 3 or 4 times, until one of the people there asked me something to the effect of, "OK, so... you aren't taking drugs or alcohol, you aren't having sex, you aren't about to become a parent, you're doing well in school. So... why are you here?"
Needless to say, I did not feel welcome there after hearing something like that, so when my parents came to pick me up after the group meeting, I told them what happened and put my foot down: "I am not going back." And I didn't :)
I've had other experiences with therapists since then. Most of them have not been particularly good. I definitely have come away with the view that the wrong therapist is worse than none at all. And a certain pet peeve of mine is the type who just lets you talk aimlessly instead of being goal-oriented, and... when you take matters into your own hands and tell them that a certain goal needs to be accomplished, they tell you that "it can't be done". Let's say that I treated that as a signal that I needed to stop seeing that person. And I did :P
That was one of your best articles, in my humble opinion.
Perhaps being a psychopath allowed you to say how the way we try to encourage someone to fight their illness might be just our selfishness. There is this "glamourization" in saying you should always cheer up a terminally ill patient and this is what staying positive means.
Talking about our problems doesn't always make us feel better. Perhaps we are just taking the bad part and making it part of our identity.
That's a very valuable advice. Your friend was lucky to have someone like you to come with her. I can't imagine how depressive those meetings were.
I have terminal lung cancer. But I've had it more than 4 years. Was widely spread when diagnosed, but a targeted therapy has stabilized it for now. I can appreciate much of what you are saying. Seems you work in the medical field, and perhaps have experienced disease on a personal level. Or maybe your cognitive empathy allowed you to see very closely into what your patients(or whatever) were thinking and feeling.
I myself do not seek out other cancer patients, unless I think they have some knowledge that might be useful to me. I don't run away from cancer patients, and when friends or family send someone my way for support, I don't mind, and I offer what I can. But I don't see out cancer patients because I really don't want the daily reminder. I want to live every day as though a future is still possible, no matter how unlikely the odds.
I am curious about your superpowers. You didn't go much into where they come from, other than that you've read diverse literature on disease. But it has to be something more than that.
In my case, there's always been a weird mixture of things I am strangely incompetent at and things that I'm weirdly good at. Recently, I started doing something I had zero interest in...and it turns out I have a talent for it. I've been an aspiring writer for about a decade, since I lost my business. But it's hard to break in. Sold a couple screenplays, but couldn't get a publisher to look at my novel. So I decided to attempt a YT channel. If I could build a small audience, I figured, maybe there'd be a way to promote by own work.
I watch a lot of youtube, mostly science and history(also a weird interest in mafia podcasts). But I didn't think I had the resources to do videos on that. I started out getting a bunch of other people to join me in doing mysteries of the unexplained. I don't believe in the supernatural, but I love a good story. However, that wasn't working.
So reluctantly I started doing some true crime. Which I had no interest at all in. I still don't watch anyone else's stuff. But I do like the challenge of trying to consider unsolved crimes, and I like trying to understand things. That's how I ended up at Athena's blog.
And it did turn out I had some talent for analyzing true crime, despite no training. For example, at someone's suggestion, I took on the Delphi murders in September. I concluded within days that the killer was likely someone who saw himself as a good father. There were all kinds of conspiracy theories about this case. I didn't buy into it. I concluded it was a psychopathic male who fantasized about killing young girls. He had not killed before, I theorized, because he had kids himself. Why did he kill now? I theorized that he had a teenage daughter who was moving out to go to college, and this triggered him, and also removed a barrier. He was a danger to kill again, but had not because he lives in that small community of 2000 people. To risky.
Well, weeks after I did videos on this, they arrested Richard Allen. It turns out he has a daughter, and she WAS leaving the house, but because she got engaged. This happened 2 months before the murders. So everything I predicted fit.
Likewise, when everyone was saying the murders in Idaho were targeted, in my videos I predicted he was motivated by a desire to kill, and if wasn't those kids it would have been someone else. This seems to have come true.
Am I Sherlock Holmes? Nope. I'm lucky if I can remember my phone number and tools are mysterious objects to me. So my intelligence is pretty limited.
How did I reach these conclusions? Very simple logic, really. The killer in Delphi had not killed before or since, he was described as being 28 and 50 in age. And there were no good suspects(there were two that were suspicious but really didn't fit). So to me, this was a guy in his 30's or 40's who fit in, who hadn't killed before. Something would have prevented him. What made sense to me was that he was a father who had an image of himself as a good father. This was enough to contain his powerful urges until his daughter left the house. And with a psychopath with sexual/murderous fantasies, that powerful urge was hard to contain.
So simple logic. Simple elimination of other possibilities. It seems very easy and self evidence to me, but apparently a lot of people can't think these things through, just like I can't fix the handle on my shower.
I wonder if something similar is behind your superpower. You are able to quickly eliminate unlikely possibilities and narrow it down to a strong guess.
Hi Athena! It's Dominique! (Quora). It's been a while. My (totally useless) superpower is that I'm able to put songs in people's heads; in other words, I'm an earworm creator.
Yes, this NT habit of trying to escape empathic discomfort by advising, it is something to watch out for. I had a friend who kept advising me on something recently and I figured that he was hassling me about it. But I realise now that he is very NT, doesn't have any malice in him (so maybe not competely NT!) So perhaps he was just trying to relate. This post literally makes me judge him less harshly.
I think there is a lot of understanding that can't be gained by people that are other than NT reflecting on the habits of NT's like this.
I'm curious as to how you type in an MBTI test. Judging by the level of factual knowledge that you accumulate and your propensity for communicating your ideas through the typing medium, I'm willing to bet you're a high-level Extroverted thinker. What you're describing as your superpower is most certainly a form of high-level introverted institution. Judging by your tonality in your interview I want to say ENTJ, but I have no idea how much of that was just a mask. I rather go for INTJ if I were a betting man, but ill wager on either. Not sure if you've answered this before, but please share it with me if you don't mind, Athena.
During your whole course of life observing and anticipating people, have you found that there are patterns to how people think? Would that mean that each person is not truly unique, even if we say they are?
Athena, I have a question. Maybe rather unrelated to this post but how do you react when people (who are below the age of 25, high chances that they are neurotypical) say they lack empathy? Usually to sound edgy. Is it true that most men lack empathy because it is a „female” trait? I’m curious.
I think you are correct. This happens in some support groups for “victims of Narcissistic abuse.” It probably could be avoided by having a trained leader who focuses each meeting on a different topic. A leader who gently, but firmly, shuts down repetitious complaining and reliving of traumatic events.
I've met someone who had that disease analyzing power before. I had some symptoms that I thought indicated a rotator cuff tear and arthritis in my right hand. She told me to have my neck checked so I did and found I have something called reverse lordosis in C6 and C7 at the base of my neck. Seems that I'd apparently broken my neck at some point though I can't recall the incident.
It was pretty amazing that she diagnosed me with so little information
This was a thought provoking piece, thank you. I've had to evaluate, very recently actually, the kinds of circles I'm moving in precisely for some of the reasons you outline. In my twenties, there were lots of NT friends who had much to bemoan but no motivation or will to enact change. Truthfully, I wasn't much better at the time; wallowing in my pain was all I was capable of. Glad that's changing.
Then, there was a partial inpatient day program. 5 days a week, 6 hours per day of what was supposed to be mental health education classes (and I did pick up some good insights along the way) but much of the time was spent listening to others' traumas. And then, at the time, I still smoked so folks would gravitate to me outside on breaks and tell me their life stories and deepest, darkest secrets. I started eating my lunch and taking breaks in my car across the street. Once I realized some of the patients had been in the program for years, I quickly realized it was time to leave. I learned a lot that month, but mostly that I don't need others to heal my own brain or body. I possess all the capabilities necessary to find my own way.
I'm becoming more careful online who I follow as well. Echo chambers are the epitome of egotisical "ew." I'd like to avoid that, because I know that my background, experiences, and viewpoints are far from singular or ideal. A circle I am choosing to remain in, albiet intermittently, is a fringe kind of 12 step program. It seems to be quite firmly based in rationality and positive-realism. Also it's structured as hell, and I love that. Folks in this group do share their struggles, but it's framed with perspective (as many have decades on me) and often comes with insight and actionable steps they're taking to heal.
My weird superpower is noticing fears people don't realize they have, based on what they don't say or how they act over time. I've heard many times, "I--uh, never thought about it that way," etc. It comes from being long-term bedmates with my own menagerie of fears, I'm well aware. And I don't use this skill as often as I used to, because, obviously, it can be more unsettling than enlightening and pretty much never comforting. Ah, well.
That was a really great well thought out piece that you wrote. My dad suffers from a mental illness, and people suggest going to support groups, but that's what I'm worried about, is people wallowing and just sharing misery. Which doesn't help at all. I really appreciate your perspective and world view. Please keep writing!
I remember having a friend in high school who did nothing but cry about their ex for six months. The thing is, they were only with her for three months. They would message me pretty much all of my free time, and if I didn’t answer right away, they would accuse me of ignoring them.
It was weird, they both wanted to get better and wanted to wallow in their own misery. They demanded my advice, and then ignored it. Admittedly my advice wasn’t that good due to being a teenager myself, but still I was exhausted after that.
After that I learned not to fall victim to someone else’s trauma.
An excellent article Athena! Pity you can't monetize your gift for diagnosing illnesses 😜
People in support groups (and online spaces serving as virtual ones) seem to feed on one another’s agony until becomes a disorder of its own. There’s a compound interest of misery going on there. Been there, done that, never again.
I have had basically only one experience with a support group recommended to me by a therapist as a follow-up for after I stopped working with him. I was young - I guess I must have been 16 or so.
I didn't stick around long enough to find out whether these people wallowed in their misery or not. I went perhaps 3 or 4 times, until one of the people there asked me something to the effect of, "OK, so... you aren't taking drugs or alcohol, you aren't having sex, you aren't about to become a parent, you're doing well in school. So... why are you here?"
Needless to say, I did not feel welcome there after hearing something like that, so when my parents came to pick me up after the group meeting, I told them what happened and put my foot down: "I am not going back." And I didn't :)
I've had other experiences with therapists since then. Most of them have not been particularly good. I definitely have come away with the view that the wrong therapist is worse than none at all. And a certain pet peeve of mine is the type who just lets you talk aimlessly instead of being goal-oriented, and... when you take matters into your own hands and tell them that a certain goal needs to be accomplished, they tell you that "it can't be done". Let's say that I treated that as a signal that I needed to stop seeing that person. And I did :P
That was one of your best articles, in my humble opinion.
Perhaps being a psychopath allowed you to say how the way we try to encourage someone to fight their illness might be just our selfishness. There is this "glamourization" in saying you should always cheer up a terminally ill patient and this is what staying positive means.
Talking about our problems doesn't always make us feel better. Perhaps we are just taking the bad part and making it part of our identity.
That's a very valuable advice. Your friend was lucky to have someone like you to come with her. I can't imagine how depressive those meetings were.
I have terminal lung cancer. But I've had it more than 4 years. Was widely spread when diagnosed, but a targeted therapy has stabilized it for now. I can appreciate much of what you are saying. Seems you work in the medical field, and perhaps have experienced disease on a personal level. Or maybe your cognitive empathy allowed you to see very closely into what your patients(or whatever) were thinking and feeling.
I myself do not seek out other cancer patients, unless I think they have some knowledge that might be useful to me. I don't run away from cancer patients, and when friends or family send someone my way for support, I don't mind, and I offer what I can. But I don't see out cancer patients because I really don't want the daily reminder. I want to live every day as though a future is still possible, no matter how unlikely the odds.
I am curious about your superpowers. You didn't go much into where they come from, other than that you've read diverse literature on disease. But it has to be something more than that.
In my case, there's always been a weird mixture of things I am strangely incompetent at and things that I'm weirdly good at. Recently, I started doing something I had zero interest in...and it turns out I have a talent for it. I've been an aspiring writer for about a decade, since I lost my business. But it's hard to break in. Sold a couple screenplays, but couldn't get a publisher to look at my novel. So I decided to attempt a YT channel. If I could build a small audience, I figured, maybe there'd be a way to promote by own work.
I watch a lot of youtube, mostly science and history(also a weird interest in mafia podcasts). But I didn't think I had the resources to do videos on that. I started out getting a bunch of other people to join me in doing mysteries of the unexplained. I don't believe in the supernatural, but I love a good story. However, that wasn't working.
So reluctantly I started doing some true crime. Which I had no interest at all in. I still don't watch anyone else's stuff. But I do like the challenge of trying to consider unsolved crimes, and I like trying to understand things. That's how I ended up at Athena's blog.
And it did turn out I had some talent for analyzing true crime, despite no training. For example, at someone's suggestion, I took on the Delphi murders in September. I concluded within days that the killer was likely someone who saw himself as a good father. There were all kinds of conspiracy theories about this case. I didn't buy into it. I concluded it was a psychopathic male who fantasized about killing young girls. He had not killed before, I theorized, because he had kids himself. Why did he kill now? I theorized that he had a teenage daughter who was moving out to go to college, and this triggered him, and also removed a barrier. He was a danger to kill again, but had not because he lives in that small community of 2000 people. To risky.
Well, weeks after I did videos on this, they arrested Richard Allen. It turns out he has a daughter, and she WAS leaving the house, but because she got engaged. This happened 2 months before the murders. So everything I predicted fit.
Likewise, when everyone was saying the murders in Idaho were targeted, in my videos I predicted he was motivated by a desire to kill, and if wasn't those kids it would have been someone else. This seems to have come true.
Am I Sherlock Holmes? Nope. I'm lucky if I can remember my phone number and tools are mysterious objects to me. So my intelligence is pretty limited.
How did I reach these conclusions? Very simple logic, really. The killer in Delphi had not killed before or since, he was described as being 28 and 50 in age. And there were no good suspects(there were two that were suspicious but really didn't fit). So to me, this was a guy in his 30's or 40's who fit in, who hadn't killed before. Something would have prevented him. What made sense to me was that he was a father who had an image of himself as a good father. This was enough to contain his powerful urges until his daughter left the house. And with a psychopath with sexual/murderous fantasies, that powerful urge was hard to contain.
So simple logic. Simple elimination of other possibilities. It seems very easy and self evidence to me, but apparently a lot of people can't think these things through, just like I can't fix the handle on my shower.
I wonder if something similar is behind your superpower. You are able to quickly eliminate unlikely possibilities and narrow it down to a strong guess.
Thanks!
Hi Athena! It's Dominique! (Quora). It's been a while. My (totally useless) superpower is that I'm able to put songs in people's heads; in other words, I'm an earworm creator.
Yes, this NT habit of trying to escape empathic discomfort by advising, it is something to watch out for. I had a friend who kept advising me on something recently and I figured that he was hassling me about it. But I realise now that he is very NT, doesn't have any malice in him (so maybe not competely NT!) So perhaps he was just trying to relate. This post literally makes me judge him less harshly.
I think there is a lot of understanding that can't be gained by people that are other than NT reflecting on the habits of NT's like this.
I'm curious as to how you type in an MBTI test. Judging by the level of factual knowledge that you accumulate and your propensity for communicating your ideas through the typing medium, I'm willing to bet you're a high-level Extroverted thinker. What you're describing as your superpower is most certainly a form of high-level introverted institution. Judging by your tonality in your interview I want to say ENTJ, but I have no idea how much of that was just a mask. I rather go for INTJ if I were a betting man, but ill wager on either. Not sure if you've answered this before, but please share it with me if you don't mind, Athena.
During your whole course of life observing and anticipating people, have you found that there are patterns to how people think? Would that mean that each person is not truly unique, even if we say they are?
Athena, I have a question. Maybe rather unrelated to this post but how do you react when people (who are below the age of 25, high chances that they are neurotypical) say they lack empathy? Usually to sound edgy. Is it true that most men lack empathy because it is a „female” trait? I’m curious.
Your advices are the best, Athena