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The important difference between lying and bullshitting
An ATSTP List member explains the difference between lying and bullshitting as being about intent: I think the distinction between lying and bullshitting is an attempt to clarify the intent of the person engaged in the act. According to my interpretation Harry Frankfurt’s essay, “On Bullshit” (http://athens.indymedia.org/local/webcast/uploads/ frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf), lying is a conscious effort to misrepresent reality, whereas bullshitting is a conscious effort to misrepresent the person doing the bullshitting. So the purpose of bullshitting is to make the bullshitter seem like a different sort of person than they actually are, or to misrepresent their own mental state. Lying, in contrast, has as its primary goal to deceive another person about…
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Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Radical Acceptance
For many, reality is hard to accept. Unexpected and overwhelming events like lost jobs, physical illness and financial problems can make us want to give up or refuse to acknowledge the realities of our circumstances. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy, the ability to accept life, the reality of circumstances in which we find ourselves and the painful events that each of us must endure is taught as a skill. These skills can be difficult to teach and learn because the ability to respond to the world as it is, is an underlying attitude towards life. These skills, taught in the Distress Tolerance Module of the skills training group, include strategies to…
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Amy Winehouse and BPD
One of my twitter followers posted the original Daily Star article about Amy Winehouse and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Of course, I’d had Amy on my Celebrities with Possible BPD list for many years. If you want to read all of my articles about Amy Winehouse click here. I have no idea why the title includes ‘Mental Illness’ in quotes. Maybe it was because they were quoting the relative or maybe it brings up the question as to whether BPD is an actual mental illness. Here is the text of the article (and my comments below): TRAGIC AMY WINEHOUSE HAD ‘MENTAL ILLNESS’ TROUBLED Amy Winehouse suffered from an undiagnosed mental…
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Pain, Borderline Personality Disorder, Emotional Lability and Opiate Abuse
An article from pain.org regarding BPD, emotional lability and Opiate Abuse: The medical borderline: personality characteristics that promote increased risk of opioid misuse Geralyn Datz, Melissa Bonnell, Toni Merkey, Todd Sitzman Forrest General Hospital, Hattiesburg, MS, USA, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA, Advanced Pain Therapy, PLLC, Hattiesburg, MS, USA Purpose Undiagnosed or untreated psychiatric comorbidities may contribute to medication misuse. In particular, personality disorders may place patients at risk for medical nonadherence, via negative coping styles. Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) utilize medical services more frequently than those without BPD and are less likely to adhere to medical regimens. Patients with borderline traits have greater incidences of risky behavior, including…
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Study Illuminates the Pain of Social Rejection
Physical pain and intense feelings of social rejection “hurt” in the same way, a new study shows. I would imagine that for people with BPD this physical pain would be even more painful… Study Illuminates the ‘Pain’ of Social Rejection ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2011) — Physical pain and intense feelings of social rejection “hurt” in the same way, a new study shows. The study demonstrates that the same regions of the brain that become active in response to painful sensory experiences are activated during intense experiences of social rejection. “These results give new meaning to the idea that social rejection ‘hurts’,” said University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross, lead…
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A Comment on my Blog that needs promoting
A while back I received a comment on the article Four Reasons Bipolar is Accepted and Borderline Personality Disorder is Not that was apparently re-posted on a forum for people with BPD. It turns out that many of the people with BPD identified with this comment (more than my post actually). So, I thought I’d re-post this comment as a blog post so that people can read it (in a highlighted sort of way): I do not think that lying and manipulation are part of this diagnosis. If they seem to be present, look either to another PD or to shame and anxiety as the cause, along with a long…