My childhood was mostly very good, a lot of fond memories, and nothing jumps out at me as beyond the pale. I was also never picked on or bullied. People would try, every now and then; but, they couldn't get a reaction out of me, so instantly gave up. hah!
Now, however... I'm terrified of most everyone, and have been and felt the target of intimidation and aggression. Wowwie, fun stuff...
People need to quit giving psychiatrists/psychologists/ and ESPECIALLY social workers so much credit. Those people are WAY more messed up than you are, most likely. They just have a knack for balancing things, if they aren't out right complete ******* pricks to begin with. (please don't take that personal if you are a social worker. Most likely the parameters of your work environment are an impossible double bind to begin with, as I'll explain further)...
Pop psychology always follows trends, like music. Right now, if in america at least, if you listen to any mainstream rap music, you'll find it all sounds EXACTLY the same, the same for a lot of pop music; and, due to the growing interconnected-ness we are all experiencing visa-vi social mediums amplified by algorithmic AI, things tend to really level out and blend together.
Personality disorders are popular right now (they are very vague, undefined, and a good fall back for a blanket diagnosis (ie: I don't know what the **** is wrong with you)). Anxiety disorders are also popular (we live in a culture that uses fear as it's main tool of motivation, go figure). And PTSD is probably a popular diagnosis now, because again, it's a nice blanket diagnosis that covers a wide gamut. For example, if you are afraid of swimming, never been swimming before, and some one pushed you into a pool and it freaked you out, bam, easy diagnosis.
A PTSD diagnosis is probably one of the more honest diagnosis, not that it actually points to anything, usually of substantial sense-making; but, that, it's very unlikely you will go through life, with out, at some point, being extremely stressed to an unbearable level. But, the fact is, some people come out of scrapes like that just fine, dust themselves off a bit and move on, and others, get stuck, and it destroys them.
As for me, overall, I think that whole institution, on the whole, has always done more harm than good. It can and does do good, some times; but, on the whole, it's more of an authoritarian institution that seeks to control through intimidation and manipulation.
Social workers are generally over worked and not equipped with the right knowledge and training to even be able to do their job properly, not to mention the fact, the entire way their job is set up, from the start, will inevitably results in way more failure rates than success rates; it's a broken system propped up with pencil sticks, duct tape, and glue.
And, as for actualy doctors of psychology and psychiatry, it's really a hit or miss thing. They have the chance to do great good; but, also run the risk of making grave mistakes. On top of that, they might just be awful, period.
I think people place way too much faith in contemporary psychology, and it will bite them and everyone else in the ass, at some point, sooner or later. 3 to 4000 years ago, the orient already had self-analysis systems completely mastered, thought out, practiced, and written down. The western world, has only been at it for about 200 or 300 years. If you want to have a fun time, do some research into how mental patients were treated in the 1940's and 50's, that's not even more than 100 years ago, and it was absolutely barbaric. They best I can say about the current situation, is, at the least, it's unlikely some one will cut out pieces of your pre-frontal cortex; but, I've heard of lobotomies being performed, still, around 30 or so years ago.
Be wary of psychiatry and psychology. If you think you need to see a shrink, you out to have your head examined!
We are all just humans, no single one of us, is really going to have it all figured out, anymore than any of the others. We are all just dealt different hands in life, and we all have different knowledge, information, wisdom, and skill sets.
If you've been in the psychiatric system for years, and each year, things only seem to get worse, chances are, those people are the problem, not you, and there are tons of stories to back up that claim. Some times a simple problem becomes a huge one, because the so called, 'helpers,' aren't helping at all.
Psychology is not a science, precisely because you can not observe human behavior in a vacuum. The observer will always have an effect on what is being observed. And all a diagnosis really is, is just canned assessment; it's not cannon, it's not law, and it can be wrong, deviate, etc.. A red ball, may in fact be a ball and red, unless I was too far away to realize it's actually a balloon and I didn't know I was color blind. See?
Psychology is not a science. It's more of a discipline and a process. If there is any science to it at all, it's just the 3000 year old science of the vedas and bhuddism that give us methods and ways of observing our self and our environment and learning from that; and each observation is subjective and pertains to that self we do the observing with. Whether we take on a guru or a western psychologist, ultimately, it's not newtonian physics; it's just a journey, at best, and a nightmare at worst...
And when we get to the point where, what was once the domain of a psychologist, becomes the domain of a neuro/computer scientists, well, once again we'll find ourselves in a brave new world. Will the mentally ill deviant be cured of her problems by literally being neurologically programmed into a different person? The answer is yes, for the happy customer who consented; and no, for the poor sap who didn't want to go through with it, and came out a changed woman...
We, as thinking and feeling beings, for all our sensitivity, often tend to complicate things a bit, which, in reality, are quite simple. We do this, I think, because we are imperfect; and I think that's the most sacred part of our humanity, our flawed nature. And unfortunately, it's also the source of all of our suffering, quite often...
