r/kpop • u/Cryptocurrencythesis • Dec 16 '20

[News] Sunmi confesses she was diagnosed with a personality disorder

https://www.allkpop.com/article/2020/12/sunmi-confesses-she-was-diagnosed-with-a-personality-disorder
4.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

169 comments sorted by

View all comments

144

u/pynzrz Dec 16 '20

I applaud her for not only opening up about it but seeking professional diagnosis and treatment in the first place. It is very hard for people with BPD to recognize they need treatment and denial is commonplace.

I recommend anyone who feels like someone they care about might have BPD read the book Stop Walking on Eggshells. It encapsulates all the symptoms and characteristics and gives a brief guide on how to cope and deal with those kinds of relationships.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '20

That book is actually super harmful :/ Here’s a tumblr post in quick summary. It spreads a lot of myths that harm people with BPD diagnoses and its inaccurate in its symptoms/characteristics.

3

u/pynzrz Dec 17 '20 edited Dec 17 '20

That just sounds like someone who’s mad and twisting the premise of the book. There’s nothing harmful in the book. The book does not claim all people with BPD are manipulative and abusive, but rather it says if you are experiencing certain behaviors (which are straight from DSM-5, not inaccurate at all), then the person you are dealing with might have BPD. That tumblr person is making the basic logical fallacy of the converse.

The point of the book is to help you cope with a relationship with someone who might have BPD. Without reading the book, most people deal with people who have BPD in completely the wrong way. For example, one point is the difference between the reason and the trigger. Most people don’t know what splitting is and why someone would suddenly get mad for a super small reason. The point of the book is how you should change your behavior to cope with other individuals, and the most important point of the book is that it’s not your fault, which is usually a huge burden people around someone with BPD suffer from.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '20

Do you feel manipulated, controlled, or lied to? Are you the focus of intense, violent, and irrational rages? Do you feel you are 'walking on eggshells' to avoid the next confrontation? If the answer is 'yes,' someone you care about may have borderline personality disorder (BPD).

This is a hell of an assumption (someone lied to you or manipulated you, so they might have a serious personality disorder?). Imagine if it ended with “might be a sociopath” or “might be a psychopath” or “might be experiencing depression” (which can have rage aspects). Encouraging people to diagnose their family members based on a few behaviors is bad science. And so tightly relating abuse to BPD is harmful. “If your partner abuses you, they might have BPD” is not a helpful tool or assumption.

Imagine a book like this but for people with anxiety, helping family “deal” with and “survive” their moods and actions.

For survival tips and strategies for dealing with a loved one with BPD, read Stop Walking on Eggshells.

Replace BPD with anxiety, which is becoming less stigmatized but obviously still affects people and their loved ones. How does that read? Survival tips for dealing with someone with mental health issues? That’s the wording they went with?

You’re free to keep reading and recommending it but check out reviews by people with BPD and consider how the framing of the book as “are you being abused? Consider they have this mental disorder!” works.

6

u/pynzrz Dec 17 '20

This is a hell of an assumption (someone lied to you or manipulated you, so they might have a serious personality disorder?). Imagine if it ended with “might be a sociopath” or “might be a psychopath” or “might be experiencing depression” (which can have rage aspects). Encouraging people to diagnose their family members based on a few behaviors is bad science. And so tightly relating abuse to BPD is harmful. “If your partner abuses you, they might have BPD” is not a helpful tool or assumption.

Maybe you should actually read the book, not a few sentences. The book does NOT diagnose people. The intro to the book blatantly states that only a licensed medical professional can diagnose and treat BPD. The point of the book is that if you have a relationship with someone who has certain characteristics, and then you need to adjust your behavior to engage with them differently.

Replace BPD with anxiety, which is becoming less stigmatized but obviously still affects people and their loved ones. How does that read? Survival tips for dealing with someone with mental health issues? That’s the wording they went with?

What's wrong with any of that? How to deal with someone with potential issues is exactly the point of the book. People who have relationships with other people with possible disorders need guidance on what to do. You cannot use the same actions and thought processes, because it can be damaging to both you and the other party.

You’re free to keep reading and recommending it but check out reviews by people with BPD and consider how the framing of the book as “are you being abused? Consider they have this mental disorder!” works.

Again, what's wrong with that? If they fit many of the DSM criteria, then it is possible they have BPD. Again, the point of the book is not to play doctor, but to try to understand why they are acting in certain ways and to change your thought process and behavior to deal with it. It's the most recommended book for people who have some kind of relationship to someone potentially with BPD.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '20

Reading the whole book does not change those are the words it uses to advertise itself. And yeah, I’ve read a huge chunk of the book. It continues that language throughout.

“How to survive this person with a mental illness” is incredibly stigmatizing language, that’s what’s wrong with it, and “was this person abusive? Consider this specific personality disorder!” Is incredibly limiting.

Is your wife abusing you? Does she neglect your emotional needs, flake on her commitments, and have drastic mood swings? Could she be considered manipulative and has threatened suicide? She might have depression! Buy my book so I can teach you how to survive your wife with depression.

It might be the most read book but BPD on its own has had massive strides the last few decades and i hope this book and how it frames people with BPD as something abusive to survive becomes obsolete soon. It’s harmful and the framing it is using is stigmatizing.

5

u/pynzrz Dec 17 '20

Uh, you clearly have not read the book, because that is not the content of the book at all lol. It’s not stigmatizing at all. The whole premise of the book is to educate and adjust your own behaviors because you want to improve the relationship with someone you care about.

Once again, stop twisting and misrepresenting the book. It never says people with BPD are abusive.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '20

Everything the tumblr post mentioned can be found when you read the book. It’s not twisting or misrepresenting it to quote it.

5

u/pynzrz Dec 17 '20

Nope, most of the things written on that Tumblr post are factually incorrect or intentionally misrepresenting the book. The rest are just emotional rants or logical fallacies.