Trump May Not Be Crazy, But the Rest of Us Are Getting There Fast

wanderingberserker:

nunyabizni:

Step 5: Acceptance…

They’re finally accepting that Trump isn’t insane; but he sure as hell is driving them insane…

Submitted by
wanderingberserker 

Only took 2 years for it to start.  I got a ask a while back and in my response I mused about how long it would be till ‘trump derangement syndrome’ made it into the DSM, I may have my answer
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CNN before love-making is not his idea of a turn-on.

But she can hardly turn it off—engrossed as she is in the latest unnerving gyrations of Washington.

Who else to blame but Donald Trump? A president who excites hot
feelings in many quarters has cooled them considerably in the bedroom of
a Philadelphia couple, who sought counseling in part because the
agitated state of American politics was causing strain in their
marriage.

The couple’s story was relayed to POLITICO by their therapist on
condition of the couple’s anonymity. But their travails, according to
national surveys and interviews with mental health professionals, are
not as anomalous as one might suppose. Even when symptoms are not
sexual in nature, there is abundant evidence that Trump and his daily
uproars are galloping into the inner life of millions of Americans.

During normal times, therapists say, their sessions deal with
familiar themes: relationships, self-esteem, everyday coping. Current
events don’t usually invade. But numerous counselors said Trump and his
convulsive effect on America’s national conversation are giving politics
a prominence on the psychologist’s couch not seen since the months
after 9/11—another moment in which events were frightening in a way that
had widespread emotional consequences.

Empirical data bolster the anecdotal reports from practitioners. The American Psychiatric Association in a May survey found that
39 percent of people said their anxiety level had risen over the
previous year—and 56 percent were either “extremely anxious” or
“somewhat anxious about “the impact of politics on daily life.” A 2017
study found two-thirds of Americans’ see the nation’s future as a “very or somewhat significant source of stress.”

These findings suggest the political-media community has things backward when it comes to Trump and mental health.

For two years or more, commentators have been cross-referencing
observations of presidential behavior with the official APA Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual’s definition of narcissistic personality
disorder. Journalists have compared contemporary video of Trump with
interviews from the 1980s for signs of possible cognitive decline. And
even some people on his own team, according to books and news reports,
have been reading up on the process of presidential removal under the
25th Amendment of the Constitution—fueled by suspicions that
the president’s allegedly erratic and undeniably precedent-shattering
approach to the Oval Office might prove eventually to be a case of non compos mentis.

A more plausible interpretation, in the view of some psychological
experts, is that Trump has been cultivating, adapting and prospering
from his distinctive brand of provocation, brinkmanship and self-drama
for the past 72 years. What we’re seeing is merely the president’s own
definition of normal. It is only the audience that finds the performance
disorienting.

In other words: He’s not crazy, but the rest of us are getting there fast.

Jennifer Panning, a psychologist from Evanston, Illinois, calls the
phenomenon “Trump Anxiety Disorder.” She wrote a chapter on it in a
collection by mental health experts called “The Dangerous Case of Donald
Trump.” In an interview, she said the disorder is marked by such
symptoms as “increased worry, obsessive thought patterns, muscle tension
and obsessive preoccupation with the news.”

A study from the market research firm Galileo
also found that, in the first 100 days after Trump’s election, 40
percent of people said they “can no longer have open and honest
conversations with some friends or family members.” Nearly a quarter of
respondents said their political views have hurt their personal
relationships.

This goes beyond office arguments or the Thanksgiving gathering in
which some cousin or in-law drinks too much and someone storms out after
the diner-table conversation turns to politics. Even the closest daily
relationships can suffer.

The Philadelphia couple who found Trump had a detumescent effect on
their love life weren’t arguing about the president, said their
therapist, Cynthia Baum-Baicker. They were just coping with
shared distress in different ways. Information for many people reduces
anxiety, and so TV news was a kind of psychic tether for the wife.

“I remember the husband basically said, ‘If you ever want to be
intimate again, you’ll turn the TV off in the bedroom. I can’t have that
man present and listen to him and feel any sense of arousal,’” said
Baum-Baicker.

Some of the explanation for Trump’s effect lies not just in
psychology but in political theory. In countries like the United
Kingdom, the head of state (the queen) and the head of government (the
prime minister) are separate roles. In the United States they are one.
In an era of media saturation presidents tend to be omnipresent figures.
And even polarizing figures like Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City
bombing or George W. Bush after 9/11 served as national
consolers—suggesting the way people subconsciously assign an almost
parental role to the presidency.

Trump’s relentless self-aggrandizement, under this interpretation, makes him less a national father than adolescent at large.

“Authority figures represent the parent, [so] President Trump sits in
the seat of parent for all Americans,” said Baum-Baicker. “So now, my
‘father figure’ is a bully, is an authoritarian who doesn’t believe in
studying and doing homework. … [Rather than reassurance] he creates
uncertainty.”

Even Trump supporters are not insulated from this modern age of anxiety.

Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, who practices psychotherapy in the nation’s
capital, said she “doesn’t view it as a party-specific thing.”

“Conservatives are hurting, too,” she said. “I view this anxiety as
collective in a very strong sense. They’re hurting in part because they
feel they don’t have permission to share their real views, or they feel
conflicted because they agree with things that the president is doing
but they’re uncomfortable with his language and tactics. … And they
feel alienated and isolated from friends and family who differ from
their views, as if there’s not permission to view it in a different way
in D.C.”

Nearly every interview with psychologists returned to the theme of
“gaslighting”—the ability of manipulative people to make those around
them question their mental grip.

Trump daily goes to war on behalf of his own factual universe, with
what conservative commentator George F. Will this week called “breezy
indifference to reality.”

Examples include false boasts on the size of his inauguration crowd;
his denunciation of unfavorable stories as “fake news”; the assertion
that an investigation into his campaign which has already produced
multiple criminal convictions is “a hoax.” Some people can’t just roll
their eyes at obvious bullshit—they experience an assault on truth at a
more profound psychic level.

“Gaslighting is essentially a tactic used by abusive personalities to
make the abused person feel as though they’re not experiencing reality,
or that it’s made up or false,” said Dominic Sisti, a behavioral health
care expert at the University of Pennsylvania who penned an article
with Baum-Baicker on Trump’s effect on stress. “The only reality one
can trust is one that is defined by the abuser. Trump does this on a
daily basis—he lies, uses ambiguities, demonizes the press. It’s a
macroscopic version of an abusive relationship.”

When people are frightened by erratic behavior and worry what’s
coming next in any arena of life, said Panning, that creates an
extraordinary amount of anxiety and often a feeling of dread.”

Even Washington actors in the Trump dramas aren’t immune. A recent
New York Times story alleged that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
speculated about invoking the 25th Amendment and considered wearing an
FBI wire in a meeting with Trump in an attempt to catch him obstructing
justice. The story cited unnamed associates saying Rosenstein was
behaving “erratically” and that he appeared to be “conflicted,
regretful, and emotional.”

The recent Brett Kavanaugh hearings revealed many others in public
roles behaving out of sorts—full of red-faced rants that left some
partisans cheering but struck others as unhinged. Legal activist Ed
Whelan was widely described in news reports as a temperamentally
sober-minded guy. But he took a leave of absence from his think tank,
the Ethics and Public Policy Center, after combing through online floor
plans and Google Maps to suggest, without evidence, that Kavanaugh’s
accuser had confused him with someone else Whelan identified by name.
His statement of apology said he made “an appalling and inexcusable
mistake of judgment.”

But therapists say today’s political conditions are ripe to send
people of all partisan, ideological and cultural stripes to the
emotional edge.

“Human beings hate two things,” said Michael Dulchin, a New York
psychiatrist who has seen Trump anxiety in his practice. One is “to look
to the future and think you don’t have enough energy to succeed and
live up to your expectations. The other is to not be able to predict the
environment.”

Put these together, he said, and the psychological result is virtually inevitable: “Anxiety and depression.”
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interesting read

The funniest thing is in the story they talk about couple who’s sex life has been ruined by Trump…

Well, the people DID ask for free, government subsidised birth control…I guess they just didn’t expect it to be so….orange…

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME IS A THING

WE BEEN KNEW 

Trump May Not Be Crazy, But the Rest of Us Are Getting There Fast