To think words like abusive, narcissistic, addict, etc are used too lightly

[kubex]

Everyday, new threads pop up on mumsnet containing the words 'emotionally abusive', 'addicted to porn', 'classic narcissist', 'he's gaslighting', etc etc and while I know these very serious things do happen, I don't believe that is the case for many of these threads.

For example, while many people are egotistical and self centered, narcissistic personality disorder is actually VERY rare, only affecting about 1% of the general population.

Also, all couples argue. Things get said in the heat of the moment. This is not emotional abuse. Nor is it financial abuse when your partner complains about the cost of something you bought.

The same with gaslighting - sometimes, people are just lying! Gaslighting is a very serious psychological abuse technique and not all lies are an attempt to gaslight someone.

Porn/sex addiction are also very serious problems - when they are actually addictions. Hiding the porn you watch from your partner because they disapprove isn't the same as secrecy because of an addiction. Neither is lying about watching porn because your partner told you to stop but you're a grown up and enjoy it. Cheating on a partner, even many times, is very rarely down to an actual sex addiction.

I feel like throwing these terms around for every little issue in a relationship really minimises the very serious situations some people are in.

AIBU to think that we all need to make an effort to give advice without actually making statements about people we are not qualified to make?

Couldn't agree more and so often it just makes the person writing it look stupid. A recent example was the DH who wanted some prossecco. He was called "rapey"!

I find the 'borderline xxx' equally annoying. It combines hedging your bets with hyperbole.

Yes and no.

You're right that terms like "narcissist" are over-used and people tend to rush to medicalise things which are probably just bad behaviour.

On the other hand you need to understand the context of a lot of these threads: if you go on the relationships board (as I have done), a lot of the threads are people going on because they instinctively know they are not being treated properly by their DH or DP but need external validation to be persuaded that its not all in their head. I've seen countless threads where a woman (it usually is a woman) goes on with what she initially suggests is a minor niggle which rapidly unravels under prompting from posters to turn out to be that the DH or DP is cheating/abusive or generally unfit for purpose.

While some posters may exaggerate in their responses, its usually the case that when your relationship is bad enough that you need to ask strangers on the internet about it, something is not right. A woman in a bad relationship is under huge pressure, from her partner and from society at large, to accept the status quo and to not push back if she feels something isn't right. Having a corrective to this, even if its sometimes exaggerated, gives women a huge amount of support.

In a situation like that, someone you don't know pointing out that you are being treated poorly and should not put up with it can be the difference between finding the strength to leave and put yours and your children's needs first or not. Whether or not the relationship is technically "abusive" is often irrelevant.

Women often feel that they need to meet a very high threshold of poor treatment before they can justify leaving a bad marriage or relationship. Bandying terms like "abusive" about may be unhelpful in some situations but the reality is that by the time you've sought help about your marriage from strangers, the chances are things are already pretty bad. Yes, all couples argue but if your arguments are bad enough to seek external help the chances are things are not all rosy in the garden.

So net/net I think that if the ability to label something, externalise it and use it to give yourself third party validation for something you know internally to be true sometimes leads to over-use its a small price to pay for the strength it gives so many women to stop putting up with shit.

Yep, most of the time the posters saying this are just trying to sound clever.

I completely agree with you. But anyone who dares to put things even remotely in perspective is an apologist in MN-land. Tis the rules!

I've seen countless threads where a woman (it usually is a woman) goes on with what she initially suggests is a minor niggle which rapidly unravels under prompting from posters to turn out to be that the DH or DP is cheating/abusive or generally unfit for purpose

True, but on the other hand, I've seen just as many threads where the OP is asking for advice for a minor problem that is then blown out of all proportion by posters and before you know it, the OP's partner is a narcissistic, financial abusive, controlling porn addict!

It gets ridiculous sometimes.

Labelling a behaviour, even if a habitual one, can be something of a dead end, becoming an excuse for not examining a situation more closely. (Of course if a woman really needs to be told that her violent partner is abusive, go for it. And of course if a clinician diagnoses a real & recognised condition it can be very helpful, though that's not really relevant to most of the posts here.)

It's not just the terms you've pointed out, either, OP. In a recent thread workers discussing another's poor job performance when he was in another room were 'bullying'. In another a woman spoke of her distress when crossed by her husband and said that his apologising was a miracle cure for her 'panic attacks'. 'Social anxiety', 'I'm sensitive' and the like are other terms tossed about here heedlessly. I don't for a moment mean that problems like these aren't real and distressing for many people, but I do think that they're often used unthinkingly and sometimes in self-serving ways.

So true - there's a bonkers rush to simplify complex human behaviours into rigid labels so that they can be fed into the appropriate MN flowchart to provide an instant "solution" to the "problem". It's as if many posters had never interacted with another human being before!

Narcissism, to take your example, isn't a clear-cut yes/no binary: it's a continuum. To diagnose someone with personality disorder, they have to score X amount on a checklist. But people can still be comparatively high in their score, even though they don't score high enough to go over the somewhat arbitrary checklist boundary point. And those people can still do damage to others. It's important to recognise this, and to recognise narcissistic traits and behaviours, because they can still be damaging, even if an individual doesn't have full-blown NPD.

I agree in part, i think people have a tendency to label too much, not only in these instances, but you know everyone has anxiety, everyone has depression, everyone has fibromyalgia, everyone has some sort of addiction- many of these people have had none of these things diagnosed. it seems that people like to overreact.

It does seem that there are people who describe being in abusive relationships though. the idea of having to modify normal behaviours to your partner so they dont scream and shout at you certainly doesnt sound healthy.

btw im also fed up of reading everyone is a narcissist. people are selfish and self serving as a matter of course, it doesnt make them a narcissist.

kubex call me cynical, but I've been on hundreds of these threads. I have yet to see a thread in which an OP suspects a DH/DP of cheating in which her suspicions are not ultimately confirmed.

The labelling of bad behaviour (narcissism/porn addiction) is a slightly separate point and yes I grant you it is over-used.

On the other hand, isn't it kind of up to the OP to decide whether or not the behaviour is a redline issue. For example, with alcohol if a poster feels her partner or husband's drinking use is damaging their marriage/family life then it doesn't really matter whether he meets the technical definition of an alcoholic -- any compulsive behaviour which damages the loved ones of the person exhibiting the behaviour is a problem. It's the same thing with porn use.

A lot of the reason why people end up using these terms is because the offenders are in denial about the impact their behaviour has. You shouldn't need a label in order to become aware that your behaviour hurts others, and it probably won't make you curb that behaviour. But it may help the person on the receiving end focus on the fact that its not their fault.

This is a TAAT.

People learn words and phrases and just pepper their comments with them, like armchair psychologists.

My pet hate is the online diagnosis along with the google stereotype: Autism/Aspie/ADHD blah blah

O/T I have yet to see a thread in which an OP suspects a DH/DP of cheating in which her suspicions are not ultimately confirmed. there was one where he was organising a surprise party .

The Institute of Armchair Psychologists has a very strong presence on MN, its members dishing out diagnoses left right and centre here. I agree it makes them sound stupid, rather than the informed and erudite they were aiming for.
Practical advice would be so much more helpful for a poster trying to deal with a problem person/ situation.

And don't get me started on the misuse of "OCD"

*Kubex
*
Also, all couples argue. Things get said in the heat of the moment. This is not emotional abuse. Nor is it financial abuse when your partner complains about the cost of something you bought.

It is the fact that people say stuff like this which means people like me continue to take the abuse for years rather than face people saying 'oh dear, it was just a few heated words love, don't overreact'

I'm rather pleased that reading threads on MN made me think, I don't have to take this, I don't have to watch my children take this, this is not just 'all couples argue'.

I think if you don't like people 'over labelling' then step away from forums. Close your internet down. As a teacher, I've got very used to parents informing me what Prof Google has diagnosed their child with. Not helpful all the time, but isn't it a little better than back in the day when our level of shared information was so low that we had to wait for hallowed professionals to tell us what to do?

I'm maybe slightly jaded after a week on a sofa bed with 3 small children as my husband has refused us access to our home and cleared all bank accounts, but I'm pleased people gave names to feelings and situations I had experienced but was to naïve to recognise.

Everyone's Mil and ex partner is a narcissist on here and yes the arm chair diagnoses of autism etc

I totally agree OP.

It's also funny how MNers are (often for good reason) totally scathing about men who claim to have a 'crazy'/'psycho' ex-girlfriend/wife. But a female poster throws around some pseudo psychology about her her ex (he's a narcissist etc) and it's believed without question.

Maybe men should be wary of women who have numerous 'abusive/narcissist' exes, just like women should be wary of men with 'psycho/vindictive' exes?

Unrelated, but can we also add (self-diagnosed) misophonia to this list?

If even half the armchair diagnoses were true, the country would be more overrun with personality disorders and mental illnesses than The Walking Dead is with zombies!

I must admit to being caught up in the some of the dramas played out on the Relationships board but I am aware that a lot of these 'disappear' and never reach a conclusion or are removed because they are the invention of a 'troll'.
I think it is dangerous to armchair diagnose and mis label medical conditions.These terms just become abusive adjectives to describe in laws etc. It's a bit like using adjectives such as 'thick' or 'mental' which are no longer acceptable, so 'narc' etc is used instead.

Yes , there’s a lot of keyboard psychologists about .

I cringe when I see the phrase "gaslighting" on MN now. No-one is misleading any more, they are "gaslighting" instead.

It's so frustrating, isn't it!

As a previous poster said, if people just gave practical advice MN would be a very useful place to come for help. But with all the armchair psychologists on here, I actually think a lot of the advice given is damaging.

My pet hate is when people say people are passive aggressive, when they are probably just talking normally. If you're speaking and not being aggressive, then you must be passive aggressive. Luckily the fashion for that term has nearly passed now.

While some posters may exaggerate in their responses, its usually the case that when your relationship is bad enough that you need to ask strangers on the internet about it, something is not right. A woman in a bad relationship is under huge pressure, from her partner and from society at large, to accept the status quo and to not push back if she feels something isn't right. Having a corrective to this, even if its sometimes exaggerated, gives women a huge amount of support.

I agree with this PP.

If you haven't been in the situation of minimizing your partner's abuse and dysfunction because "it's not that bad" and you don't want to "be unfair" to someone who isn't diagnosed with a personality disorder or whatever (possibly in part because they'll never admit they have a problem and therefore never see a professional for diagnosis), it's hard to imagine how helpful it can be to hear someone else using terms that make very clear that the behaviour is unacceptable.

Yes, over-labeling and pathologising can be annoying. But I'm not convinced it's doing that much harm (by brainwashing a lot of feeble posters into ending their relationships prematurely? if the partner's not all that bad after all, surely that's going to come out in discussions between the partners, separation isn't a quick and easy process) besides being annoying.

I think everyone would agree that anyone in an abusive relationship should leave their partner. The worry is though, if some of these threads are fabricated by trolls it can lead to a suggestion that most men are abusive.
There was a thread yesterday (no idea if true or not) where someone spouted a load of stuff she had read from the feminism board, onto a colleagues Facebook page and which has landed her with a dressing down from HR. Just because posters on here make inappropriate accusations does not make it acceptable in the real world. I agree that being wound up on here can lead to people feeling justified to use words like 'narc', when it is not acceptable in real life.

People think it makes them look smart by "diagnosing" online. Some people are just selfish, stupid or don't care about others. It's perfectly possible to be a total arsehole without being narcissistic or abusive.

It's just the same as people claiming to be autistic or having all manner of other conditions which have never been diagnosed but which they think must apply to them because they prefer their own company or don't like noisy office environments.