Denial, Procrastination and Personality Disorders expect edits

This is mostly a placeholder, to make sure I don’t forget to do some research, and possibly write something more formal later.

There’s some backstory, that I might get into in another post, but this morning A. had some questions about what I meant by personality disorder. I have my own definition of what a personality disorder is, that I have seen nowhere else: a characteristic way of Not Solving One’s Own Problems. If one’s default response to something not being the way they want it is to reassure themselves that They Are Smarter / Better than everyone else, that’s narcissistic personality disorder. If it’s to attack people, that’s Antisocial. If it’s to turn a / one’s closest relationship into drama about fear of being abandoned, that’s borderline. If it’s to reassure one’s that one is way hotter than everyone else / that one can “get” anyone they want, that’s histrionic. If it’s to get (a particular) someone else to solve the problem for them, that’s dependent. Schizotypal and and obsessive compulsive personality disorder work a little differently. _This isn’t really how these things are defined._ I am not a trained professional. Etc.

My theory about why DBT / CBT (ugh, acronyms — basically therapeutic approaches that directly engage with the impaired ability to solve problems, and attempt to improve that ability to solve problems, through a variety of strategies) is effective is basically that there’s a bad habit (I have a problem — do unproductive thing) that needs to be replaced with a more useful habit (I have a problem — spin up the Problem Solving Process), but you can’t do the replacement habit until you _have the replacement_. DBT / CBT creates a replacement, and then tries to do the substitution. DBT / CBT work better when they are more tailored and the replacement is a really good replacement, which is why seemingly magical stuff like Do What Works and The Miracle Question are so weirdly effective. This was also the underlying strategy in my advice book: probably at least one part of your life (work / friends / intimate relationships) is working okay; can you translate what works in that environment into something related that will work in other areas of your life?

(I know, you’re thinking, I thought you weren’t going to tell the backstory. The backstory was actually totally something else.)

A. asked: Is Procrastination a Personality Disorder?

I’m like, what? Then immediately went, okay what did she think. She asked what’s a personality disorder. I said, characteristic way of not solving a problem. She thought, procrastination is a way of not solving a problem. Is procrastination a Personality Disorder?

I’m like, not usually thought of that way, and I need to do some research, but I think you have a really novel and good idea here. I think basically Denial (there is no problem), Procrastination (I’ll deal with it later) and then the other Personality Disordered ways of interacting with Life are a continuum of Not Solving One’s Problems.

I would add: fatalism and miracle/wishful thinking probably belong in there somewhere, too.

So there’s the idea, and I will be pursuing the research end of this later.

ETA: Oh, hey! I totally forgot about Avoidant Personality Disorder!

The Backstory, or, Yeah I Really Need to Stop Doing That

I have a characteristic way of dealing with a certain kind of problem-person in my life. If I have long-standing values conflict with someone — say, they want my kid to get a certain type of therapy, or they have some sort of environmental program they think I should do more in my day to day life to comply with or a health program or whatever — my core strategy in life is to talk about it with them and explain why I don’t think that’s a great thing (for me). If I am not immediately successful in getting them to back off, and the relationship is important to me (<— this is crucial; I’ve never deployed this with randos, to the best of my knowledge), then I will Try It Their Way. I do _not_ — and this is important — attempt to sabotage it. It’s a good faith effort, and anyone who knows me knows that my good faith effort is terrifying to behold. I’ll put at least an associate’s degree worth of effort into the research, and I’ll put 6 months half time job equivalent into the implementation, and I won’t stint on resources. I’ll recruit relevant parts of my social / family / etc. network and hire professionals if that’s needed.

Why?

Well, here’s the thing. Sometimes they are right. People really advocate hard for stretching and they definitely engage in overkill, but you do need to get your hands above your head at pretty regular intervals or you will lose the ability to do so. I can give more examples. People advocate hard for regular exercise, and they, also, get a lot of the details really, dangerously, evilly wrong, but the core idea — you do need to move your body in a way that strengthens and improves your stamina, at pretty regular intervals, pretty consistently — is 100% right. Eating consistent meals, eating appropriate portions, eating fruits and/or vegetables, getting fiber, being moderate in consumption of things like alcohol, getting enough sleep, developing self-insight, nurturing loving relationships, showing respect for others, maintaining a social circle that loves and respects you, etc. All. Very. True. Important. Etc. However you arrive in this world, and whatever your upbringing, probably something important was downplayed, and someone will come along and say, hey, you need to make this adjustment, and it will kinda suck, but you’ll be glad you did. Taking advantage of 401K matching programs. Living within your means. Asking for a raise. Looking for a better job before your current one goes away. (Not) Finishing College. (Not) Switching Degree Programs. (Not) Getting Married. (Not) Getting Divorced. Canceling subscriptions you no longer use. Stopping doomscrolling. (The people who advocate for starving yourself to live longer, or being cold all the time to be thinner or whatever are absolutely batshit people and you should not listen to them. I spent most of my early life not eating nearly enough because food was making me very ill, and it was a terrible idea. I’m so much less sick, and I heal so much faster as a fat person, my skin is better, my hair is better, I have more strength and stamina. Don’t starve yourself. The cold thing is a little weird, and you shouldn’t cook yourself, either, and experiencing a range of temperatures can be exhilarating and enjoyable, but forcing your body to work extra hard to stay warm so you can be thin is not going to work. Ask every person who is cold-tolerant who drops below a certain weight. Whether it will lengthen your life is a harder thing to demonstrate … in either direction, altho the correlation of effective indoor heating and longer lifespans is real, and has cross-species validation.)

On the other hand, sometimes they are very, very, very wrong. And if you cannot come to consensus _and you value the relationship_, then a good faith effort (hot tip: don’t put as much effort into it as I do — that’s clearly one of the problems I’m talking about) is a great way to identify in a way that both of you might find satisfying what is good about the advocated course and what really does not work. If the advocate is at all functional, they’ll feel validated that you really did try. If the advocate is terrible, you will probably find you don’t care that much about the relationship any more. And neutral onlookers will tend to go hard in your direction if the conflict continues. If you are doing it their way, and clearly trying very hard, and it is a Disaster, then the advocate looks real bad. Most people’s sense of self-preservation will kick in; they’ll acknowledge that it does not work for you and shut up. They may not change their mind, and they may maintain some specific and real reservations about what and how your good faith effort went, but their advice was followed and didn’t turn out well.

My husband is a very smart man. (That is indeed a large part of why we became friends and why we married.) We are different people, and we have different ways of thinking about things. All of the above is a pretty good indicator of where I’m going with this. We disagree about things, I try it his way, antics ensue.

Last night’s antics involved our son’s cell phone. I’ve been really trying hard — separate from my husband — to figure out a way to interact with our son that is less conflictual. Part of that involves clearly telling him, “I’m not going to do that right now” and then sticking to it. I’ll provide an explanation — because one is always wanted — but I won’t budge just because of I Want It Now. He’s old enough to be able to wait, and the hazards of Fine Whatever We’ll Do It Now to Get You Off My Back are becoming much more salient. I’d been asking him for months when he wanted his cell phone replaced (we’d all replaced ours and his was the oldest in the house) and he finally — early in December — said he wanted a new phone. To which I said, yeah, not NOW. We’ll do that _after_ we’re back from the insane trip. Fine.

Back from the insane trip, tired, unpacking, coming down with A.’s cold, I did order his phone, and the phone arrived a day earlier than anticipated and I was really clear that I wasn’t going to try to switch him to the new phone during the 10 minutes he has between getting home from school and heading out with the babysitter (ha ha ha), nor was I going to do it at 8 whatever at night when he was back home again. At that point, I was getting better, but now R. was sick. So I went to bed, and son talked husband into starting the data transfer. *sigh* I’m getting dings on my phone from the cellular provider (codes or whatever) at 11 pm at night. Exactly what I did not want. But they carry on, and my son is happy and I consciously decide, okay, they decided to do it, it’s on them.

A day or whatever later, the packaging arrives to send the old phone in. New phone is working great, no problems, okay. Old phone is sitting on the counter powered down. All the way down.

And here is where Something Doesn’t Happen. I decided when they started the data transfer that it wasn’t my project any more. It’s theirs and I am not going to micro-manage it. They don’t like me micro managing. I don’t like micro managing. Not My Problem. So when that old phone is sitting there fully powered down, I don’t ask any questions, I package it up. Then I think, hmmm. This isn’t my project, so I won’t seal it. I’ll hand it to R. to seal. It’s his project now.

I hand it to R. to seal. He takes it out, puts it back in another way, seals it up and ultimately drives it over to the UPS store to drop off.

Later, son comes home. Still later, he asks if anyone deleted the data on the old phone.

Crickets.

And then I explode.

I actually was pretty coherent during the explosion that I was not mad that we were not going to get the $200 trade in value as a result of this failure. I was _really_ coherent that the reason I was mad was because I had worked to get the trade in not because I wanted it, but because R. cares about crap like that. He cares about the money, not me. I would probably eventually do something to ensure it was recycled properly because rare metals, environment, etc., but I wouldn’t bother to monetize it. But if it _had_ been my project to do the transfer, I _would have followed the apple checklist_. Which they did not even look at. I was living this whole, okay, don’t waste anything, value system _that I in _no_ _way_ _at_ _all_ believe_ _in_, and I was living this whole Don’t Micromanage People They Are Capable Of Doing Things Themselves and the result was offensive to me.

There are all kinds of potential lessons to be learned from this. Here are a few.

We used to have a bad dynamic of disagreeing about something factual, I’d go research it, figure out what the reality was, and then show it to him (sometimes I was right, sometimes he was right, sometimes we were both really wrong, and sometimes we each were partially right and we both learned). For a lot of that, I’ve just stopped doing the research. I tell him I think he’s wrong and he’s welcome to go do the research and show me. Why should I do all the work? I’ll do it when I care, which is way less often. Along these lines:

(1) I’m going to do some introspection on what amount of value recovery / waste avoidance I am comfortable with, and I am going to do that amount and no more. I’m working too hard on something that I think is not worth my time and energy. I need to recalibrate.

(2) My husband does a lot of complaining about things without taking action to correct, and I then listen and try to fix the problem. That’s bad. That has to stop. I do need to identify what to replace the Try to Fix It with. It could be, Ignore Complaining, It’s Just Noise — sometimes people just need to vent and that’s fine. But experience with other people in my life suggests that a fair number of people value me as a problem solving partner, which means some of this will escalate. I’ll need to come up with a better way of dealing with that escalation than ignoring. Probably, I will have to do a lot more conscious, “What conversation with so-and-so might improve how they handle WTF?” as a way of prodding them to go talk to the person they are unhappy with instead of complaining to me about it.

(3) We may actually need to be a little bit more United Front with son on the topic of, I Want This Now. If one of us says, we’ll do it tomorrow / Thursday / next month, we probably should _also_ be clear about whether or not it is okay to go get the other one to do it. In the case of things like cell phone transition, there’s a lot of potential for the person who was trying to make the activity happen during daylight hours / when they had the brain cells to problem solve to wind up _back in the soup_ unpredictably if someone else attempts the project and fails. My husband is actually _really good_ about saying, I will do it later and please don’t you try to do it now because Reasons. I should probably do more of that myself.

(4) Most importantly, I think that we need to have a lot more scheduled conversation time between R. and the kids individually but probably also together. He has a lot that he wishes they knew / would do, and they don’t know about it at all, and they wind up backing into complicated conversations and interactions. Scheduled time might reduce the backlog and would probably also improve their relationship.

There’s also the chronic issue of T. is never home, and wants us to do stuff in the tiny scraps of time that he is around, and that creates all kinds of scheduling nightmare / pressure that is absolutely the result of T. spending many hours every day doing all kinds of Fun Things and not taking care of stuff he wants done.