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Dan Sumsion's avatar

This is really interesting and entirely credible writing. Anecdotally, I remember at high school a high frequency of people who sought to performatively communicate their self-harming, or generally detrimental behaviours. Photos of cut wrists were sent between young teenagers, and page-length paragraphs of text would detail morbid feelings and wild expressions of validation, love and identification. The misapprehension I sense some were guided by was that when acts of harm were so blatantly broadcast, that mired them in some invalidity. As this essay correctly gets at, acknowledging the manic dependency on attention, validation, verification of your experience and its extremity, as a detrimental, perhaps pathological, effect of social conditions, is far more useful and important. Thanks for the read.

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Purpleherman's avatar

I think your two conclusions are more likely, but you're missing an option or two.

People wanting to showcase their illness so they can feel 'actually' loved/accepted. Hoping that others will be okay with what's wrong with they. It sounds like you've had reality break that desire from you, if you ever had it.

The darker option is self sabotage. I have times where I purposely do things that make my situation worse, usually when my issues have anyway started kicking in. Start drinking, sleep deprivating myself, eating badly...

When you're dealing with people who aren't well, this is a possibility

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