Amerika

Civilizations die politically from individualism and economically from socialism, but the real end comes when basically everyone goes insane. We are already seeing the early stages of that where people simply cannot think and act logically in everyday life.

Most likely the citizens of dying regimes give up hope and self destruct through a mixture of PTSD, Stockholm Syndrome, and emotional dysregulation, all of which a type of mental inflammation response to an ongoing trauma.

Having your civilization collapse is, as it turns out, quite traumatic, and nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the widespread emotional dysregulation exhibited by citizens:

Dysregulation occurs when an emotional reaction loses breadth and flexibility. If a dysregulatory pattern becomes stabilized and part of the emotional repertoire, it is likely that this pattern is a symptom and supports other symptoms. When development and adaptation are compromised, the dysregulation has evolved into a form of psychopathology.

See if this description of paralytic psychology matches what you have seen in your fellow citizens:

Emotional dysregulation is a complex collection of processes that are thought to include the following four main aspects (Gratz & Roemer, 2004):

• A lack of awareness, understanding, and acceptance of emotions
• A lack of adaptive strategies for regulating emotions (the intensity and/or duration)
• An unwillingness to experience emotional distress whilst pursuing desired goals
• An inability to engage in goal-directed behaviors when experiencing distress

Given these four aspects of emotion dysregulation, D’Agostino and colleagues suggest all of the following are examples of emotion dysregulation: “avoidance, rumination, denial, emotion suppression, aggression, and venting” (2017). These are mental and behavioral strategies that ultimately make negative emotions worse.

In other words, it is mental paralysis rooted in a lack of confidence, which leads to a desire to escape threatening thoughts. This lack of confidence is the long-term result of trauma, including humiliation and demoralization:

However, participants first exposed to child maltreatment or interpersonal violence during middle childhood had higher emotion dysregulation scores relative to those first exposed during other developmental stages; these developmental timing differences were detected even after controlling for sociodemographic factors, exposure to other trauma, and frequency of exposure to trauma.

Like palliative care, it is a form of coping or short-term solutions to preserve mental state at the expense of long-term decision-making:

Drawing on research literature concerning children at risk for affective psychopathology and considering relevant examples of the interaction of biology and context, this discussion offers a portrayal of emotion dysregulation as a biologically dynamic, experience-based aspect of adaptation to environments and relationships that, in conditions of risk for the emergence of developmental psychopathology, motivates patterns of emotional responding that serve immediate coping often at the cost of long-term maladaptation.

It could be understood as mere defensiveness against thoughts which disrupt the notion of the self as being in control:

With regard to the intensity of reactions it partially overlaps with the concept of irritability (1), which is however regarded to be a more dispositional trait. ED represents a major health risk (2) and is associated with diverse forms of childhood psychiatric disorders and symptoms like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant- and conduct disorders (ODD and CD), personality disorders, self-injurious behavior and suicidality. In clinical settings, dysregulation problems are especially prominent (3), occurring in 26.0–30.5% of children admitted to child and adolescent psychiatric clinics or mental health facilities.

The health risks include self-harm and poor life choices, but also, extend to criminality because defensive people retaliate as contrarians against the world around them:

Though the findings did not indicate a statistically significant relation between emotion regulation and reoffending, exploratory findings suggest that some types of crime may be more linked to emotion regulation than others. In sum, the present study aimed to examine a hypothesized relation between emotion regulation and juvenile delinquency by identifying how the individual factor of dysregulated emotion regulation may have played a role. This study’s findings did not provide evidence that emotion regulation was a significant predictor of recidivism over time but did suggest that emotion regulation is related to participation in certain types of crime one year later.

It may have some overlap with oppositional defiant disorder, another form of defensive rationalization, self-pity, and resentment:

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a disruptive behavior disorder that emerges during childhood or adolescence and is characterized by persistent angry or irritable mood, unruly and argumentative behavior, and vindictiveness. It frequently manifests in hostility toward authority figures.

All children display defiant behavior at some point, especially when tired or stressed. Oppositional behavior is in fact normal in toddlers and in early adolescents. The behavior of a child with ODD is much more extreme and disruptive than normal, however, and occurs much more frequently than the type of childhood stubbornness and rebellion that children may display over the course of development. The oppositional behavior of ODD is not only persistent but occurs across a wide array of situations and interferes with children’s social, family, and educational life.

The cause of ODD is unclear but a mix of biological, social, and psychological factors appears to put children at risk. These factors can include poverty (although ODD can occur in families of any economic status), experiencing a traumatic transition, having a parent with a mood, addictive, or behavioral disorder, having a bad relationship with a parent, having a neglectful or abusive parent, or a parent who is an overly harsh disciplinarian, or other family instabilities.

Both of these conditions involve a mental trauma and an ensuing defensiveness that becomes a contrarian outlook on authority which, as it is rationalized as “good,” leads to a general bigotry against reality:

Emotion dysregulation is a key component in a range of psychiatric symptoms and disorders and a core target for psychopharmacologic and psychosocial treatment interventions.

This in turn leads to ideation of a paranoid nature, where people feel that a vast conspiracy directed at them is responsible for what they perceive as a hostile environment, leading them to create schizophrenia-style explanations:

Belief in conspiracy theories is often initiated by traumatic life events. Job losses or the death of a loved one can trigger anger and suspicion towards public services, authority figures, and experts. This is especially so if people feel that the tragic or destructive events that affected them could have been averted. And these emotions can motivate a search for answers.

When conspiracy theories claim to explain painful personal circumstances or wider fears over COVID-19, or climate change, people can experience “awakenings”. These are moments of insight during which people come to believe that the causes of their problems lie with secretive groups which control society.

The West has been in the grips of this psychology since at least WW1 because living in a dying civilization is traumatic, and having no one speak up about what is happening creates total alienation.

Tags: contrarianism, defensiveness, emotional dysregulation, oppositional defiant disorder, paranoia, resentment, self-pity