New Theory About Why Im Sensitive To Criticism Body Sensitivity The Discard Program
Indeed, recently, I showed myself to be extremely affected when someone important to me said I was stalled in life, probably not realizing how sick I am.
Our couples therapist always asks me to look back into my childhood to see why this might be. Honestly, I don't see much there to explain it. I wasn't particularly scolded; no one told me I was bad. There was some tension and people weren't especially happy, but there's no clear-cut reason why it should bother me so much.
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I want to offer an alternate explanation for why I am sensitive to being told I'm in the wrong.
I am extremely body-sensitive and always have been. This means being sensitive not only to fabrics, clothing, noises, being touched, etc. but also being sensitive to emotional changes and how various things in the environment affect my emotions, and there might be common reasons for both of these types of sensitivity, and my body might not differentiate between "emotional" (hormonal/neurotransmitter) sensitivity and sensitivity to sensory stimuli.
Perhaps, as a sensitive person, I am more able to sense the negative impacts of messages that trigger the "discard program" described in the post below.
Hypothesized "discard program": In contrast to simple evolutionary fitness in the sense of genes, an epigenetic program that is triggered to greater or lesser degree when an individual is too unhealthy or too un-valued by the group, that drives the individual into taking fewer resources, not trying anymore (not causing unnecessary fighting if the game has already been decided), depression, poor immune health, truncal fat, arteriosclerosis, poor response to stress, degenerative disease, mental illness, or even hearing voices or suicidality.
It really is harsh to say to people that they are doing things wrong. It's especially harsh to tell people that they are:
-trying to get out of work
-not working due to hypochondria or delusion or lack of confidence,
because working and being self-supporting are some of this society's golden cows, rules that if unfollowed make you a social reject.
Feeling like a social reject is probably bad for one's body and immune system. My theory is that I feel the body changes that these messages initiate, and thus, the messages bother me a lot and I try very hard to neutralize them, to keep them from hurting my body.
An additional thought: Maybe people who are a bit unhealthy to start seem to have more sensitive egos, precisely because criticism toward them is more likely to have a "discard program" effect on them than on healthy people.
If your body is already unhealthy, and then you start getting messages that say you are an unfit and unappreciated member of society, those messages might combine with the initial state of poor health to have a negative effect on your health, whereas in a healthy person the
That is, the physical effects of negative messages about oneself might be conditional on one's health state, with the messages having more negative effect if one is already unhealthy.
From the outside, it simply looks like the people who claim to be chronically ill have sensitive egos and can't take criticism, so they might seem to be simply emotionally weak and not physically weak at all, so they end up getting even more "discard program"-initiating messages, such as "You're exaggerating your sickness or you aren't sick at all; you just have mental problems."
Perhaps part of the reason that mental illness continues to have such great stigma (in addition to the obvious reasons) is that mental illness could be a marker for a person in which the purported genetic "discard program" has been initiated.
Indeed, I recall that one of my first posts on this blog was about the apparent shame of low self-esteem.
Why should it be shameful to have low self-esteem? Why isn't it value-neutral like... not having a dog?
But it seems like such a shameful thing to admit! Perhaps that's because admitting low self-esteem says, "Something has gone wrong with me and my 'discard program' has started to activate, giving me low self-esteem. Steer clear of me!"
Perhaps this is why self-esteem is one of the most attractive things in a person you're looking to date. It's not just that we enjoy being around people with high self-esteem; it's that self-esteem signals health. It's one of the first things to go when health goes downhill, and it's also a sign that some part of the putative "discard program" is in action.
In "Listening to Prozac", Peter Kramer tells the story of how a young woman who started Prozac suddenly started getting asked out on a lot of dates. He likened it to a personality make-over that made her personality more attractive. But in the paradigm above, you could see it as Prozac interfering with the brain/behavior side of the "discard program", causing the woman falsely to seem like someone in whom it had not been activated.
Our society is interesting, because so much of how people look is not based on their health but instead on make-up, hair, clothes, plastic surgery, etc.
"What Not to Wear" could be seen as taking people who look like their "discard programs" are in action and remaking them into people who seem healthy. It's a testament to how much we make ourselves up in this society (with clothes, hair, make-up) that people can look so much more valuable. But I wonder how well the people keep up with their new programs.
Is there something about being unhealthy that keeps a person from wanting to dress up, that makes it feel somehow wrong to try to look nice, even if energy is not a limiting factor?
What about cases where a disease is seen as popular and as increasing a person's social status, such as tuberculosis in the 19th century? Could this create the odd situation of some messages saying "discard" even while social messages say "cool person"? What would the body do then?
How is the experience of illness different for people whose illnesses are culturally respected versus disapproved? This is an interesting question to me, given that my illness happens to be contested and not particularly respected.
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It's funny, but I realized just when I was writing the sentence above that all along, I have been thinking of people with respected illnesses and contested illnesses as different kinds of people.
I have seen the former (characteristic example: cancer patients) as respectable people who have done nothing wrong, who battle with strength against a formidable opponent, who are greatly missed if they pass away, and who have a lot to offer society from their reflections and experiences.
In contrast, I have seen contested illness patients as sniveling little self-obsessed ninnies (sorry, y'all, it's my subconscious here! I apologize for its behavior!). They are just "too sensitive" to handle life so they have to make up some stupid reason not to have to do the work of living like the rest of us.
Wayward subconscious still speaking: Contested illness patients obsess about the tiniest little things in their health. They're all convinced that they have all the same problems: "heavy metals," gut permeability,... they all think they're gluten-intolerant. How could all of them have the same problems?
Wayward subconscious cont. They drain societal resources, make problems for the unfortunate doctors who have to deal with them, and they create a lot of problems by "advocating" for themselves. They should just shut up and get jobs; nothing is wrong with them.
Wow. If I think all of that about contested illness patients, and I have a contested illness myself, then the negative societal messages about contested illness patients must be very strong.
I might like to do a project where I go around identifying and exposing these negative images; and where I discuss the harm these ideas can have (as discussed in a former post about the unintended consequences of doctors who say that contested illness patients aren't sick.)
But here is the interesting thing: There might be very little difference in the bodies of the people with the different types of illness. We could be putting all this meaning on it ourselves as a society.
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Another clue: caring about one's health is really unpopular.
You get social status for caring about your car, house, clothes, dog, hobbies, education, music, and hair; but NOT your health.
Caring about your health tends to make you unpopular in this society.
-going gluten-free
-trying to go to bed early
-avoiding alcohol
-being picky about what you eat, wanting to eat only healthy food
It's COOL to care about your figure, build and looks and to exercise for those reasons, but NOT COOL to be overly concerned with "internal" body health.
This is changing some, since eating healthfully and exercising are becoming the thing to do, but I'm thinking on more of a long-term scale: caring much about one's health or what one eats marks one as an unhealthy, unfit person.
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