How Can Anyone Diagnose Another Person Mentally Unless They Are Qualified ?

And yes, real stories like Liota's are happening. I'm a writer and I do a job working with women. I get to hear a lot of stories and the book reflects a lot of truth unfortunately for some. Lovely ending for the grandaughter. xx

Yes I do DB. I merely answered other posters along the way too.

Are you a Daily Mail contributor at any time nina1959?

No Ankers. I'm a published book author, not a journalist. I don't read much of the tabloid press but I think Bel Mooney often makes a valid contribution.

nina1959, where do you stand on name-calling celebrities and politicians, as that is labelling and stigmatizing as well, would you say?

Ankers re your comment to me: I learned not to regard personality disorder as an illness during my long years working in the NHS!

Ankers, celebrities choose to be very public and in doing so, they accept intrusion and statements made about them are going to be part of their public lives. Prince Harry springs to mind. But lies and hurtful derogatory attacks are just as wrong towards them as anyone else.
Personally I think any attack or libelous statement made against anyone is wrong and the courts are there to take action if wrongdoing is found.

Politicians? Again, wrong to attack or hurt them with false and untrue statements. They are an easy target and as such, are more vulnerable than Joe Bloggs.

No-one can make a diagnosis without being qualified and without meeting the patient.

However, I have not noticed it to any extent, if at all, on GN and do not visit other forums.
Someone who is having extreme relationship problems may well be tempted to give subjective rather than objective advice to others which could exacerbate someone else's situation.

I'm not a member of groups or forums either, in fact I've only just signed back into this one. But I do a lot of research and I've noticed the more youth -mid 30's age groups refer far more to narcissists in the family than the older age groups. I think the narcissism issue began when author Jean Twenge wrote a book calling it an edpidemic a few years ago. It seems to have taken root since then. There is also a very popular but as he himself confesses, damaged, Youtube user promoting many videos about identifying narcissists and how to deal with them, the main message being going NC.
He means well and I think he is qualified. He's popular because he does fill an awfully big hole in the mental health gap by speaking directly to young adults trying to make sense of dysfunctional home lives so in this respect, he's parenting them through their problems by suggesting their parents or other family members behave like they do because they're narcissists. Like I said, he admits to being broken.

Is he helping or perpetuating a problem. In my opinion, both probably.

I think he is helping Nina. Discussions are a good thing. It really does help people having to deal with someone who is abusive or has Narcisstic traits or other traits of a personality disorder to have an idea of what they are dealing with.

If someone lies you would call them a liar!

Ah Faye, so you know who I'm talking about? I think he probably is helping in some ways but not in others. If a family member watches one of his video's and then blindly says 'aha! Knew it! My mother is a raging narcissist'. Then takes his advice and goes NC. Then mother ends up depressed due to suddenly being on the end of silent treatment, and then daughter also is depressed because she's hurting mother, and grandchildren are deprived of knowing their own gene pool and on and on it goes, how is that a solution for anyone?
Cutting a primary family member off completely is a form of abuse in itself. Unless of course, there has been a history of abuse, that's different. But where there are communication problems, power battles, strong willed individuals, surely it's a massive and more favoured result, to be able to find another solution other than self diagnosing a narcissist then cutting them off never to speak to them again?

As for is a liar a liar? Yes, but the liar and I would have had personal communication together and I wouldn't be diagnosing that person third party. People are watching the video's, taking the information and then without any skill or experience, making an assessment of a relative and cutting them off without a backward glance.

My point is, and again, people who have endured ongoing abuse haven't much of a choice, those who are simply cutting people out of their lives based on an assumption about their character, may in the end do far more damage to both themselves and their entire family. Especially if in the mix, there are other family members stirring the pot.

I just think that for the sake of learning better ways to communicate and manage relationships, in all their guises, cutting anyone off is like a death and should only be a last resort.

I should add that the reason I started this thread was because I'm at the point of closure with a family member, I haven't cut them off, they've cut me off. This led me to start a group for parents three years ago. I no longer run it but I learned a lot and one thing I could see was that estrangement was a two pronged sword.
There are definitely some truly awful parents out there who have hurt their children beyond words. For them to recover, they've had no choice but to close the door and walk away. This is really hard for them because the finality and ultimate reality of their situation is that they have no one. No one is really a winner and this is why we need our mental health system to be far more target orientated than it is. There is nothing more soul destroying than feeling you have no one.

On the other side of the coin, there are good, devoted parents who have also been cut off for any number of reasons that aren't that serious. They might be a pain and hard to communicate with, but is that a reason to break ties and set in motion a really sad and destructive cycle that undermines the entire family?
In my experience, behind nearly all forms of family alienation is another, often hidden but controlling individual, manipulating the situation. This drives the wedge even deeper and causes the rift to harden.

During my research on why estrangement happens in the way that it does, I found the roots are often buried in the opinions of others given on social media. If those people giving those opinions have been burned with a bad experience, they tend to be bitter and this shows in how they comment. Often it's these individuals that are the first to bandy the words 'narcissist! Go NC!!Their own pain means they can see no other way.
Where do they get their ideas and information from? Google and some of the spurious operators on Youtube because that's the only place they can be seen and heard.

What I hope will happen eventually is that in families where life might have become fraught or difficult, a better way to communicate will become the norm. Otherwise cutting people off and going NC is going to have dire repercussions into next generations.

I so agree with this OP. Too many people using psychiatric terminology randomly. I know someone who is very prone to this especially during arguments. He has his partner, a strong assertive woman, seriously beginning to doubt her own sanity

Do you not think though, nina1959, that a lot of people have tried for years to not have to go NC?
That they have become very down, if not depressed, because they have tried numerous ways, not because they ^ have not^?

But I agree with the rest of your comments.

Yes I do Ankers. That's why I myself now find I'm at a point of closure. Except, I would never cut the person off. But I'm no longer going to keep trying. Even if the person comes back, I'm going to have to be very careful and keep my boundaries firm.
I don't want to go into too much detail but this particular family member kept cutting me off then coming back again with lots of promises. It's very hard to deal with this kind of coming and going, and then the subsequent being dropped like a ton of bricks again with nothing inbetween.
This has been going on for 13 years so I think I've been patient and hopeful that things might change.
I know this person spends time on forums and I think she may even be someone who reads up on google psychobabble and then goes cold turkey once she's reach yet another analysis of who she thinks I am. The brutal emails and criticism have made my husband and friends horrified.

What did I do to deserve it? It's hard to fathom. Even she can't say what it is that leads to the cutting off. What she does frequently say in her email rants is that 'I'm mental and I need help'. Yet other times, she thinks I've been the 'best person ever' but she doesn't like me because I'm not like her'. She's mocking, bitter, hurtful and very unpredictable. I can send a very tactful, polite, two sentence email and receive a raging torrent of abuse back listing all my faults and how I'm to blame for everything.

It is true. We are like chalk and cheese. I think this is the part of the problem. She doesn't like it that I don't think like she does. But this isn't a crime and I don't fight or argue with her. I just ask why we can't be friends?
But after years of no Christmas or birthday cards, no end of harsh silent treatment and then having the problem projected back onto me in emails, has all added up to an inevitable conclusion. We can only change ourselves, no one else.
Nothing has worked so I've had to get a new perspective and this has been a saving grace because she's been very final and brutal this week and so instead of hanging onto her like I have done so far, I have made the decision to finally let her go. By letting her go, I mean just not try any more and not attempt to contact her.
Sometimes, the cutting off works in reverse. Those who cut relatives off on a whim or relatively minor offence, end up going back years later only to find that those they cut off, have in fact found a greater sense of peace without them. It's sad and it's very hard but regardless, once you start moving on from the person who's cut the cords, there is a new life out there without them. Not waking up to hate filled emails or being on the receiving end of months of silent treatment is relief in itself.

So this week is a week of closure for me. Not only have I decided to let her go, I've also let go two other distant relatives who were her main allies. You know the kind? You bump into them and where once you were friends, they hurry to avoid you.

Part of this week's closure was to reflect and see where all this name calling of being a narcissist, character labelling, new age pop psychology and so called expert theory was coming from. Who is teaching our kids to think like they do and be so brutal in their assessment of who they think we are?

The issue of narcissism isn't widely recognised in British psychology so I have concluded that there some wounded individuals out there using the medium of Youtube and social media to go direct to the public with their own spin on what makes a narcissist along with all the other psycho terminology.
While this may be soothing and comforting to the wounded young adult, to know it wasn't him or her that was at fault, and finally he/she can put a label on the parents behaviour, how does the ordinary person process the information and apply it?
They don't because they do not have the skill set or the academic training to understand the wider ranging implications.
So instead they use it as a weapon.

In my opinion, valid or not but humble anyway, I think it's this new age psychology of labelling family members that's causing such a cataclysmic divide in families today.
If only less judging and a better way of communicating could be the way forwards.

Ankers: I agree, NC is reality for lots of people who have tried for years on end attempting to avoid NC. There are some people who are not worth having in your life regardless their relationship status.

Looking to Calais for an example not related to family: lorry drivers fret stowaway immigrants. However, the migrant crisis is not on the haulage industry to solve. NC by keeping the immigrants away from lorries, is a real solution.

is it me? Or does anybody else not get the connection here?

I get it Daphne, but what can you do?

Live and let live is what I say...

Or rather 'not get it'

Not sure I can see the relevance of lorries, Calais and NC BettyB. It's about politics for starters.

The connection is not related to family relationships. Migrants are real problem, said problem can't be solved at Calais other than by NC with the lorries. Many times the real solution to relationship problems is NC.

BettyB, have you ever read a history book?

Yes, thanks for asking. History was not my point. My point (lost, I see) was many problems have no solution other than NC. I was purposefully trying to use a neutral and not family relationship example. Nobody calls lorry drivers narcissistic or controlling, they merely attempt to follow regulations.

I think I get what BettyB is saying.
She is saying that sometimes, there is no other way than NC to protect yourself.

I know someone in this position. As yet, she keeps trying not to have to go NC with her dad.
But it is, or has been somewhat eating her up. And no one is a winner when that happens.

At least if she manages to NC, she will help save herself in the process. And others around her actually who helpto pick up the pieces of her life.

It wont make much difference to her dad one way or another I dont think whether she is NC or not. He will barely notice the difference. We are not absolutely sure.
And if he does care, yippee. He cares more about her than we were thinking. And hope may be able to be resumed.

I am certainly not advocating this for everyone in all circumstances. By a long long way.

Apples and Oranges BettyB

Ankers, I think I have said all the way through that going NC may be the only option for extreme cases without a doubt. However, my main issue is how the current use of unexplored and ethically sound psycho terminology is muddying the waters for others who still have to try and navigate their relationships hopefully in a way that does not resort to NC.