alittledizzy wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 1:45 pm
phanfckingtastic wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 7:28 am
Last comment on mental health and d&p, I disagree with assigning them to be on the spectrum of anything or describe them as struggling with something unless they specifically put it in those words. Dan HAS opened up about depression, and has made some agoraphobia and social anxiety jokey comments, but Phil hasn't to my knowledge. He has said "I used to be very shy and now I'm more confident" and has described moments of feeling anxious or nervous, but not "I used to have very bad anxiety". Not every quirk someone describes about themselves is to be taken as a symptom. I know (hey I have some minor mental health issues myself) that it's very common and shouldn't be taken as an insult or whatever, but they can't be the poster boys for everything we'd like them to be. Dan has depression, and that's all we know for certain.
This is actually a total mirror of the conversations that were had before the depression video. There was a whole chunk of phandom who was diehard convinced that Dan just used depression jokes as releatable humor and handwaved all the signs of it because they didn't believe someone who had as many options available to him would be depressed, or would point to all the times that Dan was fine on a stage or traveling and seemed happy, etc, as not something a depressed person would do. (Of course, there were also the people furious that Dan would 'pretend' or play up depression symptoms for views, but that's a whole different topic and much less relatable to this.)
I actually have the same opinion now as I did then; I am not a fan of ignoring obvious signs of something. I think we shouldn't make total assumptions but I think totally dismissing it is equally iffy to me. I also don't think it's unreasonable to look at someone who describes (just plucking out a couple random examples from memory) himself as shaking and wanting to leave through half of a show for fear of being called on stage, or being so anxious about telling someone no that he literally threw up and still didn't say anything, as having social anxiety. I myself described it as Phil just having an anxious personality but there are indications that it's more than a 'personality quirk' (imo the biggest one being the gym video). We won't
know anything until he says, but the conversation isn't based in nothing - just like people suspecting Dan was depressed for the depression video wasn't based on nothing.
yeah, but in my experience a psychologist would take into account not one extraordinary circumstance -or a few- (like the gym situation), but rather every day life, how well a person adjusts and is able to cope with daily ocurrences, in addition to how much the feelings the subject experiences actually limit or cause suffering, and to what extent.
with the vomit thing, I'm not saying it's a "normal" response free of stress or anxiety, but a lot of people can get carried away and end up doing stupid shit to avoid embarrassment or because they feel under pressure (from a coach, from an authoritative figure, in an unfamiliar environment). Phil is more than able to deal with all kinds of things in his every day life, hasn't expressed suffering from little things he finds difficult, more than feelings of awkwardness or nervousness, especially as years goes by and he's able to navigate more and more all kinds of new interactions and circumstances.
(I also want to add the context that with performers, especially people who do anything in the comedic spectrum, a lot of what they say is just because it sounds funny or creates a certain funny image or a certain effect, very often just 10% of it is rooted in truth, sometimes only 1%. More so if they've been doing it for a while and the beginner urge to express themselves gives way to the professional creative challenge of keeping a career in entertainment and doing cool shit. D&P are not your typical comedians per se, but they have heavily comedic brains in that sense, so what they say should always be taken with a pinch of salt imo)
I guess we mainly disagree in that I don't think it's up to us to ignore OR acknowledge anything regarding their mental health unless it's to explain behaviour or dynamics that affect the audience-creator relationship, which with Dan, it did.
With Phil, sticking onto him a diagnosis of sorts is just piecing stuff together to reach conclusions about how he behaves or his motivations in his private life, off camera. Even if he had anxiety, it hasn't affected or has not manifested at all with his audience except as material for his content, and always portrayed in a light way -he mentions cringing in videos of his young self but doesn't really cringe, for example- (unlike Dan, who gets frustrated and suffers or has suffered because of it).
Another factor is that I don't want young people, especially teenagers, thinking the only options are on one hand a perfect 100% well-adjusted standard of pure mental health, and on the other if anything feels uncomfortable immediately means you have failed to reach it so you're forever doomed to not be mentally okay. There are a lot of grey areas in behaviour and feelings which don't necessarily mean there's a broader underlying disorder or pathology going on.
I'm all for mental health discussion but over-diagnosis especially in such intangible things is very serious, that's why I don't like speculating publicly in those terms unless there's confirmation.