Is bitterness a serious psychiatric problem or just sadness magnified?
Written on September 2, 2009 at 7:19 am
whinge whine complain rage spit
Listening to a patient, overflowing with bitterness at the injustices they have suffered is like watching a train smash in slow motion. It is as if the bitterness has invaded their mind like some ingenious cancer and pushed out all the rational thought and self preservation instincts that should be keeping them healthy.
All of us are emotional beings. We all have times when feelings of hurt and rejection get in the way of objective and strategic thinking. But time passes (days, maybe weeks) and the hurt fades and the rational part of the brain plays the ultimate trump and we start to move on.
The bitterness I’m talking about here is not someone who gets cross at being left of a party invite list. No, this is the person who, stops people in the street with whom they have most tenuous association to regale them with sordid details of their personal misfortunes at the hands of an evil boss. Or the parent who tells their own beloved child that their other parent doesn’t love them, or shares intimate secrets of that parent’s alleged sexual dalliances with a child who doesn’t even understand what sex is yet.
It’s when overwhelming feelings of hurt, rejection and devastation become feelings of victimization and start to fester and infect other conversations, prevent otherwise healthy relationships from flourishing or other any employment being secured. It bogs people down in costly and futile litigation and robs spouses, children and friends of the person they once smiled and laughed with.
There’s a move afoot to label these people being tormented by their own bitterness as having a psychiatric condition. A Berlin psychiatrist, Dr Michael Linden named it Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder (PTED) He writes; “the trigger event in posttraumatic embitterment disorder is an exceptional, though normal negative life event such as conflict in the workplace, unemployment, the death of a relative, divorce, severe illness, or experience of loss and separation. Characteristic is a prolonged feeling of embitterment.”
Prolonged is right. In the good doctor’s research, the average duration of this disorder is 31.7 months. And the sad thing is, so far there is no treatment, no cure. “These people usually don’t come to treatment because ‘the world has to change, not me,’ ” Linden told the LA Times earlier this year. ”They are almost treatment resistant. . . . Revenge is not a treatment.”
But treat them we must, because Revenge can be a serious business. Mass murder for example. So if someone you know is struggling to escape the torment of their own mind (and their conversation is getting a bit ho hum) see if your loving guidance will get them to accept the need for some counseling.
