Do you know people who love to steal your time ?

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Cov
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Do you know people who love to steal your time ?

Post by Cov » Sun May 17, 2009 3:45 pm

I have met certain people who have an extraordinary strong desire to draw attention to themselves.
That desire seems to be beyond their own control, because there is no reasonable explanation existing to behave mentally disbaled on own purpose.
All they gain is temporary satisfaction, the most.


Maybe I should explain first what I'm talking about.

All humans depend on each other, because everybody seeks acknowledgement to be confirmed and respected.
We all have our individual strategies of how to live together within a dense society, and get our messages across.
Communication seems to be the key ... you should think.
But I'm shocked about how poor communication between people really is.

Let's look at a common relationship between a couple.
You share the positive and negative sides of life in form of (unspoken) arrangements.
How would you think rights and duties are being divided ?
I think you'd agree that the ideal situation is a division of 50/50.
Because everybody is different, it can wary between 40/60 or 30/70 for example.

Meaning, one person has 40% of the positive sides of a relationship (getting attention for example exquivalent to 40%), while the other person gets 60% out of the relationship.
An uneven division is normal and can vary at different times, up and downwards.
Actually, this model is active the first time you meet someone.
How much someone is able to get your attention (talking) or give you attention (listening) is apparent from the beginning.
After both have gotten to know each other better and agreed at one point to start a relationship, they agreed at the same time with their division of attention.
If it was a 40/60 division, then the person who gets less attention agreed to it because it matched his/her character profile (at the time).

This relationship can last for a life time, or can break in the future because people do change.
The reason for starting this thread is someone who apparently is a 99/1 type of guy.
Yeah, that's right ... a 99/1 person who wants 99% of your attention and gives only 1% back (the most).
I ask myself what kind of disability that is ?
He doesn't mind hurling an avallanche of personal information onto you, with (so it seems) neverending stories of his life.
Some of them are interesting, most of them aren't and mainly he repeats himself constantly.
I can see people turning around when he meets them, because they know that this guy doesn't (want to) understand neither subtle nor obvious signs.

I doubt he suffers from attention defficiency because I have yet to see his thirst being distinguished.
He simply is an extreme egoist by nature, demanding you to not only listen to him, but he seeks actively for praisal constantly as well.
That's another thing I don't understand.
If he doesn't get told how awesome he is (for ?), he simply over-highlights how good he is by himself.
It seems to me that all he cares for is to be admired as much as possible.
For anything you'd have to criticize him, he'd find any excuse - no matter how ridiculous and pathetic his reasoning was, to defend himself.
He is never at fault, NEVER.

Recently we got to talk about his favourite subject again, cars.
And he told me how much he loved a particular model of car where I dared to reply that I would not like this car.
He seemed shocked about my different opinion, that he didn't speak for seconds.
He simple didn't want to understand that I have a different taste than him !

What might have gone wrong with an grown adult, living in a dream world and stubbornly refuses to learn the most important thing in life: ... to share.

m0002a
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Post by m0002a » Sun May 17, 2009 4:00 pm

I would recommend using a Zalman Fanmate and turn down the voltage a little.

Redzo
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Post by Redzo » Sun May 17, 2009 4:49 pm

"Do you know people who love to steal your time ?"


I do now...

Riffer
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Post by Riffer » Sun May 17, 2009 5:52 pm

Redzo wrote:"Do you know people who love to steal your time ?"


I do now...


:lol:

josephclemente
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Post by josephclemente » Sun May 17, 2009 7:40 pm

I usually try to stay out of the off-topic threads, but this one so far is one of my favorites!

Ch0z3n
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Post by Ch0z3n » Sun May 17, 2009 9:02 pm

m0002a wrote:I would recommend using a Zalman Fanmate and turn down the voltage a little.
Haha, if it were only that easy.

On a marginally related note, DSM-IV (or wikipedia) has a lot of good info on personality disorders. My guess is he probably has a cluster B personality disorder since they tend to be relatively attention based.

Me being overly curious and my GF being a psychology doctorate student, we tend to have far too many conversations where we reference the DSM :oops:

Cov
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Post by Cov » Mon May 18, 2009 4:41 am

Ch0z3n wrote:My guess is he probably has a cluster B personality disorder ...
I have spoken with friends of mine who know the person from above as well, and we agreed that all 4 points are spot on:

Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, or erratic disorders)

Antisocial personality disorder: "pervasive disregard for the law and the rights of others."
Borderline personality disorder: extreme "black and white" thinking, instability in relationships, self-image, identity and behavior
Histrionic personality disorder: "pervasive attention-seeking behavior ... and shallow or exaggerated emotions"
Narcissistic personality disorder: "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy"

Source

Ch0z3n
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Post by Ch0z3n » Mon May 18, 2009 5:18 am

That would be really impressive if he could be diagnosed with more than 1 of them. One of the requirements of a personality disorder is that it is severe enough to interfere with your daily life. My initial guess would be histrionic since it is the most specifically tied to attention.

Kriz
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Post by Kriz » Tue May 19, 2009 2:34 pm

For about 5 years, I used to travel an hour to and from Melbourne on the train several times a week, and there was this guy I would see every now and then that would have some random passenger held hostage near the end of the carriage listening to whatever this guy felt he needed to talk about for an hour straight.

Now most of his listeners were polite and would acknowledge his words at first, so he'd continue until he either got off the train or was repeatably told to shut up, at which point he would turn his attention to another person. Sometimes I could clearly hear what he was saying and it sounded intelligent, well thought out and conversational, except that the conversation was always one sided and he was only after one or two word answers from his listener. Sometimes he seemed to try and spice things up by slipping in the occasional insulting comment about the listener or talk about politics, race, religion, sex or all of the above.

I'm thankful to have never been chosen to listen to him, but I do wonder if I'll see him again one of these days on one of my rare trips through the city.

yefi
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Post by yefi » Sat May 23, 2009 12:56 pm

Ch0z3n wrote:Me being overly curious and my GF being a psychology doctorate student, we tend to have far too many conversations where we reference the DSM :oops:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the definition of a disorder relative to the average personality type. So that if the average personality were very much different--let's imagine a world inhabited by the offspring of Courtney Love--then the definitions in the DSM would have to be amended, and it would be very probable that I would end up with a Vulcan Personality Disorder.

Ch0z3n
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Post by Ch0z3n » Sat May 23, 2009 1:39 pm

Ehh, kind of; for it to be considered a personality disorder is has to interfere with their ability to function in daily life. Pro athletes and actors and rock stars and such can get away with a personality farther from the norm, especially something like narcissistic, without it being a personality disorder because it doesn't really cause any problems for them. We pretty much expect them to be strange.

Sylph-DS
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Post by Sylph-DS » Sat May 23, 2009 3:35 pm

m0002a wrote:I would recommend using a Zalman Fanmate and turn down the voltage a little.
+1

yefi
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Post by yefi » Sun May 24, 2009 3:19 pm

Ch0z3n wrote:Ehh, kind of; for it to be considered a personality disorder is has to interfere with their ability to function in daily life.
An aggressive trait may have been very beneficial to the individual functioning in his or her daily life in our primeval past. Yet that same trait could easily interfere with their ability to function in daily life today. Therefore, the definition of a personality disorder is in some way dependent on the society that individual is placed in.

Ch0z3n
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Post by Ch0z3n » Mon May 25, 2009 9:59 am

Yes, as long as the 'society' is a very specific group, not like the society of the United States. It has to deviate far enough away from 'average' for their specific socio-economic/work group that it inhibits their ability to function. Being aggressive could be very beneficial to a football player or soldier or a salesman. As long as their aggression is taken out on the other team, or the enemy, or being pushy to make a sale, it is fine. If they go home and beat dogs or their wife, its not fine.

yefi
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Post by yefi » Mon May 25, 2009 11:38 am

Your response was interesting because you said their specific socio-economic/work group. Yet, that is an artificial construct. Our genes have no knowledge of salesmen or postmen. These roles are imposed on us by our society, and most people internalise them.

However, who is to say that it isn't the role itself which is at fault? If Stalin had won the Cold War, and I lived in an Island where truth had been subverted for the greater cause of the state, I might well discover that my will for truth impeded greatly my ability to perform the perfunctory duties I had been alloted. Dr. Zhukov, state psychiatrist, would tell my family I had the dreaded Vulcan Personality Disorder.

Just a thought.

Ch0z3n
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Post by Ch0z3n » Mon May 25, 2009 1:20 pm

It seems like you haven't actually read the (wikipedia entry) DSM diagnostic requirements. There is no specifically objective diagnostic requirements. There is nothing like 'If 50% of your conversations are about yourself, you are narcissistic,' they are all subjective. It could be that for YOU, if 50% of your conversations are about yourself, then you have a personality disorder. But, the point is that the same number doesn't work for every one. It doesn't really matter what your society is, the criteria still work.

yefi
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Post by yefi » Tue May 26, 2009 2:15 pm

The point of the label is to help the person by making them fit back comfortably into their society. Well, to fit back comfortably in a pair of trousers, you can either lose weight or you can buy a larger waistline. But during a clinical assessment I don't think the question is asked if they are the wrong trousers.

Do you get me, no, oh well.

Ch0z3n
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Post by Ch0z3n » Tue May 26, 2009 3:15 pm

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you are you trying to say that personality disorders are just a ploy to explain away someone's shortcomings? People don't want to have personality disorders. In a vast majority of the world there is a terrible stigma about personality disorders. That's like telling me that someone chooses to be gay in the bible belt.

yefi
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Post by yefi » Wed May 27, 2009 9:43 am

If anything I'm on their side. I think we make an assumption that the problem lies with the individual and that they need to accommodate society in some way rather than society needing to accommodate them. Like handing sedatives to the men on the front lines of the trenches during WWI may make them "better".

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