Lions and Wolves
A few times on Twitter, I've seen two types of complaints.
- People with diagnosed Personality Disorders (e.g. Narcissistic / Borderline) complaining that people don't give them a chance and that they feel sad.
- People complaining that we shouldn't diagnose other people, because we aren't a psychiatrist.
I'm going to address these using analogies of Lions and Wolves.
Analogy 1 - The Room With The Wild Lion
Let's say I present you with two choices:
A. Spend 5 minutes in a small room with a wild lion.
B. Don't spend 5 minutes in a small room with a wild lion.
Which one are you going to pick, if you want to survive?
Option B, of course. Yeah, the lion might feel sad and lonely, but guess what, you didn't risk getting a leg bitten off. You didn't die. You took the right choice for you. Maybe there is someone out there who can safely spend time in a room with a lion without getting hurt, but you're not that person.
The lion would've been happy, if only you'd thrown yourself in there to be eaten. If the lion could talk, it would try to guilt-trip you into entering the room, just give them a chance to show you that maybe lions can be trusted this one time.
But your job is to survive, not to become an amateur Lion Whisperer.
It's not your problem to make the dangerous person feel happy.
You have no obligation to hang out with Narcissists.
Analogy 2 - Lion or Wolf?
Let's say I warn someone not to go into a small room because there is a lion in the room that tried to eat me. It scratched me, it hurt me and I want to prevent anyone else from being hurt. I'm pretty sure it's a lion: it's hairy, it has sharp teeth, and it has sharp claws.
An idiot tells me off; they tell me I'm not an expert in mammal taxonomy, so how can I go around calling fluffy animals vicious names like "lion" and prejudicing their interaction with that big ball of fluffy that is just behind the door, and probably just wants a cuddle?
So the idiot enters the room and, inevitably. gets eaten, but just before they die, they get to shout out and let me know they are actually being eaten by a wolf, not a lion.
The idiot was right! I had misidentified it!
Do I feel a fool for mistaking one type of big, meat-eating hairy animal with sharp teeth and sharp claws for another type of big, meat-eating hairy animal with sharp teeth and sharp claws?
Did it matter that it was an arctic wolf, not a lion? Was the arctic wolf offended that you called it a lion? Is the harm of offending the arctic wolf greater than the harm of the arctic wolf eating another person?
No, it doesn't matter - if you think you've seen a lion, feel free to tell people you think you've seen a lion. They can make their own risk decisions based on the information given.
It's not your job to identify what exact type of dangerous person someone is, whether Borderline, Narcissist, or Psychopath.
But it is courteous to let people know that there is some kind of dangerous person lurking nearby so they don't get hurt.
