"X Derangment Syndrome" Explained

[Jonathan101]

So, now that Trump seems to have reluctantly accepted his loss and things are calming down a bit for the moment, I thought I'd give my thoughts on the "Derangement Syndrome" that people keep talking about.

I'll call it "X Derangement Syndrome" rather than "Trump DS" since, the truth is, it isn't unique to any particular politician or their opponents; there is Obama DS, Clinton DS, Harris DS, Pence DS, George Washington DS etc. It can also apply to ideologies, parties, cops, activists, terrorists, military, sports teams, movies, anything.

And for the record, yes I do have psychology training and I can talk about this stuff from that perspective, in fact it's been discussed in some of my classes.

The truth is, the people most outspoken about social or political issues- whatever their beliefs- tend to have anxiety disorders. Listen to them long enough and they'll not only show the traits (anger, fear, hostility, exaggerations, panic, one-sidedness) but more often than not they will, eventually, explicitly allude to or bring it up themselves.

Anxiety is a complex topic as there are a range of disorders and it often ties to personality, but a subset of anxious people- usually those with General Anxiety Disorder- engage in "Worst Case Scenario" thinking as a way of managing their fears.

"Worst Case Scenario" thinking is when you start to fear something and then become hypervigilant about it and imagine the "worst possible outcome(s)" as a way to feel safe and feel in control of your anxiety, actively looking for evidence that your fears are correct and downplaying or ignoring evidence that it might be wrong.

The rationale- and it is a subconscious one, not something they are typically aware of- is that if it "does happen", they feel prepared for it because they were expecting it while other people weren't, although they usually share their fears precisely to find or create allies or supporters so they don't feel alone / don't have to deal with the responsibility their "knowledge" brings them.

A "Worst Case Scenario" is not simply "Trump wins" or "Clinton wins" or "X wins" or whatever- it is that "X wins and they are a Fascist and Holocaust and War and Armageddon! etc" . They will usually dismiss more outlandish scenarios (unless they are especially anxious or paranoid) like "X is a Space Invader!" as they typically see themselves as doubtful, rational, skeptical people regardless of what their beliefs are, which can reinforce their convictions about their fears ("I'm a doubtful, skeptical person and I'm not easily fooled- so if I believe the evidence, it must be true!") although searching for people who share their fears is also a way of reassuring themselves that their fears are correct.

Telling someone who is engaging in "WCS" thinking that they are "overreacting" or that things are "not that bad" usually won't work or will even backfire, since again the point is to give themselves a feeling of preparedness and to search for supporters in case it does happen, and further they often prefer to feel "overprepared" rather than "underprepared" so even if they know they are generalising or exaggerating they feel justified in doing so anyway and think it is up to "X" or the supports of "X" to prove them wrong rather than the other way around. They might make exceptions for trusted allies or authorities but only to a point and mostly to avoid getting in trouble with them.

They may also honestly think they are doing people a favour by, for lack of a better word, "fearmongering" about "X" since they more people are afraid the more prepared they might be and the more people will fight against "X" tooth and nail (eg. "X is bad, but nobody cares about "bad"; we have to say that "X is the Worst Thing Ever! and a Nazi-Fascist-Racist-Satanist so nobody gets complacent).

It doesn't actually matter if "X" really is all of the things they are imagining them to be- what matters is that believing them to be so, and looking for evidence and interpretations that they are so, gives the anxious person the feeling (or illusion) of safety, though conversely it can also be very stressful as well as counter-productive as they are ultimately projecting their own fears onto the picture rather than getting an accurate picture, and even when faced with evidence that they were right all along the anxious person will likely continue to exaggerate for the sake of being "overprepared".

One of the reasons partisan politics can get so heated is that you get two tribes of people who are engaged in WCS about the "other side" - in fact there are usually multiple tribes with various differences between them, but "WCS" thinking encourages binary thinking and lumping people together in order to avoid trusting "the enemy" and getting burned, as well as pretending that the people in your own camp are in "basic agreement" and thus have each others' back.

Education and intelligence have no baring on this- an anxious person can have multiple Ph.Ds and still engage in this sort of thinking and have the same distortions and mistakes; they are just generally better at rationalising their behaviour and finding evidence and interpretations that support their fears. "WSC thinking" often encourages lying and deceit, even if the person they are lying to the most is themselves and they often aren't wholly aware of how dishonest they are truly being, and when they are they often blame it on the "other side" or on "X" for "making them" do it in order to avoid feeling guilty.

It's basically like listening to or arguing with a lawyer- the lawyer is less interested in getting to "the truth" than they are in fighting for "their side" or making "their case". Presenting logical arguments or evidence that they are in the wrong might calm their fears if done so by a firm and trusted authority figure (as long as it doesn't clash with another authority, which might be a person but could also be a group, ideology etc), but if done by an opponent or even neutral party it might just feel embarrassing and humiliating or seem to be "missing the point" since, like a lawyer, they don't feel like it is their job to be correct, or even necessarily to win, but to present themselves as biased and reliable to whoevers' side they are on.

More often than not, the person engaging in "WCS thinking" simply wants to vent to ease their anxiety and stress, and to find people who will back them up and reassure them (or, sometimes, start arguments with opponents and hope they make bad arguments or get angry in order to discredit their own side- negative reassurance). Sometimes, though, they are honestly looking for people to calm them down and tell them that things aren't that bad and that everything will be okay, even if at the same time they fight that person and become combative with them- in such cases, they might be "testing" how much that person really knows what they are talking about, or they might just be angry that this person isn't letting them vent.

So, that's a brief-ish overview of what is often going on. I won't get into treatment since that's another essay in itself but it usually involves therapy, making changes to their environment (or learning to reframe their environment) and learning to truly stand on their own two feet (as opposed to merely pretending to). The important thing is understanding that it isn't unique to any one particular ideology and that every side, on any issue, has people who do this, and that the reasons they are behaving this way are as much to do with relieving their stress as expressing their honest political beliefs, and that trying to argue with or correct someone doing this isn't always the best course of action- particularly if you are engaging in "WCS thinking" yourself.