You know them. I know them. And, increasingly, psychiatrists know them. People who feel they have been wronged by someone and are so bitter they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances.
This behavior is so common -- and so deeply destructive -- that some psychiatrists are urging it be identified as a mental illness under the name post-traumatic embitterment disorder. The behavior was discussed before an enthusiastic audience last week at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Assn. in San Francisco.
The disorder is modeled after post-traumatic stress disorder because it too is a response to a trauma that endures. People with PTSD are left fearful and anxious. Embittered people are left seething for revenge.
"They feel the world has treated them unfairly. It's one step more complex than anger. They're angry plus helpless," says Dr. Michael Linden, a German psychiatrist who named the behavior.
Embittered people are typically good people who have worked hard at something important, such as a job, relationship or activity, Linden says. When something unexpectedly awful happens -- they don't get the promotion, their spouse files for divorce or they fail to make the Olympic team -- a profound sense of injustice overtakes them. Instead of dealing with the loss with the help of family and friends, they cannot let go of the feeling of being victimized. Almost immediately after the traumatic event, they become angry, pessimistic, aggressive, hopeless haters.
Oh my, where to start with this one. Bitterness is a human emotion, just like anger, or having nightmares after a particularly traumatic incident. Yes, it's possible for this emotion (like love or acceptance for that matter) to be taken too far, and combined with other factors, may play a role in some individuals' mental illness. Refusing to let go of a break-up, for example, is obviously unhealthy.
But it's no coincidence that the number of bitter people might be increasing, as a declining economy and cultural breakdown create many, many people who did everything they were supposed to in life and still got the shit end. One might say they have reason to be bitter. Good reason, in fact.
So the obvious answer is to tell them to get over it, accept it (and if they still can't pay their bills?), go on docilely with their lives. If not, they're mentally ill. Conveniently, being in a recession, the psychiatric establishment's got similarly good reason to find some new disorders to treat.
There's an excellent sociological term for this trend, it's called the medicalization of deviance.
Basically, increasingly diagnosing non-normal mental traits as illness makes it easier and easier to punish behavior outside the norm (deviance). Like increasingly ornate laws, the more mental illnesses you've got on the books, especially for fairly common, understandable behavior gives established powers more ways to crack down on or punish said deviants.
Take the trend far enough and you've got a lovely little thing I call Somatopia.
Besides, revenge gets short shrift. Let's say that you got screwed over by an abominable health care system in a way that led to financial devastation and the illness or death of a loved one. Filing a lawsuit or joining a political cause that seeks to overhaul that system and punish those who run it is an act of vengeance, yes. It's also a perfectly constructive response.
Every social change begins with a refusal to let go of anger. We need that, properly directed, in this time more than any other.
Personally, the major point in my life where I grappled with bitterness bears testament that vengeance has its part to play. During my college years, I was shafted in office politics by the clique that ran the student newspaper, who had little tolerance for dissenting opinions. It was a hard hit, and combined with other problems in my life, fostered feelings of bitterness and anger.
So I thought about what had gone wrong, why it was wrong and did everything in my power to take the editor's spot the next year. While this was very helpful to my own ambitions, I would be lying if I said it didn't also serve as a blatant middle finger to those that threw me out. A desire to "settle the score" in that case drove me to become a more assertive person and better journalist, as well as gaining the power to run things in a different way. After that, it was far easier to let go of bitterness and put the original incident behind me.
Would acceptance have made my life better?
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