Does anyone know who is the author? Apart from "Molly Brodak".
Is it this[1] person, perhaps?
Is it this[1] person, perhaps?
First paragraph of the OP and I knew in my bones it was written by someone with a personality disorder. Since her death, her husband published his memoir in 2023. The serial cheating, open suicide ideation, unresolved childhood trauma and general toxicity to herself and others is completely consistent with the tone of the article.
These are clinical standards for self-absorption and toxic personality traits. In their relationships, cluster-Bs select for supplicants who will love them despite their toxicity. What you're saying about the memoir is consistent with this.
Her mental health conditions aren't a reason to disregard everything she says, but she is providing social and interpersonal advice here, in a way that is likely to encode the dysfunctional schema and disordered thinking she suffered from in life.
For an opinion piece that is about how to empathize with other people, I think it is relevant information that the author probably had a clinical impairment in their own ability to empathize with and understand others.
and yes, one of my best friends has BPD and i dated somebody who had it, and listening to them and their subjective experience and tips on how to communicate with them was the best thing i could ever do.
I'm interested in how you concluded the advice was so beneficial. Was it a reduction in conflict and fewer emotional outbursts from your BPD partner? A feeling that you're better able to soothe them and manage their feelings?
Being conditioned by your BPD partner to excessively validate and center them is not the same as empathy.
edit: it appears we're talking past each other. i like this piece of writing and you don't. that's fine. do you have any suggestions for me to read about how to listen, written by one of your favorite writers or poets? this will help me better understand how to listen to you.
But the author is part of that context. Especially with this kind of content where one explains how they think people should behave we can ask the question if the author embodied the guidelines they are talking about, and if so where did it took them. Did they had an enviable life full of things the reader would find valuable?
Granted, it can be a bit unnerving to accept something without a human being willing to stand with you to defend it when you reach the limits of objective reality (such as the issue of varying perspective). Typically the advice here is to “stand up for what you believe in” - but honestly that’s overrated when survival is on the line (and you potentially haven’t yet absorbed the info as part of your identity).
On a philosophical level this sounds true. On a practical level evaluating correctness has costs.
If you tell me the James Webb Space Telescope detected this and that i won’t launch my own space telescope to verify it. I need to figure out if I trust you as a source. There if you are a crackpot journalist with seemingly no connection to JWST my trust will decrease, at least until i find independent sources.
And that is a hard scientific claim where in theory one can conduct an independent experiment and judge the facts for certain.
The kind of claim this one is on about is much harder to verify. It is of the form “live by these rules and you will have a better life”. There both the interpretation of the “rules” and the “better life” is fuzzy. And even if you get it right in your own experiment it will take years until you see results.
Just on a practical level. Imagine that a thin and sporty person tells you that the secret of them maintaining their healty weight is starting every day by eating two scoops of ice cream. Now imagine that the same statement is said by an obese person. In both cases it takes the same amount of effort to evaluate the correctness of their statement but which case is going to make you want to investigate it more deeply?
if you enjoyed this, then you might like http://thefanzine.com/how-not-to-apologize/
also, search around for her poem "molly brodak" by molly brodak.