The problem with sanctimonious lockdown behaviours: an open letter to Broadsheet

To the editor,

Broadsheet Melbourne

During Melbourne’s 111 day lock down it was apparent that the community’s mental health would be likely to suffer. As psychologists, we have seen impacts of loneliness, isolation, family violence, disconnection from social supports as well as systemic problems with housing, food and employment.  

I am writing to you to express concern for a serious and arguably equally pervasive problem of lock down 2.0 - the media promoting sanctimonious lock down behaviours. For those struggling during this period, the incessant reminders to pick up a new hobby, try a new takeaway or explore another gallery online, were torture. Everyone had that friend; who’d conquered their sourdough, developed a kitchen garden fruitful enough to feed their family and started selling their life drawing sketches online within the first two weeks. That person who would talk about how great it was to have all this time, to just “be”, to connect, to spoil themselves.

The reality is, for some, simply getting up in the morning and walking the 5 steps to their home office was all that was bearable. For others, getting through 10 minutes of home schooling was a triumph. As psychologists during a pandemic, we were trying to take the pressure off people, not stack in on. The people who just scraped through are now answering questions of the sanctimonious about why they’re not missing lockdown, why they don’t feel more connected, why their house is not immaculate? The truth is, lockdown is necessary but it sucks. A large part of a psychologist’s role is to try to help people to feel and accept their emotions. Maybe the sanctimonious genuinely had a blissful 15 weeks at home, maybe promoting it on social media is what soothes them. For everyone else, there’s a quiet, nervous relief that maybe we got through it. Maybe our houses are still filthy, our projects unfinished. But we did it. And surely that’s enough?

-Amy Donaldson

An open letter to my past self about homeschooling

Dear past Hunter,

I write this to you as someone who is about to go into the journey of homeschooling your child through the pandemic. Previously you have held the opinion that homeschooling is stupid. Hunter, nothing about the next 6 months is going to dissuade you from this opinion, in fact, you’ve probably underestimated how unsuited to it you are.

Yes, you do get to be part of your child’s life and there will be some great moments and memories made. But just like ordering McDonalds on Ubereats late at night, the joy will be short lived and not worth the pain.

Right now you are probably thinking, really? I’ve got post-graduate qualifications, that you essentially teach people about psychology to laypeople, you’ve presented at international conferences, won’t that help?

Hunter, these skills, in short, will be useless in your homeschool endeavor. You just need patience, tolerance, and to charge the ipad, for godsake charge the ipad! So your child doesn’t have to use your phone for class leaving you with no link to the outside world.

Remember science experiments? They were fun at school right? They’d be ok wouldn’t they? They are, but they will require you to get odd ingredients, if you have the motivation to find hydrogen peroxide in your one hour of legally allowed shopping time you are a better man than I.

Music, art, learning a language are important and fun parts of a child’s education, but because you’ll be busy arguing about which of the 40 tasks the school uploaded to do each day - you’ll forget to do them.

The good news is that the feeling of failure you are feeling now comes in late during lockdown, and is short lived, as it is replaced by guilt once you talk to other parents who were better at homeschooling than you.

But Hunter, you and your child will survive, and by the end of the school year you’ll have new found appreciation for your child’s school and the teachers who have the patience of saints.

- Future Hunter

A perfectionistic proposal to the personality disorders committee for DSM-6 on the wording of the Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder criteria.

Dear APA,

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is currently in its fifth edition and with each revision changes are made in response to scientific consensus and other concerns to make the DSM more usable in real world settings. The difficulty classifying and describing mental disorders is evident in the need to continually refine and revise the DSM. Each new edition has its strengths and shortfalls that have been well documented.

Recently we have become aware of a shortcoming of the current edition that to our knowledge has not been discussed in the literature to date and it is this that we propose to pontificate about and have prepared a possible solution to the problem. Whilst giving a podcast on the application of the DSM-5 personality disorder criteria to the various persons in the books and films of Harry Potter (by J.K. Rowling) or in the ‘Potterverse’ (https://www.twoshrinkspod.com/podcasts/2019/2/18/41-harry-potter-amp-the-pathological-personalities) it became clear there is a problem in the way the criteria for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder is written.

Currently the criteria are described as such:

“A pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control….”

Clearly those who are reading the DSM-5 about this disorder will be either working with someone who has this particular trait or disorder level pattern of problems. Or will be interested in this disorder because they themselves exhibit traits or full-blown symptomology of this disorder. As such we take issue with the placement of ‘orderliness’ and ‘perfectionism’ and suggest that it will be less upsetting or distressing to the reader/listener with OCPD traits/symptoms if all the words starting with ‘P’ are placed together.

 Specifically reversing the order so it reads:

“A pervasive pattern of preoccupation with perfectionism, orderliness and mental and interpersonal control…”

This would be a particularly minor change but clearly would be a far more satisfying state of affairs for any sufferers of OCPD when reading about the disorder. It would also perhaps give others who do not suffer from this disorder but have to read out such a preposterous prose an understanding of the perfectionistic pressures people with personality problems experience, particularly when having to listen to people perform in public or in a psychology/psychiatry practice.

 We also suggest that a working group be formed to identify other “P” words that could be substituted in the other parts of the OCPD criteria.

Pleasingly the first three criteria contain ‘p’ words (1. Preoccupied, point, 2. Perfectionism, 3. Productivity). But there is a perverse absence of “P” words in the remaining 5 criteria.

Kind regards

Amy Donaldson & Hunter Mulcare

Two Shrinks Pod