The Worst

A friend and I got into a discussion the other day about what we'd be the worst at, jobwise. We have decided she'd be a terrible lawyer and I, the worst therapist ever. Not that I'm unsympathetic to people's problems or dismissive of therapy, I simply think I'd be really really bad at it. I have the wild idea that if someone's been in therapy for the whole of their memory, it's probably not working very well and you might want to try something like woodworking or maybe painting happy little trees. That guy always seemed pretty Zen to me. I'm not saying that therapy won't help people, I just think we're going a bit overboard giving everyone's every quirk or eccentricity a diagnosis and corresponding treatment. Think about the acronyms that are commonplace now that we all managed to grow up without. We have ADD, ADHD and OCD, we all pretty much know what these are, but a simple internet search for "psychological disorders" brings up a menu to rival that of the mother of all snooty restaurants. I have found "Conduct Disorder" (we used to call them bullies), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (rebels), Separation Anxiety Disorder (mama's boys), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (we used to call them grownups), Avoidant Personality Disorder (we called them shy), my personal favorite, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (supermodels, actors...Danny Bonaduce?) and a host of others to choose from. I read recently that internet addiction is now an actual disorder. Does this mean I get to send my internet bill to my insurance company? Sign me up for that one!
If we could channel the time and money spent on thinking up new disorders, I think we could cure damn near everything. I'm planning to apply for a goverment grant to think up new disorders to explain away all of our bad behaviors. How cool would that be? We'd never be held responsible for anything because there would be an officially recognized disorder we could trot out to get us out of our every misdeed.