Does Jinx have Borderline Personality Disorder?

hi welcome back to the truth doctor show my name is Dr Courtney Tracy I'm known as the truth doctor and on the show I talk about the world through a mental health lens using pop culture and the media as my medium I recently just finished doing the full Deep dive into the first season of League of Legends Arcane it was absolutely incredible throughout that series I also participated in a lot of YouTube commentary on the Amber Heard Johnny Depp trial specifically because Amber Heard was said to meet the criteria for two personality disorders one of them being borderline personality disorder as a therapist that has borderline personality disorder and has overcome many of the symptoms of borderline personality disorder I also got a lot of questions about whether or not arcane's character Jinx powder slash Jinx was showing signs of borderline personality disorder and What treatments may have helped her if this was a real life situation I have those answers let me give them to you while we watch scenes of jinx actually breaking down throughout the arcade in series why why did you do this it didn't I was saving you people who do have borderline personality disorder tend to view other people's facial reactions incorrectly not always incorrectly but what it what we do is we anticipate that the person may be mad at us or maybe judging us the part on our brain that actually responds to threat and aggression and fear in people's faces is located in a part of our brain called the amygdala and some Studies have found that that specific part of the amygdala is actually smaller in people with borderline personality disorder than control groups and what that means is that it can function faulty so it doesn't have as great of connections again the part of our brain that analyzes fear or aggression and faces doesn't really connect to the logical thinking part of our brain especially in moments where we're feeling overwhelmed or we're fearful that we may be abandoned so in this situation when VI already starts moving her body language away from Jinx and turns her head away to in a way not look at her and like remove Jinx from VI's environment that likely already caused powder slash Jinx the future Jinx to cave in you can see she starts to question herself immediately and part of that could be because of her age at this age children are very egocentric so they're very self-oriented if something happened in my environment it must be my fault because we're starting to develop a sense of self which is one of the major difficult criterias of borderline personality disorder is a lack of sense of self which we'll get into so you can see her sort of moving around like this and and she's starting to contemplate and get a little heated because it's it's activating this this threat part of her that the person that she loves is about to leave her they wanted to help he only wanted to help I told you to stay away I told you to stay away so immediately she starts saying please please please not only is she looking around and coming to the realization that that she likely did do something that justifies by not wanting to be around her anymore you can see her begging this is somebody with borderline personality disorders or somebody who's going to develop this disorder's worst fear please don't leave me I already feel so so alone why did you leave me because you're a jinx do you hear me Milo was right such a complicated situation going on right here not only does powder not want Vai to leave her in this moment powder is still stuck on the fact that she doesn't understand why left her in the first place all she was trying to do in this situation was get by and everyone that VI loved and everyone that she cared about to safety but what happened is that powder just inadvertently killed everyone that VI cares about excluding herself she made the mistake of all mistakes and in this moment we can kind of see her grieving a little when she's looking around but more so what she wants to know is why did you leave me and please stop don't leave me again [Music] violet please so as she's reaching her hand out as she returns to saying bye bye but she uses Violet's full name one time and to me what that what that came off as was the most desperate plea possible when we use someone's full name in a moment of very emotional context or during a very emotional experience we are attempting to connect with them more than using a nickname more than using a pronoun more than not using anything to identify them and just saying the statement powder using Violet's full name was her really trying to talk to her sister so I wouldn't say that powder had already developed borderline personality disorder in this scene if anything I actually see part of her plea as a please I don't want to go down this pathway I'm not mentally stable I don't know how to already control myself and I really need somebody to help show me the way and so to me this felt like a plea for her to not become Jinx now let's take a look at another scene in this scene powder has become Jinx after years of perceived abandonment from bi and the taking in of silco we see that powder slash Jinx is in a place where she may be able to reconnect with Bai but then somebody threatens that moment who's she who are you it's okay she's a friend savika wasn't lying you're with an enforcer right here we can see that there is a lack of trust and I think that a lack of trust is one of the main issues that disrupts and creates unstable relationships for people that have borderline personality disorder or other types of personality disorders the fear that Jinx has of being left again the mistrust that she has towards VI for her perceiving that she left in the first place and now having these voices going on the actual voices of people telling her that Vai has chosen this other person it's just gonna make her feel even more abandoned in that moment and that could be perceived as an actual abandonment because there's another person for real standing in her place this is a trick you're playing me shut up foreign stop talking to me like a child there are a lot of times that people that have borderline personality disorder are called toddlers why because at times our emotions can become so overwhelming that we want to release them and at times we can do them in very inappropriate ways and we can see that Jinx has taken out her trauma in many ways that she should not have but she doesn't want to be called a baby she doesn't want to be treated like a toddler she doesn't want to be treated like a child she wants to be seen as the person that learned how to take care of herself because no one else was there so there's no there's one there's this barrier that she doesn't need anybody two there's this fear that she just wants anybody and three there is a perceived threat of Abandonment from the past and an actual threat of abandoned meant because Caitlyn has now taken her place you're a classic Sister Sister thought I missed her but you wouldn't miss her powder I'm here for you only you you can fire that thing if you want but I'm not going anywhere I'm not going to abandon you again I'm not going to abandon you again as soon as Vice says that powder and jinx's Trauma comes back up the memories of that experience of when Bai left her the mistrust the dissociation The psychosis the trauma it surfaces immediately why because that's where the pain is that's where the trauma trigger lies so she says the one thing that she's always wanted to hear she felt Vise arm on her body and it was real it was really real I remember in the episode she even says like are you real and it was such a heartbreaking moment but becoming close with somebody again after everything that you've experienced can honestly make you feel worse because you're so afraid it reminds you of everything that you've been through and then it backfires everyone shut up I need to think that scene ends with Jinx saying I need to think and that makes sense because what's happening is the survival and the emotional part of her brain are significantly activated and we can see that in the animation that the creators want us to know that saying that she needs to think is her trying to activate rationality and logical thinking and that's really important it's very difficult for people that have borderline personality disorder or any type of trauma when they are activated to think rationally and to not be impulsive and to take a moment to ground yourself in internal safety before you make your next decision or your next move now the criteria for borderline personality disorder aren't really that well known and there aren't really great examples let's start with the very brief criteria that I can give you and we'll do some check marks to see if Jinx may or may not meet the criteria for this disorder the first criteria for borderline personality disorder is frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment check the second is a pattern of unstable and intense intercourse no relationships that actually fluctuate between ideation and devaluation meaning that one day somebody will be your favorite person and the next moment you'll absolutely despise them I think we can go with check the third is identity disturbance or a significant lack or feeling of a lack of sense of self I think this is pretty clearly identified in the transition from powder to jinx but in the way where we still see her throughout the whole series going back and forth of course Jinx can represent just generally experiencing trauma and moving from powder into this new being but I also think that it could represent a difficult grounding and a sense of self who am I when people don't see you for who you are in any given moment and push you out of the environment especially at such an important developmental stage of your life like the age that powder was at it can be really difficult to develop a sense of self and to fluctuate back and forth between who do you think you are who do you want to be who do you not want to be and often people with borderline personality disorder can start to mirror the personality of the closest person to them so she moved from bi to silco can you see it all how her behaviors have changed so we're going to go with check the next two are impulsivity and suicidal or self-harming gestures I think impulsivity is an absolute check and in one of the episodes we could actually see Jinx stapling her pants to her own leg because she had a cut in my mind I would consider that self-injurious behavior through the context of Arcane so we're gonna do a check check the next one is mood instability and we can obviously see this fluctuate throughout the series but I think where it's really important to mention is that we saw in that last scene how she paused for a moment and she was capable of almost connecting almost calming down however as soon as she was triggered Again by those thoughts and by the fear and the distrust that this might not last and that's her biggest trauma and her biggest trigger she immediately switched back to violence now it doesn't happen that often I'm trying to kind of explain this through the analysis of Arcane but hopefully you get what I mean also related to mood or are chronic feelings of emptiness and uncontrollable anger uncontrollable anger I often describe as anger that is out of proportion to the situation at hand and usually that's a perceptual issue that again happens in the brain because of the way that we interpret the world and we see this in many situations so we're going to go with the check for sure when it comes to uncontrollable mood and when it comes to feelings of emptiness and you know that's something that's really subjective we'd have to actually talk to jinx if she was in the office with us but overall I think that that feeling of emptiness I know that feeling and so I know that it's different than a lack of sense of self and fear of Abandonment so I don't know maybe we'll put a yellow X there for a maybe and the last one's paranoid ideation or dissociative symptoms and we can definitely see those so there's a check now the thing with actually diagnosing someone with a mental health disorder is that it takes a lot more than just people checking off boxes there are so many symptoms that are related to so many different disorders and somebody could present with all of the symptoms for borderline personality disorder and could not actually have borderline personality disorder they could have another disorder instead so it's really important to keep in mind that even if you related to any of these symptoms it doesn't mean that you have borderline personality disorder it may just mean that you've been struggling and that you need more support around you it could also mean many other things when we are diagnosing people as clinicians we have to rule out medical conditions co-occurring mental health conditions and we have to rule out that it's not this disorder and it's that one instead it's a really long process that takes a lot of work I really relate to jinx I feel like I might be her for Halloween I absolutely love what she looks like and the whole aesthetic should I do that let me know in the comments let me know any questions that you have I'll try to answer some comments and as always I am glad that you exist have a great day [Music]

Channel: The Truth Doctor Show

Views: 25,717

Keywords: Dr. Courtney Tracy, The Truth Doctor, Therapist, Tik Tok Therapist, Tik Tik, Therapy, Mental Health, Mental Health Awareness, Depression, Anxiety, Trauma, Self Healing, bpd, boarderline personality disorder, signs of bpd, is this bpd, identifying bpd, arcane reaction, arcane trailer, Arcane Episode, arcane episode 8 reaction, Arcane Episode 9, season finale, arcane season finale, arcane final episode, arcane finale review, arcane finale reaction, league of legends, jinx

Id: fH0pteW884s

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022