This came across my desk late yesterday - interesting, and so true
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Saturday, 13 December 2014
Sockaholics Anonymous
by Dr. Aloysius Feelgood, BSc.MA. FRSST
The above organisation was recently registered as a charity by a small group of recovering sockaholics to create awareness of this serious condition which can strike anyone who is using social media - anytime and anywhere. It is a psychological which, if not checked will develop into the full blown form of the disease and almost impossible to treat successfully.
Sock Off! or S Off! (our popular slogan) is often only achieved after extensive therapy which may take the form of regression therapy, trauma counselling and various other strategies. The Gestalt therapy has been scrapped as it encouraged the patient to invent new entities instead of releasing the many already in existence.
Regression therapy - past lives memory - can play a part in this condition when the patient is assaulted by multiple personalisties he/she has been in the distant past.
MSD - multiple sock disorder is not the same as multiple personality disorder and therefore needs to be treated as a separate condition, like alcoholism it will only ever be controlled, never cured. Therefore sockaholics say they are recovering, even when a sufferer has taken the life-changing step of losing all of his or her socks. However we find that the mulitple sock/personality disorder persists in many cases, causing the victim to change style and language in mid-post when one dominant alter/sock takes over.
An example of such a post can be seen here:
@ Gormfly: Hello, I’m sorry, you may be wrong about the time of the coffee break on the 2nd of May 2008. I recall an interview in which - whatever, you are wrong, wrong, wrong! Who do you think you are? I’d like to ban you right now, you deleted. ‘ you deleted ...
The above is a sad example from a poster who was running four socks, one of which had psychopathic tendencies. Very distressing for Lambkin, the gentle sock he was using at the start of the post, she never recovered. This type of ‘catastrophic take-over’ by an evil sock entity needs very careful handling if it is to be cured. Exorcism may sometimes be the only solution.
Sockaholism can strike at a moment’s notice. Even members who have posted under a single pseudonym for years may suddenly yearn for a new identity, sometimes only to relieve the boredom of going over the same ground day after day. But they often find it becomes an addiction, impossible to control and why stop at one sock? By the time they start on the second sock, basking in the adoration of their alter egos they are in a downward spiral which will be hard to stop.
How to recognise a sockaholic:
The patient speaks of his/her other identities as separate from him/her
The patient will often have long conversations with his socks, often choosing one or two favourites to support his theories.
Some socks will be dominant and unable to write a post of less than a thousand words, often using coloured inks. (This is a definite throw-back to prep school where pupils were rewarded by being allowed, green, blue and red pens. (My colleague Dr. Spink-Bottle FRSST is at present writing a monogram on this subject.)
These socks frequently claim expert knowledge, Adobe Photoshop and Portuguese law enforcement are popular subjects. They often have any number of children. (these come in useful when the parenting problems of TM are discussed and it’s of course always possible to field a child of the right age and appearance any time this is necessary to support an argument).
Case history: Transcript of consultation with Hortie
‘I’m now taking you back to the first time you wanted to create a sock - take a deep breath and relax - now you are back at the exact moment...’
‘I just - just suddenly didn’t want to be just myself - so I became Flatland - no, I know now. “Nobody was answering me any more and once Flatland joined (note the distancing phrase, Flatland is already another person to Hortie) people started joining in again. But .”
‘Carry on, you’re doing great.’
‘.. then Freddie came along and I had him welcomed by Flatland, but then the others started in the two ‘Fs’ being boring and of course I had to defend both of them then I became -’
‘Take it slowly, you’re safe here - now back to the time with the ‘Fs’ .
‘Yes, that was really lovely because CaringforMaddie came along and she got me in touch with my feminine side and people were much nicer to her and she took a liking to Hortie, who’d come back after a few months. It was a lovely time because Flatland began to be really popular too. Hortie started a really good topic on the length of the skirts Kate McCann wore and found out that she was probably getting paid for advertising British Home Stores Women’s Clothing.’
‘What happened then?’
‘That worked really well, we were getting into the cotton versus linen discussion when I felt I wasn’t doing enough for the forum, so ..’
‘Don’t hurry - all the time in the world..’
‘...so I went through a list of professions and baby names and so on and got three really good avatars, an Alsatian called Rover , a pink kitten called Bubbles who was female of course and the Professor.’ (patient clutches his head - looking distressed).
‘Why does that upset you?’
‘He is really clever, everybody wanted to talk to me. (note the confusion of personal pronouns) They asked me what I was professor in and I have to think of something fast so I chose horticulture. But then they asked me about bougainvillia and I know nothing about gardening byt that didn’t matter because in one post said that it blooms from January to end November and everybody believed the Professor because he is nice to everybody. Somebody even called me a scholar and a gentleman and that what I think I really am. So now I’m the Professor most of the time. Flatland hardly posts anymore and I think Freddie doesn’t like me anymore, he never answers any of my questions. ‘
‘I see, why do you think the Professor is better?’
‘They all believe me now and when I’m asked difficult questions like the angle of the sun in april seven years ago I can find it on the internet with a cut and paste and a few intentional spelling mistakes which Hortie often corrects. He said I’m a typical absent-minded professor - as well as a scholar and a gentleman of course...’ (patient rolls over on his side in foetal position with a smile on his face).
‘I think for today this is enough - you’ve done very well.’ (Consultant looks at his watch, makes a note to round up his time to three hours).
We are leaving Hortie for the moment, but it is clear that he/she (we are not sure yet) is suffering from multiple sock syndrome where one may have as many as ten to twenty socks on the go at the same time. Disillusion sets in when the patient finds after a while that they’ve been talking to themselves and even been rude to their own socks.
Socks often become independent entities, in Hortie’s case by the time the Professor in Horticulture was thanking Hortie for his keen understanding of solar flares neither of them were aware of each other’s identity and were able to pass a lie-detector test when they denied knowing each other.
Posted by tigger at 04:18
Last edited by Sykes on Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:17 pm; edited 1 time in total
