That said, I don't think Chintel actually has a personality disorder,...
I agreed with everything you said until I got to this point.
Chantal
absolutely has a personality disorder. She's a cluster B nightmare, most likely BPD with a hefty side dish of comorbid NPD. I'm not a shrink, and playing one on the internet generally isn't a good idea, but after watching her insanity play out for over a year, and observing just what a deeply,
deeply shitty human being she is, I have total confidence in saying, "Yeah, we've got a cluster B shitshow on our hands."
...or that she needs intensive, long term psych care/treatment.
I agree that she doesn't need intensive, long term psych care/treatment, but only because it would be a complete waste of mental health resources, because she has no interest in changing, and sees no need to. All the noise she's made about going to "psych emerge" is just that; if she actually felt she needed it, she'd go. But she doesn't because all she's really trying to do is manipulate her audience into feeling sorry for her so they don't abandon her--it's classic BPD manipulative bullshit.
Therapy will never work for Chantal because she is fundamentally incapable of being honest with herself, much less anybody else. She's shown no ability to engage in genuine introspection, to recognize her own motivations, or take any responsibility for her own actions. She never, ever learns from her mistakes, and always finds someone or something else to blame when things go to shit. And she's obsessed with controlling how others perceive her and what they say about her--as her all-night comment-deleting sprees attest to.
I honestly think she's just a dumb, narcissistic bitch who needs to get out of the house and do something with humans regularly. Being home and isolated all day, for years on end, messes peoples brains up. Humans need socialization and meaningful work and interaction, or they make themselves go crazy. She obsessively patrols her comment section and spends every waking hour on YouTube because she doesn't have anything else to do, and it's the only venue she has to talk to other people. At least most shuts ins have hobbies where they talk to other people... video games or fandoms or other online communities where they can make friends. She doesn't have that, she just has getting the occasional positive comment on her videos of her talking to herself to look forward to.
If she were to get a job, or volunteer, or go back to school, she'd just take her insanity with her into all of those settings, and all of her interactions with others.
She's stuck home alone all day, with no friends, no lover, no job, and no purpose in life other than stuffing her face and getting attention on YouTube because
this is exactly who Chantal is. Her brain was already messed up, and not having to work or handle any actual responsibility has simply allowed her to be more of who she is. If she wasn't such a profoundly shitty, dishonest, manipulative person, she'd have plenty of friends to go do things with. If she wasn't so stupid, so incompetent, and at the same time so resistant to criticism, and so unable to learn from mistakes, she'd still have a job--maybe even a decent one.
For the sake of every human being who might have to deal with her should she decide to leave the house and actually do something, I think it's best that she stay home and eat enough for five people every day, while obsessively monitoring her comments. Because nobody deserves to deal with her shit (except maybe DeathByJen, Hamberlynn, the Slatons, and other obese YouTube narcissists of their ilk--I'd pay good money to watch a season of Big Brother that put them all in a house together).
Therapy will be the only way Chantal can begin to change her life. Here comes the but.
BUT, it will take years of therapy to achieve this. Years.
Here's the other but: BUT, she will have to be completely honest with herself and with her therapist, accept that she needs to change her default patterns of thought and behavior, and do the difficult, painful work of making those changes.
And that shit? It ain't happening.
She has stated more than once that food is her only comfort & joy in life. She said outright, 'I only want to eat.'
That is perhaps the single most honest thing Chantal has ever said--too bad she's incapable of following that line of thought out to its unpleasant conclusions, and making changes accordingly.
To add to all that, a challenge that a lot of people are confronted with when undergoing therapy is that they need to ask themselves, "Who am I without xx?" Like who am I without binge eating disorder, anxiety, depression blahblahblah...
In cases like Amber's and Chantal's, this question would probably cause them more distress than the average patient because they've made careers out of their self-diagnosed disorders. They're both fat women who eat and lie on camera--they've developed no other skills because being a train-wreck was all they needed to be to get by. They're incentivized to stay sick because what would they realistically do otherwise?
This is exactly what's going on with DeathByJen (occasionally discussed in the Fat Acceptance thread), who has been obese, disabled, and housebound for most of her adult life. Her mother was her caretaker until she passed away, and Jen suddenly had to fend for herself, make all the big decisions, and be the responsible one. She did manage to lose a lot of weight--she was 600lbs, lost 200, and started to regain some mobility, but since then she's just about gained it all back, and uses an electric wheelchair to get around, even in her apartment, even while cooking. She makes videos about her "weight-loss journey," which has gone absolutely nowhere, and to be honest I don't believe it's ever going to go anywhere.
Because what would Jen do if she actually lost weight, regained mobility, and was able to get surgery for the currently-inoperable stage 1 endometrial cancer she claims to have? Her world would open up. The expectations placed on her would be much higher, perhaps higher than they have ever been. She might lose her disability tugboat, and section 8 apartment, and be expected to...
get a job.
Jen's had caretakers/enablers, in one form or another, for so long, and, like Chantal, has no interests or skills besides stuffing her face, lying about it, and getting pity for being the poor, sick fatgirl who can't help it if she binge eats. So now she's joined the YouTube fatty shut-in brigade, and has got fatter since doing so. Funny how that works.
If they stay on youtube, they'll constantly be triggered by the decrease in their viewership. They don't have jobs, they don't have constructive hobbies, no predictable source of income (what entry-level job would they even be able to get at their size and limited mobility?)...They have to start from scratch. That's pretty scary for anyone. And for someone like Chantal or Amber--people who only go for immediate gratification and have no patience or willpower whatsoever--trying to tackle a challenge like that is inconceivable. They wouldn't follow through with therapy regardless of what anyone says because it's just too much for them.
Where they're each going to end up (if they don't just up and die first) is in state-run nursing homes, and that's a special kind of hell I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Each of them is eating her way toward immobility, full speed ahead. None of them have anybody in their lives willing or able to house and care for them, should they become completely bedbound, especially with no steady income--as soon as the YouTube bucks prove inadequate, Necky will be gone and Hamberlynn's on her own. Chantal might try to get Peetz to let her move in because she sees him as a resource, and doesn't believe he'd abandon her, but that he's resisted it so far suggests to me that it's not going to happen. Chantal's mother is just as fucked-up and self-absorbed as Chantal is; she's not going to do it. And Chantal's sister? Ha! Dream on. Same goes for DeathByJen, who has no family left, and only a long-distance boyfriend, who she's never met IRL (and who she may have broken up with anyway).
Each one of them had better hope the YouTube gravy train keeps rolling along right up until they pop off to the great Arby's/Cheesecake Factory/Krispy Kreme in the sky; even if they keep their viewer counts up, there's always the chance they'll end up demonetized under some new policy or other, and shit will get ugly fast if they do.
I know keto is one of Amberlynn's boogeymen but has Chantal ever actually tried it? If not, I hope she really gives keto a shot and has some success. Or meltdowns. Whichever.
