LIVING WITH CBD

 

An Ordinary Man Gives An Inside Look At Crazy Bitch Disorder

 MUNCIE, June 11, 2009 | by Rhapee Kanasta

“It’s my CBD.”

I hear that from women friends and colleagues who half-jokingly use the term “CBD” to describe their over-the-top bitchy behavior – but they don’t actually have crazy bitch disorder. True CBD can be a devastating personality flaw. Women who suffer from CBD have intrusive, uncontrollable bitchy thoughts and severe bitchy behavior centered around the need to perform repetitive bitchy rituals, or “bitchuals.” These behaviors can be physical – such as throwing things, or they can be mental – such as quietly resenting the man in your life. CBD interferes with normal daily activities – like house cleaning and cooking dinner – and persists despite most bitchy women realizing, deep down, that they are being “a total bitch.”

CBD affects 90 percent of the world’s female women. We’ve seen characters with the disorder portrayed in television (e.g., Kyra Sedgwick’s Brenda Lee Johnson) and in film (e.g., Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in “Alien”). Yet CBD is still associated with stigma, shame, and an alarming level of ignorance on part of the very women who likely suffer from it.

In the seminal article on the subject, Dr. Clint Mantooth offers three helpful questions for women to ask themselves if they suspect they suffer from CBD: “Am I ever angry about some thoughtless thing my boyfriend or husband did?” “Do I ever feel that my boyfriend or husband takes me for granted?” And “Would I be upset if my boyfriend or husband had sex with another woman, especially a younger, prettier one?” Dr. Mantooth suggests that answering “yes” to any of these questions should prompt a likely diagnosis of CBD.

To find out more, I interviewed Richard “Dick” Johnson, an electrician with five children and a really bitchy wife.  Dick poignantly told me about the mental anguish associated with men living in close contact with a woman who has CBD, and how it threatened to sabotage his career, personal life and his time watching Sci Fi on television. Dick’s wife’s CBD focused on his failure to clean up after himself, his refusal to help care for the children, his chronic inability to lift the toilet seat and his habit of not listening to anything his wife said to him while he watches television.

“Oh yeah, and my wife hates it when I leave nearly empty containers in the refrigerator, like milk cartons. She is always bitching at me about that,” Dick said.

 Dick decided to do something about it.  He began what became ground-breaking research that could eventually lead to a cure.

 “I learned that crazy bitch disorder has been around for a long time, but has never been recognized as a mental illness,” Dick said. “It was excused as a mood, or ‘that time of the month’ and treated with alcohol and, more recently, with pharmacuticals like Valium and Xanax.  But now that men know that it really isn’t their fault, there is hope,” Dick said before falling asleep on his family room couch.

Dick’s message is that other men can learn what he did – that it is all his wife’s fault – but only those who ask for help can find it.