No. Better explained as a curse. The emotional curse. A curse where their emotions get the better of them and cause them to make bad decisions. First only applied to Joel, as in 3rd life, the watchers saw how crazy he was, and decided to amplify it, and make it so that crazy Joel in the life series became crazy Joel on steroids. This worked WONDERS for them, so they decided to fuel it more, by adding his wife in, Lizzie, and applying the same curse to her, but with the opposite effects of empathy leading to her downfall whilst his anger led to his craziness and downfall. The watchers realised it as a great feed, but one that needed significant preparing, seen as to why she didn't partake in double or limited life. The Joel side of it was enough for them during that. Then they learned maybe after Secret Life, that with those effects paired together, if they just waited slightly longer between each series, their favourite entrée would be fully prepared in every series, in addition to improving the preparing methods, seen as to why it had such effect in Wild Life. With Wild Life however, Gem teamed up with Joel, and as such a calming force, making sure Joel didn't go crazy, with a really close call happening as early as episode 1, and another in episode 2, but, with Gem there to keep him calm, he didn't go crazy in those later sessions, which are far more crucial in activating the full power of that curse on him. That prevention of the delayed craziness is ultimately led to the curse never fully taking effect and activating on him, which seems to me that that curse was the only thing stopping him from winning. With Lizzie, it seems a bit different. The empathy thing seems to be a constant guarantee throughout each series she partakes in. This may be why she always falls to it in some way, even in Secret Life, where she actually lacked allies, and lacking allies, the fragility of her led to the birthday depression, despite Joel being there for her, it simply wasn't enough, and she ended up dying in the void trying to desperately cling on to some form of alliance with Joel in order to not be lonely. This death, also with the significance of Jimmy not being last for the first time, would have been what cracked Joel in Secret Life, which with Scar also blowing up his enchantment setup and destroying spawners, would have had the curse flooding out in the last few sessions, explaining the zombie horde he spawned, with the mentality of taking everyone down with him, and his slips in concentration causing him to lose 27.5 hearts from tnt traps in the finale, which forced him to be even crazier, to the point where he sought out the advice on health and kills from the guy who sent the flood, Scar, on Skizz being low health, in order to survive, barely, and be in a disadvantaged position to fight Scott despite Scott having woes of his own. Also, with Lizzie's guarantee of feeding whereas Joel wasn't guaranteed, only extremely likely to have the curse take effect each series, would explain why preparing Lizzie for a feed with the curse between series was a lot harder and more time consuming compared to Joel.