Please, if you can, take a moment to read and share this because I feel like I'm screaming underwater.
NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) stigma is rampant right now, and seems to be getting progressively worse. Everyone is using it as a buzzword in the worst ways possible, spreading misinformation and hatred against a real disorder.
I could go on a long time about how this happened, why it's factually incorrect (and what the disorder actually IS), why it's harmful, and the changes I'd like to see. But to keep this concise, I'll simply link to a few posts under the cut for further reading.
The point of this post is a plea. Please help stop the spread of stigma. Even in mental health communities, even around others with personality disorders, in neurodivergent "safe" spaces, other communities I thought people would be supportive in (e.g. trans support groups, progressive spaces in general), it keeps coming up. So I'm willing to bet that a lot of people on this site need to see this.
Because it's so hard to exist in this world.
My disorder already makes me feel as if I'm worthless and unlovable, like there's something inherently wrong and damaged about me. And it's so much harder to fight that and heal when my daily life consists of:
Laughing and spending time with my friends, doing my utmost best to connect and stay present and focused on them, trying to let my guards down and be real and believe I'm lovable- when suddenly they throw out the word "narcissist" to describe horrible people or someone they hate, or the conversation turns to how evil "people with narcissistic personality disorder" are. (Seriously, you don't know which of your friends might have NPD and feels like shit when you say those things & now knows that you'd hate them if you knew.)
Trying to look up "mental health positivity for people with npd", "mental health positivity cluster bs", only to find a) none of that, and b) more of the same old vile shit that makes me feel terrible about myself.
Having a hard time (which is constant at this point) and trying to look up resources for myself, only to again, find the same stigma. And no resources.
Not having any clue how to help myself, because even the mental health field is spitting so much vitriol at people with DISORDERS (who they're supposed to be helping!) that there's no solid research or therapy programs for people like me.
Losing close friends when they find out, despite us having had a good relationship before, and them KNOWING me and knowing that I'm not like the trending image of pwNPD. Because now they only see me through the lens of stigma and misinformation.
Hearing the same stigma come up literally wherever I go. Clubs. Meetings. Any online space. At the bus stop. At the mall. At a restaurant. At work. Buzzword of the year that everyone loooves loudly throwing around with their friends or over the phone. Feels awesome for me, makes my day so much better/s
I could go on for a long time, but I'm scared no one will read/rb this if it gets too much longer.
So please. Stop using the word "narcissist" as a synonym for "abusive".
Stop bringing up people you hate who you believe to have NPD because of a stigmatizing article full of misinformation whenever someone with actual NPD opens their mouth. (Imagine if people did that with any other disorder! "Hey, I'm autistic." "Oh... my old roommate screamed at me whenever I made noise around him, and didn't understand my needs, which seems like sensory overload and difficulty with social cues. He was definitely autistic. But as long as you're self-aware and always restraining your innate desire to be an abusive asshole, you're okay I guess, maybe." ...See how offensive and ignorant that is?)
Stop preventing healthcare for people with a disorder just because it's trendy to use us as a scapegoat.
If you got this far, thank you for reading, and please share this if you can. Further reading is under the cut.
NPD Criteria, re-written by someone who actually has NPD
Stigma in the DSM
Common perception of the DSM criteria vs how someone may actually experience them (Keep in mind that this is the way I personally experience these symptoms, and that presentation can vary a lot between individuals)
"Idk, the stigma is right though, because I've known a lot of people with NPD who are jerks, so I'm going to continue to support the blockage of treatment for this condition."
(All of these were written by me, because I didn't want to link to other folks' posts without permission, but if you want to add your own links in reblogs or replies please feel free <3)
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Friendly (or unfriendly if you're against this) reminder that this blog is supportive of ALL disorders. This blog does not think ANY disorder inherently makes someone a bad person, and is against any disorder being demonized. This blog wholeheartedly believes that a bad person having a disorder, yes, even if things that are also symptoms of their disorder are part of what caused harm, does not make the disorder a "bad" or "evil" disorder or excuse ableism and demonization directed towards the disorder.
Yes this includes personality disorders
Including npd and aspd
Yes this includes all psychotic disorders & disorders that cause psychotic symptoms
Yes this includes paraphilic disorders. All of them.
Yes this includes disorders that cause, or are even characterized by, attention seeking
Yes this includes disorders that directly have lying as a common symptom
Yes this includes dissociative disorders
Yes this includes any disorder with "gross" symptoms
Yes this includes physical disorders too
Yes this includes disorders that can cause loss of control of any kind- control of speech, control of body movement, etc.
Yes tis includes disorders that make someone "look scary"
This goes for literally any fucking disorder. There are not exceptions.
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Random reminder that I HATE Plushie Dreadful!! Those mental illness/disabilities plushes? Typically rabbits? There's been a lot of criticism over them about ableism in the past. Personal feelings about disorders being marketed, formerly partnering with Autism Speaks, etc. But one thing people don't seem to notice is the ableism towards schizophrenics, narcissists, and antisocials! This site with a bunch of beautifly designed rabbit stuffed animals decided to make the schizophrenic and antisocial plushes noticably creepier than most others. The antisocial one at the very least came out cuter than the concept art. But the schizophrenic one is openly based on serial killers. And NPD? The official Twitter account made a poll about what the design should be, made degrading comments about narcissists, and liked comments by people making fun of narcissists. In the end, in order to not make the npd plush TOO special or unique looking, made it a plain brown rabbit with a paper crown (openly saying it's because pwnpd aren't actually special or deserving of a real one). When contacted by pwnpd with criticism/feedback, like they say they accept, they ignored it
Ableism towards disorders people find "scary" or "bad" is still ableism!!! It's still shitty!!!
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avoidance is so weird because it’s so temptingly easy to pretend it’s not there when it’s not at its absolute worst.
when i’m at my lowest, my avoidance becomes volatile and dangerous — it means almost daily mental breakdowns, it means probably wanting to hurt myself or worse, it’s means things are bad bad. but times like now? where i’m in a better place and i don’t have to interact with people often enough to trigger it too badly? it’s easy to pretend i’m fine.
and that’s not because i don’t have symptoms — there’s a big glaring reason i don’t have a job yet, that i stay in the house pretty much every day and (aside from the family i live with) only ever see my safe person, that there’s a million important doctor calls i haven’t made yet, that i have my name change papers all ready to go but haven’t changed any of my documents yet. the avoidance is obviously still there and still causing problems, and i know my life doesn’t look how it should.
but because it’s not destroying my default mental state right now, it feels like i’m lying to myself and i’m totally mentally healthy and i have nothing to worry about. and when i see my therapist, the way i describe things sounds like there’s nothing going wrong in my life because there’s no active bad shit, just a lot of things that aren’t happening. and how do you quantify the absence of something?
how do i explain that the problem isn’t that i’m unhappy, it’s not that there’s bad things to fix, it’s just that most of the time, there’s nothing at all? that i’m mostly happy because i don’t have much of a life right now, and if i were to get my life to a better place from a practical standpoint i would almost definitely be thrown back into a worse mental state?
i’m trying to find a balance that allows me to have a decent life and decent mental health, but god, it’s hard to do when it would be so much easier and less exhausting to just stay stagnant forever and hold onto the relative peace that comes with that.
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Hey everyone! this is where the zebra is currently with the design.
It has knee braces!! I will most probably be drawing the zebra usually with them on, but it’s no requirement, for example if anyone else wants to draw the zebra :-]. I always like to make sure an animal design has official colors underneath any clothing and accessory anyway. I think this will be final! thank you everyone for your feedback!
As a reminder, aside from why the zebra was requested for this flag, this is also just a zebra with the disability pride flag on it. It’s just a deisgn to fit the flag, with input from other disabled people in our community. It doesn’t mean other animals can’t have designs with these colors, too! I don’t mean this design to be the only mascot for all disabled people. It’s just a silly series i do of pride animals, and at the time, during disability pride month, I wanted to see what everyone wanted me to start off with for this flag!
the goal with my pride animals is to take requests and make people feel happy and seen.. that’s all <:-)
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