#several personality disorders. one of which was NPD.

[kindnessoverperfection]

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)

#actuallynpd #signal boost #actuallyautistic #mental health awareness #narcissistic personality disorder #people also need to realize that mental health professionals aren't immune from bias #(it really shouldn't come as a shock that the mental health field has a longstanding pattern of misunderstanding and mistreating ppl who ar #mentally ill or otherwise ND) #the first therapist i brought up NPD to like. literally pulled out the DSM bc she could barely remember the criteria. then said that there' #no way I have it because I have low self-esteem lmaoooooo #anyway throwback to being at work and chatting with a co-worker. and the conversation turning to mental health. and him saying that #he tries to stay informed and be aware and supportive of mental health conditions & that he doesn't want to be ignorant or spread harmful #misinformation. and then i mentioned that i do a lot of research into mental health stuff and i listed a bunch of things. which included #several personality disorders. one of which was NPD. #and after listening to my whole ass list he zeroed in on the NPD and immediately started talking about how narcissists are abusive and #he knew someone who had NPD and how the person who had it had an addiction and died from the addiction in a horrible way and he #was glad he did #fun times #or when i decided to be vulnerable and talk abt my self-criticism/self-hatred bc i knew my friends also struggled w that and i wanted to #support them by sharing my own coping methods. and they both(separately!) started picking and prodding at my npd through the lens of stigma #bc i'd recently opened up to them abt having it. they recognized self-hatred as a symptom and still jumped on me for it. despite me #trying to share hurt vulnerable parts of myself to help them and connect with them. #again..... fun times

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids,

Can you have a healthy relationship with a narcissist?

Well, if you trust many social media posts, then the answer would be a resounding "No". Narcissistic is - apparently - a synonym for abusive, and of course you can't have a healthy relationship with an abusive partner!

But, well, social media is not always right. A lot of topics get oversimplified, terms get misused and black-or-white thinking is rampant - and "narcissistic means abusive" falls into all three of those pits.

Let's look at it a bit closer: "Abusive" describes a set of behaviors - while narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) describes, well, a personality disorder. It's a mental health condition.

I am not a trained mental health professional, so I'll use a medical source here. According to mayoclinic.org (link to article), symptoms and their intensity may vary from one affected person to the next (just like the exact symptoms and severity of depression or anxiety may vary!). A person with NPD may

have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance

have an excessive need for attention and admiration

have low/no empathy (struggle to understand or care about the feelings of others)

have low self-worth

be easily upset by criticism

struggle with social interactions

have difficulty managing their emotions

experience major problems dealing with stress 

And, again just like with other mental health conditions, NPD can negatively affect the person in a lot of areas of life. For example, struggling to manage their emotions and stress levels may make it hard for them to hold down a job and cause financial worries, or they may avoid participating in social events, which may lead to them becoming isolated and depressed etc. And yes, of course some symptoms may also lead to problems in romantic relationships.

Therapy for NPD usually centers around talk therapy, with the goal of helping the person to better understand and manage their emotions, to learn how to cope with self-worth issues, and to create/maintain healthy fulfilling relationships and communication with the people around them.

Now, you can look at all this and go "See? The social media posts are right! They are self-centered, have no empathy and are easily upset! That's abusive!" - but that'd be jumping to conclusions. None of those things are behaviors.

An autistic person may also easily get upset and they may also feel low empathy. So could a person with major depression. Yet, we do not treat "autistic" or "depressed" as a synonym for abusive. We do not assume that their symptoms will definitely lead to abusive behavior. So, why would that be different for people with NPD?

Am I saying no person with NPD has ever been abusive? Of course not. That'd be black-or-white thinking, too. What I am saying is: People with NPD are people. And people can show abusive behavior or they can not.

If someone who easily feels upset hits you, that's abuse... but hitting would be abuse, even if they didn't feel easily upset. A partner with or without NPD shouldn't be hitting you. If someone with no empathy degrades and insults you, that's abusive... but that would be abuse regardless of their ability to feel empathy. A partner with or without NPD shouldn't be degrading and insulting you.

A person could have NPD and behave abusive - but "some people are X and Y, so all people who are X must be Y" is a flawed logic.

So, let's circle back to the beginning: can you have a healthy relationship with a narcissist? Yeah. It will be a relationship with someone who has a mental health condition and that's something to be aware of because mental health conditions do affect everyday life (duh?).

You should set boundaries and take warning signs of abuse seriously - like you should do when you date anyone, regardless of health status.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

#lgbt #lgbt+ #obviously not a lgbt specific topic but I wanted to talk about it

[radiostaticsmile]

On Alters and Personality Disorders

Disclaimer that I am not a researcher and this is based on my understanding of different studies and of my own personal experience being a system with personality disorders and knowing systems with personality disorders

Often I see the question can on alter have a personality disorder that other alters do not. It seems to be hotly debated without a real answer, most people just extrapolate because studies on that specifically are hard to find and combine knowledge of systems and personality disorders but be used to make an inference. I am going to be doing the same thing here, 

However one thing that I have not seen anyone mention that has greatly helped my understanding of this topic is the idea which has begun to exist relatively recently within psychology that personality disorders are really all the same thing at its core, a disorder which occurs in response to trauma, and the specific symptoms and disorder you will be diagnosed with is dependant on which survival methods worked best for the traumatizing situation that the person was in. 

For example in situations where it was dangerous and likely to get the victim hurt by their abuser to care about the abusers feelings they will likely develop a PD with low empathy like NPD or ASPD. For situations where avoiding the abuser was possible and the best method something like AVPD may occur. And those who need to be highly attuned to their abusers emotional state and weather they get hurt or not depends on how the abuser is feeling may develop BPD. This is an over simplification but you get the picture. 

Dissociative disorders are also caused by trauma. And abuse is complicated, so different survival strategies may work at different times, and using a method that works sometimes will actively get you abused more at other times. For singlets this can cause more than one personality disorder with symptoms that mix and overlap. For dissociative systems, this can mean different alters present different symptoms. Alters will often form because the system needs different survival strategies in different situations, and different alters will fill those roles. So it makes sense some alters will have symptoms of a personality disorder that another alter does not have. One alter may fit enough criteria for a diagnoses of a specific personality disorder while others may be missing key aspects of the disorder, so in tis way I do think it is possible. You can say they are just symptom holders and the whole system has it, or you can say just they have it, its really just arguing semantics at that point, since it is fairly clear within the community that many systems have alters who meet diagnostic criteria while other alters in the same system do not.

I do think it is possible for an alter to have a specific personality disorder that is not system wide, because specific personality disorders are not really separate from each other, but rather which symptoms do you present, and different alters present different symptoms. However, I also think that if any alter has a personality disorder, everyone in the system would most likely have a personality disorder of some kind (unless they have a highly specialized role or are a fragment that would prevent this, but the system as a whole would still be personality disordered). This is because the trauma changing the brain that created the personality disorders affects the whole system. It can affect different alters differently, and some specific symptom sets may be contained to only a few alters, but being personality disordered in general would affect everyone, or at least that is what I have come to believe based on my experience and research. 

It also seems like just based on what I have seen that alters will frequently gravitate around a few presentations/specific disorders that show up in several alters, like a system of six may have 5 with BPD, and 3 of those also have NPD (meaning 2 with both), more likely than every alter having an extremely different disorder presentation from each other, and then varying symptoms between alters within those subsets of symptoms. This however is not based on any research and is just personal experience since this topic really hasn't been studied enough.

This is not meant to invalidate or dictact any one else's experience or beliefs around the topic but I haven't seen anyone discuss the theory that personality disorders are a single disorder with highly varied presentation and I wanted to add that idea to the conversation.

#npd symptom holder #system #did #plural system #osdd #personality disorder #symptom holder #symptom holders #essay #now broadcasting #personality disorders

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

im sorry for the rant but im just really fucking tired and i guess that blog from that last ask set off smth in our brain so just tw talk about ableism and abuse ect ect yknow

anyways people who demonize people with cluster b pds are genuinely just the most annoying mfs on the planet theres an extremely high likelyhood both my parents are cluster b (my mom possibly having bpd and my dad possibly having npd) and theyve both been horrifically abusive throughout my entire life and you will never in a million fucking years catch me demonizing innocent people or blaming all that abuse on their disorders. i can fucking acknowledge that my parents' untreated mental health issues affected the way they raised me and abused me without pinning all the blame soley on those mental health issues. my dad ACTIVELY chose not to get help, he ACTIVELY chose to go off the medication he was given, he ACTIVELY made the decision to be a raging abusive bigot who abused and neglected his child and fucking traumatized every person he came into contact with. that was his fucking decision, possible npd and other mental health issues be damned.

and like besides the fact that i think my dad possibly had npd, he was actually dx with bipolar disorder and adhd, both of which severely affected how he raised me but you dont see me going fucking "bipolar abuse!!! adhd abuse!!!" i believe my fathers intense hyperfixations on certain things led him to emotionally neglect me as a very young child and be generally emotionally absent BUT AGAIN you will never see me fucking calling what he did "adhd abuse" and also he fucking chose to not spend time with me, he chose to not be there for me even when he couldve been. my father was a physically, emotionally, psychologically abusive and neglectful piece of shit and i fucking refuse to ever call when he did "narcissistic abuse" because i refuse to ever let a disorder he possibly had take away responsibility for the pain he caused me and so many other people in my life. he could have been better. he fucking chose not to be better. i will not fucking do the same.

im just so fucking angry that ive been out here experiencing all the shit these fuckers are talking about and i still managed to not demonize innocent people with disorders they didnt ask to have who did absolutely fucking nothing to no one. rant over. love you all go drink some water

#not culture #ableism tw #abuse tw #neglect tw #ask to tag #again sorry for the rant i think i just got a bit worked up💀 #❓

[teratophilia]

Hazbin Hotel features a set of characters that could be handled as representations of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. However, the first one I want to cover is the one I personally see as the most visibly narcissistic of them all, and it is Vox.

My analysis comes from personalized experience of someone who has NPD, I don't have any interest in purely relying on shallow clinical criteria. Guessing characters' mental state has nothing to do with proper diagnosing of real life people, so do your homework if you suspect NPD in yourself.

His most obvious trait is that Vox craves attention.

Not only is he a TV star, which automatically places him in the position of someone in power, but he is also quite popular. From S1xE2 we see that he is gloating once he's placed in the center of attention. He navigates the social field easily, always knows what to say and how to perform.

While not every narcissist is going to have a good grip of social skills as we come in many configurations and some of us might have co-occurring conditions that limit our social skills, performativeness is a big aspect of NPD. For different reasons, many of those being due to personal traumas, we are often set on performing in public.

In Vox, we see this performativity pretty much constantly, but mostly when he's about to talk to Valentino and when he's talking to the press.

Craving attention and being good at social presentation, of course, are parts of NPD-coding but not the whole. When Vox talks to others, we get a glimpse of his manipulative side. He very clearly knows what other people want and how to pull their strings: he's a TV host, after all!

However, hypnotizing your audience is one thing. Slowly manipulating Valentino is, however, another. Whether it's because he's with Val or not, but it's rather easy for Vox to find his weak spots and push until even a character as manipulative as Valentino gives in and does as told.

Not every narcissist is a skilled manipulator. However, some of us possess an abiltiy to read other people's emotions and moods rather well, usually due to severe trauma. Vox seems to always know what others want to hear from him, and that allows him to have his reputation remain flawless: "Our brand is perfection."

Not only does Vox strive to be perfect in his own definition of the word, but he also seems to have an eye for potential in others. During their meeting about Alastor's return from his 7-year-long "vacation", it's Vox who proposes the idea to have an infiltrating agent at the Hotel; he is also the one who knows the candidate.

Now, this is something only some narcissists including myself do: some of us are capable of "sorting" people out into different categories based on our subjective views on their "importance". Some people fall into a category of our equals, for Vox it's clearly Velvette and Valentino. Some individuals end up being seen as inferior, which Pentious is to Vox, and some are seen as the desirable - or loathed - superior.

Depending on where the person falls in a narcissist's hierarchy, they can be seen as someone who is deeply cared for (pwNPD can have Favorite People), loathed on sight, or exists as white noise: having no influence on a narcissist's life whatsoever.

It's hard to tell whether Vox sees Alastor as someone above him or, on the contrary, someone below him trying to get ahead of him, but their rivalry is rather on the nose. Whether secret admiration or not, but Vox feels a lot when it comes down to Alastor, and it is demonstrated through his targeted, very pointed competitiveness.

Many narcissists are competitive: sometimes out of a genuine belief in our perfection, sometimes out of deeply rooted insecurity and fear of falling behind. In Vox's case, it seems like he worked hard (in his perception) to get where he is. He built himself an empire, spent time changing the rules of the game. Alastor's quick, almost effortless return to high position of control after years of absence seems to deeply disturb him. Alastor's comment on Vox's popularity being there only because of Velvette and Valentino seems to sting him a lot. Now, it is true that TV is not needed unless it offers content provided by other people. Unlike Alastor, Vox isn't a sole performer in his field.

With that being said, I will make a big assumption and state that Vox might have an insecurity regarding his standing and what helps him hold up the high position he acquired.

The depth of his hatred for his rival, his noticeable presence in the social sphere, his possible insecurity in his position that he covers up with perfectionism and excessive drive for public admiration, his ability to read people's emotions and behaviors - all of these things are the reasons why I consider Vox the most visibly narcissistic character in the series.

Something that I like about NPD!Vox is that he has a circle of people who like him outside of just public attention. Velvette and Valentino seem to have a lot of genuine moments with him, and that's very comforting to see as narcissistic characters often tend to get demonized.

While still antagonistic, Vox seems to have shades to himself. We don't see him actively participate in excessive violence like some other overlords, and he overall seems to stick to his line of work. Whether or not he is about to remain one of the morally grey characters in the show, or if he's about to go through an arc that shows more of his caring side is still unclear. At the end of the day, he is still a character either hated or deeply admired.

#𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐍𝐎𝐖: 📡 #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel meta #hazbin hotel vox #character analysis #characters with npd #npd #narcissistic personality disorder

[a-sip-of-milo]

Is it okay to self-diagnose with npd? I'm looking for a proper diagnosis FOR YEARS and nobody gave me any answer, and so after years of research i found out about npd, digged deeper into it and realised i reeeally relate to most of the symptoms and experiences of some narcs that talk about their disorders online. However, some people say that narcs can't self diagnose because of their inability of seeing anything wrong about themselves?? Is that true?? I'm so so so confused, especially that I'm pretty sure I'm not a heartless person with intentions to exploit everyone around me, like some sources portray NPD. Thank you so much if you decide to answer this and if you decide not to, at last thank you for reading it

As long as you’ve done the proper research, which it sounds like you have, self-diagnosing with NPD is no worse than diagnosing yourself with anything else! (I am very much in support of self-diagnosis, for reference)

The idea that narcissists see nothing wrong with themselves is a myth. I’ve got several friends with NPD who, alongside being their own biggest hype person, are actually their own biggest critic! No one judges them harder than they judge themselves. No one sees their flaws more clearly than they see them.

#npd #npd safe #cluster b safe #cluster b #ask

[cluster-b-culture-is]

hey!!! if its ok i’d like you’re thoughts on something ig and to sorta ask you something

so im bodily 15 atm, and i have cptsd. when i look at posts regarding certain cluster b experiences (possibly some cluster c aswell) i relate a LOT (obviously im not saying that bc i relate that i have these disorders, i just kinda have a feeling that *something* is going on). its tricky bc i keep looking into things and i cant really find an answer. i also dont know if im too young and that its just because im a teenager.

i wont get into like what “symptoms” i experience rn bc i feel like thats a whole other conversation but yeah.

i hope i dont sound like one of those people that are like “i must have x bc i related to a silly video i saw” im just really confused and i feel like something aint right

i know you’re probably not professionals so feel free to delete or ignore this if its too much, but if not, what do you think?

So, here's the thing (and we will attempt to avoid being patronizing): It is absolutely correct that your age and emotional/psychological development can affect things, and that the process of development can cause things that look like mild symptoms. It's also correct that that combined with c-ptsd (and any other disorders you may have; you'd be surprised how many symptoms and comorbidities autism, ADHD, NPD, and BPD all share) can make it extremely hard to determine where your symptoms are coming from and whether there might be something more.

(You're also correct that we are not professionals; this is all coming from our own research and personal experiences, so as with everything, take this with a grain of salt.)

However. I would argue that it would be far more harmful to deny any possibility of having a personality disorder until you reach some arbitrary age threshold than it would be to say that you do have a PD. Especially if looking at your life experiences through the lens of having a PD is helpful, and if resources for pw/[x]PDs are helpful to you. Even if you don't end up having a PD, that doesn't mean you were just a hormonal stupid teenager refusing to listen to the Adults™ or whatever the fuck--it means that you looked at your experiences, found something that seemed similar, and it turned out that you were wrong; but hopefully, along the way, you found things that were helpful.

Under the assumption that you have done a lot of research, I would personally recommend saying that you have traits of a particular disorder as opposed to saying you have the full disorder, and that is to two ends: one, a lot of adults with PDs (especially in ASPD spaces, if that's one of the disorders you're looking at) will kick your shit to hell and back if you even insinuate that you think you may have the full disorder (which I think is extremely counterintuitive if we want teenagers to understand their experiences and, yknow, not develop a full-blown personality disorder, regardless of whether you think teenagers can have a full personality disorder); and two, it might help you target the specific symptoms that you're experiencing without saddling you with the belief[/knowledge] that you have an incredibly stigmatized and lifelong disorder.

A lot of this stuff depends on a few things: (A) what your symptoms are (and if they can be better explained by other things, especially other things you know you have); (B) how severe your symptoms are (like the difference between being generally grouchy versus being actively hostile); and (C) how long your symptoms have lasted (if they only started popping up in the past few months or the past year versus if you've had them for years and years).

If you end up not having a personality disorder, anon, I think it will still be better for you in the long run to explore the possibility instead of shrugging it off under the excuse that you're "too young". It could turn out that you never had the disorder and it really was something else, it could turn out that you have traits but not the full disorder, or, hell, it could turn out that, by using resources and support you found by being part of communities surrounding PDs, you ended up not developing the full PD (even if you may still have a few traits)--because, at this age, you are still developing, and you are changing a lot, and very little is set in stone when it comes to these types of things--and you should absolutely take advantage of that! And even then, speaking from a more selfish perspective, it will never be a bad thing for more people to understand what it may be like to have a personality disorder.

For a bit of actionable advice on determining whether or not you may have one, though:

(1) Do your research. Obviously it's great that you're getting information from people with the disorders themselves by looking at PD communities; however, not everything having to do with the disorder will be talked about, and quite honestly, Tumblr is a terrible place to find definitive information on the PDs. Life experience? Yes. Actual information looking at how the disorders work and what they can entail in full? Ehhh, not quite. Look at a variety of academic sources, but in the same vein, keep your wits about you--professionals aren't immune to ableism, and may often perpetuate it with glee. Some of it may be obvious, some of it might not be.

(2) Keep an eye on your symptoms--make a manual check against the actual criteria every once in a while (but keep in mind that the DSM is also deeply flawed and biased); @shitborderlinesdo has a ton of checklists based on the DSM and individual testimony that can help. We first started questioning ASPD when we were 14, and we'd do those kinds of manual checks once every several months or once a year or so. It both helps you understand what your symptoms are, and helps you keep track of how you're doing over time. Don't use online quizzes for this; quite honestly, they're not really good for anything except validation if you know you'll get a high score.

(3) Look at stuff other than personality disorders, too, and try to figure out why your interest skews towards specific disorders. For a long ass time, we believed we had StPD and did our absolute best to ignore any information to the contrary, because (due to our symptoms) if it wasn't StPD, the only thing it could be otherwise was schizophrenia, and we were scared shitless of the idea; at first because we were scared of the idea that our symptoms might've been so severe, but eventually because we were afraid to admit that we were wrong. (As I've said before, no shame in being wrong--do as I say, not as I do.)

Ultimately, I can't stop you from doing anything, and I can't force you to do anything either. I'm just a mentally ill guy with an internet connection. My life experiences have led me to this conclusion, and others may disagree with it--that's perfectly fine. Again, I am not a professional. You know yourself and your experiences the best, and I think by this point, you have enough understanding of yourself and the world to be able to figure out what'll be best for you and your health, given that you have the proper resources to do so. You are a being with life experience, even if it's less than others may have; you aren't a rock, and you aren't a three year old who still hasn't realized that touching the lit stove will equal a burned finger. I personally think that the way a lot of folks go about talking to and about teenagers who think they may have personality disorders is, frankly, infantilizing and invalidating, and it just ends up with traumatized and unsupported teenagers turning into traumatized and unsupported adults, with the added bonus of an extra helping of imposter syndrome to top it all off.

I hope you're doing well anon, and I hope you see this (sorry for responding so late lmao). Off into the world ye may go, hopefully with a bit more knowledge and idea of what to do next than you had before.

#not cluster b culture #Mod Reef #anonymous #unqueued #this got way longer than intended. oops

[disabledunitypunk]

Image ID: comment reading "lunod 14h ago @smolfrenchtoast my eyeglass prescription is -6.25/-6.50 and I have 4 separate eye-related conditions besides the nearsightedness. I am aware of why people wear glasses. It doesn't make it a mobility aid and it definitely means if you're trying to call it a mobility aid that you should be educated on and participating in blind/VI community and talking about issues pertaining to them."

You don't get to decide that for the entire community. "You need to be educated on participating in blind/VI community"? So far I've read more blind and visually impaired people calling their own glasses mobility aids than I've read sighted people doing so in my entire life.

But more to the point, it was a comment on this post:

The post reads:

"What about high support needs autistic people who use wheelchairs/have severe motor skill issues!"

What about them? Last I checked, you all treat them like shit and talk over them. Last I checked, half of you saying that kind of thing are still on your "autism actually makes me smarter and better than everyone else :)" schtick. In fact, are you normal about any and all stigmatized psychiatric conditions?

"Eyeglasses are mobility aids too, being mildly nearsighted makes you disabled"

Okay, and have you spoken At All about how people using white canes are treated or about genuinely any accessibility issue the blind/VI community faces? Have you talked about Any mobility aids, really?

"Psychiatric conditions are physical disabilities because it affects the brain"

Okay, and do you identify as physically disabled broadly or only when you're trying to be in cripplepunk? Have you aligned yourself with Any of Us beyond semantics arguing on the internet? Have you talked about any disability issues at all that aren't about your specific mental health diagnosis? How have you approached and reconciled the social, political, and legislative differences in how physically disabled people are treated versus mentally ill people?

Otherwise what it sounds like is you using other disabled people as tools and tokens in your arguments and that you don't actually give a shit about any of them.

Ah yes, the old, "you're tokenizing yourself!!1" argument. Because here's the thing: these points are primarily being made by multiply disabled people negatively affected by these things.

Let's take this point by point, shall we?

- What about them? Last I checked, you all treat them like shit and talk over them. Last I checked, half of you saying that kind of thing are still on your "autism actually makes me smarter and better than everyone else :)" schtick. In fact, are you normal about any and all stigmatized psychiatric conditions?

Okay, so platforming severely autistic voices is an ongoing issue in our community, one that a lot of us are working on addressing. Autism/aspie supremacy and ableism does exist on our communities - and is being shut DOWN to the point that even FACEBOOK GROUPS don't allow conditions as stigmatized as NPD and psychotic disorders to be used in their colloquial derogatory form of synonymized with abuse or a lack of ability to exercise autonomy.

Also, the existence of ableism against a subgroup does not mean people cannot bring up other forms of ableism against them. Not to mention this is a fucking spectrum. Quite frankly, the ONLY reason I don't consider my autism, which causes me to have middling to high support needs, a disorder, is because those needs are actively and continuously being met.

I am not severely autistic, but I am SIGNIFICANTLY autistic. I am the autistic person in between the person you're accusing me of tokenizing and the one you're accusing me of being.

-Okay, and have you spoken At All about how people using white canes are treated or about genuinely any accessibility issue the blind/VI community faces? Have you talked about Any mobility aids, really?

First of all, what about the people who aren't 'mildly nearsighted' who are saying this. What about the significantly visually impaired and even legally blind people who are saying this? What's with your assumption that everyone saying this is in fact privileged? You did that with autism too, because apparently none of the high support needs physically disabled autistics you're white knighting for are saying this too. Almost like you're not listening to them, the same thing you accuse us of doing.

What about the people who are talking about all those things? What about the blind/VI people who don't or even CAN'T use canes? What about the people who are simply focusing on a form of exclusion that harms them?

Finally:

-Okay, and do you identify as physically disabled broadly or only when you're trying to be in cripplepunk? Have you aligned yourself with Any of Us beyond semantics arguing on the internet? Have you talked about any disability issues at all that aren't about your specific mental health diagnosis? How have you approached and reconciled the social, political, and legislative differences in how physically disabled people are treated versus mentally ill people?

Yes. Fucking yes. The people screaming for cripplepunk inclusion are by and large ALL physically disabled. Most are physically disabled by primarily physical conditions, and simply have physical symptoms from their psychiatric disabilities as well. Most are screaming about disability issues, from physical accessibility to the struggles with their illnesses and injuries to being physically assaulted by strangers. We talk about legal issues from lack of regulations to archaic and inhumane regulations to "benefits" laws to eugenics movements like MAID. We talk about how we're being exterminated.

We talk about the differences in our treatment, but we also talk about how they're less than most people say they are. We talk about how when mentally ill and invisibly physically disabled people experience the same oppression, it is erased. We talk about the vectors along which neuroableism and corpoableism sometimes operate identically, and you don't like that.

We are not "aligning with Us" because we ARE us, and that's the whole point we've been making this whole time. As soon as we disagree with you, you strip our entire disabled identity from us. You call us "abled" and even "able-bodied". You accuse us of tokenizing ourselves and not giving a shit about disabled people when we're telling you WE ARE DISABLED PEOPLE AND OUR EXPERIENCES MATTER.

What was the point of this post? Quippy discourse to fulfill your internet superiority complex? Other than visual impairment, are you insane? Do you have stigmatized disabilities like NPD, ASPD, schizophrenia, and DID. Do you actually acknowledge the depth of stigma that exists for "acceptable" mental illnesses such as autism, ADHD, depression, and anxiety, and that the veneer of acceptance only holds up so long as we aren't symptomatic?

Do you identify as physically disabled outside of cripplepunk, or is this all projection? Because even if you are all these things, You're certainly tokenizing the rest of us.

If your point was "hey make sure you're not doing this because it's still harmful and ableist even when fighting for unity, inclusion, and safe spaces for neurodisabled physically disabled people" then you should have said that. A single line about "if you're not doing this, this post isn't about you" would have gone far. An additional line to the effect of "I'd like to think most people involved in the discourse are not doing this, but I've still seen too many" would have gone further.

Because unless you and I have seen completely different discourse, quite frankly, you're making up a strawman.

The people arguing for cripplepunk inclusion are physically disabled mobility users. The people calling glasses mobility aids are referring to their own glasses helping with vision so bad or comorbid with other conditions (such as ones affecting balance) they can't move through the world without them. The ones talking about people physically disabled by their autism who have high support needs are one or both.

I'll point again to the assumption in each point that the people saying this are the privileged ones within each group. "Last I checked, you all treat them like shit and talk over them." Not even an allowance that some of those people are saying this too. A mention of essentially autism supremacists, by their description of the type most of the community can't stand. No acknowledgement that autism is anything other than essentially "a socially awkward savant" or "a severely disabled person".

"mildly nearsighted". Aside from the fact that yes, this does still in fact make you disabled, and that you're allowed to talk about erasure of your own disability and fight back against it and name what category your disability aids fall into, it's literally primarily actual visually impaired and blind people having this conversation. How dare you.

(For reference for those that might not know, visual impairment is a specific term that does not cover visual disabilities that are fully corrected by use of glasses. Not sure if OP considers visual impairment to the point it cannot be fully corrected by glasses "mild" or if they're just erasing everyone in their community who disagrees with them entirely. Considering how they say that glasses are not a mobility aid, period, despite that experience not being universal and blind/VI people who do consider their glasses a mobility aid existing, I suspect the second.)

And finally, there it is. "Do you ALIGN yourself with Us." Not, are you one of us, but do you even consider yourself to be part of OUR group. Do you IDENTIFY AS one of us.

What does that mean? Is it quite literal? Are you saying 'do you consider yourself a physically disabled person in general when you say your neurodivergence physically disables you?' is it less literal, meaning 'are you physically disabled outside of your physically disabled neurodivergence?' Is it 'are you a disabled activist and have you done enough for our liberation to have a voice on our liberation?' None of those options are good.

Why does someone have to talk about other issues to talk about being physically disabled? Is someone with a primarily mobility disability only allowed to talk about it being physically disabling if they address general physical disabilities? What about someone with a chronic illness, whether gastrointestinal, cardiac, autoimmune, vascular, respiratory, limbic, endocrine, renal, multisystemic, other, or multiple of the above? What about someone with a sensory disability that affects their mobility?

Where do you draw the line?

Why do you draw a line?

Why must people do a deep dive into the plight of all disabled people to justify talking about their personal experiences with disability? Is it not enough to acknowledge and allow room for intersectionality - something this post seems to be actively pushing against?

Like, this is not helping. There are actually good, salient points that COULD have been made with some of these arguments, but none of them actually WERE.

It seems a bit like you're making up a guy to get mad at on the internet.

If you're not, perhaps you should make a post about them DOING these harmful things, and not that they also happen to be against mind body dualism (usually due to being materially harmed by it, as it is a key component of legal and medical ableism) and exclusion and gatekeeping in disabled spaces when talking about shared oppression and experiences.

Just a thought.

#mod stars #unitypunk #ableism #sanism #corpoableism #neuroableism #neurodisabilities #exclusionists #gatekeeping #strawman arguments

[traumatizedjaguar]

how do you tell if someone you love is a narcissist and what to do?

First I’m confused on why you’re asking this question and exactly what you are looking for? Some people have asked me bc they tell me they’re living with an abuser so that’s how I’m going to take your question…

If that’s the case and you have an abuser you’re living with and you can’t get away yet I don’t exactly have any good advice other than the usual we survivors always tell each other:

leave when it’s safest

keep everything low key and secret from your abusers such as passwords, accounts and users, jobs you’re working, etc.

Don’t leave papers with your passwords and usernames written down laying around your bedroom if you’re living with an abuser

!!! Lemme add: I used to write down on paper fake usernames and fake passwords and I’d leave it on my desk or in a drawer easy to find so my abusers wouldn’t know my actual accounts and passwords !!!

grey rock technique is always useful

And you can’t control how people perceive you when you’re being smear campaigned, so it’s best not to care about it and do your best with your life for yourself

Look for local DV shelters

Also do t leave journals or diaries laying around, I keep an online diary password locked

I’m posting a master-post soon about how to do your best living with abusers still in your life based on techniques and other things I’ve used to help myself deal with abusers. I’m almost done with it. It’s kind of based off one persons experience I.e. my own lol and everyone’s experience with abusers is unique. So some of what I say might not work for you, some will.

I can’t use words like narcissism on tumblr when talking about abusers, although about 6 of my abusers actually had NPD, ASPD, other stuff and Conduct Disorder (some were flying monkeys who abused me) and these disorders certainly impacted how they behaved with me (using fire to harm people, abusing animals, bullying, physical cruelty, sexually abusive both coercively and violently, excessive lying issues and manipulation, deceitfulness, justifying harming others, vandalism of property, conning, severe possessiveness and jealousy issues, lacking in remorse and care).

It’s common for psychological abusers to have “gangs” of others just like them/same personality and behaviors. Which is why you often see them together in numbers behind the scenes.

It’s best to use the word abuser or psychological abuser instead at least that’s what I do on my tumblr account as not to cause uproar. But you can still be honest about how their symptoms impacted you, as I still talk about it too.^

Idk if this person you’re referring to is someone abusive, someone you wish to keep in your life, or someone you’re just trying to help?

You can’t help abusers nor should you try, I’ve been there with all of my abusers and it’s a bad cycle to stay in. Don’t try to get them help if they’re abusive, just leave when you can. Grey Rock everyday. Please never try to stay and help an abuser.

——————————————

If they’re a loved one who isn’t an abuser (rarely have people asked me it this way ahhh):

Then it’s best to just bring up the disorder casually instead of accusatory.

Like say you’re interested in psychology and want to share what you’ve learned and you can go over the symptoms like, “such an interesting disorder I have been learning about!” And then go over the symptoms more so in depth with examples of how the symptoms can manifest and see if they start thinking about it as “huh I do that?” That way you don’t make it sound accusatory, but instead you are just casually talking about a subject!

That’s all I can come up with unless you have specific questions or specific needs? I’m not the best with advice but we’ll see hah

#asks #answered asks #flannelfreak02

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Why on earth are you assuming I am reading people's tumblr blogs and telling them to unearth childhood trauma, or diagnosing them with anything? I never sent these asks to you about any specific person. I do not engage with the endogenic community, period, because it is an active cesspit for one's mental health to find made-up excuses for having a childhood trauma disorder that do not involve "you experienced childhood trauma" (which, by the way, is very explicitly mentioned in every medical paper ever about DID/OSDD. You need to experience severe and repeated childhood trauma to have it. Kind of fascinating how your "denying modern medicine and research is bad" stance vanishes when people need to deny the childhood trauma in their childhood trauma disorder), especially when you have said disorder. I based my claims off of accounts from people I've talked to who WERE endogenic, and admit that it was an outlet for them to deny their trauma. It messed up their thinking and they had to figure out who in their system was actually an alter and who other people on the internet deluded them into thinking was an alter.

I asked you what you thought about endogenic systems, and never mentioned ever interacting with them. I made up an example person based on real accounts from ex-endos, and suddenly according to you I'm dropping into random people's inboxes to prod them about childhood trauma? When did you make up that lie about me in your head? When did I ever state I did that?

I just think you’re a bit of a spiteful person if you’re this mad at random people you know nothing about and don’t even humor the idea to try to understand because their existence offends you.

I’ve also always been pretty openly critical of psychiatry as a field run and researched primarily by ableist neurotypicals, this isn’t my “anti-medicine stance” coming out or whatever, I criticize how mental disorders are criticized all the time, or have you not seen my posts about NPD needing to be renamed?

The field that long stood by the lobotomy is unsurprisingly not as scientific as you seem to think it is. Dissociative disorders are extremely under researched because half of psychiatrists don’t even believe systems are real to begin with, typically writing patients off as compulsive liars or diagnose them with something else unrelated like schizophrenia or HPD because honestly many psychiatrists don’t listen to patients as much as they make their own conclusions based on their personal interpretation of the person they’re speaking to.

Anyway, I don’t see how you find it so surprising that I would imply you’re harassing people in a community you refer to as a “cesspit”and write off their experiences as “made-up excuses” because you, again, are under the impression you know better than them what they have going on.

[valeriefauxnom]

You know, the more I read about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the more I become curious if the writers were actually using it as a guideline for Emile's character and plot involving him. Yes, yes, it's not particularly unique to create a selfish character nor one that has a comically grandiose perception of themselves, nor do are these traits comprehensive to what NPD is, but let me explain, because BOY the dude is a checklist.

As always, long post.

First, let's break out the good ole DSMV. It may not be perfect, but hey. It's what I've got to work with for Official Sources to escape pop psychology sites. Here's the diagnostic criteria for NPD:

How does Emile stack up?

1: He immediately establishes a sense of identity that he believes he is more great than a Greatwyrm.

2: Much of his actions in the main campaign are born from a desire to live out his dreams of power, fame, and recognition.

3: *Gestures vaguely at 98.4% of what Emile says in Dragalia lost* He often refers to others with derogatory names, especially those that reinforce the status differences between them. Honestly, his vocabulary regarding this is rather impressive. Ingrate, peasant, dreck, peon, clod...

4: Here's where I might start to suspect the writers were doing more than just writing an egotistical character. NPD is defined in part by the excessive need for admiration and reinforcement (more on that later). Emile occasionally voices sentiments like above. See also this quote in his Gala story, in which, despite being in desperate need for money, ultimately personally valued the praise he got from the customer more. He's always been a character desperate for positive response.

5: A bit hard to distinguish from some of the standard entitlement royalty does get, but...yeeaaah. Emile is very much entitled in a way that Leonidas, who also expects absolute obedience of subordinates to his orders, isn't. He seems to believe that everyone automatically, no matter who they are, will immediately acquiesce to his will without question, without having any basis for their subservience. Take how he expects, -despite knowing that nobody recognizes him as Emperor at the moment, -a street artist to give up tools of his trade simply because he demands it.

6: Again, quite a large chunk of his motives in the main campaign is exploitive behavior of others. He lies to make Mercury believe her home is in danger and that he can stop it, then establishes he views a pactbound dragon as a slave to his will. Chelle agrees to lend him her androids, and he immediately absconds with the remote she 'accidentally' left lying out to serve his own needs.

Even smaller things in chapter 4, like his demand for Euden to escort him to the summit, is taking advantage of Euden's sense of justice and fairness to ensure he can undergo Jupiter's trial (which he thinks he will win). Take his scheme to foster love for him once he yoinks the throne while everyone else is gone is manipulative. He creates a 'bandit problem' and then sets up scenarios to swoop in to save the day. People see through this one, but it's still manipulative.

7: *Gestures vaguely at Emile again* Emile is...lacking in empathy or consideration for others' lives. I feel like this is pretty self-explanatory.

8: We can see this even in the comics. His first appearence in them checks off several of the traits we've already discussed and adds in 'assumes others are jealous of him' to the book. But even sticking to 'pure' canon, Emile is long, long established that jealousy of his elder siblings in particular is a driving factor regarding his behavior. There's many examples for this, but I'll keep it short since I already used an excuse to drag out the comic.

9: *Gestures vaguely at Emile yet again* Honestly I'm not even going to add any pictures for this point. I think when even your NPC unit description claims you as 'haughty' it's an established character trait.

That's NINE out of nine traits, when FIVE is the requirement for a potential diagnosis. Key word being potential, because we place more requirements on a diagnosis than just matching some features.

But I'd like to go a bit deeper into it. It's one thing to constantly drag out all the moments of Emile being Emile, but digging into the whys of it all also is compelling to me and this argument.

Here's another small exert of the DSMV:

Though hinted at in chapter 4, we gradually came to know more and more about the deeper side and reasons behind Emile's behavior. The long and short of it was: he's jealous. He knows he's inferior, deep, deep down. And we've one connecting factor for what flipped the switch to the degree of behavior he spirals into in canon: Euden. Emile spells it out early himself.

From what we know of their relationship before canon, Euden seemed to be the adoring sibling eager to learn whatever Emile deigned to teach him and was generally subservient as he was to all his siblings. He, unintentionally, fed Emile's ego at being able to instruct an inferior, feeding that need for affirmation. Thus, when canon rolls around, Emile is gravely wounded (emotionally), by Euden's betrayal of 'stepping outside his place'. He's the pillar that's allowed Emile to raise himself so high, and now that he's moved, Emile falls.

In that same conversation, Emile explicitly cites the 'degradation' Euden is putting him through, and thus enters another long-lasting characteristic of NPD. Enter his rage.

Among all his other motivations for appreciation, Emile cultivated quite a potent desire to harm Euden in particular. Several times he expresses a desire or tries to kill him with his 'own two hands', but I think the Persona crossover event is a goldmine for demonstrating the extent of how enamored he is with thoughts of violence regarding Euden in particular after his 'offense'.

He doesn't just want to kill Euden. He wants to short drop hang him (ie, the non-instantaneous kind that leaves you suffocating, though who knows if they even know the 'break the neck instantly' variety either, to be fair). He wants to break him mentally and quite possibly physically, judging by how quick he is to call in Shadows to beat him. Somehow, I'd speculate just by the sheer pleasure he takes specifically in seeing Euden in despair and misery (he should take notes from Ciella) it'd be a quick jump to actual torture if Euden hadn't immediately been busted out as planned.

Why? Again: though his elder siblings left Emile feeling unappreciated and inferior, Euden is the one to have raised him up before dropping him. It's personal. Therein is his fragile self-esteem, so dependent on the one he viewed as inferior.

All this culminates to a surprisingly replete picture of what NPD actually looks like. It's not just base selfishness or some excess ego, but a incredibly strong and persistent pattern of this kind of behavior, all in fulfillment of a need to acquire adoration. It's the fury that can follow the broken self esteem when that adoration isn't given. It's the vengeful fantasies of harming those who wronged him, the lower empathy for others occasionally paving the way for acts of violence.

Somehow, Emile is still compelling (to myself included), despite him being much of what people loathe in the real world. He's bombastic and dynamic in a way that his more emotionally-composed siblings aren't, and that lends him well to comedy in its own way. It doesn't hurt that he's like. Probably the 2nd most common of the royal fam to pop up, after Euden. He's the Saturday morning cartoon villain who is the lowest on the totem pole of threats and thus safe to have a laugh at until he rolls 20 and starts causing very real danger.

That aside, I threw together this for a more light-hearted thing regarding Emile:

Edit: I remembered Zardin. I think it's kinda funny how Emile is a "better", more complete representation of a narcissist is and does than the supposed actual narcissist himself. I think it's a case of Emile being the 'technical' one while Zardin is a 'literary' one. Aside from being obsessed with his looks just as OG Narcissus was, he's... not really displaying many traits that I can recall from him. Still interesting.

#dragalia lost #dragalia #character analysis #dragalia analysis #Forcibly bringing up the fact again that Aurelius and Audric both gave Magnus the authority to kill Emile. I think they knew #There was a Problem but not necessarily the extent to which Emile could go. Either way: did all the siblings have assassin-guards #That were ready to kill them if they grew too too evil? I suppose it's a good way to cull the worst eggs but. Still. #Now to get back to Secret Starfall writing! Got about 5k now. I do hope my recipient enjoys the gift though! #Sorry if any other fics are a bit delayed with that in mind. Other Things To Write(tm) call! #Scaling included as with it being likely right there at the climax I need to try and nail the landing!

[fierceawakening]

I’ve been thinking a bit more about the whole… Thing where Tumblr warns you that the whole general social understanding of narcissistic personality disorder is stigmatizing and wrong, and how different it is from many clinicians who say that more neurotypical people in relationships with narcissistic people tend to be mistreated and even abused, trying to figure out a more nuanced way of understanding what the dispute is that isn’t just “society is ableist and psychiatry needs a group of people to throw away” or just “some people are born evil and nothing they ever say is accurate in any way.”

And I was listening to a podcast from a guy who is on the “I’m a clinician, close personal romantic relationships or friendships or being raised as a kid by narcissistic people can REALLY fuck more neurotypical people up bad” side of things and I noticed a difference in focus I’ve been pondering since.

The Tumblerians who talk about having NPD (there is some question I've seen about whether they have formal diagnoses or whether several/many are self-dxed; while I am not anti-self-dx in general, I do wonder about it here, as Official Healthcare Providers almost all say that it's rare someone would self-dx this one correctly, and that in the wild it's almost always given to people in court-ordered programs or who are pressed to enter couples therapy or the like. So I'm saying they think they have it, not to assert I'm sure they don't but to flag this as a thing that confuses me) talk about it in a way Tumblr really likes lately when discussing mental health.

That is "thoughts are not actions." That it's very possible for a person to have thoughts they don't actually endorse, like intrusive thoughts from OCD, or to have odd beliefs they don't tell people about or act on, like I don't know, "I have spirit guides and I know they're real but I come from a family of militant antitheists who'd mock me endlessly if they ever knew where I get my good ideas."

On this framing, narcissism is a thought or a belief, typically "I am superior to other people." This is a belief that is objectively untrue, but that has been formed in reaction to trauma or chronic feelings of worthlessness. Challenging someone by telling them, "you are not superior to others," then, is pointlessly jabbing them in the Feelings for no good reason. They know, on some level, it's objectively untrue, which is why they *don't* act on it and expect other people to serve or revere them, but they "believe it" deep inside themselves so as not to experience the profoundly destabilizing existential question, "what if I'm actually not so great?"

Which... if this is all people are doing, then yeah, that sounds pretty minor. Or at least, not much worse than perfectionism, something I myself struggle with. It's okay to think weird things.

Where the person I was watching the other day, who does think that narcissists act frequently in harmful ways and that a narcissist who is able to not act on their thoughts of superiority is rare, keyed on something else. As I recall it (and I may be embellishing a little but this was the gist):

"The issue is really the sense of entitlement. The rest of it's not all that bad by itself really. But entitlement means they think they deserve things others don't. And if they think they deserve something and you don't deserve it, they're not going to give it to you."

This stuck with me, as I don't think it's something Tumblr would generally disagree with in any other situation. We talk a lot about "privilege," which as I understand it is the idea that some groups are treated better than others in society. If you tend to be treated well, you tend to expect to be treated well, because you have no reason to expect something else. But this can and does collide with reality when you run into somebody who thinks you haven't proven yourself deserving of royal treatment and who tells you to stuff it.

There is a lot of talk on Tumblr about how much people should be blamed for not noticing privilege, or where exactly annoying but blameless cluelessness ends and blame-worthy entitlement begins. I'm not saying we all agree on everything. But we do seem to agree, broadly, that "entitlement" exists and is a vice.

So when I hear "narcissistic people tend to be entitled," what I hear is that they tend to possess a noticeable vice. Where Tumblr seems to think "they believe an odd thing, which is a thought and not an action."

I don't know if I have a conclusion here, other than that I lean toward "entitlement is bad, and it's not likely easy for someone to secretly have it and make certain to never let on."

But... Fascinating. Just... fascinating.

[thatnarcissisticfeel]

Trying to construct "real" self esteem after having a fake ego for so long is one of the hardest parts about having NPD and trying to heal from it, especially because a huge part of it is actually letting yourself BE insecure, which obviously isn't fun for anyone, especially not narcissists.

Due to my NPD I’ve always needed attention and praise from people CONSTANTLY, and I would hate to see other people get positive attention, and I would do things I’m not proud of like lie or exaggerate or put other people down (usually in really passive aggressive and subtle ways rather than direct insults -- don't get me wrong, I'd be thinking the direct insults, but I'd rarely say them). It was an awful knee-jerk reaction that I'd have if someone did even slightly better than me on something.

I always needed to be #1. I needed people to care about me more than they care about anyone else. I desperately needed the love and positive attention that I never got.

For the longest time, I was the only one giving myself positive attention, and even THAT came from an exaggerated/fake ego. So I became hungry for genuine love, to not be so terribly alone.

I felt as if no one cared about me, no one needed me, no one would care if I disappeared or died. The reason why I felt this way ALWAYS boiled down to “well my friend gave someone else attention / didn’t give me enough attention / ignored me / whatever, so clearly this means they don't care about me at all.”

It's very much an "all or nothing" mentality - I'm either someone's favorite person in the world, or I don't matter to them at all.

Oddly enough, you know what helps me to heal? Realizing that it’s okay if no one cares, and that it’s ok if I only have myself.

You know that one meme that’s like “Nihilism, nothing in life matters?” Basically that’s how my NPD healing journey has looked. I started off with thinking "No one cares about me except myself :(" and now am striving to become "No one cares about me except myself :D" Ideally the final step in my healing process will be accepting that people DO care about me and that I CAN receive positive attention from people in a healthy way and that people WOULD be sad if I wasn't around, but oddly enough (and I know this makes no sense to non-narcs), before I get to that stage, I have to become ok with no one caring. And obviously that thought process may not work for all narcissists, but it's working for me, I think.

Because chances are there WILL be at least one instance where no one cares, or at least no one is around to reassure me that they do care, or no one can reassure me in ways that satisfy me...even if it's just in my mind/by my high standards, it is unavoidable that there will be several times when "no one cares about me". Even if it’s a disordered thought or a delusion, the best course of action isn’t always to convince myself that people actually do care, and the best course of action DEFINITELY isn’t to manipulate people into caring. The best course of action is to say “Ok, maybe I’m right, no one cares. Now what? I have to accept that and know that i’ve always got myself.”

Obviously that can't be my only coping mechanism, because then I might become too dependent on isolation, but it does help to self-sooth by trying to genuinely love myself and try to always be there for myself, even if I'm the only one.

#npdsafe #npd #actuallynpd #npd positivity #npd culture is

[orange-orchard-system]

hey don't feel pressured to give any advice to this if it makes yall uncomfortable but I need a place to put this and I don't want to put it on our main blog because we're out as a system there.

I'm beginning to think my headmates might just be a delusion. I fully believe I'm a system and can't shake the belief that I am even though more and more evidence is coming up that I might not be. I've realised that any time I "switch" I consciously choose to act like a headmate, instead of it being an uncontrollable thing. I have no 'core' sense of self due to NPD which makes it really easy to pick up and drop different traits, but I'm never not *me*.

I do dissociate quite badly and have memory issues. and I might have mistaken my ability to act like different people for headmates. which might be why I think I have DID

I don't know. I'm scared of backlash if it turns out what I thought was a system was in fact a delusion. I've made several plural friends through here and I've contributed to the plural community and people have even come to me for plural related advice. will it all have been a lie?

also do yall know any psychotic systems that I might be able to talk to about this?

I don't know of any others, but we're a psychotic system and willing to listen!

This sounds like a delicate situation. I'm going to treat it as if you're questioning being a system, and aren't sure either way, and will provide suggestions to support either direction. I'll do my best to stay objective but gentle, but this response will discuss delusions, dissociation, the boundaries between them, and how those boundaries can blur, so be mindful of how you're feeling when reading. Got that?

(also, this response got, uh, long. More under the cut.)

You do bring up good points about how you may not be a system. The switching one in particular is unlike how most switches work, as most switches are uncontrolled to a degree, and don't involve a choice to start acting a certain way. And you wouldn't be the first to have some overlap with the plural community due to a personality disorder – just look at how BPD and DID often have parallels drawn in papers on diagnosing one or the other, or even just parallels noted within the communities!

However, what you're describing also sounds similar to median, OSDD-1a, and monoconscious systems, who also often feel like themselves no matter who they switch to. This can also affect how switching feels, which for these systems, can be more like putting on a hat than losing control of themselves and becoming someone different. Do median + OSDD-1A + monoconscious experiences perfectly explain this feeling of "I'm just acting like another headmate and not actually switching"? No, but I recommend you look into them to see if you do or don't feel like they explain why you don't feel like you fit the conventional mold of systems, which is often centered around multiple DID systems. This should give you better insight into whether it's a delusion or not.

You know, I often hear the opposite of what you've next described – people often say they mistook their DID for simply being able to act differently when they need/want to! But in all seriousness, I understand the concern. If it's the plurality part that's bothering you, why not take a closer look at your memory problems and dissociation? You may want to identify possible other sources for these things, and look into how others describe their own experiences with them. Don't take others' experiences as gospel you have to match – just use it as a reference for comparing and contrasting your own memory issues and dissociation. I mentioned OSDD-1A before, so I mainly recommend looking into those experiences, but be sure to branch out to outside CDDs and look into other disorders. Perhaps other personality and dissociative disorders would be a good place to start?

Moving on, I don't think everything you've done as part of the plural community would be a lie, even if it turns out to be a delusion. It sounds like you've helped out people with your advice, and enjoyed the friendships you've made, which sound like positive things overall. Even if you're wrong about being a system, you're not wrong about having added some good into the world through your kindness and helpfulness, and it's not like you were intentionally misleading and tricking people – your concern now shows that you don't want that! While there may be backlash, that kind of backlash tends to come from people who aren't so nice in general anyway, so I don't think you should give their words much weight. A conditional sort of acceptance based on never being wrong about a personal part of one's identity that's really tricky to identify? Who wants that? It's a ridiculous standard to hold anyone to.

At the end of the day, I think what matters most is if considering yourself plural helps you. Taking the idea that it's a delusion – is it harming you? Is it causing you to act in ways that are negatively affecting you? If so, it may be time to consider how to bring yourself out of it, or how to better manage it as a delusion. However, if it's a delusion that doesn't negatively affect you, or at least doesn't negatively affect you that much... is continuing to identify as plural truly such a bad thing?

I'm not suggesting you encourage a delusion, of course (especially in this context, where you're distressed over the possibility of it), but if the plural framework helps you, then using it as a way to manage this possible delusion doesn't seem like too bad of an idea, as long as you adapt the parts that aren't accurate, and are careful with how you use it. I've known people whose best way of managing delusions was going along with them, only combating them if they started hurting or negatively affecting them – just kinda keeping an eye on them like a new owner would a puppy, you know? People tend to think of any presence of delusion as a bad thing, but sometimes they're just a part of someone's life. Of course, if this doesn't fit your experience, you do not at all need to continue considering yourself plural after coming to the (hypothetical, possible) conclusion that you're experiencing a delusion. It's just worth considering, but if you do consider it, please go to others who discuss their delusions like this or in similar ways to this, as our delusions are only ever negative and we do not and can not speak on how this works, only that we know of others who have made it work. Also, this post may help give more context on why I suggest this approach.

On another topic, the thing with dissociation is that it's very related to things like delusions and hallucinations. Internal communication is called auditory hallucinations. The way people describe derealization can match up nearly identically to people with delusions of the world not being real. So finding out whether someone is a system or experiencing a delusion of being a system... is not something that can be done easily (and certainly not over an ask on Tumblr. As much as I'd like to give you an answer either way, the best I can do is offer what I know about related experiences I've seen and had, which I hope I've done to the best of my ability). But my point is that a third option to consider is that you may be standing at the intersection of plurality and psychosis. It's happened before – hell, one of our own delusions functions similarly enough to the rest of our plurality that we've had difficulty establishing whether it was a delusion of identity or just another headmate (which is another reason why we suggest using a plural framework to manage this possible delusion – it may help you make sense of whatever's going on in your head via comparison, even if it's not a perfect descriptor, the way that comparing our delusion to a headmate helped us understand it better). So maybe the answer is "both" or "more so this thing but also partly that" or "it's this but really similar to that" for you, too.

Whatever the answer is, I hope you're able to find it. Good luck, anon!!

#asks #front soup.txt #psychosis

[alostlittleriverlotus]

im angry. I'm purely angry. My mom is finally listening about doctor stuff and why I hate doctors so much and instantly she turns my goal of my health into being able to sleep at a "normal" time (waking up in the morning and being awake through the day) and being able to go for walks, be active, and go outside. And I fucking hate it.

★(small sa mention, one line of it. suicidal thoughts and self harm mentions.)★

I don't care if I can never walk normally again. If I will always need mobility aids or only be able to walk/stand for short periods. Yes, I enjoy a ton of exercise and dancing with my whole body and having an active life, but if I never can again, I have accepted that.

I don't care about going outside. That is agoraphobia, fear of people, and extreme paranoia and delusions wrapped into one. I feel constantly watched, unable to be outside of the car or the house without extreme anxiety, fear, and having to talk myself through it when I had to go collect the main. I am okay with not being able to go outside. I still would love to go and sit out back, but my parents bought chairs that I can't sit in which is why I haven't sat out back since we were at our last place and first moved in, a fucking year ago. There's physical issues to it too, but it is mostly mental stuff that I'm fine living with.

I don't care about a "normal" sleep schedule. As long as I can get 6-10 hours of sleep a night, I'm fine and functional. I have pain, I have untreated ADHD, I have bad mental problems, I have delusions, I have flashbacks, I have breakdowns, I have paranoia, I was fucking assaulted in my sleep, I may have sleep apnea. We can fix as much as we possibly can, but I am entirely fine if my sleep schedule will never be routine. Oh yeah, plus my period messes up my sleep schedule too.

I don't care about being the most perfectly healthy active person. I don't care if I'm unable to do things that I could before. If I'm fat the rest of my life, that's fucking fine with me. I refuse to go back to obsessively needing to control my health because of a mix of ocd and ocpd and npd that results in an obsessive need to be perfectly healthy at all times. I am not going back to that cycle. My mental health is too fragile and so long as the mental health system and psychiatry system is broken in America, I do not give a fucking shit. I cope well, I am happy where I am, I am content. All I want is the constant pain to end, to be able to have relief and supports. I got ankle supports and cried over how long I have fucking suffered with joints that feel like 3D Mario game ice physics. I cried about how much I was actually at a disadvantage without knowing it while pushing myself to be "normal" and as good as others because I believed I was just not pushing through it like everyone else.

I do not care about living a happy "normal" life. Even if all of my physical issues could magically be fixed (they can't, I'm fairly certain I will always have these issues), I have severe mental problems that will never fucking change. From who I am and how my autism is to the severe trauma and personality disorders I have. AND THE FACT MY MENTAL ISSUES CAUSE ME PHYSICAL PAIN, FATIGUE, AND MINOR SICKNESS INCLUDING PHANTOM FEVERS!!!!!

But I accept that my pain may be something I live with. All I want is to receive actual help for it instead of constantly worsening it by having 0 support. A shower seat, movable shower head, mobility aids, actual fucking accommodations. My goal is to never be perfect abled and neurotypical or to function as such. My goal is never to be as perfectly healthy as I can be. Because with who I am, that will just worsen me to try to achieve that. And that's fucking okay. I am allowed to be unhealthy.

As long as I am not suffering every second of the day and considering death to be better yet unable to go through with it because I don't want to die while my parents are a part of my life then I am fine. I am happy. Even in bad pain days, the feeling of caring for myself and having things to rely on to relieve the pain makes me feel good about myself. I have lived without those for so long. This is all I desire. To relieve as much of the pain as I can so I can feel alive.

But I am aware I may be fat the rest of my life. I could also lose weight, I've fluctuated weight most of my life. I am fine having mobility issues and requiring help for those for the rest of my life. I do not care to be perfectly abled, I just don't want to suffer every single day with 0 help or accommodations while being blamed for it all as if it's a fucking moral failing and to be able to actually understand what the fuck is going on with my body. I'm fine if I'm unhealthy the rest of my life. I just don't want to have to cry over how sick I feel or how bad the pain is and consider death a better option because I have no help and have felt like I'm losing a race my entire life because no one else seemed to be suffering. That's all I fucking want.

I'm sick of my parents' dumbass health shit. I'm sick of them being fatphobic while they're extremely healthy and I'm fat and neglected and struggled so much more than they have because they will do anything for their own health, but won't do shit for me when they're the ones that I have to rely on. I'm sick of my mother pushing these "normal" goals because she wants me to be functional. Fuck. That. Bullshit.

I want help for my pain. I want to be diagnosed and get the help I can. I want accommodations and supports and mobility aids so I can experience as little pain as possible. It's so bad nearly every day. And wearing those ankle supports only made it all the more real that Yes, I Am Fucking Suffering!!! And yes, I need help. And I'm tired of being hyper independent and being neglected and being ignored while I see my parents handle every tiny thing wrong with their bodies when I've lived with this shit my entire life. It hurts. It hurts so much. And I hate that even with them FINALLY trying to find me doctors and get help, they still push fatphobia and healthy bullshit onto me. As if I need to be the optimal health. I don't know if it's possible and I'm not sinking back into the obsessive tendencies I've had since I was young. I was miserable and hated myself, blamed myself for everything. I will NOT go back to that.

#angry rant #tw self harm #tw self harm mention #tw suicide mention #actually autistic #neglected #traumatized #fat #disabled #disability #healthism #fatphobia #fatphobic #abusive mother #neglectful mother #actually narcissistic #actually disabled #actually traumatized #chronic pain #chronic fatigue #chronic illness #chronically ill #fibro #fibromyalgia #mental disability #physical disability #invisible disability #spoonie #foggy #brain fog

[mothwithapencil]

Hi can I just ask for some Ghetsis positivity because I’m sick of everyone around me slandering him

Sorry this is a little late but YES. YES YOU CAN. Big post incoming.

Listen. People hate Ghetsis for completely valid reasons. But people like him, even relate to him, for completely valid reasons too. And I'm sick of people shitting all over Ghetsis and people who like him all the time, even when it's completely uncalled for. I'm sick of having to be "humble" and apologize for liking Ghetsis when introducing myself to people, lest they think I kick puppies and throw babies off cliffs for fun or something. Sick of scrolling his tag and seeing people calling him horrible things or, even worse, targeting his disabilities (physical and mental). Sick of people legitimately claiming he's homophobic, transphobic, even racist just because they don't like him. You do see how that's harmful to people in those groups who like him right. Furthermore, I have the type of RSD where if someone doesn't like a character I like I feel hurt myself. So you can imagine how hellish it is out there. I can't imagine how bad it is for systems with Ghetsis introjects. So for all the completely normal people bearing the curse of simply enjoying a character:

Ghetsis likers! You're valid!

Ghetsis is a very complex, layered character! There's lots to like about him! He's pretty, he's funny, he's tragic, he's a depressed middle aged man.... The list goes on! There's also many valid reasons to relate to him! Ghetsis is implied to have several mental illnesses/disorders/etc that aren't often seen, especially not in a Pokemon game. He's paranoid, he has PTSD, NPD, body dysmorphia, he even shows autistic+adhd traits. He's also a cane user and is popularly interpreted as being an amputee/prosthetic user and having chronic pain from the injuries on his eye/arm/leg/etc. Although him being a villain doesn't do much for "good representation," it's okay for you to see yourself in him! I relate to him for his paranoia, PTSD, and autistic/adhd traits, and that's okay! And some may ask "But N is autistic and likely has PTSD too, why not relate to him instead?" Some may relate to him too! You're allowed to like both of them! Ghetsis and N likers aren't mortal enemies, we're not that different! But not everyone can just choose which characters they attach to. And some may relate to Ghetsis more for a variety of reasons. Ghetsis has a slower, more rough process of healing that may appeal more to some people. You're not obligated to relate to one character over another because the first one isn't a "good guy."

Even if you don't particularly relate to him, you can enjoy him just for the sake of liking him! Some reasons I just think he's a fun character:

His silly "mya-ha-ha-ha!" laugh!!!

The fact that he tries to look intimidating and scary only to call the player in USUM "tiny intruder"

Gee N, your dad is gnc AF!

This picture.

"That blasted Colress! How dare he put his personal intellectual curiosity before our ultimate mission of conquering Unova!" *proceeds to continue spoiling Colress rotten and not doing a single thing to stop him from putting off his work*

The fact that he does so much to make himself seem emotionless but is still clearly very emotional. There's lots of things that confuse and scare him!

His passion! His love for Unovan history and public speaking! (even if he's not the best at delivering them without pacing around and stuttering and trailing off...) (#autism)

His terrible fashion sense. He looks like he fell through a window and got caught on the tapestry. His unexplained love for eye motifs. Me too.

The sheer fact he's such a layered character. There's a lot about Ghetsis that's never directly stated in the games, and much to be picked up from subtle implications. His history as a descendant of fhe Ancient King, his several traumatic life experiences (two separate pokemon attacks, and of course the "memory that has continued to haunt [him]," etc.

His incredibly silly dynamic with Colress. According to pokespe and the RR episode, they've known each other for years, much longer than one would think initially. Trying not to steer too much into antigrav territory, their friendship is unique and funny. They're best friends. They threaten to feed each other to Kyurem daily. As long as they don't get caught, they plan on conquering Unova together. Colress annoys Ghetsis on purpose and Ghetsis responds with ranting about him in private but still raising his paycheck. Chaos duo.

This post is already so long, and I could say more, but to top it off I want to say:

Ghetsis likers who hate N and N likers who hate Ghetsis are the weakest link. As I said earlier, we can enjoy both! Ghetsis enjoyers and N-joyers, we have a lot in common! We both love a very clearly autistic guy with lots of trauma and pretty long hair! It's not a stretch to assume most of us have some parental issues we're coping with by attaching to them! Furthermore, you don't have to "avenge" N by violently hatimg Ghetsis. N still loves his dad, and even if he doesn't have to, he still wants Ghetsis to heal and get better (Cue to... Everything he says to Ghetsis, and even his line when teamed up with him in Pokemas: "I still have hope for you, Ghetsis..."). If he saw the things some of you say about his dad, he'd be horrified. I promise you, saying you want to kick out Ghetsis' cane and take out his other eye just makes you ableist, not a soldier fighting for N's honor. People who like either character aren't at war with each other! I love my N-joyer friends! We can coexist.... Harmonia enjoyers holding hands and singing in a circle...

That's about it! Sorry I'm so passionate about this, I've just seen a ton of hate on Ghetsis lately and I want to combat it. By the way, feel free to send me an ask about any of the stuff I mentioned here!

Please don't interact with this post if you're going to say some mean shit about Ghetsis/his fans or say "he's not actually autistic/disabled etc" "I hate him but..." "You still shouldn't like him because xyz". Please just let this be a happy space for us!!!!

#ask #ableism mention #pokemon #pkmn #pokemon black and white #pokemon bw #pokemon bw2 #pokemon black and white 2 #team plasma #ghetsis #n harmonia