#and an ask is more appropriate for the communication than a reply or rb

[madd-information]

Hi, I just found out that there is an entire community for maladaptive daydreamers here and it’s so relieving.!! Bc I feel less alone. I just created a blog to rb and interact with everyone but I’m not sure how the community works at all. Like the tags, and the names used like paras and so. Could u give me an explanation how things work around here? Like things I should keep in mind and how to inset myself in the community:) thank u so much by the way

I’ll do my best!

@babydollsmadd has a good list of MD tags HERE.  Avoid using #MDD, that’s the major depressive community and were well established before we ever showed up. If you want your posts to be seen you should always use tags, people often search specific tags rather than rely on their home feed to show them what’s new in the community. #actuallymadd and #maladaptive daydreaming seem to be the most active.

I have a post detailing some of the common terms HERE and many other blogs have their own glossaries, HERE’S one by @chaosdreamchronicles.

Overall the MD community is very welcoming.  You’ll see a mix of posts, some focus on positivity, some are vent posts, some informative, some detail their struggle or treatment and some focus on creativity by posting art of their characters/paras and some offer their blog space as an anonymous outlet for others. 

You will come across some blogs that dislike their posts being shared outside of the MD community, they will usually announce this in the post in some way using a banner or the tagging system; read the tags of posts, they very often add supplemental information or context about what you’re reading. If there are no tags keep in mind it may be a post they did not intend to reach any further than their followers and reconsider if it’s appropriate to reblog. 

Read bios and descriptions, people will often detail who they a comfortable interacting with.  Things like not being comfortable interacting with bloggers of a certain age or blogs who often post material they are not comfortable seeing on their feed. 

People also appreciate trigger warnings if you’re going to be posting material that may warrant one.  I’m really not the best person to ask about Tumblr etiquette when it comes to this topic though, being what I am I almost never use trigger warnings.  Followers might request that you tag certain material, some might even ask you if there’s anything they should tag, how you handle it is up to you, sometimes people may have to block you for their own mental health, sometimes you may have to block others, it’s just what needs to be done sometimes and there’s no shame in it. 

As far as following/interacting, here’s what I’ve done;  I like and reblog a lot of posts, anything that seems relevant to the direction of my blog. I reply to whatever I am able to and I ask my followers to weigh in with their experiences and opinions. And I follow a lot of people.  I follow back anyone who follows me but when I’m following someone cold I check their blog and only hit that button if MD is specifically mentioned in their name, description or bio or if they have specifically reblogged a post titled something like “reblog if you’re a madd blog” (I don’t want to accidentally ‘out’ anyone). On a side note, try not to get too upset if someone asks you to unfollow them, I’m a little lax with my follows and people have to DM me to unfollow them sometimes when I’ve hit that button blind. It happens and it’s not personal. 

And I use asks! A lot.  Ah, I see a few followers out there thinking “hmm, do you? I’ve never gotten an ask from madd-information”.  Yes, you probably have.  Asks are wonderful because you and click the little anonymous button and no one will know who sent it. I don’t have a personal blog so when I feel like sharing those things I do it anonymously through other blogs. And sometimes I just send fan mail, don’t be afraid to show support or appreciation for a blog you’ve been stalking, asks are almost always welcome in our tightknit little community. 

Submissions are a little different, not everyone will have button turned on and they can be used in a few different ways.  You can use them to create content somewhere when it’s not particularly relevant to your own blog, particularly for blogs more focused on curating content for the community rather than chronicling the experiences of the blog owner, like a few of the ones linked above. And on some blogs you can use them to advertise, I’ll let those people make themselves known in the notes.  

My blog is one of those you can advertise on;  If you have links to an MD resources or information you can use the submissions button to write your own post about it and have it shared here, which can be helpful for smaller blogs who may not otherwise be seen very widely. I’ll approve requests for MD information as well, you may need the aid of the wider community rather than just me and can use submissions for that rather than asks. If you want to plug your MD community, Youtube channel, website or art, I also approve those or, as the case is here, if you’re a new blog you can also submit an introduction post and pick up a few followers that way. I do reblog introduction posts when I see them, but I don’t always see them and this can help if you’re one who fell through the cracks. 

As wonderful as this community is we do disagree and argue.  The content reflected here may not always be what you need.  You may be using creativity and positivity to cope with your MD and find vent posts pull you down to a dark unhelpful place.  You may be someone who needs to vent and distance yourself from daydream content and find posts with a more positive spin enable problematic behavior in you.  Sometimes we get frustrated and lash out at one another. It’s important to remember that we are a community of all different ages, sexes, nationalities, genders, cultures, socio-economic status’ etc and within that we are a community of people with very different experiences of MD, different in the severity, different in the causes and different in our approaches to dealing with it. Be considerate, try to forgive, everyone here is your future best friend and we’re very glad you found us. 

[my-autistic-things]

Okay guys, since this post is suddenly blowing up in the past couple days, I thought I'd rb and add a few comments esp replying to these two people @ti-bae-rius @our-planet-is-going-to-explode

You guys are 100% right in the facts that 1. Lack of empathy does not equal autism and 2. These online tests are neither accurate nor even can be used to diagnose anyone with anything. And, I'm not toooo familiar with the DSM at my very tired brains moment, but yeah, lack of empathy isn't going to be a key part of you getting an autism dx and having empathy (hyper or an average level) wouldn't prevent you from a dx either.

I wanna explain a bit about why [lack of] empathy and autism is linked together in so many perspectives. Empathy requires theory of mind, and that's something autistic people have a lot of trouble with. Theory of mind, simply, is taking on someone else's perspectives. This can be interpreting motive, others feelings, predicting others behaviors/actions/responses/words/etc., and interpreting how others view yourself. If you have difficulties with theory of mind, it's very difficult to know how others are feeling because you just don't understand the situation.

Secondly, people with autism (and ADHD too) feel emotions very intensly. That's how we get extreme traits like hyper empathy and low empathy, and also why BPD and autism are very similar. When we get happy, we get Happy. When we get sad/depressed, we get Sad. So, when we feel empathy torwards someone/something else, if tends to also be very extreme too. If we can take on that person's perspective for that situation and understand their pain, then we will feel that A Lot. That's how we get hyper empathy. If we can't take on the other person's feelings, then we get low empathy. It's not even that you're incapable of feeling anything torwards another person, it's that you can't understand their perspective from your perspective. It's very very difficult thing to do and neurotypicals don't do this easily either (even tho they claim to). We're talking about this pretty in depth in my linguistics class rn and it takes so much cognitive ability to have theory of mind, plus cultural and communication barriers occur, plus on top of that just pure miscommunication, and then there's also the issue of just not being familiar with the context/person/situation/your distracted/you've been primed with another situation/etc etc etc. Basically, it's a lot and it's very hard and my class can't theorize how humans are (theoretically) so good at it.

My point is, this is a fun test to take to see how low/high your score is on these specific questions. It doesn't mean you have low empathy necessarily, but it does ask questions about empathy so if you have a low score it is likely you do have generally lower empathy. Again, having low empathy doesn't mean you're autistic, and being autistic doesn't mean you're going to score low on empathy tests.

Lastly, I'd like to remind everyone, empathy, sympathy, and compassion are three different things. Having sympathy (feeling bad for someone, ex: staying up at night to talk to your sad friend, comforting someone crying) is much more important than empathy (feeling what someone else is feeling, ex: seeing someone cry makes you sad and cry too). Having human compassion and sympathy are things every human is capable of, and it's also a part of being a nice person. You don't need to feel someone else's pain not to be a dick to them. It helps to understand others and respond in appropriate ways, but you can still care deeply about others and be an amazing friend with low empathy.

Bored at the laundromat so I took the Empathy Quotient test impulsively bc I saw a post about it and...

(my score is 20 our of 80, indicating lack of empathy)

Hm yeah that seems accurate.

Here is the link: https://psychology-tools.com/test/empathy-quotient