#but my mentally ill ass is like

[parrrty-poison]

the "seen" feature on messages was literally invented to torment mentally ill people, i want to fistfight whoever came up with it

[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)

[amanfromnewjersey]

I am going insane about these stoats

(my insta is @trisideseye and that's where I mostly post art. I'm purely posting here bc @quiddie is active on here and I need aabria to know, personally ,how fucked up I am about these stoats)

[pinetreevillain]

Broke: they would hate eachothers

Woke:

[necrotic-nephilim]

jealousy really is the driving force of DamiTim as a ship. love that for them. love how Tim has the Robin mantle ripped away from him and he has to suffer the jealousy of watching Dick and Damian bond. how possessive over Dick Tim can be, to have him stolen by Dick.

even more so though, is the jealousy from Damian. how on earth do you cope when you finally get to be Robin, a role you've convinced is your birthright, and no one really likes you? every prefers the Robin who came before you? Dick regularly reminds you that he can always go and call Tim back when you act out? like the complex Damian has over Tim is unreal. Tim, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had everything handed to him his whole life. he never had to struggle or fight for his place like Damian did. Damian has spent his whole life fighting and proving himself, and yet he can't ever seem to truly claw the mantle of Robin away from Tim. even when Tim lets it go, becomes Red Robin, they seem to share it. Tim can slip back into the role of Robin whenever someone like Dick or Bruce need him to, because *he's* the Robin who they need. he's the Robin who was able to find Bruce. he's the Robin that Ra's wants an heir out of. he's the Robin who even Jason respects. in Damian's eyes, everything Damian has fought tooth and nail for, was handed to Tim.

so of course he's going to react to Tim with violence and aggression, especially after finding out Tim has contingency plans for him. no matter how much Damian proves himself, he's never going to be enough, especially not to Tim. and so his deep refusal to see Tim as family, to acknowledge Tim's legacy is all driven by such an angry jealousy. Tim understands aspects of Bruce's legacy that Damian doesn't, like the need to sweet talk and play nice with the elites of Gotham, even if they're corrupt. they exemplify different aspects of Robin, and the aspects that Tim exemplifies are the aspects that Damian knows he'll never fully understand and therefore holds such a deep contempt for. he wants to fight criminals, not play nice with politicians. Tim understands the side of Gotham that's utterly foreign to Damian. if anything, he represents that side of Gotham, to Damian. a pretty little rich boy who's nothing but a know-it-all and not a real son of Bruce. he can't be a Wayne. he can't be Damian's family.

and all of that angry jealousy leading to unhealthy obsession turned a weird, angry crush from Damian is just my bread and butter. that is how DamiTim should be. to me. Damian obsessed over hating Tim Drake so much he accidentally ends up sort of in love with him and that only makes Damian angrier. because he can't prove everyone right by *also* liking Tim. he can't let Ra's win like that, because frankly why wouldn't Ra's be delighted by Damian and Tim getting together. and it builds and builds with angry passive aggression towards Tim that culminates in angry hate-fucking-that's-not-just-driven-by-hate. love and hate are always viewed as opposites in shipping and i think they're the same intense passion just in different directions. and for the best ships, they're very intertwined. what is DamiTim is not the peak of that. "i put so much of myself into hating you i had no choice but to fall in love with you somewhere along the way" core. love that bleeds into hate and hate that bleeds into love. "you make me so angry i regularly passively try to kill you but not with any real effort because who would i obsess over if you were actually gone" core. murder attempts as a form of courting. contingency plans to take each other out as a love language. they're unwell.

[dayurno]

“but if you didnt read aftg for the sports or the romance what did you read it for” is such a good question. unfortunately i am weird and mean and i read it because i like reading about people who are also weird and mean

[moonkhao]

hi.

[housewifebuck]

[blueskittlesart]

Since you're asking for requests... Maybe Ran from Case Closed?

YEAHHHH if no one else got me i know my one follower who likes the same bad japanese detective show as me got me ‼️

[lesbianwyllravengard]

Wyll breaking up with the player character if Ulder dies so Wyll must become the Duke makes me wanna throw up sobbing because he actually thinks that just because his father's first duty being to Baldur's Gate made him a Bad Father that Wyll himself will inevitably be a Bad Lover because surely no one could match love with duty if his father couldn't, unknowing he has more love in one hand than his father had in his entire body. fuck

[lifenconcepts]

hiiiiiii friendly reminder to not go knocking on strangers doors and running away :)) or just doing that at all :) some of us have sheer paranoia that can render us stressed for time long after the action is done :) because you don’t experience consequences doesn’t mean you’re free to go around doing this like a fucking asshole. :). I know most people who’d listen to this don’t go around doing it but I hope that at least one person reconsiders doing this just to look cool in front of their friends. You don’t seem awesome, you just make it clear your an uncaring asshole and nobody will come to you. I hope karma does its thing. :)

[frostgnawdraws]

hi hello if this looks terrible I'm sorry I'm on mobile

[chiquilines]

Yeah im late to the bandwagon but i've been itching to redraw them for some days now,, theyre so small

[mueritos]

its crazy how coming into clinical social work, i really just thought I was up against systems and cycles of trauma....but it turns out i'm up against those two things AND other therapists. the amount of work spent correcting mistakes from other clinicians--whether with clients or during the classroom--is fucking crazy.

i totally get we're all on different journeys in terms of being clinicians. but it is insane finding out day after day of therapists and clinicians saying the worst things ever to clients. demeaning them, telling them "it's all in their head", the racism and the ableism and harm that is caused. like no fucking wonder people are afraid to seek therapy (on top of the accessibility issues). while i'm a little biased and think that at the very least clinical social work training focuses on viewing people within their environments (so not engaging in the medical/individualist models of practice that a lot of counseling programs focus on), that doesn't mean it gives every person the skills to be an effective therapist. i'm also not saying i'm the best clinician ever--I'm literally in training--but boy! it is jarring seeing how some of my peers interact in class and wondering...is that how you are with your clients??

my social work program at the very least also has a focus on anti-racism, but i know students from other programs and some of them don't even mention racism AT ALL and focus entirely on diagnosing people "correctly", or finding the perfect form of therapy to use on a client. but man, what none of these programs teach are basic life skills. wanting to be a clinician isn't enough, especially considering that an inhumane amount of people in my program are 1. so nervous about making mistakes that they lose scope of their practice 2. have so much internalized racism/white guilt to work thru 3. or they have absolutely no listening skills.

again, im not trying to make it seem like I am the number 1 clinician in the world ever. I don't even have a psych background or bachelor's in social work. my reasons for going into social work are quite selfish (I want a job that is very flexible, easily transferable, and can be done in different contexts), and the helping people part is just a plus. i'm just saying it's very jarring seeing other people in training and realizing they too are working with clients. i have conversation after conversation about these issues with other BIPOC/queer/marginalized clinicians, so I know i'm not the only person worried about some of the people that will be out of this program in a few years practicing on their own or with vulnerable populations.

[honeypleasejustkillme]

i genuinely do not have it in me to claw my way out from rock bottom right now. this can’t happen anymore, it can’t get worse than this. i can’t take it, i’m just not strong enough

[ahli-stuff]

An Overanalysis of That Bsd 119 Panel

“If God does not exist, everything is permissible.”

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

With one of the most intense displays of genuine emotion that we’ve seen from Fyodor paired with the Expression emphatically taking up over half the page, I immediately wondered, what does this tell me about Fyodor?

I’ve seen a lot of interesting analysis floating around already, with the main two being: Fyodor doesn’t think Atsushi represents the “noble” beast of his ability, and/or Atsushi’s attitude reminds Fyodor of his past self.

However, to me, it seems that Fyodor’s reaction is a natural culmination of his obsessive and hypocritical search for perfection.

Part I: Fyodor’s Impossible Idealism

Fyodor has always been a romantic.

Not a romantic as in someone interested in ‘romance,’ but a romantic as defined by Oxford Languages: “[someone or something] characterized by…an idealized view of reality.”

From the beginning, Fyodor’s goals has always been steeped in idealism. “Saving” the world! Though thankfully a departure from the omnicidal maniac trope (I hate it! If you destroy the world, what then, genius), saving the world is as nearly nebulous as destroying the world. What does saving the world mean?

To Fyodor, it has been stated that he means cleansing the world of sin: ability users.

But I would argue that a better way to phrase this would be to cleansing the world of imperfection. Fyodor doesn’t only view ability users as imperfect, he views humanity as a whole as imperfect. I hinge this arguement where upon Dazai meeting Fyodor for the first time and talking with him in prison, Dazai says “people are sinfully stupid,” not ability-users, in opposition to Fyodor’s ideologies.

The second reasoning for this arguement is that while Fyodor hates ability users, he has no problem killing non ability users. You would think for someone who puts so much emphasis on abilities users as “sinful” that he would subsequently view non ability users as pure, right? Yeah, no.

“But Fyodor,” someone asks. “After you erase all the ability users how the fuck are you going to fix the rest of humanity?”

For one, he’d be dead (someone correct me on this if he said he’d kill all ability users but himself). For two, if the former () is the case, then is he just going to… write all of the rest of humans as perfect? Is he going to kill them to a write a version of humanity that is perfect? If that’s the case, then what the hell does ‘perfect’ mean to fyodor?

Another popular theory is that Fyodor is attempting to rewrite the world from the beginning without abilities, but that brings up the same issue in my second point—Fyodor doesn’t exclusively view ability users as imperfect, he views all of humanity as imperfect.

His plan is full of holes when you consider how exactly he defines “perfect.”

Therefore, I’d like to go forward in this analysis with the assumption that Fyodor is attempting to kill all ability users, including himself, through the “salvation” of death to create a “perfect” world despite all logistical fallacies.

So… what was the purpose of this tangent? It’s that I believe Fyodor’s search for perfection is futile, he likely knows it, and his goal is simply the largest unwilling suicide pact the world has ever seen.

Part II: Does Fyodor even believe in God?

Before this section begins, I’d like to define religiousness by the unconditional belief in gods or a god.

Short answer: yes. Slightly longer answer: well, yes, but…

Fyodor embodies of the churchgoing villain trope to a tee—at every possible moment he uses religion as a directive to all his actions. God, to Fyodor, is his patron.

What makes Fyodor’s religious zealousness so interesting to me is that highly intelligent, calculating, and cunning villains are often associated with ideologies ranging from relaxed-religiousness to atheism in media. Dazai is an example of this—he a deist who believes that god exists—but has created a world which runs on inconsistencies and absurdity.

Hell, Raskolnikov, the main character from from Crime and Punishment himself is an example of an intelligent character who is non-religious. While Raskolnikov is not a villain or a necessarily an irredeemable person, he is, as opposed to BSD Fyodor (the character of whom he inspired), an intelligent “bad person” who is notably non-religious. The following is a quote from Raskolnikov, in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, where he cynically comments about a religious character.

“At first he was afraid that she would worry him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with books.”

Which naturally leads to the next question: why is Fyodor so religious if it clashes against both his literary counterpart and the tropes associated with an “intelligent villain”?

Trick question: I don’t think Fyodor is religious at all.

I believe that Fyodor’s fervent belief in god does not come out of genuine faith, but rather a desperate need to justify his own crimes. After all,

“If God doesn’t exist, everything is permissible.”

That is an adapted quote referenced in BSD 42 from a conversation in another one of Dostoevsky’s books, The Brothers Karamazov. The meaning of the quote is that the presence of god gives moral guidance meaning, and without god, humanity falls into anarchy.

After all, if heaven and hell do not exist, if god does not exist, or if god exists but he doesn’t care, or if god exists but he hates Fyodor, then… there’s no such thing as Fyodor’s idea of perfection. All of his plannning and scheming will be for naught. The slaughter and manipulation he has enacted across centuries will be pointless.

Fyodor must believe in his idealism (his version of god) or else his world views, his idealism, his raison d'etre—crumbles.

So let me ask the question again. Why is a villain who is as intelligent as Fyodor also religious? It’s because he must be, or he’d go insane.

“God is necessary, and therefore must exist... But I know that he does not and cannot exist... Don't you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?”

This is a quote from Dostoevsky’s Demons, which perfectly describes what I believe about Fyodor’s motivations. I believe that deep within Fyodor’s fucked up mind, he understands that either god does not exist or that god exists, but hates/doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Fyodor.

However, Fyodor’s idealism has no room for nuance, even though someone of his intelligence must already understand that. Anything that challenges his idea of god, his idea of salvation, his idea of perfection, will challenge his very reason for being alive.

Which is what brings us to:

Part III: My Bad; The Panels this Analysis was Supposed to be About

In the past few years, there has been a recent shift in the fandom’s general perception Fyodor. He is no longer perceived as a character with a god complex, but rather character with a messiah complex(also known informally known as a Jesus complex). This is basically cemented in Fyodor’s last words before ‘death’: “Eli Eli lama sabachthani,” which mirrors Jesus’s words, not god’s.

While both god complexes and messiah complexes arise from the same core insecurities and delusions of superiority, those with messiah complexes are often characterized by their extreme empathy and intense desire to “save” others.

Looking at Fyodor, you wouldn’t think that he is a highly empathetic individual, but it is only because of his advanced emotional intelligence that he understands the human condition intimately enough to manipulate it—and he uses that power to try to “save” humanity the same way he perceives Jesus would.

But… if anything, it’s Atsushi who resembles Jesus.

Atsushi is compassionate; he extended his sympathy and respect to both Kyouka and Akutagawa, two people who attempted to kill him. Atsushi is selfless; from episode 1, he attempted to use his own body to cover a bomb in order to protect the ADA (people who he had barely known at the time!). Atsushi is humble; he denies his power and affability when confronting Lucy’s anguish.

(Arguably, you could say that Atsushi’s selflessness in the beginning was more motivated from self-hatred then true altruism—and you would be right, but once Atsushi learns a sense of confidence, his selflessness does not disappear… it just becomes genuine.)

Compassion, selflessness, and humbleness—all values that Jesus is said to preach.

The prideful Fyodor knelt before Atsushi in hopes a finding a god to his “Jesus,” but all he found was a painfully human boy. Not only that, he found a man who is more of a savior than he will ever be.

To add insult to injury in 119, Fyodor discovers Atsushi is an imperfect being who resides within what he had previously believed to be a perfect being. He is a contradiction��a nuance—and like I said before, Fyodor’s idealism has no room for what-ifs and buts. If he entertains a single contradiction(like Atsushi), his entire world view collapses.

So, Fyodor goes on the defense. In his attempt to rid himself of the so-called pathetic humanity he sees Atsushi demonstrating, he demonstrates some pathetic humanity of his own: For the first time we’ve seen since Fyodor has been introduced, Fyodor forgets his fixed benevolent, lofty, half-amused persona and gets pissed off.

More often than not I believe self-righteous anger comes as a result of insecurity and doubt. I imagine that his inner monologue is going something along the lines of: ‘how could this noble, god-like creature be so stupid, base, human? How could this faux-divine suggest that I am not already saving humanity? How could I have ever believed that he could be the perfect one I’m searching for?’

What I said before, about how Fyodor’s idea of perfection is a zero sum game and he knows it; it is reflected in his interaction with Atsushi. Atsushi’s mere existence and personality is evidence of what Fyodor has been trying to deny this entire time: his ideal of a “perfect world” does not exist.

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment