#cause *I* was Normal and just Lazy and Stupid and people with adhd are actually trying but everyone knows I'm not

[crippledanarchy]

It's Truly amazing I managed to get anything done before i got on Adderall

[compassionatereminders]

Hi! I wanted to answer the anon who was asking about what ADHD meds do & don’t help with as someone who was late-diagnosed and started meds this year. However, the effect of ADHD meds and even experience of ADHD itself varies heavily from person to person, so do keep that in mind!

DO:

- Actually hearing and retaining what people are saying. I was never able to fully experience a college lecture without panic because of only hearing bits and bobs of the lecture, going in one ear and out the other. I can truly focus and actually respond to what people are saying in a single line of thought without desperately trying to stimulate myself as much as possible to maybe get 1/2 of the detail to stick in my brain.

- Time blindness!! At first starting meds it felt like the day went for 500 years. I felt so much slower and mentally calmer, and I was able to complete “simple” tasks in under 15-20 minutes that could normally take me up to 3 hours due to distractions.

- Memory! Off my meds I have an enormously hard time remembering anything I’m trying to accomplish. I bounce from task to task without ever finishing it. On meds I’m able to think “I need to do laundry” and I just. Do the fucking laundry. It’s magical and I’ve cried more than once thinking about how much I’ve spent my life thinking I’m stupid or lazy for not being able to “just do the thing” like everyone else.

- Shutting down/fearful procrastination— I would be stuck doing nothing for days and days because I would want to do a task so badly but overly think about it and essentially paralyze myself in the decision making/getting started process. When I’m on my meds I can just do the fucking thing! Even if I don’t really feel like it! When before I practically had to have the exact perfect circumstance and could never create them, I can just plop myself somewhere and do the fucking thing. Just like I’ve been told all my life— “Even if you don’t want to, do it anyways” except now I have the actual ability to do that like everyone else. Before it was like everyone else was telling me to turn on a light, but I had no switch.

DON’T:

- Help with hyperfixation. Sometimes I can fixate even worse when I’m on my meds, just because my mind is so single stream that I’m able to do things for even more excessive periods. I burn myself out accidentally a lot quicker if I don’t provide myself with manual distractions to take breaks from daily/academic tasks.

- Immediately fix you. It was hard to start meds because I had to unlearn a lot of habits I had developed to cope with my undiagnosed ADHD— such as constantly moving, stimulating myself, having candy, etc. Just because the day became longer didn’t mean my time management became awesome either. I’m still working on tools that help ADHD with my meds!

- Not really a don’t but more so an unexpected side effect was becoming very intensely angry or upset when the medicine wears off. I struggle with emotional dysfunction already but the anger was so severe and I didn’t know that ADHD meds wearing off can cause that.

- Work 100% all of the time. Some days things like stress, poor sleep, poor diet, etc, can alter the way the same dose of meds works for you. Especially if you are nicotine dependent or a regular caffeine consumer, the way your meds work can change on a day by day basis. Some days I feel like the meds aren’t working at all, but more often than not there’s still a difference between myself being unmedicated and medicated.

- Instantly make you better at studying/task completion. Apparently having ADHD for years made me so extremely avoidant of many things that I just don’t have the skill set to do them well yet. Like studying, for example. I still struggle with extreme perfectionism that impedes me outside of ADHD paralysis.

- I’m gonna say it twice but they DONT FIX YOU ON THEIR OWN. Yes, they make your life fucking way better than before especially if you’re an adult with undiagnosed ADHD, but you have to learn how to use tools and learn skills to support yourself for the medication to help you to the max capability! I will definitely say that being on meds helped overhaul my mindset when I’m off meds and improved my perception of myself, but again, the meds can only get me so far!

I hope this helped anon!!!

Thank you for taking the time to share this! I hope anon sees it 💕

[nocturnowlette]

I have been recently diagnosed with a mental health issue and I have been trying to deal with it on my own .I think that it is not the best choice for me and I am curious about how you are dealing with this situation that you are so confident in posting and that is a good thing for you then you be you.

Content Warning for Mental Health Discussion

First, I’m very happy that you’ve decided to reach out to someone about this topic, as it can feel very alienating to do so, and to actively declare that you’re struggling with this. Even further, I’m honored that the person you chose to ask about this is me. I’ll do my best to help.

I suspect that I might be in a similar situation to you. I was diagnosed with ADHD and Autism long after my childhood unlike some others, and so I grew up with the idea drilled into my head that I was “normal”, while just being a little different from the other kids. 

I would constantly have kids and adults alike get angry at and yell at me for reasons I didn’t understand, would be called rude or condescending or feel stupid for not understanding things that others seemed to easily. I would find it magical how other people would be able to just do things without issue, and have the only advice given to me to “just do it”. I’d be called lazy and scatterbrained and weird. Because I was supposed to be “normal”, it gave me the impression over time that something about me was just fundamentally wrong. Like I was broken.

The realization of me not being normal, that there might be something defined that actually explains all of these struggles was both enlightening and somewhat soul-crushing at first. It was nice to have an explanation after all of this time, but it felt at first like it reinforced the idea of me being “broken”. I was supposed to be “normal”, and now I’m not. Thinking back to my childhood (which was largely hard to remember for reasons I didn’t question at the time), every small wisp of a memory I would see now through this new lens. Every nice interaction was treated with paranoia, wondering what the person thought of me. Feeling vindictive towards how I was treated, feeling angry at my parents for insisting that I was normal, feeling everything tainted by this realization. I was angry at the world for “making” me this way.

I already had a strong sense of shame and self-hatred, and this only fed the flame of it. However, as time passed and I was able to reflect on it more, me learning about this has only served to help me. The first thing that is important to note is that neurodivergence is not an inherent good or an inherent bad. There are some things that concretely affect your every day life negatively, there are aspects of it that are occasionally useful, and the are things that feel wrong, but only under a societal context.

One of the things I’ve thankful about is having this realization lead me learning about the Social Model of Disability. It’s one of a few, but the simple concept is this: imagine there is a world identical to ours, except that the majority of people had the common grouping of symptoms one would associate with autism. If someone considered normal in our world was placed into that one, they would then be the one that is considered to have a “mental illness”, and there would be no name for autism because it would simply be normal. Architecture and lighting and social traditions and interactions would all accommodate those with what we call autism, and so it would be far easier to navigate the world because it was made for you.

While there are absolutely concrete struggles with autism, with ADHD, with bipolar, with BPD, with schizophrenia, they are made harder by the fact that the world isn’t built for us. There are symptoms and aspects of all of those that are only struggles because “normal” people don’t have them and don’t need to think about or accommodate them. That’s to say, you are not “fundamentally broken”. You are just different, and that can cause friction with a world that functions largely off of fitting in. You are okay, and you are not broken.

Specific to ADHD and other ones with Executive Dysfunction, it’s important to note that “productivity” is not some inherent human good. Capitalism values productivity highly, and that has bled into our culture, but humans are not robots and we were not built to simply produce. Take days where you force yourself to do nothing. If you constantly just think about needing to do something, then you won’t be able to get that relaxation you need to have the energy to do it. You’re kinda stalling yourself out. I still get like this sometimes, but it’s easier to recgonize when you’re doing it the more you’re aware. 

Again, though, while many of these problems are due to just the society we live in, there are concrete issues you need to deal with, ones that would still be problems in that fictional world where everyone has what you do. Sensory issues and depressive mood swings and executive dysfunction are not something you can just will away, and they are things that you need to deal with. However, you still had to deal with those before. Now, you have a name for it. It’s a target, and something defined that you can work on now that it’s no longer some abstract struggle and has a name and known information around it.

And, to reiterate, you are not some fundamentally different person now that you have learned this information. You simply have a name for it now. That is exclusively helpful for you, so long as you don’t fall into the pitfall that I did for a while, which is “learned helplessness”. For a good while, this realization made it feel like I was destined to fail, to never succeed, and to always be different and alienated from others. The truth is that there will always, always be people that will understand and support you. 

In my humble opinion, it’s best to avoid online semi-closed off communities that center exclusively around these neurodivergent struggles. While they’re well intentioned, what I’ve found is that it slowly becomes a place that functions like a crab in a bucket, everyone sort of convincing themselves that they will never grow beyond their struggles, and that any progress they make is in spite of them and not alongside them. In a more open, diluted website like Tumblr it might be better, but I haven’t participated much so I can’t tell you for sure.

It’s best to find communities that have people that struggle with the same things, but function as a general community of people rather than focusing just around that topic. Not only do friendships grow stronger that way, learning more about the person and being able to relate your struggles as well as count the small differences, but it enforces the idea that while this is a significant part of yourself, that it is only a part. It does not define you entirely, it is a texture to your mind. Important, but not everything.

The most important parts of growing as a person alongside your neurodivergence is both to accept it and to try your best to love yourself. Shame is a strong social motivator and it gets instilled into you early. My bullied and the uncompassionate angry adults that harshly corrected me started to form their own sort of critic in my mind, one that would always comment on what I’m doing without anyone else even needing to anymore. This is somewhat present in everyone, but it can turn nasty if it’s too strong and turns into self-hatred like it did with me.

The solution, for me, is to form a new voice in your head, one of rationality and self-forgiveness. I envision is as an owl, but most people simply feel it as an abstract voice. It talks over your negative feelings, over your self critic, reminding you that you are not worthless or broken. Reminding you of the simple facts, things you should keep in mind, even if you don’t feel them right now. As you grow and slowly change, that voice becomes more solidified. It doesn’t override or discount your feelings, but accepts them and tries to remind yourself of what’s true and what’s important.

It’s okay to feel bad, and you keep stay rational at the same time. You can forgive yourself even while you are doing something you perceive as wrong. Failure is the most important part of self-improvement, it could not happen without it. Real, helpful change happens slowly and systematically. You choose every day to do small things that help you, and sometimes fall off the horse entirely before getting back on. Change is not linear, it is not easy, and it is not fast, but it is very, very possible. The key is failure, acceptance, and forgiving yourself for failing and finding it hard to accept yourself.

Finding people that love you for you is extremely helpful, so while communities can have problems, I do highly suggest it. Even a few close friends or even just allies that understand you can make such a big difference. Even something private like a diary or journal or a private blog helps. Turning your feelings into words has some sort of effect. If people could see some of the things I’ve written down in my journal, they’d be extremely concerned for me. It’s a place that lets you get out your worst thoughts.

Lastly, understand that while some mental illnesses are concrete in their existence, others are simply names we give to a common grouping of symptoms. Both Autism and ADHD are just that, and they can potentially have multiple different sources or a combination of them, and also have many different individual nuances. Keep your ears perked to new ideas and always be willing to try them, it might take 100 before you find 1 that works, but every single one makes it a little bit easier.

And remember, you are so, so deserving of love. You are wonderful and complex and unique, while still close enough to others to resonate with them. You deserve happiness and contentment and joy and self-acceptance. You need to remember this, as hard as it is to feel it. You deserve so much love. 

Those are all of my thoughts for now. My PC crashed after typing about 15 paragraphs of this and it didn’t save because it’s a response to an ask, so I dunno how good this rewritten version is or if I covered everything the first did. So, apologies if I missed anything.

[vreemd]

wish there was some room in online adhd spaces for people who don't want to or can't take medication. I so often see people acting like we're just stupid or self sabotaging.

I got stimulant medication prescribed to me. I had high blood pressure at the time (and always do; I have cptsd and suspected POTS, or something else) and no one at any point explained to me that this was an actual risk. like a life or death level kind of risk. I was just told to monitor my BP. at age 25 I wasn't really sure what my BP was even supposed to be like.

so one morning, a few months into taking ritalin, I woke up with an absolute fucker of a migraine, and just feeling very weird. like my entire body was making overtime, working too fast. my heart was beating out of my chest, I was out of breath, trembling more than normal. my skin felt too small and tight to contain all my blood and my body hurt all over.

I took my BP. it was 190/240. great, I thought, that's normal, right? I wasn't 100% sure so I sent a picture of the meter to my brother in law (he is an EMT). I was completely wrong; 90/140 is normal. my numbers were both 100 points too high.

I had to go to the ER, got BP medication and had to stop the adhd meds immediately. I also had to take my prescription of benzodiazepine medication regularly to keep my BP down while the meds left my system.

I had had a hypertensive crisis. this could've been a lot worse had I not questioned my BP numbers. I could've very well had a heart attack had I taken the adhd medication again.

you might think "but you didn't have a heart attack so, crisis averted, right?" my endurance after having that hypertensive crisis had dropped to zero. I had to build my walking endurance back up. to the mailbox, a bit past it, etc. I remained out of breath for so long. I couldn't do any strenuous activity, I couldn't read out loud of talk for more than a minute without being completely out of breath. this took months, if not an entire year, to reach some kind of normalcy again.

my blood pressure, while it was always high and I have one or more conditions that make it so, has stayed higher after that than it was before. I'm on more blood pressure medication now, and on a higher dose. I didn't do anything in my life that caused high BP to begin with, and now I have to watch what I eat, have to exercise regularly and avoid caffeine, which is fun when you have chronic fatigue.

so no, I don't want medication. I'd maybe try a non-stimulant one, but that isn't very common in my country and I haven't found any doctors yet who'd be on board with trying. some people genuinely CANNOT take stimulant adhd meds, others don't want to for health or other reasons.

the fact that the entire online (and offline) experience of finding other people with adhd is just "oh I was a lazy dysfunctional POS until I started taking meth!" is so alienating. like I genuinely truly believe that there is a lot of work you can do to function easier with adhd, and I think the psychiatric system is just lazy and unwilling to try to do anything other than giving anyone and their mom a prescription for extremely heavy medication with potential deadly side effects. I don't think that's normal.

I do also think that if you do take the medication and it works for you that's great, but that's not my point here.

[cimeriansparrow]

My mom got mad at me this morning bc "I never talk to her," but every time we try to really talk, it turns into a massive fight (guess what happened 15 minutes ago)

I can't even ask questions without them eventually leading down a road where she keeps cutting me off and begins to yell at me. Obviously I'm taking a tone with you. Not only am I literally just speaking to you in the way that you speak to me, but being spoken down to for 22 years really teaches you that it doesn't matter How I speak to you, you won't ever Listen. Idk. I'm tired of living in a house where I can't even try to talk to my parents about the smaller stressors that I have.

Tried to bring up what's been going on the past few months bc she accused me of being depressed and lazy and. Yeah. I was depressed for 3 months. Thank you So much for noticing. It really speaks volumes to me that you didn't say anything about it while I was going through it?? I tried explaining that a new medication (that she knew I was taking!!! I told her when I switched to it!) Was causing me immense brain fog and seriously scary suicidal ideations that I did nearly act on.

And she got pissed and started yelling bc I never talk to her, and when I asked her to stop yelling she told me that she's gonna yell because she shouldn't be made to feel like this in her own house. She just went through a massive surgery and she's had to walk on eggshells around us when we should have been taking care of her (which we did. And it fucking tears me apart that she doesn't realize how much of my own life I've given up already to make sure she's been taken care of) and she's done with tiptoeing around all of us and she just kept going and going and going and going and going because she doesn't actually ever know when to fucking stop.

No shit we don't talk. Every single time I try to talk with you it ends up like this. With me trying to calm down after stepping away after you've accused me of some wild shit and when I come back to try to talk normally you're still yelling. In fact, you're more incensed than before.

For some reason she thinks adhd medication will fix everything. Like it's some sort of cure all and I don't have a decent handle on it. And every time I bring up that I've done some research and I feel like I might be on the autism spectrum she tells me that's stupid and people are making a trend of it and that's why I feel that way and I shouldn't think that because none of us (myself and two younger sisters) are autistic.

If none of this makes any sense to anyone reading, know that that's how Every Single conversation with her goes. If she's not in a good mood she's going to bring you down to her level of emotion. She will make it about her through the stupidest methods possible, and after being emotionally manipulated like that my entire life it's hard to see exactly what's going on because she comes at you so fast.

[thekawaiibutterflygirl]

I can't believe I had to hear stupid criticism of these things in review videos of season 3, but I'm out here willing to defend my homies to the death and giving my own two cents on things

I'm somewhat okay with Sarcastic Chorus, but his criticism of the "hero doubting themself trope" pissed me off so goddamn much. I know it's not specifically canon that Luz is ADHD, but I literally relate in every way with her symptoms. That includes something that's known as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). It's not Luz doubting herself in terms of normal sort of doubt, it's not that she believes she can't do it or deal with things, or doesn't think she's strong enough. She is deathly afraid of her friends abandoning her because of something outside of her control. Just because of a little mistake, she thinks the whole world is going to fall apart because of her. And this extreme reaction to something outside of her control is a pretty common reaction in those with ADHD and to those who experience RSD. She wants to punish and she actively blames herself for things like that because of the way she's been judged so harshly due to being different. This self criticism comes from other people blaming us as children, from calling us lazy to punishing us for causing trouble because we weren't accommodated properly. It is so normal for children with ADHD to grow up being traumatized by the world. This is shown both in her mother, Camila and somewhat within Eda. Camila shows symptoms of inattentive ADHD, while Eda shows symptoms of hyperactive ADHD. And they both have trauma. So they definitely have different ways of reacting to that trauma, Camila being protective and Eda repressing a lot of the things that make her different. Luz's experience is so real and common, and people ignoring that and writing it off as a trope, boils my damn blood. Maybe don't act like it isn't realistic, just because you don't experience it.

The other thing is that it is SO WEIRD people hate Willow?? Like man, I didn't think she was a boring character at all. I guess y'all just don't understand feeling insecure and learning to glow up and be more confident. Willow is far from my favourite character, but people doing her fucking dirty in the review videos. Willow has had a character arc of being a doormat to being a badass plant witch. And that comes with being the therapist friend and repressing all that shit inside. Having to deal with everyone else's bullshit and being the sensitive person she is, she wants to help. And she couldn't accept people back into her life because of the way she was mistreated. She was tired of letting people walk all over her, and was super cool for eventually getting boundaries. Willow's character arc is small in comparison to others, but she deserves more credit for being a damn cool and relatable character. I can't believe people called her boring, just because she's a side character. I like her a lot, and there's nothing that any of you motherfucking reviewers can do to change my mind. Willow doesn't deserve the criticism, she's a well-rounded and complex character, actually.

I can't really remember much else, just more so how it's weird people have viewed things in their reviews. I'm definitely confused. Like,, it feels like people are upset because some things just weren't written for them or they just made a weird reach for something.

Anyway, I'm glad most people like this show regardless. Reblog if you agree or wanna add your own thoughts!!!!!

[emeraldspiral]

Kinda reminds me of a thread I once read about how the normalization kids hating their parents for nagging them about eating their vegetables and such, like to the point where it's kinda seen as cringe and makes you seem like a "mama's boy" or something if you actually like your parents, makes it harder for kids with actually abusive parents to recognize that what they're going through is abuse. They hear their friends saying "Ugh, my mom is such a bitch" and don't realize they're not talking about someone who puts cigarettes out on their arm.

The FOP example is actually kind of a weird middle ground though cause like... the premise of the show depends on Timmy being in a bad situation in order to justify why he gets fairies. But at the same time, the show wants Timmy to be "average" so he can be relatable, so they end up treating all of the bad stuff in his life like it's normal and not exceptionally bad.

Like, they make Timmy's parents really stupid to justify them hiring an obviously evil babysitter, but the show still wants you to think they're good parents and doesn't really act like they should be held accountable for how their stupidity hurts Timmy. There was even an episode where a spoiled rich kid with a fairy felt like Timmy had it better because at least his parents were around, even though half the episodes have the Turners pawning Timmy off on Vicky so they can go out instead of spending time with him.

They established that Crocker intentionally sets up his students to fail and delights in handing out Fs and has a vendetta against Timmy specifically, but they still portray Timmy as a bad student who deserves those Fs, rather than blaming Crocker for being an incompetent teacher. They show Timmy struggling to study, but never portray it as a symptom of his mental health being negatively impacted by the people in his life who are so awful they're the reason he has fairies, let alone that he might have dyslexia or ADHD or that there might be any other root cause for his learning difficulties besides being lazy and stupid.

As the series went on, they also started playing up the idea that Timmy goes out of his way to avoid growing up or taking measures to improve his situation by getting rid of Vicky or Crocker so he can keep Cosmo and Wanda longer. But they play it as just Timmy being selfish and immature, rather than unpacking why Timmy would be so desperate to hold onto his fairies he'd sabotage himself like that. Like, maybe because any kind of separation is already traumatic, especially for a child, but much more so when we're talking about separating them from the only parental figures he's been able to depend on and leaving him in the care of two parents whose lack of dependability is the entire reason the other two had to intervene in his life in the first place.

With the way literally every episode has Timmy's wishes going horribly wrong and needing to be undone and Timmy either resolving his problems without magic or just having to accept that life is bullshit and there's no way around it, it can kinda seem like the show's underlying message is that fairies are bad, actually. They're a perversion of the natural order. Suffering is divine and something Timmy needs to endure in order to become a well-rounded adult, and the true purpose of his fairies is to tempt him to sin by trying to cheat his way out of it, so that he can be punished and learn his lesson. Failure to let go of his fairies leads to Timmy becoming a loser, unable to cope with adult life, because he relied too heavily on them as a crutch to make his life easier, when life isn't supposed to be easy.

FOP portrays a world full of stupid, ignorant, selfish, and cruel people, and the show depends on the world being like this in order to support its central premise. But at the same time, it treats all the things in the world that make life bad enough for Timmy to need fairies as just normal parts of life we need to accept and not try to improve upon.

Zim on the other hand, actually acknowledges that the world sucks for no good reason. Things are not bad because it's meant to be that way, they're bad because lazy, selfish, stupid, apathetic, and outright malicious people choose not to solve problems and make it impossible for the handful of people who are actually trying to get anything done. Where Timmy's universe is ruled by divine justice that punishes evil and rewards good, there is no justice in the universe of Zim. Sometimes people bring their own misery upon themselves, but sometimes evil goes unpunished or is even rewarded while good can be ineffective, unintentionally make things worse, or get punished, and it has nothing to do with what's "deserved".

Invader Zim knows Membrane's a bad parent and how his terrible parenting has made his kids maladjusted. FOP does not seem to have the same self-awareness about Timmy's parents. Zim knows that public education is shit and blames a lack of funding/misappropriated funds and child-hating teachers like Ms. Bitters for failing to prepare students for real life, rather than blaming students for being stupid slackers. Zim knows that the earth it's portraying is a dystopia that's only going to get worse until humanity either destroys itself or becomes just like the Irken Empire. FOP thinks its earth is just fine the way it is and will continue to be fine as long as everything stays the same.

Timmy's world is corrupt, but the show doesn't want to admit it and wants you to laugh at Timmy for stupidly thinking he has the right to mess with god's divine order and try to make it better. Zim's world is corrupt and invites you to mock the society that enables it to be that way.

Something interesting about Invader Zim is how it might still follow the ideology that "adults suck, kidz rulez lol" that some cartoons in that era follow (see: FOP and Jimmy Neutron)

The other cartoons show kids hating adults for getting grounded, curfews and keeping order (all of those normal things parents do to educate their kids). Although there ARE some instances that hate is justified (looking at Crocker), the hate for parents and other older authority figures is petty and for childish excuses (I mean, they are all children, so it's kinda reasonable). In the Jimmy Neutron movie, kids think they could go for a long time without their parents until it was shown otherwise.

The thing is, in these cartoons, it's a silly mentality kids have until they realize they would be lost without them. In Invader Zim, it's not the kids who hate them, but the creators who want YOU to hate them. Because they are useless.

In Invader Zim most (if not all) adults are useless. Dib really wants someone to listen to him, he wants to depend on someone. Throughout the series he wants an adult to believe him (especially his father), but ends up fighting alone.

TLDR, regarding the "kids hate adults" stuff in cartoons, most shows make kids hate them for wanting to do the best for them but they are dependant on adults. In Invader Zim, they are useless, Dib is mostly independent from them but despite it all he doesn't hate them (although many kids would)

[copperbadge]

Hi! I suspect this question may sound sarcastic or asshole-ish, but I promise it's sincere. And I realize that you're not a doctor, so feel free to ignore or tell me to DMOR, but you seem to have looked into this pretty extensively, so I thought you might have some thoughts. If you take ADHD meds and they work (that is, you don't feel any different but you can actually Do Things, which maybe gives you really positive feelings, which is not how you usually feel about yourself), how do you know that it's actually ADHD and not that normally you're just lazy, but now you took meth and you're hyper and euphoric or whatever it is that it does to non-ADHD people? Asking for a friend.

I...hm, layers to this one. First, thank you for offering a tone note because on the one hand, without it I definitely would have felt a bit hostile, but on the other hand it's very difficult to ask a question like this without sounding like you're trying to get a rise, when you really are just trying to get information. I'd struggle with that too. So thank you! I believe you are in earnest :)

I'm going to try to dig through this by levels rather than go through the question chronologically, that might cause the least amount of confusion and crosstalk. This is going to get long and quite rough and I’m going to address a lot of tender subjects including drug use, addiction, and self-esteem issues, so please read with care for yourselves. 

(I’ve tried to add in bolded topic headers so if you have ADHD and get bored of reading about one thing you can skip to the next!) 

So to start with -- and this isn’t particularly satisfying as an answer, but well...I know I have ADHD because I’ve been evaluated for it, twice now, and the doctors said I did. 

I fit a lot of the classic symptoms on the usual checklists, and while I’m smart enough to game those checklists, I tried to answer as honestly as I could. I wasn’t especially interested in getting Adderall for its intoxicant properties, since I’ve got plenty of access to other, arguably much easier to obtain intoxicants. I also, because I know myself to be someone who enjoys gaming tests for the game’s sake, made sure that at least one of the evaluations had cognitive tests that were harder to fuck with, like tangrams and memory tests and such. On the very top level, I know I’m medicating my ADHD because the tests say I have ADHD. 

But say we don’t trust the tests, or say I’m not as honest as I claim. On the next level down, but still quite near the surface, let's talk about "how do you know you're medicated and not high?" 

I've been in several kinds of altered state -- concussed, runner's high, stoned on weed or opiates, drunk -- and very occasionally I’ve been around people on coke or meth, though I’ve never done those myself. It's usually not difficult to tell that you are not functional on a normal level. It's difficult to describe how to someone who hasn’t experienced it, but for me being in an altered state like that is very evident. The first time I got a runner's high I was absolutely terrified because I knew something was wrong with me cognitively, but not why it had happened. When I woke up concussed, I knew immediately that something was wrong, but it was all I could do to get dressed and go across the street to a clinic, I was so fucked up. If you’re in an altered state and suddenly need to do something complicated, you're aware you would very much like not to be in that state anymore.

I've described Adderall as being like the most functional high you've ever had, but there are differences. If I've had, say, a weed edible, I feel calmer and happier and I'm also aware I'm stupid. I'm impaired and I can tell that. If I've taken an Adderall, I feel calmer and happier but not nearly to the same level, and there's no impairment to my intellect. Part of the calm is that if I think of something I need to do, I can immediately get up and do it, competently -- or I can decide not to. I control my impulses and actions. With street meth -- which I should note is much, much more potent than a low-dose Adderall -- compulsive behavior and lack of control are much more evident. Even if you are getting a lot done while on meth, you’re not necessarily in control of what, or how many times you have to do it to get it right. I'm told this is also often how people who don't have ADHD react to Adderall -- they’re not efficient as much as they are manic, particularly at stronger doses, which is why a) a good test of “do I have ADHD” is “How do I react to Adderall” and b) they start you on a super low dose.

When my psychiatrist and I meet to discuss how the medication is going, he asks me stuff like, do you feel you're in control of yourself? Are you having hallucinations? Do you find yourself craving a dose even when you know it would be detrimental? Do you feel your performance at work has improved, remained the same, or fallen? Do you find yourself able to focus but not able to control what you focus on?

On Adderall I do feel like I'm in control of myself, I do better work, and while I'm still learning to aim that focus, I am capable of doing so. I don't take it after 1pm because I know that'll fuck up my sleep schedule, and truthfully I don't want to. The one time I’ve taken Adderall after 3pm was because I was going to an art museum and I wanted to see how that would alter my experience, being able to focus more fully on the art and the person I was going with. And while I did have a great time, I wouldn’t make a habit of either taking the drug late in the day or taking it purely so I could have An Experience while on it. It’s fine, it’s fun, but it’s not so much fun I’m willing to mess with my sleep over it. 

I also have zero desire to drink (for the best, given alcohol and stimulants are a no-no) and a much decreased desire to get high. I don't need to self-medicate because I am actually medicated. I wasn't doing a shitload of self-medication before, but I was undoubtedly doing some, and more during the pandemic, and I can see how it would have become unhealthy had I continued. Do I still occasionally take an edible in the evening to unwind? Yes. Do I do it at the level I was doing it earlier this year? Fuck no. And I take half the amount I used to when I do, making sure I’m doing it well after any Adderall has worn off.

The question of "medicated or high" can still be a little difficult. What I said above is also what a lot of addicts say. They believe they are in control, they are better when they're on their intoxicant of choice, etc etc. "I can stop anytime I want" is like, the number one way to quietly tell someone that you, in fact, can't. Addiction's simplest definition is "loss of control over behavior" and addicts will do a lot to convince you that they haven't lost control over their behavior. (For more on this, Caustic Soda has a great episode about addiction in which Dr. Rob discusses how addiction and physical dependence differ.) All I can really say in response to this is that Adderall improves my quality of life in ways external to my emotional state -- yes, it helps emotionally, but that’s small potatoes compared to say, weed or opioids (opioids -- now there’s a drug I could get into trouble over) and weed’s way easier to get these days than Adderall. Weed does not, however, help me cook healthful meals and clean the bathroom. Adderall does.

So let's talk about the deepest part of this -- "How do you know you're not just lazy?"

Increasingly we are coming to an understanding of human behavior that informs us that laziness doesn't exist. What we think of as laziness can be caused by a number of factors: failure of executive function, fear of failure, exhaustion, avoidance of the unpleasant. Humans want to experience pleasure, it's a fairly strong primal drive, and we do not experience pleasure purely through inaction. If you should be doing something but aren't, that's not pleasurable, it’s stressful and boring. Lots of people will tell you “I fucking love to sleep, sleep is the best thing” and I’m sure they truly feel that way, but it’s not because they’re lazy, it’s because they have a sleep debt they’re banking against or paying back. There’s a lot of debate about laziness right now, but even as I refer to myself as one of the laziest people on the planet, I know laziness doesn’t exist in the way we conceive of it. When I call myself lazy, I’m using it as shorthand to say “I will find the most low-energy way to achieve something.” Because I am tired, because I have ADHD. (And also because I’m not twenty anymore.)

With exquisite timing, @thebibliosphere has very recently written an essay on this situation called “But You’re So Successful Without It”. Joy can’t take any of the medications available for ADHD, and the essay talks about what it feels like to have ADHD and to burn out because of it, which is where I was about to hit earlier this year. There is no way to call Joy lazy and absolutely no way to hear what she has to say and think that she would choose to go through what she has if she had an alternative. Nobody with any compassion would force her to. 

And here’s how I know I am not actually lazy: like Joy, I want to be doing the thing. If I need to do dishes and laundry so I’m not eating with my hands and wearing smelly clothing, but I’m not doing them, that’s not laziness. I know that my life is less pleasurable, indeed very unpleasant, if I don’t do those things. If I’m still incapable of doing them, it’s not because I Don’t Wanna. It’s because I am too tired, because I don’t feel like I can deal with unpleasant sensations on top of forcing myself to do something, or because my executive function isn’t functioning. If you aren’t doing something you should be doing, there’s usually a reason beyond “I’m just lazy” and it’s helpful, in breaking out of the mindset of “I’m a lazy (and therefore bad) person”, to ask yourself why. 

If there’s a reason you’re not doing it, even if that reason is simply “I’m so tired”, then you’re not lazy. You’re tired. If it’s because it’s unpleasant, then you’re not lazy, you’re avoiding pain. If you want to and just simply can’t, you’re dealing with a loss of executive function. 

Sometimes there are nonmedical workarounds. I wear gloves to do the dishes, I bought a cordless stick vac so my back wouldn’t hurt because I was constantly holding the vacuum cord in one hand, I blast podcasts when I’m doing something boring so my mind is elsewhere. I used to run at 3am because at any other time I was too fucking tired and I hate being out in public around strangers.

But, well, the best workaround for wonky executive function for me is Adderall. It’s not for everyone, it’s not an option for some, but for me it is one more tool -- admittedly a pretty spectacular one -- to manage a difficult life. 

All that said, the idea of being a Bad Person for Not Doing A Thing is a knot that it takes a long time to unpick. It is very freeing, and certainly less stressful, to both acknowledge that some things are beyond us, and receive help that brings them back into the realm of our ability to do. But it’s a process, and nobody can hustle anyone down that path faster than they are capable of going. So, all I can do is offer my personal experience. 

Even if this shit does kill me eventually, I’d rather have thirty more years where I am the person I’ve been in the last two months, than have fifty more years where I am the person I was in 2021. And even if I eventually have to go off it, what I’ve learned will help me not to hurt myself for something beyond my control. 

[roses-and-lightnings]

A struggling ADHDer confession

I was born mentally ill, maybe it was my premature birth that didn't allow my brain to fully develop, or my genetics but

I have ADHD, which is a chronic lack of norepinephrine neurotransmitters, as well as fewer dopamine receptors and considerably smaller brain volume

For that reason, other illnesses were allowed to develop, such as my crippling anxiety

I am primarily hyperactive-impulsive, my executive functions are impaired, my thoughts are always racey, I have lots of issues with processing information and communicating, I sensory overload quite easily and it's embarrasing, I'm loud and can't stop pacing around for the life of me and it's been 10 years I'm a nocturnal. I take 4 different meds, because my strong hyperactiveness and anxiety prevents me from being treated with stimulants. Combining with the meds I take for other health issues, I swallow about 12 pills a day, in which 10 are my daily anxiety and ADHD treatment. This fella right here is my monthly drug baggie:

Sometimes it felt like a superpower, to think super fast and make a thousand associations per second and be much more creative than anyone else ever was. I'm a talented artist, writer, scientist, I have neurodivergent and neurotypical friends that love me, and I don't have anything else I could ask for

And I was used to love being this way, being me, the only way I can be, yes, I am mentally disabled, but I'm happy with who I am, and nothing could ever change that, right?

Actually, when I look at the exams I fail because I can't set numbers apart, or when I forget to write my answer, details I neglect, no matter how hard I try, I mess up for some very stupid, very fucked up reason that is not even my fault. Not only in academics, but in life and relationships. I forget nearly everything, I can't stay still in a reunion and most days my brain just turns off all functions and leave me behaving like a squashed vegetable

This has caused me many kinds of problems, from the smallest as losing an appointment, to failing an entire college semester, to being kicked out of my frat and getting homeless in a foreign city, because people just couldn't live with me

And I just feel like a failure, a mistake, and wish I didn't exist, I wish I could die and be reborn as someone else, someone that won't have to face these stupid issues, or never even be reborn at all, I just want to disappear

Everyone else can do it eventually if they try really hard, why can't I? Oh, yeah, my brain is wired wrong, thanks a lot

And the worse? No do-overs for me. No one will provide me assistance when I fail due to my brain issues, they'll throw me in the trash. No one will understand, no one will give me another chance to try again, I'll just have to deal with it the same way normal neurotypicals do, and if I can't do it, well, it's because I'm just not trying hard enough, like the useless, pathetic trashbag I am. I should just stop being lazy and begin to work harder, and if I can't do it, if I'm a such a terrible, awful, disgusting human being, then I surely deserve to be outed of society, I deserve everything that happens to me for not having a normal, 100% functional brain

After everything that has happened this week, my mind issues just sound more and more like an excuse for being idle and dumb, and that I should just quit trying if I'll clinically never be able to make it. I'll never be able to change, or make anything worth it.

[rejectedanimexp]

ADHD AND AUTISM RANT

first of all, i just accidently deleted all of this and had to rewrite what I dont remember writing ugh- anyways, my whole life can be summed into being a reclusive, fidgiting girl who cant fit in with the norms of society. I tend to stay towards items and such and hate being near people. Going to social events is hard- I will puke if at a party too long. Sadly most people immediately tell me I can not have ADHD or Autism becuase I am not disabiled physically nor am I stupid. EXCUSE ME KAREN, ADHD AND AUTIDM DOESNT MAKE YOU DUMB OR DISABILIED ALL THE TIME! I actually was diagnosed with ADHD when I was around the age of 8. Sadly, when diagnoised with ADHD, they refuse to look for Autism as well. Why, i dont understand. its stupid, but oh well. I know i am not normal and dont fit with what is called normal. I know I cant focus in class. I know I have issues with going outside when light and sound bother the living heck out of me! I know something is wrong, but no one seems to actyally listen to me. SORRY IF HAVING A 3.8 GPA MEANS THERE CANT BE ANYHING WRONG WITH ME KAREN!!! SORRY IF I DARE TRY TO BE ANYTHING BUT PERFECT! I have taken sooooo many onine autism spectrum tests and every single one of them have pointed to a most likely to have Autism or aspergers. But how do I even go about getting a diagnosis when I'm an Adult?!?!??! People say I cant just say I have trouble with this becuase its a crutch. A CRUTCH?!??! I'm sorry if me having a mental healh issue means I need help. I'm sorry if my so called possible crutch in life bothers you. I didnt ask for someone to illegitimatize me health issue. I asked for someone to help me. Seriously, why do people not take these things seriously??!??!?!? I just want to know if i am a freak in society or am suffering from Autism. I need answers in my life, not more critisim from the Karens in our world who assume that anyone who claims to have ADHD or Autism is just lazy and not trying. CAUSE BOY AM I FREAKING TRYING!!!! Like, why is it so hard to get someone to take this seriosly enough to get an adult diagnosis? Anyone else wanna add to my rant about how unfair getting a diagnosis in our judgemental Karen filled world is?

[smuglemon]

time to vent here because it somehow feels safer then anywhere else 🦎 . it will go into stupid detail cause lol

i just. fucking Hate how. everything has turned out! I hate coming to terms with the fact i have actual trauma . but. it doesnt feel right to say what i went through is trauma even though it was. or maybe it wasnt i dont know but i literally have flashbacks when im feeling weak, i dont KNOW if thats normal. i still just wish things were different i want a different childhood. i know was neglected my whole childhood , i missed months of school my parents fought all the time over drugs i witnessed kittens pass away and i had to deal with that . I know my parents still loved me and tried for me and they are recovered now. but it just hurts so bad still. i coped with everything by having a horrible internet addiction. Which led to me getting insomnia whcih i still suffer from to this day. i wasnt depressed back then but i had horrible anxiety, it wasnt social yet but every time they fought i would break down and i didnt know how to deal with that i still get involuntary shakes whenever i hear yelling from my parents . I wish i could control it but ggahhh fuck. i used escapism to deal with my problems, id just sit and draw and watch my little pony and just look for anything that would be a distraction. I didnt have any friends outside of the internet or school and usualy i wasnt going to school. my parents never wanted to do anything with me and i was always really lonely, id talk to anyone who would talk to me. this led to some good things but a lot of bad things. but all this neglect whether it was trauma inducing or not just led me to not seeing doctors, getting a proper education or learning how to be social . Whcih leads to today!!!!! hahahahahhahahhaha :(

to start I have no friends outside of the internet period anymore. everyone irl left me 2 years ago on a total whim, and i have no reason to believe it was anyone elses but my own fault. I love and appreciate tje friends i still have online, but being suddenly dropped by my old friends left me with really severe abandonment issues with the people im closest with rn :( i need to constantly be with people especially a specific person who my emotions seem to rely on,, i know im the only one who can control how i feel but ggod. it feels like evry emotion they have i have to match it or i will not be good, if im visibly sad when theyre happy i will be left alone agakn and i know that isnt true i know they wouldnt leave me but the fear still exists and i dont know how to get rid of it. i always read too far in nto their tone and worry whether they are mad at me or sad or any other thing, i fear im annoying for constantly asking for reasurance :( and every time they go i fear when they come back they will realise im bad and they will leave me and it feels almost inevitable. i know logically i know i shouldn't but god i have nightmares abt it,, theres so many better people out there. my friends deserve so much better than that.

ive also been diagnosed with ADHD recently ! man as if i didnt have enough problems. its just been really awful to deal with. with a combination of trauma(?) driving me to want to indulge in my childhood fixations and nostalgic things and , like idk if its age regression but just ,, trying to imagine a happier childhood alot. mixed with getting hyperfixated on anything but my school work,, mixed with not having a classroom environment , its lead me to fail 2 semesters of school so far . I feel like I have no future anymore because of that. i feel so lazy and i know im just making excuses for that but despite everything tjat happened i just wanna be a kid again! I want to be raised normally I want to get help for my problems early i wanna not have to worry about anything :( i want to be normal.

[jereviendrai]

||| ooc; does every character on this blog have bpd symptoms? is this problematic, considering they’re all villains or would-be villains? is there a way to give a villain a mental health disorder without stigmatizing the disorder? well--

OH AND BIG TRIGGER WARNING FOR A WIDE RANGE OF MENTAL HEALTH TOPICS SUCH AS: eating disorders, mental illness, stigmatization of mental illness, self harm, suicidal tendencies, and a fuckload more. I don’t go into detail. There are just mentions. I’m not gonna say a bunch of graphic shit, I promise! If I went into graphic detail, this would turn into a PhD thesis proposal, and that’d be WAY too long to be worth writing. Also I have BPD, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on the subject. I’m not. My word is not law, but it’d be nice if my word was taken into consideration.

this post got so fucking long and disorganized jesus christ

The answers are: yes, not inherently, and absolutely.

I want to get into the mental health of all three characters in a second, but I think it’s important to talk a little about the other two points first. That said, though -- yes, they’re all borderline. All three of them! And they all experience it differently! I will come back to that. Anyway--

I feel like it’s important to talk about villains, mental illness and stigma. There’s a really common (and insanely lazy) tendency for writers to explain a villain’s villainy by simply saying, “oh, well they’re a psychopath,” or, “they’re just crazy.” This is not only lazy and offensive, but it contributes to an unfair stigma against the mentally ill.

Mental illness might, say, compel someone to steal a chocolate bar or snap at someone out of anger. It might make a person’s emotions volatile. It might make someone unreasonable. They might suffer delusions of abandonment, of some plot against them, of people’s secret intent to humiliate them, etc. They might suffer and handle their suffering poorly. They may cause harm. But that doesn’t make them... evil. It makes them complex. And how they react to and handle their negative actions says more about them than any diagnosis could.

When you have a villain with a mental illness, you need to examine how the illness is hurting them. Write about how it hinders their progress. Write about how isolating it can be for them. Write about the impact and struggle. Not how the illness makes them so evil or so irredeemably awful. The illness should be what humanizes them and helps to make them relatable. No matter how untouchable and powerful your villain is, they have some personal struggle that is independent of their villainy. When done correctly, it can go a long way in fleshing out your villain and adding interesting inner conflict!

I know, I know. You might be asking, “yeah, but don’t people with mental health issues sometimes cause harm directly related to their symptoms?” To which I say: yeah, duh, of course. Just like a depressed person might say something mean when they’re having a bad day. Just like someone with ADHD might make someone feel like they aren’t being listened to. Just like someone who has social anxiety might make a friend feel unloved. Just like mentally healthy people also occasionally cause harm.

I’m not saying mental health issues don’t cause problems and maladaptive behaviors. I’m just saying it doesn’t... make someone inherently bad -- real or fictional. And I need people to internalize that.

ANYWAY ON TO THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR BPD

(i know, you’re probably like, “dude oh my god shut up and get on with it” sakjlfdkjsa)

I’m going to be referring to the four subtypes. I know these are controversial to some people. Some really don’t like these labels, others feel comforted by them, etc. They’re just to make it easier to talk about this whole thing. No one fits neatly into any one subtype! Some people don’t resemble any particular one! Everyone is different! Don’t box people into these subtypes if you haven’t been given consent, thanks!

Mr. A / Clark Donovan Mr. A is a classic example of the Quiet Borderline. Someone with quiet BPD mostly directs their symptoms inward. It’s harder to detect than other types, as the symptoms that are most prevalent are mostly expressed, well, inwardly. Self-esteem issues, self-blame, insecurity, withdrawing emotionally, pretending you’re not angry when you are, self harming tendencies, suicidal thoughts, etc. He’s also kind of clingy. Mr. A is an extremely loyal person to a fault. He is a people pleaser and will go to the ends of the Earth to make his loved ones happy, even if it hurts him. This is of detriment to him, as he often finds himself getting hurt on behalf of people who might not care as much as he does. He’s let a lot of bad people into his life solely because they made him feel loved, wanted and useful. He views everyone he loves through rose-tinted glasses and only takes them off long after he’s been laid to waste by them. He has terrible issues with self-image and has thus developed an eating disorder. He also has severe depersonalization/derealization disorder, which is a result of how his mental health interacts with his reality-warping powers. It creates a lot of anxiety with him, watching himself phase through things and bend the world around him on a whim. His motivations in life are connected to this, but his motivation to do evil things is not. He wants to bring other superpowered people together as a united front against humanity, as he feels that humanity is a threat to their continued existence. This has nothing to do with his mental health issues. The part of it that does tie in is that he’s painfully lonely and has chronic feelings of boredom, so being surrounded with a shit ton of different people mitigates that. It’s a motive for him bringing people closer to him, but it is not a motive for him to launch an attack on all humanity. He’d be really offended if you tried to accuse him of doing this on the basis that he’s just a bit ill. His illness literally just makes him crave contact with other living beings just like him. He sometimes does bad or stupid things because of this, but it literally has nothing to do with his motives as a villain. As an addendum of sorts, Mr. A’s alias and reluctance to use his given name (Clark Donovan) are a result of identity issues he suffers due to his BPD. He finds it hard to maintain a stable sense of identity, so he just... doesn’t.

Ivan Chanteur Ivan closely resembles what we like to call an Impulsive Borderline, comorbid with ADHD. He is an impulsive person, as the name of the subtype suggests. He’s a thrill-seeker who suffers from extreme levels of chronic boredom, which he desperately tries to combat by any means necessary. Staying still and doing repetitive tasks is literal torture for him. If he cannot get up and move and do whatever it takes to keep himself feeling fulfilled and occupied, he is probably going to fucking lose it. When he is actively vocalizing his boredom on a regular basis, this means the chronic feelings of boredom have reached critical mass. It’s not just boredom. It’s anxiety, it’s agitation, it’s existential dread, it’s an inability to focus, it’s pent-up energy that needs to go somewhere and can’t just stay in him anymore. If he can’t get it out in healthy ways, he usually resorts to self-harm or less-than-healthy pursuits. He’s been known to dabble in drugs, self-harm, occasional promiscuity on a bad night. While therapy’s helped him get a handle on it, there’ve been a lot of stressful and traumatic things going on in his life have have made it a lot harder to keep himself in check. Ivan is pretty charismatic, able to cast a wide net and catch all sorts of people in his social web. He has a sort of natural magnetism that, on a superficial level, should make him quite popular. But underneath it all, he has difficulty trusting people long enough to actually let them into his life. He’ll act like an open book, only to slam himself shut and reshelve himself before anyone can get anywhere near the end. He’s easy to befriend, but difficult to get close to. This has caused him to feel lonely and frustrated. He wishes he could easily form deep connections, but it’s hard and it hurts him. In addition to all of this, he engages in a wide variety of attention-seeking and risk-taking behaviors. He often spends time with people who are not good to him, simply for the thrill of it. This has often gotten him hurt, but he finds it hard to cut this habit in spite of everything. This leads to a lot of frustration and self-hatred, as it makes it hard for him to protect himself. Every time someone hurts or betrays him, he beats himself up over it and tells himself he should know better by now. All that said, though, he’s come a long way in therapy. He’s not quite able to keep a handle on all of it all the time, but he’s managed to secure one or two decently stable friendships along the way.

Eve Laurier Eve is particularly difficult to talk about, but I’m going to try my best. Eve is what happens when you make a conscious decision to be bad. He knows beyond a shadow of doubt that what he’s doing is wrong, but he feels so wronged by the world that he just cannot seem to motivate himself to care. This... again... has nothing to do with his BPD. If anything, it’s his struggles with this disorder that keep him at least somewhat... grounded in reality. Eve suffered a personal tragedy -- the loss of his twin sister in a housefire. Though ruled an accident, he cried foul play. Consumed with grief at the loss of the only person he felt could truly understand him, he vowed to find the culprit and make them pay. This set him down a path of vengeance that would make John Wick blush. Eve grew up as the heir to his family’s criminal enterprise. This put him in a position of power the very moment he was born. This also left him exposed to a lot of terrible, violent crimes from a very young age. Because this was normalized by his family, he internalized and compartmentalized any misgivings he had about violence. By the time he was ready for university, he had been thoroughly trained to carry out hitjobs on behalf of the family. He was a weapon from the moment he left the womb. He was groomed to do terrible things, and it’s because of this ongoing and continuous trauma that he developed his particular cocktail of mental health issues. He mostly fits in with the label of Petulant BPD. Repeated and violent trauma did a number on him, leaving him angry and hurt over what his parents let him fall victim to. He also experiences feelings of self-loathing over the part he feels he played in his own trauma, despite the fact that it started in early childhood. He is self-defeating and self-blaming. He has a difficult time expressing his feelings and has angry outbursts fairly regularly, often resulting in self-harm and suicidal ideation. He’s been known to reach for the nearest mind-altering substance just to get out of his head for a bit. His mood swings are intense and leave him feeling fatigued and anxious. He has severe social anxiety that sometimes manifests as cold indifference. He also has issues with control, has paranoid delusions about the people in his life and doesn’t often believe it when people say that they care for him. He will find any and every piece of evidence that points to the contrary, even if he has to make it up himself. This usually ensures that he’ll end up alone again. He doesn’t have very many close relationships, if any at all. His BPD is not the reason he hurts people. Any hurt caused by his BPD is directed at himself, not at others. His BPD is a direct result of what actually has primed him to hurt people. It’s a direct result of trauma. He’s traumatized. And no, trauma is no excuse for what he’s done -- but his BPD didn’t make him kidnap and torture Ivan while he waited for Ivan’s parents to send in the ransom. That was all Eve. That was his conscious decision to make, in spite of everything in his head telling him how awful and wrong he would be to do such a thing. He knew it was wrong and ignored it, as he was under the impression that Ivan’s family had a hand in his sister’s death. If anything, his BPD aggravates his feelings of shame and self-loathing when he does precisely what his parents had been training him to do his whole life.

Anyway-- I hope this was helpful or at least interesting.

The point I’m trying to make here is that mental illness isn’t some kind of ultimate litmus test of good and evil. A disorder doesn’t make you good or bad. It’s just another facet of who you are.

So... to that end... please for the love of fuck stop using personality disorders as the reason for someone’s villainy. Please. I am begging.

I wrote a bunch of BPD villains in various stages of villainhood because I have BPD and this disorder often makes you feel like you’re evil, a monster, etc. Honestly, on good days I feel like an inherently bad person who consciously chooses to do good. That’s very flawed and I know that logically I’m not inherently bad, but that’s kind of what stigma does. It makes you feel like you’re inherently bad. And that feeling influenced how I write all three of these characters.

This is an incoherent mess but today’s the day I find out if I have coronavirus and I’m so fucking stressed out and hopped up on DayQuil. Thanks for reading any of this, I guess?

[suteshiro]

ALL for crown.

I LOVE YOU

If your character wasn’t an adventurer, what livelihood would they lead?

Wouldn’t you want to know

Who in the party would your character trust the most with their life?

For now I can’t say for sure? From the ones he currently knows it’s hard to tell bc he trusts Love in a Personal Way but is lowkey convinced he’d sell him to Satan for a corn chip. And Gank seems p trustworthy in that regard but they have only briefly met each other

What are your character’s core moral beliefs?

No one gets to control or take away someone else’s autonomy

What relationship does your character have with their parents and siblings?

Parents? Hate ‘em. Siblings? H

Does your character have any biases for or against certain races?

Eeh, I don’t think so

What is your character’s opinion on nobility? On authority?

Take a wild guess ksvjfnskjv 

He doesn’t think someone having authority is inherently bad but he hates every person in authority he’s ever known of so his opinion has been formed based on that

Describe your character’s current appearance: clothes, armor, scars they’ve picked up along the journey, etc.

I’m lazy. You know what she looks like

What location encountered in the campaign has your character felt the most “at home” in, or just generally liked the most?

Campaign hasn’t started yet so I can’t say anything about which locations visited she’s liked! She feels very comfortable at the spot we’re starting at tho

What deity, if any, does your character worship? What’s their opinion on other people’s worship?

Caenrys babey. She’s a bit weirded out by people who dedicate themselves to organized religion but in general she doesn’t stick her nose in others’ religious business

If your character had time to pick up any artisan’s tools, game set, instrument, etc., what would it be?

Artisan’s tools: I think he’d like glassblowing! Woodworking is cool too

Game set: playing cards probably

I don’t think he’s rlly interested in music as something he himself might perform vkjfnfksjn

Learning how to use a poisoner’s kit could be fun

Describe your character’s current relationship with the player character sitting to your right.

I’m not sitting next to anyone so I rolled for it and got Gank (@prophe-seer​‘s character)

Crown likes Gank a lot! They only met like, once but they rlly got along. She feels a bit bad for them bc they seemed to think she was rlly nice and instead of considering she Might genuinely be nice she jumped to “oh shit the bar is fucking underground for this guy” skvjfnksjfvn. So she’s surprisingly attached. She wants them to have an actual friend bc it seems like they need it

What is your character’s current goal, summed up in one sentence?

I’m headed straight for the castle

Does your character ever want to “settle down” with a spouse, children, house, etc.?

Currently, no. She has a lot of dangerous shit to do and is too caught up on being A Free Spirit That Actually Gets To See The World to like,, consider settling down. And she hasn’t given any thought to what life she’ll have after her goals have been fulfilled.

But I’ve actually given some thought to this and I think she wants to make a family one day. Idk if it’ll include children (probably adopting older “problem” children tbh) or a spouse but she definitely wants to settle down with at least one pet

Has your character ever been in love?

H,

What battle in the campaign has been most memorable to your character?

Haven’t played yet!

If your character wasn’t whatever class they are, what would they be instead?

Probably a fighter skjvfnskjfvn or a paladin

What is your character’s favorite season?

Autumn! Lovs the cronch. Loves to get to cool down after summer

What would your character’s Zodiac sign be, following stereotypical astrology?

I actually already made this decision ksjfnkvsjn she’s an Aries. I remember liveblogging my decision making to a friend regarding this but i cant remember what it was and im lazy

Where in the world does your character most want to visit?

Oh you know

What is the biggest mistake your character has ever made?

Oh you know,

Does your character have any noticeable scars? If so, what are their stories?

Probably not!

What animal best represents your character?

Wolf,

If your character could go back in time and change one thing about their life, what would it be?

Oh you know,,,,

Which other player character does your character find themselves having the most in common with?

Not sure yet!

Does your character regret any particular choice the party has made?

idk yet ksvfsjfv

What would your character say their best trait would be?

uuuh i dont think he thinks of himself in positive terms a lot skvnksjfvn

he’d probably name his strength or smth like that

What is your character’s greatest fear? Deep, irrational?

Oh, you know!

What is currently motivating your character to stay with the party?

I don’t know cause we don’t have the plot hook yet

What are your character’s hobbies and interests outside of their class?

he likes collecting small trinkets and going to festivals and thats. about it

What would most people think when they first see your character?

“Oh shit sexy”

What stereotypical group role does your character play in the party? (The Mom, the Mess, the Comic Relief, etc. Optionally: What role would your character play in the “Five Man Band” structure?)

Surprisingly, I think it’s The Mom skjvfnksnvksjnvf he seems to be really going in the “What The Fuck. Are You Okay. I Must Protect You”

But also he’s absolutely the mess

 In a five man band he’s the leader, lancer and big guy all at once. Probably the lancer tho

What is your character the most insecure about?

He’s completely unable to see himself as a kind person worthy of tenderness

What person does your character admire most?

Gaylia!!! He thinks she’s so strong and cool

What does your character admire and dislike the most about the player character sitting to your left?

Going for Love since I talked about Gank already. He bedrudgingly admires how cunning and People Smart Love can be. Absolutely hates how much of a Bastard he is and how hot he is

Why is your character’s lowest stat their lowest (the in-character reason, not “because there’s no reason for a wizard to have 16 strength, duh”)?

Both int and wis are at a -2!

Wisdom: he wasn’t uh. raised in a way where he rlly got to learn the ways of people’s minds, or do anything but repress his own feelings. and once he was out on his own he was so focused on being a reckless fool he never even tried to change that

Intelligence: He has big adhd and always had a hard time learning. Instead of being supported he was yelled at and punished for stupidity. He retaliated by refusing to keep trying. So now he’s dumb 

What would be your character’s theme song/favorite band/favorite genre of music?

I have an entire playlist for him please look at it I worked so hard on it-

I think most  relevant are Castle by Halsey and Emperor’s new clothes by p!atd. I think he would also associate those songs with himself and really like them. Royals by Lorde is also up there for sure. And Rise from League of Legends

What stereotypical role would your character play in a high school AU/if they attended a normal high school? (Nerd, jock, bully, goth, etc.)

Goth jock.

What treasure/item/artifact that your character has collected during the adventure is the most important to them?

Not particularly precious to him and not in the adventure since we haven’t played yet but he has Love’s broken antler skvjfnksjfv

Is there any particular weapon, item, etc. that your character longs to find?

Oh you know

Where does your character feel the most at home?

Gaylia’s place probably,

Does your character care about how they’re perceived by others? How do they change themselves to fit in with other people?

She’s built her entire identity around refusing to give a fuck, however in truth she probably actively tries to be seen as rebellious and maybe intimidating

What does your character think is the true meaning of life?

Bold of you to imply she thinks that much

What is your character’s scent? (Bonus points for a description that sounds like it could be from a bad [or awesome] fanfic.)

Roses, lilies and musk ( have no clue if those go well together)

Does your character think more with their heart or their brain?

Heart, absolutely

What is your character’s most recent or frequent nightmare?

haha,,,, ha,,,,,,, h

What opinion does your character have on [CERTAIN ESTABLISHED GROUPS/AUTHORITIES IN THE GAME WORLD]? (Dragonmarked Houses, royal crown, etc.)

Wouldn’t you like to know

How did your character spend their childhood? Where did they grow up/who were their childhood friends?

What aspect of your character’s future are they most curious about? (If they could know one thing about the future, what would it be?)

I will keep that to myself!

What colors are associated with your character?

Who in the party would your character prioritize rescuing, in dire circumstances?

Love,,

Is your character the most swayed by ethos, pathos, or logos?

Pathos

If your character was granted a single use of Wish, what would they use it for?

I will keep that to myself!

What is your character’s favorite spell? If they don’t use spells: what is their favorite personal weapon/combat maneuver/skill/etc.?

She has spells and enjoys using them (probably mostly eldritch blast) but nothing beats her good trusty zweihander

How does your character feel about keeping secrets from the rest of the party?

She has no qualms with it ksvjfnskfjv

What type of creature in the world is your character the most intrigued by?

Love I dunno, snakes? Snakes are weird

When they were a child, what did your character want to be, or think they were going to be, when they grew up?

I don’t think Crown thought she was gonna make it to her 20s

The player character to your left admits that they’re passionately in love with your character. How would your character respond?

I rolled and got Gank skfvnksjvfn

I think he’d be flustered and flattered and be like “oh! we can. certainly try dating! but I can’t say I return your feelings right now. uh. sorry,,,”

If somebody (an NPC, someone from their backstory, etc.) your character trusts/loves asked your character to do something against the party’s best interest, who would they side with?

Ah,,,

That’s a very complicated question that depends on many factors I’m afraid 

Does your character value their own best interest more than the party’s?

He wants to think he does, at least skvjnskvjf

What decision would the party have to make in order for your character to consider splitting off from the group?

Who knows!

How does your character imagine the way they will die?

Doing something stupid, completely alone

What is your character’s greatest achievement?

Making it to 25 honestly svkjnksfjnv

Is your character willing to risk the well-being of others in order to achieve their goal?

Depends on who those others are

What is your character’s opinion on killing others?

Sure why not let’s do it man

What is your character’s favorite food? Beverage?

Pizza and orange juice?

How generous is your character? Especially to those they don’t know?

Surprisingly generous! Maybe not so much with money but she’s always willing to lend a helping hand

What is your character the most envious about, regarding anyone in the party?

I don’t understand this question svknskjfv

The player character to your left and the player character to your right are both telling your character two different versions of the truth. Who does your character believe?

Again I keep choosing between Gank and Love bc they’re the only ones she knows kjfvnskjfvn I mean. it depends. if it’s on something Important I think she’ll side with Love but in general she’s more likely to believe Gank 

What is your character’s sexuality/relationship with sex?

Big bisexual, first of all!

She actually has a complicated relationship with sex! Being in any kind of Intimate Situation used to be very triggering for her. But she worked through it and now she’s. Horny

What is your character’s biggest pet peeve?

When people leave without paying their part.

Describe how your character feels about the party’s current situation/objective/etc.

Shit man I dunno we have no plan

Who in the party would your character trust the most to keep an important secret?

Love is the only one she’s known long enough to build any meaningful trust with svknskfv

If your character knew that they were going to die in a month, how would they spend the rest of their life?

Probably with his only genuine friend, trying to live life to the fullest kvjfnskfv,

What makes your character feel safe?

Being fully aware of his surroundings with easy access to his sword

If your character had the chance to rename the party/give the party a name, no questions asked, what would it be?

No party yet!

What memory does your character want to forget the most?

H,

If your character had to multiclass into a class they currently aren’t the next time they level up, what would it be and what reason would they have for doing so?

Fukinuh. Paladin? He rlly likes Caenrys and is like “fuck it let’s do another combat charisma-based thing”

What television/book/video game/etc. character would your character be best friends with? (Or: what media character is your character the most influenced by/similar to?

He was heavily influenced by a webcomic character but i will keep Who a secret just in case it makes people figure stuff out skvnskvn

What unusual talents does your character possess?

Really good at doing things without looking, apparently skfjvnsfv

How does your character feel about receiving/giving orders? Are they more of a leader, or a follower?

Giving orders is. Kinda hot

Receiving orders? Die

What does your character’s name represent to them? (Or: why as a player did you choose your character’s name?)

Among other things, Crown’s name represents her proclaiming herself as someone with full authority, if anything, over herself. She’s claiming at every moment a position of power and I think that’s very sexy of her

Is your character more of an introvert, or an extrovert?

Ambivert, probably! Loves people but may get overwhelmed being around them too much

How far is your character willing to go to pursue the “greater good”? Do they believe in a greater good at all?

In theory she doesn’t believe in the greater good but she lies to herself so who knows what she’d do when push comes to shove skjvfnksjfv

What does your character want to be remembered by?

It’s complicated and I’m too lazy to explain it, especially without spoiling anything

What would be your character’s major in college?

He’d shrivel and die in an academic setting pal

Does your character consider themselves a hero, villain, or something else?

It’s complicated,,

Let’s say hero and keep it there

What major arcana tarot card best represents your character?

I’m between The Fool and The Magician. Strength is also fun

Where does your character see themselves in 20 years?

Oh, you know!

What is your character’s relationship with magic? Are they scared of it, wish to know more about it, indifferent to it?

Magic is,,, kinda hot!

Who is your character’s biggest rival?

Love ksjvfnksjfvkjsfv

What is your character’s guiltiest pleasure?

Bold of you to imply he feels guilt over anything pleasurable

What does your character hope for the afterlife?

He doesn’t think about that

Who in the party does your character trust the least?

Just as he trusts Love the most he also trusts him the least. Shady bastard

What is your character’s biggest flaw?

-2 wisdom

How did your character learn the languages that they speak?

Uh. Growing up and being raised?

What is your character’s favorite school of magic/type of weaponry?

GREATSWORD AND EVOCATION BABY

What is most important to your character: health, wealth, or happiness?

Happiness

What advice would your character give to a younger version of themselves?

“There’s power in your anger. Take action before it gets worse”

Are there any social or political issues your character feels strongly about?

It’s hard to explain bc I don’t know Politics Words

What, currently, is your character the most curious about?

;)

[mmmoxielady]

If you think you may have ADHD, don't suffer like I had to. I was diagnosed at 31 bc for decades all I knew was that trying and failing to reach normal hurt a lot. While the people around me who met normal were either better at hiding how much it hurts or were just actually normal. So I internalized decades of being abnormal thinking I had poor character: lazy, unmotivated, not a hard worker, gives in too easy, careless, not worthy, too stupid, etc. Shame was my normal.

My rock bottom was walking across the stage at 30 to get my bachelor's degree knowing I'd failed a sophomore level research writing class that is required to graduate. I'd already failed that class or withdrawn from it 6 times before. I struggled to finish college despite being in honors classes as a kid. Always loved the learning part of school, but hated the proofwork part of it. That tug of war is exhausting because they were always at odds with each other. I thought it was normal to be pulled taffy on the inside. I never understood how other kids could turn their shit in on time, while I only had excuses and late/incomplete work to show for it. It took me 2 attempts to finish college. 3 1/2 years after high school, a 5 year break bc I was no where near a degree bc I couldn't settle on one bc ALL THE CLASSES LOOK INTERESTING, then 3 years to walk across that stage, still failing.

I retook that class in the spring, but found myself already falling behind and stressed out before I even got to decide on my paper topic. The structure of the assignments and deadlines slipped right through my fingers. I resented how the fuck 19 year old kids were flying through this shit and I couldn't stay afloat at 30. On a whim, I googled "what does ADHD look like?" I ticked so many of the boxes on the checklists of symptoms I found. I'd spent so long depressing over the effects of undiagnosed ADHD bc I didn't even know I had it.

That started me on a path that changed my life. It was like finding a field guide written just for me. I always felt so alien when talking to other people, and here I found a bunch of information written in my mother language. It felt like finding a home in this messy jungle of life and I could add skills, strategies, and advocating for my needs to help me navigate it. For example, executive dysfunction makes planning, maintaining sustained effort, delayed gratification, prioritization, and time management near impossible for someone with an ADHD brain. Even Superman has kryptonite. Mine was a sophomore writing class that required ability in things that I am disabled. It helped me unpack a lot that had been in my way. I let my interest in learning about ADHD feed my hyperfocus, which I used for my paper. I learned what the barriers to diagnoses and treatment look like for girls and women with untreated ADHD. There's so much society gets wrong about ADHD. And it ends up hurting the undiagnosed bc the things they try to treat themselves with end up causing secondary health problems while the needs of ADHD go unmet.

I passed that class with a B+. Partly bc I was still late turning my paper in, but had an amazing professor who worked WITH me to tailor the workload to accommodate my needs. I couldn't have done it without her help and my discovery. I can't tell you how rewarding it was to finish school feeling like a fish in water as opposed to a fish trying to climb a tree.

Seek a doctor who specializes in ADHD testing and diagnoses. That process took me 6 months. 8 months before I got medicine, which is a game changer. I do best taking it daily. I can't skip it on the weekends. I don't miss feeling overwhelmed with chaos and crippled by time wasted. Go get tested. Would you rather have a Dr say you don't have it or find support meant for someone with your unique needs? Either one is better than suffering with an invisible Achilles heel that only slows you down or makes a mess out of everything you touch.

Finding out at the age of 20 that I have ADHD was very strange because the cultural understanding of ADHD is hyperactive 8 year old boys, and I am none of those things. But hot damn did things start to make sense.

For example:

Oh! So that's why some tasks take me hours

Transitions are not my thing

Similarly, changed plans are also not my thing

Yelling at myself to "just do it!" For hours for very simple tasks

General social confusion? I'm not sure when exactly this happened, but I feel like at some point everybody else took a course in "how to do social interaction" and I just... Missed it?

I will forget to eat

I don't know how long it takes me to do things AT ALL

One time, I got distracted while doing math homework and carved a smiley face into the kitched table with my pencil

I can literally spend an entire day in my own head just thinking

What do you mean it's not normal to get fixated on one thing and barely eat or sleep for a week?

Being in a class like: Do I actually have a question or did the professor already address this and I was zoned out?

Also being in class like: Have I been paying attention or was I just zoned out?

Sensory overload! Too many things! All at once! Apparently this isn't a normal thing to get!

I will pay attention. I will pay attention. I will pay attention. I will... Shit. I have not been paying attention.

When trying to go to bed at a normal time, sometime between me grabbing my towel and getting into the shower three hours sometime pass.

[subtletyislost]

please stop asking strangers for so much money. think about it, the more money they give you, the less they're giving to sick people, homeless people. people who really really need it. you don't really need it. your wish list? you don't need that stuff. you said you need $100 for cable.. that's not a necessity. please stop asking for money when there are people who need it more and don't have access to Tumblr to beg for it. I'm not trying to be mean... I just want you to understand

I know you’re not trying to be mean, but I also just want to explain something important that you’re missing out on here:

It’s not just cable. It’s also the phone and the internet. Without the phone, my mom has no way of paying the bills, no way of knowing if or when she got paid, no way of contacting our landlord about problems (nor any way of our landlord contacting us either which is enough to get us evicted according to our lease which means without our phone, which we can’t separate from the cable we will end up losing our house).

Without the internet, I can’t do my work, I can’t apply for jobs, send emails, do commissions, or check the bank for detailed information on what’s going with it.

To be perfectly honest, I forgot my wishlist is still linked to my blog, the only things on there that I didn’t put on there are the books and video games. My mom asked me to drop those on there so she wouldn’t forget that she wants to get them when she has a little spare money. The stimtoys and new shoes are actually fairly important to/for me.

I’m break this down a little. The more money they give me the less they’re giving to sick people: I’m not sure if you understand this, as I’m not sure I ever mentioned it, but the reason I don’t have a job yet is less on there not being jobs, there’s jobs I see (and apply for) job postings all over town every single month. It’s because I’m autistic, adhd, have anxiety and major depressive disorder, which causes me to be unable to pass those questionnaire thingies that tell the company what kind of person you are. I also have hyperglycemia and by all legal definitions I am starving because without a job and very little money I can’t afford food very often.

The reason we only get 1296$ a month to work with (and that’s all together to deal with there being 3 people in the house), which is only very slightly more than minimum wage for one full time worker in our state, is because that’s my mom’s social security disability pay. She’s nearly blind, can’t walk, and has hearing and memory problems.

I also would like you to understand one thing:

Despite your intentions, suffering is not a competition. I should not have to suffer in silence just because “other people have it worse” is said by someone who doesn’t even know the full extent of my situation. I should not have to police my own blog’s content just because there are people who can’t or wont understand that just because someone is asking for help for something that “isn’t important” doesn’t mean it’s not actually important to the person asking. Nor should I feel pressured to share details of my life that I’m not normally willing to share, and other people honestly don’t need to know, just to satisfy someone that I’m actually in need and not just begging because I’m lazy or something.

I’m not angry, I’m just tired. I have barely eaten in the last two days because all our money has gone to paying the bills and left us unable to buy any food at all.

I will stop asking when the bill has been paid. Which means after the 15th you won’t see the post again unless someone reblogs it from someone else and doesn’t know that I don’t need it anymore. All goes well, I won’t be asking again for anything more than maybe 20$ for food for several months at the worst.

I’m sorry you (tumblr in general maybe not specifically you) feel the need to tell people who are in need that they shouldn’t ask for help just because the help they need doesn’t fit your very narrow definition of “need”. I just think it’s really stupid that people on this site feel like it’s their duty to tell people not to ask for help just because they don’t want to see it or can’t accept that some people’s entire lives (bill paying ability, communication with clients, communication with the landlord and thus ability to keep their house) rely on having access to phone and internet which are provided by the cable company.I’m going to stop talking now, because I’m tired and don’t want to say anything that might piss someone off.

[mischiefandmiscellaneous]

Just rambling

I wanna talk about my mental illnesses. They say there are different symptoms of ADHD for girls than there for boys. And having it go untreated and undiagnosed can lead to women who develop anxiety and depression because they feel imperfect and degrade themselves for not being perfect which can really fester and manifest into these mental illnesses. I've tried to go through counseling for the anxiety and depression I thought I had but it didn't help, because of the cause of those two things was actually untreated ADHD it would only be like putting a bandaid on a tumor. The tumor (ADHD) was still going to be there causing its own problems My suspicions for my possible ADHD are all based on sign and signals from my time in school. I was real bad at school, I was put in extra programs for reading, I had to be put in math tutoring every year because those shitty timed basic math worksheets were the devil (ironic because I was in catholic school at the time). I spent from preschool to the first nine weeks of sixth grade in average or below classes and was believed to be dumb. My mom didn't know what to believe because I was a reading machine at home and had a vast amount of knowledge in things that interest me (which at the time was horses, dogs, and Harry Potter) but after moving to Florida and being told I had the reading level of a 3rd grader in fifth grade and being put in a remedial reading and writing class i started to believe that I was just stupid (didn't help that my dad thought I was too). It wasn't until the beginning of sixth grade that my science teacher at the time recognized I was smart but unfocused. I was then moved up and placed in gifted /honors classes. I still didn't do well but that was just the rebellious prepubescent emo phase kicking into gear. I did better than in average classes. But it wasn't until 9th grade when I realized if I didn't get flawless grades I was doomed to live in the hell that I thought my family life was at the time and due to the possible ADHD I had a hard time getting my shit together. I couldn't study to save my life and I just couldn't focus in certain classes (namely classes with shitty teachers). This sudden realization and sudden need to be perfect with a fucked up brain is probably how the anxiety began to fester. I didn't realize my random "tantrums" as my mom called them at the time were known as panic attacks until I got to this shit website in 2011 after graduating high school and everyone started exploring and explaining the symptoms of mental illnesses. I had kind of worked out that I had had depression from about age 9 after my uncle died and my family moved 1100 miles away to avoid dealing with those emotions, but when I learned about the symptoms of depression I was in the beginning of my emo phase so I thought the sadness was also a phase and ignored it (turns out that is a terrible idea). Anyway, I'm only mentioning this because these are all just suspicions because my mom is still not super understanding of mental illness, she still thinks her children are normal and healthy kids with inherent laziness and ungrateful attitudes. She's starting to come around as long as I don't use the big scary labels and just tell her about my symptoms she becomes less scared and more concerned which I don't even know if that's any better. So due to this and the current fuckery that is the United States health care system, I'm self-diagnosed so that I can get jobs and healthcare. It's lying and ignoring the problem which is apparently a family thing. But because I'm lying and ignoring the problem to play "normal" I don't get the treatments I more than likely need. It's gotten to a point where I have tantrums and lash out because I'm anxious or yelling at myself for something and then maintaining that tone with another person and I'm just so tired. I'm tired of snapping at people for no reason other than my brain can't fucking decipher my tone before it pours out of my mouth. It affects me on a day to day basis. I can't really have a relationship because I'm scared I'll fuck up because I can't work things out. I barely have friendships because I snap a people for no reason at all. My friends are long distance now so it's easier because tone is not something easily conveyed over text so there's no angry tone to an instructional text like there would be if they were in the room with me. And I know my possible mental illnesses are not an excuse for my shitty behavior with other people, but it gives reasons beyond me just being a cranky bitch or a lazy dumbass fuck up (which coincidentally are all things I've said to myself on my bad days). I need help and I know it, I just can't afford to ask for it with all the shit going around that can ruin my life worse than me not having long last relationships of any kind. Tldr: let people self diagnose, unless they're being harmful to the awareness of a mental illness or using it as an excuse for their shitty behavior, there is no reason self-diagnosing can't be at least a half decent option for people until they can get to professionals.