#on the topic of disorders

[bixels]

me too, luna.

[brutalnferno]

It USED to be Gaz. I like his design, his voice, his characterisation. There are lines he has that make him feel truly three dimensional with internal/moral conflict and I enjoy it

Now?

It's PHILLIP FUCKING GRAVES

I genuinely used to hate Graves but he ended up growing on me a lot. He's very well written and his dynamic with the 141 (especially Soap), Los Vaqueros, and his Shadows is really enjoyable to me. I always end up being a fan of villainous characters I fear 💀

And one of my headmates finds him hot asf

As is customary, I hit my favourites with the disorder beam. And tbh my favourites usually end up getting NPD. But if you look at the DMS-V criteria I think it's a scope you can easily look at him through. He's very narc to me and I do adore narc-coded characters

^ I'm about 98% sure the source for this list is the DSM-5. I used this as framework for the NPD Graves headcanon :) It has a lot more detail about etiology and other symptoms/behaviours/etc, so if you'd like to read, it's here

Thank you Gomz for the exuse to go on about my favourite war criminal who I hate

I would like to know what everyone’s fav wife/husband/blorbo is

[infernoflorys]

media: narcissists only get their supply from directly abusing everyone around them until everyone is manipulated and forced to see them as god.

my friend: i appreciate that you did this task for me. you are a good friend

me, grinning, blushing, twirling my hair, getting the supply: haha no problem man

[deityofproendos]

By the way, PTSD flashbacks aren't always "suddenly you're in the moment again". They can be of course but emotional flashbacks are a kind of flashback too (remembering the event and suddenly feeling the emotions you felt in the event) just in case someone needed to hear it

[nagichi-boop]

I know that this scene is about Shadow grappling with the fact he has alien DNA, but I feel like his thoughts in this scene are relatable to people with conditions like autism, BPD and NPD (not an exhaustive list) who struggle with feeling and being treated like an outcast or monster at times. For some, it’s because we struggle to operate in a world not designed for us. For others, it’s fighting against all the negative perceptions society has of us.

Shadow sees himself as a monster. But Maria assures him that just because he expresses himself differently, that doesn’t make him evil. I feel like especially for people who struggle with empathy, this really hits home. People often assume that people who struggle with empathy, whether cognitive or emotional, are heartless. And for those with personality disorders, they’re often treated as if they are abusive or manipulative just because of the disorder they have, even though people with said disorders are victims of trauma and abuse themselves.

I hope you all have a Maria in your lives. And if not, please remember that it’s your actions that define you, not your neurotype or disorder. If you struggle with socialising, or emotional regulation, or empathy, you’re not a monster. You’re strong for living in a world that so often seems to outcast and insult you. You’re strong for choosing to be as kind as you can be, even though so many people refuse to show that common courtesy in return. Even when you can’t be strong, you are not a monster.

Please be kind to yourselves. You deserve it.

[thefluxsystem]

10 mindsets about my DID that have helped my system:

[This is solely for the sake of sharing experiences & supplying food for thought. This post is not implying these takes are the “right way” to view systemhood.]

1. We’re individuals and we’re parts of a whole. We see each other as people in our system, but in a different way than those in their own bodies. We share a brain. We share a life. I’m me, but I’m also him/her/them at the same time. If you take a piece out of a puzzle, it doesn’t cease to exist, right? It’s still its own object. It just doesn’t make much sense when it stands alone. We need each other to be truly complete.

2. Time keeps coming. I know it’s not an unlimited resource, but it’s not scarce either. Okay, so somebody in the system didn’t get to do what they planned today. They’ll do it tomorrow. No big deal. No need to fight about it or stress over “how I’ll ever manage all this”. We’ll simply give it another shot in the morning.

3. Reality is subjective. We’re a very philosophically-inclined system, and I could write books on what “reality is subjective” means. Basically, reality is based on perception. On a societal level, it is based in the common agreement of what something is. If anyone’s perception tests the limits of this common agreement, it is labeled as untrue. This ties into why DID is largely disbelieved; it doesn’t fit in with the common reality (perception) of the average person. So it is seen as fake. And, well, if I’m going to be told I’m wrong for the most basic, inherent part of this disorder… I don’t really care if they disagree with any other aspect of it. My reality is different. That’s okay.

4. There is no original. I strongly believe the Theory of Structural Dissociation. Maybe science will prove it wrong with a more suitable theory to take its place in the future, but it’s what I roll with at the moment. Now, to us, this translates as “there is no original/we were all the original”. We’re Adventure Time fans, so we think of it like the “Mother Gum”. If all of the Mother Gum broke off into people (like PB & Neddy), no specific one of them would be “the original”. Rather, they’d all be repurposed parts of the original whole. (In a less serious way, we like to say “we all came from the primordial personality soup”.)

5. Our body is shared equally. We’ve decided our body has its own identity & “look” that helps represent us as a whole, but doesn’t take after one member specifically. In a gnawingly self-aware way, I know this is a further form of dissociation. But adopting this view changed a lot for us in a positive way. We don’t fight about hair or clothes anymore, we don’t have discomfort around our legal name, we don’t even really have struggles with gender/sexuality anymore. (We identify differently internally, but externally we identify as nonbinary & bisexual. Even if the person fronting at the moment is, for example, a gay man.)

6. Be open-minded to what happens internally. Seems straightforward enough, but we’ve wasted a lot of time trying to “make rules” for each other in the system. The biggest example I can think of is in-system dating. Around 10 years ago, as we became more aware of each other, it became clear that two system members were basically in love. We immediately became defensive. We told them that they couldn’t do that, that two system members being together was absurd & “impossible”. (This view became stronger after discovering online system spaces & “fakeclaimers” that come with it.) Though we regret it now, we shamed those two a lot in the hopes they’d drop it. They didn’t. About 3 years later it became an actual problem. They didn’t trust us; they were fronting & we were coming back to absolutely no memory of it (we usually have a vague idea at least). Eventually, they wrote us a whole thing about how they were going to be together & there was really nothing anyone could do about it, seeing as we couldn’t technically keep them apart. In modern day, we’ve had an in-system couple recently fuse. Upon reflection, we were standing in the way of genuine healing by trying to break up the first two, and we did so solely out of shame. As long as it isn’t genuinely causing harm, we try to be accepting of each other these days. This applies to a lot of other aspects; how system members appear internally, the pronouns and/or identity labels they choose, anything to do with how system members engage with each other, our differing individual perceptions of an event, etc.

7. We don’t have to like each other, but we do have to love each other. Mostly because, if we don’t, we’re holding hatred for ourself. There are certainly members of my system I would never choose to befriend if we were actually separate people, but we’re not, and we don’t get to act like we are. So even though it’s hard, I’m learning to love every piece that makes up “me”, no matter how difficult they try to make it at times.

8. Nobody’s system works like mine except for mine. Meaning, no two systems are going to be alike, and experiences aren’t often going to translate perfectly. This is true for people who aren’t systems as well— everyone’s experience is going to be different, because nobody is wired exactly the same way. Once I took that to heart, it became easier to focus on my own way of being. I could take the pieces of represented/online systemhood that resonate with me & leave the rest (which probably resonates with someone else).

9. There’s a reason for everything. This kind of ties back into the ‘we have to love each other’ thing. Each component of the system is a clue regarding how to move forward. We had someone in the system getting really uptight & controlling, to a point that it was irritating, but, taking a step back, we recognized it was a response to feeling a lack of control. Instead of simply getting angry at him for how he was acting, we were able to address the problem. My collective self is more laid-back for it.

10. It’s okay not to focus on it all. DID is a part of my life for the rest of it, whether I like it or not, but it’s nice to let it be a background thing every once in a while. Who’s fronting? Who cares. What roles do we have? I don’t know. Who’s this new person in my head? I’ll figure it out later. We’re making it through as a team, and sometimes that’s enough.

[necroticcadaver]

I love talking about myself.

You ask me questions about myself? I could spend literal hours happily talking about me.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

I love my church family but there is an unfortunate tendency in Christians to not believe in mental illness/neurodivergency

[deplcythebattery]

why are functional disorders not seen as real? why is the functional part what makes people think it's not real? i'm autistic and struggling to grasp why the word functional means not real to a lot of people. like. it's a functional disorder. it affects functioning. why is that not a big deal? why does that make it not real like other disorders that aren't labeled functional disorders?

also why does it not count as a real disability if it's functional?

edit: there's a really good reply in the reblogs from @ciderjacks if others are wondering this too!

[schizouse]

Why minors can indeed have ASPD

[PT] Why minors can indeed have ASPD [END PT]

Written by, and yours truly, a minor professionally dxed with ASPD.

It's an very popular misconception that minors cannot have ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder) and instead must have CD (Conduct Disorder) because the diagnosis criteria states an individual must be 18 or older. But here is why that is wrong;

'Adult diagnosis' isn't really a thing as mental disorders can't just appear in adulthood. The causes of ASPD include genetics and childhood trauma and symptoms of ASPD can start at as young as 2-5 years old and in order to be diagnosed you must've showed symptoms before the age of 15.

Conduct Disorder is not an minor equivalent to ASPD, they're two different disorders. Adults can have CD just as well as minors can have ASPD. Conduct Disorder refers to unlawful conduct/behavior and CD itself doesn't typically affect the entire personality since it's not a personality disorder while ASPD does and is more severe than CD.

Although few, there have been multiple cases of minors being diagnosed with ASPD because their symptoms were too severe to be CD, and the symptoms weren't the result of puberty or from another disorder. One of, and maybe the only, reason why minors aren't typically diagnosed is because differentiating antisocial behavior and just normal teenage behavior can be difficult.

Of course still most minors won't be professionally diagnosed, a lot of them are self-diagnosed and there is no problem with that either as long as they've done their research and they know it's not CD nor puberty or another disorder. "What if they're wrong?" "What if it is CD?" It's okay to be wrong about self-diagnosis, they're no professional and you probably aren't either.

You don't know what another person has and, unless they blatantly say they're faking, you cannot know they're faking. Tired of some of y'all talking about a disorder you don't have or know nothing about.

[medicalunprofessional]

[aspd-culture]

would it be strange if i reclaimed psychopath if i was armchair diagnosed as a kid? + i do have aspd traits but not particularly in a situation where i can get a psych eval

Being armchair diagnosed, especially as a child, is not enough to know if you have ASPD. We’re perfectly cool with self-diagnosis here, but it needs to be well researched. One thing you’ll find in the process of that research is why that “as a child” is a problem. ASPD cannot be diagnosed as a child for a reason: because under the age of 18 the traits are not able to be differentiated between normal stressed teenage behavior and in children younger than that, there is a high potential they will not go on to develop ASPD despite having traits of it.

There is quite a high threshold of things that need to go awry in neurological development for someone to end up with a trauma based personality disorder. ASPD in particular comes with a strong potential to avoid the traits becoming the PD if a child or honestly even a teenager is introduced to the support system they need and given reason to trust it.

And even as an adult, you can have some traits without having the disorder. I would definitely do some research, starting with but not exclusively reading the current DSM (DSM V-TR) entry on ASPD, and not just what’s posted in my bio, that’s the criteria but none of the important surrounding information in the ASPD section. That’ll go over a lot of info, and from there you wanna go through both scholarly stuff (articles & research papers - many of which will be stigmatized but it’s important to read because somewhere in there they hide some good info), and anecdotal stuff like this blog but not just this blog. Take in as much information as you can, learn about what it is and what it isn’t, and especially learn about the things that are similar to ASPD but are not ASPD. There are other disorders that look similar, but have key differences.

I suggest all this because unlike some disorders that are either easy to self diagnose (panic disorder - the main thing you need to know is if you have panic attacks, and if you have panic attacks about the fear of having a panic attack) or at least much more straightforward than self diagnosing a personality disorder. PDs are in fact some of the most complicated disorders to categorize and diagnose - even professionally - because when something is affecting every facet of someone’s personality, it’s not going to be easy to figure out what’s a symptom vs what’s situational. They usually require a long rapport with the diagnosing professional because they have to be persistent and consistent across time and situations. That means that it’s not something you can look into quickly and decide, you’ll need to keep watching for the symptoms once you know them and see if you are responding that way across the board or if something is triggering that response in only certain situations.

I can’t stop you from using that term, but I can say that being armchair diagnosed as a child is not a good way to figure out if you have something as complicated as a personality disorder. Honestly, a big reason that I say to people that they need to look at other anecdotal sources from other places too is because someone I’m very close with who has known me for over 10 years at this point and lives with me has BPD and thought I did too, like was 100% certain. In fact they directly thought I had the hyper-empathy of BPD - and so did my ex who knew me for much less time but also has BPD. Even having the disorder yourself and knowing someone for a long time doesn’t mean you can accurately armchair diagnose them. Like I said, these are complicated to diagnose.

For reference, it took me at least a year of fairly constant research (bc I have mental health as a special interest, I was researching something about ASPD or its differential diagnoses for at least a couple hours per week at that time), probably longer, to feel secure self diagnosing with ASPD. While it doesn’t need to necessarily take that long, it does take some effort to understand a disorder like this.

Plain text below the cut:

Being armchair diagnosed, especially as a child, is not enough to know if you have ASPD. We’re perfectly cool with self-diagnosis here, but it needs to be well researched. One thing you’ll find in the process of that research is why that “as a child” is a problem. ASPD cannot be diagnosed as a child for a reason: because under the age of 18 the traits are not able to be differentiated between normal stressed teenage behavior and in children younger than that, there is a high potential they will not go on to develop ASPD despite having traits of it.

There is quite a high threshold of things that need to go awry in neurological development for someone to end up with a trauma based personality disorder. ASPD in particular comes with a strong potential to avoid the traits becoming the PD if a child or honestly even a teenager is introduced to the support system they need and given reason to trust it.

And even as an adult, you can have some traits without having the disorder. I would definitely do some research, starting with but not exclusively reading the current DSM (DSM V-TR) entry on ASPD, and not just what’s posted in my bio, that’s the criteria but none of the important surrounding information in the ASPD section. That’ll go over a lot of info, and from there you wanna go through both scholarly stuff (articles & research papers - many of which will be stigmatized but it’s important to read because somewhere in there they hide some good info), and anecdotal stuff like this blog but not just this blog. Take in as much information as you can, learn about what it is and what it isn’t, and especially learn about the things that are similar to ASPD but are not ASPD. There are other disorders that look similar, but have key differences.

I suggest all this because unlike some disorders that are either easy to self diagnose (panic disorder - the main thing you need to know is if you have panic attacks, and if you have panic attacks about the fear of having a panic attack) or at least much more straightforward than self diagnosing a personality disorder. PDs are in fact some of the most complicated disorders to categorize and diagnose - even professionally - because when something is affecting every facet of someone’s personality, it’s not going to be easy to figure out what’s a symptom vs what’s situational. They usually require a long rapport with the diagnosing professional because they have to be persistent and consistent across time and situations. That means that it’s not something you can look into quickly and decide, you’ll need to keep watching for the symptoms once you know them and see if you are responding that way across the board or if something is triggering that response in only certain situations.

I can’t stop you from using that term, but I can say that being armchair diagnosed as a child is not a good way to figure out if you have something as complicated as a personality disorder. Honestly, a big reason that I say to people that they need to look at other anecdotal sources from other places too is because someone I’m very close with who has known me for over 10 years at this point and lives with me has BPD and thought I did too, like was 100% certain. In fact they directly thought I had the hyper-empathy of BPD - and so did my ex who knew me for much less time but also has BPD. Even having the disorder yourself and knowing someone for a long time doesn’t mean you can accurately armchair diagnose them. Like I said, these are complicated to diagnose.

For reference, it took me at least a year of fairly constant research (bc I have mental health as a special interest, I was researching something about ASPD or its differential diagnoses for at least a couple hours per week at that time), probably longer, to feel secure self diagnosing with ASPD. While it doesn’t need to necessarily take that long, it does take some effort to understand a disorder like this.

[tf2heritageposts]

….wait does coffee/caffeine count as an abusable substance?

[im-not-buying-it-ether]

Not my idea, pointed out in Tiktok, but something had to be up with Martha Wayne if her alternate self becomes the Joker after seeing her son die.

Now, onto what is my idea; There definitely was something wrong, but it was handled for the most part until that point came up and she had a full mental breakdown over the event

And there are two ways she could’ve been mentally ill, and that depends on the time period you set Gotham back in

If it’s modern day? Martha could’ve been getting genuine medical help, seeing a psychiatrist and being properly medicated by some of the best doctors in the business. (Isn’t Thomas a doctor sometime too? They had to have trusted friends in the field to help her and keep it under wraps from the public) Maybe her symptoms are minimalized but still there in Bruce’s childhood and his young self can’t understand why there are some days where he just can’t be around his mother or why she has bad days, but there’s always his dad or Alfred able to distract him while the other keeps an eye on her in some other part of the Manor because there’s plenty of room to keep space when she’s not herself that day. Maybe, in that one horrible night, she breaks and doesn’t want to be there or lucid enough to understand that her son is gone and just falls further and further into the role she took up.

The worse outcome if it’s old Gotham? Lobotomy. Women who needed help and care having their brains irreparably damaged so they’re less to deal with, and what’s an eight year old to understand of what happened to their mother or how their mothers always been like?