#w // mental health struggles

[kindnessoverperfection]

Please, if you can, take a moment to read and share this because I feel like I'm screaming underwater.

NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) stigma is rampant right now, and seems to be getting progressively worse. Everyone is using it as a buzzword in the worst ways possible, spreading misinformation and hatred against a real disorder.

I could go on a long time about how this happened, why it's factually incorrect (and what the disorder actually IS), why it's harmful, and the changes I'd like to see. But to keep this concise, I'll simply link to a few posts under the cut for further reading.

The point of this post is a plea. Please help stop the spread of stigma. Even in mental health communities, even around others with personality disorders, in neurodivergent "safe" spaces, other communities I thought people would be supportive in (e.g. trans support groups, progressive spaces in general), it keeps coming up. So I'm willing to bet that a lot of people on this site need to see this.

Because it's so hard to exist in this world.

My disorder already makes me feel as if I'm worthless and unlovable, like there's something inherently wrong and damaged about me. And it's so much harder to fight that and heal when my daily life consists of:

Laughing and spending time with my friends, doing my utmost best to connect and stay present and focused on them, trying to let my guards down and be real and believe I'm lovable- when suddenly they throw out the word "narcissist" to describe horrible people or someone they hate, or the conversation turns to how evil "people with narcissistic personality disorder" are. (Seriously, you don't know which of your friends might have NPD and feels like shit when you say those things & now knows that you'd hate them if you knew.)

Trying to look up "mental health positivity for people with npd", "mental health positivity cluster bs", only to find a) none of that, and b) more of the same old vile shit that makes me feel terrible about myself.

Having a hard time (which is constant at this point) and trying to look up resources for myself, only to again, find the same stigma. And no resources.

Not having any clue how to help myself, because even the mental health field is spitting so much vitriol at people with DISORDERS (who they're supposed to be helping!) that there's no solid research or therapy programs for people like me.

Losing close friends when they find out, despite us having had a good relationship before, and them KNOWING me and knowing that I'm not like the trending image of pwNPD. Because now they only see me through the lens of stigma and misinformation.

Hearing the same stigma come up literally wherever I go. Clubs. Meetings. Any online space. At the bus stop. At the mall. At a restaurant. At work. Buzzword of the year that everyone loooves loudly throwing around with their friends or over the phone. Feels awesome for me, makes my day so much better/s

I could go on for a long time, but I'm scared no one will read/rb this if it gets too much longer.

So please. Stop using the word "narcissist" as a synonym for "abusive".

Stop bringing up people you hate who you believe to have NPD because of a stigmatizing article full of misinformation whenever someone with actual NPD opens their mouth. (Imagine if people did that with any other disorder! "Hey, I'm autistic." "Oh... my old roommate screamed at me whenever I made noise around him, and didn't understand my needs, which seems like sensory overload and difficulty with social cues. He was definitely autistic. But as long as you're self-aware and always restraining your innate desire to be an abusive asshole, you're okay I guess, maybe." ...See how offensive and ignorant that is?)

Stop preventing healthcare for people with a disorder just because it's trendy to use us as a scapegoat.

If you got this far, thank you for reading, and please share this if you can. Further reading is under the cut.

NPD Criteria, re-written by someone who actually has NPD

Stigma in the DSM

Common perception of the DSM criteria vs how someone may actually experience them (Keep in mind that this is the way I personally experience these symptoms, and that presentation can vary a lot between individuals)

"Idk, the stigma is right though, because I've known a lot of people with NPD who are jerks, so I'm going to continue to support the blockage of treatment for this condition."

(All of these were written by me, because I didn't want to link to other folks' posts without permission, but if you want to add your own links in reblogs or replies please feel free <3)

[ecstasydemon]

the way some people talk about shane stardew valley irks me so bad

[beescake]

found some old tweets frm my private diary acc logging errant thoughts i had while getting into hs

and well. smth abt the progression of it makes me emo. happy new year ig :')

[coachbeards]

One of the worst things tl ever did was imply beardjane matched each other and that they were soulmates … AFTER showing Jane’s abusive tendencies

[theyhitthepentagon]

real talk rn the people acting like genyinely angry and upset over this feel a little selfish to me because like if you just watched the stream for a minute youd recognize like. All of the effort and prep put into this. rheyre doing so much work and you people are complaining about a series that ended 3 years agoz what happened to all the people saying not to be weird if its not hl2vrai. some of you guys need to realize you have a parasocial relationship w media and fictional characters and fandom shit or whatever. this should be a wake up call for yall #tbh ive actually never seen ANYTHING this ridiculous in my life. now gn

[yesloulou]

dude (@ F1USFANS on youtube) the thumbnail wtf 😭😭😭😭😭

[menlove]

wish people would understand and learn that someone saying "most traditional forms of therapy do not work for me. i deeply distrust the mental health system in my country for various valid reasons and cannot afford to seek alternate forms of therapy that might work better for me than what is easily accessible. therefore while i recognize i have a lot of mental health problems, therapy is not my best bet & i'm not interested in seeking it out right now" is not the same thing as "omgggg no i don't need therapy!!!!"

[chryblossomjjk]

just found out that jungkook interacts with people who aren’t me

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

the rose of york: love and war (2003) - sandra worth

“he swallowed his dick”

[casart]

Meds don’t work for everyone. And sometimes it’s trial and error to find the right ones. But for me, mine helped me see colour again after everything had become so grey

[bunnihearted]

lately i've been finding it so so hard to be positive and hopeful. and it's making me so bitter and hateful. i hate it but i dont know what to do about it

[boycritter]

have some Opinions i could post but i dont trust tumblr to be normal about people w eating disorders

[mokutone]

page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 (you are here) | page 6 | page 7 | page 8 | page 9 | page 10 | page 11 | page 12

image desc below readmore

ID:

Where the majority of pages before were in red hues, this is all green and blue and teal, cool colors.

Over the entirety of the page, there is a drawing of Tenzō, naked and loosely coiled in black cords, just as he was in canon flashbacks to his time in Orochimaru's lab. His hair rises from his head as if floating. His expression is neutral. He appears to be the same age as he was in the red pages.

Tenzō's head dominate's panel one. His hair obscures a lot of the panel behind him, but we see a close image of ninja sandals on a tree branch. "The mission went impossibly smoothly," Tenzō recounts. "I only got injured because we were accosted during our return journey."

Tenzō's torsō rests over panel two. Behind him, to the left, his mokuton branches bind an enemy shinobi to a tree. To the right, Rabbit-Taichō is crouched on a branch and hand-signals at a different Tenzō, one which is fully dressed in his Anbu kit. Tenzō watches, his own hands poised in a seal. The Tenzō whose body stretches over the page continues, "They were rogue shinobi from the Hidden Rivers. But the mission itself was just gathering intel with Rabit-Taichō, from a lab just east of the border." Much like the black cords, the tails of the speech balloons weave and wrap around Tenzō's body.

The third panel is split by Tenzō's body. On the left, there's a single panel in the red hues of Kakashi's room. On the right, there are rows of lit, fluid-filled tanks. "A Lab?" Kakashi asks, looking uneasy, on his guard. "Yes," Tenzō's speech balloons reply. "An old one. Former hideout, but now truly civilian."

Tenzō's legs dangle over the fourth panel. Behind his legs, Tenzō and Rabbit-Taichō observe a fish as it swims in a tank. "The lab was conducting experiments on the chakra natures of non-summoned fish," Tenzō says.

"We deemed it safe after ten days of study, and several infiltrations."

/end ID

[coriander-candlesticks]

I'm sick so I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, but I've been thinking about the nature of myths recently as I've been exploring hellenic polytheism.

For context: I'm ex-Mormon. I was raised in the church and, because of that, was taught biblical literalism but in, like, a more subtle way than most? I was raised believing that Adam & Eve and Noah's Ark, etc., were literally true, but that the story of Job specifically was not; I also always knew evolution and the Big Bang to be correct, despite there being a verse in the Doctrine & Covenants (a Mormon-specific religious book) where God apparently told Joseph Smith that the world is 6,000 years old- a passage I didn't know existed until my senior year of high school. I didn't realize I had believed in biblical literalism until I'd left the church, actually.

Now that I'm aware of it, it's a mindset I'm actively trying to combat while I explore Hellenic polytheism. It's definitely been a task to separate the nature of the Gods from their myths, as brutal as they often are. And it's something I've noticed within the community, too, which I think is interesting. It makes sense: Christianity, at least, has had a chokehold on much of the world for a long time, and so many of us have experienced literalism as our first interaction with any sort of holy text (though, of course, Greek myths as a whole aren't that) alongside our first experience with divinity as a wrathful God whose flaws are waved away, or ignored, or twisted into positive attributes. This also means that I'm trying to re-approach several deities with an open mind (Zeus, Hera, and Ares in particular, but many of them to some extent) while also trying to un-condition myself. I was already in the process of doing this, of course, but trying to figure out how to interact with a completely different pantheon has made that especially clear.

It extends to things like prayer and offerings, too. Prayers were very formulaic growing up, even though most of the time there wasn't a strict script to follow. There was always something you ask as part of the prayer, even if it's just 'please help me do better tomorrow' (alongside giving thanks, of course), so trying to craft a prayer without adding *everything* I'm used to including in makes it feel incomplete and, therefore, disrespectful. And daily prayer is something I'm resistant to because of prior experiences with it. I don't want to offend any of the gods by asking for something or asking for too much, especially so early on, and there's always a promised offering the few times I *have* asked. Add worries about exact obedience on top of that and it's proving to be a difficult thing to untangle. And I know that the gods are difficult to offend, figuring out how to do this takes trial & error and that's okay, it'll get better the more I do it, etc., etc.; this is more an issue with my own overthinking than anything else (hooray for ✨ mental health issues ✨). I'm not really asking for advice here, necessarily, just thinking out loud because I'm not comfortable talking to people in meat space about it yet.

[wlwaerith]

got my results from my uni finals back and i feel like i’m about to pass out??

[motherhenna]

wanted to share an almost full-body pic for the first time in probably almost a decade because for once I'm actually proud of how I'm progressing and think that the changes I'm making will end up being permanent bc I'm genuinely enjoying them. Plus, the few selfies I have shared over the last five years have been very photoshopped and at flattering angles, so I feel like most of y'all don't know what I actually look like. So this is me in my children's theater teacher fit last monday!

I'm 17 lbs down from my highest ever weight, but my trainer thinks I'm probably up at least ten to fifteen lbs in muscle. I'm cooking my own food, eating more reasonable portions, and going to the gym at least five times a week because I want to, not because I feel shame or guilt. And now that I'm working as hard as I am, I'm a lot less triggered by looking at new pictures of myself because I know I'm doing my best. I'm still obese, and probably will be for awhile more, but I'm starting to appreciate what I look like and feel like. And hopefully it'll just get better from here!