npd + system + bpd culture is not loving ur friends. yes i like them. but i don’t love them. i cant love them. i cant love anyone. love just isn’t in my body unless it’s in-system.

they’re cool but they aren’t forever. i cant love them. they are just there to keep me not bored and give me a laugh so i make them laugh in return because they make me laugh

.

no you don't understand. yes, I think that I am the scum of the earth, and hate myself immensely, and think that I don't deserve love of any kind, but I also think that I am the most important person ever, and love myself because I am perfect, and I deserve everyone's attention and love and and and

i need a kind of relationship where you can agree to beat each other up for adrenaline rush but kiss right after (weirdly specific but still)

Trying to construct "real" self esteem after having a fake ego for so long is one of the hardest parts about having NPD and trying to heal from it, especially because a huge part of it is actually letting yourself BE insecure, which obviously isn't fun for anyone, especially not narcissists.

Due to my NPD I’ve always needed attention and praise from people CONSTANTLY, and I would hate to see other people get positive attention, and I would do things I’m not proud of like lie or exaggerate or put other people down (usually in really passive aggressive and subtle ways rather than direct insults -- don't get me wrong, I'd be thinking the direct insults, but I'd rarely say them). It was an awful knee-jerk reaction that I'd have if someone did even slightly better than me on something.

I always needed to be #1. I needed people to care about me more than they care about anyone else. I desperately needed the love and positive attention that I never got.

For the longest time, I was the only one giving myself positive attention, and even THAT came from an exaggerated/fake ego. So I became hungry for genuine love, to not be so terribly alone.

I felt as if no one cared about me, no one needed me, no one would care if I disappeared or died. The reason why I felt this way ALWAYS boiled down to “well my friend gave someone else attention / didn’t give me enough attention / ignored me / whatever, so clearly this means they don't care about me at all.”

It's very much an "all or nothing" mentality - I'm either someone's favorite person in the world, or I don't matter to them at all.

Oddly enough, you know what helps me to heal? Realizing that it’s okay if no one cares, and that it’s ok if I only have myself.

You know that one meme that’s like “Nihilism, nothing in life matters?” Basically that’s how my NPD healing journey has looked. I started off with thinking "No one cares about me except myself :(" and now am striving to become "No one cares about me except myself :D" Ideally the final step in my healing process will be accepting that people DO care about me and that I CAN receive positive attention from people in a healthy way and that people WOULD be sad if I wasn't around, but oddly enough (and I know this makes no sense to non-narcs), before I get to that stage, I have to become ok with no one caring. And obviously that thought process may not work for all narcissists, but it's working for me, I think.

Because chances are there WILL be at least one instance where no one cares, or at least no one is around to reassure me that they do care, or no one can reassure me in ways that satisfy me...even if it's just in my mind/by my high standards, it is unavoidable that there will be several times when "no one cares about me". Even if it’s a disordered thought or a delusion, the best course of action isn’t always to convince myself that people actually do care, and the best course of action DEFINITELY isn’t to manipulate people into caring. The best course of action is to say “Ok, maybe I’m right, no one cares. Now what? I have to accept that and know that i’ve always got myself.”

Obviously that can't be my only coping mechanism, because then I might become too dependent on isolation, but it does help to self-sooth by trying to genuinely love myself and try to always be there for myself, even if I'm the only one.

genuine question, do you think callout posts are inherently evil? like if someone's doing some weird shit and hiding it i think people would want to be warned about that at least. just try to discourage harassment as much as possible

The existence of a callout posts means that the targeted person will be harassed if enough people see it. There is no amount of "don't harass anyone mentioned in this doc/video" disclaimers that will prevent that. The post is now potentially a permanent record that anyone can cite for years into the future. You are now at the whims of unknown strangers to be banned from communities, kicked out of creative projects, or be blocked by friends, at any time with no warning. I would consider this to be harassment, but to people who don't know about how these things usually go down they would be seen as righteous whistle blowers.

No matter what you actually did, if your awkward interaction with someone was too sexual, or if you stated a shitty opinion about a complex topic, or if you misjudged someone's boundaries, or if you engaged with kink in a way that made someone outside the scene uncomfortable, you are now a predator. I have seen firsthand the game of telephone starting from "this person did/said something sexualized on an online platform where teenagers could have been present," to "acted creepy around teenagers," to "regularly sexually assaulted children," to "pedophile".

Callout posts do not actually stop the person from "doing weird shit". It depends on what you mean by "weird shit", but if you mean "secretly draws/engages with Bad Porn", which is what a lot of callout posts are about, I implore you to recognize that it is truly not your business to know every private action someone takes just because you follow them on social media. This applies to awkward interactions people have in private too. Sometimes it's patterns of abuse, but a lot of the time it's interpersonal drama that is not anyone else's business.

If by "weird shit" you mean that someone has demonstrated ongoing patterns of real emotional/financial/sexual/etc abuse, and it's something that cannot be handled by any other means (either privately or with legal action if relevant), then in those cases a callout post can potentially do more good than harm if it reaches the people that need to know about it.

The level of long-term mental anguish that a target can go through is absolutely no fucking joke. A callout post has the potential to be a gun to someone's head, especially if they're socially/mentally/physically disadvantaged to begin with, which conveniently describes the most likely people to be targeted with high profile callout posts. [This is because: 1.) Our communities are wayy more likely to self-police than the rest of the internet and 2.) there are groups such as kiwifarms that love when a trans girl does something they can suicide bait her with and they also love it when we infight, isolate, and attack each other.]

I don't think callout posts are inherently evil, but they do nothing to make the target not continue their unwanted behavior. The only good function a callout post can serve is to warn potential future victims. If there are no victims, no behavior that will DIRECTLY lead to someone being victimized, no scam being uncovered, no patterns of abuse being shared, then the only victim is the target of the callout post. Everyone else involved is just gawking at gossip and/or contributing to suicidal levels of anxiety to a stranger.

something i love about akeshu is the "i know you know" of it all. them being rivals makes very little sense outside of the context of joker being the leader of the phantom thieves, and yet he is the one who proposed that they be rivals. because akechi already knows, and joker knows he knows. their "rivalry" is a game, they're friends hanging out but they're playing a game, how much can they dance around the issue, how much can they say, how blatant can they be without losing that veneer of plausible deniability. but it's not just that, because joker, who is observant enough to notice the discrepancy between what hand akechi shook with and what hand he played pool with, definitely noticed that akechi heard morgana. so akechi thinks he's winning because his secrets aren't part of their game, but they are, because joker knows. he knows what akechi means when he says, "if i'm going to take you out." it's their game. he never tells his other friends, because this is about them. they're friends. akechi talks about murdering him over the phone and they still hang out. they duel in memetos with apparent lethal intent, akechi confesses his hatred to joker, then invites him to jazz jin a week later. he doesn't want to kill his friend, his rival in this game, but a couple days later, he puts a bullet through joker's head anyway.

i know you know, but you don't know i know.

when did it stop being a game, i wonder? did it ever?

this happens like five times in game

Distortions, and ways to see the world

npd makes me the most jealous fucking person on the planet. someone will draw something and instead of being like "oh that looks great!" i will get irrationally upset because i can't draw like that. or my friends will hang out with other people and i'll get angry and defensive because that means they don't like me anymore and i'm not good enough.

npd artist culture is 'why can't i be better' turning into 'why can't they see i'm better'

.

Quick snippet from 10/26. In case you ever wondered whether Akechi knows Mona talks all along... watch him here, and listen to him. At first he's on script—entirely in control even when he talks about how he was supposedly nearly murdered by himself. It's the same tone he uses on the news. He's gone over this speech a dozen times.

Then Morgana talks, and while Akechi does react, he's still acting. He's still on script, prepared and practiced. The portrait looks shocked, but the model is just standing there, playing detective....

... until Ann steps in with "our friend who taught us about the Metaverse":

He jumps back so fast I didn't have time to load the textbox, lol. "What do you MEAN you had a MAGIC CAT GUIDE, the FUCK??"

Of course he knew Mona talks. How does he expose himself, right away on 6/9?—he hears Mona talking about pancakes. He had to be close enough to hear Mona, the cat. So it's not Mona talking that shocks him, but the revelation that Joker and the rest had help, had a guide from the very beginning, when he did not.

And you can hear his voice change register at that moment. That careful, controlled, rehearsed tone goes out of the window. He talks faster, he pitches up, he's breathless, without a script. He is, in short, more real. And he immediately asks Mona a question:

He really hasn't solved that mystery; he really wants to know. In fact, he has to know—about the difference in their methods and his own, which he just can't figure out....

There's a little of that high-pitched breathiness when he talks about his awakening, too. I'd say that's pretty much how it happened way back when, and he's adapted the story a little. "I can't die here... I need to determine the truth"—of course he did. The same truth that his "sole interest is uncovering"—the truth about Shido and himself.

What about that image of the killer, standing in the entrance to Okumura's Palace? Well, sometimes people think this is a photo, but it's not—Akechi doesn't produce any more photos, he just continues with his story. So this is presumably what Akechi pictures in his mind at that moment. This is his self-image, God help him:

Lastly, here's an incredulous Akechi with a bonus Futaba glaring at him. Don't neglect the models—they really repay close examination, and the face animation is often incredibly detailed. And as for whether Akechi is lying or not at any given moment—it's often easier to tell than you think.

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2024/04/18)—first posted.

Shadow Akechi doodle

Nobody is saying that people with cluster B disorders can't be bad people. We're not saying they can't abuse, that they can't manipulate, that they can't hurt people.

we're saying it's not their disorder that causes the abuse. it's their choices. my disorder might amplify those bad thoughts - as does any disorder - but it is still me that has chosen to behave badly in that moment, even if unconsciously.

‘i’m not demonising NPD, i’m talking about narcissistic traits’

so… symptoms of NPD.

do these ableist freaks not realise that narcissism and NPD are not separate things?

What’s with this trope of the light haired boy being in love with the dark haired protagonist

The list can go on eternally if I put my heart into it.

Bonus points if the dark haired boy is oblivious, it’s unrequited or they get a tragic ending

is future diary even cool anymore