i think a lot of people would benefit from internalizing the reality that just because u had a negative emotion doesnt always mean someone else did something wrong

we can be hurt without someone else being to blame for being the epicenter of that hurt. just because something makes us upset or hurts us, doesnt mean the other person made a mistake or should have done something differently or needs to apologize

negative emotions are an inevitable part of life and sometimes they were always going to happen no matter what because of the situation and there was no way to avoid them and thats okay. sometimes there's nothing to be done to fix a negative emotion or prevent it from happening. sometimes people we love and care about are going to hurt us and thats okay. its a part of being human. we will inevitably do the same to them. but just because we were hurt doesnt mean they did something wrong.

and we can take the time and space to be upset about that privately without involving them in our emotions at all. because even when our emotions are triggered by someone else, that doesnt mean they have to answer for them

the world is not divided into victims and perpetrators and sometimes people hurt us when they do the right thing. sometimes everyone can do everything right and we can still get hurt and be upset. that doesnt make them bad people and it doesnt give us the right to blame them for it or hold them responsible

father dies wailing, yelling yato's name in vain and reaching out to his children only to recieve no response and fade into obscurity abandoned and alone

adatchitoka is so real for this i am so happy

dabi taking 45mins to get ready cause he has to spray his fucking hair with wash out black dye in the leagues bathroom mirror before every outing: this'll pay off one day, just wait

genuine protip for free therapy that works, start following "gentle parenting" accounts that discuss the ways they are raising their children and the healthy coping mechanisms and communication they're teaching and then use those techniques on urself. passively consume that content at random moments all throughout ur day. genuinely surround urself with it so that ur encountering it daily, multiple times a day, till those thought processes become second nature think of urself as both the parent and the child. use ur rational adult mindset to learn and internalize these new mindsets and teachings when ur not in distress, and then in moments when u are upset or distressed, parent urself through them. mimic and emulate these parents and speak to urself with the same compassion, patience, and understanding that they speak to their children with

for people with cluster b disorders, we did not have healthy childhoods. we did not grow up learning these messages and being treated with kindness and respect and compassion. we were not given the tools we needed to emotionally navigate the world in a healthy way. but that doesnt mean we cant learn it now. be the parent that u did not have. take care of urself and ur emotions the way they should have been handled

i promise it will make a huge world of difference. it might seem silly at first, or might make u angry and upset seeing people being treated in ways u wish u were, or it even might seem stupid and like it will never work. those are all valid things to feel during the process, but try and stick with it and keep consuming that content and eventually those messages will really sink in and start making a difference

a sentiment i see a lot from anti recovery crowds that i really deeply disagree with is the notion that recovery for cluster b personality disorders is solely for the benifit of others and doesnt actually help us at all so its useless and this is just completely untrue

recovery and healing is first and foremost, always about us. it is *for* us. it is for OUR benifit, to make US feel better and make OUR lives more bearable and enjoyable. and while yea, a lot of that will also benifit the people around us, that is and should always be an afterthought and natural byproduct of the process and not that main goal. because u cant make real meaningful change solely for someone else, u have to want it and it has to benifit u because recovery is a long and difficult process that hurts and is uncomfortable and so there HAS to be actual benifits to us as payoff for that hard work to be worth it and to keep us going. thats just how human beings work. so it's okay and good for recovery to be selfish. ur allowed to want ur life to be better and easier for u! thats a good thing!

because acknowleging and confronting our trauma, being heard and seen and validated in what happened to us, being able to finally claim and have taken seriously the very real pain and suffering we went through, finding new ways to understand and cope with our feelings, finding healthier paths to better decisions that actively benifit us and lead to positive outcomes, is and should be entirely for our benifit. it is a perfectly good and healthy motivation to say "im doing this because im sick of being miserable" "im doing this because it will benifit me in the long run" "im doing this because it will make me happy" "im doing this to feel better" "im doing this for me"

recover selfishly, recover spitefully even! do it solely to make ur life easier and better and for no one else. that is genuinely always the goal and the best way to make meaningful change

one day the cluster b tags on this site will be filled with people having real actual discussions about our disorders and mental health and the ways it effects us and coping mechanisms and paths to healing instead of 900 vapid note grabs that say shit like "ur so valid!! i know everyone hates u but *i* dont so u should give me praise for saying absolutely nothing of value or use! i dont even have one of these disorders or understand them at all but ur absolutely not all monsters! this is in no way just using ur disorders as a ploy for attention and my own sense or moral superiority!" like girl go home. no one cares. i dont give a shit if someone thinks my existence is ""valid"" i'd like to read something of actual substance that shows op knows even the tiniest bit about what they're talking about. i know asking for an actual thought that requires work and nuance and complexity is asking a lot on this site in this day and age but a guy can hope

if I had a penny for everytime I watched someone describe what they called "a manipulative psychopath with aspd whose every action is a calculated manipulation for the most uncharitable reason possible" and then it ends up its just a very deeply traumatized autistic person being treated like a monster and pushed to meltdowns for what are, at worst, mildly annoying symptoms id have Jeff bezos money

something i see happen a lot when people are working through self dx and even sometimes with professional dx for comorbidity, is the lack of understanding that once a symptom is covered under a specific disorder, it does not then cross apply to another

which is confusing so let me explain. lets say u have bipolar disorder and u know this for sure, but u also have other things going on and are trying to figure out what else u might have. when u start to consider other disorders, all the symptoms that are "covered" under the bipolar diagnosis should now be off the table so to speak. they should not be counted towards another diagnosis

meaning, they have a place u know they come from already, so they dont need a further explination. for example, both bipolar disorder and bpd have multiple overlapping symptoms as well as unique symptoms they dont share. if ur going through those lists of symptoms, and the only bpd symptoms u expierence are ones that are also bipolar symptoms, then u probably dont have bpd

mood swings for example in this scenario should not count towards a bpd diagnosis, because u already have a disorder that accounts for that symptom. lots of disorders have the same or similar symptoms because humans are incredibly varied and nuanced and some things are more common and present across the board then others. but that doesnt mean that just because u have a symptom, means u have every disorder where that symptom presents

i see this a lot with cluster b pds, and especially with people thinking they have 3+ cluster b pds. they will see that all 4 disorders contain things like impulsivity, executive dysfuntion, empathy dysfunction, cptsd symptoms ect. and think that means that they qualify for all of the disorders because they have these symptoms that are shared by all of them. but that really is not how diagnostic criteria works. those symptoms only count the once towards the 1 disorder. after those, u have to look at the other symptoms that are not shared, and see which of those u qualify for.

this stuff is very difficult and can be very confusing which is why it takes a long time and lots of research and introspection to really understand fully what u might have. and also why so many people end up misdiagnoised (both professionally and selfdx) at one point or another but i hope this was maybe helpful in that process

Can you talk a little bit about crossovers in ASPD, ADHD, and Austism?

there's honestly a lot. having autism/adhd put u at a higher risk for childhood abuse and neglect and the specific ways that autistic in particular but adhd kids as well get mistreated and abused are very likely to cause cluster b disorders which is one probable reason for the amount of overlap and comorbidity between the three

for aspd in particular some of the overlapping symptoms are things like:

low distress tolerence

low overstimulation threshold

chronic understimulation/boredom

perseveration on specific thoughts or feelings

demand avoidance/ pathological demand avoidance

oppositional defiance/rejection of outside control and influence

valuing ones own internal sense of logic and understanding over outside influence

rejection of societal and social norms

impulsivity and difficulty not acting on impulses

difficulty with delayed gratification

empathy dysfunction

decision paralysis/ analysis paralysis

maladaptive daydreaming

dissasociation

struggles with anger, irritability, and aggression

executive dysfunction

thats all the ones i can think of rn but this is by no means an exaughstive or comprehensive list. and even within each of those bullet points there's absolutely like, micro lists underneath them of how each of those things presents in a practical manner and the thought processes behind them

for example executive dysfunction, this is often viewed as "irresponsibility" or lack of caring/understanding and is weaponized differently for each. autistic ppl often get infantalized and viewed as too unintelligent or incompitent to understand what to do, while ppl with adhd are viewed as selfishly lazy and not trying hard enough, and then ppl with aspd are viewed as maliciously and purposefully not doing tasks to hurt others. when in reality, all of it stems from the inability to properly order and execute specific tasks in specific ways under specific time constraints without any kind of accomodation

aspd lists a vague and unspecific "biological component" that is required for the disorder to manifest alongside trauma, which lots of people have taken to mean that aspd has some inherent "asshole gene" where ur just born a piece of shit but in realy the "biological component" is nuerodiversity. aspd is the result of prolonged childhood trauma on a nuerodivergent brain. and the most common form of nuerodivergency is autism, with adhd a close second (mostly because in reality these two exist on the same spectrum and are not two distinct things but more like different points on the same graph)

so these things are much less three distinct and completely different catagories and more like a venn diagram that is practically a circle and therefore share a ton of overlap

i hope that was helpful and please feel free to come back and ask more if u want me to expound on any of these points or go into more detail about specific symptoms or similarities

honestly real talk tho the longer and longer i have been really deeply involved with cluster b pd stuff the more i really do believe that the entire catagory needs to be dissolved, reevaluated, and remade. we need to radically change how we view and speak about these symptoms

i used to criticize the dsm6's decision to do just that, and dont get me wrong i still do think the new model needs work, but the current one we have is fundimentally broken and useless. getting diagnosed (or diagnosing urself) with a current cluster b pd is at this point actively harmful to ur own mental health and thats just unnacceptable.

no one knows what they're talking about, no one understands the criteria, no one can agree on the criteria, or understands the history of it, the cultural misinformation is too widespread and great to be properly divorced from it at this point and is infact leeching into practice to do irreparable harm to people, people treat them like hogwarts house identities, theyre not helpful for understanding core underlying disordered thought processes or unpacking where they come from, all 4 catagories are steeped in huge amounts of ableism, sanism, racism, and misogyny, new studies and meta data and long term case studies show most of our understanding is misguided, its really and truly just a mess and its doing more harm than good at this point

and like yea, some of that is because people are stupid and ignorant and dont want to learn and so it'll always be an issue, but when its at *this* scale its a foundational problem. because at the end of the day these diagnosis only exist to help people articulate their experience so they can be heard and get the help and support they need, and so if they arent doing that and the catagories are only making it HARDER for people to be properly understood then they're functionally useless

like at some point i think we gotta conceed that the problem isnt that absolutely everyone is just stupid and that if people are constantly disagreeing about basic criteria and tenants of a disorder, then the problem is the foundational understanding and it should be reevaluated. because peoples lived experiences and their emotions and their distress is whats actually tangibly real and its the catagories we use to explain that experience that is socially constructed and therefore should change

i think a big part of why people latch onto things like narc abuse and sociopath nonsense is that at the end of the day, they want something easy to blame

when ur abused, the hardest and most difficult thing to confront is why. why did they hurt u? why didnt they love u? why did they do those things and treat u that way? why couldnt they see how much pain u were in? why didnt they care? why why why why

during the abuse, we internalize that why. we think the reason is us. we're just wrong or broken or undeserving or bad. it's our fault they abused us. and so when u finally escape that, its a big and emopowering moment to finally be able to realize that no, we weren't at all the reason. we werent to blame. we didnt do anthing to deserve that.

but then that leaves us once agian with the why. and the uncomfortable truth is that there really isnt a satisfying answer to that question. the why is usually very mundane and doesnt offer a lot of closure. its often just, because they were selfish. because it was the easier thing to do. because they were hurting and took it out on u. because they just couldnt be bothered to care. because they couldnt see past their own defensiveness. because they chose to.

but those aren't satisfying. they dont give closure. people dont want to confront the mundane and human reality that people abuse others for no good reason sometimes. that they were just being human, because abuse is mundane and human. so people try to find some other big universe defining reason. they latch onto things that tell them "this abuse was an immutable force of the universe and no one can do anything about it. these people are inhuman monsters who need to be removed from society" because that kind of absolutism is a much more comforting and easy thought than the reality that sometimes people just choose to be terrible to one another. because that reality means confronting the randomness of tragedy and our powerlessness to stop ourselves from becoming victims. it also means u never have to confront the reality that while someone may have abused u, they can and do go on to love others in healthy and real ways, and they deserve to do that. and that still doesnt at all mean there was something wrong with u or that u deserved what happened.

but those are difficult and uncomfortable things to confront. so in a twist of deep deep irony, they do exactly what their abusers did. they choose the selfish, easy, defensive option. and they take their pain out on other people who dont deserve it and did nothing wrong. they fall into abusive patterns and habits without even realizing it and then become the thing they claim to be fighting so hard against. they refuse to understand and accept the reality of why people hurt others, and thus doom themselves to repeat those same patterns of misbehavior. because when u refuse to view other people as human, u end up becoming the monster ur looking for

im gonna be very real and only say this once because there is zero room to change my mind on this

i am very psych critical and i agree with antipsych pricinicples and points, but bipolar disorder is a physical genetic condition that requires medication. point blank. medication is the Only proven effective treatment for bipolar and u cannot actually get better without it

and when i say get better i dont mean just slightly alleviate some things. i mean that remission means a complete and total lack of symptoms. if u are on the proper medication and taking it as perscribed then ur bipolar symptoms will stop. you will no longer experience mania, hallucinations, breaks from reality, delusions, ect. they will literally stop. and i say that so strongly because i know its factual because it is my very literal lived experience. it is also the lived expereince of everyone in real life that i have met and known throughout my 15+ years of treatment for bipolar disorder, which is dozens and dozens of people. I was diagnosed at 14 and have been in and out of treatment and on and off medication for over half my life at this point, and this is very much the reality but u also don't have to believe my lived expereince alone. bipolar disorder is one of the oldest recorded mental illnesses (we have literally known about it since the early 1800's) and treatment for it has existed almost as long. lithium is a naturally occuring salt and the only known antimanic agent in existence and humans figured out very quickly that this specific salt made some of us not insane anymore. the effectivenes of lithium and other mood stabilizers and the rates at which proper medication will result in full remission for bipolar patients and how relapses almost always only occur when people stop taking their meds is Very well documented. a reputable study done in 2003 reported that over 90% of bipolar patients recieving medication as treatment entered full remission within 2 years. and 72% of those people reported ZERO symptoms going forward

do not listen to people who tell u that u dont need medication for bipolar disoder, that it wont really help, that it only helps a little, that u can manage without it, that it wont actually make ur symptoms fully go away. they are lying to u, often to justify their own misguided decision to not take medication and ruin their own lives. do not listen to them because that kind of thinking will literally kill u. take ur fucking medication.

someone on instagram was like ppl with aspd hate autistic people and vice verse (they were much ruder) so i’m here to say ppl with aspd are sick and we should all go go concerts together

absolutely fucking hilarious stance for them to take given the fact that the aspd and autism venn diagram is practically a cirlce

the more and more i research into it the more it is glaringly obvious that aspd and autism are very closely linked

i think looking at aspd as one potential trauma presentation for autistic people makes the entire disorder make more sense. there was a point when ppl thought they might be the same disorder and thought autism inherently caused antisocial behaviors but then as more studies were done it proved that was incorrect and autism does not inherently cause violent or antisocial behavior and so the two were seperated.

but imo the crucial component being left out is trauma. when u traumatize autistic people, thats when they exhibit antisocial behaviors (among others i dont think apsd is the *only* way traumatized autistics can present, i actually think all cluster b pds except hpd are potential presentations (which for the record i leave hpd out because i believe hpd should be its own seperate catagory of sexual trauma based ptsd because thats absolutely what it is and catagorizing it with cluster b pds makes little sense)).

so its not the autism that causes the behaviors, its the trauma. aspd is inherently a trauma disorder, and so when u traumatize autistic ppl or even just ppl whose brains function closer to autistic brains than alltistic brains, the behaviors they exhibit are antisocial behaviors

i think it just makes sense when u remove the ableism from the aspd criteria and break the disorder down to its base parts. things like lack of emotional empathy, devaluing social and societal norms, difficulty making meaningful connections with others, low tolerance for boredome and understimulation, overstimulation feelings resulting in violent reactions, impulsive behavior, perseveration on specific thoughts or ideas, a rejection of outside logic and influence that favors ones own internal sense of logic, opperant defiance, ect.

i think we'd end up with a much better understanding of antisocial behavior if we viewed it from a traumatized autistic lense. i cannot count the number of times someone has described a "crazy psychopath" and if u take more than 3 seconds to look at their behavior its obviously just an incredibly distressed and maladjusted autistic person

im gonna say something thats gonna make a lot of u real mad but it's the truth and u need to hear it. real recovery starts with ego death.

otherwise u will just continue to stand in ur own way by finding ways to justify and excuse ur own negative and unhealthy behavior

u are wrong. u are the problem. ur behavior and thought process is unhealthy and harmful to u and needs change. u are the only person who can change those things. u are whats standing in ur way. u do not know what is healthy. ur ideas and understanding of others is skewed and incorrect. u are the problem.

in order to get anywhere real and make meaningful progress towards being happier and healthier, u first have to be able to accept those statements without anger, rejection, and shame. because those are not shameful statements. they dont make u irredeamable. they dont mean u deserve to be abused or punished or mistreated. u still have value and worth even when ur wrong. being wrong is not the same as being worthless. everyone will be wrong sometimes, it is an unavoidable part of life

u first have to get to a place where those statements elicit curiousity, not anger or sadness. because u can always change ur behavior. u can always make a different choice. if u control ur behavior and ur behavior is the problem, then u control the problem, u have all the power to fix it. being wrong in the moment never means u cant be right in the future. u can figure out the what and why and how and do something differently next time. u can change and grow if u allow urself

being wrong isnt a value judgment, it's an opportunity for growth

Do you have a list or of your favorite sources, research, and papers on ASPD, ADHD, or NPD?

unfortunately no, sorry anon. im incredibly disorganized and really bad at keeping track of that kind of stuff. I go down study rabbit holes where I read like 20 in a night and save the links to none of them rinse repeat lmfaoo

I do have some books I recommend all the time tho cause while they aren't directly about aspd or npd I think they help inform the conversation a lot

against empathy: the case for radical compassion by Paul bloom

the body keeps the score by bessel van der kolk

adult children of emotionally immature parents by Lindsay c gibson

and then for adhd stuff id recommend

how to adhd by Jessica McCabe

dirty laundry: why adults with adhd are so ashamed by Roxanne emry and Richard pink

genuinely nothing i hate more these days than the word "supply"

"narcissists need supply" "npd is the need for supply" "how to get supply" "what to do when u have no supply" ect ect into infinity. it's so unbelievably ableist and othering and disingenuous and the more i see other ppl with npd adopting this language the worse and worse its getting

"supply" is not some unique need that only we have. it's validation. it's attention. it's acknowledgment. its feeling valued and wanted and seen. it's a human need that literally everyone on earth has and requires for healthy mental stability. it's why isolation is considered torture for humans. but calling it "supply" as a shorthand because u dont want to write out all those specific words is a horrendous decision that only adds to pathologizing ur entire self and worsening ur disorder

the reasons people with npd seek out that normal human need in unhealthy and maladaptive ways and cannot generate those feelings internally is what makes things different for us. abuse means we were never taught how to properly develop healthy feelings and skills surrounding those base needs because they were used against us and exploited in abusive ways. thats what makes the way we seek it out and our inability to cope with its lack disordered symptoms. but the thing we are seeking, the validation and attention and acknowledgement, is not some "other" thing that only narcissists need and needing those things at all is not what means u have npd. npd is not at all, in any way, "the need for supply" and to say so is being hugely ablest.

there's been this trend of taking ablest language and stigma's against us because narc abuse ppl have flooded the lexicon with these terms and so they're the most well known and putting positive language around it and just using it like it's fact devoid of any critical thought or nuance. u see it with supply, with malignant or covert and overt narcissism, narc rage, ect. like. this stuff is othering and ablist and stigmatizing af at best and flat out incorrect at worst. there is no way to meaningfully reclaim that language and use it to describe our experience

the push to use buzzword language and label every emotion had by a cluster b with a Moniker does absolutely nothing to actually help ppl with these disorders better understand and learn to cope with them and in fact is actively harmful and patholigizing. u stop engaging with the actual real specific things ur feeling because u stop naming them, u put distance between the uncomfortable truth and urself by slapping a title on it and not fully engaging with it. all the while othering urself and ur needs. ur now no longer just a person with specific needs ur a "narcissist who needs supply" which gets watered down and misunderstood until everyone has a different meaning of the words and u cant have a useful conversation about peoples problems and struggles and the support they need

people with cluster b disorders are normal people. we are human beings. the emotions we experience, even the disordered ones, are human emotions that everyone is capable of. our needs are normal human needs that everyone has. the specifics of them will be different, the exact how and when and why will be different. lots of it will be disordered and unhealthy and incorrect by nature and need to be reevaluated or relearned or adjusted. but the core base emotions and needs that we have are *normal and human*