If You Have Violent Intrusive Thoughts I Love You. If You Have Sexual Intrusive Thoughts I Love You.

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)

to the disabled person who needs to hear this:

you don't have to earn or "deserve": resting, sleeping, taking your medications (including OTC meds, cannabis, creams, etc.), using your mobility aids, eating, declining to go to an event, choosing to stay home, having a self care/lazy day, or taking care of yourself in any other capacity. you can be good to yourself today.

[Image ID: A white background with black text with red shadows "Intrusive thoughts can" (can being all red text) "and will" (will being in all red text) "be about anything." The next points are bulleted out in a list in black text. "There is NO limit to what they can be about whatsoever. They WILL be about things you don't want them to be about by DEFINITION. NO topic is evil or weird enough to be exempt. NONE. NO LINE IS DRAWN. THE SUBCONSCIOUS DOES NOT STOP. It MAY make you uncomfortable to hear about and that DOES NOT give you an excuse to be fucking ableist about it. They cannot be controlled, you cannot expect people to try. They are NOT indicative of someone's true wishes or feelings. REPREMINANDING SOMEONE FOR HAVING THE "WRONG" INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS WILL ONLY MAKE THEM WORSE, ESPECIALLY FOR SOMEONE WITH OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER. Lastly, in large black text at the bottom of the image is big red text that reads "YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN SOMEONE WITH INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS YOU FIND GROSS OR MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE. YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN SOMEONE WHOSE INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS DO NOT MAKE SENSE TO YOU, EVEN IF YOU EXPERIENCE INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS OF YOUR OWN. IT IS A SYMPTOM THAT CAUSES ENOUGH SUFFERING ON ITS OWN. DON'T JOIN IT." End ID]

For this Disability Pride Month, I saw a post that was shittybad and it made me angry. So have this

therapists saying you're surprisingly self aware is like being called a pleasure to have in class for adults

this disability pride month, i ask that you include OCD on your mental illness positivity posts. for some reason we are rarely included in those. much love to all my OCD homies

Autistic people’s relationship with sex is treated so horribly in so many different ways it’s genuinely fucking frustrating. Whenever a character is depicted with autistic traits a thousand weirdos manifest into existence to say that their cute little autism blorbo “doesn’t know what sex is and must be protected” but over in real kink circles with high populations of autistic people (furry porn and shit) they suddenly become the crazy degenerate perverts. To the greater society at large autistic people expressing their sexuality aren’t allowed to be considered normal, we either have to be sterile and nonexistent or a group of freaky sexual deviants. Give me a fucking break dude.

I sure hope people don't take tiktok autism misinformation as "all these people are faking autism and being a gatekeeper is good actually" because I personally think the actual answer is "we need to learn how to discuss neurodivergencies in a way that includes nuance and doesn't overgeneralize things, we should also normalize questioning people for their sources and not taking everything at face value".

i love you autistics who can't control their volume . i love you autistics who struggled with/never understood "inside voice" . i love you autistics that yell to communicate their wants and needs . i love you autistics that stim loudly . i love you autistics who make noise .

we are loved . we deserve to be heard and accommodated for .

Writing Accessibility PSA

Please avoid using long strings of characters as line breaks in your writing - these are not screen reader/TTS friendly!

Every ‘°’ will be read as ‘degree’ - can you imagine how long it takes to read out a string of 25? Let alone more complicated combinations of characters (eg. imagine listening to TTS read out ~*~ |°| ~*~ multiple times per line break)?

A good rule of thumb is to stick with short, 2-3 character line breaks (eg. I don’t find — or *** too egregious to listen to). Your readers can tell there’s been a scene change whether you use two or twenty em-dashes, but if you use twenty, some of us might have to listen for 30 seconds to read the next scene. If you’re more concerned about aesthetics, you can insert an image of your aesthetically pleasing line break with alt text simply reading ‘line break’ for accessibility.

Don’t feel bad if this is something you’ve never thought about before - now you know better and can make your writing more accessible moving forward!

I would like to invite any other screenreader users to add their own thoughts or preferences to this post. We’re not a monolith and there’s a variety to how different softwares interact with repeating character strings and images with alt text, so there’s bound to be some conflicting opinions on what I’ve suggested above. Let’s try to make the stories we share accessible for everyone :]

fellow heat sensitive individuals. go drink water. learn from my folly.

if heat makes you flare up, GO DRINK WATER

if your meds lower your heat tolerance, GO DRINK WATER

if none of the above apply to you but youre still suffering through a heat wave GO DRINK WATER RIGHT NOW