#literally hate feeling any sort of emotion with bpd whether it's good or bad because it always gets taken up to 100

[bpdanakins]

i just infodumped to my friends about bpd anakin and i have No Regrets snakjdkajfsk

anyway, doth thee have any more bpd anakin (or just anakin in general) headcanons becuase i am living for this

I am So Sorry this took so long, but hopefully the length makes up for it. Thank you so much for sending this to me bc BPD!Anakin is my entire life. I could talk about it all day, every day.

I’d like to thank @apple-grass-and-smiles for helping me organize my Thoughts on all of this, prompting me to focus on certain things and giving me feedback in general too. 

Okay, here goes:

Anakin fidgets!! I’m not even sure if this is a headcanon but if it is I will die on this hill. He can’t stay still for the life of him and doubly so when he’s anxious, nervous or Ready To Do Something Already. 

We know Anakin can’t hold eye contact to save his life when he’s upset or insecure, but I can also see him having issues with touch when he’s upset, unless it’s from certain people only (Padmé always gets a pass, for example).

Anakin’s quick to let some small stuff go, but larger things people do that hurt him (whether intentionally or not) aren’t really ever forgotten, and he just kind of takes that in and suppresses it, until random moments when it pops up, he remembers, and it just hurts like it’s happening all over again. The people around him often have no idea what fully sets him off, bc to them, his reaction now seems out of nowhere while his mind’s still stuck on this other thing.     - His reactions also seem sometimes like they’re Over The Top, but even just remembering past hurts can feel almost disabling at times. It’s worse when he ends up ruminating on it, because the hurt and feelings of betrayal just keep building up over and over until it almost blots everything else out.

When he’s happy or surrounded by those he loves, everyone kind of can feel it too, bc he’s just fuckoff powerful in the Force and esp other Force sensitives kind of gather around his space and just… his affection and excitement are literally infectious. 

This probably runs closer to ADHD than BPD for sure, but get him talking about anything mechanical (robotics, engineering, racing, etc) and he will go from 0 to 100 so fast you’d get whiplash. No one minds though bc, as I said, his excitement is infectious and honestly those around him just adore listening to him go off even though half of it goes over their head.     - Ahsoka may not ever get Gotta Go Fast, but she definitely loves it when he really talks her ear off about all this stuff, bc it makes her excited to learn and she picks up on all of it easily. (There’s a part of her that wants to emulate him and she does def look up to him obviously.)     - We see it with Obi-Wan, but people love to use his love of all things mechanical as a way to distract him from things that upset him. It doesn’t always work but they try.

With Obi-Wan, he ends up on the side of Anakin’s splitting like, all the time. And unfortunately sometimes Obi-Wan can’t tell that Anakin’s lashing out not because of something Obi-Wan’s actually done, but bc Anakin’s young and Obi-Wan’s the figure he can project a lot of his frustrations on.     - It can lead Obi-Wan to being confused and hurt sometimes, bc he doesn’t always understand Anakin’s thought processes when this happens, and it definitely sometimes cuts him to the core. On the reverse side, though Anakin might not always say it to his face, Obi-Wan definitely can overhear him at times when Anakin’s ready to 1v1 anyone who even so much as makes a frowny face about Obi-Wan, which helps Obi-Wan remember that Anakin does love him too, actually.     - It ends up being one of the points of frisson between Anakin and Mace, bc Anakin can’t read body language perfectly, especially when it comes to feelings of abandonment or someone seemingly not loving who Anakin loves to the same degree. Mace has a drier sense of humor at times and defs has a more resting frowny face, and this rankles Anakin at times bc he can’t always tell when Mace is just chilling vs being disappointed, and while Anakin will take it all personally, he ALSO takes any perceived criticism to those he loves personally too.     - Both Mace and Obi-Wan don’t get this bc they have a perfectly fine relationship. Anakin’s just Like That.     - (And super overprotective of people’s perceptions of Obi-Wan. Anakin will go off about Obi-Wan being mean and all that, but fuck you and your entire family tree if you ever even think Obi-Wan’s anything short as the most amazing Jedi to ever Jedi.)

Everybody and their mother can see the pedestal Anakin puts Padmé on, and surprisingly she rarely is on the end of his splitting. When he does, he just internalizes it bc he can’t stand the idea that he’s somehow seen her in a wrong light, or he feels guilty for getting angry with her.     - He also defines a huge chunk of his life around loving her, making her his center for a lot of his decisions and reactions, so when they’re off, his whole world seems backwards. It makes him Really uncomfortable and unsure. He gets panicky and upset and often people have no idea what the cause is so they just end up a lil panicky in return.     - He tends to take it out on others, by doing an exercise or by disappearing to fiddle with something.     - Pads has an easier time recognizing Anakin’s emotional needs, bc in some ways they’re the same as hers. She’s good at reaching out to him, comforting him and reassuring him of her love. And in turn, he like, never fucking shuts up about how much he loves her, and those moments are what make her feel so special around him. Being loved by Anakin makes someone feel important and even get tingly, bubbly happy feelings, because it’s hard to doubt it sometimes.     - There’s a part of her that sometimes worries about how Intense he is, but, like I said, when his positive intense emotions are focused on you, it feels wonderful. And he’s genuinely super sweet and gentle, and she appreciates that, when she tells him to back off about something, he’ll listen to her wishes. (I’m using movie Anakin as my base here bc TCW!Anakin in this regard is just…. bad y’all lmao)

Anakin’s anxious about Ahsoka All The Time. He’s afraid he’s a bad teacher, he’s afraid he’ll mess her up somehow, he’s afraid he’ll hurt her or she’ll get hurt, and that’s why he can’t stand the idea sometimes of her being on her own. It’s not a lack of trust in her abilities, but because he feels responsible for her, and that’s why he’s always ready to put himself between her and literally anything that could potentially hurt her. (Even if it’s not a physical threat.)     - There are times she finds this amusing and times this makes her angry, but mostly she is long suffering. There are times she appreciates it though, bc she’s still a kid and isn’t always sure which way is up, especially when in a war. Anakin is often a cornerstone for her, and though she’d literally NEVER admit it, his overprotectiveness can sometimes be a reassurance. She knows she can handle herself just fine, but when she has an inkling of doubt, she’ll remind herself that Anakin will be there, and then go and take care of the problem herself.     - She doesn’t always get his moments where he’s not always falling over himself to talk Obi-Wan up or go out of his way to sass at him. To her, they have a wonderful relationship and she rarely notices when Obi-Wan might say something that pokes at Anakin wrong, so she often just winds up ???? when Anakin is huffy or annoyed with her grandmaster.     - She sees Anakin’s anger issues a little more easily than others, and she worries about it but always brushes it off or downplays it, bc she always sees why he’s angry, and also always just assumes (like everyone else) that he can Handle It.     - Anakin’s recklessness and impulsivity are some of her favourite things about being his padawan. He’s literally never boring to be around, and Ahsoka needs that sort of excitement to sometimes push aside the knowledge that she’s literally in a warzone. Anakin’s also really good at doing this intentionally; he’s literally always worrying after her, and all he wants to do is take care of those he loves and make them happy, so sometimes he’ll be Extra just to get under her skin or distract her and honestly this is the basis of where their playful competitions always come from.

If Ahsoka is long suffering, Rex is doubly so. Sometimes it’s all he can do to keep up with Anakin and Ahsoka, but he appreciates Anakin “thinking outside the box”. He also appreciates knowing that Anakin is just as loyal to him and his men as he himself is (well… Anakin is until he isn’t lmao)     - Rex, like Pads, is really good at picking up Anakin’s moods and even trains of thought, so he’s always able to work around that, or even see where Anakin’s mind is going when coming up with a plan. They make a really good team bc while Anakin can jump from one idea to another without them seemingly correlated, Rex immediately follows Anakin’s leaps and they just end up in sync.     - That being said, Anakin can be really confusing at times. His moods are often so all over the place, that Rex generally has no idea what tf is going on. He deals with it by learning to be calm when Anakin’s unable to, and just ride out Anakin’s worst moods until they pass by, learning not to let it all phase him. Anakin lowkey hates it when he’s upset, but once the worst of it passes, he really appreciates that Rex will just… not press like Obi-Wan, or balances out the moments Anakin’s mind is so cluttered by instead just keeping a good focus on things.

Probably everyone’s most baffling symptom of Anakin’s is his paranoia. Obi-Wan kind of sees it the most, because Anakin is always testy with the Council and often feels put on the spot, dismissed and looked down upon. To everyone else, they don’t get where Anakin’s ideas come from, bc everything seems chill on their end. His fretting about others’ well-being is straightforward enough, but his instant panic-turned-anger shift when he receives any criticism (especially the perceived type) always gives people whiplash. It’s hard to keep up with, hard to see what it was that got to him so much, and hard to know how to help (particularly when they’re worried that trying to help him will feel like “taking sides”).     - Ahsoka takes Anakin’s POV of the Council pretty easily, at least when it comes to him. This is mostly bc she’s not there when there’s a meeting or tension around them, nor was she there when Anakin first arrived, so she just assumes they must genuinely often have issues with him too. She doesn’t see it to the extent Anakin does though, but she recognizes that sometimes he seems to blow things out of proportion when he’s upset, and figures it’ll just blow over once he’s calmed down.     - Pads, on the other hand, is always kind of aware of Anakin’s fears of losing her. He often not-so-subtly looks for reassurances that she loves him and won’t leave him, that she’s feeling alright or not angry/annoyed with him. She chalks it up to his trauma with his mother (and she’s partially right), so even when sometimes it gets on her nerves that he seems to doubt her so much, she tries to remind herself of that and let it go. 

Those closest to him can pick up that Anakin tends to see the negative in things, and is generally really hard on himself. They try to help out by giving praise where it’s due and just overall Being There, but it’s Rough to know they often don’t get through. (Palps, on the other hand, knows how to weaponize this.) 

The saddest part is that I don’t think anyone once thought Anakin was Seriously Ill, partly out of ignorance, partly bc they assumed it had to do with his age/upbringing, and partly bc, eventually, everyone was dealing with trauma and even if someone wanted to send Anakin back to the Temple to have a nap or something, they legit couldn’t bc there was a war going on and he also would never have tolerated it at that point in time.     - Obi-Wan’s the one who worries about all of this the most, because he’s always felt such a huge responsibility for Anakin and loves him a lot, he’s just never fully been able to understand how to get on the same wavelength as Anakin.     - Anakin, too, actually never fully figures out that there is something Going On. Everything’s always overwhelming him and even though he prefers doing things at 100mph, sometimes it seems like there is Too Much going on, and even during peace times it just felt like he couldn’t keep up with everything. He hates internal reflection but also can’t stop overthinking about everything, and so he just ruminates and goes in circles and often just ends up going nowhere when it comes to dealing with things. He tries his hardest all the time, he is ALWAYS trying, but doing stupid stunts, fighting droids, making robots and speeding everywhere all the time is truthfully only a bandaid.     - Being surrounded by those he adores and receiving affection from them/seeing them happy boosts his mood a lot but he doesn’t have enough self-awareness to guess at why his happier moods just won’t last.     - Sometimes he can figure out when he’s being irrational and then just takes it out on himself, which only exacerbates his bad episodes. 

Palpatine doesn’t help. He’s abusive, manipulates Anakin all the time and is the Worst and definitely makes everything Anakin is struggling with harder and I think we should all just punt him into a sun thank you this isn’t a headcanon I just want everyone to know how much I hate him

[toycarousel]

Thank you for answering my ask about pro-life. Sorry if it made you uncomfortable. Now, I want to be pro-choice too. Because, it sounds kinder and more open minded. I think it's not right to judge people's choice to use abortion. They are the ones who have to live with that choice and it's between them and whatever god they believe in. So just love people and use compassion and leave the heavy stuff up to God. My religion says it wrong. My feelings say to hate it. But my faith says to love ppl.

Hi there~! I think there’s always an overriding issue in that people can group any sort of “pro-something” and “anti-something” social movement -- whether it’s a fringe group born in tiny corners of the internet (like the whole shipping/fandoms VS cyber harassment of real people debate I was talking about), or something much, much larger on a global scale, like abortion rights.

Because there will inevitably be people who think slapping an “I’m anti, uh, bad stuff” label on themselves holds enough nuance to work out well or apply to literally any and all situations, and people who think “I’m pro... all the good stuff, then” is a politically reliable way to counter that.  And for most arguments, it becomes a semantic signifier for anything the person in that group decides it means (and it gets difficult to tell what it is people are actually fighting for; it’s so generalized that it becomes a social performance, rather than a genuine desire to help people or better society).

I wanted to tell you that I think it’s great that you’ve shifted your stance to be more widely accepting of people who bring up conflicting emotions within you.  Because I think that’s an issue we have as humans, is that when something makes us feel bad, we no longer take it as a cue from our brains to step back and think “yikes, that felt bad, so... was it bad? What exactly happened there, what are the facts? What specifically needs to change?” Instead we tend to go “yikes, that felt bad, which means it was the worst thing on Earth, it is definitely what it feels like to me, screw the facts -- the people who caused the unpleasant feeling Needs Be Evil.”

And I know that pitfall intimately, because I have borderline personality disorder (BPD), and black-and-white thinking as well as intense emotions, and impulsive behaviour based on those emotions are all huge issues for us.  :’) My initial response to anything that hurts me (because I feel things so, so intensely), is to hate anything and everything associated with that thing, or person.  I’ve had to learn -- through a long, arduous process of self-discovery and therapy -- how not to do that.  Because the problem is that always reacting like that is not only extremely self-destructive, but also extremely harmful to other people.  We all need to be able to engage in self-awareness before we react instinctively to everything that incites any negative emotion in us.  And I think it’s fantastic that you’ve taken a step back and done that here, Anon~!

Wrt abortion, the problem, again, isn’t ultimately in the words we use to label ourselves and how positive those words sound to other people -- because as I said previously, pro-life people can be described as anti-choice, (and pro-choice people are typically just described by pro-life people as “baby killers”, while they throw graphic renderings of bloody, dead fetuses at us or something; neglecting any of the conclusive science behind what a fetus actually looks like at the legal cut-off point for abortions).  So I’m up for mentioning more of my personal feelings about this topic, btw, bearing in mind that I do not have a uterus, or the relevant gender-related experiences, so I am not an authority. (However, I do feel I have valid concerns about anti-abortion, and many of these concerns are shared by a massive number of people who do have the relevant bodily experiences).  

I’m p obviously fully on board with people having abortion rights.  It’s a basic right for women (and non-women with the related bodily autonomy issues in society) to have access to good abortion clinics.  We as a society should at least realize that, for absolute certain, fully developed women and girls have feelings and fears and lives -- we cannot say the same for a fetus at the stage of development in which legal abortions are conducted.  It’s sad that so many powerful men, and their allies within our society, seem to have to be constantly reminded that Women Are People.

That brings me to my main concern about anti-abortion sentiment and especially legislation.  Abortions won’t stop if they’re made illegal.  For as long as rape, poverty, misogyny, familial abuse of daughters, and other systemic issues exist, there will be women who (for a massive variety of specific reasons) cannot afford to be pregnant, who cannot care for a baby, and who will be desperate enough to have an abortion that they’ll end up getting one done illegally.  This will mean that a) A whole lot of women will die from botched abortions, and b) Many pro-life folks’ worst nightmare will occur a whole lot more often: Legal abortions have a cut-off date for the development of a fetus, to ensure that the practice is safe for the mother, and that it causes no pain to said fetus.  Illegal abortion practitioners do not have the same restrictions.  The more legal, safe abortion clinics there are, the fewer unsafe, illegal abortions there are.  

In any case, to close off with -- Anon, I think it’s genuinely awesome that you’re practicing compassion for others~!!! And though I can’t judge anything spiritual for certain, I feel very strongly that being kind and compassionate to other human beings, particularly ones who are disadvantaged, who you may disagree with or even feel animosity towards, is a beautiful and admirable way to practice religion~! Take care~!!! : D

[dpdoggie]

Some Symptoms of my DPD

These are some symptoms of my DPD (dependent personality disorder). Not everyone with DPD may have these same symptoms but I thought I’d share since it is hard to find info on us. Also when researching DPD make sure you search co-dependency. I’m going to number these for later reference so I don’t have to retype.

 1. Not wanting to eat alone or until I’ve had some sort of social interaction or the hope of social interaction after eating.

 2. Sleeping in my parent’s bed until I was locked out the room on a nightly basis (I slept in the room until I was about 9 years old or so.) I continued to check to see if the door was locked every night for about a month.

 3. Would sometimes scream in the middle of the night in hopes that someone would come to check on me so I knew if I was in trouble I would be safe

 4. Would always want my mother’s attention when she was talking to someone else.

 5. Feeling anxious and scared when alone, and not expecting anyone to be around for longer than a day. This would often lead to panic attacks as soon as they’d leave.

 6. Feeling like I was alone and therefore had no reason to be alive because my friends couldn’t physically be around me everyday.

 7. Sometimes not wanting to figure things out because I knew others would help me.

 8. Instinctually asking certain people (people I regularly depended on and saw as capable) just about anything because I always expected them to know something I didn’t.

 9. Not even thinking about what I would want for myself when given a choice but instead what others would expect me to want or what others would say I should do.

 10. Literally feeling the solitude of being the only person in the world and therefore not having a reason to anything let alone breathe or use the bathroom because other’s weren’t around.

 11. “If I can’t help this person then why am I even alive? I’m a waste of space and a terrible human being.”

 12. As a child I would sometimes just fake being sick. No even to get out of school but just to know that if I were to be sick that I would be taken care of.

 13. I used to hug my mother upwards from 80 to maybe a couple hundred times a day. I would literally feel empty and anxious if I wasn’t hugging her. It’s like having a million spiders crawling on your body and knowing they’re there but having to resist the urge to brush them off of you. That’s how I would explain the anxiety.

 14. “I’m alone. No one is around to know if I’m alive or not. So I might as well be dead. Why am I even moving. What’s the point if no one knows.”

 15. Having an opinion that I believe in and know it’s right because of research I have done but not calling out an authority figure because “I don’t want everyone to hate me. Everyone will hate me and I’ll embarrass myself because I’m probably wrong anyway.” Also note that an authority figure doesn’t have to actually be an authority figure but can literally just be anyone that I’ve assumed to be more capable, popular, or admired than me.

 16. Only doing my homework and school work with the hopes that I can be useful to my friends who didn’t do there work. Or not doing my work because I assume my friends will help me.

 17. Motivation?? For myself?? Doing things because I want them done? Lol. More like, “I’ll take care of this thing so that it doesn’t bother this person in case they happen to come by it.” or “I’m doing this project because otherwise my teacher will be disappointed in me and I want them to like me.” or “My dad just told me to eat so I need to eat because he wants me to.” or “People need this so even though it comes as sacrifice to myself I have to do it. I need to. It’s my job. If I don’t I’m an awful disgusting waste of space.”

 18. Doing something for myself and solely for myself, by myself makes me feel so horrible that I want to cry and self harm. It makes me feel more useless than empowered because I am so grossly aware of the amount of energy it took up for me just to do this one things and how can I live like this? It should be simple? Right? But it isn’t. It takes so much out of me and I don’t know why.

Co-morbidity with BPD

Those are some examples, I may add more later. But now let’s go through some things. DPD is often co-morbid with BPD. I haven’t seen a case of someone who have DPD who doesn’t at least have traits of BPD.

Note the black and white thinking in 17, 14, and 11. There are also traits of self-splitting in those. Note the general dependency of social interaction for means of value. 

Now think of other things like impulsively putting yourself in unsafe and generally not good situations when around others that you depend on because you know someone will either talk you out of it or tell you that it’s not safe. You do this because being reminded that other’s will take care of you is one of the only ways you actually feel safe and worthy of value.

Lack of impulse control is a key characteristic of BPD. That coupled with traits of DPD can result things like what I mentioned in the passage above.

It can also result in a impulse to self harm when alone.

The addictive personality trait of BPD when co-morbid with DPD can also result in things like:

 - addiction to online communities because of validation and being able to almost always talk to or interact with any of your online friends

 - addiction to pseudo social interaction like Youtube videos. - I used to marathon from the time I woke up to the time I fell asleep hour long live streams of my favorite Youtubers just because it helped me from feeling like I was alone. I would eat because of them, I would have the energy to take of things I needed because of them, I would finally go eat or go to the bathroom because of them.

 - the people you have come to rely on and want to be dependent on are also your FPs (people who your emotional stability is highly dependent on and who you want to be around all the time and receive constant attention form. People who you would literally sacrifice and do anything for because you tie your reason to being alive to them. Whether they are actually good people or not you are likely to be believe they are and split (or suddenly hate) anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.)

 - “I need you.”

Causes of DPD

Let’s talk about some causes of DPD. There are probably more than what I will mention here but DPD is something that is not heavily researched. It’s an old personality disorder but many professionals barely know what it is. I’m guess because it’s just not “edgy” or “interesting” (sensationalized) enough.

But one cause can be being often physically ill as child. I for example had severe asthma from birth to about 3 years old. From a young age my brain was trained to associate others actively keeping me alive with my ability to be alive. Yes, I know that many infants are aware that they would not be alive without care-givers but the difference here is that I was regularly on the verge of death. I was only ever brought back to not having my life in danger because of the interference of others and the attention that others needed to give me. I still had pretty bad asthma until about the age of 7 but I was in the hospital about 11 times a year form birth to 3 years old. They even diagnosed me at about 10 months of age because of how severe it was (when they typically don’t diagnose you with asthma until about 4 years old.)  

Another cause of DPD can also be growing with a narcissistic abuser. You are only alive because of them and they remind you of this constantly to the point of which you are afraid of doing things without them being there. They have convinced you, that you are not capable on your own and that you need them to survive. Without them you will die or your life will fall apart.

Anyway, please do more research on DPD it is greatly neglected by the psych community.

[surviving-guilt]

Checks and Balances

Many are keen on accepting the notion that the abused carry the abusers. This is what we call a revolving door.

They would also argue that the indifference of man is just as evil as evil men are by their actions.

If your friend texts you they’re going to kill someone and 10 minutes later does it, are you evil for not stopping them? Most people would say no.

If you and your friend are in a room with someone else, and they tell you they’re about to shoot the other person and 10 seconds later they do, are you evil for not stopping them? A little more wishy washy, but most people would tell you there was nothing you could do.

What if you were in the car with them, they parked in front of an ex’s house, and told you they were going to run them over the moment they walk out of the house? The ex opens the door, your friend whips around the block to gain speed and momentum, it takes about a minute and a half to make it around the block, you see the ex walk into the street, you see the impact coming and it happens. Are you evil for not grabbing the wheel at any point? For not texting someone or calling the authorities when it was still being premeditated? For not getting out of the car when you had the chance? The courts would decide if you were an accomplice or not, but would you be evil for your inaction? Whether you tried to talk them out of it or not?  -- If you say yes, why aren’t you equally as evil for the first example with the text? Why not for the second. People act as though “evil” and “immoral” are synonymous, they like to pretend all things are circumstantial, but that is truly a conclusion that people make up within their own minds. I will start my point here by saying on the conversation of “good” vs. “evil” there is no gray, it truly is black and white; it is light vs. darkness, or light vs. the lack there of. 

I say this because “morals” are man-made and vary culturally, therefore, in the grand scheme of mammal existence, morals do not exist. I know this because my dog does not know I’m an asshole for calling women bitches, but it does know if someone or something malicious or evil is present. Quick word of advice -- if your dog is usually nice to most humans and literally hates someone that walks in one day and you don’t know why, take the hint. Your dog will know to run away because of an earth quake or tsunami before you will, and it will know evil and toxic people before you realize it. Trust your dog. Anyhow, no one would argue that walking passed someone drowning a child in a pool or lake and not doing or saying anything makes you a fucked up person, but everyone has this confused fucked up conversation about what if that child was Hitler? Would a strict Catholic, against homosexuality and abortion, still believe in the purity of that fetus if it was born gay? Where are these invisible lines we draw in our heads and when is something gray and not black and white? I ask all these conflicting questions as someone who believes very little in circumstantial exclusions and gray areas. For example, many people recognize “high functioning” people on the Autism spectrum and that have asperger’s as having extraordinary talents despite their “disorder” but would look at someone who is schizophrenic as having a simply negative disorder. I do not. I feel all mental disorder, both naturally occuring and developed through physical or mental trauma, is both an affliction and a potentially powerful adaptation and expansion of mental ability and/or capacity. This is not to say that this is true at face value. I am sociopathic, have bipolar disorder including BPD, seasonal depression on top of Bipolar, PTSD, severe ADHD, and go through bouts of anxiety at different points in my life depending on where I am, it’s a living hell, i know. But surviving it and battling it head-on when it’s easier to run away long enough to learn ways to manage it and cultivate the “positive” symptoms along with the bad ones has left me more capable than I was before these disorders overtook my entire life. I am in no way saying that ALL people with mental disorders are better for having them, not at all actually. At their worst, these disorders are so debilitating that they kill who they afflict, or rob them of the ability to lead a successful functional life, or even form basic human relationships, and these examples are what most of society uses as their basis for their impression of mental illness in general. When you hear the term “sociopath” the images that come to mind may be serial killers, child abusers, animal abusers, or generally evil people, but I’m sure your first thought isn’t “Owner of a Fortune 500 company.” As i’m sure when you hear “Autistic child” you don’t immediately imagine tech geniuses that are the best in data analysts, developing algorithms to make for better technology, or catching hackers and predators by sorting metadata for big companies and the government.  I’m also sure you hear schizophrenia and think that someone should be in a jacket or heavily medicated and a danger to society, but have never thought that you may have met a very high fuctioning schizophrenic who goes untreated and you just think of them as nice and quirky. Someone you may know with dissociation may come off as selfish and forgetful and insensitive or overly sensitive, but I’m sure you wouldn’t think that in the time of complete crisis, they may be the sanest, most calm and rational person in the room capable of leading everyone to safety rather than being in complete panic, now would you? Someone with OCD may come off as an anal, controlling, selfish, narcissistic, and sometimes condescending prick, but they’ll know where the exits in the room are, when someone may trip in front of you due to an untied shoe, exactly how much time until the next bus, etc. Someone suffering from severe anxiety that has learned to manage it may actually know better than you when something is worth freaking out about, because they focus so hard on reasoning and not letting irrational fears and feelings overtake, that when they finally do let themselves freak out, just like my dog hating someone, it IS time to listen and freak out. People often mistake ADHD as the inability to concentrate, but often time the issue is that they are focused on TOO MANY things at once and don’t have the energy to fix any one thing because they’re experiencing more of the world at once than you can fathom without drugs. Most people don’t believe that in any given moment, I can be listening to you speak, have music on, have a completely different song playing in my head, while thinking about the past and wondering about the future on two different trains of thought going in different directions, and texting someone all at the same time while still actively listening and responding to whomever I’m speaking to with no issue. My ADHD is an issue when I have to sit in a quiet room and accomplish one task, too little stimulus is my downfall, not too much. My last example is those with emotional disconnection issues, be it from PTSD, sociopathy, autism, anxiety, or a variety of other potential factors. They may find it hard to care, like, and especially love, and may come off as “cold” and incapable of sympathy, empathy, or tenderness beyond simple introductory kindness, but believe me when I tell you that when they DO care, when they DO love, when they do form a bond, no one you ever meet will care more, love harder, and try with everything inside them than they will. Saying “I love you” less DOES make it more valuable when it is said. 

So with all this said, when is the last time you had an argument with yourself? Who won? Did that seem like a stupid question? You see, people think that symptoms of disorders are exclusive to those WITH disorders, but you see people every day who exhibit the same behaviors as people like me. How many times have you caught yourself purposely not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk? Do you think your have OCD for that? Do you get sad and not want to go outside or leave your bed when there’s bad weather? Do you think you suffer from major depression for that? Does a similar sound, smell, or image that reminds you of an old bad memory make you cringe or feel bad? Do you think you have PTSD for that? More than often, the case is no with all these questions, but you exhibit symptoms without having the rest. So if someone with bipolar disorder learns how to manage their bad symptoms, but allows themselves to exhibit the more practical or useful symptoms, such as high energy and drive during a manic phase, are they not using their disorder as a beneficial tool or way to get ahead without suffering fully from the full negative symptoms of the disorder? Is this wrong? Or an unnatural leg up? Is it wrong to exploit a disorder for a benefit? You may think it’s circumstantial, but I simply do not. One can take advantage of manic symptoms to simply gain, such as being able to go to school, go to work, hang out, party, have the confidence to get with someone and do school work all in one day with little sleep, yes. But what if someone was just coming out of their major depressive episode, finals are coming up, work is at it’s busiest, their friends need them for help through a tough time, and they’re having personal issues at home? Is tapping into the manic energy, drive, and full-on go mode to not collapse under the pressure they’re undergoing considered taking advantage? I would think not. Now let’s revisit our more extreme examples from the beginning. Someone has a dissociative personality disorder, or “split personalities”, they are both you and your friend in the example about killing someone. Part of them fears the other part doing something they consider evil such as murder, does the part that doesn’t reach out or do something about it get the same judgement the part that carries out the act does? Is not stopping a death  you can evil? Yes. But what if your reason is because there is so much stigma against the mentally ill that the absolute fear of being attacked, detained, misunderstood, or not listened to is what causes your silence? If you tell someone you get institutionalized and labeled a danger, if you don’t you commit the act and are looked at as evil over ill, and you can’t just walk faster past it because both people are inside you. This is the torment that leads us to kill ourselves out of fear for not stopping ourselves from the pain we can cause because we’re afraid to reach out for help. But now, what if one personality is a sociopath and the other is human as can be, and just anxious? What if that sociopath is smart and instinctual enough to catch on to the fact that someone is evil, maybe about to go runover their girlfriend and kill her? It wants to do the right thing because the other personality cares about morals and it sees evil. The sociopath recognizes evil, and realizes he can’t reach out for help because he’s labeled as mentally ill, therefore not credible and “damaged” so he decided to drown the person who is going to kill his ex. You, a neurotypical person, walk past him drowning the would be murderer, and choose to keep walking. Putting all morals to the side, who was evil?  The stigmas we have towards the mentally ill not only cause them to suffer directly, but it blinds us to the great potential those who have mental illness have and how they can do such greater things in society BECAUSE of their disorder, and we shut them out instead of letting them in out of fear for what they may do, instead of letting them in out of excitement for what they may do. That same person struggling with an inner sociopathic personality may be a huge asset to law enforcement, but won’t be allowed to be because they would fail a psych eval.  The point of this post is that if we were more supportive of those with mental disorders CULTIVATING and managing their symptoms to their benefit, rather than suppressing ALL symptoms with stigmas, shame, and medication, we could be a lot further along on our progress as a society instead of muting the great minds that could better us all. We create the serial killers and “psychopaths” of the world by forcing them to have to run away from themselves based on the potential of the damage they can do rather than the potential of the great they can do with self discipline, self awareness, and joined management with professionals that can give them the tools to use their disorders for good rather than suppress what makes them who they are. For some, we are not defined by our disorders, but in some cases we ARE our disorders, and suppressing that makes us less human than you think we are with them. Abusing us makes us the abusers when we give up on trying to get help, and for many the ones we abuse are ourselves to dangerous and even fatal extents.

The biggest thing I want to stress is not looking at someone with connection issues or sociopathic tendencies as a serial killer or societal reject, because when we learn to put our resentment for not feeling things the same as others aside, we rely on our instinct and we’re much closer to recognizing evil the way your dog does than you are, and our trouble grasping “moral” vs “immoral” doesn’t mean we can’t teach ourselves right and wrong if you let us try to learn more about ourselves other than “YOU’RE BAD.” All of this is food for thought, and me realizing what I wish I did years ago, I’m not as bad as I think I am, and I’m not as bad as I can be, and most importantly, not letting myself be as bad as I can be makes me good. It is okay that the only opinion of me I care about it my own, because it is me that has to learn how to live as me, manage me, and control myself for better or worse. Not accepting help is okay, taking a step back and saying “i need this time to figure me out” is okay, and warning people that you’re afraid of not responding well in certain situations or doing something others would find wrong is okay if you recognize something and say or do something about it.

It is okay to be ill and not suppress yourself if you learn to cultivate the good. I am not handicapped, in fact, I’m one of the most capable people I know. Self improvement is not selfish. I may never love myself, but I can appreciate the good parts in all the bad, and that’s huge. FUCK YOUR STIGMA, BE YOUR OWN BIGGEST FAN AND CRITIC, AND BE WHAT YOU GOTTA BE EVEN IF ITS IMMORAL AS LONG AS ITS GOOD.

Congrats if you read this.  

Thoughts?