#mentally ill or otherwise ND)

[kindnessoverperfection]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stigma in the DSM

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

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

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

[aceofroses-queenofstars]

I feel like the last four years of my existence have just been string of instances where i discover something i do/experience isn’t considered the norm. First it was the anxiety, then the asexuality, then the nonbinaryness and subsequent genderfluidity and now it’s the autism. like i thought i had it mostly figured out and then i’ll just be talking and it’ll happen again. I was talking to my friend last night and i mentioned i had learned to darn socks because my socks always got holes around the balls of my feet before the rest of the sock wore out, and they said yeah that’s probably because you’ve been toewalking and didn’t realize it. I’ve been doing this my whole life. I’ve worn through the soles of shoes but only in that one area and i thought that was normal.

My catchphrase should be So you’re telling me that’s not normal??? 

[chaoticautie]

As someone who is somewhat of a “veteran” of the online ND community, I’m disappointed in the lack of positivity and love for lesser known diverse cognitive conditions, and the opposing abundance of posts about “cures” or outdated criteria or treatments for those conditions. So, without further ado, I want to say hello to anyone with any of the disorders I’m listing, and give them the love and support that hardly anyone else in our community has… Shoutout to:

People with Down syndrome

People with Fragile X

People with William’s syndrome

People with dyslexia

People with dyspraxia

People with dyscalculia

People with dysgraphia

People with Prader-Willi syndrome

People with PANS or PANDAS

People with aphasia

People with a TBI (traumatic brain injury)

People with chronic/early onset mental illnesses

People with cerebral palsy

People with FASD or were otherwise disabled via other substances in utero

And many, many more I may have forgotten to list (but still support and love, I will add more to my list)

You are all beautiful and wonderful, and you all deserve so more love, appreciation, acceptance and support. You are just as neurodiverse as the rest of us, and your voices deserve to be heard and amplified.

I love you all ❤️

[autistic-katara]

stuff i wanna see in TSATS

its just less than 2 months until TSATS comes out and my pjo phase is coming back HARD so heres some stuff i wanna see (idc how popular or unpopular these r)

Solangelo kiss (seriously like all the other good canon couples had one)

explicit use of queer terms (i havent rlly seen anyone talk abt this but as much as i love queer characters just existing u have no idea how happy it makes me to see media, especially kids media, explicitly say the words gay, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, etc.)

Hunters of Artemis cameo

piggybacking off that, Nico’s reaction to Reyna being a hunter (ive wanted to see this since 2019 PLEASE i gotta know how he feels abt this considering yk his past w/ them)

confirmation on whether Will’s gay or bi/mspec (or just simply queer, no specific labels necessary)

a trans/nonbinary character (specifically transmasc)

a Piper cameo

during her cameo Piper explicitly saying her sexuality (which is lesbian, if u think otherwise ur wrong/hj)

Hazel cameo

more Lavinia content (idc how i just need more of my chaotic Jewish ADHD pink-haired Russian lesbian, ok?)

GAY ANGST

MORE GAY ANGST

SO MUCH GAY ANGST ITLL MAKE MY AO3 HISTORY LOOK LIKE A HAPPY HETEROSEXUAL PURE BIBLE CLUB FOR TODDLERS

canonically autistic Nico

that Lil Nas X reference we were promised

Nico making more trauma jokes (he just like me fr)

the multiple coming out scenes i heard were allegedly promised

Hades and/or Apollo cameo

Hestia cameo

Jason’s ghost cameo

dead Apollo kids cameo

explicit discussion of Nico’s religious trauma

explicit discussion of just Will’s trauma in general (seriously we all kinda ignore that our “sunshiney golden retriever uwu gay boi 😊🌸✨☀️” actually has some super serious trauma)

both of them coping badly with all this and being worried abt eachother (aka gay angst but more specific)

Maria di Angelo content

Persephone cameo w/ her either still lowkey hating Nico and being passive aggressive asf to him or having had him grow on her in the past few years and is now turning the overprotective mom mode to the max

just some cute, non-angsty moments between Nico nd Will cause goddam we need some queer joy rn ;-;

so much hurt/comfort u physically cant continue living anymore (going both ways not just Will comforting Nico)

a MCGA cameo

Fierrochase and Solangelo meeting and having the same funny interactions they have in the memes (but with the canon versions of them)

discussions of stuff like homophobia and internalized homophobia and mental illness

a relatively happy ending (but not a “2 months later and the world is perfect and neither of them had felt anything close to depression or anything since the ending and if for some reason addiction was a part of this we would we talking abt how they were magically 2 months clean and it would be physically impossible for the thought of relapse to even cross their mind” kinda happy ending cause i hate those kinda endings w/ a burning passion)

setup for another side book (preferably a Piper or Reyna one)

thats all i can think of rn off the top of my head but feel free to comment on any of these or add ur ideas cause 2 months feels like an eternity long wait + hearing other opinions is fun when we arent all in a heated argument over smthn stupid

[transmasc-wizard]

"write every day or you're not a real writer"/"you have to write every day if you want to succeed" is an ableist mindset. I can't even talk every day, and you want me to be able to work on my WIP during that time? I can't. I just can't. That is not an achievable thing for me as an autistic person. It won't be achievable for a lot of other ND people either, or certain mentally ill people, or certain physically disabled people.

Writers do not have to write every day to be real writers, and saying otherwise is ableism.

(If your response to this was "well, those posts don't mean disabled writers have to", that's still bad. Disabled writers are real writers, posts about "writers" in general inherently include us, and even fully abled people still shouldn't feel pressured to write every single day.)

[b0y0rgy]

updating my intro post :P

hiii i'm werner (19, it/he)

im a t4t queer+aro polyam black intersex transman, im also very chronically and mentally ill . not actively looking for a relationship or anything, mostly just here to umm be horny and make friends :3c

asks and dms are always welcome ^-^ very open to flirting, teasing, etc, or just talking about non nsfw stuff!! also pls ask before sending nudes/explicit pics, i'll be open to sending them to mutuals sometimes but no guarantee (it'll usually be a yes if im comfortable dont stress out over asking)

my nsfw fandom blog: @ancientserpentdeceiver

elaborating on kinks/terms/non nsfw likes/dni under the cut ty ilyyy

kinks (will update over time)

favorites:

religious kink

breeding (+ mild pregnancy)

pet play

medfet

royalty/knights

robophilia/tech

somno/mild cnc

otherwise i'm into most things except:

scat, v*mit, watersports

feederism

hard cnc

hard bdsm

raceplay

detrans/misgendering

abdl/ageplay

terms

names/titles:

for my body i typically prefer:

pretty much open to any masculine titles that might come up, there are like two feminine names i'll take if we're close enough and you earn them

chest/tits/boy tits

dick/tdick/boydick

hole/cunt/boycunt/boypussy

non nsfw stuff

im a massive nerd im always down to talk about:

horror stuff

metal + rock

media analysis (especially movies nd characters in general)

writing

art

saw (franchise)

hannibal

death note

and lotsss of other stuff i love talking about it all please always feel free to reach out

DNI: under 18, over 30, cishets (/hj), terfs/transmeds/queerphobes, zionists, racists, etc (if you've made it this far you can probably use your own discretion about following)

[neuroticboyfriend]

the fact having sexual thoughts and feelings about children is suddenly wrong if it involves attraction instead of distress is wild to me.

attraction is a type of feeling, it doesn't mean you're going to do something about it - saying otherwise is abelist and abuse apologia; it removes responsibility from abusers and justifies ableism toward any mentally ill/ND person for the thoughts/feelings they have.

and linking distress to morality is literally the most OCD inducing things you could do for someone with intrusive thoughts. you don't need to be distressed by your intrusive thoughts to be a good person.. let alone exist, and be a person who has a right to life and autonomy.

at the end of the day, it doesn't matter why you have the internal experiences you do (in terms of harm). what matters is that you treat people with respect and kindness and... don't actually hurt anyone. the kind of person you are is ultimately determined by your actions... not things you can't control.

also, the demonization of people attracted to children is inseparable from the distress brought on by intrusive thoughts, as well as the ableism towards people with them. like you are just hurting people all around if you demonize and dehumanize people attracted to children.

[queercoded-antagonist]

Any other autistics have the experience of masking by default (even if not masking well enough to seem NT) around people until you’ve known them for a long time/well and the mask starts to drop bc you trust them enough to know the Real You but then they lose interest/drop you? It’s really fucked with my self esteem having befriended so many people that seemed to like me and realizing (sometimes after months/years) that they don’t like me when I’m not actively performing and pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m scared of getting close to anyone now. And a lot of people are like “just stop masking and be your authentic self!” which sounds ideal, but for a lot of autistic folks, especially multiply marginalized, masking can be a shield from being treated with immediate hostility/judgement, having your autonomy rejected, etc. I don’t like pretending to be someone I’m not and I want people to get to know the real me. But I also don’t have the mental strength to deal with the social (and other) consequences of unmasking. I feel caught in a lose/lose situation.

I wonder about how the people on the other side of this feel too. When I stop masking around someone, maybe to them it seems like *I’ve* lost interest or *I’m* being rude because of the difference in my speech and mannerisms. Or maybe they don’t like people who act “fake”, idk.

A lot of folks think they don’t have a problem with autistic people. But the moment their friend needs something “obvious” explained, is seen struggling to do “basic tasks” independently, gets too overstimulated to speak, otherwise appears/acts unpalatable- they feel resentment. A lot of this applies to physical chronic illness as well. I’ve had friends lose interest in me when I actually set boundaries and stop pushing myself to do things that will put me in pain. The message I get from that is “I liked you until I realized you were an inconvenience”. So many people, including some NDs, only support autistic people when we are palatable enough. They like autistic people as long as the autism is something they can write off as a personality quirk and not something they have to acknowledge as a developmental disability. Even without the words “high and low functioning”, a lot of people (probably unconsciously) still view autistics in a dichotomy due to their level of support needs. Palatable vs unpalatable. Independent vs burdensome. Eccentric vs off putting. Worthwhile vs worthless. A lot of people, esp but not limited to NTs, seem to struggle with understanding that autism isn’t a dichotomy, that it’s more complex than “high and low functioning”. When they meet an autistic person who exists in the grey area, they mentally categorize us as one or the other. Lots of autistics have been told things like “if you’re capable enough to speak, why can’t you drive?” or “if you struggle so much that you can’t live alone, why expect to be treated like a real adult?” Many cannot conceive of autistics existing outside of this dichotomy. Autism isn’t a spectrum from capable to incapable, autism is a spectrum of many traits. An autistic can be capable of speaking eloquently while being far from able to understand unspoken social rules. An autistic can be a tech genius and struggle with disabling sensory issues. I am *incapable* of masking for more than a few hours at a time before shutting down, and even in the most ideal situations my masking skills aren’t good. So I’m caught in a situation where sometimes I can hide my disability at first but I quickly become unable to hide it. I feel like when people who don’t know me well learn I’m autistic, they’re fine with it at surface level because they think I’m “not that kind of autistic”. But then they find out I am in fact the unpalatable kind of autistic. And they get uncomfortable. Even a lot of well intended (including ND) folks seem to feel the need to neatly fit me into one category. I’m either infantilized, or held to expectations that I am too disabled to meet.

It’s all “I hate fake people” and “just be yourself!!” until the person in question is autistic. If I stopped being “fake”, everyone would think I was rude- even though I try my best to be considerate and thoughtful of others, I do so autistically, so it’s seen as incorrect. It’s very important for allistics to understand that an autistic person who loves being around you is not going to express it in the same way that an allistic person would. We tend to express our emotions differently. It doesn’t mean we don’t like you. And it hurts more than I know how to express when someone you thought liked you only wants to be your friend if you’re performing, and stops seeing your value as soon as you start expressing yourself authentically.

[melodioustear]

Fanfic & Mental Illness Survey Responses 1 - Demographics

As I've said elsewhere, the bulk of my analysis of the survey will focus on the qualitative questions - those are the ones that are most relevant to my thesis. But given the intersectionality of both my thesis and fandom in general, it's also super interesting to look at the demographics.

So today both for your interest and my benefit, I'm going to go through the demographics questions and chat about each of them in turn, especially (but not purely) with reference to what it could mean for my research.

For the purposes of this initial post I am just using the infographics generated by Google Forms - I'm working on putting together better ones which I will share later on.

Enjoy!

Q1: Do you experience or have you ever experienced any kind of mental illness or similar? 

It is unsurprising that in a survey about mental illness, most people who completed it have experienced it. 443 of the 488 respondents answered yes to this question for a total percentage of 90.8%. There's not a ton of fandom demographics out there on mental illness, so we can't quite know what this is like in comparison to the general fandom population (shoutout to @ao3demographicssurvey2023 for the data we will hopefully have soon!) - but it's reasonable to presume these figures are higher than normal given the topic of the survey.

Q2: Do you have any kind of disability, chronic illness or similar?

This is the first select all that apply question, so this chart is a little more complex to read. To just look at disabled vs non-disabled, we can see that 20.5% declare themselves to be non-disabled, with the remaining 79.5% being disabled. The %s we can then see in this chart by the disability types are a % of the total.

We do have some general disability demographics, though they are also from more niche surveys, like Renée Nielsen's 2021 survey on Whump which puts disability % as only 16.9%. However it's important to note that Nielsen queried neurodivergency separately, and saw 46.3% identifying as neurodivergent. So when you take that into account these figures aren't quite as radically dissimilar as they might otherwise appear. (Obviously some people in Nielsen's survey will have said they are both ND and disabled so this isn't exact, but it's a general idea).

As someone who has a chronic pain condition, it was very interesting to me that so many people identified with that. I hadn't originally intended to list chronic pain separately (as it's so often caused by something else, like a physical disability or chronic illness) - but in discussion with people on the Discord for the above mentioned AO3 Census, decided to do so, and I'm very glad I did. I'm super interested to see what these figures come out as for the 2023 Census.

Q3: If you experience mental illness, do you consider your mental illness to be a disability? 

Firstly a shoutout to my past self for somehow not ticking 'required' on this question and allowing two people not to complete it. Oh well. It is likely they fall into the "I do not experience" category anyway, or they are people who prefer not to disclose.

So, this question was one I was most excited about, because it's such an interesting thing as someone who's approaching mental illness at least in part from a disability studies perspective. One of the critiques of disability studies is that mental illness is often either an afterthought or not considered at all. (In her incredible book black madness :: mad blackness, Pickens points out that disability studies has inherited some very ableist assumptions of 'mind', calling back to the awful Cartesian duality).

Therefore it's not really surprising that so many people have complex feelings around whether their mental illness is a disability or not - especially with a high % of neurodiverse people. Whilst I included neurodiversity in the disabiility question and not separately, many people do not prefer to consider their neurodiversity to be a disability.

The question of whether mental illness and/or neurodivergence are disabilities is a very loaded, very personal thing, and I feel super strongly that we should all use the terminology that we prefer for our experiences - especially in a culture where the terminology is so highly medicalised, pathologised and curated by bias and marginalisation - but we're not here for my anti-DSM rant today.

I think this question really highlights that complexity and it's that ability to rest in vagueness and uncertainty that characterises Mad Studies for me, and is super interesting as a result.

Q3: How old are you?

Yes, the legend for this one is so long it had to go over into two images.

Here's the fun thing about this question - you can see fandom aging. In the 2013 AO3 Census, the biggest categories were 19-21 at 23%, 22-24 at 20%, and 25-29 at 19%. In this survey, we have 30-34 at 23%, 25-29 at 20.3%, and 35-39 at 16.6%. I'm very interested to see what the 2023 Census figures come out as and whether they display this trend of the dominant age group shifting upwards.

Having gone through a lot of work to be allowed to survey people 13 years and older, it was also notable to me that only 2 people aged 13-15, and 14 people aged 16-18 responded. This may well be a product of where and how I shared the survey, as well as the age shift in general, which is why I suspect we need a comparison like the Census to see the difference.

Q4: Which geographic region best describes your current place of residence?

No surprises here, I'm a European person who shared the survey only in English and on Anglocentric platforms - the more influential people and groups that shared the survey were also strongly US-centric.

Having said that it was lovely to see we got some representation from all of the options, even if only a few from some.

Q5: What is your race? Select all that apply.

I'll be honest, this is one of the first demographics that disappointed me. Whilst I cannot of course fully control the survey's reach once it's on social media, I'd hoped to see a more representative group from a racial perspective.

There's a huge intersection with mental illness and race. BIPOC are not just more likely to experience mental distress, they are also more likely to have one or more of the other factors that make you more likely to experience it - such as poverty or housing insecurity. So it's definitely a weakness of this survey that such a huge % of respondents were white.

I do wonder whether it has anything to do with the ongoing racism present in the AO3, and on social media in general - whether that's made people less inclined to engage with fandom spaces that might harm them - but it may equally just be that I am white, my personal and professional circles are predominantly white, and thus those circles are more likely to have the same white bias.

Some of it will likely be language barriers too, but when you have no funding it's basically impossible to conduct this kind of research across languages.

I hope that future research can be conducted to properly elevate BIPOC voices and make sure their perspectives on fandom and mental illness are heard too.

Q6: Do you identify as any of the following [queer identities]?

This was an optional question, so bear in mind the %s here will be skewed. This is one of those situations where my lack of experience came into play - if I was doing it now, with the wisdom of having started to want to analyse things, I would definitely have made all questions mandatory and always had a n/a option.

Nonetheless we can see here the usual strong weighting towards queer identity in fandom. I was especially delighted to get so many trans perspectives, which as we'll see in the next question included a really diverse selection of gender identities.

Something my supervisor encouraged me towards in my previous supervision was to look at the queer studies work in fandom and consider how that overlaps with my work. I have a strong background in gender studies and that's evolved into a love for queer theory and especially trans theory. Whilst I'm cis myself, trans theory has huge overlap with disability theory, especially in terms of self-identity and the need to constantly come out or reaffirm/redefine your disability.

Q7: What is your gender identity?

This was another select all that apply question and it is our first question that allowed write-in answers. This means this graph is a bit messy but as you can see people listed personal gender labels (some of which cross over with the given categories) as well as some longer reflections on their gender identity.

The two cut off, longer write-in questions were "I do not label but present masc" and "I am still discovering and questioning myself but this is how, for now, I identify as" - this second respondent obviously gave other options too.

As mentioned above I'm really delighted we got so many gender diverse responses. Being of a marginalised gender is also likely to lead to experience of mental distress (you will have noticed by now that all kinds of marginalisation do, goodness me, I wonder why) so it's great to have these perspectives included.

Q8 & Q9: What is your sexual orientation and what is your romantic orientation?

I've included these together so you can see them side-by-side as I think that's very interesting. Like before these are select all that apply questions with write-in options.

Longer write ins for sexual orientation were: - I don't distinguish between sexual and romantic orientation for myself. [a more specific version of the given I do not label] - Like before, I am still learning and questioning myself, but for now this is what I'm sure of about my sexual orientation. - Somewhere between demisexual and whatever the opposite of asexual is, like 3/4sexual?

And longer write-ins for romantic orientation were: - And once again, I'm questioning myself, still learning, but I think what I marked fits well enough for now, learning myself has been kind of chaotic

Shoutout to the person who has clearly gone on a journey with learning themselves lately and has given write-ins for all of these last few. I hope you keep your wonderful open-mind and insight into yourself!

Nothing here is surprising - we all know that fandom is heavily queer leaning, and it's not surprising that so many people identified as some form of queer. So whilst marginalised sexuality is also commonly alongside mental distress, I don't think for a fandom survey this will make as huge a difference, since fandom is so queer as it is.

Q10: Which religious or spiritual traditions do you believe? These options include all denominations.

Now this is where these graphs start to get really messy.

I'd first like to give another shoutout to the AO3 Census team who recommended including Folk Religion or Spirituality and Modern Paganism or Wicca, as these were things they had as common write-in responses in the 2013 Census. We can definitely see here that it's well represented too.

This is also a select all, so many of the write-in options (which I won't list this time as there's so many) were people clarifying exactly what their selections meant - such as saying I'm not sure so I picked X. I will say my favourite was "I honestly could not tell you. I've got schrodinger's religion at this point", because I think many of us have been there.

A couple of people did note that they were culturally affiliated with a religion even if they didn't believe.

Summary

And that's it for the biodata/demographics questions!

I apologise for the infographics not being amazing, this is as I've mentioned elsewhere my first time working on a project like this and whilst my graduate school offers access to software and training, it's still not something that I've got tons of experience in as a humanities scholar. With that said, I've loved the challenge and I'm very excited to get into coding the long-form responses.

What I've come away with is very much mixed - it does highlight the weaknesses of doing a specialised survey like this, and of only being really able to get it out there via social media (which means I've inherited the racial and geographic biases of my circles especially). That said I'm so happy we have so many disabilities represented, and that we have any disability data about fandom at all, even if it may not be fully representative of fandom as a whole.

I'll be doing a post next week looking at the quantitative questions around fanfiction practices, so make sure to follow and keep an eye out for that if you're interested!

[doberbutts]

I really appreciate your nuanced discussion. I'm physically disabled and mentally ill. My anxiety is so severe I become physically ill, and I'm desperately trying to manage it because it gets intense enough that it's putting strain on my heart. My depression makes me not want to get out of bed for days and sometimes makes it impossible to do *anything*. Honestly, I would care less about my chronic pain and fatigue if I wasn't constantly fighting depression alongside it. But having depression combined with being very limited physically, it makes it unbearable.

Like, the line between physical disability and mental illness it so thin, especially when considering that various mental illnesses and ND types literally impact how the brain is formed, how it functions, and can do damage to the body overtime. I'm rambling in your inbox now, so I'll wrap it up. But I always think that communities are stronger together, and having solidarity with overlapping communities helps strengthen everyone

We are all disabled, and what may be "severely disabled" for one may hardly make a difference to someone else. We are better as allies, because otherwise we will all hang together regardless.

[alabasterandpitch]

This is probably gonna end up a garbled word salad. I'm just vomiting my insecurities, please don't take this too seriously

Realtalk, the Tumblr community is a wonderful place to find like-minded folks who share your fucked up interests and obsessions and mental illnesses, and it's honestly really nice to share that with someone as I start down the neuro-questioning rabbit hole myself. I don't think I really appreciated how closed-off I'd let that part of myself get these last few years.

But shit if this site doesn't make me feel like hot garbage as a (semi)straight man sometimes. And on some level I get it; even if we're not all oppressive agents of The Patriarchy™, there's a lot of privilege being seen as part of the in-group of society's Default Setting™. Even though I don't really fit the typical ideal of masculinity in a lot of ways, I'm still spared a tremendous amount of grief purely by virtue of being visibly male-presenting, so I'm hardly the target-demographic on Tumblr. I have my own axe to grind with societal perceptions and expectations of masculinity, but we'll save that for another day.

Tumblr is a community that focuses on uplifting and empowering marginalized groups and bringing together artists and weirdoes and eccentrics and people who might otherwise feel utterly isolated and alone, and that's such an amazing and laudable thing. I think it's more necessary than ever in the world today to have communities that celebrate all sorts of marginalized people that we don't see reflected in Mainstream Society's version of things, whether they be LGBTQ+, POC, ND, or anyone who wants to break free from the box of restrictive societal norms they feel trapped by.

Believe me, the absolute last thing I wanna do as a straight(ish) cis man is show up at The Designated LGBTQ+ Hellsite™ and start whining: 'bUt WhAt AbOuT mE?1?!?'.' But I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel a little shitty sometimes to rediscover such a vibrant community of people I can actually relate to, who makes my weird brain feel a little less alone, only to feel like I stumbled uninvited into a party nobody wants me at.

I guess I often don't feel like I'm intrinsically desirable as a man on the scrawny, introverted end of the spectrum (hardy har), and I know that's on me to deal with in therapy.

It would just be nice to see a little more male-positivity

To all the lads, boys, men -- whatever word you want! -- out there, you're fuckin killin' it dude and I'm goddamn proud of you. Don't hesitate to check in with yourself and dump out all the emotional shit from time to time, and for the love of all that is holy, don't give yourself a second less time and love than you would give to your dearest friend in need.

My asks are always open if you wanna vent to someone who knows the struggle.

[dropoutparty]

maybe i could end up trying to incorporate this into a theory of some sort, but as a neurodivergent (adhd and autism) and mentally ill person, i just wanna say that i resonate SO fuckin deeply with how dhmis depicts things. the entire main trio are nd and no one can tell me otherwise, the episode "jobs" feels SO accurate to what ive experienced trying to navigate the workplace, the way that every character that isnt a teacher sees the main 3 as weird/too much/stupid (teachers are probably excluded bc they are also weird and too much lmao), its all just so REAL... the episode abt families (i forget if it was just called "family" or something lmao) hit especially close to home because of the PALPABLE feeling of otherness you know?? also just the fact that every other character in the show can easily "fit in" and go along with how things are while the main 3 just. cant. this is super rambly and nd coding probably wasnt even intentional but i just feel so understood by this show abt funny puppets peeping the horror <3333

[operahousebookworm]

As the new year approaches and people start talking about resolutions, I urge you to meet yourself where you are. Especially for people who are ND, disabled/ill, or otherwise struggling. The arbitrary reset button of January 1 offers a great opportunity for problem solving, but not if you're hoping to just become a completely different person.

So if you're not the kind of person who enjoys going to the gym, resolving to go more is not gonna work. Instead, if you want to be more active, things like signing up for that ballet class you've always wanted to do, taking time once every week or two to find a new and interesting place to walk around, or even just resolving to get up from your chair once every hour are all legit tactics.

And sometimes that looks like finding different ways to solve a problem. If you struggle to remember to clean the litter box, sure, you could remind yourself more sternly or find different ways to remind yourself or just feel that much more ashamed when you inevitably forget. OR you could resolve that you're gonna save up for one of those self-cleaning litter boxes so you can take that chore off your mental plate.

Just, be gentle with yourself. This new year, rather than trying to move closer to some imagined standard lifestyle, look for ways to make the life you've got a little easier, a little more enjoyable. Take small steps, avoid shaming, and make it fun.

And remember, resolving this year to just accept your life as it is and find peace with that is a valid option too.

[lokiinmediasideblog]

hi! :D you've said before that you see mcu loki as ND-coded, and i'm curious about your specific thoughts on that. personally, i've mostly thought about this in terms of acquired mental illness stemming from trauma, but if i'm interpreting you correctly, you see him as innately neurodivergent? which is a fun + interesting take. are you thinking of a specific diagnosis, and/or is there a specific moment that stands out to you as ND Behaviour, or is it more of an overall vibe?

It started by thinking of Loki being ND-coded metaphorically, but I think he shows some behaviors. I will be breaking this down into actual behaviors and metaphors. I have ADHD, so I tend to skew his diagnosis towards that or AuDHD (and I have a mutual that thinks BPD also fits rather well and they're welcome to join in, lol).

Metaphors (movies):

1. The Jotun reveal. Aliens and changelings (both of which Loki is in cannon to Asgard) are common in metaphors to describe autism. From both the ND’s perspective as being in “Another planet” and from the NT’s perspective.

“A persistent trope in some autism communities is that autistic people are aliens, or, symmetrically, that non-autistic people seem like aliens to autists. Some autists are attracted to the metaphor of the alien to describe their own condition, or to say that they find other people alien (Hacking, 2009).”

“In addition to failure to thrive, before the development of modern medicine and psychiatry, it is very likely that any number of childhood disorders were interpreted as stolen children. Several modern authors have suggested that, in pre-scientific eras, children born with autism and other developmental disorders were probably considered changelings (Ashliman 1997; Wing and Potter 2002). By the late nineteenth century, science had begun to provide non-supernatural explanations for children who did not thrive or otherwise did not meet the normal expectations for a healthy infant, and belief in changelings faded. ”

2. Loki does not fit in at Asgard, the only home he’s known. His friends are actually Thor’s rather than his, and seem to tolerate him rather than like him.

3. Loki also gets blamed for misdeeds without good evidence: The W4 start suspecting a crown prince based on an enemy’s words and they assume Loki wants to harm Asgard. I think it’s important to note that they don’t assume he just wants the crown; they assume in his very short reign, that he’ll harm Asgard, which is never in his plans. And it’s unlikely they cared about Jotunheim since they wanted Thor back right away.

A parallel to being ND is that people distrust and even villainize you due to your mannerisms (e.g. “weird and quiet”). And I’ve talked about how I think Asgard promotes a very ridiculously straight forward mannerisms on its population to make self-policing easier. So Loki’s mannerisms must have clashed with the general population’s for them to distrust them so easily.

4. Loki’s main power-set being illusions, and unbeknownst to him, being changed into something he wasn’t born as (Jotun -> Asgardian), is a power-set analogous to masking (i.e. the process through which NDs camouflage themselves to fit in better).

Masking involves a lot of rehearsing and suppression to act in a more socially acceptable way. → Loki also needs to be useful to be appreciated

5. Thor being preferred for acting in ways deemed more socially acceptable by Asgard and Odin. A personal experience from me is getting shit to this day about how I was “so difficult as a toddler, unlike your brother!” and some mean comment about how I made life hell because they couldn’t take me to public places.

Some traits Loki showcases (and seem relatable to my ADHD-ass):

1. Tendency to fidget (in the movies and series). I think it’s even more noticeable in the series, where he’s doing random shit with stamps and hammers while he speaks to people (S2E1 talking with OB). It’s like he can’t stay still.

2. I pulled something very similar to the salad scene around an older mentor figure. It was rice I kept squishing in my hand while going off in a rant. My former mentor found my behavior amusing, for the most part, and never let me live that down.

3. Tendency to info-dump about how his magic works.

4. Poor impulse control (Loki series, gets drunk in a train, and cut Sif’s hair just because ← I HC he wanted to sabotage the relationship out of fear of vulnerability).

And that’s on top of the trauma-based extreme fear of abandonment he showcases in pretty much everything he’s been in.

Badly-formatted Sources:

Hacking, Ian. (2009) https://www.jstor.org/stable/40543987

[archive2394934]

Decided to finally share this with the fandom. Originally wrote this as reference for other folks in interacting with my rp/writing blog where I write Henry because as far as I could see from the fandom the takes on the character were kind of shit (no offense to people who buy the “hes a psychopath” spiel, but I don't! Not even sure where it come from tbh.) so I’m gonna just post this & hope there's other Henry Creel apologists out there who feel the same lmao. (not fixing the format, take the garbage how it is)

GENERAL:

Straight to the point I do not write or interpret Henry as a remorseless psychopath. He is not “pure evil” & he was not “born evil.” To me it is quite clear that a lot of themes in Stranger Things are allegories for, & are very much metaphoric to metal illness & neuro-diversity, most particularly a lot of themes in Stranger Things touch on the the demonization of & abuse toward people with mental illness & neuro-devise individuals. Please keep in mind Stranger Things is a period piece that is taking place from the 50s through to the 80s & EARLY 90s. This was a time period particularly in AMERICAN HISTORY that was not known for its kindness toward minority demographics & just as it was difficult to be lgbt or a poc, for example, in these times, it was also very difficult to exist as a ND or mentally ill person without experiencing oppression, horrific abuse, exploitation & demonization.

Ultimately, to me Henry is on the autism spectrum. He is very high functioning but none the less he was labelled as “broken” by his doctors & teachers because he was born in the 40s & was a young boy in the 50s where this stuff was not commonly understood or recognized. Theres a few other factors floating around that make this story true to the horror genre & further add to the metaphorical side of things (Henry’s psychic powers, the idea the Creels were living in a haunted house, the concept of demonic possession, etc) but bringing things down to basics Henry was a high functioning autistic boy living in a time period where kindness & understanding toward his neurodiversity was not a thing. As a autistic person Henry instantly got me when he said all his doctor’s & teachers said he was “broken” because do you know what my doctor’s & teachers said about me when I was a kid? The exact same thing. & my bullshit was happening in the 90s rather than the 50s so I imagine what Henry was dealing with was a fair bit worse. Also check this post out, while I’m here if you don’t believe me on this stuff, the OP of this post covered this really well. & I’m also adding this little tidbit of info because it feels relevant. 

After coming to live in Hawkins, Henry discovered he had unlocked the ability to read minds. He then discovered his mother hated him & he discovered she planned to have him committed, where he would be taken away by a Doctor (Dr. Brenner) & “fixed.” This was a secret she had been keeping from him & presumably her husband. This was the trigger for Henry’s murderous rampage. He practiced using his psionic powers on small animals & prepared to kill his mother & escape from his family to avoid the horrors of institutionalization within a “psychiatric hospital,” as had been planned.

He failed. This perfectly explains the “secret” Henry’s mother kept & why Dr Brenner knew Henry existed. Keep in mind this is again the late 50s. Virginia was an upper-middle class house wife. Her duty & image as a loving mother & wife would have been held in the highest esteem. If she was someone who secretly despised one of her children ━ not only is this particularly shitty for Henry as the child she disliked to discover this ━ but it does in fact make her a hypocrite as someone who would pretend otherwise to fit societies mold of “normal” & “perfect.”

Henry used his powers to “torment” his family by “showing” them their “real” selves. Prior to the murders, Henry was nothing but a lonely, innocent child. He was unfairly judged as “broken” & “wrong” by his family members who themselves were actually not the ‘perfect’, ‘faultless’ people they pretended to be, hence his accusations of hypocrisy toward them. Henry was born different, try as he might he couldn’t change what made him “different”, he struggled hiding his differences, something which was expected of him, so he grew disgusted by people like his parents & sister who were so obsessed with perfection, conformity & this false notion of “normality” that they refused to accept that they themselves didn’t even fit the mold they were trying to force on Henry.

Henry would spend the next 20 years of his life wrongfully imprisoned & suffering various kinds of abuse & dehumanization at the hands of Dr. Brenner’s project. Henry was as much a victim as anyone else in this situation. We are made aware of the fact that he was often tortured & essentially treated as a slave to the facility. Henry, by his own admission, suffered a life of fear & cruelty.

ALICE CREEL:

I'm adding this because I can't decide if all the extreme inconsistences surrounding Alice mean something in canon or if it was just laziness on the Duffer Brother's behalf but for now, according to my headcanon: Alice was 15 years old. (Despite being portrayed by a much younger actress & thus appearing to have been the same age as Henry if not younger. A really weird inconsistency.) Her date of birth is given on the news paper clipping & she would have been 15 accordingly, 3 years older than Henry, making her Henry's OLDER sister.

I imagine Henry & her to have had a relationship best described as an inverted parallel to Will & Jonathan. Where Jonathan was supportive of nurturing toward Will, Alice was scornful & neglectful of Henry. She viewed him as a burden due to his "differences", which she considered were just him being difficult & a "freak." She was very much a normal teenaged girl in the 50s who largely kept her personal life a secret from her parents. I actually feel like the entire Creel family is suppose to be an inverted-parallel to the Byers family. 

Henry tormented Alice the least of his three family members because he simply didn't understand Alice's fears or secrets well enough to prey on them on a personal level. Again he was a 12 year old boy at this point, he wouldn’t have had this kind of insight. A similar thing could be said of his mother, as Henry's "torment" toward both his mother & sister appears to be very much in the vein of only making them see general phobias like bugs & spiders thus & not near as personal or potent as the torment his father received thanks to his PTSD & guilt from his actions in the war.

THE MIND-FLAYER:

To me, & I’m very sure this was what canon was suggesting, the entity we know as the mind-flayer was actual the “demonic presence” that emerged within the Creel house. The mind-flayer exists within another dimension, but the barrier between the human world & the mind-flayer’s dimension is thin around some places in Hawkins, which is why all this bullshit is going on in Hawkins in the first place. The Creel house happened to sit atop of one of these places. Henry was particularly sensitive & susceptible to the presence & influence of the mind-flayer due to his psychic abilities. Henry once believe that he was the demon in the Creel house, but this isn’t entirely the case.

We know that the mind-flayer is a malevolent force that amplifies feelings of sadness & anger, which are the emotions that it feeds on. Henry couldn’t have been a more perfect target because he was a sad child, a child who was ostracized from other children & found it difficult to fit in with others & was constantly being made to feel as if he was wrong/bad/at fault. This takes a psychological toll on a child & almost always leads them to acting out. Henry’s negative emotions however were amplified by the presence of the mind-flayer, which in turn amplified Henry’s powers.

This is why Henry’s abilities became so strong once he & his family had settled into their new home in Hawkins. This is what drove Henry to look into his families minds & find their “darkest secrets.” He wasn’t a twisted little demon who was just sick like that, Henry is shown actually as a sad & lonely kid. His spirits only brightened a little when he found some spiders inside a vent inside the house as he recounts he has a love of spiders & they brought him comfort in a very stressful time in his life. Henry then spent most of his time illustrating the spiders while his family fretted over the “evil presence” in the house, which used Henry’s powers to manifest itself. I mean one has to wonder where & how a 12 year old boy in 1959 learned to, essentially, suck the “souls” out of his “victims.” among other things

Which yeah, brings me to something else. While Henry’s method of killing does seem to be demonically influenced, it makes sense to me that a child like Henry would seem to reason this as a “valid” way to commit a murder. If he is able to basically “keep” his victims in some way, linking their souls to himself & thus giving them some type of immortality, it would serve to ease his guilt somewhat in the fact that he hasn’t completely killed them in the first place. This seems to be the case as Henry explained to Eleven after the lab massacre that the other numbers he "killed" weren't really gone.

Something else I consider evidence for this is when Victor recounts the family’s time in the house, we’re shown a scene with Henry drawing in the living room of the house. The lights in the room begin to act strangely which Henry notices, looking confused. Victor says he could see Henry could tell something was wrong. Now here's the thing: we know the best way for the someone or thing in the upside down to make “contact” with the human world is through lights/electricity. If Henry wasn’t manipulating the lights, which I think its clear he wasn’t, due to his own confusion & curiosity toward the event, what was?

We also have Henry’s apparent change of demeanor. He starts out seeming happy when the Creel’s are shown first arriving at the house, only to then be shown as gloomy & distant after some time in the house. 

& lastly this is completely theory but Henry’s massacre of the children always came off odd to me. It feels like we missed something in the way Henry goes from optimistic & helpful upon leaving Eleven in the store-room to dark & disturbed when she finally finds him again in the rainbow room. He just does not seem like he had his shit together or that this was all “according to plan”. Either something else happened that we didn’t get to see OR, something else I think could play a part if my theory about the mind-flayer always being there is true: Once the chip was removed from Henry & he started to get his powers & psychic senses back its possible with them came his connection to the mind-flayer. But that's purely just a thought & not something I’m willing to say is exactly what I think happened. No matter which way I look at it though I PERSONALLY think killing the other test subjects made a lot of sense from an in-character, in-world, in that moment in time perspective.

THE LAB MASSCARE:

IMO, there are many reasons for why Henry killed the other test subjects in the lab. This doesn’t just come in one shade. Survival is the leading one, but behind this we have the fact that Henry only learned to harness his powers through sadness & anger, two emotions that can be very intoxicating, even when utilized by someone who doesn’t have a life of lived trauma & oppression behind them like Henry does. We also have the fact that Henry saw the other children as enemies, given they viciously bullied Eleven for no good reason & he saw his own childhood of ostracization & bulling in their interactions with her.

Ultimately, Henry killed them because he could not save them & because if he left them alive they would only be used as weapons against him & Eleven in the long run. The children in the lab were not allies to him & Eleven & he was not entirely wrong in believing this. Many of them would do anything to please “Papa,” this including beating & abusing Eleven, possibly to the point of being willing to kill her, & thus would easily include using their remote location abilities to track Henry & Eleven down if they escaped. It seemed to be a worse outcome to leave the other subjects alive than it was to kill them.

DR. BRENNER:

Henry’s mercy on Brenner was entirely vindictive. He wanted Benner to live knowing he had taken everything away from him, that he was powerless & that he lost all the control & oppression he had lauded over Henry’s head for most of his life. It was really a power move, as was killing the other test subjects, because ultimately, Henry’s relationship with Brenner was/is a deeply fucked up one due to years of psychological & physical abuse. Ultimately he wanted Brenner to live & witness his escape, witness the loss of everything he had tried to build for years & witness everything else Henry would come to do free of Brenner’s imprisonment. Vecna’s motives for for continuing to leave Dr. Brenner alive are very much the same.

HENRY & VECNA:

Simply put Vecna is Henry but Henry is not Vecna. Vecna is the result of Henry’s “death,” as much as he is the result of Henry’s merger with the mind-flayer entity. As previously discussed, I believe the mind-flayer entity was always a malevolent force that amplifies & feeds on feelings of sadness & anger. This is why Vecna is so warped, both physically & spiritually. This is why Max explains that Vecna can’t see anything within people but hate & darkness. This connection with the mind-flayer changed him on a metaphysical level. Henry’s “dead” body was mutated by the unique constitution of the upside down & his merger with this entity to become the wickedly powerful creature that is been dubbed “Vecna” by the hellfire kids.

By all logic, Henry should have died after he entered the Upside down, not just by the multiple lightening strikes he apparently suffered that horrifically wounded him to the point of deformity, but also the fact he had to have fallen from a couple hundred feet at least. Somehow he didn’t die. There is no logical explanation as to why “Vecna” is or would be “alive.”

But we have seen that the Mind-flayer has the ability to reanimate creatures that have supposedly died. (The Demodogs in the Russian prison are a good example). Its more likely that Henry did die after he was thrown into the Upside down, whether from the lightning his body conducted or from hitting the ground from the seemingly endless height he fell from. Its all thanks to the influence of the mind-flayer & his psychic link with it that he was ‘revived’. Meaning he was able to get up & simply wander around the upside down dazed & mesmerized until he found the mind-flayers “physical” body & the two “linked” together.

This also explains why “Vecna” was able to take several head-on rounds from a shot gun, all the while being set on fire, & continued to live & function through the whole ordeal, even after falling at least a dozen feet out of a window, to the point that he was able to get up & escape with little effort. There is no logical explanation for any of it other than that Vecna is, in fact, “undead”. In his human life, Henry hoped to use his powers to change the world; to make things better for people like himself. As Vecna he is opting for more brutality & something much darker, due to his heavy corruption from the mind-flayer, though he still believes he’s doing this for a good reason, remembering his own goals, which is Henry’s remaining “human” element coming through.

Basically, in the story Vecna embodies all three major archetypes in the horror genre. He is the killer, the monster & the ghost & he is played by me as all three. This means he is a vindictive, malevolent creature who is not bound to human mortality but has a hauntingly tragic & human past. Vecna is vengeful & ruthless. He kills with impunity because it brings him closer & closer to his “goal” of forcefully “reshaping” the world that hated & rejected him but it also seems Vecna targets his victims for very specific reasons that allow him to believe these attacks are less murders & more mercy killings. I’ve talked about Venca’s personal “method/ritual” of killing & its “symbolic” refences to his human life & in general here. (removed the link, maybe I’ll share that one too though in another post)

Henry on the other hand has a killer instinct, & will kill if he has to, but he is not Vecna & his murders are almost always survival or revenge based. Henry’s goals included more anarchy for the sake of political & systematic change; to bring about a better quality of life for oppressed & marginalized individuals like himself. Henry & Kali were the same in this regard & this why I’ll never believe they weren’t connected or that they didn’t have a positive rapport, or that it wasn't extremely likely that Henry played a part in Kali’s escape from the lab. This is at least my personal headcanon & will remain that way until canon tells me otherwise. So far though canon is heavily, heavily suggesting this is true.

"A PREDATOR BUT FOR GOOD":

Henry’s speech to Eleven & his interest in spiders has resulted in all the fandoms insane misunderstandings about Henry’s character & what his actual motives were. I’ve been over it in a previous post but to largely quote that post: Henry’s self-label of “solitary” creature & his relation to spiders is not suppose to clue us on to some innate evil within the character. Completely the opposite actually. Henry has spent his life only ever knowing scorn, rejection & exile from others. Whether this exile is imposed on him by others or self-imposed to cope / feel safe, this is a heavy feature in Henry’s life. This single feature made most of the fandom convinced that Henry’s interest in & relation to spiders was scary & proof of “psychopathy”, because they think of spiders as scary, weird things that need to be avoided or eradicated; they're just not viewed as living creatures worthy of respect or sympathy despite the fact they very much are. Its very ironic that people took this away from Henry’s speech as he was actually explaining the opposite.

Henry literally says he relates to them because they’re a misunderstood creature, that people hate & only want to exterminate & people have always treated him the same way. He takes comfort in being able to relate to something so much & finds them inspiring as a result. He draws strength from them. They made him feel safe & seen. He feels more empowered & less alone when he thinks of them. Unfortunately, a lot of people somehow boiled this down to “Spiders kill things, spiders are scary, spiders are unrelatable, spiders are emotionless so that's what Henry was trying to tell us about himself.” Which all couldn’t be further from the truth.

Henry further spoke about the experience & unending stress of anyone who can not conform to societal norms, anyone who couldn’t live up to societies “expectations” & the restrictive, unfair standards of what is good & right vs what isn’t as these standards DO NOT apply to everyone. They are largely unnatural & that it is downright evil to try & enforce them on everyone since it is impossible for everyone to fit into the “mold.” The mold being heavily bias & flawed from the start. He is saying that all this nonsense has been made up by evil, bigoted, stupid people in power. He is talking about the real struggle “othered” people face against societal & systematic oppression.

He’s trying to say that a spider is considered an important part of the natural ecosystem. Spiders fit this ecosystem whether people like it or not & despite their differences they have a valuable role in brining order to the natural world. He’s not saying he wants to murder people because he finds it funny & he’s a sadistic freak; he's ensuring himself he belongs & he’s trying to illustrate that someone with powers like his & Eleven’s would be able to fight & perhaps work toward dismantling the painful, oppressive system that is currently in place & bring about balance. Equality. If he has to eat a couple insects to do it then so be it. He directly specifies he wants to be a predator BUT FOR GOOD & that is what his meaning was. It was intended to be the opposite of a predator being seen as an evil, monstrous thing. Anyways, thats my thoughts on that. I have plenty more but I can’t be bothered to fit them here rn. Thanks for reading if you did!

[nyarlathotep-thecrawlingchaos]

Hello, I'm the anon that spoke about autism, sorry about the asks being so close together, but I just read your response.

I entered the Psychology field to be able to treat patients from a ND's point of view and offer a different brand of understanding and comfort than I've seen myself and a thousand others (especially people who have schizophrenia, Tourette's and DID) be given.

I have a newfound brand of respect for you ( I am clarifying, because text is tricky, that I already respected and quite admired you as it is, it's simply increased) for the response you've provided. Thank you very much.

Autism, even nowadays, has a ton of misconceptions even for professionals who are biased. It is still diagnosed as Asperger's (even though the term has been in disuse and was taking out of the official Psychology term and had the reasoning well explained, due to its disgusting story), and nobody bothers to tell patients about it, or even worse, people don't care enough to know the difference or change their view of it even when told. This, paired with the whole view that Autism is an illness, that vaccines can cause it, and a thousand other misconceptions, make it so even getting a diagnosis becomes detrimental to people getting a job in the future, and so, people become isolated. The way you've immediately pointed out that both children were vastly different even when they were both autistic is heartwarming and it is the reason Autism is an spectrum. Once again, thank you.

Because I have no personal knowledge on your own case, nothing but textbook understanding from my field of study, I won't comment on it, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. Even as someone who does not have to live with it, it is disheartening to have to constantly see, both in cases and in day-to-day life, how any kind of mental illness, neurodivergent, etc, ESPECIALLY Schizophrenia in any capacity, becomes the go-to for shows and movies' killers and bad guys, or is boiled down to either comedic relief and/or something 'quirky'. It seems to never be taken seriously and talked about it maturely, and I despise it. Please, know that at the very least one of your followers is deeply understanding of this and that you should feel free to speak about it without fear of judgement.

You've made a safe space for us, allow us to make a safe space for you too. You're a very kind soul and I wish you the best.

Your writing is wonderful, and you've made me feel incredibly secure and comfortable in reading any other set of headcanons you've made for the rest of the characters (especially Mihawk in this case), because now, thanks to you, I know how they're going to react to my ND and my mind doesn't get to try and be self-detrimental. I know it seems silly, but in a way, you've done something extremely important to change a small part of my life and I sincerely thank you ❤️.

First, please don't feel like you ever have to apologize for asks here, close together or otherwise. I'm always happy to respond when I'm able to.

Second, it's my dream to be able to go into psychology as a profession, for the same reason, to be able to help people with similar problems who are often misdiagnosed and misrepresented.

Third, on autism specifically, the fact that there are STILL people who believe it can be "triggered" by vaccination honestly disgusts me. It's misinformation that leads to people keeping their children from getting protection against potentially deadly illnesses, and as a result potentially exposing other children to said illnesses. Absolute bullshit.

Autism is a fucking mental health disorder. It's not "triggered" by anything. It's also not something to be feared. It's a thing that happens, something that some people are born with and some aren't. The only reason it's more prevalent now than it was in the past, in my opinion, is because neurodivergeant kids in the past were just dismissed as "probelm-children" and given no further attention, so it just wasn't given as much attention in the past. We've come a long way since then, but that ideology does still exist and it frankly disgusts me.

So fourth, I do thank you for your understanding, regarding schizophrenia. There are a lot of people who consider "schizophrenic" synonymous with "psychotic serial killer." Definitely not the case here. As I said in the last post, my main symptoms are auditory hallucinations. Most of my auditory hallucinations revolve around insulting me and making me feel insignificant. It's like there's an army of little goblins that live in my head and exist for the sole sake of second-guessing everything I say and do.

I hate it, but it's what I deal with.

And I don't want anyone else to have to ever deal with that.

I want everyone here to be happy and comfortable.