Kiwis with stigmatized mental conditions, how do you cope?

[Lingering butter taste]

I generally just dont fuck with people, everyone is lying to have something to talk about nowadays , and i feel very hollow, BUT , it might just be the way that im living life right now

That’s even more normal, I’d assume frequenting KF also doesn't help with that to be honest. I know when I was deep into that mindset I had to distance myself from this site to start liking people again. It was a mix of doomscrolling lolcows and debate topics and also just not having any friends to offset the former with “Well in all reality most people aren’t that bad”

 

[Hitchhiker]

I have terminal ligma and I try to cope with it by trying to talk to other people with my condition, but whenever I ask them they start laughing. We truly are the most stigmatized group of people.

 

[Super Mario Brothers]

"My ex was borderline" really is the "my ex was a narcissist" for men.

Spoiler

It's possible that it's real but for 90% of the time I refuse to believe it because it's tossed around so much and just used to mean "crazy bitch." It doesn't help that it's criteria is extremely vague and at best reads like having PTSD or some type of abused dog syndrome. But I guess you can say that for many mental illnesses.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

I have terminal ligma and I try to cope with it by trying to talk to other people with my condition, but whenever I ask them they start laughing. We truly are the most stigmatized group of people.

Totally understand. I have termina sugma, apparently there is a homebrew treatment that involves "sugma ligma balls"

Also I have OCPD/GAD if we're talking about legit mental illnesses.

 

[Lingering butter taste]

"My ex was borderline" really is the "my ex was a narcissist" for men.

Spoiler

It's possible that it's real but for 90% of the time I refuse to believe it because it's tossed around so much and just used to mean "crazy bitch." It doesn't help that it's criteria is extremely vague and at best reads like having PTSD or some type of abused dog syndrome. But I guess you can say that for many mental illnesses.

I actually agree with you here. I do believe borderline is real, but people love love LOVE to armchair diagnose it whenever some woman pisses them off. Then they get to decide how it works, manifests, and what color your eyes magically turn into when you’re mad.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

An important distinction for laypeople to understand about Psychiatry is that anything classified under the "Personality Disorder" category is essentially hopeless & intractable.

1) Most people suffering from a Personality Disorder will forever be in denial that they have a Personality Disorder
2) People in denial will never seek treatment (or will never seek treatment for their actual problem)
3) Even if they did seek treatment, there's no pills to fix them
4) In theory, a very skilled psychotherapist with specific PD expertise, a willing & extremely motivated patient witn infinite resources & time could make some progress. But this is mostly cope.
5) The reality is that most people with PDs are so self-unaware, manipulative, toxic & repulsive that even in a vacuum, most professionals would rather neck themselves than treat them (which they really can't even if they wanted to).

People with schizoid personality disorder often not only accept the diagnosis but go to a shrink suspecting that they have it.

Although it's still basically hopeless and intractable, as you say.

 

[Hypercop]

Like the last guy said, they can only be fixed with therapy. Not the power of friendship

I doubt it. When did therapy become some kind of magic bullet for all mental problems? When is this meme going to die?

 

[Lingering butter taste]

I doubt it. When did therapy become some kind of magic bullet for all mental problems? When is this meme going to die?

I never said that therapy was a guaranteed fix, just that it’s the first option you probably should take when diagnosed with a PD. It’s significantly more of a shot than some random 20 something year old who’s ready to fuck off and rant about you on Reddit the moment shit goes south.

 

[RollingRock2]

Psychology is fake and gay and OP is a whiney fag that's probably why people don't like you

 

[Lingering butter taste]

Also I have OCPD/GAD if we're talking about legit mental illnesses.

Give me my puzzle pieces but I’m genuinely having trouble seeing if this is a joke or not. (Not that I’m judging you or anything if you’re not joking)

 

[I'm Retarded?]

How do you deal with nearly everyone speaking of your condition as if those who suffer from it must be avoided or euthanized?

I endeavor to act in such a way that others explicitly say it is I who should be avoided or euthanized. this throne is mine alone

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Nice try, RFK jr.

 

[DefinitelyNotMe]

just be normal nigger
for the most part all you have to do is nothing
and theres hardly anything easier to do then nothing

 

[DumbDude43]

"Personality disorders" aren't all the same. Avoidant personality disorder sufferers aren't like borderline or narcissistic personality disorder sufferers. It's extremely reductive to pile them all together. Cluster B disorders have a lot in common with each other, hence why they're clustered together under the same banner.

with some of those, i think the classification as a personality disorder isn't very accurate to begin with

in my opinion, APD for example has more in common with mental illnesses (specifically social anxiety disorder and major depression) than with personality disorders.
and i think the cluster A disorders (schizoid, schizotypal, paranoid) are better thought of as schizophrenia variants rather than personality disorders.

 

[YellowIsACoolColor]

FINALLY an answer

I mean you made a thread where you get answers from the mentally ill

 

[The Feline Solution 2]

I rail more fat lines. Substance abuse disorder is just the convoluted way of saying "Nigga enjoys a good time."

Been clean for over eight months. God, i want to kill myself

 

[PetiteFeet]

with some of those, i think the classification as a personality disorder isn't very accurate to begin with

in my opinion, APD for example has more in common with mental illnesses (specifically social anxiety disorder and major depression) than with personality disorders.
and i think the cluster A disorders (schizoid, schizotypal, paranoid) are better thought of as schizophrenia variants rather than personality disorders.

I can't speak for others with Cluster C's because I've only met B's but I'm inclined to agree with you on certain disorders, but in my own case my depressive patterns feel more like a huge part of my personality and there's no clear trauma or cause beyond me if that makes sense. I'm not a professional, just a long time sufferer of muh mentals.

 

[Lingering butter taste]

there's no clear trauma or cause beyond me

I don’t know about all the other clusters, but I’d say at least cluster B’s definitely have a traumatic cause. I’ve met plenty of cluster B’s and they always have some kind of awful past, whether child abuse or rape or something. I’ve never seen a cluster B that just had a normal life, I’m not sure if that’d extend beyond that cluster.

 

[PetiteFeet]

I don’t know about all the other clusters, but I’d say at least cluster B’s definitely have a traumatic cause. I’ve met plenty of cluster B’s and they always have some kind of awful past, whether child abuse or rape or something. I’ve never seen a cluster B that just had a normal life, I’m not sure if that’d extend beyond that cluster.

A disorder like Borderline is 100% rooted in some form of trauma, at least the ones I've met weren't born with their brains broken but these are also BPDs who've actively recognised they have issues and have/are working towards something resembling a life worth living. Someone like Anisa Jomha doesn't appear to have gone through trauma (that we can fact check anyway, she has a lot of claims of trauma like her infamous tiktok rape dance) but she's very clearly broken.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

with some of those, i think the classification as a personality disorder isn't very accurate to begin with

in my opinion, APD for example has more in common with mental illnesses (specifically social anxiety disorder and major depression) than with personality disorders.
and i think the cluster A disorders (schizoid, schizotypal, paranoid) are better thought of as schizophrenia variants rather than personality disorders.

It's becoming more common to view "cluster A" as part of the "schizophrenia spectrum" along with schizoaffective disorder and some other stuff. Checks out on a population level, given the common course of those disorders and comorbidities.

It's also very common for people with chronic mood disorders, especially bipolar 1 and more severe forms of MDD, to have a number of "schizotypal" personality features. Since we know bipolar disorder and recurrent MDD share a lot of genetic/genealogical territory with sz, this also makes sense.

A disorder like Borderline is 100% rooted in some form of trauma, at least the ones I've met weren't born with their brains broken but these are also BPDs who've actively recognised they have issues and have/are working towards something resembling a life worth living. Someone like Anisa Jomha doesn't appear to have gone through trauma (that we can fact check anyway, she has a lot of claims of trauma like her infamous tiktok rape dance) but she's very clearly broken.

Estimates vary widely between studies but for BPD it's somewhere between 35-90% with a history of serious trauma. It's not 100% caused by trauma but it does seem like at least a large portion of the cases we "catch" have something to do with a trauma response. I think the concept of CPTSD needs serious, non-politicized study but I'm not ready to embrace it wholeheartedly as I think most of the study for it so far has been heavily motivated by politics and other inappropriate factors.

There is a ton of interrater variability in diagnosing cluster B- more than pretty much any other disorder group- meaning that a lot of people could be BPD or HPD depending on the evaluator, or NPD vs ASPD etc. This also kind of suggests we aren't understanding either the nature or the etiology of each of these expressions properly. Should be fodder for research but in this case stigma and the fact that there's no pharma bandaid is gonna be a big obstacle to getting it done.