Upswings and Downswings Oh My

Why questions are often interpreted as accusatory, especially during times of duress or for individuals with certain disorders such as dpd or bpd. 

If you want to help keep people from getting defensive or from accidentally triggering paranoia in anyone, it can as easy (or hard) as rewording your why question into a what or how question. 

Some examples:

Why don’t you like x? –> What don’t you like about x?

Why do you like x? –> What do you like about x?

Why are you doing x? –> How did you get to x?/What lead up to x?

Why didn’t you do x? –> What happened?

Why is x happening? –> How did x come about? 

So I was hoping I could have this info confirmed by people I know & trust. I want to be respectful of other neurodivergent people and not trigger them, so if this is something I should be doing, I wanted to know.

im actually pretty pumped you chose dpd as the first pd you’re gonna touch on, that’s rlly cool, dpd gets like, no publicity of any kind, so yeah. canon dpd characters would be A+++++ 

(unfortunately most pd’s can say this ): not a lot of positive or any type of representation outside of like, a couple fairly offensive bpd movies -_-) 

anyway, advice for creating a character with dpd:

These are the common symptoms of dpd:

Has difficulty making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others

Needs others to assume responsibility for most major areas of his or her life

Has difficulty expressing disagreement with others because of fear of loss of support or approval

Has difficulty initiating projects or doing things on his or her own (because of a lack of self-confidence in judgment or abilities rather than a lack of motivation or energy)

Goes to excessive lengths to obtain nurturing and support from others, to the point of volunteering to do things that are unpleasant

Feels uncomfortable or helpless when alone because of exaggerated fears of being unable to care for himself or herself

Urgently seeks another relationship as a source of care and support when a close relationship ends

Is unrealistically preoccupied with fears of being left to take care of himself or herself

And these are common traits that people with dpd show.

Within all that, we’re people. Like anyone. We can have any personality, we can be anyone, the only thing we all have in common is an intense need to please others and fear of being alone, at a very base level. 

The best way for me to explain this I think, is to give you a few examples.I would argue that Mikasa from SNK/Attack on Titan has dpd because she’s fiercely loyal and when the people she loves are hurt, or even presumed dead, she’s ready to die, she’s ready to die to get vengence and outside that life is fairly meaningless. She only joined the army (I don’t remember the terms from the anime anymore, it’s been a long time, sorry) because Eren did, she followed him repeatedly into battle but she was also the strongest fighter, the best at what she did for her age and better than many of her elders too. She was terrifying and strong, skilled, intelligent, practical when not in an overly emotional state. 

There are a lot of people who view Pearl from Steven’s Universe as having dpd and while I don’t watch the show quite enough to know what traits she shows via dpd, but I do know that Pearl is a soldier, an excellent swordsgem (swordswoman?), willing to put her life on the line again and again to protect the people she loves. I also do remember an episode where she exhibits parentalization with Steven, treating him like Rose (i.e. treating the child like the parent) which is a dpd thing and also I would guess one of her depended’s was Rose (which especially would explain her gravitation towards and immediate adoration of big women with pink hair lol, a Good Look tbh)

Then there are the characters more likely to be thought of as dependent. Piglet from Winnie the Pooh is a good one. Fearful, meek, submissive, loyal, wants to help, would do anything to help, always worried about something, loves Pooh, lets Pooh make all the decisions, even if Piglet doesn’t like that decision. Seemingly “simple”, caring, loving, a good friend, but not the one pushing for new adventures. 

• telling the same joke/ wanting to have the same conversation over and over again

• not having much coordination and having a tough time doing “easy” things like tying shoelaces

• having trouble understanding what you mean and needing lots of clarification

• needing things to be broken down into little steps

• having extremely high or extremely low empathy

• getting very attached to things like inanimate objects

obsessing over special interests

object permanence is the developmental skill to realize that an object continues to exist even when you can’t see it. that’s why peekaboo is entertaining to babies – they haven’t developed object permanence yet, so they really believe you stop existing when your face disappears behind your hands. then you come back into existence, and they’re amazed!

a lot of borderline, dependent, and histrionic people don’t have this developmental skill, but specifically in a certain area: we lack relationship object permanence, the ability to understand that a relationship continues to exist when it is not actively being reaffirmed.

this is why many borderline, dependent, and histrionic people can fall into a depression, irrationally believe that someone hates them, or develop bitterness towards someone if they are not actively reaffirming their relationship to us. our lack of relationship object permanence can often be triggered by people not contacting us for an extended period of time, acknowledging or interacting with other friends without acknowledging or interacting with us, and especially actively ignoring us.

(seriously, don’t ever intentionally ignore a borderline, dependent, or histrionic person person. when you do that, you are intentionally triggering someone. please understand that nothing feels worse for a person with a cluster b personality disorder than being ignored. i understand sometimes these things can happen by accident, which is ok, but doing it on purpose is nothing short of cruel.)

please be aware of this developmental problem when you interact with us. just understand that if we seem needy or cagey, this is often the reason. most of us aren’t trying to manipulate you, we just literally can’t understand that you still like us unless you give us some active indication of that.

Every Stress Cube comes with six dynamic fidget features, Switch, Flow, Swivel, Compress, Soothe and Twist. Each feature is specially designed to settle uneasiness and keep you focused and stress free.

1. Autism is a fundamental part of who we are and how we experience the world and it cannot be separated from who we are as people. Autism is not something which is clearly separated from our identities and our personalities - it’s something which affects every aspect of how we think about, experience and interact with the world around us. Autism isn’t something we have or something we’re suffering from, it’s something we are. For the vast majority of autistic people, autism is a part of our identity which means that despite common belief most of us prefer to be called “autistic” as opposed to “people with autism.”  Do not tell us that we only have value if we can separate our identities and our personalities from autism.

2. The vast majority of autistic people do not want a cure, we want acceptance and accommodations. Do not put your time and money into researching how to cure autism and how to prevent it, put time and money into accommodating and accepting autistic people. We do not wish to become neurotypical, we wish to change society so that we can be accommodated, accepted and included as autistic people. Our goal isn’t to become as close to neurotypical as possible, it is to get the opportunity to live happy, fulfilling lives as autistic people. It is society that needs to chance, not us.

3. We do not support Autism Speaks or their campaign #LightItUpBlue and neither should you. If you want to support autistic people, check out ASAN or Autism Women’s Network instead. If you don’t know why autistic people don’t support Autism Speaks, check out the many resources linked in this post.

4. Functioning labels are at best inaccurate and at worst actively harmful.  Functioning labels (claiming that some autistic people are “high-functioning” while others are “low-functioning”) do more harm than good, not just because they aren’t able to give you an accurate impression of what supports an individual autistic person needs but because they’re mainly used to either silence or invalidate autistic people. Autistic people who speak up about the issues concerning them are labelled “high-functioning” to invalidate what they have to say as being inaccurate and irrelevant for other autistic people and so-called “low-functioning” autistic people are being silenced and spoken over because they are written off as too ‘low-functioning’ to have nuanced, relevant opinions or even communicate at all. Instead of forcing autistic people into one of two boxes, name the specific issues or strengths that you are referring to when you’re calling them low-functioning or high-functioning. Are they non-verbal? Say that instead of calling them low-functioning. Are they able to manage a job? Say that instead of calling them high-functioning.

5. Non-verbal autistic people can and do learn to communicate using other communication forms than verbal speech and they’re all individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, wants and opinions. You do not get to speak on behalf of non-verbal autistic people. You do not get to assume that you know exactly what they think, want and feel, especially not when you have never made any effort to communicate with any of them. Instead of assuming that you know what non-verbal autistic people think and feel, try listening to what they have to say by reading the words of some non-verbal autistic people such as @lysikan or Amy Sequenzia or Emma Zurcher-Long.

6. Applied Behavior Analysis, the most widespread and well-known therapy for autistic children, does more harm than good. The goal of ABA therapy is to train and force autistic people into hiding their autistic traits by all means possible as if passing for neurotypical should be the goal of all autistic people regardless of what consequences it might have for their general well-being and their mental health. If you don’t see why that is a problem, check out this masterpost by @neurowonderful.  

7. People diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome are just as autistic as people diagnosed with other variants of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Aspergers is autism and to emphasize this, aspergers and other variants of autism have been united under a broader diagnosis called “autism spectrum disorder” in the DSM-5, Back when aspergers was a separate diagnosis, the only difference between whether you got diagnosed with aspergers or autism was whether you spoke before you were three years old - something which says approximately nothing about your struggles and abilities later in life.  The common misconception that aspergers and autism is two different things is just that - a misconception.

8. If you want to learn more about autism, listen to autistic people - not our parents, our siblings, our therapists our or caregivers. Autistic people are the ones who know the most about being autistic, so if you want to learn about autism we’re the ones you should ask. If you want to learn more about the different aspects of autism, @neurowonderful‘s youtube series “Ask An Autistic” is a good place to start. Here is an index over all the episodes so that you can easily find the topic you want to learn about.  You can also visit @askanautistic where autistic people are ready to answer whatever questions you may have about autism.