not my usual post, but something that has been on my mind recently is how people (myself included) with mental illnesses/disorders will never be truly accepted or understood by the general public. especially people with incredibly villainized and stigmatized disorders, like aspd and npd for example. it’s so, so incredibly hard for me to research aspd and npd without seeing posts about how they’re evil or abusive, as if having those disorders makes them inherently bad people. in a lot of cases, these disorders can be genetic or formed from prolonged trauma, but the general public just can’t seem to comprehend that.
i’ve been diagnosed with bpd since i was eighteen or nineteen, but i’ve known since i was sixteen. i was hesitant on putting a label on it for a while because that made it much more real, and i didn’t want people to view me differently based on a diagnosis that i can’t control. i’ve learned to stop caring about what people will think about me if or when they learn about my bpd, but for a lot of people with more stigmatized disorders, that misunderstanding from the world is all they’ll ever know.
it can be suffocating, when someone learns about our disorder(s) and then that’s all they’ll see us as. it’s even more suffocating when we try and mask to seem “normal”. i’ve never been more stressed trying to be seen as normal than just being myself, with all of my “flaws”. we shouldn’t have to force ourselves into a box all to make other people feel comfortable. it just doesn’t feel right; why do we have to fit into a premade societal structure that wasn’t built for us in the first place, all so we can be deemed as “normal” human beings? why can’t the general public force themselves out of their comfort zone to try and understand us?
because that would be too hard for them. it’s easier to ‘other’ people with mental illnesses than to try and learn us, it’s easier to say that people with aspd or npd are “monsters” or “abusers” than to sit down with them and learn who they are, not just as someone with that disorder, but as a person. because at the end of the day, people with these disorders are human, and should be treated as such, but unfortunately that’s just not the case, because a majority of neurotypical people view aspd and npd individuals as less than human.
(side note: i use aspd and npd as examples because of just how stigmatized they are. there are plenty of disorders that are incredibly misunderstood and stigmatized, but i take a specific interest in cluster b disorders, as i have a cluster b disorder myself. but there are aplenty of disorders outside of cluster b that are really stigmatized. though this post is mainly centered around cluster b personality disorders, it can be taken from any perspective and cluster.)
i want to touch on the empathy = morality mindset aplenty of people have, as it pertains to pwaspd in particular. people have come to believe that empathy is a learned trait, except it’s not. it’s something you’re born with, and there are different types of empathy, like emotional, cognitive, and compassionate empathy. i have a mix of cognitive and compassionate empathy; i can understand what someone feels and is going through, and will try and come up with solutions to said problems, unless they only want me to listen. normally, i ask what they want from me, and will act accordingly. but i can’t feel what they’re feeling, that’s just how my brain works.
a majority of the time, pwaspd have little to no empathy, but empathy isn’t needed to be a “good person”, they can still feel sympathy or compassion (i’m going based off of the minimal research i’ve done when reading people’s experiences, so anyone with aspd, feel free to correct me or share your experiences), but they don’t have empathy for other people, or they could have cognitive/compassionate empathy.
but a lot of neurotypicals view empathy as something you’re born with, and as soon as they learn someone else doesn’t have it or doesn’t feel it, their own empathy that they claim to have shuts off for said person completely, because they can’t comprehend that empathy ≠ morality. so they immediately assume that a pwaspd doesn’t have any morals, which makes them believe that they are a “bad” person, when that just isn’t the case at all.
on the topic of bpd, it has been incredibly romanticized. there are a plethora of people who say that they’d be able to handle someone with bpd, that they’d love to have someone who is obsessive, but as soon as they learn about the more negative sides of it, they flip a switch and say we’re crazy, manipulative, abusive. they want the “good” without the “bad”. it’s almost laughable how they switch up immediately after witnessing just how bad it can get.
i know i’m rambling at this point, but i needed to get this out there, though there’s a lot more i could say about this topic. i know you may think that this is a pessimistic way of thinking, that people will come around eventually, but i just don’t think so. i think neurotypicals will never be able to truly understand people with stigmatized disorders, and in a way, i think that’s fine. as much as we crave being understood, as much as we can try and get it through their heads, i don’t think they will ever really understand us, so i think all we can do is find understanding in each other.