• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Cluster B personality disorders have a heavy stigma because of the abusive behaviors so common to the disorders.

    It’s hard to have a neutral conversation about NPD if you have been traumatized by someone with NPD or other PDs. Personally, I will usually distance myself from anyone with cluster B traits to protect myself since those behaviors are very triggering for me. That’s more about me than it is about them.

    I also understand that personality disorders are some of the most painful disorders to have in virtue of the great human pain of the world taking issue with something that you are and can’t easily change. If you’ve got NPD and are in therapy, working on your behaviors, and striving not to harm others with your hurt, that’s commendable!

    When people complain about narcissists, they’re probably complaining about abuse perpetrated by narcissists. It’s an important distinction that isn’t commonly made. Nobody wants to devote care and understanding to somebody they see and unlikely or incapable of reciprocating. But that’s an asshole assumption to make.

    It’s pretty disheartening to see a community that’s big on inclusivity respond judgmentally and FWIW, I’m glad you shared the article. At the same time, I would strive not to take the backlash personally.




  • I think I can see the point of confusion- the reason for illustrating physical sex as a spectrum is that it’s easier to lay out the concept of gender identity as an analogue.

    It’s also possible that gender identity is structural but brains are complicated and linking mechanisms to behavior is hairy.


  • To me it seems like the important question is:

    Why wouldn’t one do something that makes others feel valid/happy/comfortable for so little effort?

    It’s easy to respect name and pronoun preferences and admit when mistakes are made. One needn’t to dive into the full nuance and complexity of trans experience to understand that.






  • Probably by design, to be honest. Jobs tend to be very anti-parent, especially in US states where FMLA is legally protected.

    I’m fortunate to work for a company that has a culture of prioritizing real life so you can do your best work. Sadly, that’s antithetical to next quarter thinking, so it’s not the norm.

    The dumb thing is (in my experience) parents seem to work harder and stay at companies for longer than childless folks. They’re just shorter on free time and need some basic flexibility to address emergent issues. Not to mention being better at teaching and managing in general.





  • It was a really rough time after I got the cPTSD diagnosis because it really changed the context of my life. So my brain, being so very helpful, decided to do a 24/7 stream of my past for reconciliation. Probably not a unique experience so here’s tips I could have used earlier on:

    • mindfulness practice is paramount so that you’re not just like dissociating into oblivion or getting consumed by flashbacks. James Gordon’s “The Transformation” (also printed as “Transforming Trauma”) is pretty solid on the mindfulness stuff, though some of it needs to be taken with like a fistful of salt.

    • sleep hygiene is everything since without it, symptoms are worse and you’re less equipped to cope. Do not be afraid to get psychiatric help if nothing is working. The last thing you want is to be in urgent care after being awake for four days straight.

    • get on some anxiety medication. Helps with the sleep and with having more mental space when flashbacks hit

    • weekly therapy

    • lean on supportive humans in your life. DBT might help stand in if you don’t have those, but you need to be careful that it’s not a group dominated by cluster B personality disorders (I.e. people like your abuser(s))

    • schedule time for soothing activities that you enjoy

    • exercise. Doesn’t have to be extreme, but like try and at least walk for half an hour a day.

    Tl;dr - sleep, mindfulness, therapist, psychiatrist, support of loved ones, self-care, exercise





  • There appears to be a punctuated rejection of more traditional gender roles in current youth. With the concurrent increased visibility of trans people, I can sort of see how someone who is under-informed and fearful of change might blame trans folks for this or perceive them as a threat. There’s no actual reason to think these are causal, but I can kind of see how one could end up seeing it that way.

    Just spitballing, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around where the vitriol toward trans* folks comes from lately. Like yeah, bigotry and lack of understanding, but that kind of dismissal doesn’t lead to understanding or dialogue. Still not sure what is so scary about cultural changes, but there seem to be people who strongly feel that “the way things are/have been” is somehow sacred or important regardless of whether there’s objective rationale?

    As far as whether trans* people necessarily follow gender roles, I haven’t really seen that to be the case in the circles I orbit. Especially since trans and nonbinary aren’t, like, mutually exclusive.

    There is a lot of pressure to conform with gendered expectations in order to “pass” and receive medical treatment, but there’s also lot of exposure to how arbitrary and unimportant gender is as a social construct.

    Does any of that help clarify?



  • I used to be a researcher in hypoxia and wanted to clarify this for folks.

    The way your brain and body detect low oxygen is indirectly via the drop in pH, or increase in acidity, that high carbon dioxide causes. They call this hypercapnia. Without hypercapnia, there’s none of the pain or distress of asphyxiation because your body can’t actually detect oxygen or its displacement directly.

    At 78%, nitrogen is the overwhelming majority of air you breathe.

    After 1-2 breaths of 100% nitrogen, humans lose consciousness.

    This is why working with inert gases is so dangerous - you’ll asphyxiate without even knowing you entered a room without enough oxygen to sustain life. Had to do a whole training to get our liquid nitrogen tank into a smaller animal isolation room for our study for this exact reason.

    If I had to choose a way to die, I’d choose nitrogen displacement without question.