Someone: "Calling someone a #narcissist is #ableist and #abusive to people with #personality #disorders. You see, I have a personality disorder."

Me: "What if the person who abused you did it in such a manner that they played out the symptoms of their personality disorder?"

Someone: "Your reply is why you're part of the problem."

Me: "Are you being serious right now?"

Someone: "Ugh. Fuck off."

As a person who tends to believe that abusive people, regardless of their #psychopathology, do not deserve my #empathy as a #survivor of #trauma, I'm trying really hard not to internalize the following lesson:

People with Cluster B personality disorders who claim that identifying their personality disorder is a form of ableism are using leftist language in order to justify and excuse their abusive behavior.

My last abuser loved using leftist language as a way of silencing the victims of their abusive behavior. They once set a #boundary that no one could claim that their bad #behavior was #manipulative because it was a #trigger for their trauma, which was actually a perverse way of preventing anyone who cared about them from calling them out when they did behave abusively.

Ironically, and disgustingly, the individual about who I'm speaking tonight once convinced me that someone who had abused them had lied about how abusive they were in order to punish them for refusing to be victimized any further. I believed them. Now, I really wonder whether that was ever true. It makes me wonder whether my abuser says that about me, that I was their true abuser. I wonder how many people like me believe them. And I'm really trying not to wonder about such things because it's a waste of energy I could be using to create content and joy.

Anyway, I hate making generalizations, and I really want to believe that even though Western #psychology doesn't know how to help people #heal from any Cluster B personality disorder aside from #BPD (thank you, Marsha #Linehan), that these people are still human beings capable of being more than just scary and dangerous.

I want to believe that. But each time this happens, I believe it a little bit less. I imagine at some point, I'll have to admit that my faith in them was wrong, and I hurt myself repeatedly by believing in people that I never should have believed in.

Gods, I hate it when people cause me to lose faith in them. It feels really fucking awful to fear a group of people for something out of their control. But I also know that I'm forgiving (read: stupid) enough that if I met a new person right now with an official #diagnosis of #NPD, I'd treat them like any other person and be obnoxiously surprised when it turned out they behaved like I should have expected a narcissist to.

There is a confounding factor in that the person I had to deal with tonight claimed to have a personality disorder and also to distrust the mental health system so much that they refused to have anything to do with it. Unfortunately, this means that they were not receiving any kind of #treatment for their #mental #health issues, and this is something that this person has in common with my abuser.

So, maybe a more fair statement than the one above is:

People with Cluster B personality disorders who refuse to engage in any kind of treatment for their mental health and also claim that identifying their personality disorder is a form of ableism are using leftist language in order to justify and excuse their abusive behavior.

This statement allows the individual with the personality disorder to have made a #choice. And that choice, insofar as humans are their behavior towards others, applies not only to personality disorders, but very much to #PTSD and trauma survivors.

To me.

This is why I don't think that I have any place to argue that I was good or deserved positive treatment during my self-serving enabling of others' narcissistic abuse by my abuser. I made a choice, and it was a hard choice not to make, but it was a choice I made. Even if I had no control over the choice, I was still not a safe person to be around because of my loyalty to such a selfish and capricious person. Yeah, I had a #therapist, but I also wasn't great at keeping appointments then (probably for significant, non-time-management-related reasons that I'm only recently beginning to understand).

Compare that to now, when I have few qualms about ending #toxic relationships, a stronger sense of personal #identity, and a supportive and constructive #social #support group. And when I'm seeing a therapist and #psychiatrist regularly and religiously because I understand how much it benefits me and have been consistently #healing from my trauma as evidenced by reports from the people that know me and that see me day in and day out.

As much as I hate making generalizations, I find I'm generally OK with making ones that I can easily and appropriately apply to myself. So that's something.

Oh, for fuck's sake, Nina Paley is on Gammon's transphobia safe space instance. Doing transphobia, as you might expect.

Indeed, every single account I've looked at on glindr.org (server ban recommended, it's a fucking cesspool) is utter hateful garbage, safe the one that keeps asking him how to beat Beaver Bother.

#transphobia #Linehan #gammon #serverblock