RPing characters with mental illnesses

[Wayne]

As someone who is diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, DCD, post-traumatic stress disorder, has a history of depression, anxiety, psychosis, and drug/alcohol abuse, and is going to be evaluated for possible schizophrenia, I've been curious about what other people's thoughts and experiences are with RPing characters with mental illnesses.

What do you think of using mental illness as an element in characters that you RP?

[Brovo]

At work at the moment, excuse any typos, but I just had to ask as someone with a mental disorder myself... How do you function?

Aspergers would degrade your ability to understand social situations, adhd would cripple your ability to think straight, DCD is a motor learning disability that is often the precursor to Parkinson's or Cerebral Palsy, PTSD would make you relive horrible traumatic episodes and cause you to have severe panic attwcks in conjuncture with dcd would make you clinically incapable of taking care of yourself...

Depression would at this point be a symptom, not a separate disorder, anxiety as well, and psychosis would make it impossible for you to tell reality from fiction, and disable most if not all of you empathy or sympathy.

Not meaning to be offensive. Its just a rather incredible claim you have there.

As for rping, i will get into detail on that when i get home.

[Wayne]

Brovo said
At work at the moment, excuse any typos, but I just had to ask as someone with a mental disorder myself... How do you function?Aspergers would degrade your ability to understand social situations, adhd would cripple your ability to think straight, DCD is a motor learning disability that is often the precursor to Parkinson's or Cerebral Palsy, PTSD would make you relive horrible traumatic episodes and cause you to have severe panic attwcks in conjuncture with dcd would make you clinically incapable of taking care of yourself...Depression would at this point be a symptom, not a separate disorder, anxiety as well, and psychosis would make it impossible for you to tell reality from fiction, and disable most if not all of you empathy or sympathy.Not meaning to be offensive. Its just a rather incredible claim you have there.As for rping, i will get into detail on that when i get home.

If you really were trying to be offensive, this has got to be one of the shittiest attempts at offending me that I've ever seen.

Good questions. It's anything but easy, but I still function somehow. I can definitely understand your view that this seems too incredible to be real, and I'm really just going off of all the shit that I've seen countless psychiatric appointments and hospitalizations for. Honestly? I have my own reasons to doubt all these labels that have been slapped on me in the argument that I just happen to be a really complex case.

With Asperger's, I was diagnosed with it at the age of 5. I've gotten better at understanding unwritten social rules, but I still find myself in situations where I end up becoming a bit of an annoyance, if not an outright chew toy. It's gotten me in all sorts of shit. With ADHD, thinking straight doesn't come easy to me, and I often find myself a bit hyperactive and with poor impulse control. I also have lots of trouble filtering what I say, and even though my mom and others have suggested to me multiple times that I try and put a filter on what I say, I still don't really heed their advice because either I forget it completely or I just don't care enough at that particular moment to worry about offending anyone. My DCD may not be a full diagnosis with me, but I do have dysgraphia, and I'm also a bit clumsy in my movements too. Writing on paper in school was a major source of stress that often made me miss the bus home. As for PTSD, I was molested by one of my teachers, picked on by numerous other teachers and people in general, and have nearly died on multiple occasions from either suicide attempts or getting the shit beaten out of me by security guards at the hospital. Too much shit for me to talk about in one go. I've been losing lots of sleep lately because I'm still heavily affected by my most recent internment at the psych ward at the hospital, where I was beaten pretty badly, tried to strangle myself, and was then beaten up some more and restrained in a bed for the next 2 days. That was just last month.

Yeah, depression and anxiety are definitely more along the lines of symptoms than full-blown separate disorders. I'm also prone to having psychotic episodes as you've described, as I often find the lines between reality and fiction blurred up until my mom or grandmother or whoever else has to remind me that what happened was not real. And most of the time, as real as they happen to be for me, I just don't know how to explain them, and when I do try to process them through a logical perspective, it just doesn't seem right. And these episodes don't come on as the result of a stressing factor. They just seem to come whenever they please, and it's been making me very disorganized lately. Hence why I don't really RP all that much, as much as I want to just to both have a sort of retreat from my life into collaborative creativity with other like-minded individuals, as well as try and keep myself in my zone of comfort when my episodes start happening. There's also a little bit of a lack of empathy coming on in me, but I'm trying to keep myself from becoming a sociopath as much as I can, as much as my cynicism sometimes tells me that I shouldn't care about other people on the basis that I've gone through lots of shit. But then I remember that lots of people have been good to me too, and that's helped a bit in me retaining my sense of empathy.

As for RPing on my end, I often find myself giving some of my characters mental stuff that I've gone through, whether it needs a label or not, and exaggerating it a bit to allow for tense if not outright stressful character interactions, which I really like playing out in RPs and writing in general.

[Dervish]

The fact you're enduring that horrifying laundry list of horrible conditions and still managing to keep pushing forward with a good attitude is rather commendable. Seriously, loads of respect!

As for the RP question, I occasionally do like to put in mental illness with my characters, although I do my best to understand it and make it as accurate as I can without actually knowing what it's like first hand. The key for anyone doing it, I think, is to be respectful to what you're incorporating into the character and not just using it as a cheap gimmick (kind of like those idiots who pretend they have some kind of mental illness for "street cred" or a "woe is me! Pay attention!" load of horse crap.).

So far, I have two characters who suffer from diagnosable mental conditions, one who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder which often manifests itself as nightmares or vivid flashbacks, and it's brought on my things that remind her of what caused it. Her life kind of fell apart after her military service, her mother didn't know how to cope with this changed girl who came home, and she's been trying to get her life back on track without seeking out medical help because she's way too stubborn and prideful, to various degrees of success. She'll always suffer from it, but everyone has good days and bad days. She tries to keep herself busy and mentally stimulated so she doesn't have much time to think, which sometimes goes back to where she doesn't want to go.

The other is a sociopath, which is way too often confused with psychopath. He's incapable of assigning emotional values to people and things, and a lot of his personality is based around him acting like a goofy and aloof individual with an odd but endearing sense of humour, but it's all an act that's second nature to him because he's been doing it so long, kind of like wearing a mask so people can't see his true self. Not that he really cares what people think, it's just easier for him to do his job if people assume he's not an extremely intelligent and resourceful individual who is cold and ruthless at what he does. It's very much a wolf in sheeps clothing scenario.

It can be a lot of fun writing those characters, and I think if you treat a mental illness as a facet of who they are rather than like I said, a gimmick or a source of cheap drama, it can be very powerful and captivating to read and write.

[Heyitsjiwon]

Tried it once on a different forum. Except a lot of people couldn't seem to detect it cause I was using an unreliable narrator, my character, and everything was from his point of view. I guess my writing wasn't up to par to make people think in the back of their minds that my character wasn't 100% in the mind. I tried to make a Don Quixote-esque character who was suffering from schizophrenia and from delusions/grandiose delusions. However, I tried to make the delusions seem natural and a bit realistic while leaving some small red flags here and there such as reoccurring "NPCs" conveniently showing up one moment and practically disappearing the next. How would you guys try to create a sense of unease and make readers question if the narrator is reliable or not in terms of psychological issues without being obvious?

[Wayne]

Dervish said

It takes a lot of getting used to.

Honestly, it's as hard as fucking titanium to talk about my conditions, but I do it anyways because I've got stories to tell, and because as much as they're hard for me to go through, they also give me lots of insight into how I want to write my characters without them seeming like they're made of cardboard. Give them layers, like onions. Just like real people.

The closest I really have to any real military experience are the 2 years I served in the Calgary Highlanders army cadet corps, so I can't really say that YOU WEREN'T IN 'NAM, MAN. YOU WEREN'T THERE. Besides, I've already partially explained how I got my own PTSD. But one of my buddies in the furry fandom is a former US soldier who operated tanks in Iraq, and he's given me lots of insight into what military life is like, and how it can really affect somebody. Most of the time in the military, it's just training and routines like carrying supplies from one place to the other, and other stuff like that. Do your duty, do this, do that. No questions asked. But when you're out in the danger zone, it's nothing like the action-fantasy fluff you see in fiction. War doesn't just change countries. It also changes the individuals who end up in them, soldiers and civilians alike.

Honestly, I wish I could talk here about my own furry persona, Wayne Travers, but I've just put so much detail into him as a character that I don't even know where to begin to start on telling his story and and what he's like. Can't really organize my thoughts right now. All I can really say is that instead of making him this idealized hunky-curvy Sue like a lot of other furry characters, I've made him into this vision of what an anthro cougar version of me would have been like if I was 30 by now and had it way worse than I already have had. The best way I can really describe his personality is that he's something of a mildly autistic Trevor Philips, but even then I've just put so much thought into him that he could very well be incomparable to other characters.

Mental illness isn't something I play in characters for shits and giggles. Mental illness is something I use to get into the shoes of my characters more easily while still making them more rounded and layered.

[Kaga]

Really I think that if you're going to make a character with mental illness, you need to follow two simple rules: 1) try to be accurate if you're going to label it with a specific term, and 2) don't be an attention whore.

One of my more notable characters that I've had for a long time, tweaked and recycled a couple times is a sociopath. He's incapable of empathy or caring for other individuals. And... that's really all that I've given him in terms of that attribute. I don't think I've ever even technically referred to him as a "sociopath" in the RP, now that I think about it. He just comes off to others as really cold, sadistic and somewhat of a troll - not that he's like that because he's a sociopath, though, those are just other parts of his personality. He also has... I dunno, I guess you would call it a "God complex"? Basically he considers himself a god and is always trying to assume complete control of everything around him - which makes sense considering that, in most incarnations of his character, he usually has an admittedly ridiculous powerset and a whole world he's created, thus putting him only a stone's throw away from being a god. Though in other incarnations where he's less powerful, I guess it falls under the category of delusional. Also, in his latest incarnation, I've given him some early signs of alzheimer's. Every once in a while he has these episodes of memory failure, but, again, I don't think I've ever used the term in the RP. And to the other RPers, he probably just looks like a forgetful person.

Another notable example is a character I made for an RP that fell apart almost immediately after it started, so I never got much of a chance to play her, but I had a lot of fun designing her. Basically the RP had a sort of virtual reality-type setting, and my character was basically supposed to be a glitch in the system. As a result, she had a lot of "mental problems", but I never really labeled any of her quirks with the names of actual mental disorders. Some of them were inspired by real mental disorders, and a few other qualities of hers were just things that I thought would be fun to play. Her awkward social interactions were inspired by autism/aspergers, her emotional instability was inspired by bipolar disorder, etc, but I knew that I wasn't portraying any of these things perfectly accurately - in fact in some cases I intentionally let her traits differ from what I knew the actual disorder(s) looked like. But that was ok, because nothing she had was labeled with the name of a real disorder. They were all just generically lumped under the term "mental disorders", which I explained through the fact that her virtual brain just wasn't wired the right way. And I think that's a good way to get around portraying mental disorders inaccurately, intentionally or not - just don't label it as such. With RP's, you have lots of reasons to justify portraying a mental disorder that doesn't actually exist. And so long as you don't name it as something that you were inspired by or that you think it sort of looks like, then it shouldn't be offensive to anyone. Or, at least, that's my take on it.

Also, I agree that characters with mental disorders can be really fun to play. They let you experiment with a lot of social interactions and characters' thoughts that you wouldn't otherwise get the chance to play through.

[Ellri]

One of the more natural places to explore mental illnesses in RP settings, wethinks would be the World of Darkness. There's one clan of vampire in there that every single member is insane in one or more ways. Among other things like social dysfunction, the character we're working on creating now has both suffered global amnesia and is schizophrenic. Because there's no pattern to the insanity in that setting, you can go with whatever you feel like, so long as the character is dysfunctional in some way.

[Kestrel]

To realistically write a character with mental illness, you must understand that said condition is a core element of who they are and not just an add-on. It affects how you think, perceive, feel and decide every day, every waking minute. To this end it's advisable to do a lot of research to make a believable character, as well as try to keep the number of conditions low as one by itself is often already crippling. For example, a person with ADHD lacks the focus to write a long, coherent response. A character with PTSD is going to be banned from any kind of combat scenario, etc. That's stuff you have to think about when you're writing your character. The more you pile up, the less likely a functional, or even breathing individual comes out of it for you to RP with.

[Wayne]

Kestrel said
To realistically write a character with mental illness, you must understand that said condition is a core element of who they are and not just an add-on. It affects how you think, perceive, feel and decide every day, every waking minute. To this end it's advisable to do a lot of research to make a believable character, as well as try to keep the number of conditions low as one by itself is often already crippling. For example, a person with ADHD lacks the focus to write a long, coherent response. A character with PTSD is going to be banned from any kind of combat scenario, etc. That's stuff you have to think about when you're writing your character. The more you pile up, the less likely a functional, or even breathing individual comes out of it for you to RP with.

Coming from my own experiences, definitely. Mental illness isn't something that's all "oh, he just happens to have it," and it's something that really affects the quality of life of a person. Unless I decided to try something out that I don't have personal experience with, in which case I would do my research, pretty much all the mental illnesses I play out with my characters come from my own experiences with what I have.

Though also from my own experiences, there's also going to be characters that have varying degrees of the severity of their afflictions, or have otherwise learned to cope with their afflictions. If I didn't learn how to cope with all the shit that I happen to have, this thread would have been about how the Mossad are using the RP Guild to brainwash me into communism to make way for humanity's enslavement by the Intergalactic Reptilian Empire at best. At worst, I wouldn't have even been able to join the RP Guild in the first place. Though in which case, the mental health issues would be hidden underneath the outer layers of the character, and not really worth bringing up in a character sheet or other form of introduction. Rather, they would be revealed as the story progresses and the character has the outer layers of their personality peeled off by whatever experiences they go through in the RP that would cause their inner core to be exposed.

You've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. You've met one person with PTSD, you've met one person with PTSD. Likewise for everyone of not just every mental affliction, but also race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, non-religion, and the list goes on. We're all individuals, simple as that.

[Brovo]

Okay, no, stop. I'm sorry just... No. Enough with claiming all these mental disorders. One of these would be enough to cripple you. I know this, personally. Gwazi knows this, personally. A few other people on this forum know this, personally. The vast majority of the time we don't mention it because it's not something that is comfortable to talk about, but since people seem to be believing you, I guess I have to deconstruct just how silly this claim is.

#1: You cannot be diagnosed with multiple disorders under the same family, due to many disorders sharing many similar symptoms. (ex: You couldn't have "PTSD" with "hints of psychosis" or "sociopathy". You couldn't have Bipolar with Depression; depression is a symptom of bipolar. Same goes for mania to the previous example. ADHD's symptom of broken concentration easily fits many disorders. It's one of the go-to disorders to start from before finding something more specific for that reason.)

#2: Psychosis disables empathy and sympathy. It makes it hard to form a coherent line of dialogue. ADHD makes it nearly impossible to write large sums of text without being distracted and forgetting what you were doing. All of these disorders would make you more impatient and more prone to violent or self-defensive outburst.

#3: I'm sorry I still can't get over the part where you apparently got PTSD by being repeatedly beaten in a hospital, and somehow, nobody noticed... In a hospital. Look, some medical practitioners are dicks, sure, but the majority of people who go into the field do so with the intention to save you, and everyone like you. To even pretend that an entire hospital would stand by and let your ass be beaten savagely by security guards for no reason... No. Not acceptable. Not remotely. You need evidence for this kind of claim before anyone should remotely believe you.

#4: It's fine to inquire about mental disorders in RP's, and even to be curious about them, to want to learn about them and try to understand their various symptoms and behavioral mannerisms... But there is no way you would be able to compose a coherent story like that with PTSD. Leave alone ADHD. C'mon man. You don't need to pretend all these disorders, you really don't. It just pisses off people like me and Gwazi, and causes others to look at people like me and Gwazi and go "HEY! YOU ONLY HAVE ONE DISORDER?! Psh! This Wayne guy has like, five disorders, and he's perfectly reasonable and sane! Why can't you be?!" See why lying about this is wrong?

#5: To RP a disorder, Kestrel has it right. Nothing else needs to be said: Do your research, create facsimile, play. I don't mind if you RP someone with a disorder, just get it right. That's all I ask as someone who actually has a disorder.

Alright. Hope that clarifies things for anyone who reads this topic, but just in case, one more time.

You would not be a functional human being if you had a combination of any two of these disorders. You would be, at the very least, clinically incapable of taking care of yourself, and medication would be mandatory just for you to have a remotely coherent thought. Leave alone having twice that many in combination with each other.

[Kaga]

Brovo said
ADHD makes it nearly impossible to write large sums of text without being distracted and forgetting what you were doing.

Pardon me for being pedantic, but I'd at least like to point out that, as someone with ADD (which is basically ADHD without the hyperactivity), writing large amounts of text isn't as impossible as you seem to be making it out to be. Sure, I do get distracted while writing a long response to something and my mind definitely wanders, but I'd hardly call it impossible. Just takes me a lot longer to write one than if I were on my meds.

In fact, if anything, I'd say it's quite possible that my ADD causes me to write longer responses, actually, since due to that I often repeat myself and make the same point over and over, sort of rambling. Basically, it makes it harder to be concise, which makes sense.

I'm not going to argue with you about how it does seem unlikely that one person could have all these - honestly it struck me as unlikely, too - but at least consider the fact that just because he has any one of these disorders doesn't mean he has the most severe case of a disorder. If my ADD was more severe, would I fit your description? Maybe. And while mine isn't that bad, it's still present enough that I have a diagnosis for it and meds that I take - although I don't even take them every day. I'm not even on them right now. :/

[Brovo]

Kaga said
Pardon me for being pedantic, but I'd at least like to point out that, as someone with ADD (which is basically ADHD without the hyperactivity), writing large amounts of text isn't as impossible as you seem to be making it out to be. Sure, I do get distracted while writing a long response to something and my mind definitely wanders, but I'd hardly call it . Just takes me a lot longer to write one than if I were on my meds. In fact, if anything, I'd say it's quite possible that my ADD causes me to write responses, actually, since due to that I often repeat myself and make the same point over and over, sort of rambling. Basically, it makes it harder to be concise, which makes sense. I'm not going to argue with you about how it does seem unlikely that one person could have all these - honestly it struck me as unlikely, too - but at least consider the fact that just because he has any one of these disorders doesn't mean he has the most case of a disorder. If my ADD was more severe, would I fit your description? Maybe. And while mine isn't bad, it's still present enough that I have a diagnosis for it and meds that I take - although I don't even take them every day. I'm not even on them right now. :/

Unlikely? No, it's... Quite literally impossible.

And read what I wrote again, Kaga. Nearly impossible--not outright--and to write large sums of text without being distracted and forgetting what you were doing.

You could totally write a giant paragraph, but you might repeat yourself four times because you got distracted writing something else and forgot what you had previously written. It's not a barrier towards writing large things, it's a barrier towards coherent things--just like my own disorder is a barrier to coherent things.

EDIT

Though, I do see how in hindsight, I might have come across that way. Sorry.

[Kaga]

Brovo said
Unlikely? No, it's... Quite literally impossible.And read what I wrote again, Kaga. Nearly impossible--not outright--and to write large sums of text without being distracted and forgetting what you were doing.You could totally write a giant paragraph, but you might repeat yourself four times because you got distracted writing something else and forgot what you had previously written. It's not a barrier towards writing large things, it's a barrier towards coherent things--just like my own disorder is a barrier to coherent things. EDITThough, I do see how in hindsight, I might have come across that way. Sorry.

No, you're fine. Reading that, I thought you were trying to say that he can't have ADHD because that would mean there's no way he could keep writing long responses on this thread, for instance, but that was me jumping the gun a bit. ^^" I see your point now.

[Wayne]

I'll try and keep this short and sweet. I understand how it can be seen that I'm lying, but I'm trying to be honest and truthful here. Unfortunately, I tend to ramble on in ways that often makes people think I'm lying, so this is by no means new for me. I might have to go over this with my mother, since she more than often tends to be a more reliable source about my conditions than me.

You can probably scratch DCD off the list, and my mentioning of undergoing evaluation for schizophrenia can probably be scratched off the list too. I could be bipolar, but I'll have to see my psychologist about it. Honestly, I have doubts about what the doctors have slapped on me myself, and I'm really just going off of my recollection of what they've told me about, and sometimes my recollection of things isn't as accurate as I would like it to be.

1: The last time I asked about having ADHD I think was around April last year, when I asked my school psychologist about what I was diagnosed with on the papers. And there it was. Asperger's, ADHD, and DD-NOS. Might be good for me to go over them with my psychologist when I see her again.

2: The way I see it, psychosis is the loss of contact with reality. I've got a feeling you might be thinking of sociopathy here. Then again, I have a history of violent outbursts, which is what caused me to get beaten up by the security guards at the hospital and restrained for 2 days. I was holding a plastic cleaning sign because I felt I had to defend myself, and that's how I got tackled down. Beyond that, I've also had violent incidents with my family and with people at school too, and I've gotten too close for my liking to getting charged for assault.

3: The hospital's not really as nice a place for me as it is for other people. I think I've been hospitalised for mental health issues about 8 times since 2009, and none of them have really helped me in any way whatsoever. Even my family agrees by now that I cannot afford another hospital visit for the sake of my own psyche. Beyond the hospital, I've also had experiences with some of my teachers through school, like I've mentioned earlier.

4: As I've said, I could very well not be accurately recollecting what I'm diagnosed with, but I'm not doing it with the intention of lying to be "hip". Unfortunately, relaying information across the internet isn't the same as relaying it to someone face to face, so the potential for interpretations of dishonesty is greater than it would be in real life.

5: And that's what I do. I do my research.

Honestly? We probably all have disorders of some sort. It's probably not so much a case of what we're labelled with that makes it all better or worse, but how much we're able to cope with it all. I hope I've clarified things a bit better here, but if not... well, I'd have to go over it with my mom, and my psychologist when I see her.

[Gat]

As Brovo said, ADD/ADHD is something of a go-to diagnosis before more specific things are pinned down. This is mostly because ADD/ADHD actually has a small laundry list of symptoms itself and you only need a few of them to be diagnosed.
I was diagnosed quite young with ADD for instance, I can typically keep a coherent thought going so long as I concentrate, I do however get distracted relatively easily and need to remind myself to stay on task, this is part of why my desk and monitors are littered with sticky notes.
This particular symptom is pretty much the most common but by far not the only one as many people with no experience with ADD/ADHD believe.
A second notable symptom I have for instance is the inability to filter sound, also quite common but much less well known. You know how most people say they just tune out the sound of traffic or someone talking to them, I'm actually incapable of doing that, which can make focusing on what a person is saying tricky sometimes when there a high level of ambient noise and provides another trigger to the getting distracted part.

Bare in mind of course this is just my experience with a relatively mild case of ADD, I haven't taken meds for it in about 20 years now and have learned to cope with it. there are a number of less common ADD symptoms I apparently don't show signs of, but many of those are shared with other disorders which is why ADD/ADHD is often the first thing doctors come up with to explain symptoms of a disorder.

[Wayne]

Gat said
As Brovo said, ADD/ADHD is something of a go-to diagnosis before more specific things are pinned down. This is mostly because ADD/ADHD actually has a small laundry list of symptoms itself and you only need a few of them to be diagnosed. I was diagnosed quite young with ADD for instance, I can typically keep a coherent thought going so long as I concentrate, I do however get distracted relatively easily and need to remind myself to stay on task, this is part of why my desk and monitors are littered with sticky notes. This particular symptom is pretty much the most common but by far not the only one as many people with no experience with ADD/ADHD believe.A second notable symptom I have for instance is the inability to filter sound, also quite common but much less well known. You know how most people say they just tune out the sound of traffic or someone talking to them, I'm actually incapable of doing that, which can make focusing on what a person is saying tricky sometimes when there a high level of ambient noise and provides another trigger to the getting distracted part. Bare in mind of course this is just my experience with a relatively mild case of ADD, I haven't taken meds for it in about 20 years now and have learned to cope with it. there are a number of less common ADD symptoms I apparently don't show signs of, but many of those are shared with other disorders which is why ADD/ADHD is often the first thing doctors come up with to explain symptoms of a disorder.

Yeah, and I asked my mom about it, and she says that Asperger's, ADHD, and DCD are what I'm diagnosed with, which in turn can cancel out other things I've been rambling about. However, she's also said that it might not be entirely accurate, hence why I'm going to see my psychiatrist again.

Distraction is a problem for me too. This is why I don't RP that much, because I far too often find myself drifting off into something else when I intended to do research for something I was going to RP. In school, I've gotten really bad grades because I couldn't concentrate hard enough on what I'm supposed to be doing at the given time. Noises also play into the distraction part for me too, and it's intensely hard for me to concentrate when there's air conditioners running in the background or when people are talking around me.

It's cleaning day for me today, so I'm not able to elaborate on what I'm talking about as much as I could be when things aren't as busy.

[Tydosius]

I have Asbergers syndrome, and I can tell you that there is more to AS than what it says on the tin, so to speak.

For one, a quick way to get on the nerves of someone with AS is to tell them 'just be yourself' in a social situation.

Also, I would not say AS is an illness, but a difference. AS also gives perks as well.

[Wayne]

Tydosius said
I have Asbergers syndrome, and I can tell you that there is more to AS than what it says on the tin, so to speak.For one, a quick way to get on the nerves of someone with AS is to tell them 'just be yourself' in a social situation.

Exactly. I personally think that rather than a diagnosis being a be-all end-all, it's bound to be a different experience for everyone with said diagnosis.

I feel the same way, honestly. I'm told to just be myself, and then when I be myself, people hate me. But I'll be myself whether people like it or not, because fuck people.

EDIT: Yeah, I personally think that Asperger's is more a difference than an illness, but oh boy does it ever leave us aspies more prone to mental illnesses.

[Tydosius]

Wayne said
I'm told to just be myself, and then when I be myself, people hate me. But I'll be myself whether people like it or not, because fuck people

This.

EDIT: Do you mind if I use this as my signature?