HOME | DD
CassidyPeterson — Know What It Means
Published: 2010-11-15 01:25:55 +0000 UTC; Views: 5409; Favourites: 368; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
Inspired by one of ~alaska-is-a-husky 's stamps.
People assign all sorts of mental & emotional disorders to their OCs with no idea about what it means. Depression does take a back seat to partying. ADHD affects hobbies and emergencies just as severely as they affect homework. Eating disorders can have long-term effects that linger even after the disorder itself has been controlled. Obsessive-compulsives can have severe anxiety attacks if their "rules" aren't followed.
Unspecified disorders are fine, but if you're going to say it's a specific disorder, then the symptoms should be consistent.
On the other hand, hypochondriacs probably shouldn't research these things too thoroughly...
As with a few of my other stamps, yes, this is something I've been guilty of in the past as well. I now have considerably fewer characters with specific disorders. Partly because I keep convincing myself I have everything I research, partly because I'm just lazy as a writer.
Related content
Comments: 137
Oh, yes, if they've got a disorder they're capable of masking, that's fine. It's when they've got a disorder that doesn't affect them at all despite the disorder being defined by its effects that there's a problem.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Gagh, this annoys me so much. I have severe OCD - and yes, it has been confirmed by psychologists that I definitely have OCD as a form of anxiety, as well as general anxiety - and it annoys me so much when people say "OH REALLY I HAVE THAT TOO HAHAHA" when honestly, they have no idea what that even means. I'm not saying everyone is a lier, but for instance, one person said to me "I HAVE OCD BECAUSE I CRY A LOT." and I'm like...you do realize that OCD is severe perfectionism as well as other things such as repetitive actions...it's not crying. And they are all like "YAH BUT IM SUUURE I HAV IT. I DIAGNOZED MYSELF."
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
I also used to have a customer with OCD who would request that I seal his bags with the store's logo stickers - one to keep each corner down, one in the center to keep anything from wiggling out, and they all had to be facing the same way. He also refused to take nickels, dimes, or pennies, so almost every time he paid in cash he'd leave some of his change behind.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Oh wow. That's pretty bad...when things are off center for me, I just try to fix it if I can, then try not to stare at it and I close my eyes while concentrating on breathing, and imagine it being perfect. I kind of have to deal, which is why I've been in therapy for a while, because my parents like having things off center. I don't need them to all be straight, but everything has to be angled in a certain way.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yeah, apparently he had a panic attack one day when his friends went a little too far in turning stuff in his room around.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Is he on meds or in therapy? Because geez, he needs both. I'm on meds so I've only recently had mini panic attacks, but I almost had one today when someone was writing with chalk. I don't know why, or if that really has to do with my OCD, but chalk--just looking at it--makes me want to suffocate. Imagining it is pretty bad, too. Touching it...especially with my nail...gahhh.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I'm pretty sure he was in therapy. I haven't seen him for a few years, as I moved away back in 08.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ah, that makes sense.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Yeah. My sister and a friend of a friend both have OCD. My sister's is pretty mild but she gets really annoyed when things are uneven, while the friend of a friend actually hurt somebody because they'd stuck something to their forehead off-center and she clawed at them trying to get it off. Fortunately it was just a scratch, but she could have gotten their eye.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ooh...I've done things like that before. And people get mad at me, when, say I step on their foot once by accident, and then I "accidentally" step on their other foot...they think I'm a jerk or whatever.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Agreed, thank you! I've studied psychology n all, so some mental and emotional disorders that are improperly portrayed or inconsistent make me wanna rip my hair out sometimes
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
If you're going to give your character a disorder or whatever, PLEASE at least research it...
I'm so glad you made this stamp. So glad...
I try not to overuse disorders (working on limiting on them because they tend to get rather cliched) but when they DO I want to be as knowledgeable as I can. Of course, my characters are constantly changing, so things are constantly going back to the drawing board. (I'm lazy as well, so I know where you're coming from xD)
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I just go with listing the symptoms instead of the actual disorder, most of the time. Giving a character some outrageously rare disease isn't going to mean much if nobody knows what that disease actually is... so saying "they've got [x] & [y] symptoms" is so much simpler, plus it leaves room for interpretation over why.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That's actually a rather bright idea. 
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
As a psychology student, this drives me absolutely mad. Most of them I can sort of forgive, but...
If I hear one more person say someone has Schizophrenia when the actually have Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder, though it was recently changed to Dissociative Identity Disorder), I am going to hurt someone.
They. Are not. The same. Freaking. THING!!!
( ^ probably my biggest pet peeve EVER)
👍: 0 ⏩: 3
Really? I didn't know that. Even though it's changed, I'm still gonna call it Multiple Personality Disorder because the person displaying the symptoms seems pretty fitting.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Well, it was changed because Multiple Personality Disorder wasn't as accurate as it could be, even though externally it might look like multiple personalities is what's going on. Our personality is a part of our identity, but it's not our whole identity. And with DID, it's not just one person with 2 or more personalities, it's one person with 2 or more distinct identities, which may or may not be aware of each other (often there is at least 1 alternate aware of the other identities while the rest - including the core identity - aren't aware of the others), and are generally unable to interact or communicate directly. And it's often caused by - and aids in - dissociation. The classic example is of a child being abused who pretends to be someone else so as to dissociate themselves from what's happening. Eventually, the person they pretend to be might (it's extremely rare) develop into its own identity, allowing the core identity to be completely dissociated from anything stressful, and unaware of what's going on.
That said though, it's a recent enough change that most people in psychology won't jump on you for calling it MPD (they might give a friendly reminder that it's now called DID though), and will often continue to call it MPD - or at least reference the name change - when talking to anyone who might not know about psychology.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ah, I see.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Funny thing is, I didn't know the two were ever confused with each other until I was researching schizophrenia after making this stamp!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yeah, I don't think it's as common a mistake now, but there were movies from a few years back that make the mistake, and of course, everyone believes what they see in movies 
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
None of my ocies have disorders 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yeah, my OC's disorders fuck them up.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I've been researching fetal alcohal syndrome (but still can't spell it to save my life lol) for over a month, but even in just 5 minutes of initial research disproves all the fanfics with no research done at all.
WTF. Does ANYONE do research anymore? This stamp is awesome!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I did some deep research for a hermaphrodite character (now pseudo-hermaphrodite post-research) and it was the most traumatizing 4 hours of my life... I kinda wish I didn't but i'm mostly glad I did. I hate making a character with something that I don't know about.Once learned an entire sport for a character that laster less than a week.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Haha, none of my characters are athletic at all, because I have no attention span for sports concepts.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
me too, I just end up getting a bit obsesively diverse with my character creation, so I end up researching things I don't care for or even sometimes hate. It's a vicious circle.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
THIS SO MUCH
I love researching disorders, more fun if you can do them accurately
I have so many disorders I used XD; But I try to do them correctly --- It's more interesting that way
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thank you. So much.
I've been researching D.I.D. for several months in order to really get down what it means, and I'm still not confident enough to actually write the character I'm researching it for yet /:
It just makes me so angry when people slap down a character with some random disorder without having ever researched it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
None of my characters have any sort of disorder besides fictional in there own universe, but I can understand where you are coming from.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I have one schizophrenic and one transgendered character, but I used to have characters with problems all across the board.
One even had rabies!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ahahaha, well I'm curious to see the characters now.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
[link]
The schizophrenic is the one on the left
[link]
This be the trans character
[link]
No good pix of the one with rabies, so here's her daughter instead. Same basic idea, only bigger and crazier.
Most of my characters' problems aren't too obvious. I've got one with some vague bone disorder, but it's mostly internal so aside from awkward posture there are no outward symptoms.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The reason none of my characters have any type of disorder is due to the fact that the "Creator" once created our Earth and eventually it was destroyed by mass nuclear warfare, knowing this, he found a different planet and created two beings directly from his person, known as "Genesis" and "Mary". They where perfect beings to the physical extent, no faults, no illness, the perfect immune system. Ofcourse, they began to imbreed. Millions of years pass until five races of Heran(What Genesis and Mary are known as) where formed. The Takguri,Takgalva,Megihumans,Demihumans, and Dracovins. These five different species have different traits. Megihumans and Demihumans do have real disorders as their ancestors did long ago(humans). The Takguri have disorders also, but not too the variety that the "humans" do.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
<= Prev |