How My Personality Has Evolved Over the Years

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today, in her Sunday Poser, Sadje asks us how we’ve changed, personality-wise, as we’ve grown up.

The first way in which I’m far different from what I was like as a teen, is my self-expression. I am much, much more open about myself and my inner world than I was when I was younger.

Oh wait, I need to nuance that statement slightly. There, after all, was a time in my late teens and early to mid twenties, during which I was more open about myself than I am now. On my first blog, which I started as a diary in 2002 and moved to WP in 2007, I probably showed a little (a lot) more of myself than would be considered normal. Also, no-one probably remembers that I had my current blog URL for a few months in 2011 too, but I do. I particularly remember with a sense of shame a post one of my alters wrote just after I got married saying my spouse probably doesn’t even love me. Well, now nearly fourteen years on I’m convinced that my spouse does love me, but even if I didn’t think so, a public blog wouldn’t be the place where I’d spill my guts.

I do believe that, even though I was extremely private as a teen, the willingness to share my thoughts was always there. I just didn’t trust my audience at the time, ie. my parents and teachers. Now trusting the whole world isn’t necessarily safer, which is why I’m no longer as candid as I was even seven years ago when I started this blog.

Another way in which I’ve changed, which might be related to the above, is that I’m generally more outspoken and assertive than I was as a teen. I still oscillate between passive and aggressive a lot in daily interactions, but where it comes to major life decisions, I’m not as dependent on the approval of others as I was.

Lastly, I’ve probably become less judgmental than I was in my teens. I’ve also become less arrogant. I mean, back then I looked down on people with intellectual disability or those who were less educated than I was in general. It did take me having to rely on the care system myself in order to change that.

As a result of being less judgmental towards others, I have also become less hard on myself. That doesn’t mean that the voice telling me I should be able to live fully independently, isn’t there anymore. I am however able to channel that voice into prioritizing my need for self-determination.

A Time I Decided to Speak Up for Myself

Posted on by Astrid

The weather has cooled off some, but I’m still somehow lacking motivation to do much. For this reason, I scrolled aimlessly through some journaling prompt books I have in my Kindle app. In one of them, one of the prompts that caught my eye was to recall a time when you spoke up for yourself.

I am usually not one to speak up for myself easily. Especially not when the person I’m needing to advocate to is an authority figure. The memory I’m going to describe involves my last psychologist at the psychiatric hospital.

She was somehow convinced that I have dependent personality disorder. There are good reasons to think so, but her reasons were not among those. To put it bluntly, she thought I misused care.

More importantly than her diagnosis of DPD though was her removing my autism diagnosis that I’d had for nine years. She believed that I could not possibly be autistic because I had a brain bleed as an infant and that instead my diagnosis should be some form of brain injury. She ended up putting hydrocephalus (which I’d developed as a result of the brain bleed) on axis III of the DSM-IV classification and that apparently should suffice in explaining my difficulties. That plus, of course, DPD. Well, it didn’t.

Like I said, I have trouble sticking up for myself. This is indeed a DPD criterion. Honestly I don’t even care whether I might have DPD actually. I can see how I have some traits. But DPD is different from care misuse. And that’s what my psychologist was accusing me of.

So I finally decided to stand up for my rights and demand an independent second opinion. This was extremely hard and my psychologist had been successfully trying to talk me out of it before. Not this time though. In February of 2017, I had an appointment with a clinical neuropsychologist at Radboud university medical center in Nijmegen. Three months later, on my would-be discharge date from the mental hospital, I got my autism diagnosis back.

Autism, of course, doesn’t explain everything I experience. I might have DPD too. And God knows what else. But I don’t misuse care.

My psychologist, interestingly, claimed that I spoke up for myself really well. That’s a rather contradictory statement to the DPD diagnosis. After all, dependents are often seen as passive. I still wonder why she didn’t have the balls to “diagnose” me as a malingerer.

Verbalize Your Needs: Assertiveness as Self-Care #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to my letter V post in the #AtoZChallenge. Okay, I already posted a V post and originally didn’t want to write another one for this challenge or at least not so soon after posting my earlier post. However, I had a topic in mind already. Today, I’m going to write about using assertiveness as self-care.

Assertiveness is nothing more than sticking up for yourself appropriately. It doesn’t mean aggressively dictating how others need to treat you. Like, I am always reminded of a scene in the first Adrian Mole book by Sue Townsend, in which he desccribes that his mother went to an assertiveness training for women only and started to rigidly divide all household chores evenly between his father, herself and Adrian. Well, that’s not how it works.

Assertiveness also doesn’t mean passively agreeing to everything someone else says even if you don’t. I have a tendency to do that and then to complain to other people about the person’s behavior. That’s passive-aggressive.

In order to resolve interpersonal disagreements, I like the DEAR MAN approach from dialectical behavior therapy. DEAR MAN stands for:

D: Describe. Describe the situation as objectively as you can in order to get on the same page with the other person about what you’re actually talking about.

E: Express. Tell the other person how you feel and what you think. Use “I” statements and take responsibility for your stance.

A: Assert. This is where you verbalize what you need or want or don’t want. Be as clear as you can be. Don’t expect the other person to know what you mean if you’re vague.

Remember, we all have different love languages (which apply to friendships and family relationships too). Say your partner’s main way of expressing love is through kind words, but you prefer physical touch. Then you will consistently feel disappointed if they keep saying “I love you” without touching you. State clearly that you want your partner to hug you more often. COVID-19 permitting, they’ll most likely be happy to do so.

R: Reinforce. This means to reward the other person for their behavior. Sounds weird, right? You know you are not dealing with a 5-year-old who gets candy for eating his veggies. Okay, sometimes you are, but in this post I’m mostly talking about relationships between equals. However, what I mean is simply to focus on the positive you want instead of the negative behavior the other is showing you. Often we tend to react negatively in times of conflict, such as by yelling or threatening or withholding our affection. I definitely do. Instead, express how the other person’s changing behavior makes you feel more appreciated, respected or loved.

M: Mindful. Be present and in the moment. Don’t bring up past grievances. I’m often guilty of bringing past stuff into conflicts.

A: Assertive. Stay calm, make eye contact (if possible), keep an even voice. Don’t shout or threaten. It’s okay to express emotions, but let your words express your needs or wants.

N: Negotiate. Once you’ve done all these previous steps, it’s time to let the other person express their reasons for possibly not changing. You need to listen to these mindfully. If you can’t negotiate or you come to an impasse, it may help to ask the other person how they would react if they were in your situation. If nothing else works, you can always agree to disagree.