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Wellness Wednesday for April 22, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I am in my late 30s and I have discovered that I may be somewhat neurodivergent.

Posting on TheMotte

Uh, anon...

Kidding aside, I had my own realization in my early 20s before it was such a common thing, and it was when I read about Dr Asperger's "little professors" and thought "oh shit." Turned out to be more complicated, but unsurprisingly parents in the all-too-common autist/cluster B pairing managed to produce a bunch of weirdo kids.

And really, that would be my main worry about someone figuring it out later in life: that they would've already fallen into the cluster B trap. It sounds like you avoided that, so everything else that stems from your realization can probably be managed.

fallen into the cluster B trap

Been there. Learned my lesson. Never again.

And really, that would be my main worry about someone figuring it out later in life: that they would've already fallen into the cluster B trap.

Do non-diagnosed autists often become narcissists/antisocial/borderline disturbed? Is that what you mean by cluster B trap? If so, how does that work?

No, by trap I mean male autists entering a relationship with a cluster B woman, specifically borderline or histrionic tendencies.

So, why are the autists more susceptible for falling for these women? Because they are more isolated and worse at reading people?

I would suggest for, um, reasons, that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a bigger risk. That thing where they decide that you are The Good Person and then chameleon-cloak themselves to appeal to you is super effective against quokkas.

This is why gatekeeping is super important. "Oh, you're telling me you're really into Curtis Yarvin after I mentioned him? Name 5 kings you'd grant absolute sovereignty."

As you describe it, that sounds more like BPD mirroring, but I'm not a doctor and don't even play one on tv.

The NPD version is more manipulative.