Accidental portrayal of clinical conditions

[djourner]

So recently I was chatting with a personal friend of mine about my characters mental health.

I am a not a mental health professional and have a passing understanding of the conditions, and I won't say i can diagnose them. But my story deals with a lot of issues intentionally, of the main trio, Vernon could be easily classified as bipolar, Azreth has ADHD, and Grey suffers from PTSD, and all of these are important parts of who these characters are.

The subject of the matter was Azreth, who is often not just portrayed as ADHD but also has several other tendencies that I'm not qualified to analyze... As we were discussing him a friend of mine accused (just joking) that I was writing HIM on the story and that all he was missing was a Borderline personality.

Of course I did not intentionally write my friend into my novel, as first and foremost I am very careful not to do that, and second we've met early february, and all i've posted so far has been written last year. But when we started talking we quickly realized Azreth fit him a bit more than expected... And when he asked a couple of questions he metioned Azreth not only fit the borderline description, but also fit 90% of the simptoms to the letter.
So yeah... Apparently I have been writing a character with Borderline, Adhd and a tiny bit of a psycho for good measure (but don't worry he is a good guy when you get to know him well enough).

My question is... Did you guys ever write a character and later found out they fit into a specific condition you didn't know about? physical or mental!
What was that like? Did you feel a need to rewrite? Were you proud of your accidental portrayal of a clinical condition? Did it reveal something about your own person or someone you know in the process?
I can't possibly be alone in this, can I?

[ApplesOverIndia]

You're not alone! I started a story when I was 12 with a main character who was extremely suspicious of literally anyone, experienced flashbacks when faced with things from her childhood, was always looking out for danger, etc. I recently (10 years later) went back and completely rewrote the story, but kept most of those things. It wasn't until I wrote her first actual flashback before I realized I had given her PTSD, to the letter. I didn't even know PTSD was a thing that existed when I first wrote this character! And yet, when I looked up a list of symptoms, that was exactly it. I did a little digging into actual treatments and how flashbacks really work to make sure it stayed somewhat true to life, but I didn't end up changing all that much.

[AmysGames]

I'm usually intentionally vague about any mental illnesses my characters might have, because I just write whatever feels natural for the characters, and I don't want to accidentally give a false impression of an actual mental illness. But I've definitely found myself getting eerily close to reality, haha.

[TheOddFungi]

My female protagonist has ADHD. I didn't realize this until I myself found out I have ADHD and realized that I had written those traits into her (mostly because I didn't know how else to write a female character when I first wrote her). And while not a clinical condition, my male protagonist is asexual (demi-sexual maybe?). Yup, found this out after I learned I was asexual. He may also come off as being bipolar or even having DID (dissociative identity disorder) but that is not the case.

I feel like we as writers tend to subconsciously write into our stories stuff we may not even quite recognize about our environments not only outwardly, but in our heads as well.

[Colours_dont_match]

A lot of artists I know (including myself) have mental illnesses. As artists also like to invent characters that somehow represents aspects of their own personality it absolutely makes sense that their characters then often also have parts of their mental illnesses too, I guess.

[djourner]

@ApplesOverIndia
I can say I had a similar experience, I found myself talking to that friend and asking him a lot about bordeline and how to keep the portrayal accurate... I mean, if it is already there, might as well expand on it right?

@AmysGames
Inside the story I never straight up admit these things, at some point I might, but not anytime soon... I don't want to disrespect the people who live with these conditions by stating these things, I too just write what feels natural and real and sometimes (especially on a story about mental health) you stumble on very real concepts.

@ZakuraTheFungi
Hey! Welcome to ace/demi club ^^
I myself am demi, and in the first version of my story I was still figuring it out, so the MC actually ended up being demi as well without me even realizing it.
Now that I have reboted the story (started early last year and still going) I made him into a proper demi, and gave that side of his personality a lot more depth.
So it actualyl was a very positive experience for me, and him ^^

@Colours_dont_match
I can safely say I took a lot of inspiration from my own experiences when writing, my opnion on this is that it is impossible to completely dissociate ourselves from our work, its best to actually acknowledge that and try and mitigate as opposed to denying it.
Does make me wonder if I myself have some of the problems I wrote me characters to have... I already know some of them to be true, but like, what about the stuff that I dont know they have? xD