#JUST ONE FUCKING BREAK

[twistedappletree]

lmaoooo i was all excited to have some money left over after bills and time after work to hangout with friends and i woke up this morning with an absCESS IN MY THROAT???????

[puppppppppy]

who is your favorite AA character? 👁️👁️

ziska… I hope capcom brings her back someday

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

Plain-text version:

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[graye]

Rumors say this is what tipped Anakin to the Dark side.

[heartorbit]

searching for a star that's still unknown to anyone!

[just-null]

wrestling to be the first to greet you (they broke into your house)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Archery Nemesis.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[clouvu]

Nothing in the world belongs to me But my love, mine, all mine

[syrupbitee]

free my boy from his own show he did nothing wrong

[fennelwasp]

Conversation from Bachelor Route

[slymanner]

hurt my heart why dontcha.

[suntails]

toot toot!

[why-the-heck-not]

me, a responsible being, working on the coding project as I should vs. me, a dysfunctional shithead, getting distracted by reading about brains (once aGAIN damnit (it's my favorite "I need to study my field but bc I should do that it's an impossible unthinkable feat now, so I'm reading about something else to fool my brain I'm still being productive"-topic))

[nekrosmos]

May I offer you some NikPrice doodles in these trying times

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

god DAMN are the squirrels aggressive

okay so when I moved in I had my dad do a quick mesh replacement on the screen window in the kitchen, so we can air out the area without every bug in the universe descending upon us, right?

well, throughout the spring summer and fall the squirrels have been tearing their way THROUGH that mesh to get to the fruit bowl we keep on the table next to that window. We now have to all remember to keep that inner window closed if we aren't in the kitchen

earlier today i heard a thump, and, of course thinking it was the household cat knocking something over, got up to go check it out

and i find

this CHONKER of a black squirrel sitting hunkered over the kitchen table trying to horf down as much of an apple bigger than his skull as possible. it'd scrimbled around a bit to start off and knocked over a trash bin, which is what summoned me in the first place

upon seeing me, he scrimbles the fuck back through the mesh hole

...

that apple has been forfeited to the backyard beasts

I have informed my father that we need something way the fuck stronger for that window

[joejhang]

don't y'all just think jeremy knox is on a downhill trajectory. like he's been bottling up emotions and faking smiles and stepping carefully around his family members for at least like four (?) years at this point and even though laila and cat seem to know what happened with him he never really confides in them that we see? he's hiding so much from everyone (including the fucking readers, ok oddly aware narrator) and i think it's all just building up to some implosion.