#Specific Phobia Disorder

[crimsonprayer]

unfriendly reminder that phobias are actually considered anxiety disorders and not just a fun word for fears

[its-liammm]

We should start gatekeeping the word phobia from neurotypicals

[selectivechaos]

do not laugh at people for uncommon phobias

your phobias are not embarrassing. people can have phobias of absolutely anything, and they can be really precise and something that other people would think is strange to be scared of. your fears are valid feelings. you shouldn't have to be ashamed, but many people do not know about phobias beyond the common ones.

if it's something you don't understand because you've never seen it before, don't laugh at it.

they're not "being silly",

they can't "just get over it"

they need actual help, rather than unprofessional exposure therapy

they're experiencing real real fear

people with common phobias get sympathy; people with uncommon phobias get ridiculed at the worst possible moment: when they're in a state of fear.

so i repeat: don't laugh at them. 🌹🌹

[themogaidragon]

I have to ask can people who have GAD use this flag?

Yes! This flag represents anxiety disorders, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder.

The other anxiety disorders are: social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder (PD), specific phobia (SP), agoraphobia (AG), separation anxiety disorder (SAD), health anxiety/hypochondria (HA) and selective/situational mutism (SM). They often overlap. :) /infodump

[zoonibloom]

being afraid of something does not mean you have a phobia of it — please recognize that there is a difference between being scared vs. the debilitating terror that comes with having an anxiety disorder, because that’s what a phobia actually is

[bootlegdvdmenu]

Having actually met and talked with other people who have OCD now I'm wondering if there genuinely is some sort of link between the disorder and having emetophobia or if it's just coincidence.

[gayhenrycreel]

as it turns out i have eurotophobia and no it is not why or because im gay. its horrible being trans. im scared of my own body beyond just dysphoria. how do i tell my therapist about this. -Henry

[ednygmasbowlerhat]

I don’t know how to explain having a phobia to mentally well people. Like I am consciously aware that it is completely irrational but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t ruin my day when I encounter my phobias out in the world

Like I have emetophobia and I was out to dinner with my family and my dad started to feel sick. I was upset and started internally freaking out because I had already eaten which means if he has something contagious and I got it I’d have to throw up. But I try to just stay calm because whenever I react to someone else’s illness with fear my family thinks I’m being selfish and unempathetic but I literally can’t help it. So I’m silently playing with my a fidget and not eating and my moms like what is wrong with you and I was just trying not to have a meltdown in a restaurant so I wasn’t really able to speak.

Whenever I get anxious. My mom gets so concerned because she doesn’t want me to be in distress and it’s super sweet but it’s also hard because I just don’t know how to tell her that there’s nothing she can do and it’s fine.

[lodane]

when people say "mental illness doesn't make you act XYZ, (implied: that's just someone being a bad person). i have that same mental illness and I don't XYZ (implied: because i'm a good person)."

like... yeah, good for you? some people use illness as an excuse, but sometimes it's just the reason. i lash out, i'm paranoid, i catastrophize, and can really ruin a family vacation with a meltdown.

i do work to be better, i take my meds, i do what my doctors tell me, but at a certain point we're just gonna have to accept that some of this is who i am...

...and that point might be when the filters finally fail from dementia, letting the intrusive thoughts win the war, and i'm an old lady saying absolutely wack shit to the orderly.

not to mention if someone wants to date me? it's literally irresponsible for me to let someone engage me in romantic relationships, because being around me causes collateral damage. according to random strangers on the internet: that's tantamount to abuse... and i don't want to be an abuser.

boy, this mental illness stuff is a real pickle, huh?!

I think any reasonable perspective on mental illness needs to include the fact that it can make you really fucking unpleasant to be around, and honestly it would be kind of odd if that wasn’t the case.

[steampunk-raven]

OH in other news: I finally told my mom I have haphephobia

[artisticdivasworld]

Exploring the Various Forms of Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is a natural response to potential threats or challenging situations. However, when anxiety becomes chronic and disproportionate to actual threats, it may indicate an anxiety disorder. These disorders are diverse, each with distinct triggers and symptoms. Diverse Forms of Anxiety Disorders Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Individuals with GAD experience persistent, excessive worry,…

[transmutationisms]

I have always been wary of the psychiatric industry, but its only very recently that i started to read anti-psychiatric works. Your blog is the first time i saw that the "chemical imbalances causing mental illness" is a myth, and honestly its something im having a hard time wrapping my head around.

Is it that mood regulation struggles, labelled as a mental illnesses, has more to do with outside factors instead of the person "just being that way"? Is it therefore unlikely for someone to have struggles with mood regulation if they cant identify any external causes that would cause them to be, for example, extremely agoraphobic or to have anger management issues? Im asking this for myself mainly, cause i always had intense agoraphobia no matter how i often go outside my home (in fact it was worse when i was a teen and i was outside the house in even more back then). I cant think of any reason for me to be like this than chemical imbalances in my brain.

the specific 'chemical imbalance' myth i was talking about in this post is the idea that depression is caused by low serotonin, and that therefore SSRIs—serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, ie drugs that cause a higher level of serotonin in the brain—ought to cure or at least ameliorate depression. this conjecture is belied by the fact that SSRIs don't, at a population level, reliably perform better than placebo.

although a neurobiological cause of 'mental illness' has long been the holy grail of psychiatry, the serotonin imbalance myth is far from the only hypothesis that psychiatrists and neuroscientists have proposed. so, a critique of the serotonin myth is not synonymous with, or generalisable to, a critique of every neurobiological mechanism purported to explain psychiatric diagnoses. you may be interested to know, though, that genomics and neuroscience have not identified a biological cause of any psychiatric diagnosis (p. 851).

all human experiences are biologically instantiated, including in the brain and wider nervous system. we are embodied beings. however, it is a leap to assume that such instantiation is automatically equivalent to a causal explanation or disease etiology. in other words, to deny that psychiatric diagnoses are known to be biologically caused does not mean we deny that thoughts and thought patterns express in the physical matter of neuroanatomy. this is a major philosophical sticking point to keep in mind whenever you're looking at something like, eg, a study that purports to show 'brain differences' in those assigned a certain psychiatric diagnosis. another thing to consider is whether these papers are plagued with methodological issues or financial conflicts of interest.

i can't possibly tell you why you exhibit agoraphobia. however, when i talk about social, economic, and environmental factors that may contribute to the patterns of behaviour labelled as 'mental illness', i'm talking about much more than the individual choice to leave your house. since phobias are 'anxiety disorders', i might start by probing into questions like: is the world you live in safe? do you perceive it as safe? do you or your community face existential threats that may confront you more obviously when you go outside? are you nervous around other people, and if so, might that be connected to fears (well-founded or not) about interpersonal violence and harm? do you think any of these anxieties may be connected to the hostility and inaccessible design of the social environment and economic conditions?

human behaviour and thought varies. some of those variations may be totally benign; others may be helpful or harmful to the person living with them. it would be weird if every single one of the 8 billion people on earth experienced precisely the same amount of anxiety about any situation, no? all of this is to say: yeah, it's entirely possible you have been, for one reason or another (genetic, neuroanatomical, social, &c) predisposed to experience high, even debilitating levels of anxiety when leaving your home. most human characteristics develop from a tangle of social, environmental, material causes—ie, from a combination of 'nature' and 'nurture'. what doesn't follow, though, is the claim that there is therefore a discrete, 'diseased' element of your brain or brain functioning that can simply be cured or eliminated through psychiatric intervention.

it is a critical point of anti-psychiatry to challenge psychiatric and neuroscientific claims to neurobiological determinism where psychiatric diagnoses are concerned. this is for many reasons, including: a) that these claims have not been demonstrated to actually be true [see above]; b) that they rob pathologised people of agency and self-determination [see: you're too sick to know you're sick, and the doctor will fix you now]; c) that they are often pushed by pharmaceutical companies with financial interests, or grant-funded researchers with... financial interests; d) that they are politically seductive in various eugenic, hereditarian discourses that seek to eliminate the biologically 'unfit' element from society.

[gatheringbones]

[“As I have outlined earlier in this book, the institution of psychiatry does not work in a vacuum, somehow above the everyday norms and values of wider society; rather, they are a profession with a particular conservative zeal for upholding the current social order through their work. When behaviour becomes unacceptable to the needs of capitalism, the profession seeks to pathologise such deviance. This process does not happen overnight but through a progression of debate, research, and movement towards a collective focus on such areas.

In this case, the research on shyness from Philip Zimbardo (1977)—the former president of the American Psychological Association—is seen as key towards the development of social phobia as a category of mental illness. Significantly, his research did not suggest that shyness was a mental illness, but rather noted a concern that people with such characteristics were likely to be seriously disadvantaged as society began to change. Zimbardo (1977: 5, emphasis added) commented on the “condition,”

Shyness is an insidious personal problem that is reaching such endemic proportions as to be justifiably called a social disease. Trends in our society suggest it will get worse in the coming years as social forces increase our isolation, competition, and loneliness. Unless we begin to do something soon, many of our children and grandchildren will become prisoners of their own shyness.

The traits of shyness—including timidity, mistrust of others, and a lack of self-assertion (Zimbardo 1977: 13)—were conceptualised as increasingly problematic within contemporary society and therefore a justifiable focus for psychiatric activity. This is tacit acceptance that such behaviour has not been found to be a mental disorder as a result of rigorous testing but rather is socially dictated and culturally relative; shyness becomes a “social disease” (i.e., a social deviance) in need of treatment. Thus, “the rise of social phobia,” states Cottle (1999: 25),

offers a glimpse not so much at the anatomy of a specific illness as at the still inherently subjective nature of psychiatric medicine and the cultural forces that help draw the boundary between what we are told to think of as normal and what we are told to consider pathological.

Concerned with the need for workers to conform to the desired norms and values necessary to “succeed” in neoliberal society, the psy-professions have stigmatised and “othered” those once considered only shy, introverted, or reticent co-workers. This process of psychiatrists labelling the shy as mentally ill has also been previously highlighted by Scott (2004: 133) who acknowledges that, in comparison, the non-shy self,

embodies the cultural values of contemporary Western societies: ambition, assertiveness, competitiveness and individualism. This dominant ideal can be used to stigmatize those who fail to live up to such expectations, whose difference is attributed to individual pathologies rather than to an unrealistic cultural ideology.

The success of psychiatric hegemony here is that since the original construction of social phobia in 1980, workers have become more inclined to self-label and entertain the possibility of therapy and drug treatment for their failure to be more sociable and assertive at their place of work. This situation has further legitimated the extension of the psy-professions in the areas of unemployment, job training, and work, reinforcing the neoliberal focus on the self as the site of change, while simultaneously depoliticising the increasingly alienating work environment and constant pressures on employees to upskill and be “more employable” in the jobs market (see Elraz 2013). Through the pathologisation of such “non-sellable” traits, Lane (2007: 208) argues that what counts as acceptable behaviour within the population has been narrowed to such an extent that “we now tend to believe that active membership in community activities, the cultivation of social skills (becoming a ‘people person’), and the development of group consciousness are natural, universal, and obligatory aims.” ]

bruce m.z. cohen, from psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness, 2016

[jennifer-jeong]

Hello there! What about Kazuha x reader who has anxiety <3?

HII POOKIE THANK YOU SM FOR YOUR ASK FJDKALFJAS; I lovee specific asks like this esp as a girlie with GAD hehehe

Fluff | Kazuha x GN!Reader Anxiety Remedies

CONTENT Fluff, comfort, reader has anxiety (no specific disorder), mentions of panic attacks etc, ALL CHARACTERS ARE 18+ WORD COUNT: 509

Kazuha would be such an amazing partner regardless of if you have anxiety or not but wow is he also good at helping you relax.

He’s already such an observant and smart guy that it doesn’t take long for him to understand your preferences and your tendencies to be a bit more worried about things. He never complains or calls you a “worrywart” though, he loves you and that includes all of you. Of course he’d try to guide you away from being anxious not because it annoys him but because it brings you distress and he hates to see you upset. He’ll gently correct your thinking sometimes, if you’re worried that someone hates you or that you won’t get that job you wanted, Kazuha puts his expansive vocabulary to the test. He’s so good with his words both in and outside of writing poetry. He knows just how to calm you down and explain things to you slowly and logically. Why would your friend hate you? They didn’t reply to you but they might just be busy for a moment and they’ll reply later because your friends love you. Why wouldn’t you get the job? Even if you didn’t, it would be the company’s loss anyways, they missed out on an amazing candidate and you’ll easily get another job somewhere else.

He’ll also just sound really wise sometimes when he says things like “one door closes and another opens” or “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” The quotes might sound cheesy but he always follows them up with a comforting explanation of why it might apply to you. He’s so sweet and reassuring and will give you lots of hugs and kisses.

Kazuha helps so much with your anxious way of thinking and never ever blames you for it. He’s so helpful in day to day life in helping you unlearn any anxious ways of thinking even though he’s never been trained, he’s just naturally calm and good at calming you down too. When it comes to any physical symptoms of anxiety though, Kazuha is also such a sweetheart. He’ll hold your hands when they shake and breathe with you slowly to calm your racing heart when you’re feeling overwhelmed. If you need to cry, he’ll hold you without a single ounce of judgment. He’s here for you wholly and you love him so much for it (and you make sure he knows it).

For specific anxiety disorders, Kazuha is also amazing at helping you cope with symptoms. Social anxiety? He’s super vigilant in social settings, always making sure you’re comfortable, otherwise he’ll leave with you. Panic disorder/panic attacks? He knows exactly what tricks you use to slow your breathing and he knows to get you somewhere less stimulating to calm you down. Phobias? He’ll 100% help you avoid them in any way he can and will even help you with exposure therapy if you’d like.

Overall he’s amazing and you love him so much, he’s the cure to all your anxieties <3

|| MASTERLIST ♡ || Thank you for reading! ||

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

Please, elaborate more on these Hazbin Hotel headcanons. I’m very interested in hearing about them.

I would like to preface all my posts on headcanons related to psychology and mental illness with a disclaimer: diagnosing mental conditions, especially personality disorders, can be extremely challenging. It's a complicated process that relies heavily on a psychologist's interpretation of facts, making it susceptible to biases. Personality disorders cannot be diagnosed based on surface-level observations and are not just labels that we can assign to people like in the case of MBTI. Additionally, I am not a clinician with any expertise in diagnosing people. Therefore, the following post should not be taken as a reliable professional opinion. It's simply my interpretation of the internal mechanisms that may be responsible for the behavior of certain characters in my fan fiction. Furthermore, I want to make it clear that I have no intention of stigmatizing people with personality disorders by associating them with villains. A personality disorder does not determine someone's character or make them a bad person. Some characters may be evil because of the choices they make, not as a result of their mental conditions.

Since you didn't ask about anything specific, I'll just give some headcanons on Vs since I think about them the most.

> Vs are not a polycule, it's VoxVal + Velvette because she would never touch any of these losers. What's more, Vox and Val are extremely sexist (I mean it's kinda canon, we heard how they speak about women) so if she had sex with any (or both) of them, she would no longer be one of the boys and become one of the bitches.

> Vox has NPD, Val has BPD, Vel has APD.

> Vox is continuously overstimulated because he's constantly connected to his web. That's why snaps so easily and sometimes goes through 5 stages of grief in 5 seconds. He could disconnect (and sometimes he does) but he's too much of a control freak to not lurk constantly.

> During his life on earth, Valentino had a terrible, toxic father. Very much machismo who abused him relentlessly for being queer. (Not that I want to make him sympathetic, I just think that evil people are often miserable before they become evil.) Because Val is very queer, not just "man occasionally fucking other men", he's always been loud and proud pansexual and gender non-conforming. He wasn't some kind of activist, very concerned about queer issues, he just refused to stay in the closet out of spite, and because it made men around him uncomfortable. He just enjoyed being perceived as a deviant. It was one of the things that eventually got him killed.

> Vox is like a hardcore sadist. He cuts people open just to feel powerful.

> During his life on Earth, Vox used to be extremely homophobic because his bisexuality was threatening to his masculinity. He's also the embodiment of toxic white masculinity from the 50's. He actually did some personal growth in Hell, eg. He gave up racism, homophobia, transphobia, and most other -phobias, and now he despites everyone rather equally. He just bullies women more because misogynistic violence is a low-hanging fruit.

> So with Velvette I had some fun because she manifested in Hell not so long ago and happened to be as powerful as other Vs, who had much more experience and souls collected. So I assumed she must be completely deranged. I came up with the idea that she used to be a toxic influencer who built a cult-like following around her. She weaponized it against multiple people, ruining lives, and manipulating kids into committing crimes or even suicides. Her methods are very fine, Vox and Val have nothing on her when it comes to cruelty.

> Velvette is not misogynistic per se but she despises weak women who can't fight for themselves. That's why other Vs behavior don't bother her, she doesn't feel threatened by their aggression.

> Angel Dust has BPD and an eating disorder. That's why he fell for Valentino so terribly, to trust him with his soul. He used to think that Valentino is the only person fucked up enough to truly love him as damaged as he'd been. (More hc about Val and Angel here). Actually Val has a very similar backstory to him - a queer, gender non-conforming man in a very masculine environment (I'm not sure how canonic is Angel working for the Italian Mafia at this point but I stick to it until proven otherwise).

Other headcanos about Vox and Val ❤️🩵

[5-htagonist]

2, 7, 18 for kabru plz 🥺

i will apologize in advance i got like 5 of the most inconsistent hours of sleep so i dont know if i even make sense. More than i usually dont know LOL

2: favorite canon thing about this character

tldr: his trauma complexes and the way that drives his character

obligatory "autism" answer to be honest. no but in all seriousness kui is really really good at portraying people in accordance to their trauma/background and kabru is no different... being intimately familiar (married) to someone with ptsd, it makes kabru hit home in a lot of ways. i LOVE that he comes off as creepy to those that are close to him! i love his dissociative symptoms and his panicking. ive been doing (loose spare time) research on the correlations/potential causations of personality disorders and other trauma complexes (dissociative identity, ptsd, sometimes ocd, etc etc etc) that can arise specifically from the way people who are neurodivergent from birth are treated by others. i love the clear line from utaya (caused kabrus ptsd), his adoption (perfect circumstance for a knowledge seeker), his special interest, and his cluster b tendencies ("i have to mask, lie, or otherwise be dishonest to meet my physical/psychological needs. i have to yell to be heard by myself and others."). i think you can see from the way he reacts to going to milsirils family reunion that his interest in people isnt solely due to trauma-- that gathering has nothing to do with taking down dungeons. but it takes that path because the hole caused by kabrus trauma is a need that milsiril cant fulfill. so he has to do it himself. it is uniquely traumatizing to suffer from survivors guilt, specifically. HES JUST SO COOL!!!! <3 <3

of course im not saying like. Kabru Specifically Being Diagnosed With PTSD Is Canon because the term ptsd is a collection of traits that weve lumped together with one term that typically responds to the same set of treatment, but trauma is universal and ptsd is excellent shorthand for kabrus trauma responses!

7: something the fandom does with this character that you like

i love when he isnt portrayed as Knowing Everything. i love when hes portrayed like a little bit of a dumbass sometimes. i also really love the way a lot of people portray his dynamic with laios, especially when its kabru getting to experience his emotions in a relatively stable environment and laios is there to support him. ALSO i love that Kabru Marcille Friendship seems to be agreed upon

18: relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire

... i Mean. i dont mean to be TOO obvious but his relationship with laios... ouuughhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! FUN FACT! exposure therapy is actually like. HIGHLY effective for people with obsessive-compulsions, phobias, or other aversions!! this is not due to the simple fact of being exposed to it, however. kabru retraumatizes himself this way-- he risks his life for the uncontrolled exposure to the familiarity of his trauma. a big motivator for him is his survivors guilt. this isnt exposure therapy, its just exposure.

what makes exposure therapy effective is understanding. its understanding you wont get every disease if you dont wash your hands when youre compelled to, understanding not all spiders are dangerous and that we have an evolutionary fear response.

kabru is bad at recognizing his needs. he chases the need to understand monsters by resolving to adventure dungeons. he makes this decision as a kid. its like he knows he needs to understand monsters on some level, but no one else sees monsters as complex beings, no one gives the time of day to understanding them. so instead he interprets this motivation solely as a desire to end monsters and dungeons. upon his observation of laios though, seeing someone who doesnt act like everyone else, who is a really good leader regarding progress in the dungeon, its like he subconsciously chases his need to understand, while consciously seeing laios as concerning.

all this to say, i admire so much that laios can provide kabru a safe, human place to understand monsters, when hes ready. laios can expose him to the monstrous while preventing reckless, unprepared exposure. this story is so damn cool through my psychology special interest goggles lol...

honorary mentions: his relationship with rin. i admire rin, because dear fuck how do you make it through what she did and still speak at all let alone leave your room?? and their relationship i admire not because its crazy healthy or good for either of them but because it is a testament to their strength as people. i dont remember rn if any of their interactions as kids are shown but i presume kabru was just insanely kind and patient. you have to be to befriend someone so traumatized. their relationship kills me, because they clearly have a deep respect for each other, but rin probably has more emotional problems than kabru does regarding forging relationships. gwohhhh...

lastly, i like his minor relationship with toshiro lol its interesting how they seem to gravitate to each other if theyre both in a scene! and i really enjoy when kabru brutally talks sense into toshiro regarding falins revival. obviously, they dont have much interaction to go off of, but i like to think the combo of kabru being able to empathize so strongly with toshiro AND be honest about the situation at the same time are probably pretty refreshing for him, where he typically either gets minimal empathy and intense honesty from laios, or intense cognitive empathy-driven assumptions about what he wants or needs or how to interact with him. having someone who is genuinely adept at the mask and cognitive empathy out of his own choice, rather than social pressure, but also isnt scared to say it like it is... well itd do toshiro some good if they stay friends post canon imo!