#and personality disorder have no cure

[bunnihearted]

having avpd and bpd which are at odds with eachother basically just means im in constant emotional agony 🤙

[tic-loud-tic-proud]

Question for people with Tourette's and tic disorders

[unrestrainedbalderdash]

Batman's experience with Joker in Arkham Knight is pretty relatable to my OCD (for anyone who hasn't played it: he has infected Joker blood in him, and after being dosed with Fear Toxin he hallucinates Joker being with him and talking to him). It's like you're stuck with this horrible person living in your brain who you can't get rid of and says the shittiest things (except at least Joker is occasionally funny). You're terrified that you will become this person, that you might be becoming this person, that one day you will start doing the horrible things it says you want to. You're plagued with thoughts of killing the [thing that triggers you, is your brain's "enemy"] It's sometimes at the point where you can't tell what thoughts are "yours" anymore, is it the intrusive thoughts or do you genuinely think this way, are you turning into a horrible monster?

Everyone's reactions to Batman are what you fear society might start acting like - will they shun you, lock you in a cell to stop you, because they think you're turning into the monster?

But the important thing - the Joker doesn't win. Batman doesn't end up killing people. He does manage to get rid of Joker in the end, which might not be that possible in real life, but more importantly, even when Joker is saying these horrible things, Batman keeps going, keeps moving through life, he doesn't let it stop him from being a hero.

It's hard living with someone saying horrible things in your head, but to anyone with OCD reading this: They don't define your real thoughts/values/opinions. You are strong enough to get through this, I believe in you. You're not a monster.

[also disclaimer: if you have (or are questioning if you have) OCD and your experience doesn't match up with this, that's ok, peoples' experiences of the same disorder can be different! (putting this disclaimer because OCD self-doubt is a pain)]

[dairyfreenugget]

A little funfact

I headcanon PK as an introvert (I mean. Duh. Being a recluse is like one of the few things we know about him) and Flower as extrovert/ambivert with severe anxiety

🤝 socially awkward brothers in arms

[jonny-b-meowborn]

Hey remember how I said that I joined a few polish therian groups on fb hoping to find some local therians? Today I went on their group chat for the first time and long story short I got banned because one person there insisted that being a therian is a purely spiritual thing and we should stick to rigid definitions (their definition ofc), while I said that it's not always the case and while it is spiritual for many people, it can also be more psychological, and I for example am a dog because I'm autistic. Apparently there's only one way to be a person that's an animal and if you think otherwise you're not a therian and should die

[theygender]

[subconsciousmysteries]

it pains me to announce that if you got fucked over by someone with a mental illness and now you project that mental illness onto everyone mildly strange who you come into contact with

you too are MENTALLY ILL and you need to stop scapegoating others for your problems because you are the fucking problem.

[cicadangel]

hm i think maybe i just will not accept that i am mentally ill. no i am not i am the most normal girl in the entire world and it's actually everyone else who is crazy and they are also out to get me so actually i am better than everyone. i am so special and unique people just don't understand me because im like more highly evolved or something

[lovef0ols]

if you aren't autistic you have 0 right to talk over autistic people. stay out of it. stop infantilizing us.

[freebooter4ever]

"The media was saying 'oh the russians are good during the year, but in the playoffs they aren't strong enough. That maybe mentally they are weak'" lar*onov said

Gahhhhhhhhhhhh sounds familiar -_- like certain assholes commenting on my favorite. I would like to introduce my boot to their face.

[thorne1435]

I feel like I should add to this, because I know for me personally this idea that I'm permanently broken or that I "didn't develop right" was a really scary thought not even just 2 years ago:

It's not like that! You may have been damaged so much that you didn't develop the pathways that everyone else did at your age. But that doesn't have to be a permanent issue, and in all likelihood, it won't be! Your brain is constantly rewiring itself to accommodate new information and new needs. People with disorders that are incredibly complicated and debilitating, socially, emotionally, sometimes even physically, can be fixed with remarkable success rates! And this is with simple talk-therapy! Something as drastic and painful as Borderline Personality Disorder can be fixed with Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and a genuine effort at maintaining healthy, long-term relationships. It may take decades, but isn't that worth it? Isn't that inspiring?

Your brain can develop those pathways it forgot when you were a child. You can get better. One day, you will stop being afraid. It just takes time and community.

Folks have got to understand that they probably aren't messed up by some Secret Big Trauma that they just can't remember; but rather by a million tiny microtraumas that they do mostly remember but don't even register as traumatic because nobody actually understood that these things would cause trauma, much less stack on each other over the years.

[xxxemilyg1996]

*looks up free psychiatrist*

"Here's a list of free online therapy places!"

Thats not what I fucking asked for theres a major difference between psychology and psychiatry! I have access to free therapy i need a medication plan and diagnoses!

[chrlotpony]

I don't even wish misophonia on my worst enemy

my main misophonia triggers are YAWNING (i hate it so much), breathing, humming, laughing, singing, coughing, snoring, sniffling, whistling, mouth smacking, and... oh my god. zipper. I hate zipper sounds sm, I always have since kindergarten

other sounds are faint noises (like music seeping through earphones or whispering), repetitive noises (like cars passing by), chewing, teeth biting 😦😬😦😬, pennies on wood, and knife swish sounds.

for some reason, most sounds I mentioned don't actually trigger if I hear it from a recording. I may not like the sound of chewing or munching but I love watching muckbangs that pop up on my fyp or ytshorts. so thankfully I'm not like some misophonics with this who do get triggered by sounds from their phones or computers

sounds I don't mind but other misophonics do are chip bags, windchimes, glass clanking, purring, hair ruffling, paper sounds, balls bouncing, and musical sounds.

the opposite of misophonia is asmr and my only asmr is literally any animal eating anything of any texture. if it's human eating asmr, not really. it specifically has to be an animal, primarily dogs, cats, racoons, deers, and horses

[giantkillerjack]

This is the kind of shitty trope that can only be worth anything but a purposeful and mindful inversion of the trope, which not everyone can pull off well, though I believe it is possible.

Another separate example of a shitty harmful trope that only truly becomes worth anything when it is inverted is the trope of "a timeskip has happened, and now to show that the character has turned into a pathetic disgusting loser, they have become FAT." -- This is my least favorite trope of all time, and it genuinely makes me lose some of my will to live.

But the inversion of that trope is like the end of the novel series my wife is writing, in which there is a timeskip and the main character is now chubby -- and this is framed as a clear sign of healing and growth for this character who has been underweight and malnourished for 3 books up til now!! -- As a fat person trying to recover from an eating disorder, this makes me feel seen and happy and loved! (I LOVE MY WIFE.)

Similarly, with the "disability reveal illiciting fear and pity" thing, it's like @cripplecharacters said: the issue is the fear and pity, especially when framed as an obvious and natural reaction from neutral or good characters.

And now before I list some ideas for inverting the trope, I wanna give the caveat that if you are not representing a disability that you have, you should first and foremost ask yourself why you want a remarkable reveal of the character's disability in the story in the first place:

-- What function does it serve? What feeling is it meant to evoke from the audience? (Fear, pity, shock, or disgust = bad answers.) Is this a matter of making disability a spectacle[bad]? Is this a matter of body horror[very bad in relation to disability]?? or is it a genuine educated attempt to represent someone from a community you aren't a part of[has the potential to be okay]???

Ideas for inversions:

The people expressing shock/pity/disgust/fear are explicitly framed as FUCKING ASSHOLES for doing this, who are eventually INVALIDATED by the larger narrative, which is committed to proving them to be in the wrong by centering the disabled character as a hero. -- The disabled character is a bigger character than any of the assholes, with their own inner life, active agency in the story, and pain response to being treated poorly. Perhaps they make the assholes look like ignorant fools in the very same scene! (Note: if you are representing a community you are not a part of, this kind of nasty prejudice is NOT OKAY TO PUT IN JUST FOR ~FLAVOR~. You need to have something to SAY about it with your storytelling beyond "isn't that just so sad that some people are mean to cripples??", or else you're a hack for ***exposing your disabled readers to a painful reflection of their own trauma for no good reason.***)

The disabled character has their own inner life and active agency in the story; and when they reveal their disability, it is met with delight and excitement - perhaps by another major character with a disability who feels pride and comradery over this in their current situation.

It's possible to have a good scene where someone reacts wrongly with pity/ignorance to a disabled character, and then the disabled character (a full character who is in the story for more than just this purpose) carefully and generously explains why this is harmful -- with the ableist character apologizing and meaningfully changing their behavior. But tbh it is more likely that this will end up as a stilted and unnecessary scene if you are not a disabled person yourself. Especially if you aren't consulting actual disabled people.

There is no grand reveal, but rather a simple acceptance and even celebration of disability. Characters have totally awesome wheelchairs; people with scars and unusual body types have loving partners and active sex lives; characters are not considered unworthy of being the story's hero just because they are disabled!

The Jaws Effect is dangerous and even deadly, but the flip side of that coin is GOOD representation for us, in which we get to be full characters that have hopes and dreams and fears outside of just being disabled setpieces for abled characters to react to!

If showing wheelchair users as inherently miserable only serves to make real wheelchair users actually miserable because abled people end up thinking that our lives are hell and therefore we need endless harmful "hLep" and dangerously dehumanizing pity that veers into eugenics......

Then the opposite of that would be to show how FULL our lives can be! How we are still entire complex humans, who don't need to be magically turned into abled people to remain a part of the story!! Our chairs are GOOD and offer FREEDOM, and showing a wheelchair user going about their life and being part of the story can go a long way towards communicating that, even without focus on the disability itself as part of the narrative!

How could I do a "classic disabled reveal" (Example: The guy reveals that he has a mechanical limb and the spectators feel pity/scared) in a better way, without using the tiring tropes and drama?

The thing is, you can't.

The tired trope and the drama, is, in fact, the 'pity' and the 'fear' spectators feel at seeing a disabled person and a sign of their disability.

That is what's tired, not the dramatic moment of the reveal. The reveal itself is whatever.

The tired trope is that disabilities and signs of them are something you should be scared of, that you should pity, that you shouldn't be seeing or have them being shown to you.

And this trope is not harmless, and it hurts real disabled people in the real world. It extends to people's feelings about real disabled people, the way they treat real disabled people. It contributes to thinking that disability is something inherently scary, bad, and required to hide. Disability is neutral, not the end of the world.

Someone having a disability is not automatically scary nor something to pity. Someone having a visible disability is not automatically scary nor something to pity. Disabled people are just people living life. Disability is a part of their life, our life.

Here is a post on the "Jaws Effect." Please read it and take it into consideration.

Hope this helps you understand.

– mod sparrow

[thebibliosphere]

Whenever I talk about the medical neglect and ableism I've encountered as a victim of the healthcare system, there's always some cockwaffle who feels entitled to come into my inbox and make the argument of "not all doctors" while talking about how "people like them" (because it's always someone in a field of medicine who does this) are doing their best and it's really hard because so many people fake being ill to get on welfare (Yikes), but like, yeah, obviously #not all doctors, because if all doctors were negligent, bullying scum bags, I'd be dead.

But here's the thing: while I truly believe that the majority of doctors are doing their best in a system stacked against them and their patients, their presence does not negate the mass harm caused by the bad ones. And there are far more bad ones than you realize.

Fuck, John Oliver literally did a segment on this last week:

Yes, the truly bad, malicious doctors are in the minority. Most are just horrifically burned out and fighting a losing battle against a system, killing both them and their patients through a lack of funding and resources and profound overwork.

But the malicious ones do exist, and they will go out of their way to harm patients who don't kowtow to them.

I almost lost my life because when I was in my early twenties, I told a doctor I didn't think she was listening to me, and I disagreed with her assessment of my mental health (she was not a mental health doctor, and I was there for heart palpitations and chronic pain). She retaliated by putting "non-compliant" in my file.

There was also a fun little "doesn't show respect" note too that lives rent-free in my head because I know I wasn't rude. I was polite. I just didn't agree with her, and my refusal to accept her off-handed comment that "you probably have bipolar or BPD" (again, I was there for heart palpitations and chronic pain) meant I was "refusing care."

I wasn't. I just refused to be slapped with a mood/personality disorder when I was there because I kept fucking fainting when I stood up.

(Spoiler alert: it was dysautonomia)

That "non-compliant" marker followed me around for years. It followed me across an ocean and effectively ensured that any doctor I saw was going to treat me like absolute dogshit because no one wants to help Difficult Patients. It wasn't until I was so undeniably ill, literally on the brink of death, that anyone helped me.

I'm alive because of a good doctor. And all the good ones that came after him because of him.

So, I know they exist. You don't have to tell me that.

But I really fucking need you to acknowledge the bad ones and that you're part of a system with a long, long history of abusing minorities and vulnerable people. I need you to acknowledge that because it's the only way we're going to survive this godforsaken nightmare and make things better.

So yeah, #notalldoctors, but if you feel the need to say that because someone talking about being literally left to die by the medical system hurts your feelings, I'm going to have to ask you to take a step back and ask yourself if you're going into medicine for the right reasons.

Namely: do you want to help people, even the "difficult" ones?

Even the ones who might disagree with you?

Even if they're on welfare?

Even if they'll never get "better" in a way that means "cured"?

Just a thought. But hey, what do I know. I'm just someone who experienced hemolytic anemia because doctors kept telling me I was anxious and needed to exercise more 🤷‍♀️.

[harbingrs]

Another thing that helps a lot with the anxiety is having genuine safety nets. I have income now that lets me keep a roof over my head, so the fear (or feeling) of being incapable of working doesn't spiral out of control the same way. If I can't cope on my own, I know I just have to survive until I can get into the complex mental health program and have a team of people literally walking me through what to do about it (and I can hospitalise myself if /that/ isn't enough).

I'm okay right now, that's not the situation. But not having /any/ kind of safety net for those things before was a recipe for disaster when I knew just not being capable alone meant falling through the cracks. As soon as I felt incapable of handling my life, it was gonna be a free-fall.

Those fears are a lot easier to manage when the 'worst case scenario' is nowhere near as bad. Even if I completely fail at everything, it's survivable now. The relief in that is incredible.