#as someone who advocates for mental health

[otakuvampyre]

Brian Thompson was not a mass murderer. Denying claims is not the same as murder. He was a CEO in a company that had a board of directors, it was highly unlikely he even had a hand in deciding which claims to deny. You're acting like he was sitting in a room with a stamp looking over each individual claim deciding which person he wanted to die.

That is fucking ludicrous.

"bootlickers." Being called a bootlicker by someone who thinks insurance not covering every claim that comes through is akin to mass murder is like being called a Nazi by someone who thinks Hamas is a group of resistance fighters. I.e. it's meaningless. Especially since you ignored the part where I was specifically against murder, but was advocating for doing things that actually helped. You are not entitled to being able to murder someone just cuz you can use mental gymnastics to paint them as the second coming of Osama Bin Laden, you freak.

Also, for your tags? My step-dad beat me regularly, mother fucker. I absolutely had abusive parents. The only parent I trusted is my mother, who never laid hands on me. Don't assume shit about my past just cuz I pointed out that your parents are shitty if they don't help you just cuz you're an adult. I survived abuse, CSA, and relentless bullying from those around me. I have more empathy for people who went through shit like I did in my pinky than you have in your entire body. So fuck off with this bullshit of acting like I'm saying "oh, it's not the health insurance system's fault, it's your fault for not having good parents." Cuz that's not even close to what I said.

Pulling strawmen out of your ass is not an argument, fuckwad.

[chiwosays]

i think some "health advocates/educators" do less advocating/educating and more pathologizing. both in mental and physical health conversations. i think that some people confuse dissociative disorders and harmful dissociation with normal experiences due to the amount of people who have started pathologizing normal behaviors or trying to armchair diagnose people that they don’t know with a disorder.

i'll see some therapists or advocates or whoever else (online) very vaguely talk about a normal experience but phrase it in a way that makes it sound less normal or even harmful. for example, dissociation in the form of daydreaming and zoning out. daydreaming and zoning out are NORMAL experiences but when some of these people talk about it, they make it seem like part of a larger dissociative disorder when it's not.

i think this pushes a lot of (younger or more vulnerable) people into believing that their normal behavior is abnormal or harmful, which can cause placebo effects or unwanted medical attention, which can lead to both medical trauma or just generally negative experiences.

or, additionally, talking to someone who is describing mild to moderate dissociation and telling them to look into a complex dissociative disorder like OSDD (OSDD-1 specifically) or DID without asking any further questions about their experiences/possible symptoms.

its quite frankly dangerous especially when dealing with younger people or people who are in treatment for other mental health conditions who might be easily influenced or convinced.

the "this isn't normal??" comments on some videos or posts where the OP is describing a normal human experience but using terms such as dissociation, trauma, disorder, etc. but what really gets me is when the OP will reply and tell the person that "no, it's not normal! look into/research x!"

anyway, more or less of a ramble, may or not be somewhat incoherent haha.

[yamishika]

100YQ Rant/Criticism

SPOILERS FOR FT 100YQ INCLUDED

I have been following FT 100YQ and have seen a lot of moments that just made me go ‘hmm okay, doesn’t make sense but alright’, and there have been a lot of moments of just the plot/narrative being broken for convenience sake. It has gotten under my skin many times, but as a Jellal fan, one of the biggest offenses and one that makes me scratch my head a lot is from chapter 144.  Don't read ahead if you don't want to be spoiled about a big reveal on his character or on 100YQ.

144 : Beyond Sins.

Now initially when this chapter came out, I really loved it since it was the first time we had a backstory in ages and it being Jellal’s, I ate it all up.

But there was something in this chapter that made absolutely no sense narrative wise when I looked back with fresh eyes and wasn’t riding the high of getting Jellal’s backstory/anything Jellal related.

That being.

This panel.

We’re told not even a page into the chapter, Jellal’s real name is ‘Siegrain’, a name which we know from the previous narrative and was hinted throughout arcs to be like an alter persona for Jellal. 

This chapter goes on to basically confirm that Jellal canonically has DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), a trauma response that must have manifested given all the stress and changes that happened in his life from losing his father young, watching his mother die by the slavers and then being taken into slavery, having his whole trajectory he planned for his life ruined etc. 

This is an understandable trauma response, and I would love to have seen it properly explored with understanding in regards to Jellal/Sieg’s character. It would have been so interesting to see how Jellal’s trauma at the tower manifested in a split personality and how he coped with the situation as he was cited to be notably different to all those around him 

‘A Leader’

‘One who doesn’t cry’

‘The strong boy’. 

This chapter basically confirms that this character he created was a way to mask his own insecurities and cope in the unknown environment.

However, that’s not where my gripe is.

Because as much as I was interested in the idea of Jellal’s trauma manifesting as DID, it’s the way that the narrative has gone about it which butchers everything else and makes no sense in a narration sense.

The man who we are told his name has always been ‘Jellal’ is now revealed to us by this flashback chapter to have actually had the name ‘Siegrain’ as his birth name. 

This on it’s own is boggling but wouldn’t have caused such breaks in the narrative, but the fact that this very chapter contradicts a chapter in a previous arc with Jellal in the Gears fight, this is where it just stops making sense.

In order to beat Gears in chapter 57, Jellal takes out ‘Siegrain’, the man whom he claims is the carrier of his sins, which in accordance to other arcs of Fairy Tail makes sense since we see the Siegrain persona being the most active in regards to infiltrating the magic council, getting the etherion fired etc.

But now we have in not even 100 chapters after this, it’s revealed to us that Jellal’s name isn’t Jellal at all, but ‘Siegrain’. How can Siegrain be the one carrying Jellal’s sins, when Siegrain is the main identity/person  that Jellal was created from? 

It just doesn’t add up.

And if that isn’t narrative breaking enough, Jellal’s name actually being ‘Siegrain’ causes a whole other narrative hole too.

This guy.

Mystogan.

Mystogan’s real name is Jellal, just like if not all Edolan counterparts share the same first name of their earthland counterparts (e.g. Natsu Dragion, Lucy Ashely, Erza Knightwalker, Gray Surge etc). But being told now all of a sudden that Jellal changed his birth name doesn't work for Mystogan, as are we meant to believe that Mystogan conveniently changed his name to be ‘Jellal’ to match his earthland counterpart who was going through a mental crisis?

Mystogan, the one who’s whole thing was to keep his identity hidden and it’s Faust, the one who calls him out the name as Jellal. The one who is meant to be his father/father figure? Mystogan, who somehow has the name Jellal, a name Erza wasn’t even allowed to mention out of the Tower, which makes sense for him to have it if his counterpart had that birth name, but apparently that’s not the case?

I know I am probably just beating a dead horse now and I should get over it, but I just needed to write something since my head was struggling to make sense of the reveal for a long time. I don’t know what exactly is added to the story by Jellal’s birth name being ‘Siegrain’ other than shock value. Like what does this plot twist actually do? Nothing.

Other than it just makes the whole narrative so messy now and I don’t like it. If the aspect of DID was to be introduced for Jellal’s character, then what was wrong with Jellal being the host? And Siegrain being the alter that manifested as a trauma response?

It could have been something intriguing and insightful to explore, bring awareness about different trauma responses and also add a new layer to his character beyond just extremes of misguidance and the need for redemption.

But no.

God this just makes no sense.

I’m sorry for ranting, after seeing the Gears fight animated, it reminded me of THAT reveal and I just saw glaring plot holes which I completely blindsided the first time I read the chapter.  And what makes me even more annoyed is the DID aspect is probably just another plot convenience that is most likely never going to be brought up again ever.

And I’ve already said how I don’t like something serious such as trauma being used as a plot device.

Which it clearly is in this case.

The only way I can make sense of both events existing, is that it shows that Siegrain is so disassociated from his sense of self, that he has decided to adopt the identity of Jellal completely, killing his born self for the sake of the present and going as far to believe that Siegrain is the made one and not 'Jellal'.

However then that opens up a whole new discussion...One I might cover another day, but i'm afraid this is getting long enough as it is.

But yeah, thank you for listening to my ramblings if you’ve stayed this long.

I wonder if anyone else felt the same about the reveal as someone who likes Jellal's character? Or just has been following the story? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[citrus-blade]

If you think the grooming joke from Niki was funny or anything like that block me! It's disgusting and joking about something like that is NEVER funny! Sincerely, a grooming victim!

[mymitochondriaforpresident]

If Wille abdicating means being with Simon then I accept it.

[thealphabard]

I feel like I've said this quite a lot the last few months, but as far as anyone in my past is concerned, I'm a whole new ass person. I'm happy and have found myself in the best way possible and, for some reason, that infuriates the toxic people who have long since left my life.

[formula-red]

.

[savage-rhi]

Magenta 🤬

[timeisacephalopod]

In relation the that true crime post I made yesterday, does anyone know good true crime YouTubers who aren't fucking weirdos about crimes, criminals, and constantly advocating for higher prison sentences acting like Americans??

If you say Princess Weeks I already follow her and if you don't it's not all true crime that just comes up go watch her shit she's very informative and let me to the In The Dark podcast, which is also very good

[boyapologist]

sometimes I don't know if gaylors are getting bolder with what they choose to say here instead of hiding in discord servers or if I'm simply closer to fully developing my frontal lobe now to realize 99% of them just sound fucking insane

[llycaons]

reconciliation fics are all like 'all jc needs is a little time to calm down and some open communication 😊' but I'm like yeah thats a start but I think he needs therapy for real HOWEVER I know therapy doesn't exist in this universe so how about the healing power of bdsm

[bluecardigan-13]

I did it! I am so happy! I rented the @taylorswift Eras Tour concert on #amazon prime!! I cannot wait to watch it. Eek!! And I’m going to lock myself in my bedroom and take some mom time to watch it. Per Amazon you have 30 days to watch it.

I’m now going to to pay it forward to ONE person who has #Amazon Prime, I will purchase ONE #amazon gift card in the amount of $19.89 to rent the @taylorswift Eras Tour concert.

Only #one l

Here are the rules to get one:

1. Unfortunately I can’t rent the show for the person via #amazon BUT I can purchase a gift card in the amount of the rental $19.89 - @taylorswift birth year, so they can rent it if you can’t afford it right now. You must be the first person that messages me on this post that will get the gift card.

2. I will need your email address so I know where to send the gift card.

3. The person must use it to rent @taylorswift’s Eras concert that was released today. This is to rent the tour on Amazon only. I believe it can be rented until 12/20.

Once I get that first person, I’ll type “CLOSED”. Good luck!

Much love and mahalo. And Happy Birthday @taylorswift! Or Hau'oli lā hānau @taylorswift!! Sending you much love and may all your wishes come true!

[genderqueerdykes]

btw 'syscourse' and plural infighting isn't accomplishing anything. back in the late 90s and early 2000s, the only communities and resources for plurals that were widely available were for and by non-traumagenic systems. the only people who were advocating for normalizing and accepting plurality on a large scale were non-traumagenic systems. if you did research into plurality 10 - 15 years ago, most of the results that came up would have been experiences written by spiritual and natural plurals.

many people at the time were expressing their dislike of forcing every single plural to identify as if they had trauma- many found this insulting to themselves, and rightfully so! no one should be forced to identify in a way they don't agree with just to rightfully be a part of a community they already occupy. this obsession with "you can only be plural if you have trauma" has only come about extremely recently. i found out about plurality through the otherkin community. i was actually told about DID by someone in the spiritual plurality community. people don't seem to understand that most non-traumagenic systems have respect for traumagenic systems and don't gatekeep their spaces to prevent us from entering.

older plural spaces on the web like healthymultiplicity accepted all plurals. the goal of the community was to show that you can live as plural and not have it be a tragedy or something to "fix". if anything, folks with dissociative disorders owe a LOT to non-traumagenic systems for pushing to normalize plurality without implying that we HAVE to integrate our headmates and try to stop being plural. a huge part of the early online plural community was there to push that plurals can and do live happy lives and shouldn't view their plurality as a bad thing

it's not going to make singlet society see us in a better light. it's not going to get people to understand plurality better. it's not going to get us better mental health resources. it's not going to improve the quality of care for dissociative and traumagenic systems. all you're doing is bullying someone else that you don't understand simply because you don't agree with them.

you're not going to recover from your trauma or understand your own plurality better by denying the existence of other types of plurality. you're not "making the community safer" by gatekeeping. telling other people how their brains work is policing their identities. whether or not you want to accept it, if you forcefully kick endos out of plural spaces, you are the cop you claim to hate.

fighting with people on your own team will never net you a victory. to every other dissociative and traumagenic system: endos are on your side. you are wearing the same jersey. you are made of the same flesh and blood. enough. come together to share your similarities instead of fighting over differences. celebrate the diversity that plurality offers. don't take someone else's identity personally. someone can share the space with you without having to match exactly how you identify. diversity is what makes a community thrive.

[trans-axolotl]

also in regards to that last article about varied ways of thinking about psychosis/altered states that don't just align with medical model or carceral psychiatry---I always love sharing about Bethel House and their practices of peer support for schizophrenia that are founded on something called tojisha kenkyu, but I don't see it mentioned as often as things like HVN and Soteria House.

ID: [A colorful digital drawing of a group of people having a meeting inside a house while it snows outside.]

"What really set the stage for tōjisha-kenkyū were two social movements started by those with disabilities. In the 1950s, a new disability movement was burgeoning in Japan, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that those with physical disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, began to advocate for themselves more actively as tōjisha. For those in this movement, their disability is visible. They know where their discomfort comes from, why they are discriminated against, and in what ways they need society to change. Their movement had a clear sense of purpose: make society accommodate the needs of people with disabilities. Around the same time, during the 1970s, a second movement was started by those with mental health issues, such as addiction (particularly alcohol misuse) and schizophrenia. Their disabilities are not always visible. People in this second movement may not have always known they had a disability and, even after they identify their problems, they may remain uncertain about the nature of their disability. Unlike those with physical and visible disabilities, this second group of tōjisha were not always sure how to advocate for themselves as members of society. They didn’t know what they wanted and needed from society. This knowing required new kinds of self-knowledge.

As the story goes, tōjisha-kenkyū emerged in the Japanese fishing town of Urakawa in southern Hokkaido in the early 2000s. It began in the 1980s when locals who had been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders created a peer-support group in a run-down church, which was renamed ‘Bethel House’. The establishment of Bethel House (or just Bethel) was also aided by the maverick psychiatrist Toshiaki Kawamura and an innovative social worker named Ikuyoshi Mukaiyachi. From the start, Bethel embodied the experimental spirit that followed the ‘antipsychiatry’ movement in Japan, which proposed ideas for how psychiatry might be done differently, without relying only on diagnostic manuals and experts. But finding new methods was incredibly difficult and, in the early days of Bethel, both staff and members often struggled with a recurring problem: how is it possible to get beyond traditional psychiatric treatments when someone is still being tormented by their disabling symptoms? Tōjisha-kenkyū was born directly out of a desperate search for answers.

In the early 2000s, one of Bethel’s members with schizophrenia was struggling to understand who he was and why he acted the way he did. This struggle had become urgent after he had set his own home on fire in a fit of anger. In the aftermath, he was overwhelmed and desperate. At his wits’ end about how to help, Mukaiyachi asked him if perhaps he wanted to kenkyū (to ‘study’ or ‘research’) himself so he could understand his problems and find a better way to cope with his illness. Apparently, the term ‘kenkyū’ had an immediate appeal, and others at Bethel began to adopt it, too – especially those with serious mental health problems who were constantly urged to think about (and apologise) for who they were and how they behaved. Instead of being passive ‘patients’ who felt they needed to keep their heads down and be ashamed for acting differently, they could now become active ‘researchers’ of their own ailments. Tōjisha-kenkyū allowed these people to deny labels such as ‘victim’, ‘patient’ or ‘minority’, and to reclaim their agency.

Tōjisha-kenkyū is based on a simple idea. Humans have long shared their troubles so that others can empathise and offer wisdom about how to solve problems. Yet the experience of mental illness is often accompanied by an absence of collective sharing and problem-solving. Mental health issues are treated like shameful secrets that must be hidden, remain unspoken, and dealt with in private. This creates confused and lonely people, who can only be ‘saved’ by the top-down knowledge of expert psychiatrists. Tōjisha-kenkyū simply encourages people to ‘study’ their own problems, and to investigate patterns and solutions in the writing and testimonies of fellow tōjisha.

Self-reflection is at the heart of this practice. Tōjisha-kenkyū incorporates various forms of reflection developed in clinical methods, such as social skills training and cognitive behavioural therapy, but the reflections of a tōjisha don’t begin and end at the individual. Instead, self-reflection is always shared, becoming a form of knowledge that can be communally reflected upon and improved. At Bethel House, members found it liberating that they could define themselves as ‘producers’ of a new form of knowledge, just like the doctors and scientists who diagnosed and studied them in hospital wards. The experiential knowledge of Bethel members now forms the basis of an open and shared public domain of collective knowledge about mental health, one distributed through books, newspaper articles, documentaries and social media.

Tōjisha-kenkyū quickly caught on, making Bethel House a site of pilgrimage for those seeking alternatives to traditional psychiatry. Eventually, a café was opened, public lectures and events were held, and even merchandise (including T-shirts depicting members’ hallucinations) was sold to help support the project. Bethel won further fame when their ‘Hallucination and Delusion Grand Prix’ was aired on national television in Japan. At these events, people in Urakawa are invited to listen and laugh alongside Bethel members who share stories of their hallucinations and delusions. Afterwards, the audience votes to decide who should win first prize for the most hilarious or moving account. One previous winner told a story about a failed journey into the mountains to ride a UFO and ‘save the world’ (it failed because other Bethel members convinced him he needed a licence to ride a UFO, which he didn’t have). Another winner told a story about living in a public restroom at a train station for four days to respect the orders of an auditory hallucination. Tōjisha-kenkyū received further interest, in and outside Japan, when the American anthropologist Karen Nakamura wrote A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan (2013), a detailed and moving account of life at Bethel House. "

-Japan's Radical Alternative to Psychiatric Diagnosis by Satsuki Ayaya and Junko Kitanaka

[scrimbly-mc-scrombly-iii]

If you advocate for mental health awareness, but joke about things like intrusive thoughts and schizophrenia, think it’s disgusting and lazy when people who are depressed can’t do things like showering or cleaning their room, use terms like “narcissistic abuse”, and believe that having ASPD, BPD, or NPD makes someone a bad person, you are not a mental health advocate. You don’t actually care about helping people or de-stigmatizing mental illness, you just want to make yourself feel like you do. You can’t pick and choose what disorders and symptoms are acceptable, and which ones make someone a bad person. Either you support everyone, or you support no one.

and if you’re neurodivergent/mentally ill and you do any of those things, you are part of the problem. there’s no such thing as “good/moral” disorders, or “bad/immoral” disorders. We all need to have each other’s backs.

[goathouse]

[ID: the Supernatural "I love you" meme. The 2nd box reads: "Wayne Brady just came out as pan." End ID.]

Here's the video he posted on tiktok:

[ID: a 32-second tiktok of Wayne Brady, accompanied by 3 dancers, lipsyncing and dancing to "It's All Coming Back To Me Now." He starts the video in a pink bathrobe, then reappears in a pink suit and a long wig. The other dancers wave a rainbow flag. End ID.]

the video description (which doesn't appear with the video outside the tiktok app, annoyingly) says:

As someone who gets to bring joy to others daily on tv, it's been ironic that I don't experience it as much as I'd like. I advocate mental health for all and a part of that is self transparency. In doing my work, I've come to see a few truths, one of them being that I want to be free to l love whomever I want. This truth makes me pan and part of the lgbtq+ family. It's scary as hell to say it out loud but here it is. The people I admire most are the ones brave enough to be themselves unapologetically. This shouldn't shake anyone's world, but if it bothers you at all, that's your business:) I was so afraid of having my manhood questioned, but screw that. A "real man" in my eyes, isn't afraid to be honest and happy. From now on, I'll be over here living my best life. I love you @Mandietaketa @Maile Masako @Jason