#but yeah literally fuck the stigma around medication

[chryblossomjjk]

taking steps to get on antidepressants tomorrow besties 🤧

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Man those people on your ‘why are you straight edge’ poll are really showing their disdain for people who engage with any sort of drug… if I may add, I voted for having a medical restriction (my liver is failing thank youuuu immune system) AND I also take prescription opiate medication to help with pain. Every time I take my painkillers on days where I’m not working so that I can enjoy my hobbies I have complicated feelings about it because anti opiate rhetoric is just EVERYWHERE and it’s like… I just want to have a nice day. Getting over the ‘oh but it can be ADDICTIVE’ stigma is so important and it’s really not different just because I have a prescription. People who are so nasty about drug use for recreation are so stressful to me.

Ikr it's like people have such disdain for addicts, and drug users in general. I get upset about this because while I personally am a very casual user and I spend most of the time sober and am self assured so I can walk people being dicks about it off, but I know addicts and their lives are hard enough without all the stigma piled on top of it. I just wish everyone could be addiction neutral and pro harm reduction but they're so moralistic about it. I wasnt the politest I could have been about people not drinking and having sex because I was trying to keep it light and I know people take things like this really serious and it kinda backfired.

But like I totally know what you mean about the opioid thing. I really think that our society could benefit from being a little more addiction neutral, because yeah sometimes substance dependency does ruin your life, but I'm neurodivergent and I've met people where I think that doing life with drugs is better for them. Like you raise a great point about opioids. They're dangerous and addictive but if you're in pain because of a disability you need pain management. It's not really an option if you want to lead a normal life. There's a lot of heroin addicts who got that way because they needed pain management and their doctors refused them on the basis that they might become addicted, but taking a daily pill to improve your life, while it may be illegal depending on the substance, isn't bad. I bring up my own neurodivergence because I've heard of the same thing with ADHD and stimulants. Most people who have an ADHD diagnosis can get an Adderall prescription, but undiagnosed people and people falling through insurance cracks will sometimes turn to the street version. And it's like those people, both the ones with a script and the ones who are self medicating, should not be forced to live a substandard life because of someone else imagines there's some purity to a life without drugs. The goal should be to get those people the drugs they need in the safest way possible.

And I come down really easy, to the point where I forget to take prescription meds and don't experience any ill effects, but I have a friend who experiences a come down from their adhd meds thats not unlike the comedown ive seen from my other friend who's a meth user, and this friend with the ADHD meds can't function without them. But when the doctor and the pharmacist get them their meds on time they live a perfectly happy fulfilling life. That's what I mean when I say I'm addiction neutral. Most people who get addicted didn't just pick up heroin or whatever one day for shits and giggles. When I fuck around with "highly addictive" substances I make sure I'm in a good place and it's not a problem to drop them. People who develop problems are usually either they're escaping from something or self medicating. The goal for society can't be to never do drugs we've had drugs literally for longer than we've been humans.

I've heard second hand of a study which I haven't gone looking for, I might, because as you can tell this is a bit of a soap box for me, where they gave Heroin addicts a prescribed dose of heroin like you would pick up Percocet for chronic pain at a pharmacy, and because those addicts weren't shooting up mystery amounts and worrying where they were going to get their next hit from so they didn't start rattling and all the other things that make addicts lives hell, they were able to start doing things like holding down jobs. That study should have been a game changer. I want addicts to be able to live, and selfishly I want to be able to go to the drug store when I'm bored and say "one mdma high no fentanyl please" and leave with something to spice up the afternoon. That's like, not a moral failing on my part even though I'm not self medicating I'm just having fun.

The way the war on drugs has ruined drugs, which like, genuinely drugs are sort of magical when you think about it. Not just the fun ones either. Like when I was a baby I had a really bad bladder infection that absolutely would have killed me if I had had that same situation just like 100 years ago, but my mom was able to force a pill down my throat and it went away. Since then I've probably had at least a dozen little things like that that would have killed me dead if someone hadn't invented a chemical that could interact with my body and make it genuinely not a problem. and the fact that we have that for things like chronic pain and we're too afraid to use it because of stigma is so insane. Like god forbid people get high.

[aemiron-main]

Sooo I’m very confused

Could you maybe explain to me what this whole Dani situation is about ? What exactly happened?

Im not following them anymore because from what I’ve seen , they are in the wrong. I might dislike Henry but that doesn’t mean that searching for reasons for his actions is wrong. Is that even what they said ? Im literally so confused but also kind of sad … why can’t we live in peace on the byler tag hahaha 🥲. ( also is she for real calling gay Mike truthers bi phobic ? That would be fucked up)

Have a good day !

HELLO, ANON!!

Sure! Basically, it started with Dani making a bunch of posts/answering a bunch of anon asks about how much she hates Henry and hates the theories around him/thinks theyre dumb or whatever.

But what the actual issue was/what bothered me more than any of the Henry hate (since I’ve come to expect that atp) was Dani making comments about personality disorders and “people who just want to kill” in a way that was weird and vague and not medically or scientifically accurate and came across as pretty ableist and rude & making comparisons to real-life mentally ill people using that same sort of language/lack of actual medical info & continuing to perpetuate stigma & inaccuracies about personality disorders instead of even doing a bit of research. The other big thing that bothered me was Dani saying that Henry analysts/people like them would likely “forgive IRL rapists” which is a weird and untrue accusation to make.

And exactly!! You don’t have to like Henry, nobody does, but like you said, trying to understand him/search for reasons for his actions isn’t wrong. Dani seems to have an issue with people analyzing him & people who don’t think he was born evil as a child & also people like me who have been analyzing Edward Creel and who think that there’s a solid chance that Henry might not be Vecna. And yeah LMAO it’s definitely confusing and upsetting but alas, it’ll pass and the world goes on!

And oh yeah, Dani’s been throwing the biphobia allegations at gay mike truthers forever. Even though she’ll claim she has no issues with gay mike truthers, one way or another, she ends up tossing false biphobia accusations at them.

Thanks, anon! I hope you have a good day too!

[roguemonsterfucker]

I used to think I had a phobia of spiders

but then my house was literally infested with them (long story, it's better now)

And I had to see spiders every single day. for years.

Turns out I in fact didn't have a phobia of spiders. It was fear of the unknown/unexpected combined with the stigma against spiders.

They're not that scary when you know how they'll react.

So like, I'm still deeply afraid of certain species of spider because they're unpredictable. But the two species that mainly populated my house are chill. I love them. There's still a few around and I thank them for their service of keeping my house fly-free and I pick them up and move them out of high traffic areas when needed.

"Exposure therapy" worked with my fear of spiders because it was a deeply ingrained part of my brain. It was a learned fear. A fear I easily rid myself of simply by becoming familiar with these spiders, learning their behavior, and seeing that they weren't at all dangerous.

Despite there being literally thousands of spiders in my house, I don't think I ever got bit. And if I did, it clearly wasn't serious enough for me to notice. And these two species generally kept to their corners. Sometimes they scurry across the floor to get to a new place, but overall, I could expect to see the same spider in the same place for weeks or even months.

Sometimes I'd wake up to one near my bed and that still gave me a fright, but not nearly phobia-level fear.

Now... my "social phobia" is uh... different.

That isn't learned. It's a broken part of my brain that triggers my fight or flight response in every single social situation.

Exposure therapy can't work with it. I've been exposed. I went to school and church as a child. I didn't start isolating myself until I was able as an adult.

Plus like... it's triggered when I spend time with my family. The people I've known for 30+ years and have seen nearly every day of my life, even as an adult.

After my mom spends an hour at my house, I can tell my body has been in fight or flight mode, even if I enjoyed that time. It's still painful.

Anyways, yeah a therapist tried to convince me exposure therapy would work so I fucking fired him because fuck that. No. Exposure therapy absolutely has it's place. 100% it cured my extreme fear of spiders and my mom's extreme fear of snakes. But it can't fix a broken brain. Only medication can but medication thus far has only worsened my issues so fuck that too. I'm just broken forever.

[gloaming-sometimes]

@cerialslasher replying to this comment in a reblog bc my reply is waaay to long for a comment lmao so get ready for a long rant below the cut. also my opinions and way of thinking about things have changed since i made the original post given that its been over a year since making it, if i were making it now id word stuff very differently. ive actually thought about remaking this flag, mayhaps ill get around to it some time

trigger warnings: "syscourse"/system discourse, (non-graphic) trauma mentions/discussions of how did/osdd-1/etc form

note: the "etc" in did/osdd-1/etc means polyfragmented did, programmed/highly complex did and partial did

where in this post was plurality mentioned? there is a very distinct difference between non-disordered/non-traumagenic plurality and did/osdd1/etc systems. as a person with did i fucking HATE the term plural in the context of systems and or did/osdd-1/etc because of how people use that term in the non-disordered/non-traumagenic communities, and i know many other people with did/osdd-1/etc feel similarly. so yeah, i agree not all plurals are systems. the only systems that are plural are people with did/osdd1/etc who self identify as plural, the same way not all people with did/osdd-1/etc are systems unless they self identify that way. you can have these disorders and not be a system or not be plural. non-disordered/non-traumagenic plurality is real and a fine term to use in theory but literally every single person who ive seen use these terms use them to mean system and or did/osdd-1/etc without the "scary symptoms". "plurality" that is not attributed to did/osdd-1/etc is something many people experience regardless of if they are in the non-disordered/non-traumagenic plural community (for example having multiple internal monologues, feeling like a different person with different people or in different situations, structural dissociation that doesnt result in alters but does result in parts, you get the idea). the difference between that stuff, which is normal and i dont fucking care if you want a community or term for it as long as you arent trying to conflate it with the disorders or de-medicalize them in general, and did/osdd-1/etc is that the latter is a severe, sometimes disabling disorder that is caused by childhood trauma. all of the people who identify as non-disordered/non-traumagenic plurals that ive seen have a sore misunderstanding of the psychology behind these disorders, why they form and how similar the two experiences are. no, you cannot have alters that have specific roles like trauma/memory/symptom/emotion holders, persecutors, caretakers or anything similar because without the childhood trauma and disordered/dissociative part of the equation these alters have no reason to fracture off in the first place. and because online communities have made plural synonymous or, at best, adjacent to did/osdd-1/etc this adds stigma to the disorder and harms people. plural is not a good description of did/osdd-1/etc because these disorders are less like multiple identities and more like a fractured identity. youre still one person if you have these disorders, it just doesnt FEEL like it because thats the whole point of the "disorder" part in the name.

and before someone says "but what about people who are traumagenic but dont remember their trauma so they use endogenic" ive got news for you! a major part of the disorder is not remembering trauma! so that's entirely normal! doesnt mean youre not traumagenic though! if you are self diagnosing or suspect did/osdd1/etc but dont remember trauma that is more than fine, but a part of self diagnosing is doing thorough research on said disorder and similar disorders that could explain the root symptoms better. and all the scientific evidence (which is overwhelming at this point) points to trauma among other prerequisites (disorganized attachment style, predisposition for dissociation, etc) being required for did/osdd-1/etc symptoms to form.

system unity flag 🫂

pride flag for osddid systems because i can't find any that i like that i can confirm arent pro-endo or otherwise problematic. c-did/did/osdd1/p-did are disorders formed in early childhood as a result of repetitive trauma and beyond that symptoms / similarities can vary greatly across the disorders. endo/xeno origin "systems" fuck off this isnt for you. systems who don't remember their trauma, dont know the disorder causing their multiplicity and undiagnosed systems may use this flag.

[thatbadadvice]

GOOD ADVICE INTERLUDE: Help, My Friend is 15 and Pregnant!

Readers won’t stop sending the Bad Advisor their real-ass questions to answer, so the Bad Advisor is periodically going to try her hand at answering them. If you'd like to submit a question for a Good Advice Interlude, use the "ask" form!

A reader writes:

Hey uh if you’re still doing the good advice interlude, advice for helping a friend with a teen pregnancy? She’s 15, with a boyfriend two or three years older. They had sex and she clearly really enjoyed it. It’s resulted in her being pregnant. She wants to keep the child, and I’m obviously going to support her decisions, but I don’t know what’s best to do to support her. She’s in the hospital regularly (chronically ill), and I don’t know how to ask if she’s looked into the risks that giving birth might provide for her. I don’t want to come across like I don’t want her to do what she wants, because I do, but I’d like to be reassured she’s prepared for that, because I think mostly she’s thinking about how excited she is to be a mum. Which is great! I’m glad she’s excited! I’m excited! But yeah how do I ask if she’s prepared for health risks both in that and the fact that in general regular hospital visits with a small child aren’t ideal (I speak from experience there lol). I speak from experience because I’ve been visiting the hospital regularly since I was a small child because I have an array of health issues and always have done. Friend & I have bonded over this a little.

Hello! Thanks for writing in! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to write a Good Advice Interlude, so this is very exciting.

You sound like a lovely and concerned friend! However, and this probably is gonna land with a big-ass thud: your friend’s pregnancy isn’t about you and she doesn’t have to make you feel better about her decision to become a parent.

Right out of the gate, you say you’d like “advice for helping a friend with a teen pregnancy.” Okay! A good instinct! But when we get into the details, what you really seem to be asking for are some ways for you to feel okay about your friend’s decision to carry her pregnancy to term — you talk about what you need to be reassured about, and what questions you need to make sure your friend is grappling with so that you can help her. But it’s not clear whether your friend has asked for your help or your advice or your recommendations on how to do her pregnancy! So let’s back waaaaaay up, because the top way to not help a person going through some big life shit is to burden them with your own personal misgivings about it.

Reading between the lines, I sense that you want to be a kind, good friend who does the right thing, and you know that the right thing is to support your friend who has decided to become a parent at a younger age than most people do these days. I sense that in your heart, you know the right thing to do is to support young people’s reproductive autonomy and not to judge or shame people for making decisions that you wouldn’t make for yourself, or that are outside the norm in some way. I also suspect that in your heart, despite this, you also feel judgy and frustrated by your friend making a decision to become a parent at age 15 when she has all this other medical stuff going on, and you’re trying to overcompensate for that, because it probably doesn’t feel great, so you’re trying to cast your concerns for you friend as just! looking! for! how! to! be! enthusiastically! and! cheerfully! supportive!

But let’s be real: we live in a complicated cultural milieu wherein we internalize beliefs — whether we want to or not — about young people’s sexuality and pregnancy and parenting that have been shaped by literally the worst fucking people of all time.

Teen pregnancy and teen parenting are massively stigmatized — at least, they are where I live in the United States, and I bet they are where you live, too. This stigma is so prominent that there’s a whole repro justice-oriented, intersectional campaign around respecting young people’s reproductive autonomy called #NoTeenShame, and I strongly encourage you to check it out and share it with your friend if she’s open to it. (For more on the subject, I extremely recommend Natasha Vianna’s work for some contextual reading on parenting while teenaged, plus more here and here and here on shame, stigma, and teen pregnancy and parenting.) We don’t have a lot of positive cultural narratives around teen parenting, and we have a whole fuckload of horror shit show stories about how becoming a teen parent ruins your life forever period the end full stop.

So how about … just owning that those narratives affect you, too? You could explore those feelings on your own, or try unpacking them with another friend who is not at all even a little bit involved with this situation. Examine where these pressure points come up for you — what parts of your friend’s decisions make you feel uncomfortable, angry, frustrated, judgmental, anxious, worried? What parts trigger a need to be kind of patronizing toward your friend? (Such as, for example, assuming that she doesn’t know how to navigate a medical establishment — when bonding over your shared experience with the medical establishment is already a big part of your friendship!) Sit with those feelings and acknowledge them and don’t try to cover them up with being friendly and helpful, because they will only fester, and eventually they’ll taint your actual experience with your friend, and you’ll really, really not be able to be there for her in a genuinely supportive way.

You don’t say how old you are, yourself, but maybe you know a thing or two about parenting at a young age, and maybe you’re hoping to save your friend from going through some of the same bullshit you’ve had to deal with in your life? That can definitely be a kind and loving instinct, but it can also be incredibly patronizing, and even infantilizing — especially if it’s coming from a place of you needing to feel better about something an entire other person is doing with their entire other body that has absolutely nothing to do with you in the most practical and literal sense. You’re not your friend’s parent, and you’re not your friend’s partner — your investment in your friend’s pregnancy is many degrees removed, which means you have a wonderful opportunity to be a cheerleader, and not yet another person in her life asking her “what about” questions as if her pregnancy has actually rendered her incapable of being both excited and nervous or scared or apprehensive at the same time, which is how folks often treat pregnant teens (and, frankly, pregnant adults, too, because misogyny is the fucking realest). You can certainly suggest: “Hey, I went through something similar, do you want my advice about this?” but only if you’re willing to take “Nope! I got this!” for an answer.

Anyone planning to become a mom at 15 years old is going to have plenty — P L E N T Y — of people in her life treating her like she doesn’t know her own mind or her own body. She is never going to lack people who are afraid at her all the time. She is going to mostly be surrounded by people telling her she’s making a dangerous and bad decision, and that she’s being irresponsible toward both herself and her future kiddo. The vast, vast majority of people — including her medical team, unless she has a radically progressive provider setup — who she encounters are going to be naysayers, and many of them are going to be concern trolls, and even the really well-meaning ones who love her a whole lot and only want the best for her are never going to stop asking her if she’s thought of this and that, if she’s read about the risks and the dangers, if she’s got a plan for A, B, and C, if she realizes that parenting and pregnancy are hard, if she wouldn’t rather do X, Y, Z so that she can do whatever it is people think you can’t do while parenting as a young person: go to school, have a career, enjoy your friends, have fun, etc.

And yes, raising a kid while you’re young is really hard. But it’s hard because many of our cultures mostly shame and stigmatize young people who choose to parent instead of offering them the support and resources they need to be happy and healthy. Teen parenting isn’t a scourge, but the way we treat teen parents certainly is. You can break that cycle right now!

Good luck to you both, and congrats to your friend! Sending all the great universe vibes for a safe and healthy pregnancy, and a long and happy friendship for y’all.

[npdbubblygum]

Hi there, as a lot of people have seen there is a cluster fuck of a post in the npd tag about.. idek how to summarize it except glorifying empathy and villainizing personality disorders. They use narcissist, psychopath, abuser, and lots of degrading words interchangeably so be prepared for that. I won’t @ the person, partially because I don’t want to deal with the headache of them replying and partially because I don’t want to be responsible if they get harassed. They’re in the tag though publicly saying this so you could stumble upon it yourself, be careful and don’t read if it’ll hurt you! Tagged as #long post

It was so long so I decided to pick out the most relevant parts and comment on them.

People who know they have NPD don’t seem to go around calling people “unaware narcissists” as we know it’s difficult to notice and diagnose and increases stigma to do so. That’s something self proclaimed empaths do a lot though. Also, are you in this statement admitting that empaths can come across as self centred and “narcissistic” if people don’t understand what’s happening in their brain?

Personally I don’t feel any hatred for hyperempathetic people, that’s just a neutral trait some people have.

You can’t really say something is the opposite of a whole personality disorder that has several different diagnostic criteria and presents differently in different individuals. Brains aren’t black and white and antisocial PD isn’t only lack of empathy. The word for not being antisocial is prosocial what I know?

People can have compassion without empathy and people can lack compassion while having empathy, and it’s okay to not be loving as long as you aren’t harming people.

You shouldn’t passive aggressively say sorry to us in the same sentence you’re insulting us as “number out husks” and then go on to talk about how weak and cowardly we are. A lot of us had our empathy weaponized against us from such an early age that we had to turn it off to survive. If you value empathy so much, why aren’t you empathizing with that? I don’t really feel anything about it, it’s just a fact, but it’s also a fact that we shouldn’t have had to suffer through so much pain and then be blamed for how our brains developed. Also, if someone was born without empathy or had a traumatic head injury that impacted it they obviously didn’t choose that either. People who can feel a lot of empathy are also often scared of love and people without empathy can hate violence and conflict and have people they value enough to sacrifice themselves.

First of all, people in power are corrupt and become corrupt and are not the same as inventors or philosophers or any other great contributor, secondly those are exceptional people who stand out in history and didn’t have any access to therapy or self help or medication or anything else that helps mentally ill people function and cope. You can’t even go back in time and confirm who feels what level of empathy. People without empathy can also value peace, human lives, safety, etc. I constantly help caring for friends and community regardless of how little I feel about them. I don’t have to feel empathy, sympathy or compassion to do what is right, I can simply choose it, I can hate someone and devalue them and still choose to do what’s best for them.

The concept of empathy isn’t attacked we’re literally just saying we can exist without it and still be worthy human beings and people with empathy can be flawed and selfish still. We literally just want nuance and acceptance so people will have access to help.

Okay who thinks we’re actually out to destroy empathy? Maybe fascists are but come on. In the npd tag? You go into the npd tag thinking we have some kind of agenda to Destroy Empathy? People in society value empathy so much that calling someone empathetic is considered a huge compliment and calling someone unempathetic is an insult.

Fun fact! That’s how a lot of us were made! People literally broke our child-brains by using our empathy as a weapon against us and it was so overwhelming and terrible we couldn’t handle it :^) but yeah call abuse victims weak and pathetic that’s great love that for you

Also, a lot of us have really strong emotions that are incredibly overwhelming, not just a “dried up stream” lol

You talk about empaths needing a shield. Our “shield” was Not Having It.

Still unsure if you mean people with NPD or abusers or abusers with NPD but while there probably exists some people who go out with the intention to cause harm, most narcissists don’t and even most abusers work differently than that, they have a set of beliefs that they think justifies their harm it’s not really “oh how fun to destroy people” in a lot of cases. Of course it is unjustifiable though. I’ve read that abusive people seek out more empathetic people because they’re easier to convince that they can deserve it and often have qualities an abuser values, like a willingness to give more chances and staying quiet about mistreatment because they’d feel guilty or being guilt tripped easily. It’s often more about control than sadism, but sometimes it is sadism. Unempathetic people can also be abused and deserve to have resources.

Intelligence is actually not very easy to define and measure and intellectually disabled people should absolutely be included in that conversation and should absolutely not be called mindless, the mind is way more than the typical definition of intelligence. Heart doesn’t have a set definition and is even more loose than intelligence but if someone doesn’t experience the same types of emotions as me I’d still think they should be able to speak their minds about it.

Oh my god no one is denying the existence of empathy?? It is a well known concept, people study it, people who say they don’t feel it are admitting it exists because that’s what makes them different.

There are so many things to say here.. first of all are you equating npd to abuser again?

Secondly, this is a really toxic mindset. You don’t have to suffer through incredible emotional/psychological pain to be strong. You don’t have to be strong. You don’t have to “bear the burden”. If you’re in a situation that is bad for you, please do what you can to leave! You aren’t better or worse for not being able to handle the pain, you shouldn’t have to be in pain.

Thirdly, what do you think a narcissistic injury or crash is? It’s exactly that. Our sense of self and self worth crumbling when our defence mechanism doesn’t work. It’s not funny. It’s awful to go through. We do not have life on easy mode, life is a fucking nightmare, people with npd often have suicide attempts. How can you say any of this while claiming to empathize with people?

People with facial disfigurements have told me that disfigured is the word they want to be called, not deformed. Also, you shouldn’t vilify disfigurement like that, it’s not a bad thing and it’s ableist to use it to insult and to equate it with being an abusive person or having a mental illness. Also calling people monkeys is dehumanizing too. Don’t think you can get away with that.

You are actually correct about empathetic not being the real word - empathic is actually standard English. Not because -pathetic means you’re weak but because -pathic means suffering/experiencing/feeling/being moved by and -pathetic means means being able to move someone else. You’re being super fucking weird about it though.

Your pop culture references weren’t that accurate or relevant and you shouldn’t rely on made up stories to support your point when you’re talking about real psychology. So I won’t include them. I saw some other people already told you they were wrong.

Hopefully no one agrees with any of the shit you wrote it was a pain to make this post but it was eating at me when I tried to leave it alone so here you have it

[socialistsooner420]

looking at a treatment center for agoraphobia and

oh wow, only $80? AND the insurance companies designated to help finance my mental health "stay out of my private matters"?? wow thats great!

yes i know i said i hate the insurance industry, this doesn't change the fact that this is literally just shady as FUCK, acting like they're doing this out of some kind of "privacy merit" like fuck OFF this shit is so transparently meant to extract the most money out of you. by "not getting insurance involved" they're just admitting they're unregulated and only care about money.

also,

im fucking agoraphobic, you dicks.

I DONT FUCKING HAVE $80 BECAUSE I CANT LEAVE MY DAMN HOUSE LIKE WHAT THE FUCK

like seriously, this is supposedly a treatment center specifically for agoraphobia, and they don't see how fucked up it is that i gotta pay $80 that i dont have and even have the "courtesy" of "not getting insurance involved in my private matters" by having them pay???????

seriously im so fucking sick of the rampant abuse and complete neglect of agoraphobic people. im so fucking sick of being pushed around by pharmacies and doctors who say stupid shit like "wElL yOu GoT oUt Of ThE hOuSe To CoMe HeRe!!! iT cAnT bE tHaT bAd NoW cAn It????" like, fucking YES, ITS THAT BAD THATS WHY IM FUCKING HERE. AND DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT WAS FOR ME TO EVEN FUCKING GET HERE???

and most the time it seems like these fucking doctors dont even know what the fuck agoraphobia actually IS. like JUST FUCKING LISTEN TO US AND WE CAN TELL YOU!!!! im so sick of being shut down by my own psychs who i came to for help, just to be invalidated and told "well you probably dont have agoraphobia, you're out of the house right now" like ??????yes for help????????

and then theres family and others in my life that will say "well you still go out sometimes!" like, yeah. when i have to go get my medications or go to the doctor. sometimes im literally forced by my mother in law because she "doesn't believe in agoraphobia" (even though she believes in anxiety???) and constantly throws the examples of those times to guilt me about how im sick.

and i understand that agoraphobia is not very well researched, how could it be when

A) we're scared of being in social situations

B) the stigma that we're just lazy

C) the endless invalidation of our mental situation, being told that we're not "at that stage" of "anxiety", using examples of going out to seek treatment as a justification that "its not that bad"

and that third reason really pisses me off because although a lot of the time they do go hand in hand, agoraphobia is not a "level" of anxiety. its a similar but completely different mental illness that has anxiety as a SYMPTOM, not a cause.

i think im going to make an agoraphobia awareness post and just explain what agoraphobia actually is since no one seems to fucking understand what the fuck it is because this is just so ridiculous im so fucking sick of this shit. i deserve help too. all agors do. im sick of us being neglected.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #390

“i am the enemy, here to save the day!”

When was the last time you woke up in the middle of the night? I do this LITERALLY every night. Do you write? (Songs, poems ect..) RP posts and rarely poetry. What is the easiest type of YouTube video to binge watch? Probably a good let's play of a game I'm really into. Do you color Easter eggs still? I haven't in years. I would if it was offered up, though. Do you prefer to decorate with pastel colors or bright colors for Easter? Pastelllll. Do you own a cross necklace? I did in the past, but I don't now. What color is your favorite pair of shorts? I don’t wear shorts. Do you prefer bright colors, dark colors, or pastel colors? Pastels. What’s something that makes you tired? Socializing. Like it's physically draining to me. Do you like drawing or painting better? Drawing. Do you own any foreign coins? No. Do you prefer soft tacos or hard? I hate tacos. Any recent purchases? My niece's birthday is coming up, so I bought her a Disney version of a board game from my childhood called "Pretty Pretty Princess." She's going to love it. :') Do you ever make mixed CD’s for anyone? I never did, no. Are you into gory movies? Yeah. Have you ever been locked in a room forcefully without anyone knowing? omg no Do you have the same color eyes as your mother? No. Do you know anyone who has overdosed? Me. Though I obviously didn't die. Have you ever been put to sleep for surgery? Twice. What is your favorite online smiley face to you? I think I use (: the most. What is something that freaks you out no matter what? Seeing babies move in their mother's stomach makes me want to shriek and vomit. Do you have any fetishes? No. Do you take a lot of photos? Sigh, not as much as I used to... I just don't know what to photograph anymore. Never leaving home doesn't help. Do you have big ears? No; I actually have very small ears, as has been pointed out to me. Do you have a laptop, desktop or both? A laptop. Have you ever met an online friend in real life? Yes! :') There are more I wanna meet. What would you say is your favorite color, out of them all? Baby pink. Have you ever attempted suicide? Yes. What are you most known for? In my real life, my art "skills." Online, probably my obsession with meerkats. Do you have a problem with body hair? Nope. The stigma of it needs to fucking stop. If you bathe yourself and keep your hair groomed, who the actual fuck cares what YOU do with YOUR body. Have you ever been so depressed, you were put on medication? I've been medicated for depression since the 7th grade. What is one thing you think is gross about the human body? Fluids like pus gross me out. Have you ever witnessed someone being murdered? Jesus, no. o_o At what age do you plan to get married? I'd like to as a young adult, but it's not that big a deal for me because I don't want kids (I wouldn't want kids 'til marriage if I did). Do you have any candles in your room? No, but a wax warmer. Ever make a friendship bracelet for someone? Yeah, as a kid. What have you been made fun of for the most? People love to pick on me always being on the computer, when I REALLY wish they fucking wouldn't. I'm aware it's an issue that I've had before I was even a teenager and it makes me SUPER self-conscious. When you’re visiting a site, do you still type ‘www.’? No; I kinda forgot that was a thing, lol. Can you still read the time if an analogue clock doesn’t have numbers on it? Yeah. To whom will/did you first talk about the first time you’ve had sex? My mom, I think. What is something you didn’t like about being thirteen? Acne lmaooo. What can you hear right now? "Girls" by Marina. It's really been jammed in my head lately. Do you think it’s okay for kids to have cellphones? Depends on the age and the phone, imo. I personally am for the idea of (slightly older) children having some sort of cell phone with limited applications, just because emergencies happen, and if I was a mom, I'd want my child to ALWAYS be able to reach me like if they were at a friend's or something. I'll tell you right now kids don't need extravagant iPhones, though. Again: limited applications, also to prevent addiction. Do you have any siblings? If so which one of them do you get along with the best? I have one brother and technically five sisters, but I know nothing of one of them. I don't really know who I get along with best...? I'm sadly not exceptionally close to any. What’s your favorite TV show? And who’s your favorite character from it? My favorite show of all time is Meerkat Manor, wherein my favorite character was Mozart. What kind of signs do you use when you pose for pictures? I usually don't make any, but I'll sometimes do a peace sign. What math subject is your favorite? Um, none? How about science? Genetics. Do you have a favorite Youtuber? If so, who? And what is your favorite video by them? Markiplier, obviously. :') Favorite video... I think it's gotta be the first video of the Dark route in "A Date With Markiplier." It's, uh, special to me lmfao. What’s your favourite Mexican dish? I just like quesadillas. Have you ever ordered a specially made cake from a cake shop? Yeah. Well I mean, Mom has. What’s the name of your first real boyfriend or girlfriend? Jason. Have you ever dated a model? No. What is your ultimate goal in life? To be happy and satisfied with what I've done. Have you ever visited someone in prison? No. What months were you and your siblings born in? I was born in February, my younger sister in April, and my older sister is a June baby. Do you write down your passwords in a physical place to prevent losing them? No. x_x Do you have any injuries at the moment? No. Are you tall, short or average? Would you change this? Average. Nah. Have you ever taken an acting class? No, not my thing. Have you ever worked in a store while someone shoplifted there? Yikes, no. Is there anything you absolutely refuse to eat? Venison. Basically anything hunted primarily for sport. If you killed something that did not need to be killed to provide for yourself, I'm not touching it. Have you ever lived in university/college campus housing? No. Who was the last person you complimented? I think my mom? She's doing great with her diet, and I can tell she's lost weight. Do you like spring rolls? Yeah, they're decent. What do you live on in terms of a street, road, crescent, place, court etc? Court. What’s your favourite type of curry? I don't know if I've ever tried any. Have you ever had casual sex? No. Not my jam. If your phone rang right now from a number you don’t know, would you answer? Nope. What was your first pet’s name and how did you pick that? My first personal pet was either my guinea pig Squeak or Chinese water dragon Shadow. I could NOT tell you why I named a green lizard "Shadow," but I called Squeak "Squeak" because he, well, squeaked, lol. How tall are your highest heels? Not high at all. What’s your favourite flavour of frosting? Chocolate. Last thing you looked up on Wikipedia? It was a band that needed a Wikipedia link to go on the Silent Hill wiki. Someone pointed out in trivia that Tears of Mankind covered a SH piece. Should guys keep their shirts on at shows? Unless there's a good reason, like you're seriously overheating, I think so. What about girls? The same as guys. I do think women should keep their bras on though mostly for their own protection because people are pigs. Do you have multiple playlists on YouTube? Yes. What is a goal that you have trouble accomplishing? Losing weight, apparently... What color is your Easter basket? I don't have one anymore. My childhood one was a light tan basket with a baby pink frill around it. What do you need to get from the store right now? Mom just got groceries the other day. What is something that you used to feel ashamed of, but now you don’t? I can't think of anything. EVERYTHING embarrasses me, so. What is your favorite part of growing older? Uhhhhhh. Are you hypersensitive? If so, in what ways are you hypersensitive? Yes, to textures in food. What’s a drug that’s made you gain weight? Paxil was the first, but I worked it all off and got in the best shape of my life. Then Abilify absolutely destroyed my body as far as my weight is concerned because my doctor was an absolute, utter fucking idiot that I will never forgive. Is there a piece of jewelry you have your eye on right now? No. Do you believe that people can be asexual? Bro the fuck, of course I do. What color is your Bible, if you have one? I don't have one. When are you at your happiest? When I first wake up and get on the computer. New day, same shit, but don't tell me that. :^) Do you prefer to spend your time indoors or outdoors? I mean, it really depends on my mood as well as the weather, but generally, indoors. Can you honestly say that you love yourself? Nope. Where did you go, the last time you left your house? My sister's house to celebrate her husband's birthday. Do you like your singing voice? Meh, it depends on the song I'm singing, but usually, no. Have you ever done a psychedelic drug? If not, would you ever consider it? No to both.

[pestopascal]

so i hace a question in regards to cyberpunk and cyberpsychosis. i have seen a lot of negatitivyt into the use of the word and i agree but i was hoping there is something else in it and they didnt just call it that to be edgy

yeah. it’s called cyberpsychosis. and that is... not fantastic at all when you’re introduced to it. and especially since it is aaaaaalllllll around you. datashards and banks you pick up refer to it...

the only credit i will actually give is that you are told how horrible they are and so on and then if you actually like. do the side mission where you take them down (non-lethally or... lethally... if you have to...) regina actually tells you that 1) it is basically a corporate lie that people have eaten up to blacklist people who even show the slightest problem 2) most of the people who have “cyberpsychosis” are actually people suffering from untreated PTSD, poor cyberware updates, trauma of any kind, wrong medications, abduction by corpos to be experiments etc and that the stigma for mental health is so great they have been boxed in instead of being treated (especially former soldiers, or people who have been wrangled by corporate lies like an autoshop owner, and even an actress) and 3) that by helping these people seek treatment (which is definitely possible and mostly stems in either removing the bad cyberware and therapy regina provides (either in the form of BDs or other)), you’re kind of... opening up the discussions of it. regina is a wartime reporter and she actively hunts down child molestors and rapists in her spare time, and reports accurately on arasaka’s movements alongside militech and stuff. she just wants to help people of night city because, since johnny’s attack on the tower in... 2023? people gave up fighting back.

mental health still has a very noticeable stigma in cp77, because it has it’s universe divergence in 1990, and didn’t have all these leaps and bounds we actually have had, and like in terms of lizzy wizzy, who is pretty much all chrome by 2077 (finished her transition recently), her boyfriend/manager speaks to arasaka about potentially engram-ing her and ‘erasing bad traits’. and you’re like oh fuck that’s awful since arasaka can technically do that (and do) and he’s betraying her trust. but then if you tell her that and respond to her later message... she’s killed him. she kind of crosses this threshold of not recognising what has happened... and she later releases a BD and v just tries to question her about it but she’s dismissive of it. you could argue that.......... he knew something was wrong, cybernetic wise, and the ‘less desirable traits’ were honestly actually more to do with the excessive cyberware hampering on her humanity. the actress i mentioned was pumped full of cybernetics for a new movie, woke up with amnesia, everyone thought she was just playing her role well but... she panicked and couldn’t remember where she was and just reacted to believing that the script was real, because no one was around to help her.

sandra dorsett, the woman you rescue in the opening, also has references to night corp purposely trying to “induce” cyberpsychosis in people and record what happens. i think they probably could’ve used another term in any case just because... well. people who report on the game write it off for many reasons, and naturally unless you do this complete side mission... you’re not going to hear the truth of it. but regardless...

tldr: “cyberpsychosis” is made up corpo garbage that is spouted by corpo controlled media to isolate and hurt people who suffer largely from PTSD and control people into literally reporting anyone who so much as blinks wrong, that 9/10 they end up being spirited away during the night, and relies heavily on stigmas to be used against people (you do hear some npcs sometimes saying stuff about hoping they don’t have it because they don’t want to get shot vs treated as... ncpd shoot first ask questions later)

[peepingnee]

Anxiety Things

I hate that I have an internal debate every time when it comes to my attacks about wether or not to take my Clonazepam. Like I should be able to handle them on my own and not lean on medication. Especially after the incredibly awful new prescribing doctor I got who told me my anxiety was curable and meds should only be used until you're cured. Also he pointed out I'm on a high dose of "a very addictive medication". So now I sit here and I can feel the panic set in and how my skin starts to crawl and my heart rate rockets and my body tenses but still in my head I think "it's not bad enough yet, I should wait to take my meds until I REALLY need them" like I somehow have to prove to myself/the people around me that it's bad enough to warrant taking a pill. That I have to EARN my relief through suffering first. Instead of being a rational adult and saving myself the work up by just recognizing an "attack is coming so I should get ahead of it and take my meds now" I think part of it comes from the stigmas of mental health that I grew up with and the constant string of "it's not that bad, just think happy thoughts, you can do anything if you're dedicated enough, you've got to want it"

Look you guys...

But here we are yeah?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's bullshit. All of it. You do not have to earn your relief by being a martyr. Fuck those guys with their live laugh love shit "other people have it worse, be greatful for what you have" everyone is different and we all have our struggles and you don't owe your relief from your symptoms to anyone. There's nothing to prove. YOU are in pain. Maybe physical, maybe mental, but it's yours and not theirs and only you know how much you can take. I'm not saying go out and do something destructive alright (whiskey is not actually a substitute for proper mental health care) but I am saying there is no shame in taking your prescribed medication when you need it. That's literally what it's there for and anyone who tells you otherwise can go suck it (this includes your own irrational brain ) ❤️

Stay safe loves and take care of yourself!

[agena87]

That.

The parts about under-diagnosis in AFAB people + self-diagnosis being important particularly got me.

I, a 36yo AFAB person, had to wait until this year to get a diagnosis. And you know how/why I finally was tested? Because I self-diagnosis after three decades of suffering and being told I was this-or-that (shy, "too smart for my age", mentally-ill*, strange, ...), but never once, was it suggested that I could be autistic. How could I, I am a "female", and only boys are autistic, right? Girls are just "too sensible" or "difficult" or "attention-seeking", right? WRONG!

*(duh, of course I am, I spent my whole life masking, it leaves (figurative - and sometimes literal) scars)

So yeah, I self-diagnosed back in 2018, but I didn't dare talk about it to any medical personnel until the end on 2022, 'cause I feared they would say I was "faking". So I continued masking, and my mental (and physical) health got worse and worse, until some nurse, compared some symptoms I talked about to her with autistic behaviour. That's what got me the courage to talk about my self-diagnosis to my GP and psy nurse, and got me tested (and "officially" diagnosed) in the end.

If not for this nurse who saw (and expressed to me her observations) some signs in me, I would never have got tested, and I'd still suffer from my constant masking, all because of fear of the stigma around self-diagnosis, of people's ignorance. My health (both mental and physical) is fucked because of those three decades of faking. Not faking being autistic, but faking NOT being autistic. It's too late for me, but for 15yo kids? There's still hope that they could get the help they need before their health/life is too impacted.

So stop shaming kids (or older people) for self-diagnosing, because it's not helping anyone. In fact, it does harm. And maybe some people fake, or just want attention (but ask yourself why. People rarely do so without reason, and more often than not, it's because they have problems and need help). Or maybe they're wrong. So what? It doesn't hurt anyone (it certainly does less harm that not being believed, at the very least). And guess what? Most of the people who are self-diagnosed? Really are autistic (or have the condition/illness/whatever - it's not limited to autism) because they know better than anyone how they work and what is happening in their mind/body.

So. Shut your mouth and stop being the diagnosis police!

(sorry for rambling but I'm tired of this mentality)

im gonna need non autistic ppl to stop trying to talk about the autistic experience please and thank you ❤

ugh listen i know majority of the time when yall say shit like "autism is becoming a trend diagnosis" yall are coming from a good place but like... ik yall mean to say you dont want ppl to stereotype or water down autism and i do appreciate that sentiment. but autism has been so severely underdiagnosed in ppl, especially women, for years, and its only within the last 10 or so years that its become more understood and acceptable. so like yeah of COURSE theres gonna be an uptick in diagnosis and an uptick in ppl identifying with symptoms of it. its like that study that was done about how it used to be socially unacceptable for people to write with their left hand, so everyone was right handed. but then when the stigma died down, suddenly you saw a huge uptick in left handed people. like no those people werent Faking Being Left Handed, its just that they now live in a society where being left handed is accepted, so fuck it theyre gonna write with their left hand now cuz thats more comfortable.

but seriously, especially if you arent autistic urself im gonna need you to tone down your weird obsession with Proving That A Bunch Of Random Teenagers on tiktok are wrong and lying about their valid mental health concerns. like we literally just went thru a pandemic 3 years ago and yall still act like its totally unreasonable for teens to have suspicions that theyre traumatized and mentally ill?? obv im not saying that the pandemic caused their autism but its just so weird seeing people who ik were dismissed their entire childhoods for their undiagnosed mental illness bc theyre just Dramatic Idiot Teens, now suddenly doing the EXACT same shit to teens as though they didnt all collectively go thru a Really Traumatizing World Event and its like... you are literally your parents dude. idk i think shit like "acoustic" or "big spoon discourse" is annoying too but do you remember being 15? thats like the whole shtick, youre literally just inherently annoying at that age. a lot of the times, teens focus on and get really angry by really stupid small stuff cuz they cant see the root of their real problems. like honestly even if you are autistic like fully diagnosed and everything you still shouldnt be so obsessed about "proving" someones faking a disability because genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, you literally cannot ever know that. you do not know these people and you do not know the intricacies of their lives. you are not advocating for "real" autistic people, you are just preventing people who do not relate to their symptoms in the way you relate to your symptoms from seeking help.

y'all complain so hard about the tiktok teens with poor understandings of their own mental health and unlimited internet access but like as someone who is autistic i have to ask what does you making a bunch of sicknasty gotchas at some random tween online is gonna do for me, an autistic person. youll always see them say shit like "but but but the autism resources!!!" and its like WHAT resources lmfao. government assistance? cuz you have to have a diagnosis for that, you dont just walk up to the judge and be like hey give me money im so fucking autistic bro lmao. group therapy? cuz thats not a finite resource lmfao, we're not gonna suddenly run out of group therapy sessions just bc someone Might Be lying about being autistic. especially things like therapy, typically when more people show up that just means theres an interest, so they put MORE effort into those things bc hey theres an interest! so then resources are actually funneled more into these programs. so its not that either! like do you see what i mean??? u arent defending my honor, youre literally just mad at some random kids for doing dumb attention seeking kid shit.

i'll let y'all in on a little secret. i too was an attention seeking child who claimed to have a mental illness before i was diagnosed, and you know what ended up happening? i actually had the fucking mental illness the whole time! and you know what? a lot of those kids probably ARE autistic too, if you identify heavily with a lot of autistic traits thats a worthy cause for concern. so many people have this idea that you arent allowed to suspect your diagnosis before you get diagnosed, like yall think someones gotta go to a doctor completely unaware of their symptoms and have the doctor organically confirm whats wrong with them without any input from the patient experiencing the symptoms, and its just so weird? typically self dx is the first step towards ACTUAL diagnosis you guys. idk like yeah OBVIOUSLY theres a problem with people misunderstanding the true experiences of autistic people, that literally happens with every mental illness and disability ever because our society was not made for mentally ill and disabled people. but to me the good of believing people and helping even ONE person to receive a diagnosis or even to better understand how they function in this world, outweighs the bad of, like, some random tiktok teen lying about being autistic for internet clout. and like i said ESPECIALLY if u arent autistic, you truly have no reason to focus the entirety of your """activism"""" on Owning The Fakers! cuz again genuinely what good does that do. idk like i get yall have good intentions but it kinda seems like yall just want an excuse to be mean to annoying kids online who in retrospect are not doing That Much harm. like, genuinely... get a hobby 😭

[nautilusopus]

👀

send me a 👀 and i’ll post a snippet of art/writing

Ughhh I’m mostly just realising how bad all my WIPs are.

This one’s literally just titled “workshop this” and then I just abandoned it until further notice. Can’t even give you an ETA on this one since memory loss is pretty played the fuck out and there’s nothing I could do with it that hasn’t already been done to death. 

Geostigma went deep. 

That was the first thing they learned, after the rain. It made sense, in a morbid sort of way -- Jenova's genetic material would naturally cause all sorts of health issues, and so too would her mind, her presence lingering on inside those infected, carving away at their psyches bit by bit, infesting her victims mentally as well as physically.

Denzel wasn't the first one afflicted by it, but he was the first one they personally noticed -- little moments where he'd space out, then snap out of it moments later. Cloud had thought they were absence seizures at first, since he was certainly the right age for it. Until they noticed there were specific conditions that set it off. 

One specific condition, in fact.

"If you didn't want to draw anything, you could have said so," sulked Marlene. Tifa was out for the moment and Barret was left to supervise directly, with Cloud cleaning off the bar behind them. 

"That -- it's --"

He was staring at the notebook she'd offered him, that she'd had since she was five, that Denzel had stolen on more than one occasion to add his own drawings to. She was six, and he was eight, and that was practically a lifetime of difference at that age. He was bound to blow her off for being "too much of a baby" in one aspect or another, and in Denzel's case it was Marlene's drawing skills, and how they were inferior to his own. 

Now, however, he was staring at the notebook, with a pained expression, his face slack, his eyes empty. His grip on it tightened, earning him a squeal of protest from Marlene. 

"You're gonna rip it!" she yelled. "Papa!"

And then Barret was looming over the both of them, staring down at Denzel with The Look. Cloud had stopped cleaning, internally grumbling as he began putting together something that woud qualify as a scolding now, and a talk for him later on about how him being older didn't automatically make him "in charge" of everything.

Normally anyone having Barret look at them like that was enough to give them pause. Denzel didn't even acknowledge he was there. His breathing became quick and uneven. Marlene seemed to have noticed something wrong too, as she had let go of the notebook and had backed off behind Barret's leg. 

"Cloud, get over here," said Barret sharply. He didn't need telling, already out from behind the bar hurrying over to them. 

"Denzel," said Cloud, lowering himself to eye level and shaking him gently. "Hey -- look at me." Denzel didn't acknowledge him either, distressed breathing growing heavier by the second. And now that Cloud was further down enough to see his eyes -- 

"Call Reeve," he said in a hushed voice. 

Barret nodded, turning to Marlene. "Let's go upstairs, baby girl," he said, placing a hand at Marlene's back and herding her out of the room. "What's wrong with him?" protested Marlene, still trying to look over her shoulder. "I wanna see --"

"You can see him in a bit," said Barret in a voice that left no room for argument as they disappeared up the stairs. 

"Denzel?" tried Cloud again. Denzel looked up at him then, eyes a bright, poisonous green, pupils narrowed into slits. 

He'd relapsed. How -- it couldn't relapse, could it? They'd checked, his bloodstream had been completely clean. How could it be back?

He wasn't blank anymore -- instead it looked as though he were having some sort of panic attack, eyes still riveted to the notebook. 

"It's okay," he said, just in case he could still hear him. "It's gonna be okay. I gotcha -- here --" He carefully picked up Denzel and carried him up to his room, sitting them both down on the bed. 

Jenova was a barely-there tug in the back of his head, all but gone entirely ever since the rain, and it was with no small amount of difficulty that he felt his way towards it. Sure enough, there it was -- faint but unmistakable. And through it, there was Denzel -- panicked thoughts prickling through, like a wire stretched taut, vibrating and ready to snap. And he pressed himself in closer, trying to ground him, giving him somewhere to pull away too. Denzel slowly unclenched his hand from the notebook and looked up in confusion.

"...Cloud?"

"How're you feeling?" asked Cloud. 

"...Okay," was the dazed reply. "Back kind of hurts."

"...Lower back?" ventured Cloud. "On the sides?"

"Yeah."

Muscle aches. Early stage geostigma symptoms. 

"You kinda blacked out," said Cloud, doing his best to sound calm. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Think so," said Denzel. "I was talking with Marlene about --" 

He winced, his whole body tensing up, and then he was gone again just as quickly.

"C'mon, kiddo," he said softly. He picked him up again and carried him downstairs. "Call Tifa and tell her to meet me at the hospital," he shouted over his shoulder, snagging his keys on the way out.

Not bothering to stick around for Barret's reply, he awkwardly positioned Denzel behind him on the bike, keeping a tight grip on his arms. He took off down the road, his thoughts racing. 

They'd caught it early this time. He hadn't been starving in the ruins for months beforehand. They had a cure. It'd be fine. He'd be fine.

"Cloud?" came a puzzled voice from behind him. 

Cloud squeezed his hand tighter.

-------------------------------------------

As it turned out, it was fine. Sort of. 

As loath as he was to turn Denzel over to some sort of... "medic", he was out of his depth with this and he knew it. Tifa had joined him in the middle of Denzel's third lapse, by which point he'd realised to not, under any circumstances, bring up what led to him being here. 

"It's treatable," said the man who'd introduced himself as Dr. Crandall, as Denzel was escorted off to another room with a nurse. "Same cure as last time, just as effective. Moreso, in fact. We can have him out of here within the hour.

"The infection isn't physical," he continued. "It's mental. Jenova's managed to lodge its mind within the host's. Where exactly varies from person to person, but there's always a specific memory trigger that it's anchored in and spreads out from."

"You know an awful lot about this," said Tifa, "considering how quickly it's popped up."

"You're not the first case we've had this month," said Dr. Crandall. "Or even today. There's been a mass outbreak of it, but only six fatalities that were entirely preventable. As long as they have access to that pool, or know someone that does, it clears up within a few hours."

There was an edge to his voice, a "but". He could feel it coming.  

"And... that's it?" asked Cloud. "You said -- you said you had a lot of cases. How many?"

"In terms of those that had previously contracted the stigma... about ninety percent seem to be experiencing these relapses." Cloud stiffened. "The only real dangerous part is getting the symptoms to show so we know to treat it in the first place. If it isn't something someone often thought about, it would potentially have a lot of time to spread itself before it was detected."

"And..." began Cloud, dreading the answer, "...how would you go about checking for something like that?"

"To be perfectly honest? Luck," said Dr. Crandall. "Of course, you could just take the cure before you even know you had it, but... you may have ethical concerns about that, too."

"Ethical concerns about not dying?" asked Tifa. 

There was another pause, before the doctor finally spat out what he'd been sitting on. 

"...When purging the physical aspects of the stigma, the water destroyed the infected cells. It was on a small enough scale for the body to not even miss the lost tissue." The doctor glanced back at the door Denzel and the nurse had departed through briefly. "And with this strain, it works the same way -- with the affected memories essentially 'amputated'. I mentioned those fatalities." He sighed quietly. "A few patients decided death was preferable. Never told us specifically what those memories were, but in the end, they refused treatment. It's not something I would personally advise, though I can't claim to know the in-depth details of your lives."

Cloud blinked. "When you say 'amputated', you mean...?"

"This isn't specifically my field, but... from what we've observed so far, if that part of your psyche is infested the water burns that away too, just like it did with the cells. Like removing a gangrenous limb."

Cloud was silent. Was the backache he had psychosomatic? Probably, but it didn't really reassure him any. He suddenly felt unclean, as though there were a million insects clinging to his skin, creating gooseflesh on his arms.

"From what you've mentioned," said Dr. Crandall, resuming his previous pace, "his seems to be that book you mentioned, or whatever prior history he had with it.

[donnerpartyofone]

TL;DR - i finally got an MRI for my ear, which has been fucked up and constantly clogged since september and developed tinnitus in february, and apparently, supposedly, there is nothing wrong with it. so there’s nothing to do about it. so just like with my eye and my skin and my lung and my etc, i have a problem that i can’t do anything about, that i can’t even get the satisfaction of a diagnosis for, and i’m so pissed off about how much time and energy i’ve spent trying to improve things for myself when there was absolutely no point in doing so, that i just want to set my body on fire to really show it what i think of it.

i’m so, so mad. the last couple of months have been almost nothing but wall to wall doctor’s appointments, and with zero exception, they have all been a complete waste of time. it hurts because my body tortures me, of course, but it hurts worse than that because i convinced myself that i HAD to do this, that it was Mature to face my fear of doctors and generally the Right Thing to Do, when i absolutely didn’t want to do any of this at all.

i suffer a lot from an internalized impression of myself as being lazy, defeatist, and dramatic. it comes from a lot of places. i grew up in an environment where i was the only open depression sufferer, under one parent who definitely considered depression to be an antisocial behavioral problem, to be treated like any other shallow cry for attention. i also grew up in an environment full of obvious talents, all of whom would go on to be published, or even public figures, and not to be a complete asshole, but the idea that “you can do anything you put your mind to” is kept alive by people who have the baseline talent necessary to succeed at things they put their minds to. if you subscribe to the idea that success requires nothing other than commitment, then the implication is that all failure is a matter of laziness, petulance, and defeatism--never lack, never inferiority, never ordinariness. on top of all this, my personal interests--horror, sexually graphic media, comics, underground music movements, the usual roundup of morbid or antisocial cultural items--were considered pretty much...well, not very adult. so what i’m coming to is that if i can’t prove my adulthood in any way that has to do with who i am or what i’m capable of, then the very least i can do is Be Responsible. (and of course i get made fun of all the time for being an uptight rule follower but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, LITERALLY WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO)

one of the main ways you can Be Responsible, if you have the means that is, is to look after your health. the world is full of icky, boring, degrading, depersonalizing, and occasionally painful tasks that are necessary to keep the societal cogs turning. if you can’t make art or have ideas or be beautiful or become an athlete or whatever, you can still show that you’re alive and generally hygienic by going to the dmv, voting, showing up for jury selection, or going to the doctor. you can still grasp the final shred of integrity offered to you by doing things no one wants to do, but that we know are necessary for the vitality of self and society. so i’m extra good at doing stuff that people my age frequently shirk--the dentist appointments, the doing your taxes the second the forms come in, etc--because they’re sort of the only things i can do that prove that i’m not, you know, a complete piece of shit.

so this year, at the start of february, i decided i was going to get a real handle on my health. i’d been going to doctors for various things already, of course, even though it was pretty much never satisfying; the only thing i can think of that ever got fixed or explained was the pathological growth of scar tissue over my eyeballs, which required some pretty fucked up surgery. but at this time, i had a lot of problems building up. my left eye developed a small spot, and a constant glare that borders on having double vision. my right ear remained completely stuffed up since i had a cold last fall, and began to ring constantly at the end of the winter. my right lung has felt alarmingly tight and weak for...years actually. the right side of my face is constantly beet red, like i go fresh with somebody’s wife, and i can see how it’s thickening and bending my flesh all out of shape, which rosacea will do progressively and incurably throughout your entire life. i decided that instead of quaking in fear of doctors, and also in fear of wasted time, i was going to straighten my back and go nip this shit in the bud. after all, when you’re miserable but not doing anything about it, people kind of hate you, and then you have THAT problem on top of all your real problems. sometimes you gotta give the people what they want.

so how did it all go?

my skin: since no insurance company considers rosacea a medical problem, which is actually complete fucking bullshit, i decided to take matters into my own hands. i researched what rich people do for their uninsurable problem, and decided to use my recent (traumatic) inheritance to take care of myself. i tried three different preposterously expensive topical treatments that i was told are a “magic bullet” for rosacea, and all of them made my face blow up like a fucking macy’s day balloon. then, after four rounds of extremely expensive, painful and scary laser treatments, i had absolutely no results other than that my face was actually MORE reactive for about a month after the last one. i’m fucked.

my eye: according to my optometrist and ophthalmologist and corneal specialist it’s “just” regular scar tissue from my terrifying surgeries, not the pathological scar tissue that i had to have removed via terrifying surgery and localized chemotherapy. this kind of sucks because it means i can’t just get it removed again, but at least there is a slight chance that my body will reabsorb it like regular scar tissue. (oh yeah? and what’s my luck USUALLY like?) my only “treatment option” is to use eyedrops four times a day, which is actually extremely uncomfortable, and which pretty much means i’m just not allowed to wear makeup ever again.

my lung: after two rounds of clear x-rays and a breathing test that only detected slight asthma, through two GPs and a pulmonologist, nobody has anything to say about why i have this chronic breathing problem. there’s some indication that it might be a “muscular-skeletal problem” that’s putting pressure on the one lung, so i guess i need to add a physical therapist or something to my endless list of specialists.

my ear: two or three trips to urgent care (i forget how many now), two GPs, an ENT, a fucking weird hearing test, and an MRI have done absolutely nothing for me. after a cold with a sinus/ear infection last fall, my right ear remained permanently slammed shut; if i pop it, it closes back up in seconds. i do not have the same problem with the other ear, it is clearly a physical problem. in february, my ear began to ring agonizingly and has not stopped for a second. in all this time, i went through round after round of antibiotics, antihistamines, anti-inflammatories, steroids, etc. nothing works. no one can see any type of problem. apparently i have the option of electing to have a tube surgically inserted into my ear, although i can’t quite figure out what the risk factor is, both for my tinnitus, and for my hearing in general. 

and OF COURSE, depression: part of the stigma against depression is that it’s a choice, somehow. like fresh air and exercise and looking on the bright side are so effective that if you’re depressed, it must be because you LIKE IT THAT WAY, because otherwise you would use these simple and free cures for your so-called illness and it would be all over, right? anyway i kind of hate being depressed, and i’ve been working my fucking ass off trying to deal with it. i see a nutritional therapist (a licensed psychiatrist) who prescribed me a number of nutritional supplements that i do think help, but they are unthinkably hard on my stomach. i tried lexapro, and it made me feel so abnormal, and cut into my general quality of life so badly, that i didn’t keep it up. i tried a generic version of wellbutrin, and it made me violently sick to my stomach, and caused my ringing ear to ring deafeningly for days after a single dose. the brand name version wasn’t much better. then i tried lamictal, and felt totally great AND NORMAL for like a week, and then i got the rare and potentially deadly lamictal rash. sometimes this just indicates a basic allergy, and sometimes it indicates Stevens-Johnson Syndrome which causes something called TOXIC EPIDERMAL NECROLYSIS WHICH REQUIRES LONG TERM HOSPITALIZATION TO GROW YOUR SKIN BACK. i had to deal with this on the day of mandatory final exam presentations in a class where i was already struggling, and this was one of the darkest days i can recently remember. after this, my psychiatrist tried to prescribe me abilify, but after i started to hear about the side effects and personal testimony of certain friends, i decided i couldn’t handle it. very possibly, i just cannot be medicated for depression, unless i’m willing to sacrifice everything else around the depression too. 

...this is all pretty much a retread of an experience i had for a few years, a few years ago, where i was having these abnormal paps, so they constantly had to drill painful core samples out of my cervix to keep checking up on the NOTHING that was going on in there, until one day they were just like...uh your tests are coming back fine now, and we don’t know why they didn’t before, and it just doesn’t matter, you don’t have to do this anymore PLUS you could have just been sitting on your couch jerking off this entire time and it would have done exactly as much good as this cycle of being humiliated and tortured by doctors in a while that leaves you curled up in a ball sobbing every time. i’m still pretty pissed off about it, if you can’t tell.

so like i don’t know why the fuck i’m doing all this. i don’t know why i do anything. nothing fucking comes from even my most herculean effort except a relentless sense of mystery that is starting to border on satire. i don’t know why i have so many problems. i’m 38 years old and i’m in ok shape. i don’t have generalized immune issues or anything. my doctor said i have some of the best lab work she’s ever seen. why the fuck does all this shit happen to me. i’m trying so fucking hard to enjoy my life. it’s hard to be in mental and physical pain all the time, the latter for absolutely no coherent reason. i mean i’d rather have a bunch of random problems than like, lupus or MS or something, for sure, but everything that happens to me is so meaningless and arbitrary, i’m starting to get that feeling like god hates me. it’s also hard to have the constant feeling that so many people think that failure to enjoy life is exclusively a matter of “not trying hard enough”, being a pill, looking for attention. i don’t know what to do anymore. i’m real pissed. i think what i need is a change of philosophy, which will be a long hard road. at least i know it’s the one and only area where i, and only i, have some level of control. wish me luck.

[the-evil-twin]

Writing Update.

So, as some of you may know, I’ve been working on a prequel story for Doug Rattmann / Portal over the course of the past few months, and man... 

I eventually storyboarded it into this long epic thing that spanned the duration of even Portal / Lab Rat itself, but the more I research Paranoid Schizophrenia (and I have been researching that illness heavily), I have honest to god no idea how on earth I would be able to pull off Doug off-medication in that sort of a horrific situation without the story turning into horror, because stress seems to make symptoms of the illness much worse. It would be like Layers of Fear meets Portal. It would be extremely difficult. Positive hallucinations seem to be very rare, especially in situations of high stress, so it especially makes a LOT of sense now why Doug would be so obsessed with keeping the cube around him and being afraid of losing it so much - it’s his one positive hallucination. 

Writing about him sane-ish is already a difficult feat because the medication not only would have side-effects, but the hallucinations - while being milder overall - would still not entirely be gone, and the paranoia / delusions most of all would still be there. I think I can still manage that; however, my biggest issue is thinking of how to draw someone like him out, in the first place. He personally strikes me as the sort that would internalize stigma a lot, and I base this entirely on how he’s drawn holding his medication in Lab Rat - like he’s hiding it, and afraid of it being seen. Most people probably have no idea what he deals with, but can sense something is wrong; so there’s a distance between himself and most others. And of course, the closer he gets to people, the more afraid he would be of disclosing that information - so why bother? So yeah, it’s rather difficult trying to think of how to draw someone like that out, in the first place, especially if they have lived that way for some time. Doug really is an incredibly difficult character to get into the head of, lol. Jesus.  Furthermore, I have a giant middle finger extended towards all of the people that romanticize or trivialize his paranoid schizophrenia for the sake of laughs in their stories because fuck you, that illness is hell. In case some of you forgot, that’s a real disease that real people have (most importantly of all) - but even in that fictional world: his life of utter isolation and constantly having to hide from a homicidal all-powerful rogue AI would be terrifying enough for anyone, but for someone like Doug, that would especially be complete agony and mental torture. There would be nothing romantic or humorous about it at all. Though I will say this -- to survive ALL of that off-meds, let alone going through university and having the career that he did on-meds, are both enormous feats for even the average person; Doug must have some serious mental fortitude, I mean goddamn. Which leads me to my next point - I’ve been wondering if Doug would have PTSD after Aperture? Or how his illness would fare after learning about the Combine on the surface? That is serious trauma, let alone the fact that his illness in and of itself would constantly have him on edge; I honestly feel like he would probably die at 60 from all of the stress :( Which I HATE saying, but... ugh. I want to see him have a bigger payoff than just 12 or so more shitty years of worrying about barricading his doors and a grenade getting thrown through his window every second of the day, just UGH. Doug’s life just makes me SO sad whenever I really think about it, and it’s such bullshit. I literally want no one else in that universe to have a happier ending than him, goddamn it - and if I finish it, then I’m gonna TRY to give him that, but the story also needs to sound reasonable in order for it to be decent. a;bKJABT’aebw’b Okay, all that being said... I may or may not be taking a break from it for a while. I’m not sure. I might read for a bit and then go back to look over what I already have written, and go from there. 

[queengeekrose]

My silent struggle

I have a secret.  It’s one no one, not even my own family, who lives in the same house with me, has figured out, until very recently when I talked to them and told them, and it’s one I’m not proud of.  It’s time I talked about it.

It’s not exactly a secret that I’m overweight.  I have been my whole life.  I was even a very large newborn.  I get it.  And with my other health restrictions, I can’t exactly get a lot of exercise or move around a lot.  I have never been a gym rat or a fitness queen.  Everyone who knows me knows this.  Having asthma didn’t help these matters any either -- it’s hard to get excited about trying to do something that makes it hard to breathe.  I was also never particularly gifted at most sports or coordinated.  Let’s call a spade a spade here.  I’m clumsy and some of the other things going on in my life made that worse.  Anyway, I’m not athletic.  I don’t exercise much.  It’s hard for me to lose weight.  So I’ve always been called fat or chubby, or tubby, or plump (one of the kinder ones, usually by friends parents), or round, or rolly polly, or chunky, or some other, less than kind way of saying the same thing.  I mean ALWAYS.  It started when I was three, for fucks sake, going to a storytime at a public library, and other kid asked who the new fat girl was.  It beat me down and wore on me, year after year, decade after decade, become an ingrained part of who I was, what made me feel bad about myself in some way. 

It’s also not a secret I struggle with major depressive disorder.  Or PTSD.  Both of them are major factors in my life at this point and getting them diagnosed and starting treatment for them has helped me a lot.  I still have bad periods, like I’m going through now, where things just seem like an endless struggle to do the most basic tasks, but I know I can get through this because I have before.  My mental health will always be a factor in my life, I suspect, just because I have been through so much, even if the rest of my life were to suddenly be all sweetness and light.  Actually, that would probably make me a bit mistrustful too, just because of some of my history, but that’s a story for another time.  Today we are focusing on something more important.

Anyway, depression, self-image, a heft dose of self doubt, a smattering of self-hatred for being overweight for so long, and me, listening to some of those voices from my past, telling me I wasn’t worth the effort, the time, the expense, the love, the FOOD, ended with me silently spinning into a cycle of self abuse.  At first, it was things like literally picking at scars, cuts, or my skin until I bled, as close to cutting as I ever got.  Then, when I realized what I was doing, and I was diagnosed as a diabetic, and was forced to change my diet, I stopped.  Diabetics are more prone to getting infections because we heal slower and our body can be more at risk, so I decided it wasn’t worth it.  Instead, I decided to make a different change.  Now, please, keep in mind, none of this was actually done with me consciously thinking about it.  My brain just decided it would be the best way to handle things without me really making a choice that I knew of, other than to alter my diet to eat a more diabetic friendly diet.  I thought I was just cutting out sugars and carbs.  What I was really doing was starting down a very slippery slope.  One I’m still struggling on today, four years later.

The decision to cut carbs and sugar seemed easy for me.  I had a lot more willpower than I realized it seemed and suddenly I was just avoiding a lot of foods entirely and my blood sugar came under control in no time flat.  It amazed the doctors.  They had to take me off ALL the medicines, insulin included, except the very minimal maintenance medicine I still take now.  My blood sugars and long term blood sugars (A1C’s) measure more like someone who is not diabetic at all, most of the time, well below 100 daily (and below 5.8 for my A1C).  In other words, I no longer needed to maintain that super tight control and even push further.  My initial A1C had been very high, partly due to an infection, which as I understand it, often throws your body off, and I didn’t know I was diabetic at the time, so I hadn’t been taking very good care of myself either.  Now, I was doing better and going to the doctor, getting things checked, and trying to make a positive, or so I thought, change in my life.  I was even losing some weight!  That was an unexpected bonus. 

Now, as some of you no doubt know, at the same time I was diagnosed diabetic, my legs started giving out on me, due to an unrelated neurological condition.  The doctors have spent several years, countless procedures, and innumerable hours looking at me, my medical charts, going over my spine (they did multiple spinal taps and MRI’s), my legs (nerve biopsy, nerve conduction study, and countless tests of every sort imaginable), and even just focusing on my feet.  They found that the nerves were dead and dying from the inside out, but couldn’t find the cause (and the way they were dying, perfectly evenly on both legs, was extremely odd).  I definitely had something wrong, but they were all stumped.  Oh, and I had a VERY severely crushed spine that I hadn’t known about, probably from a car crash many years ago.  So I was told I needed to use a wheelchair whenever I was outside the house, so I didn’t fall, and even in the house, I should be careful.  My legs can randomly give out on me.  This didn’t help my mental well being, as it seemed like the doctors were kind of just giving up on me, saying “Oh, well.  Yeah, there’s something wrong, but we don’t know what.  Too bad for you.  Hope it gets better.  We’ll be interested to watch, if you let us.”

That was really the beginning of the dark times in my mental struggles.  I became passively suicidal.  I stopped eating almost completely and was often nauseous when I did eat.  I didn’t realize at the time what that was the beginnings of.  What I was starting to struggle with.  What I am still, two and a half, nearly three, years later, still struggling daily with.  ANOREXIA.  To look at me you wouldn’t think I had that problem.  I’m still overweight.  But here’s the thing, you can’t tell by looking at someone what’s going on in their head, heart, or body, most of the time.  I have had several extended family members struggle with anorexia, but I don’t think anyone in our family ever even thought I might be close, even when I said I hadn’t been eating.  No one paid attention.  I was giving them subtle warning signs, looking back, but the red flags all went unnoticed and flew under the radar.  I don’t blame them.  It took me a long time to realize I had been doing this to myself. 

So now my real work begins.  I need to find a way to somehow cope that isn’t so self destructive.  Hopefully, this time around things will be a little easier, as far as that goes.  Some of my stressors are gone.  My life is still rough and rocky, but such is the nature of life.  Some people just have more of an uphill battle than others.  I just wish mine were less of a mountain to climb at times.  And I know some of this is self-inflicted now, but it was never my intention to do this to myself, or to anyone in my family.  I now have to try extra hard to remember to eat everyday, and not skip, just because that’s what seems easier, and more what I want to do.  I can’t say it felt bad losing over 40 pounds in a year, even without much exercise, but that should have been a clue to everyone too, I think.  Even for someone who’s very overweight, that a lot.

Well, I’ve rambled long enough today.  I just wanted to get this out here.  If anyone is going through something and needs to talk, my DM’s are open, and I do have a Discord.  Send me a message and I can send you a link.  Depression, mental health, and eating disorders are all heavy stuff, but they need talked about.  I’m a firm believer that by keeping this stuff in shadowy back corners, we give it more power.  Bringing it into the light helps people and takes the stigma away.  It helps more people understand it too.  ANY ONE can suffer from an eating disorder.  ANY ONE can struggle with mental health.  You never know.  People wear masks in public to hide their innermost thoughts and feelings, so we don’t know what’s going on inside.  Sometimes reaching out is all someone needs.  Don’t be afraid to reach out if you need help, or to reach out if you think someone needs it.

Peace Folks. <3