#help me what have I done

[giantkillerjack]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plain-text version:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[kimarisgundam]

We ended last night's session at like 10+ but at around 12am my friends who play Nomad, Solo and Solo2 demended we continue cos "the drama is too juicy" ಠ_ಠ

Yeah. That's cos the 3 of you aren't involved in the "drama". It's my Netrunner, Exec and Rockerboy whom are in hot spicy soup now ಠ_ಠ

Look at this mess 😭. All our bad decisions are coming back to bite us 😭

Our characters got dragged back to my Netrunner's dad/sponsor's private residence... Rockerboy tried resisting (we told him to not to) so he got his arm and hand torn off by my Netrunner's big bro

Good job 👍. That's going to cost eddies to replace

Dad basically pissed cos

I disobeyed orders and I'm hanging out with street trash

Exec isn't from Arasaka R&D but he was helping dad spy on the other department head... so dad is annoyed that he caused a scene and destroyed company property

Dad is still pissed at Rockerboy for trying to dig up dirt on him. And dad just hates all rockerboys anyway... so he still wants him dead

We told Rockerboy to shut his mouth, please don't make things worse. But he can't shut his mouth... so dad said that killing or torturing Rockerboy isn't a good solution cos Rockerboy is too dumb to learn his place...

Dad (played by our DM) said that to teach Rockerboy a lesson he's going to kill the family members of Rockerboy's friends

I'm just like dad wtf?? Don't do that?? I know I'm a disappointment, but I just found out I'm your bio kid. Can you please don't do this to Rockerboy for my sake??

I was told to shut my mouth and know my place... apparently dad was so lenient with my Netrunner cos he felt guilty for not knowing she was his kid...If he knew he would have tried to send her mom out of Night City 😣

I ended up threatening and blackmailing my own dad @_@

To buy us some time I told dad to let us walk or I will reveal he had an affair with my mom

Does he really want the corp to find out he slept with a traitor? Isn't that the reason why he tried to keep my relation to him a secret?

The info is already in a shard and with a close contact of mine. If I don't return alive, the shard will be turned over to a media

If he's not happy with how I'm blackmailing him, he can go ahead and shoot me if he can bring himself to do it

I am a terrible daughter @_@... why did I do that @_@. I chose Rockerboy and Exec over my own dad, what am I doing @_@

It's another cliffhanger until next session 😭

I swear my Netrunner is so dead 😭

[maybe-a-gatto-or-a-catto]

hold on I'll make this my personality for 3 months

[sciderman]

How did your meeting go with the surgeons?

it was memorable

[manyothermusingsofmine]

Ordering lots of stuff

Pro: I have stuff that needed to be replaced anyway

Con: tHE EMAILS

[letsmakethenaughtylistt]

little life update/hello

[lilybug-02]

Bribed with Chocolate. The way it should be.

Part 22 || First || Previous || Next

--Full Series--

More to come as this is a two-parter. But you know how I am with schedules.

Bonus:

I think this was an equally possible reaction from Chara.

[obsob]

autism 2 autism communication

[rambles-about-minecraft-ocs]

one of my favorite things about zedaph is that on a server full of people that find strange and oft-overlooked minecraft mechanics or rare events and then see just how far they can push them in the name of spectacle or efficiency or world-breaking, zed is over here finding these mechanics in order to do the weirdest things he can think of in as entertaining a manner as possible

like i 100% have faith in zedaph's theoretical ability to be just as efficient or spectacular or world-breaking. if he wanted to do that stuff, i trust that he absolutely could. but thats so far from being his priority. instead, hes going to spend around a week of irl time focused entirely on eventually having the good luck to spawn in something insanely rare so that he can convert it into something even rarer, the result of which being something that 99% of the server reacts with complete and utter shock that it even exists in the first place, just because its zany and funny and he wanted to. and i love that

[deoidesign]

Time and Time Again comes back tonight!

Thank you all for being so patient with me, I know it was a long hiatus.

My health was struggling, my arm was (is) hurting, and I decided it wasn't worth it. I'd rather be slow!

So thank you for giving me that grace, and I hope you'll be there with me for the rest of the series.

[lorebird]

In which Ford struggles so badly to relate to other people that he wonders if he’s really human at all. The more isolated he becomes, the harder it is to reconcile with his own humanity.

[uncanny-tranny]

Another bonus to learning a fiber art is being able to speak to others in a Lovecraftian language that nobody else understands...

...and also being able to read things like THIS:

[eggwishing]

messing around with lineart

[espurr-roba]

practicing values in storyboard pro :D i'm sure nothing canonical is about to happen to strelitzia :D

[genericpuff]

There's a user going around currently reblogging/commenting on antiLO content with the intent of "digging up dirt" on people who simply read and enjoy the comic. Basically demanding the OP's of such posts to inform them of any 'stans' so they can add them to a 'list' that they absolutely do not have any good intentions to do with, along with making some very unsavory and completely unwarranted comments about the fans in general (and I don't mean the usual "lmao LO fans are weird/dumb/etc." stuff, I mean genuinely cruel wishes to have the fans of the comic doxxed/harmed/etc.) I have blocked this user for obvious reasons, and if you get a similar reblog or DM like I did from this person, I hope you'll do the same.

Please do not play into this. As much as I and many others talk shit about this dumpster fire of a comic and its questionable if not outright controversial writing and messaging, none of us have any right to go after any of the fans or stans directly. At best that would just be proving to the fans who already hate this part of the fandom that we're boogeymen out to get people, at worst it would be a betrayal to our own integrity as human beings who should be capable of discussing media without turning it into a harassment campaign. Making shitposts about the media and the fandom is fine, discussing the media itself and the creator who made it within our own little spaces of the Internet is ultimately harmless so long as it's managed within reason, but deliberately going out of your way to dig up personal information on innocent people within the fandom for the purpose of ruining their life is not okay and if you ever get to that point where you're trying to rationalize going after people directly, you need to log off.

[mf-artdump]

Cyn McLean