#it's only a disorder because society makes it one

[barbiexgirl]

“But nobody talks about men’s mental health”

First of all YOU should be advocating for yourself and believe me, women would be cheering you on so we could finally free ourselves from the free emotional labor. Even though I’m pretty sure you’ve never even been anywhere near a therapist’s office, you’re just whining.

But what makes you think we have it better? I’ve been in and out of treatment for the last 9 years and I got nowhere. I’m not taken seriously, my eating disorder was never severe enough for professionals to even acknowledge it because you only get treatment when you’re on the verge of dying. The first suggestion is always some type of antidepressant, I tried 3 different ones and they always make me numb and emotionless while I can also deal with the shitty side effects. Finding a therapist who likes to work with people who have bpd is also a challenge. I had a psychologist tell me we should stop the treatment because it’s already been 6 months since we started and I haven’t shown improvement. I was 16 and I was abused by my parents, of course I couldn’t get better while I was still living at home.

And don’t even get me started on women’s health. Endometriosis, pcos and other medical issues that are not researched enough. Receiving disgusting treatment while giving birth. Millions of women spend years in excruciating pain and not even receiving a tiny bit of empathy. Where’s their movement and representation?

But of course nobody just magically makes your problems disappear like your mom or your wife did your whole life, obviously we as a society just let poor men suffer. Just like the “male loneliness epidemic” it’s only a problem men experience.

[columbidae-creature]

I see colourful (usually green) waves of light flowing across my vision in various patterns. the world feels as if it is rocking under my feet. these ones always come with a sense of unity with the world, as if I am seeing some larger pattern in the universe. they also come with a lack of desire to move or react to things, as in the moment, seeing the beauty and unity of the world has made me uninterested in functioning in human society. sometimes I see very weak/non corporeal people or animals. sometimes I see childhood objects I don't have anymore sitting on a shelf in my house. they usually go away when I blink. sometimes I bump into people, apologize, and then they disappear. sometimes I see downy grey feathers emerging from my arms.

when I am very anxious, and about to have a panic attack, I always smell this scent that's like a combination of ozone and strawberries. it is hard to describe.

i often feel insects crawling all over my arms/legs but tbh i'm not sure if that's actually caused by my nerve problems or not cause it does only happen where I have nerve pain. I can feel the feathers as they grow in.

I hear the ghosts of famous confessional poets (and a few other famous writers as well at times) talking to me. they are a mix of good and bad. I've had amazing conversations with them, and they are my friends, but they are also sometimes very cruel. they all have their own issues and like to make that my problem. Plath and Sexton are the worst about it, with them at times trying to get me to kill myself. however I have also had very beautiful and complex conversations with Plath about suicide. they are like a weird aunt you love but that also gives horrible unsolicited life advice you pretend to appreciate but that you never actually follow.

I don't like when people ask me if the voices tell me to do specific things, because that feels weird and like my entire existence is being boiled down to this one thing, but also because you are giving them ideas. a friend once asked, upon hearing of my disordered eating "do the voices tell you not to eat?" and at the time the answer was no, but then a few days later, guess what they were saying to me. :/

I get milder command voices as well, that i usually follow if they are not hurting me, like taking a different route to get somewhere or putting an object in a certain place.

the voices also do not want me to tell mental health professionals about them, which is tricky.

I also get a lot of nonsense almost-talking. it sounds almost exactly like those hallucinations you get when about to fall asleep, except that i am fully awake.

rarely I have felt an earthquake happening when there isn't one.

Let's fight some of the misconceptions about hallucinations. If you have audio or visual hallucinations, either frequently or only under stress or what have you, tell me what they're like and how you deal with them.

I'll start.

My audio ones are music, or murmuring. The music is like a lively adventure 8bit tune, like old Zelda music, or a tasty guitar or bassline from another room to some rock song i can never really put together into a whole thing. The murmuring is like hearing a party in another room, people talking. Sometimes, lately more often, I'll have clips of things stuck on repeat in my head over and over. Tom Cardy's voice has been particularly invasive the last several weeks, but it's always weird because it's not accompanied by the music, it's acapella. It's just his voice.

Visual most often when it's in full swing I'll see little borrower sized shadows darting around my room or on tabletops, just fast enough I can't get a solid look at them. Other times I'll see things form out of the corner of my eye like shadows, especially in corners. If I'm in low light or have my glasses off it's more oppressive and scary feeling because I can feel and see something but not see details no matter how close it gets.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned these all before on this blog a few times. But I can't help but feel like it's important to bring them up now and then, and to invite others to talk about theirs, so there's less stigma around it. Stigma exists because of misunderstandings and fear, and if we can erase those components then the world will be a slightly better place I think.

[johndonneswife]

not a sad ‘woe is me’ post so don’t send me weird messages but: the thing abt cycling through every ED possible and being bulimic for like 10 yrs & making yourself vomit up to 10x times per day on ur worst days is that your teeth and gums will eventually give out on you (bc it doesn’t make a difference if you’ve been good & it doesn’t matter how well you’ve taken care of your teeth for the last x years) and u will be 30 years old crying to your very sweet and kind dentist when she tells you about the 1 million things that are wrong with ur teeth

[kateis-cakeis]

people are really so weird and so fatphobic huh

(and oops most of my commentary is in the tags XD)

[princesscolumbia]

The frustrating part about this is; the more you look into it, the more you realize just how wrong the way we do things today is.

First there's the less obvious but you're going to kick yourself for not noticing before; "night owls" just happen to have a lot of traits in-common:

They tend to be neurodivergent

They usually prefer to be solo operators and think independently when support structures that "morning people" rely on for productivity aren't there

They often have better night vision (whether that's due to an increased number of rods in the cornea or some other mechanic)

Their generally introverts, meaning they thrive when operating in isolation

They problem-solve and process learning in ways that are better suited to people who don't need large support networks

And, to put the icing on the cake, let's point out the oft-repeated exhortation from the many, many "night owls" in this thread:

TᕼᕮY OᑭᕮᖇᗩTᕮ ᗷᕮTTᕮᖇ ᗩT ᑎIGᕼT!

Humanity has, built in, an entire night-shift crew ready to do all the things at night that are also done during the day. We're built different on purpose because for millions of years we, as a species, had to survive without things like "cities" and "enough weaponry to wipe out any competition for the title of 'Apex Predator'" and "electrical grids." They don't experience the negative psychological effects of isolation, they crave the kind of environment that demands constant draws on attention, they see better in environments with less light, and their responses to contrast-dependent motion stimuli are on a freaking hair trigger (try asking someone with ADHD a question while spinning a fidget spinner with light reflectors on the weights and tell me I'm wrong on this part), and their senses are turned up to 11 (my autistic girlfriend has hearing that boggles my mind, and my ADHD fueled senses are already better at auditory processing than most neurotypicals for my demographic).

By insisting that the people that are biologically hard-wired to work the night shift instead force themselves to work during the day, you're requiring that they operate directly against their nature.

Then there's the fact that 𝗘̢̖ͩͪ𝗩̹̝̚͟𝗘̡̰͊𝗥̧̞͒͛𝗬͉̑͋͡𝗢̣̖̐̈́̀𝗡̛̯͚͆𝗘̨͕̐'̾̚҉̱𝗦̱̆̀ ̛̙̲ͥͦ𝗦̵̜̻͂𝗟̸̼͆𝗘̵͈͖͑𝗘̞̰̅͜𝗣̡͔̓ͤ ̰̹͌͜𝗦̎͏̞͕𝗖̵̗͗𝗛̷͈̹͌̐𝗘̵͚ͥ𝗗͉̑̐͝𝗨̢̱͔͆𝗟͖ͭ́𝗘͔̄̄̀ ̶͉ͩ𝗜͚ͭ͡𝗦̡͍̼̓̅ ͤ͏͉̖𝗙͈ͫ̆́𝗨̗͚͒͜𝗖̖ͭ͢𝗞̡͍̐𝗘͕̻̆ͣ͜𝗗̖ͨ͜!̵͔̈́ͥ!̰̹͆͠!̵̙̎̾

In the past 10-20 years, more and more anthropologists are digging through human records of all types (both explicitly recorded history and not) and discovering that the modern "sleep 8 hours in one shot, work/live/play during the remaining 16" is exclusively an invention of the so-called "industrial revolution."

You know, the time period when we were all sold the idea that humans were replaceable cogs in the industrial complex machine and we're all replaceable and you'd better work and work and work and that's your entire point of existence or you're a lazy good for nothing slacker who deserves shame and death.

Prior to the whole damn world being convinced we're supposed to work ourselves to exhaustion for 16 hours a day and then collapse to sleep the remaining 8, people went to sleep when they felt the need and woke up when their body told them to. This resulted in THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE SLEEPING IN TWO (2) BLOCKS PER SLEEP PERIOD.

You ever find yourself reading some account of a historical figure where they were up at 2 AM doing something that would make history? Yeah, it wasn't because they were insomniacs (well, not all of them), it was because they had already gotten 2-4 hours of sleep and their body said it was time to wake up! Probably for the bathroom, but also because they had gotten enough rest they didn't need to sleep longer than that. And they got enough rest because they stayed up long enough to get tired again, then went back to sleep for another 2-4 hours.

When I learned about this, I began comparing my sleep tracker data against a theoretical sleep schedule where I planned to be awake in the middle of the night. Sure enough, the periods of sleep where I was most restless and prone to waking up randomly happened at about the 2-4 hour mark. So I started planning for this and expected to fall back asleep at some point later, which meant I had to go to bed earlier than usual (Doing this with a regular 8-hr./day pre-pandemic job sucked, but more on this in a little bit). Within, like, a week I was getting enough restful sleep from this split schedule that I was thriving on 5-6 hours of sleep. I just had to keep myself busy during the 2-3 hours I'd be awake at night. Would I take more sleep if I could get it, like for a nap? Heck yes! But I didn't need it on a day to day basis.

Couple this little data point with the studies that show humans aren't ever productive for a full 8 hours a day and it starts to look like the entire human race played themselves by adopting the Calvinist "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for everything else" mindset.

One more thing; when I got to the point in my job where I could dictate my own schedule? I planned to only be 'productive' 6 hours a day. My bosses still want me to be available "business hours" (which is a FUCKING stupid notion when your business is 'keeping the homes where people live maintained and damage free,' which is a 24-hour a day operation), so I can't slip into my natural sleep cycle of waking up between 9-10, starting [productive activity here] at 12-1, working until 2-3, taking a 'lunch' break until 4-5, working until 7-8, then going to sleep around 10-11 so I have enough time in my "sleep block" to be awake for a couple of hours. That said, I can tailor my schedule around giving myself that "awake" period in the middle of the night and still get enough restful sleep to get everything else done I want and need to do.

I just shouldn't have had to wait until I was in my FORTIES to have that level of flexibility.

Ok wait let her speak

[wilsons-hotlittleprettyboymouth]

Okay listen I have another disability related thing that’s important!!

If you have any disabilities linked to tooth decay/erosion, through direct cause or secondary symptom, it is vital that you get one or both of the following items: Sensodyne toothpaste and enamel repair mouthwash

This includes health conditions such as acid reflux, diabetes, thyroid conditions, fibromyalgia, chronic pain & mental illnesses such as depression that create poor hygiene routines, sensory issue disorders like autism and ADHD, and any health condition that causes frequent vomiting / increased stomach acid, including eating disorders and migraines.

All of these disabilities will erode the enamel of your teeth, not only opening you up to cavities but making it very easy to chip your teeth from such simple things as biting the wrong way on the tines of a fork. (I’ve chipped my teeth at least 4 times this way).

The toothpaste on the left here (sensodyne pronamel) is gentle on your teeth, won’t cause painful sensations from any extreme mint flavor, and will even protect your gums if they’re sensitive from any of these conditions.

The mouthwash on the right (Crest enamel repair) will, as it says, repair your enamel — which is marvelous, because the technology to repair your enamel at all is relatively very new to society! — but it is most importantly non-alcoholic. Meaning that it works well as a once-a-day rinse without any of the burning sensations of antiseptics that typically discourage people with sensory issues from taking care of their teeth.

I know remembering to do these things every day can feel like a lot when you’re sick and exhausted, but I promise a collective three minutes out of every day is going to save you an incredible amount of pain and money in the future. If your teeth are susceptible enough to rot, you can actually die from infection. And as they say, with how little insurance actually covers dental —

Not brushing your teeth??

In THIS economy???

[serial-unaliver]

we know due to conducted studies on lives experiences that psychotic symptoms and disorders prevent differently based on the culture and society a person lives in.

i'm so tired of seeing "schizophrenia would still exist under communism you idiots" when discussing the impact of mental health under capitalism. it's always brought up.

while psychosis will always exist schizophrenic people raised in hyper-capitalist, individualist societies have a more terrifying experience with the condition. their voices and delusions are more violent. they are rejected by their peers and end up homeless because they can't function in the only environment capitalism cares about--a work environment.

i've been in and out of treatment for psychosjs for years now and nothing helped me more than loved ones accepting me. for accepting that i'll never function the same as them and that's okay. for making sure i'm in a safe environment when in a delusional state.

so please consider it's not just things like depression that can be better or worse based on your environment.

[devotedlystrangewizard]

sometimes i barely even think about being trans anymore because its just such a normal part of my life now where everyone uses my name & all but now that im graduating im soon getting a piece of paper that has my deadname on it as proof that i graduated and. i dont know. kinda ruins the entire graduation part

[genderqueerdykes]

poverty is so isolating. it means being alone and away from people, events, society. you can't afford trips to and from places. you can't afford to spare gas. you can't afford the entrance fee. you can't afford tickets. you can't afford making eating a social event. you can't buy drinks. you can't engage in hobbies.

all you're encouraged to do are "free" things, but they're not free. Internet isn't free. cell phone service isn't free. sitting on the computer and your phone all day is frowned upon for good reason because it destroys your health. we shouldn't have to only be able to talk to people digitally to be able to socialize. we shouldn't have to watch streams all day. we need to see other people, i DON'T care if it costs a few dollars: poor people shouldn't be relegated to what few free activities there are because most of them involve being alone.

the library is one of the most annoying suggestions because it makes you feel pinned. yes i want to support my local library. i cannot sit still and read in public. it is not socially acceptable to start taking to strangers in the library in fact you can't have conversations there at all because you need to be quiet for the other readers. libraries are places of education, accessibility to information and resources, and social services. it is not a place to socialize. maybe entertain but Only if you can, well, read. i have dissociative disorders and unmedicated ADHD, i don't make it very far into books. i feel like most poor people get really tired of the library suggestion. it's an amazing resource. but it's not for this purpose

social events are almost always off limits. sure you can go to the bar and not drink, if you don't have alcohol trauma, aren't a recovering alcoholic, aren't overstimulated by noise, aren't photosensitive, don't have anxiety with crowds and strangers, aren't a minor, have an ID, and can walk there or get a ride there. sure you can walk to the cafe and use their Wi-Fi but this isn't a social activity and in many places you can't sit there for long periods unless you buy anything.

i get SO tired of the "go to a cafe" suggestion. think about how boring that actually is. you're alone. in America, it is NOT socially acceptable to sit at a strangers table like it is in other countries, let alone just start talking to them. it is NOT a common experience to strike up a conversation with strangers in cafes in America, like we really have cafes other than fucking starbucks to begin with.

going for walks and going to parks is not accessible to people with physical disabilities, agoraphobia, some schizophrenics, people with dog trauma, and other issues. parks usually have really poorly maintained or no sidewalks or foot paths. they can be uneven and hard to traverse for people who use mobility aids. unless you live near a monument or state park, your local parks are really meant for dogs to piss and shit in, for joggers to run through, and to look impressive to investors. they're usually pathetic swaths of grass with you guessed it, nothing to do. again it's rare to strike up conversation at the park. people need conversation starters. there's Nothing going on at the park. it's a great place to go if you need to cool down when angry or stressed, but it's fucking boring.

window shopping is pointless and dehumanizing. i really can't stand it when people suggest poor people window shop so we can think about things to buy when we have money ... why the fuck would i ever do that. when i don't have money i don't think about frivolous things i don't need. what the fuck kind of activity is window shopping, that's for people who have money.

poor people get tired of doing the "free" shit. if you suggest that a poor person should do these things when you do none of them yourself, you have 0 clue how boring and dehumanizing it is to never be able to decide what you do with your time. to have limited options to live. to experience.

money is not the reason you get to experience; you get to experience because you are alive. no poor people don't deserve to sit there and do nothing all day because they didn't "earn" anything. no poor people don't deserve to live their lives because they don't make as much as you. poor people deserve to enjoy being alive. poor people get to decide to have fun with their money, too.

I'm so tired of people being so harsh on people who struggle with financial issues and spending money "right" or "smart". reckless spending and difficulty managing finances are symptoms of mental illness and neurodivergence. bipolar, personality disorders, schizophrenia, anxiety, autism, ADHD, OCD and other mental health conditions can make managing funds very hard. don't be extra cruel to someone who spends money poorly in response to a mental health crisis. this won't make their situation any easier.

i sat in apartment after apartment for a decade doing nothing. i was a total shut in because i had no money. i never did anything but browse the Internet. all day long. without end. i was dissociating constantly. my anxiety was at its highest. i was constantly psychotic. instead of going out to fix it, i would stay inside longer, making it worse and worse and worse. i never bought anything. i didn't have hobbies. all of my decorations and possessions were from my childhood, my clothes were literally falling apart, a decade old. my walls were barren. my world was grey.

don't do this to yourself. don't tell yourself that you deserve nothing because it's harder for you to make money than other people. I'm very lucky now that i have made friends who pulled me out of my shell and have helped me get outside of my house. i spent so long alone and trapped indoors thinking it's the only thing i could do with myself for years. I'm finally recovering. if you're poor you deserve to live. you're alive. and you're not alone. i love you.

[psychoticallytrans]

There's this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they're abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that's not common.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don't know what's normal and what isn't. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.

[fatphobiabusters]

People say weight loss is for sure possible...but no one agrees on how to do it.

Dieting works...but there's now an "ob*sity epidemic" despite people lining the pockets of weight loss corporations more than ever.

Weight loss products work...but weight loss corporations are making the Exact. Same. Claims. about their products that they did in 1910 with the products that were sold and then discontinued over a century ago.

Humans are all meant to be thin...but there are families of fat people who stay fat no matter how much "willpower" they muster and have fat ancestors going back generations.

It's about health and not looks...but people who are losing weight due to smoking, cancer, illness, mental disorders, and other health conditions are praised for their weight loss and told to keep going.

Fat people aren't oppressed...but fat people have no positive representation, no proper access to clothing, face a wage gap, endure deadly medical neglect and abuse, have their deaths by police brutality excused with their fatness, and countless other aspects of oppression that they deal with every single day.

Fat people are all fat because they overeat...but you can point to any fat person on the sidewalk and there's an extreme likelihood that they're on their 30th diet attempt in the past 10 years while there's thin people who eat whatever they want, however much they want, and don't exercise yet never gain a single pound.

Fat people are privileged because they gorge on unnecessary food...but fat people are overwhelmingly living in poverty, are not paid the same amount of money for the same work as their thin peers, are not chosen for promotions, are turned away from jobs that an employer wants more than a "pretty face" for, are at major risk of workplace harassment, and endure oppression even beyond just that.

Fat people aren't treated badly...but people use the word "fat" as a metaphor and synonym for "ugly," "unlovable," and "unworthy," while at the same time believing "fat," the most basic term for a specific body type, is a dirty, taboo insult you should never allow to leave your lips.

Professionals agree that fatness is inherently bad...but almost any weight-related research study that people, especially weight loss corporations, use to justify demonizing fat people has the worst methodology imaginable with validity errors and logical fallacies galore as well as conflicts of interest due to how many of these studies just happen to be funded by the corporations that make millions and billions of dollars off of the demonization these studies promote.

All health conditions a fat person has are caused by their fatness...but there is not a single health condition that only fat people obtain, many fat people developed the health condition in question when they were thin or thinner, weight gain is often a symptom of said health conditions, fat people are not given the same amount or quality of healthcare as thin people, and repeated starvation attempts (also known as "yo-yo dieting") have been shown to worsen a person's health.

Fat people can't have eating disorders...but fat people are the group encouraged to partake in disordered eating by this fatphobic world the most and then are not given any support to recover.

Thin privilege doesn't exist...but thin people who see the way fat people are treated in society do their absolute damndest and take whatever drastic measures they have to in order to prevent themselves from ever becoming one of "Them."

Fit and fat are mutually exclusive...but there are fat athletes as far up as even the Olympics, and sports are intentionally made inaccessible to fat people to the point of fat children even being turned away when trying to join a sports team.

Fat people are ugly...but all we grow up ever seeing in media are thin, conventionally attractive people painted with layers of makeup next to fat characters who were intentionally designed with an ill-fitting outfit, matted hair, and all other traits that fit the "ugly" stereotype that the character designer could manage to slap onto a single person.

Fat people are big, bad bullies...but studies show that weight is the number one excuse that children use to bully their peers, outcompeting a multitude of other oppressed identities considered.

Fat women are just men and vice versa...but sometimes they're androgynous, and sometimes they're basically nonbinary, and sometimes they're just things, and sometimes they're nothing at all depending on what labels a fatphobe decides will hurt a fat person most that day.

Fat people are subhuman...but fat people deserve the same love, respect, compassion, and support that all people are born inherently deserving.

Fatphobia isn't real, but—

-Mod Worthy

[psychofright]

I love the AOS versions of Kirk and Spock especially. Not only because they’re just both so catty and downright bitchy towards each other and that’s a funny dynamic, or just because I love the casting choices. Not just because I love watching characters who start as near complete opposites and almost enemies (one driven purely by what seems to be instinct/emotion, the other by what seems to be logic) develop deep respect and love for each other. Mainly, I love their AOS characterizations because they are both so deeply flawed when you get down to it, and it adds a whole layer of depth and complexity to them that other versions of them seem to sometimes lack.

AOS Kirk is a complete product of trauma. And yes, he’s incredibly intelligent to start with. But at the end of the day, his charming and deeply caring personality, his recklessness and disregard for his own safety over that of others, his ability to instinctually know things are going to happen before they happen based on very little logic or evidence to support his “hunch”, his skills to calmly and effectively navigate crisis scenarios, and his general lack of respect for and aversion to (most) authority figures is all birthed of trauma. When you go through the type of shit he went through as a child, it literally rewires your brain and how you process things, and how you notice things. And that makes him a great Captain yes, but he also has very obvious (probably a list of honestly) anxiety disorders, and as such is hyper vigilant and unable to cope with periods of down time (at least, at the start).

And then there’s AOS Spock. He tries his best to be a perfect visage of calm cool and collected, seemingly completely driven by logic, but he’s actually just constantly masking. But then Kirk comes along and is this wholly illogical thing who some how always ends up being right in his predictions (that, to Spock, seemingly are improbable and nearly fantastical, and almost always driven by emotion rather than evidence) and it effortlessly derails Spock’s entire visage of calm and emotional neutrality. He literally has an on-screen meltdown in the 2009 movie when Kirk provokes him after meeting Prime Spock. And at the end of the day, AOS Spock is an overwhelmingly emotional individual who has practically been told since childhood by his society that is unacceptable and wrong. But it doesn’t change the fact that he is, so he just finds ways to bury that side of him and mask it (successfully, even). At least he does until Kirk comes along and Spock hates him automatically, because well, Kirk is a mirror image of Spock, it’s just that the reflection is of his highly emotional side that he tries with great effort to hide, and it’s staring back at him with bright blue eyes and completely unavoidable.

[collaredkittyboy]

Well it's come up multiple times today so I'll make a post about it.

I think the popularization of the word "twink" has ultimately been really bad for people in general.

I know it's hard to track the positive and negative effects of language but I don't think it's hard to see how creating a word for a group of people wherein the most consistent qualifying trait is "being skinny" is healthy for people's self image. Obviously people have lots of ideas about what it means to be a twink- gay, lacking body hair, feminine, beautiful, young, white- but the most consistent descriptor I've seen is "skinny." Hell, it's even a body type on Grindr; the size below "average."

So it kind of functions as a code word in the gay community: anyone can say that they're only interested in twinks and they don't have to look shallow by saying they only like skinny guys. It's such an accepted attitude that no one really bats an eye when they hear it.

I'm not even going to get into how it's become part of the larger issue of people turning "top" and "bottom" into gender roles 2.0, but that is closely related, because people with any internalized homophobia can look at a skinny, feminine man and turn off their fag alarms by viewing him as a woman or not a "real" man, and it makes twinks more acceptable to society at large.

No, ignoring all of that, one of the biggest issues is that gay men are taught by society that they are only attractive while they are skinny. Just having the label "twink" reminds a boy that people are looking at his body and judging it. There were countless times when I was growing up that people would tell me, "You're such a twink," or argue about whether or not I qualified as a twink because I had body hair. People around you, unpromted, judge your body and give you a label based on it, and that label has a large influence on whether or not you're seen as objectively attractive. I know many other gay people who say they wish they were a twink so they could be more attractive to guys.

So think, you have all these kids growing up being told whether or not they qualify as a twink, and then we have the gay community as a whole where it's completely acceptable to say you're only attracted to twinks. I think its because of all of this pressure to be a twink (in other words, to have a below average weight) that many of the gay people that I interact with struggle with a negative body image or eating disorders.

I mean, people talk about "twink death" like it's an actual event that makes a gay man much less attractive, and no one thinks that, maybe, it's harmful to tell a guy that the very day he stops being young and thin and pretty, he will stop being attractive and celebrated?

I'm not qualified to speak on fatphobia in physical queer spaces because I don't have the ability to frequent them where I live, but I can't imagine that these aren't issues at social gatherings as well. I also can't speak on my own experiences with weight discrimination because so far in my life I have had a naturally thin body, but I have experienced a lot of outside pressure to be thin that have caused me to pick up unhealthy eating habits to reduce my weight in fear that I could become fat later on. Thankfully that is something that I've mostly been able to work past. I'm not an expert, but idk, I just wanted to rant on my silly tumblr blog.

Obviously it's impossible for a word to be inherently bad. I'm not trying to imply that saying "twink" is a magic word with evil powers. Obviously the real issues at play here are fatphobia and harmful beauty standards and body shaming. But in my opinion, the popular use of the word twink has made it much easier and acceptable to express fatphobia, etc, in the gay community by turning "skinny person" into a "type of guy that you should try to be so you can be attractive."

[thistlecatfics]

Talking about Incest in Public

(both the painful traumatic kind and the hot fictional kind)

As it turns out, lots of the people who read and write taboo fiction have survived some deeply fucked up shit. After talking about incest with other survivors on the Moon, Sun & Stars discord and answering questions, I decided to share more about my experiences and the things that helped me survive and the things that helped me heal, because there are a lot of us, and a lot of us feel very alone, and maybe there are other people who aren’t incest survivors but who might want to know more to better support the survivors in their life.  

–

Incest is not just a sexual act between two family members -- it's a larger system of absence of boundaries within a family, and it's almost always part of multiple incestuous dynamics, even if only one might be the obvious or explicit dynamic. 

If you’re an incest survivor, you’re almost certainly not the only one in your family. 

-

“The true characteristics and dimensions of incestuous abuse have been masked by the taboo and silence that have surrounded its occurrence. Recent research demonstrates that incest occurs regularly in our society, perpetrated by individuals who, for the most part, would otherwise be regarded as fairly normal. The taboo on incestuous relations is a deterrent to some would-be perpetrators but not to others. The taboo contradicts the reality of incest prevalence, a fact which led Armstrong (1978) to comment that th taboo has been on the open discussion of incest and not on its perpetration.”

-Christine Courtois, “Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy” 

–

To use my family as an example - 

My (similarly aged) brother did sexual things to me as a kid, and I had a range of reactions to it including pleasure and enjoyment. And confusion. And fear. I do not think he is bad or even what he did was bad. I think we were both two kids who existed in a family with incestuous dynamics, and we were both shaped by those dynamics and trying our best to survive. 

From a young age, I existed as a physical comfort object to my mom (when she was sad she'd get into my bed to hold me until she felt better while I dissociated), and I took on the idea that my role in the family was for my body to be used to make other people feel good. The sexual behavior by my brother felt like an extension of how my mom held me. 

My mother was the victim of incest from her uncle, and her parents sided with her uncle over her when she spoke out about it (even after he was facing legal consequences for his behavior with kids outside of the family) (even after he fled the country). She didn't know how to emotionally regulate herself, and I don't think she had (or has) the capacity to understand a child's need for physical autonomy and boundaries because her own were never respected. 

There were other incestuous behaviors and dynamics within my family which I'm continuously discovering and unpacking. I think my mom’s uncle abused my grandmother too but I’ll never know for sure. It’s deeply uncomfortable to look back on a happy family story or a childhood nickname and see something sinister underneath and wonder if you’re being paranoid or if it’s actually that bad.  

–

Things that have helped: 

Long term relational therapy (5+ years). EMDR. Adopting a cat. Adopting more cats. Antidepressants. Reading about incest (realistic, terrifying, academic). Reading about incest (fictional, hot, amateur). Being a competitive athlete. Getting a graduate degree. Going on long walks late at night. Telling my family I had Covid so I could skip a family vacation. 

These books specifically: Healing the Incest Wound by Christine Courtois, The Myth of Normal, Dissociation Made Simple, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, The Narcissistic Family Unit, Clementine Morrigan’s writing x1000. 

The protector parts: Eating disorder. Self harm. Drinking. Perfectionism. Depression. Suicidal ideation. I’m grateful to these imperfect protectors I’ve leaned on over the years. 

Things that have not helped: 

You will be shocked to hear that people on the internet yelling about how people who find fictional incest hot are disgusting and bad and dangerous did NOT in fact help me unlearn the belief that experiencing incest made me disgusting and bad and dangerous. Luckily, I’m built of spite. But it certainly did not help. 

(If I think about my vulnerable pre-teen/teen self reading those things, I become deeply angry. How dare you hurt her in the name of protection.)

- I don’t cater to all these vipers Dressed in empath’s clothing God save the most judgmental creeps Who say they want what’s best for me Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see

-Taylor Swift, But Daddy I Love Him

-

After I discovered fanfiction in middle school, and then after I realized that there was a world beyond OFC/Draco Malfoy fic, I read a lot of Blackcest. I devoured any I could find, hopping through rec lists on LiveJournal. 

Reading Blackcest fics, first Bellatrix/Sirius then Sirius/Regulus mostly, allowed me to see my experiences reflected. Those fics gave me a way to contextualize my family and my role in it. I hate the expectation that kids who experience bad things should go to a safe trusted adult rather than find art that romanticizes their experience. The whole point is that there isn’t a safe trusted adult. The whole point is that I needed the art. I got to hold the romanticized narrative until I got far enough away that I could put it away in a box until I had enough therapy that I could safely open the box and build a new, more honest story. 

Obviously plenty of people love incest smut and fic and art. It’s taboo! It’s angsty! It’s a classic! Probably most of those people don’t have direct personal experience with incest in their families. I’m glad they read and write fics too. 

But for me – have you ever experienced something you believe so strongly you will never be able to say aloud? That any time you see your secret referenced it’s in shock and disgust and revulsion? You can pretend – you’re very good at pretending – but you know it’s real, and you know it’s your secret you’ll hold onto for the rest of your life while the world reminds you how disgusting you are? 

Then you find that people are writing about what you experienced in a thousand variations that all contain some nugget of your truth.

I cannot express in words how important it was that I found those stories at that time. 

I never commented on a single fic. I never made a single account on any of the sites I read fanfiction on. I clicked the “yes I’m 18” box without hesitation every time. I wish I could go back in time and have my adult self articulate the enormity of my gratitude for each and every author who helped save me whose work exists on sites I can only revisit with the Wayback Machine. 

I understand why people might feel horrified at the idea of a 11-12 year old reading smutty incest Harry Potter fanfic. People aren’t wrong for feeling that way. 

That said, I truly don’t care what people who aren’t incest survivors think.

I’m so proud of that child for finding a way to survive. She might have hated herself, might have fantasized about death, but she survived and kept the truth of her experience wrapped up in a fictional world where it could be safe to explore and kept it there until years and years of therapy made it possible to engage with it in reality. 

- I’m a real tough kid I can handle my shit They said, babe, you got to fake it till you make it And I did

-Taylor Swift, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart -

No one is writing about incest the way Clementine Morrigan is right now. I’m so grateful for her. I’m not sure this little tumblr post would exist without her essay series. 

"Incest functions as a spell of unreality. A structure of nothingness. A completely normal and unremarkable family life in which something unnameable is ominously and terrifyingly wrong. You know in the summer when you can see the heat making the air go squiggly? Imagine those squiggles as an indication that in the seeming nothingness, there is something there. Incest is like that. Subtle, pervasive, unthinkable, unnameable. But present, felt.

As a teenager I came up with this metaphor: Imagine you are in a house full of bugs. There are bugs crawling all over all the walls and all the furniture and in your food and even on the fork you are lifting to your mouth. And you feel disgusted, you feel like something is really wrong. But your whole family is acting completely normal, laughing and eating and talking as bugs crawl over their faces and into their mouths. When you tell them you think there are bugs in your food your family says it’s just pepper and not to worry about it.

There is no way to talk about incest without feeling that you are lying. This is because incest lives in the realm of unreality and everything in the realm of unreality cannot be thought or said or named. When you speak of things that happen in the realm of unreality it will always feel like a lie and be treated like a lie. You are breaking the fundamental rule. You are not allowed to talk about what goes on in the realm of unreality because it isn’t real."

Read more and pay for her writing if you can on her substack.

-

Without a doubt, the not-explicitly-sexual incest from my mom fucked me up more than the explicitly sexual incest from my brother, but I only feel confident claiming the incest survivor label because sexual stuff was done to me by a family member, and I still feel like I’m lying sometimes because it wasn't bad enough to count. 

I’m a literal mental health clinician who can map out various incestuous dynamics within my family and who has clear memories of a family member doing sexual stuff to my child body, and I still feel like I’m lying. 

I believe you if you feel like a liar because I bet you do. I believe you if the incest never included anything directly physical. I believe you if you enjoyed it. I believe you if you don’t remember but feel like it’s true. 

I love us. 

If we’re monsters, I love our courageous monstrosity.

If we’re liars, I love the way we make up stories to survive when reality is impossible. 

If we’re an uncomfortable truth, good. 

-

It still impacts me. I’m not over it. 

It’s very difficult for me to imagine love that does not include violation. To be loved and to be allowed to maintain a self. 

But I’m open to learning otherwise, and that openness is new. 

-

I was so, so good at living in unreality. I could make myself perfect, such a flawless object until I couldn’t think of anything except killing myself, but even then I still maintained the image of perfection my family expected. 

It’s cool I never actually killed myself. 

I find it hard to be around my family now. There are advantages of living in unreality. I drink a lot more when I’m around my family than I ever did before, but I don’t think about killing myself nearly as much. Reality is worth it. Being able to exist as a person is worth it. 

- I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

-Sylvia Plath

- I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. (I insist.)

It didn’t kill me then. It’s not going to kill me now. (I remind myself.) 

My life is worth living, and there are fights worth fighting, and it is undeniably true the world is full of horror, but it is good to write and create and be alive, and it is good to try. I’m a little afraid to post this, but the fear and shame isn’t mine to hold, and I never should have been the one holding it. 

Consider this a thank you note sent out to the universe in the hopes the sentiment echoes towards those authors who saved me then and to all the writers who are saving people now. Your art matters. No matter how weird or niche or dismissed or hated it is. It matters. 

Thank you.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Monsters Reimagined: Yeenoghu, Demon Lord of Insatiable Hunger

It's been some years since I did my overhaul on the lore of the gnolls and how they embody the weird de/humanization that goes on with various monsters over d&d's history. Ever since I've had more than a few folks write in asking about how I would handle the default Gnoll God Yeenoghu, who exists in a similar state of "Kill everything that ever existed" to Orcus and a good portion of the game's other late game threats, thematically flat and not really useful for building stories around.

For a while I've avoided doing this post because I thought it might skew a little too close to my personal philosophy, and risk going from simply being influenced by my views to an outright soapbox. I personally hold that despite being part of our nature hunger is the source of the majority of human cruelty, and if society and cooperation are the tools we developed to best fight against the threat of famine, it is fear of that famine that allows the powerful to control society and secure their positions of privilege.

I've also dealt with disordered eating in a prior period of my life, alternating between neglecting my body's needs and punishing myself for needing in the first place. I'm well acquainted with hunger and the hollowing effect it can have, though I'd never claim to know it so well as someone who went hungry by anything other than choice and self hatred.

Learning to love food again saved saved my life. The joy of eating, of feeling whole and nourished, yes, but there was also the joy of making: of experimenting, improving, providing, being connected to a great tradition of cultivation which has guided our entire species.

If I was going to talk about an evil god of hunger, I was going to have to touch on all of that, and now that it's out in the open I can continue with a more thematic and narrative discussion on the beast of butchery below the cut.

What's wrong: Going by the default lore, there's not much that really separates Yeenoghu from any other chaotic evil mega-boss. He wants to kill everything in vicious ways, and encourages his followers to do the same. He's there so that the evil clerics can have someone to pray to because the objectively good gods are on the party's side and wouldn't help a bunch of cannibalistic slavers.

This is boring, we've done this song and dance before, and the only reason that there are so many demon lords/evil gods/archdevils like this is because the bioessentialism baked into the older editions of the game's lore was also a theological essentialism, and that every group had to have their own gods which perfectly embodied their ethos and there was no crossover whatsoever, themes be damned.

Normally I'd do a whole section about "what can be salvaged" from an old concept, but we're scraping the bottom of the barrel right from the inset. Likewise my trick of combining multiple bits of underwritten d&d mythology to make a sturdier concept isn't going to work as most of d&d's other gods of hunger or famine are similar levels of paper thin.

How do we fix it: I want Yeenoghu to be the opposite of the path I found myself on, a hunger so great and so painful that it percludes happiness, cooperation, or even rational thought. Hunger not as a sumptuous hedonistic gluttony but a hollowing emptiness that compels violence and desperation. More than just psychopathic slaughter and gore, it is becalmed sailors drinking seawater to quench their thirst, the urban poor mixing sawdust and plaster into their food because their wages are not enough to afford grain.

This is where we get the idea of Yeenoghu as an enemy of society, not because violence is antithical to society ( I think we've learned by now how structured violence can really be) but because society fundamentally breaks down when it can't take care of the people who provide its foundations. Contrast the Beast of Butchery with one of my other favourite villainous famine spirits: Caracalla the grim trader, who embodies scarcity as a form of profit and control in to Yeenoghu's scarcity as suffering.

Into this we can also add the idea of the hungry dead, ghouls yes but also vampires, anything cursed with an eternal existence and appetites it no longer has the ability to sate. A large number of cultures across the world share the idea that the dead cannot rest while they are starving, which is why we leave offerings of food by their graves or pour out a glass to the ones we lost along the way.

On that topic, there's also a scrap of lore involving Doresain god of ghouls, who has been depicted as an on and off servant of Yeenoghu. Since I'm already remaking the mythology, I'd have Doresain act as a sort of saint or herald for the demon lord, the wicked but still partially reasonable entity who can villain monolog before the feral and all consuming demon god shows up.

Summing it all up: Yeenoghu isn't a demon you wittingly worship, it's a demon that claims you, marks you as its mouthpiece and through you seeks to consume more of the world. It gives you just enough strength to keep on living, keep on suffering, keep on filling that hole in your belly and feed it in turn.

The greatest of these mouthpieces is Doresain, an elf of ancient times who's unearthly hungers elevated him to demigod status. Known as the knawbone king, he dwells within a dread domain of the shadowfell, and is sought out only for his ability to intercede with the maw-fiend's rampages.

Signs: Unnaturally persistent hunger pangs, excessive drool and gurgling stomach noises, the growth of extra teeth in the mouth, stomachs splitting open into mouths.

Symbols: An animal with three jaws, a three tailed flail or spiked whip. A crown of knawed bones (Doresain)

Titles: Beast of butchery, the maw fiend, the knawing god

Artist

[furiousgoldfish]

When people hear stories about abuse, they often get fascinated and interested in the abuser, and the 'mystery' behind their behaviour. They'll want to analyze what happened to this person to make them act in such twisted and sadistic ways, and they want to find the past event or past abuse that would 'explain it all'. Abusers will also, very happily recount the past abuse whenever it's time to explain away their behaviour, so nobody could hold them accountable, because after all, they had had it rough! Of course they're now abusive, it's only natural.

Fascination with explaining away abuser's behaviour often leaves victim's situation forgotten and ignored. Victims are supposed to just 'get over it', not be so sensitive, and be careful to not turn into abusers themselves, because after all, being abused means you become an abuser, according to the abuser. Except it doesn't, and victims often don't end up abusing anyone else, especially not in the horrific ways they themselves have been abused. So we're having two opposing stories: one is told by the abuser, and it's easy, simple, explains everything away, and it says, abuse causes future abusers, I am the proof, I was abused and now I am like this. Victim's story goes: I was abused, and now I struggle to function, I have cptsd, I have flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, anxiety, eating disorder. I struggle with suicidal feelings and wishing I didn't exist. I feel like I'm not important at all in this world and like I have no community, no family, no home. Failure of everyone to help me while I was being abused caused me to feel like an outcast from society, someone who isn't a part of it, who doesn't matter. I would never do this to another person, I feel like a part of me was torn away into pieces and I struggle to put myself back together.

Now that story is complex, it implicates the society in failing to stop the abuse and making the victim's life worse, it showcases the actual consequences of abuse, which are not 'becoming evil', but feeling ultimately traumatized and damaged, struggling to find joy and happiness in life in the aftermath. Society doesn't want to hear that; it makes abuse into a problem that should collectively be dealt with, rather than pushing it all onto individuals who find themselves trapped in it and suffering. It's much easier to pretend that abuse just makes someone abusive, and for people who are abusive, we need to feel sorry for, because they were 'made to be like this', and for those abused, we just need to shame them and control them so they don't become abusive themselves.

There are abusers who have lived privileged lives, there are abusers who have been spoiled and rewarded for their acts of abuse. Most abusers don't show the symptoms of trauma nearly as bad as the victims of abuse do, they're most often just having the symptoms of 'I lash out my anger on those who cannot defend themselves' and 'everyone needs to feel sorry for me because I am having the roughest time on the planet'. Weird how the victims almost never develop these two symptoms! Victims will go and compare their situation to everyone who has it worse, and will struggle to express or direct anger at anything. 

So what is the actual source of abuse, if not past trauma? There's no study or statistics that can tell us that for sure, and abusers are careful to maintain their story and are not interested in being studied past what makes people feel bad for them. I would guess that it's a mix of entitlement, being in a position of power over someone vulnerable, never having to develop empathy or compassion, being rewarded continuously for acts of abuse, and social influence (admiring other abusers and wanting the power they have). A lot of social structures support and enable abuse of those who are at the very bottom of it, with very few protections against it. A lot of people believe it's their right to abuse someone if they have the power over that person, and gain power specifically for that cause. Abusers will have children and believe this is their property and they can do whatever they please with it, abuse being a part of it.

If we don't know where abuse comes from, how do we combat it? I don't believe in feeling sorry for the abusers or giving them endless attention, chances, excuses and rationalizations; instead I believe we should stand firm on the fact that abuse is inexcusable, and will have consequences, regardless of how it came into their behaviour. If abuse always had consequences, regardless of the history of the abuser, they would know they can't get away with it, that they can't later make everyone feel sorry for them and go on with their sob stories. Abuse would get them punished, not sympathized with.

I also believe the abuser's point of view should be decentralized; it should be victims who get to speak. It's easy for the abuser to show themselves in the positive light, minimizing the abuse, insisting the victim provoked or wanted it, that it wasn't that bad and it was done with 'best intentions'. But if we listened to victims, we would quickly understand that anyone who can do this to another person is monstrous, and should not be extended any sympathy. Abusers don't extend their sympathy to the victims when they abuse, so why should they expect to get it? Society should take abuse more seriously and put defenses into place, so abusers are not as easily able to put it behind closed doors. Resources for recognizing abuse, especially child abuse and intimate abuse, should be taught, spread and shared in society, so nobody would be able to convince another that suffering abuse is normal, or justified.

One of the biggest barriers to escaping abuse is victim confessing what's been happening to a trusted family member or a friend, and then this family member or a friend shaming and blaming them for it, instead of offering help and protection. It takes a lot of courage to even say something out loud, knowing the abuser would punish them for it, and then to be punished externally for speaking out, it's devastating. If abuse was taken seriously, and victims understood to be fault-free, but singled out, isolated and hurt in a way that nobody should be, and it was understood it's a societal responsibility to protect them against this, it would be easier to speak out, and get support. It often takes a society to help someone get free, because abusers are hell-bent on abusing once they start to, the victims need multiple barriers before abusers could get anywhere near them.

And why shouldn't we want that? If we know there are people in society such as children, young people, people without regular income, poor people, disabled people, compassionate people, marginalized people, people who struggle to recognize and flag down predators, shouldn't we want to make sure they're protected? That nothing bad happens to them, and they're free to live their lives safe from those who would do them continuous harm and make them want to die? We want our young, old, kind, vulnerable, sensitive, disabled, poor, compassionate and marginalized people safe and happy. There's no reason to throw them under the bus and leave them to suffer abuse.