sweetvenus9

[equalperson]

BTW "destigmatizing mental illness" doesn't just mean being tolerant when someone says they have a psychiatric diagnosis or go to therapy, it also means investigating how your own view of "evil" may overlap with the signs of madness.

this is because the mainstream idea of what a "bad person" looks like is heavily influenced by sanism, thus most people's perception of what makes someone bad is literally just them being mentally disabled.

to support the crazy, you must accept that grandiosity, delusionality, attention-seeking, rage, homicidal ideation, and many similar experiences are not inherently dangerous. likewise, you must also understand that love and empathy are not the ultimate goods that everyone makes them out to be.

madness can easily be an abundance of the former and a lack of the latter, not just the quiet insecurity that most people reference when they talk about "mental health."

ultimately, the world will never be a truly safe place until it's a widely acknowledged fact that there's no such thing as villainous cognition or emotionality; prejudice is the source of all evil, not abnormality.

[fagdykemuppet]

this disability pride month, extend your thoughts to all the disabled people in palestine. all the disabled people that aren't getting the care they need, and all the people that are becoming disabled due to the genocide.

consider donating to crips for esims for gaza this month, and if anyone has any other disabled run groups or causes that help disabled palestinians feel free to add on.

[whereserpentswalk]

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[schizononagesimus]

also hey can we talk about violent psychosis for a sec. cause i really appreciate all the talk surrounding psychosis positivity and stuff but a lot of it is "we're not all violent! sometimes hallucinations can be positive!" like sorry mine are not. im scary psychotic.

im "cant have anything that even remotely could be used as a weapon in the house" psychotic. im "if i miss my meds one day i have to go to the hospital for homicidal and suicidal thoughts that literally aren't my own thoughts but theyre controlling my actions" psychotic. im "im seeing horrors you cant even imagine to the point where i dont exist in the same world as you anymore" psychotic.

im not going to hurt you, i just need help. when im rocking in the corner talking to myself at 3am, remember that i am in a state of terror. im afraid for my life. i either genuinely believe everything is trying to kill me, and i only know one way to deal with it; or something is telling me to be violent or else it will kill me; or i have dissociated so hard that i autopilot myself to violence to try and wake myself up.

some of us are violent, and that's okay, because it has to be, because it's the truth. just get us help.

[hyperlexichypatia]

As I keep shouting into the void, pathologizers love shifting discussion about material conditions into discussion about emotional states.

I rant approximately once a week about how the brain maturity myth transmuted “Young adults are too poor to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own” into “Young adults are too emotionally and neurologically immature to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own.”

I’ve also talked about the misuse of “enabling” and “trauma” and “dopamine” .

And this is a pattern – people coin terms and concepts to describe material problems, and pathologization culture shifts them to be about problems in the brain or psyche of the person experiencing them. Now we’re talking about neurochemicals, frontal lobes, and self-esteem instead of talking about wages, wealth distribution, and civil rights. Now we can say that poor, oppressed, and exploited people are suffering from a neurological/emotional defect that makes them not know what’s best for themselves, so they don’t need or deserve rights or money.

Here are some terms that have been so horribly misused by mental health culture that we’ve almost entirely forgotten that they were originally materialist critiques.

Codependency What it originally referred to: A non-addicted person being overly “helpful” to an addicted partner or relative, often out of financial desperation. For example: Making sure your alcoholic husband gets to work in the morning (even though he’s an adult who should be responsible for himself) because if he loses his job, you’ll lose your home. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html What it’s been distorted into: Being “clingy,” being “too emotionally needy,” wanting things like affection and quality time from a partner. A way of pathologizing people, especially young women, for wanting things like love and commitment in a romantic relationship.

Compulsory Heterosexuality What it originally referred to: In the 1980 in essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493756 Adrienne Rich described compulsory heterosexuality as a set of social conditions that coerce women into heterosexual relationships and prioritize those relationships over relationships between women (both romantic and platonic). She also defines “lesbian” much more broadly than current discourse does, encompassing a wide variety of romantic and platonic relationships between women. While she does suggest that women who identify as heterosexual might be doing so out of unquestioned social norms, this is not the primary point she’s making. What it’s been distorted into: The patronizing, biphobic idea that lesbians somehow falsely believe themselves to be attracted to men. Part of the overall “Women don’t really know what they want or what’s good for them” theme of contemporary discourse.

Emotional Labor What it originally referred to: The implicit or explicit requirement that workers (especially women workers, especially workers in female-dominated “pink collar” jobs, especially tipped workers) perform emotional intimacy with customers, coworkers, and bosses above and beyond the actual job being done. Having to smile, be “friendly,” flirt, give the impression of genuine caring, politely accept harassment, etc. https://weld.la.psu.edu/what-is-emotional-labor/ What it’s been distorted into: Everything under the sun. Everything from housework (which we already had a term for), to tolerating the existence of disabled people, to just caring about friends the way friends do. The original intent of the concept was “It’s unreasonable to expect your waitress to care about your problems, because she’s not really your friend,” not “It’s unreasonable to expect your actual friends to care about your problems unless you pay them, because that’s emotional labor,” and certainly not “Disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to be visibly disabled in public, because witnessing a disabled person is emotional labor.” Anything that causes a person emotional distress, even if that emotional distress is rooted in the distress-haver’s bigotry (Many nominally progressive people who would rightfully reject the bigoted logic of “Seeing gay or interracial couples upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public” fully accept the bigoted logic of “Seeing disabled or poor people upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public”).

Battered Wife Syndrome What it originally referred to: The all-encompassing trauma and fear of escalating violence experienced by people suffering ongoing domestic abuse, sometimes resulting in the abuse victim using necessary violence in self-defense. Because domestic abuse often escalates, often to murder, this fear is entirely rational and justified. This is the reasonable, justified belief that someone who beats you, stalks you, and threatens to kill you may actually kill you.

What it’s been distorted into: Like so many of these other items, the idea that women (in this case, women who are victims of domestic violence) don’t know what’s best for themselves. I debated including this one, because “syndrome” was a wrongful framing from the beginning – a justified and rational fear of escalating violence in a situation in which escalating violence is occurring is not a “syndrome.” But the original meaning at least partially acknowledged the material conditions of escalating violence.

I’m not saying the original meanings of these terms are ones I necessarily agree with – as a cognitive liberty absolutist, I’m unsurprisingly not that enamored of either second-wave feminism or 1970s addiction discourse. And as much as I dislike what “emotional labor” has become, I accept that “Women are unfairly expected to care about other people’s feelings more than men are” is a true statement.

What I am saying is that all of these terms originally, at least partly, took material conditions into account in their usage. Subsequent usage has entirely stripped the materialist critique and fully replaced it with emotional pathologization, specifically of women. Acknowledgement that women have their choices constrained by poverty, violence, and oppression has been replaced with the idea that women don’t know what’s best for themselves and need to be coercively “helped” for their own good. Acknowledgement that working-class women experience a gender-and-class-specific form of economic exploitation has been rebranded as yet another variation of “Disabled people are burdensome for wanting to exist.”

Over and over, materialist critiques are reframed as emotional or cognitive defects of marginalized people. The next time you hear a superficially sympathetic (but actually pathologizing) argument for “Marginalized people make bad choices because…” consider stopping and asking: “Wait, who are we to assume that this person’s choices are ‘bad’? And if they are, is there something about their material conditions that constrains their options or makes the ‘bad’ choice the best available option?”

[sickness-stricken]

I know I clown on Taylor Swift for using a “psych ward aesthetic” but if I’m being honest I feel like it’s a broader issue among writers trying to talk about psych abuse. Even if it’s not actively trying to be romanticized, it bothers me that every book I read where abuse in the ward is a prominent theme, it’s always the same idea: takes place before the 60s, shock therapy, the character strapped to the bed with leather belts in a straight jacket, etc.

It unintentionally frames psych abuse as this thing of the past and I don’t fuck with it. Like… you know this kinda stuff is happening now, right? Sure, I was never subjected to shock therapy, but I was restrained and I did have meds forced on me. But I guess that mental image doesn’t invoke quite the same kick.

[trans-axolotl]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[wheelie-sick]

I'll constantly see people list of disorders that cause psychosis and talk about how they're highly stigmatized and somehow they never ever mention bipolar disorder? ever? and it's almost certainly because people online tend to have this perception of bipolar as the "socially acceptable sad happy disease" and it is not. it is just not. bipolar disorder is so incredibly stigmatized and its symptoms go so much deeper than just "sad and happy"

did you know bipolar causes psychosis?

do you know what mania actually is? (hint: it's not "extremely happy"!)

did you know bipolar causes hypersexuality?

did you know bipolar causes aggression?

did you know bipolar causes generally socially unacceptable behavior?

did you know bipolar people are more likely to kill themselves in a manic episode than in a depressive episode?

did you know bipolar causes a thousand other highly stigmatized symptoms?

did you know that after my bipolar disorder diagnosis people started gossiping about how I was "unstable" and therefore "untrustworthy" and I was "erratic" and "a liability"? would you guess that these things were said by a progressive activist group who were "anti-ableism"? does this all sound like an destigmatized mental illness to you?

does it????

[transsexualfiend]

Cripplepunk, madpunk, and neuropunk aren't just "I'm disabled and also left-leaning". It's a specific realm of activism rooted in dismantling the systems that put disabled, mad, sick, etc folks at a disadvantage in society. This mean not only being against the very systems that harm us but also understanding their colonial origins and continued racist legacies. (Anti-ableism, anti-sanism, anti-psych, etc). This means not only just identifying and finding pride in your disability but also building and constantly evolving your understanding of disability and diversity and learning how you can change your worldview to accurately highlight the struggles of disabled people. (EVEN if it sometimes means you will be uncomfortable or unsure of unlearning some kinds of hate.)

[psychotic-tbh]

Stop saying…

“Psychotic/Schizophrenic” when you mean: unpredictable, unhinged, unreal, etc.

“Bipolar” when you mean: polarized, scattered, fickle, unstable, etc.

“Delusional” when you mean: unrealistic, unreasonable, close-minded, stubborn, etc.

“[insert “R” slur in relation to intellectual disabilities]” when you mean: unreasonable, unintelligent/ridiculous, childish, etc.

“OCD” when you mean: particular, neat, overbearing, etc.

“Narcissistic” when you mean selfish, abusive, manipulative, etc.

Note: I’m NOT saying that these are synonymous. This is also not an exhaustive list.

[disabirbity]

Honestly, talking to our hallucinations is hilarious.

There's a weird figure in the dark? Dude, get off of my lawn. Go home.

We see a cat for a split second but it was never there? There goes the extradimensional cat, that's a good kitty.

We see bugs that aren't real? Besties you really gotta start paying rent to be in here!

There's weird figures darting around the corners of our vision, never clear enough to be seen? Sorry we looked at you, I totally get social anxiety!

It makes it seem less serious and lets less room for fear to creep in, because when we get afraid is really when it gets bad. "Why are you talking to yourself?" So I don't go insane actually. Deal with it.

[madpunks]

it's okay if you get confused easily. it's okay if you forget things easily. it's okay if you lose track during conversation easily. it's okay if you have to ask for clarification often. it's okay if you struggle to parse information or sensory unit. you're not "playing dumb" or "doing it on purpose". it's okay to be disabled, some people just refuse to be accommodating.

[giritina]

A small thought for disability pride month... There's a stereotype/myth/common perception that mental health meds make people's art worse. Sometimes, it's portrayed as people being incapable of making art at all. Other times, they simply don't have anything interesting to say now that they're "happy." Some people even avoid going on meds because they worry about not being able to make art.

I want to share some pages of a comic I made during a manic episode, before I was on any proper medication.

I think this comic is very interesting, very raw and unique, but this was my attempt to be understood by other people. I made this art thinking that other people would know exactly what I meant by it. I thought this was incredibly clear, that it would communicate everything I was going through and had experienced without any ambiguity. When people didn't react how I wanted, when they couldn't parse it in the way I intended, it hurt me. Here was my best attempt to be understood, and I remained alone.

Now I'll show some comics I made after being on a mood stabilizer/antipsychotic.

You can say what you like about the artistic merit of it compared to that raw, abstract work I made before, but what matters to me is that I was actually able to connect to other people through this art. When I showed this work to people, their reaction was in line with what I intended. They saw part of me. I made it to show a side of myself I was incapable of expressing without art, and when people read it, they actually saw that side of me.

Without medication, I was trapped in my own world. I couldn't even begin to fathom how to connect to another person because we weren't using the same vocabulary. You might be "interested" or "compelled" by my suffering, but part of that interest comes from the mystery of my delirium. No matter how unique the result, it still represented a failure of intent. Learning to make art again after exiting that delirium was difficult, but I promise you it was and is worth it.

[boughkeeper-dainsleif]

big shoutout to disabled people who smell bad. disabled people who cannot shower regularly. disabled people who sweat a lot and it causes them to smell bad. disabled people who cannot apply deodorant due to mobility restrictions. disabled people who cannot do laundry regularly or at all, and end up wearing dirty clothes for a long time. disabled people who cannot clean their living space, and thus end up smelling bad themselves. disabled people who have any condition or disability that causes body odor. and any other disabled people who smell bad for reasons i didn't mention. i see you and i love you.

(this post is for all disabled people, including mental and physical disabilities)

[gor3sigil]

I’m Trans and Insane and I’m doing fine.

[TW Psychosis, transphobia, psychophobia, medication, psych ward]

“Are you sure ?” she asked.

I remember looking back at her in disbelief, because that was certainly a question I never asked her when she came out.

“Why do you ask ?” I say.

“Dude, I’ve seen you go into depersonalization so hard you even thought you were a human soul in a robot vessel and now, you want me to trust you when you say that you, too, are trans ?”

That’s the memory that comes back to me as I fold and put in my bag my psychiatrist’s note attesting that I suffer from gender dysphoria, NOT LINKED to any psychotic symptoms. Here it goes in my folder with my prescription note, an increase - again - of my anti depressants and Xan, and my endocrinologist’s HRT prescription, increased too - finally.

I go to two separate pharmacies to pick up each prescription for two reasons:

There is only one in this godforsaken town that always had testosterone in stock.

I can’t explain to you with words the look you can get when you give back to back, to someone who, despite not being a doctor, works in healthcare, a note for trans HRT and then a note for psychiatric meds.

And I’m lucky, because I’m not taking antipsychotics anymore. Contrarily to what you could think, it doesn’t magically makes the voices and the shadowy people disappear, but it can make a mess of your head pretty bad and my doctor and I both agreed that I didn’t need more damage up here than what I already had. And no, it doesn’t make your delusions vanish magically too: in fact, I was still pretty certain that I was talking to my soul family out here in Argentine telepathically about my mission on Earth, the meds just made it more difficult to understand their voices, but the belief was still solid.

Anyways, I’m back home with the Hoy Grail I fought tooth and nails to get: a letter from the Sacred Council of Mental Sanity also known as Psychiatry that I was, indeed, a bit delulu, but also trans, and that both things didn’t play into each other. My transness wasn’t a delusion, my delusions didn’t have anything to do with being trans.

Or did it ?

Chicken or egg, you know the drill. Did I have my selves fractured before and one of the piece that shattered my brain happened to make me trans or was I just trans with a shitload of traumas in the back that made me insane ?

But don’t worry, at least, trans people when we’re together, we have each other’s back ! Right ?

“Transidentity ISN’T a mental illness !! We don’t DESERVE to be FORCIBLY LOCKED UP and MEDICATED and MADE TO CONFORM FOR OTHER’S SENSE OF SECURITY !!”

Neither do I, RIGHT ?

Oh

Or do I ?

Remember what she said, my girlfriend, right at the beginning ?

How I can’t be trusted about myself when sometimes I don’t even have a sense of self anymore or I have too much selves who fight against each other ?

And what do we say to that ?

Get treatment. Get in-patient. Take medication. And for the love of God, shut the fuck up about it, you’re giving us a bad name.

Because being trans and crazy can’t exist. It’s absurd. You have to fix one of these two things. Choose which jacket I’ll wear, and they call it a straitjacket for a reason it seems, so am I queer or am I insane ?

All I know today is there isn’t a universe in which I’m a trans without any mental illnesses, or mentally ill without being trans. And yet, I can’t tell you how many time I got asked “do you think you’d be trans if you never got through [x trauma] ?”. I. Don’t. Know. I’ll never know. And I deserve just as much agency as you get despite being mentally ill. If you don’t believe in that, don’t come yapping about “liberation for all of us”, but “if one of us is crazy they’ll all think I am too and that can’t happen”.

No LGBTQIAA+ person deserves to be told they need to be put away, to be cured, to be allowed out in the open only if they’re deemed “acceptable” by society’s standards. And no mentally ill people deserve to either.

No trans person should be going through years of counseling to have the access to HRT.

And I shouldn’t have had to threaten my own mother’s life to avoid being locked in an adult psych ward at 14.

If you ever think, for one second, that these two things have nothing to do with one another, you are far removed from history.

To hear queer people say “yeah but some mentally ill people are dangerous !” feels like you don’t even know where you come from.

And if I want to say, that me being trans is linked to me being mentally ill, or at least, that both are connected in a way, all hell breaks fucking loose.

So I’ll explain very carefully.

See, when I was young, my mind got shattered into a thousand of pieces I had to try to glue back on. All these pieces of myself broke further more down the line because I couldn’t catch a fucking break. And now, it happens that the final puzzle does not have the same face it had before. It happens that its shape changed over time, for reasons over the control of all of us who tried to build ourselves back. Now there’s a bigger picture, less pieces, a few other shadows, and me. Built from the shatters. With my own needs and afflictions.

And whoever you are, whatever your agenda might be, I will not let anyone take any agency away from me under the false pretext that I can’t know anything for myself. They say that about children, they say that about minorities, about physically disabled people, about the people they want OUT. And my trans siblings, you know that.

I came out for the first time 7 years ago, to my then girlfriend, who was the one asking the question that is the first sentence of this text. I came out a second time 3 years ago. Been on HRT, had top surgery, had psychotic breaks, got my meds changed, switch therapist.

Because I am trans and crazy. And yet, all these choices I made, I made myself. It didn’t have to be that hard to get the basic care I needed. It didn’t need to be. But it WAS. And I’m part of the lucky crowd of people who had access to out-patient treatment, who never have been locked up in ward, who managed to stay alive through meds withdrawals without medical assistance when I had no therapist.

Be very careful of when you start to put conditions on the rights you think you deserve. Be very, very careful about your definition of sanity and of how it warps the way you see people. When you start to say “I have access to that, but there’s people like X or Y who shouldn’t BECAUSE”, pause and ask yourself what led you to think this way. More often than not, you’ll find yourself playing the same mind games as the ones you swore to fight against, and when it gives them the upper hand, they won’t hesitate to come for you after that.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I am begging Mental Health Culture to stop broadening the definition of "self-harm." If you want a term to convey the concept you're trying to express, may I suggest bringing back the term "bad habit"? "Self-harm" is grounds for involuntary commitment. Do you want people to get involuntarily committed for spending too much time on the internet before bed or volunteering for too many projects? No? Then don't give coercive psychiatry ammunition by broadening the usage of their coercive terminology! When I first started out in the Mad liberation advocacy movement, one of the arguments we made against involuntary commitment and coercive intervention for "self-harm" was that neurotypical people do things that are "bad for them" all the time, like playing football, smoking tobacco, or eating candy, and they still have the bodily autonomy right to make those "unhealthy" choices. The point was to highlight the double standard that some people were denied rights because of doing things that were allegedly "bad for them," while other people were allowed the dignity of risk and freedom to choose. Our point was "The neurodivergent/Mad person picking her skin should have the same right to bodily autonomy as the neurotypical person dancing ballet, even though both are doing things to their bodies that could be described as 'bad for them.'" The argument was that neither should be pathologized. Current discourse would pathologize both, as well as even more variations on human behavior. That's a big step backwards. "But it's only self-harm if it has certain emotional motivations" -- let me stop you right there. Coercive psychiatry does not ask us what our emotional motivations are. It dictates to us what our emotional motivations are, and increases the coercion if we disagree with it (because disagreeing with their assessments of our emotional state is also A Symptom). Do you think the Parental Surveillance Industrial Complex is going to listen to their children before following through on moral panic articles about how parents should take away their children's hobbies because they're "self-harm"? Don't ascribe good faith to coercive psychiatry, because coercive psychiatry doesn't ascribe good faith to you.