#medical disorder tw

[schizopositivity]

Here's a reminder to fight the internalized sanism/ableism in your head.

If you have executive dysfunction, don't compare your productivity to people who don't.

If you have anhedonia, don't compare your struggling to keep up with hobbies to someone who doesn't.

If you have paranoia, don't think of your fears as any less valid than the fears of someone who doesn't.

If your meds make you tired constantly, don't compare your energy levels to someone who doesn't take those meds.

If you have issues with concentration, then you won't be able to pay attention as well as someone who doesn't.

If you're in the deep end of a pool, then you can't compare how well you keep your head above water to someone who is standing in a kiddie pool.

Please try to think of these things when you feel "lazy" or "childish" or "a failure" compared to other people that don't struggle with the same symptoms as you. If you have a mental illness that will affect how you act in everyday situations, then it will in fact affect you in everyday situations. It's not an excuse, it's just a reality. We need to try to be kinder to ourselves.

[coyotecoining]

SICKITIS

@ T3R|\/| FOR VVH3|\| U R S!CK BUTT U DO|\|'T K|\|OVV VVH@T VV!TH!

(translation: a term for when you are sick, but you don't know what with!)

hi ho! galaxy actually coined this term, i'm just helping her post!

-kermit

[bixels]

When I was getting my diagnosis, my psychiatrist told me right after giving me my prescription that I need to consider eating food a part of my medication, and that flipped a switch in my brain that oh. Maybe willingly starving myself and eating only one meal a day isn't healthy.

[fatphobiabusters]

I hear a lot about how fatness is a "risk factor" for certain illnesses and diseases. I don't hear much about how so are age, socioeconomic status, experiences of abuse, starvation, sex, race, queerness, and so many other aspects of a person's life. And that's because the world already for the most part accepts that a lot of these factors cannot be changed and that many of these factors are not what actually causes an illness or disease.

You don't develop a medical condition because your bank account suddenly shows a different, smaller number. You developed that medical condition because poverty means unbearable stress every day, less access to healthcare, worse housing, inability to clothe yourself for protection from the elements, having to overwork yourself to be able to afford your basic necessities, going without food, and so many other aspects of oppression. You don't weigh your wallet to measure your health because the amount of money you have is not what actually causes a medical condition.

But no one wants to look at the studies with legitimate methodology and admit that fatness is also in this category—that fatness is not something that we can just choose and will away, that fat people face immense systemic oppression just like any other oppressed group, that the correlation of fatness and illness is not some simple relationship of causation. And that's because doing so would mean no longer making hundreds of billions of dollars off of fat people's oppression and having to admit it's not actually okay to treat fat people as an acceptable punching bag.

When I look at medical information for whatever illnesses, see the risk factors laid out, and the only risk factor the website says to change is fatness? I think about all of the research I've read that shows actual permanent weight loss is as likely as finding Atlantis. The amount of hypocrisy at not telling someone to drink a youth potion as a form of treatment at the same time as they lose weight becomes so palpable that I can taste the dirty money being made off of this website telling people to "just lose weight, fatty." It's as cruel as selling an ill person a random crystal that you tell them will fix their health, which they then rely on instead of actual medical care, causing them to get worse and even die. And if you think that comparison is a stretch, you do not realize how many people die every day because they were told weight loss was the answer or were forced to lose weight before the doctor would actually respect them enough to run tests or so much as touch their fat body.

We live in a world where people with PCOS are told to "just lose weight" to solve their infertility, where that is the very first bullet point listed on a website about a medical condition that makes weight loss even more impossible than the already 95% failure rate for the general population. A world where fat people have to stick their own fat bodies with needles during a doctor's appointment because the doctor is too disgusted by fat rolls to even look at the person's body to give them a shot. A world where fat people with eating disorders are encouraged, applauded, and told to keep going while the thin person with an eating disorder has the "luxury" of receiving help, compassion, and a diagnosis that isn't separated in the DSM with the word "atypical." A world where a fat person accidentally given chemotherapy is told by the doctor "At least it helped you lose weight!" A world where weight loss corporations are making the exact same promises they did in advertisements from 1910, yet somehow over 100 years later we have an "ob*sity epidemic" because diets, weight loss products, and exercise regimens "Really work!!!"

If this single "solution" to ill health has not worked despite well over a century of desperate, constant attempts, maybe we should stop trying to jam a triangle into a square hole.

-Mod Worthy

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

psychotic system culture is regret taking antipsychotics because they took away your alters that were your whole world and an integral part of your life. and now you're hysterical, not knowing how to get them back because you can't function on your own.

<-w->

[4spooniesupport]

I assure you the trauma is not all in your head. it's also in your heart, your nerves, and your stomach. It is in your trembling hands, your uneven breathing, your vision is suddenly gets blurry. It's not just your head that went through the thing. every cell in your body was there

[fairiencarnate]

Why did no one tell me that the "chemical imbalance" theory has largely been disproven, that serotonin and dopamine can't cause mental illness on their own? Why have all mental health professionals been pushing this idea as fact? I've always thought the whole BPD diagnosis was bogus, just modern day hysteria slapped onto (mostly) women with complex-PTSD. Almost an official gaslight, like "your trauma wasn't traumatic enough to warrant the PTSD label so we're going to act like your brain is malfunctioning". So I'm not surprised to find all this out.

Can we finally begin a trauma-informed approach toward mainstream mental health shit? Especially mood disorders? Let's not rule chemicals and hormones out entirely, but let's acknowledge that trauma and genes have far stronger ties to mental health.

[blitzsicedcoffee]

Yep.

Rheumatologist left a message saying I have autoimmune thyroid disease or Hashimoto's.

It just gets worse over time but the problem is that it's hormone based and my hormone is still in "normal" range even though I'm feeling a fuck ton of symptoms.

So they can't treat it til my thyroid fails.

Family curse gang rise up lol

[emirrart]

04,12,2023

春の約束

[thebad-lydrawn-sanses]

May... may we get info on the super au? 👉👈

"Monsters", in local dialect, can refer to any being that wields magic and/or is made of magic

SOULs are a culmination of magic, not self

tw/cw (trigger warnings/content warnings)

long post

medical system neglect/trauma

eating disorder (kind of)

food difficulties

knives

violence/murder/death (all implied/mentioned)

body horror, sort of

Killer

first to join the gang

hand arthritis because you're not allowed to enjoy your remaining arm (but you get an arthritis glove so)

mask

transhumeral (above elbow)

knee disarticulation

only character who gets a prosthetic

weird soul shape is the power

very stable

very unstable

Cross

second to join the gang

hood

mask

hasn't lost any limbs (yet)

knife summoning

"scarf"

saw Dream ACCIDENTALLY crush a metal beam with one hand and now screams at the top of his lungs anytime Dream gets close to grabbing him

Dust

third to join the gang

motorcycle-esc helmet

and they were roommates

literally

the economy is in shambles

Doctor: well actually we can't give you prosthetics unless we do a procedure to ensure you're actually missing your arms

Dust: ...but i was born without arms

Doctor: the procedure costs over a thousand dollars and i don't have the authority to diagnose you if you don't do the procedure

Dust: what

Doctor: im sorry

when the medical system is useless you have to improvise

bad for teeth probably

adjustable length grabber tool

whoopee cushion probably

villain outfit

scarf

ankle length

got blue to cut off the arms of a morphsuit and sew the holes up

GASTER BLASTER

Random Civilian: WTF

glowy eye

has a lot of magic to burn

Horror

fourth to join the gang

villain outfit fits him when he grows to a specific height

hasn't lost any limbs

motorcycle-esc helmet

least scared of Dream (because he can run away fast enough)

sharp teefers

Dream

was originally meant to be a manipulative government-working hero who's fake personality reflected canon Dream's while the real personality reflected canon Nightmare's

psychologically broken from spending 500 years in a statue

the constant hunger pains don't help

huge lidless eyes and permasmile tend to disconcert people (uncanny valley)

head is always slightly tilted to alleviate neck pain (making it worse in the long run)

little-no fine motor control

anything in his hands will be held with every ounce of strength he has (which is a lot)

Swap

was sweet and relatively innocent when he started working as a hero (and was a bit squeamish about even hitting villains a bit too hard)

naturally black hair, dyes it constantly to match outfit

prone to trembling violently when angry

blurred for violence

Karen: <- interrupting Blue while he's trying to do his job

originally tried to replace screams with laughter to trick his brain into not panicking during high-stress moments and now ends up laughing hysterically when startled/scared

Villain 42: boo

Past Blue: hahaa! you missed!

Villain 42: boo

Current Blue: AHAHAHA

Villain 42: hey man wtf

Current Blue: i don't know why i did that

Villain 42: it's ok

sledgehammer

mental stability is stretched thin from constantly supervising a murderous human-eating being with the psychological state of a severely traumatised child and a paint-eating psychopath with severe memory issues

Ink

travels the aus where he's human and technically doesn't actually belong to the super au

dislikes water (makes him start dissolving)

likes this au because he doesn't have to hide his supernatural abilities

Ink: wh.. where are my vials

keeps mixing up the definitions of hero and vigilante because it's different from au to au

supposed to have a tragic backstory but he's always forgetting it

legally diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and ASPD despite never taking the tests

[domina-honoribila]

I need your prayers, please. My husband has been hospitalized for a bipolar episode. This is probably the worst he's ever had.

[pinkxcloudz]

many years ago i told my friends (at the time) that i was delusional and actively experiencing delusions. they said they couldn't help and to talk to a doctor. i told my psychiatrist and she said i'm not delusional because "being delusional is believing in things that clearly aren't real" even though that's what i was going through, and even told her as much.

it was a year later, after she retired, that i got access to my records and saw she had diagnosed me with major depressive disorder with psychotic features. i was 14 and had been seeing her since i was about 11 and she lied the entire time. it took even more time for me to be diagnosed as schizospec (this year).

so never tell a psychotic person to "just tell a doctor". if they have genuinely never seeked psychiatric help before, it may, may work. even then, psychs and therapists often will not or cannot help you, malicious intent or not. a lot of psychotic people have been abused by mental health 'professionals', and seeking help is a death sentence in some cases. we are forced on drugs that can have major symptoms, are lied to about the risks, aren't believed, and further abused and neglected by physical health doctors.

calling 988 sometimes doesn't help either if your symptoms are severe and you can't take care of yourself- they will send the police.

we have to carefully pick what to say to avoid being hospitalized, and some of us are hospitalized simply because we're psychotic.

while i do not expect anyone to be able to help someone actively experiencing psychosis- you should educate yourself about the history of psychotic people, past and present. you should ask us how we need to be supported. you should stop recommending to go to a doctor. we know the risks, that's why we don't go.

[beanghostprincess]

Sabo still struggles with memory loss. He had his childhood back, of course, he remembers Ace and Luffy and everything they did together. But he doesn't remember some stuff. Some anecdotes Luffy tells oh so excitedly? He can't recall that those happened. And if he does, it's all blurry and never at all like Luffy says. But he never says anything because that would break his brother's heart, to know his older brother isn't fully back with him, so he nods and smiles and pretends he knows what Luffy is talking about every time.

His room is filled with Post-it notes. Stupid, really. Dumb stuff. But he has all the meetings he needs to remember and the missions he has to do, along with everything he wants to write down at some point properly. The walls are covered in pictures of the people he loves (Luffy, Ace, Koala, Robin... All the others that have ever meant something to him because he refuses to forget somebody again).

He keeps writing dumb stuff down. Anything. He refuses to forget. He denies the possibility of doing it again.

But he forgets. Sabo keeps forgetting important dates. Important parts of his life, like his past with his brothers (he forgets a random adventure they had that he swore he had talked about the day prior) and crucial things he has to do. He has a hard time picturing his memories. Putting them in his brain. Turning them into images. Saying it's frustrating is a huge understatement.

Koala helps him out, of course. She's hard on him so he finishes his paperwork, but she knows it's difficult sometimes. She's his personal calendar and diary. She informs him of what he has to do during the week and always tries to talk and talk about anecdotes that she knows he still remembers but knows he loves to hear again.

His mental health isn't the best either, but he refuses to acknowledge it. There's a revolution at hand, he can't stop working. And fighting. And doing more and more and more. But sometimes it's just too much. Sometimes he goes into depressive episodes he can't control, and the medication is either addicting or the worst thing that has ever happened to him. Sometimes he's a bit too intense. Koala says he needs to calm down, that he has a problem with his fixation on the revolution and his past. Sabo keeps saying that it's fine. But he sometimes forgets or has blurry images of the fights and the people he has killed, filled with energy and excitement and like he has the power of a God. He doesn't like those. Enjoys the moment. Hates to forget it. Hates to know what he did during it too, even if it was for a good cause. Despises the look Koala gives him, also. Makes her promise not to tell Luffy about all of this.

But it's fine, he keeps saying. Sabo will keep trying to never forget anything ever again.

[lefluoritesys]

I was going to answer a post about alters using deadnames a couple days ago, but I lost it, so here's a separate post about it.

It really depends on the circumstances and your unique situation when an alter wants to go by your body's deadname. And it's very nuanced, so there is no, "alters should(n't) go by your deadname."

We have three alters who go by variations of our deadname.

One of them goes by it because they are a little who formed with it during childhood and carried it for decades.

The other formed during a tough time medically and had to deal with one of our worst triggers every day for months. Our DN (deadnam) is not only all they knew of who they are, but since it was our legal name at the time, it's what doctors knew us by.

The third carries our proper DN, though we haven't met them yet and only know about them from gatekeepers.

We still have issues with our DN in English, but we've learned to accept those alters and their names through a bunch of reflection, getting their sides of the story and their reasoning, and learning to see our DN as a legal label to our body rather than something that shapes us.

Our advice is: have a sit-down conversation with the alter(s) who wants to go by your deadname and figure out why they want to use it. See if you can come to a compromise via a nickname, a different spelling of the name, etc. And also look at the factors such as, how long have they had it before, if at all? How old are they? How personal is it to them? Does it help their healing journey? Do y'all have issues with your name that you can solve and/or would benefit from solving, or not? Stuff like this matters. Communication is key.

-host, memory gatekeeper

[schizopositivity]

have you ever talked about how your schizoaffective symptoms and osdd overlap or are different? i have the same diagnoses but my new doctor thinks it might just be one of them

No I haven't but that's a really good question. I'll explain how I got the individual diagnoses, then the overlap I experience, then how I can tell the two apart.

So for me personally I was diagnosed with OSDD first. I've been in therapy for my trauma since I was a child so therapists knew about my responses to trauma and stress for a while. I have a mix of dissociative amnesia and depersonalization/derealization, hence the OSDD diagnosis. I had these symptoms before I had my prodromal period of schizophrenia, and my reoccurring psychosis. I'm pretty sure I was diagnosed as a young teenager but it was suspected before that.

Then once I started having reoccurring and distressing psychotic symptoms, when I tried explaining it to a therapist they had me tested for DID. It turns out I don't have DID, but my psychosis in the beginning seemed to be dismissed as relating to my dissociative disorder. And I think my negative and cognitive schizophrenia symptoms were chalked up to PTSD and depression.

My psychosis escalated over a few years until I had to be admitted to a psych ward and was finally prescribed antipsychotics. At that point therapists realized I did indeed have a psychotic disorder as well, and determined it to be schizophrenia, since I have almost every symptom. (They still don't know if it's schizophrenia and MDD, or schizoaffective depressive type, but the treatment I have now is working so it doesn't really matter to me.)

So now for how my schizophrenia and OSDD overlap and interact with each other:

When I was having very intense hallucinations (before I had antipsychotics) it would sometimes get bad enough for me to fully black out, that's when the dissociative amnesia kicked in. So my memories of these experiences are having prolonged and very distressing hallucinations, then blacking out completely while still being awake and conscious, and then coming out of the blackout hours later, usually crying and hiding under a table or something. So basically my brain would react to trauma by having me totally forget a chunk of time, even though that trauma was the hallucinations that my brain created.

I would also have days of derealization/depersonalization where I would have hallucinations and delusions that enhance the dissociation, and they overlap to totally change my perception of reality.

For me the way I can tell the two disorders apart comes down to a few things: the specific symptoms, when they appear, and what kind of treatment works for it.

So with a dissociative disorder, the way it can impact you is usually very centered around yourself and your perceptions of yourself. Meanwhile the way psychosis impacts you can be limitless. It can impact how you view other people and can oftentimes feel like outside forces, not connected to yourself at all. I tend to hallucinate entire other beings outside of myself, but my dissociation seems to really only impact myself for the most part.

Also dissociative symptoms often occur during trauma, during stress or while your trauma is triggered. Meanwhile psychotic symptoms can flare up randomly, even when you are at your happiest. Sometimes my dissociation occurs as a reaction to the stress of psychosis, but in those cases the psychosis happens first.

And of course, schizophrenia has many more symptoms as a part of it that have nothing to do with psychosis, aka the negative and cognitive symptoms.

Also the treatment is different, the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia can often be treated with antipsychotics. But any dissociative disorder is most commonly treated with therapy. Like now that I take a daily antipsychotic medication my psychosis is mostly gone, but my dissociation is still around. My dissociation flared up in stressful or triggering situations, but the few hallucinations that I still get will come up totally randomly.

(Sorry this turned into a bit of a ramble, but I realized I hadn't really talked about what it's like to have both OSDD and schizophrenia.)

I think it will be important for you and your new doctor to determine if it is only one, so that your treatment can focus more on that specifically. But if you are happy with your current treatment and don't care about diagnoses that much, then you can let them know that you are content with the way things are now and maybe things don't have to change.

[4spooniesupport]

"One reason trauma survivors bond with each other so profoundly---which is different than a trauma bond---is because people who have been through certain things "speak" a different emotional "language" than the rest of humanity and we recognize that "language" when we hear it." (Dr. Glen Patrick Doyle)