#pro disability

[ohdeerradiodemon]

(Inspired by this post, I 100% had to add my own thoughts as I adopt this headcanon as well, because it's such an incredible idea! You're a genius @shootinwebs!)

Alastor has (undiagnosed) temporal lobe epilepsy that developed when he was alive (and still has now in his afterlife)

details about the disease and comorbidities that are likely under the cut

Temporal lobe epilepsy developed in Alastor’s early 20s

Was a result of a traumatic brain injury at some point in his late teens

Somewhere between a medial and lateral origin site within the brain, resulting in combined side effects

During a temporal lobe seizure, a person may experience a seizure aura; an aura is an autonomic, cognitive, emotional or sensory experience that commonly occurs during the beginning part of a seizure.

Alastor’s auras may include:

rising epigastric feeling

abdominal discomfort

gustatory and olfactory hallucinations

tingling (somatosensory)

déjà vu and jamais vu

flushing

vertigo

humming/ringing/buzzing sounds in ears

hearing song(s) (particularly ones he tended to play on his show)

A person may then stare blankly, appear motionless (behavioral arrest) and lose awareness. Repeated stereotyped motor behaviors (automatisms) may occur. Alastor’s automatisms include: repeated swallowing, picking, and/or vocalizations. Visual hallucinations can also occur. Loss of awareness may occur (he might not realize he even had a seizure until he comes out of it.) Although, he’s never had convulsive seizures.

Temporal lobe migraines have resulted over time as well

It was never properly diagnosed, as it was something he heavily ignored and didn’t draw attention to at all (therefore it was left untreated)

Psychiatric co-morbidities:

Psychosis/Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

AIWS – episodic, which means it’s not a consistent thing. It can happen randomly, and the instances are few and far between

Type C – including symptoms from both Type A and B (visual/perceptual distortions)

Partial or total macrosomatognosia/paraschematia (a disorder of the body image in which the patient perceives a part of or the entire body as disproportionately larger than it actually is)

Micropsia (viewing objects and the environment around them as much smaller than they actually are) and/or tele- and pelopsia (viewing things as much farther or closer than they actually are)

Lilliputianism (people appearing smaller)

Depersonalization/derealization (a feeling of disconnection from one's own body, feelings, thoughts, and environment. Depersonalization is a term specifically used to express a true detachment from their personal self's and identity)                                                                 

Hearing and time distortions (sound perception - amplification of soft sounds or the misinterpretation of common sounds. Other auditory changes include distortion in pitch and tone and hearing indistinguishable and strange voices, noises, or music. A person affected by AIWS may also lose a sense of time, a problem similar to the lack of spatial perspective brought on by visual distortion. This condition is known as tachysensia. For those with tachysensia, time may seem to pass very slowly)

Personality co-morbidities:

Geschwind syndrome

Hypergraphia is the tendency for extensive and compulsive writing or drawing. Those with hypergraphia display extreme attention to detail in their writing. Some such patients keep diaries recording meticulous details about their everyday lives. In certain cases, these writings demonstrate extreme interest in religious topics. These individuals also tend to have poor penmanship.

Hyperreligiosity - characterized by increased, usually intense, religious feelings and philosophical interests. Some auras include ecstatic experiences. These religious feelings can motivate beliefs within any religion, including voodoun

Atypical or altered sexuality - in approximately half of affected individuals hyposexuality is reported.

Circumstantiality - tend to continue conversations for a long time and talk repetitively.

Intensified mental life - including deepened cognitive and emotional responses. This tendency may pair with hypergraphia, leading to prolific creative output and a tendency toward intense, solitary pursuits

Many of these symptoms manifested in his demon form in his afterlife

He never complained about hearing music during an episode and now everyone gets to hear it too

The other auditory hallucinations manifested as Alastor being something of a living radio in his afterlife, using radio static and music as a way to express himself

He still suffers from seizures in the afterlife and still continues to never draw attention to it unless someone actually catches him having one in which case he plays it off as not being a big deal and being unbothered by it (this is a bold-faced lie)

[raging-guanche]

friendly reminder you dont need a diagnosis to be in disability spaces, as an example im in constant pain and fatigue, have migraines every week and my joints hurts to a point I can't write, but since familiar gaslighting/medical trauma and the fact that im an indigenous, brown skin fat man a diagnosis is fucking hard (but im in my way! :)) , but i still deserve a safe space to talk about my experiences and to feel valuable and supported.

never feel like youre interrupting someone's space or that you shouldn't be here cause you dont have a diagnosis, disabilities existed before diagnosis

[terror-punk]

Be Openly Scary

Society is scared of a lot of things it shouldn't be. A lot of those things can't be helped, a lot of those things don't hurt anyone, and a lot of those things are not what people even think they truly are.

So you know what?

Talk about your hallucinations, your delusions, your psychotic symptoms. Share things about your gender identity whether it be nonconforming, trans, xenogender or anything else. Scream about your nonhumanity and animal urges. Be open and unwavering about your systems existence, presenting as more-than-one wherever you want. Use and introduce your pronouns, even if people find them weird or offputting. Rock back and forth, pace, twitch and stim in any way you please. Wear things that reflect your identity in public. Get tattoos and body mods to your heart's content. Tell people about your personality disorders.

Don't make yourself small because others can't handle you. Be open where safe. Be you. Be scary.

[enbyhyena]

please stop scrolling for a sec!! i'd really appreciate your attention!!

hello, my name is nexys and i am a disabled, autistic, and queer person trying to make it in the content creation world. i'll do my best to keep this short and sweet, but i'm going to be having a subathon over on twitch starting 8/1 (august 1st) at 12pm CST.

this event is super important to me, as i'm trying to raise money to improve my living situation, as well as the living situations of those in my community. i'm also going to be running a charity day on friday, august 2nd for parkinson's awareness, research, and treatment, and will be having on my grandfather, who is an advocate with the disease. and i know it would mean a lot to him if he was able to raise some money to help other people like him.

for those that don't know, a subathon is when a streamer goes live on twitch for a certain amount of time, and the stream ends when the timer runs out. however, the timer can be increased indefinitely by viewers donating money, subscribing, gifting subscriptions, or cheering bits.

due to my disabilities i can't go 24/7 like some of the maniacs (/lh) out there, but i have committed to going every single day for at least four hours until the timer hits zero. and once again, this subathon event holds potential to be lifechanging for a lot of people. plus i'll be collaborating with over a dozen other creators throughout the first week, so you'll be getting a lot of variety! we'll be playing everything from pokémon to phasmophobia, roblox to subnautica, and more!

even if you can't contribute financially, dropping a follow, saying hello, and just Being There would mean the world to everyone involved.

here's my linktree, which directs to every website i'm on, including my twitch channel and discord server.

even if you're not personally interested in this project, please consider reblogging! there's a chance one of your followers might be interested, and any engagement helps. <33 thank you so much for reading this far, and i hope you have a great rest of your day/night!

[wispforever]

happy pride, everybody. ask me about my queer system

[Edit: now has image description]

[ed-recoverry]

This post exempts you from any and all “If you don’t ___ this post, ____ will happen.” You are hereby immune to it all. You are now protected! Be free!

[the-darkestminds]

very much in favor of letting characters keep their life-changing injuries, no matter the severity. reject using magic as a cure-all for every bad thing that ever happens. let the characters suffer. let them realize they’ll never be the same again for the rest of their long, immortal lives. force them to come to terms with everything that was stolen from them. make them struggle and fight tooth and nail to rebuild themselves into something new and different. AND BY GODS MAKE IT HURT.

[disabirbity]

What are some things other psychotics do to differentiate between hallucination and reality? And what are ways some of you hold off symptoms? Looking to get a nice thread for people to help each other going here, this stuff isn't posted about enough.

Ways we prevent symptoms/stop them from progressing:

Make background noise to prevent auditory hallucinations. Most of ours start by hearing something that we can't identify the cause of in the background, and our brain starts the spiral from there. So we listen to music all the time and sleep with a fan on every single night, even in the winter. We just point it away from us if we don't want it making us cold.

Blame the cat (or other pets). Any weird movement, scratching, crunching or thumping? That's just Jerry, don't worry about it. He's a silly cat that does cat things even while we're sleeping. Any noise can be blamed on pets or the wind, which stops the paranoia from setting in and making everything bad.

We also tell ourselves that if there was an actual issue like an intruder or monster, the cat would hiss or scream, and the dog would be barking or making noise. This can be applied to many pets.

Stay busy. Focus on something--art, video games, tv shows and films, craft, gardening, anything that keeps you thinking. Don't let the anxiety get to you, just stay focused on your regular life.

Laugh at it. You're hallucinating a monster in your peripheral vision? Name it Fred and tell him to pay rent. You hear weird noises? Tell them to come back with a warrant. For us, treating symptoms like they're jokes or not serious makes us less anxious and therefore makes it easier to get back to a point where we're okay.

Having a friend or a pet near you can help. We feel safer and less alone when we see another living thing near us that's safe. We don't feel as much like we're trapped in another dimension that way.

How we differentiate between reality and unreality:

Touch it. This one only works for things you're not scared of, and if you don't have tactile hallucinations. It's not foolproof! But when we're seeing things like bugs and stuff, reaching out to touch them causes them to fade away so we know they're fake.

Ask friends and other trusted people if they "heard that" or "saw anything". If they're psychosis friendly, feel free to explain and be specific. If not, be vague and keep it to simple things like "hey did you hear anything? I couldn't tell what it was", if that will be safe enough. Having people to ground you can be great.

Look at how others around you are acting. Are they running or interacting with the thing in question in any way? Do they seem to look at it or no? If no one is noticing, it's less likely to be real.

These won't work for everyone and some of these might be harmful to others, but they're helpful to us. You know best what will help you!

Please feel free to add your own! We need more discussion around psychosis that isn't "scary evil person disorder and how to deal with people who have it".

[reasonsforhope]

"As a Deaf man, Adam Munder has long been advocating for communication rights in a world that chiefly caters to hearing people. 

The Intel software engineer and his wife — who is also Deaf — are often unable to use American Sign Language in daily interactions, instead defaulting to texting on a smartphone or passing a pen and paper back and forth with service workers, teachers, and lawyers. 

It can make simple tasks, like ordering coffee, more complicated than it should be. 

But there are life events that hold greater weight than a cup of coffee. 

Recently, Munder and his wife took their daughter in for a doctor’s appointment — and no interpreter was available. 

To their surprise, their doctor said: “It’s alright, we’ll just have your daughter interpret for you!” ...

That day at the doctor’s office came at the heels of a thousand frustrating interactions and miscommunications — and Munder is not isolated in his experience.

“Where I live in Arizona, there are more than 1.1 million individuals with a hearing loss,” Munder said, “and only about 400 licensed interpreters.”

In addition to being hard to find, interpreters are expensive. And texting and writing aren’t always practical options — they leave out the emotion, detail, and nuance of a spoken conversation. 

ASL is a rich, complex language with its own grammar and culture; a subtle change in speed, direction, facial expression, or gesture can completely change the meaning and tone of a sign. 

“Writing back and forth on paper and pen or using a smartphone to text is not equivalent to American Sign Language,” Munder emphasized. “The details and nuance that make us human are lost in both our personal and business conversations.”

His solution? An AI-powered platform called Omnibridge. 

“My team has established this bridge between the Deaf world and the hearing world, bringing these worlds together without forcing one to adapt to the other,” Munder said. 

Trained on thousands of signs, Omnibridge is engineered to transcribe spoken English and interpret sign language on screen in seconds...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” ...

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. "

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024. More info below the cut!

To test an alpha version of his invention, Munder welcomed TED associate Hasiba Haq on stage. 

“I want to show you how this could have changed my interaction at the doctor appointment, had this been available,” Munder said. 

He went on to explain that the software would generate a bi-directional conversation, in which Munder’s signs would appear as blue text and spoken word would appear in gray. 

At first, there was a brief hiccup on the TED stage. Haq, who was standing in as the doctor’s office receptionist, spoke — but the screen remained blank. 

“I don’t believe this; this is the first time that AI has ever failed,” Munder joked, getting a big laugh from the crowd. “Thanks for your patience.”

After a quick reboot, they rolled with the punches and tried again.

Haq asked: “Hi, how’s it going?” 

Her words popped up in blue. 

Munder signed in reply: “I am good.” 

His response popped up in gray. 

Back and forth, they recreated the scene from the doctor’s office. But this time Munder retained his autonomy, and no one suggested a 7-year-old should play interpreter. 

Munder’s TED debut and tech demonstration didn’t happen overnight — the engineer has been working on Omnibridge for over a decade. 

“It takes a lot to build something like this,” Munder told Good Good Good in an exclusive interview, communicating with our team in ASL. “It couldn't just be one or two people. It takes a large team, a lot of resources, millions and millions of dollars to work on a project like this.” 

After five years of pitching and research, Intel handpicked Munder’s team for a specialty training program. It was through that backing that Omnibridge began to truly take shape...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” 

In order to achieve that dream — of transposing their technology to a smartphone — Munder and his team have to play a bit of a waiting game. Today, their platform necessitates building the technology on a PC, with an AI engine. 

“A lot of things don't have those AI PC types of chips,” Munder explained. “But as the technology evolves, we expect that smartphones will start to include AI engines. They'll start to include the capability in processing within smartphones. It will take time for the technology to catch up to it, and it probably won't need the power that we're requiring right now on a PC.” 

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. 

But it is more than a transcription service — it allows people to have face-to-face conversations with each other. There’s a world of difference between passing around a phone or pen and paper and looking someone in the eyes when you speak to them. 

It also allows Deaf people to speak ASL directly, without doing the mental gymnastics of translating their words into English.

“For me, English is my second language,” Munder told Good Good Good. “So when I write in English, I have to think: How am I going to adjust the words? How am I going to write it just right so somebody can understand me? It takes me some time and effort, and it's hard for me to express myself actually in doing that. This technology allows someone to be able to express themselves in their native language.” 

Ultimately, Munder said that Omnibridge is about “bringing humanity back” to these conversations. 

“We’re changing the world through the power of AI, not just revolutionizing technology, but enhancing that human connection,” Munder said at the end of his TED Talk. 

“It’s two languages,” he concluded, “signed and spoken, in one seamless conversation.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024

[dank-pro-life-memes]

Quiet part out loud 👀

[cheerfullycatholic]

From studentsforlife on Instagram

[cryptidcodex]

Hey, if you go on a disabled person's post to talk over them and whine about their aids getting in *your* way, I hope they run over your foot and break at least two toes. Have some compassion and stop being a dick

~A very disabled system

[thepro-lifemovement]

[lebloodymoonsystem]

Alright time to go out and have a fun day

*5 minutes later*

Damn. That chronic fatigue really do be fatiguing.

[franknfurterstriangulardinosaur]

Someone added tags to my post yesterday that really made me think. When you research how to deal with your disability or neurodivergence or mental illness, you normally find much more about how other people should interact with you. if you look at npd help, you’ll find some hateful articles on how to destroy a narcissist or about “narc abuse”. if you research autism, you’ll get articles helping people to interact with autism or about how parents of autistics should parent. if you research any disability, you’ll get articles on how to deal with disabled people. the ableism is so blatant but never talked about. this is why no one can ever get help.