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notallangelsaregood · 1 year ago

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My thoughts on Spy x Family Chapter 82

Needless to say, (some real serious) manga spoilers alert

Oh, boy, I'm gasping for air. I'm panicking, and I've not panicked this much about Spy x Family since Anya's last hijack incident (which my heart has not recovered yet). Mr. Endo, may you, please, pay my cardiologist bill? I'm not joking, I'm hyperventilating, and my chest is TU DUM, TU DUM.

The mole was discovered! Poor guy (or not, who knows?). I wonder what SSS will do to him. How far will the organization go? I believe we won't even know.

I'm seriously nervous for him. Twillight is used to things getting on his way, with minimum complications and this situation is definitely not it. Of course, he could figure things could go bad, since It's a really risky operation, however, I feel his frustration in not getting much time to secure the real wheeler.

Damn, my heart is not surviving till the end of this chapter.

Our man got ✨ The Skills ✨ Still, all this shooting is getting me pretty nervous. I'm immediately getting my anxiety meds. Endo, what the actual f-

Yeah, Twilight is The Man! Still, my hands are trembling and so is my apprehensive cardiac organ. This is sure to be qualified as torture.

He is quite wise disguising as Yuri. Haha, got it? I'm not okay, Christ.

Damn, Yuri is very intelligent, as well. The brains had to go to one of the Briar's, am I right? (Poor Yor, I love you, It's not personal. Bad comedy is my coping mechanism when I'm nervous. I'm so sorry!)

He is right about that. Twilight is nervous. And I wonder why. Maybe because there's more on this game than before? He is a father. A husband. He worries. He is not the same he was before, as much as he tries to convince himself that he is not attached to his fake family dynamics.

I can clearly imagine his thoughts racing. He's thinking about Anya, about Yor, about WISE, while trying to run and get these thoughts away from him in order to not commit mistakes, like leaving a footprint behind. Just saying.

Oh Yuri, you are so sweet, in a way. And you know absolutely nothing.

The panic™ on his face. Poor Yuri, I'm truly divided right here. See? I'm calmer, not panicking at all, this is certainly my clonazepam working.

Quick (but important) writer's note here, I'm actually diagnosed with intense anxiety and use prescribed medication, I joke about it, cause It's better to laugh than cry on the reality of my condition, however, never use anxiolytic/benzodiazepines drugs without valid prescription and conscience, it might cause long-term dependency and tolerance. My Pharmacy academic self felt the need to point this out. Moving on!

By the way, have you noticed the "waver"? Twilight is hesitating, deeply, which makes him more prone to aiming wrong. Haha, ha… I'm okay, I swear 😰

...

HOW THE FLOOF AM I SUPPOSED TO BE CHILL AFTER THIS, HUH?

Okay, two theories. I'm okay, I swear, my blood pressure is just fine.

Theory number 1. Twilight gets Yuri shot on some of his limbs, probably one of his legs, so our spy can buy time, run to encounter the others Wise's agents and hide. Gladly, he can aim just on the spot when no much damage is made to Yuri, even though the spy is extremely nervous. Twillight was totally not expecting to find him on that corner, and he knows that doing something so serious like UNALIVING HER WIFE'S BROTHER will tear her apart. Why else he would waver? He is the best spy of Westalis. He doesn't hesitate, but this is different.

Theory number 2. Which I believe is less likely, but still possible, Yuri gets our incredible Spy shot on some area of his body where the disguise falls off, and he realizes Twillight and Loid are the same person, but he does nothing about it, at least not for a while. Making him and the spy share this major secret for a while, due to numerous reasons, but mainly to protect Yor and take her out of her position as Loid's wife safely. But as I said, I find unlikely to Yuri shoot TwiTwi, even though the latter is quite nervous and might not dodge the shot. Besides the fact Loid has his arm aimed at Yuri first, while Yuri has his arm sideways, which gives Twilight an advantage in time.

Be sure to talk to me in the comments, I would love to hear what you guys think. Moving on to the last past of the chapter.

Lady Yor! Our grownup baby! She is still with the same outfit and hair down, so I assume it's late at night or afternoon, maybe Anya is already home or at a sleepover with Becky? Not sure.

Our poor girl is nervous due to Yuri filling her thoughts with the possibility of Loid cheating (which is dumb as floof, because he is a loyal boy) but still, even sober, Yor is worried. She cares about this family so much it probably hurts and confuses her. Her face on the left gave me chills, so much is going through her mind, almost if she senses something is wrong.

So. Much. Blood. I'm. Nervous. I. Can't. Breath. Properly. What. Was. This? Whose blood is this? (Not Yor's, I assume). I always count the days till the next chapter, but for this one, I'll be in severe mental pain until its release date. My mind racing like Yor's, wondering if Loid will come home late or come home at all.

I keep imagining scenarios where one of the boys gets shoot and the aftermath of that, Loid or Yuri at the hospital or being held by their organizations in order to get intel from them, Yor drying with worry, there are so many possibilities. This arc has been the most intense so far, for me, at least. I don't know how I will cope till June 26th.

What do you guys thinking? If my heart survived until now, yours will! Make sure to like, reblog and support my work here on Tumblr, I really appreciate it. Now I will rest, cause that chapter was (hell) difficult 🌹 (this post will be reviewed soon, so if you encounter any grammar or spelling mistakes, forgive my bilingual mess self)

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bubblegum-glitch · 1 month ago

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I Was Gaslighted to Believe My Mental Health Disorders Were Fake

TW: Suicide, alcoholism, mental health, childhood trauma

This post is a bit off topic with the theme of my blog, but it's something I really want to address.

I was about 10 years old when I first started noticing something was wrong with me. This was revealed to me quite recently when I was looking through my mom's collection of my old saved homework assignments. I had written a "biography" and in it I detailed how I was unlovable, and outlined clear indications of depression within it.

No one ever thought to address this with me. No one asked why I felt this way. No one drew any attention to the fact that something was clearly going on inside my head.

Before I continue I would like to preface this blog entry with a reminder that I did not have a bad childhood. Yes there was some emotional trauma that I recognize now that I'm older, but my parents did the best they could with what they knew and are not the villains of this story.

The suffering I did mentally in my teenage years was boiled down to teen angst and hormones, and once again ignored, even when I began self harming. This would, however, result in my first hospital trip regarding my mental health, but only because I had called the police on my drunk father and had to threaten to hurt myself in order to get them to send someone out to help me.

I don't remember what happened at that hospital visit. I've suppressed most of that memory too deep and would prefer not to dig it up for a blog post. I do remember people being disappointed in me and embarrassed that I would dare call the police on a family member. The focus ended up being on the resulting depression my dad was suffering instead of the scars I was now left with.

You see, I wasn't allowed to have emotions that weren't happy. Most importantly, I was absolutely not allowed to be angry about anything. If I felt rage, if I felt sadness, I was expected to put on a happy face and bury all that deep down in the depths of my soul until it all melted away.

It doesn't melt away though. It builds, and builds, and builds, and builds, and builds, until you just can't contain it any longer.

I struggled with suicidal thoughts and tendencies, self harm, depression, and anxiety quietly for many years. Eventually I told my mom about the intense urges that would coax me to hurt myself and the conversation was once again dismissed and forgotten by the following day. I was lead to believe that these thoughts weren't real, that I should push them all down and bury them, and I would feel better by exercising and going out with people more often while pretending nothing was wrong. Spoiler alert, this was not the correct solution.

I had my first total breakdown a few years later around 2014/2015. I was on my way to my new job when I was hit with this wave of absolute despair and hopelessness. It got so bad that I had to crawl into a public washroom at the bus terminal and call my mom to come get me because I couldn't even walk anymore on my own. Despite her insistence that going to the hospital wasn't going to help because all they would do is prescribe me medication (a BIG no-no in my house), she did eventually cave and took me to get some help.

That emergency visit was absolutely useless, however. I was told to read a book on being happy, told to exercise more, and sent home.

So once again it was confirmed to me that there was nothing wrong and I was just being a lazy drama queen.

This would lead to the first time I seriously considered suicide and it was just dumb luck that an interruption stopped me from going ahead with it.

Unfortunately the mess my head was in only began to decline from here. I never wanted to leave the house, I was constantly paranoid that my friends hated me, believed myself to be worthless and a waste of breath, and figured no one would listen to me cries for help because I just wasn't worth saving. My poor mental health was my fault and I was only making it worse by wallowing in a pit of despair that I had dug for myself. If I would just exercise and be more positive I would be all better.

My second suicide attempt occurred after I had moved out of my parents place to live with my partner. That despair had worsened to a point where I couldn't stand it anymore and I walked out into traffic to try and make it stop. Fortunately I was not hit and, upon realizing what I had done, I called a friend to take me to emergency.

This time the doctors listened and got me help. I spent a year in therapy, got a loose diagnosis of PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) from my doctor, and with the encouragement of my partner finally gave in and went on medication to treat my anxiety and depression. I had been resistant of this previously because my mom had led me to believe that long-term medication was poison and only hurt more than it helped.

I'm sorry mom, but fuck you for making me believe that.

After a couple of weeks adjusting to the meds and feeling like nothing was real, the suicidal thoughts went away, the urge to self harm diminished, the weight on my chest lightened, I could think clearly for the first time in my life, I could see the beauty in living...

After 20 years I finally understood what it meant to feel normal.

But the story doesn't end here.

Over the last few months I've noticed my medication has been significantly less effective. It happens, and originally I was just going to ask my doctor to strengthen my prescription, but then my mom said something that sent an intense rage through my soul.

"I've always known you had ADHD but I didn't take you to see a doctor because all they would do is medicate you."

Excuse me?

This epiphany sent me down a rabbit hole of exploring the disorder and when it became obvious to me that she was probably right I began the steps to getting myself a diagnosis, partially for confirmation, but mostly out of spite.

Last weekend the NP diagnosing me stated that while she believes I do probably have ADHD, it's also very clear to her that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, with signs of possible Bipolar. I've now got an appointment with my doctor to get a referral to a psychiatrist to have this officially diagnosed, but dear lord does it all make so much sense now.

Years of blaming myself for never being good enough, for feeling awful that I never made anything of myself, for failing again, and again, and again and being told it was because I was too lazy...

I'm mad. I'm really. Fucking. Mad.

My family and the health system failed me. They made me believe I was making it all up, that I was a drama queen. They invalidated my feelings over and over and over...

But 10 year old me was right. Something was wrong. Something has been wrong for a very long time and I'm finally now, at 35 years old, getting the help I have been begging for my entire life.

When I discussed this discovery with my friends the first thing they asked was if I was okay, because hearing all that was a lot to take in. My mom, on the other hand, scoffed and told me the NP is lying and isn't an expert. She just wants to sell me a medication that will poison my system. Mom completed her "diagnosis" by telling me my real problem is that I don't exercise and I spend too much time on the computer. If I'd give up the screen time and go for a walk I will be all better.

I'm really. Fucking. Mad.

#lifestyle #mental health #depression #anxiety #bpd #bipolar #pmdd #adhd

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wolves-etc · 2 years ago

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thoughts on The Last Of Us episode one, largely in the order I had them:

[thoughts on: 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9]

(I have some spoilers from tumblr, a vague awareness of the older gays & younger gays situations, and a friend's recommendation that I'd really like this show. I didn't realise how evocative this would be in a mid-pandemic world. the show quickly set me right.)

— all kudos and respect to mr "I have an opportunity to infodump to a crowd about disturbing fungal diseases and I am going to make the most of it." loses points for warning people about hypothetical future dangers while actively smoking at them.

— the views we get of the crowd and the host during the second half of his speech are interesting - they're so still, all rapt attention, while he's talking about humans made puppets. it's unsettling.

— and the visuals during the theme music? gross. the guy who recommended this to me is squicked out by fungus. I may have used the words "wetly unfurling" while confronting him about this.

— I'm struck by the apparent ritual of joel setting his alarm, sleeping through it or ignoring it, and having to be alerted by his daughter anyway. he's a mess. (<3)

— there's something very real and unsanitised about their home environment. sarah's presumably not the worst cook in the house, but still they're eating eggshell. there's takeaway in the fridge that tommy sniffs before having any (though I wish he didn't decide against it then put it back.)

— and joel's shirt is on inside-out. bless him.

— sarah and joel passive-aggressively siccing the neighbours on each other is bitchy and great

— the first glimpse of the unrest of the pandemic being someone visibly panicking, closing the shop, herding sarah out, telling her to go straight home? I'm trying not to do too much real-life comparing. but that's ouch.

— we have a dog!! a border collie!! mercy I love you I am giving you up for dead given the genre we're in but I very much hope to be proven wrong <3

— "three nails plus one cross equals four-given." please, please tell me people don't speak like that. lie if you must

— the mental shift from "that blurry old lady in the background needs medical attention" to "oh. oh this is a horror show, the characters just don't know that yet, oh no" was a fun one

— "and you were never gonna [get the watch fixed] for yourself" OH BOY

— it's functional depression vibes in joel and it's intense. he won't get the watch fixed for himself, and he probably wouldn't celebrate his birthday for himself either - I'd buy that the pancakes could have been more for sarah than him, but then she insists on cake, and he doesn't suggest anything he'd enjoy better. still, he seems willing to make an effort because she wants to, and that's nice.

— that moment, sitting down to watch a movie together, sarah falling asleep against him? joel's a mess, but he has a good relationship with his daughter, and that's refreshing to see. there's real love there.

— mercy is a very good dog and sarah COULD DO WITH MORE ANXIETY SLASH SURVIVAL INSTINCT, FRANKLY,

— and we get the first glimpse of joel being brutal and unhesitating when it's called for. the sense that he's already made a shift in thinking that sarah's slower to - she's scared, crying, not yet really believing that it was necessary.

— sarah in the back of the car being smart enough to put together - given what she knows - that any one of them could be infected. it's awful.

— "[they've] got a kid, joel." "so have we. keep driving." fuck

— (how must that feel for sarah? if she's the thing to be protected, it must be her fault.)

— okay the infected's too-quick movements and bird-like head tilts? very "inhuman software on human hardware." it's cool.

— this scene here, though. there's a lot here. they're saved, in the nick of time, by a soldier. the soldier receives orders that he has to double-check. joel calls him sir, says please don't, has to know what's coming. it's unfair and it's horrible and there's nothing he can do.

— and I had a lot of thoughts about that. about how the US military - quite aside from the huge wrongs it does to other countries - promises people to chance to do some good, and to be a part of a family, and betrays them on both counts. leaves its soldiers with trauma and no way to manage it. leaves them, perhaps, with chronic depression, in a job I don't even want to speculate about because neither the military nor construction work are kind to the body. it's betrayal on top of betrayal as standard. and it's cruel, very cruel, that the military betrays joel again here. (edit for reasons and for at least one "article" possibly lying to me)

— and it's a fucking needless way for sarah to die. fuck.

— okay. okay.

— we get this little reminder that the birds, the trees, the sunlight, they all keep going. no matter what goes on with humans. and I, for one, find that comforting.

— and that comfort is VERY NEEDED because holy shit it's twenty years later and joel barely even hesitates to throw a bound child's body onto the fire. (practical and brutal, when it's needed. I don't even want to wonder whether he's done it before.)

— he's still wearing his broken watch and he is very much not okay.

— tess is all steel. I'm a little scared of her as a person and I love her as a character. what the fuck are they both up to that they can handle criminal dealings like this.

— "I promised him you wouldn't hurt him, but I would very much like for you to hurt him." CLEAR AND TO THE POINT.

— no but that's a lot of fun though. clear communication, what seems like no real lies when she's negotiating with her captor, just a forthright attitude that's so easy to believe and a comfortable willingness to mislead him.

— "you don't have a fucking ear on your fucking head" would be a fun way to accuse someone of not listening

— "y'all talk it through, but please remember that I'm bleeding out." I LIKE MARLENE

— and here we see joel's fight response to trauma, which will, I hope, serve him well. that flashback was evil though.

— what the FUCK is the expression on ellie's face. is that awe. is that delight. miss, you're very fucked up, do you know that

things I expected: ellie being a murder child; joel being a traumatised badass with a soft spot for her. did NOT expect ellie to be THAT much of a murder child, or joel's soft spot to be that well-armoured. this is gonna be interesting to see.

and I didn't expect tess, who's interesting, and scary in her own right, and rugged in a way women aren't generally allowed to be in the zombie genre. this was a really pleasant surprise.

#the last of us hbo #the last of us spoilers #tlou spoilers #angst tag #orig #at the time of polishing I have actually seen and loved the next episode too #remains to be seen whether I'm gonna tidy up my thoughts for each one but I'll try #just don't look too deeply into the tangent about the military and we'll all be fine <3

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sugoi-and-spice · 2 years ago

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So, I'm sitting here. Reading the new chapter of Play Nice rn. And I have to agree with Spinner. They are indeed the dumbest smart people and I LOVE SPINNER! I want more of Lizard boy! What are his hcs!? Why is this chapter an emotional Rollercoaster? How do you even write Shiggy so well?! I'll be back with more commentary

Ahhhh, thank you so much, this is just the sweetest message in the world - I'm go glad that you're loving the fic and my interpretations of Shigaraki and Spinner. ^_^

As for headcanons about Play Nice Spinner (CW: Racism, Self-Harm, Mental Illness):

As opposed to being a heteromorph, in this universe, I write Spinner as Hāfu - his Dad is black, and his mom is Japanese - although they gave him his Mom's last name for hopes that it'd be easier for him to fit in. (Spoiler Alert: It didn't.)

He also has some pretty bad acne scars.

Much like his canon counter-part, he grew up in a pretty rural town and experienced a lot of intense discrimination and bullying to the point that he ended up dropping out of school and becoming a shut-in.

His plan as a kid was to renounce his Japanese citizenship and go to America to join the military like his Dad, however, he ended up losing pretty much all of his drive and aspiration when he [REDACTED ¬‿¬ ]. In retrospect, it wasn't the right path for him and he's glad that he stayed in Japan.

He has depression and anxiety, but takes medication and attends regular therapy for both. He's doing pretty well on them.

He's very athletic! Really enjoys weight-lifting, climbing, and boxing (mostly shadow and with a bag). He used to surf with his dad as a kid and he'd like to get back into it.

He lives on his own in a studio apartment. He doesn't love it though and is considering finding a place with a roommate.

While Shigaraki is a Computer Science major, Spinner is a Computer Engineering major. He's just more of a physical, handy, get your hands dirty kind of guy.

I sense this question may come up, so I'll clear up right now, that he does NOT have a crush on MC. The story will not become a love triangle between them. He just would never let himself go there. If Shigaraki wasn't in the equation, he'd probably fall in love with her instantly, however, he can see really clearly the feelings and the growth they share between each other, and wouldn't dare come between that. So he genuinely does just enjoy her friendship and presence in his life.

Love the extra commentary my dude! I freaking live for it!! ^_^ And hahaha, that would be some delightful ironic justice wouldn't it? Maybe in a post-series one-shot lol. xD

Thank you for your awesome messages!

#play nice fic #spice chats #iguchi shuichi #shuichi iguchi #spinner #headcanons #mha headcanons #bnha headcannons #tw racsim #tw mental health #tw self harm

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transrevolutions · 4 years ago

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please help. how do i know if i’m autistic. i think i am but i’m not sure. how.

oooh! so basically autism is a condition that affects how we perceive the world. you’re born with it, you can’t get it from vaccines, yada yada yada.

autism is really fucking hard to diagnose from an outsider’s perspective so that’s why this is a condition for which self-diagnosis is completely valid as long as you’re basing it off facts.

some signs lol:

-hyperfixating. this is also an adhd thing because those two are comorbid a lot of the time. if you already have adhd you probably do this.

-executive dysfunction. also can be an adhd thing. basically the can’t do task mode and the reason I’m failing math.

-sensory processing. this one is a bitch. sometimes it means medical procedures like shots or blood tests hurt more, but that’s just one way it can represent itself. also it can mean that sometimes you straight-up forget that you’re hungry or cold or whatever. things just feel... different. sometimes more intense, sometimes less.

-stimming. also an adhd thing. some autistic people stim vocally (singing to themselves, repeating words, making sounds) or physically (tapping, nodding, bouncing, etc.)

-what the fuck is a social norm. shit like politeness and eye contact and thank you notes and traditions seem like weird-ass bullshit. like why the fuck do we not put our elbows on the table. why the fuck do we put mr./ms./mx. before everyone’s name if they’re an adult. like you technically know why but it doesn’t make any fucking sense.

-what the fuck is nonverbal signals/body language/context clues. oh, you’re mad at me? well why the hell did you say you were fine then?!?!! you’re upset? you said you were okay! what do you mean I was supposed to just know?! (I’ve lost friends over this one before.)

-meltdowns. this is the real shit. I don’t think all autistic people have these but a lot do. not meltdowns like the kind babies or toddlers or little kids have, these are a whole other level. parents bitch about these all the time but it’s laughable because they don’t even have a clue what we are going through. basically it’s like someone’s playing a trumpet directly into your skull. irritating but bearable. now someone’s also playing a tambourine, someone’s skateboarding, someone’s spray painting behind your eyes, someone’s screaming at the top of their lungs, on and on and on.

until you can’t take it. until you start screaming your head off because it’s the only way to get the torture out and it keeps on fucking hurting and pounding in your head. sometimes it isn’t screaming though. sometimes it’s sobbing into a pillow. sometimes it’s banging your head against a table. sometimes it’s just lying there completely empty and unresponsive. you cannot stop. it will not go away. your parents will probably yell at you to get off the floor and act your age. you can’t. you can’t and nobody believes you and there’s no way out. this was my shitty childhood.

-thought patterns. think of it as neurotypicals thinking in, say, blue, but we think in red. if someone’s only seen blue their entire life, they will not be able to ever truly comprehend what red looks like. likewise, non-autistics will never be able to comprehend the thought patterns autistic people have. autistic people will be aware usually that they think ‘differently’ from the people around them, but they often won’t quite know why, because they see all red, and at first usually think that everyone else does too.

-comorbidities. the most common ones are anxiety, adhd, various forms of depression, and ocd. of course you can have other comorbid conditions too, and you can have these conditions without having autism, but if you’re autistic odds are you have at least one if not more of these. spoiler alert but it’s probably gonna be adhd.

for more info I’d recommend you check out ASAN (autism self-advocacy network) which is basically a website BY and FOR autistic people (unlike auti$m $peaks) that actually has good and reliable up-to-date information about things like symptoms and self-diagnostic criteria (also unlike auti$m $peaks)

hope this helped!

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feralnumberfive · 4 years ago

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I expect no one to read this at all. It’s more of a way to get some feelings off of my chest. This is a look into my personal life and what I went through in 2020. I cried quite a bit while writing this, haha.

My farewell letter to 2020:

To you 2020, the year that shook the world. You’re certainly one to go down in the record books. You changed my life as you did to everyone. To you, the month of March. I had hit the lowest part in my life since the shock of my parent's divorce 11 years ago. My beloved cat had died in October of 2019, a few days short of our one year anniversary of fostering him, which soon turned into us adopting him. It was sudden and unexpected. I still can remember clear as day that horrid call I got from my sister from the vet. “Hey, we need you to come up here. It’s kidney failure.” As she spoke through her tears, I instantly began to cry. I had felt sad for months after that.

In December of 2019, the adoptive dad of one of my closest friends committed suicide. She was torn apart, having had three people she knew died earlier that year. I stood by her side and watched her cry. We colored together in the counseling room, making small talk and doing anything I could to comfort her.

From late February into March, another one of my closest friends revealed to me a traumatic experience she went through. She had been raped by a classmate of mine, one who I considered to be good acquaintances. She was a grade younger than me, and was practically completely dependent on me and my friend, as she was too scared to tell her parents. She eventually completely relied on my friend as I became shoved out of the problem. Her story and the amount of support required from her, which she never gave back to me throughout our friendship, made me realize at that moment I had hit rock bottom. I was tired and so sick of it all. This sentence that I'm about to say is one I've never admitted to anyone: I didn't want to be around anymore, or at least alive. I needed somewhere to escape. I didn't want to commit suicide due to expectations I held upon myself. I was also too scared to commit suicide.

I finally admitted I needed help, which was scary for me to do. In March of you, 2020, I was diagnosed with situational depression. I was soon put on an anti-depressant. It felt good to put a name on it, but little did I know I would pay the price for my relief. Preparing to go off to college, I needed to get a First Class Medical Certificate in order to apply to the flight program at the colloege I wanted to go to. I went and got my FAA Medical Certificate done, ticking off the boxes on my journey to fulfill my life long dream of becoming a pilot.

Spring Break came and after watching schools around me close, it was announced that we wouldn't be returning until mid April, and then the end of April, then until May. I quickly realized it wasn't possible to return and that unbeknownst to me I had already spent the last days of my Senior year at school in March. A frantic question was suddenly formed amongst my classmates and soon the world: Will the class of 2020 graduate? I, being burnt out, didn't care what would happen to me or my class. We soon became a laughing stock and a sight to pity around the world. Class of 2020, Corona Class, The Class that would be telling this story to their kids. It didn't matter to me. As I held up the “Class of 2020″ shirt my uncle got me with the zeros as tp rolls, I sighed. I just wanted to graduate without getting laughed at. Spoiler Alert: That didn't happen.

Around this time I ended my friendship with the girl who I cherished but didn't cherish me back. I still to this day can’t exactly understand why I did that. I blocked her and left without saying goodbye. That wasn’t the right thing to do at all. She had been raped and needed support, but here I was leaving her. She always needed and wanted my support but never gave it back. It was always “Aw you have a problem? Here, let’s try this minimal effort plan to help you. That didn’t work? Oh well, let’s get back to me.” This is no excuse at all for my actions of cutting her off. I really still don’t know why I did this. I had hung out with her everyday in the summer of 2019. Here I was, easily letting her go. Jackie, I’m so sorry. I hope you are doing well and get into ISU to follow your dreams of being an engineer.

In May I received news that still hurts and effects me to this day. I had been denied my Medical Certificate. It wasn't due to me being on an antidepressant, is was due to the fact that I was depressed. This was soul crushing news, but there was still a chance I could reapply for the Medical Certificate if I jumped through multiple hoops. May also provided the announcement that my safe haven in Oshkosh, Wisconsin wouldn't be happening this year. It was definitely understandable due to the virus, but still very saddening to me. It’s really the only thing I look forward to each year, but I understood and agreed on why it was canceled for 2020.

In June I got the news that a beloved teacher of my family and I passed away due to a heart attack and complications of Addison’s Disease. She was the best math teacher I had ever had, and the best in my High School. Math is my worst subject, but she never made me feel stupid like the other math teachers. She always made sure I understood what I was doing. Sometimes when she didn’t feel like having class she would have a free day. She would gossip with my classmates and tell us stories of her youth. Sometimes though she would give us free days due to having intense migraines that sometimes hospitalized her due to her disease. It wasn’t fun to see her like that.

In June she was hospitalized where even her husband and two kids weren’t allowed in to see her. The only person allowed into her before she died was her twin brother. The family decided to have a public funeral, with tons of people in the community and school district socially distancing and wearing masks to pay their respect. I began to cry as I listened to her husband tell everyone that he wasn't ready and was so scared to be a single parent. Their children were both under ten, and were now motherless. Mrs. Johnson it was so hard saying goodbye to you. I loved you so much, and I still do. You gave my friend who had lost her dad food and comfort. You did so much not only for my family and I, but for everyone in the community and school district. I miss you so much.

Hot days came with hazy skies. Everyday I checked the wildfire smoke map as I watched the sun turn bright pink as the sun became a blazing red when the sun went down. For weeks our sky looked hazy. Some days looked cloudy, but it was actually smoke. As someone who lives the Midwest, this was quite surprising.

In August I experienced something that will forever be remembered by me and everyone who lives in my state. A Derecho tore through and ravaged my hometown and the state that I dearly love. We watched through the window as trees snapped in half and branches and leaves whirled around everywhere. We watched through the window as water roared down the road, appearing as if a stream had started right next to us. We watched in fear as shingles were torn off and large items were blown through our yard. As the electricity flickered out, we wondered if we would be crushed by either tree that were on two sides of our house. Wet leaves were torn apart and slammed into our window, where they stayed there for a month afterwards. They looked like confetti, torn into thousands of tiny pieces.

To the branches and trees I still see today in the neighboring towns and cities, broken reminders of the damage done. To you, the metal grain bins that still sit out in the flattened cornfields. Our once tall and proud cornfields that are a proud symbol of my state were now flattened to the ground, completely parallel to the rich farming soil that it stood in. Painting the countryside in flat waves of green with splotches of silver from grain bins and white from barns and houses damaged. Our proud stalks became damaged goods that costed us billions. To the buildings that still show their battle scars from months ago, the houses with the tarps on their roofs and the old wooden barns that couldn't handle the 140 mph. To you, Donald J, Trump, the President of the United States who was supposed to tour Cedar Rapids to exam the damage that still lies there today. You stayed in the airport and immediately left after getting your business done. You didn't care about us, you were there to do business and leave to start your campaigning.

My small town was able to clean up within a month or so, but even still TODAY the bigger cities are littered with damage. There are tree trunks and branches scattered along roads. Thousands of houses still have tarps on their houses and siding missing.

In August my grandma was also diagnosed with Dementia. I've watched her deteriorate over the past few months. Every time we call she forgets that I’m not in school. Sometimes she forgets my name. When we tell her we’re on our way to visit outside her window, she forgets within 10 minutes. Grandma, I hope you never forget that I love you.

In September I finally met with a therapist. I am so thankful to be working with her. After months of my family getting angry and upset at me for being scared to go to the store, my therapist diagnosed me with Social Anxiety. I was so relieved to be diagnosed with it and to be working out the issues I have with my therapist. We work together weekly to help me become a better and more comfortable version of myself.

Over the summer months the health of my already diseased cat took a steep decline. She was my cat, and I felt powerless as I slowly watched her die. She could no longer stay inside due to her having constant accidents. As we made our plan to take her to the vet to give her a peaceful death, I received a heartbreaking call from my mother on a cold September night. My little Jill had passed away in her sleep on our porch. I came over to say goodbye to my baby as I pet her cold fur one last time. I love you my little Jilly Bean and I miss you everyday. I miss and love you so so so much.

September also brought the news that a precious B-25 had a crash landing. It always hurts to hear about a Warbird crashing or getting damaged. I was happy to hear though that they were going to fix it back to airworthiness.

In October I had to make a difficult decision with the FAA. Do I try to visit four different doctors for phycological examinations in order to complete my Medical Certificate or do I wait to get off my medicine and start feeling better on my own? I opted for the second part due to the decline of visiting all of those doctors coming up in November. We had been given that option early in the year, but Covid prevented us from traveling out of state to see those doctors. I sent a letter to the FAA to let them know what I was doing. I received a letter about a month ago that stated that I still needed to visit those doctors or something like that. I honestly didn’t look through it that well because it’s just such a pain in the butt.

Another thing about you 2020 is that you provided me with he opportunity to meet amazing people. I began to watch The Umbrella Academy in September, but I decided to make my account on October 1st. I’ve met tons of funny and talented people on here. The show itself had provided me tons of comfort. It has given me the courage to start writing fanfiction for it along with starting back up on drawing fanart

The end of 2020 has slowed down for me. One of my aviation heroes died this year, Mr. Chuck Yeager. It was heartbreaking for me to hear that. One of the worst days for me was ironically on my birthday in December. I felt really bitter and down and just wanted to sit in my room, but I didn’t. I don’t like celebrating my birthday anymore. As I get older it feels less and less special and in turn I feel sad about it. Another reason why is that I don’t like having a fuss made about it. I don’t like the attention from it haha. It’s okay though because even though this year I felt upset I eventually felt a bit happier as it turned to night.

This year I witnessed history being made. Let me be clear that history is made every year, but this year was very eventful. I witnessed innocent black lives being slaughtered by the very people who are sworn to protect everyone. It’s so disappointing and soul crushing to see all of this. I don’t know if I’ve made it clear on here, but I strongly stand with the BLM movement. I may not understand what they haven been going through for decades, but I stand with them to make things right. Black Lives Matter, not All Lives. All Lives only matter when it’s actually true and Black Lives are included. If you saw a house on fire in an entire block of houses, you wouldn’t say “All Houses Matter!” No they don’t, that house on fire matters. Black Lives Fucking Matter, and All Cops Are Bastards.

To you, the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyday in elementary school I proudly held my right hand over my heart as I stared up at Old Glory and recited you. This year helped me realize that “With liberty and justice for all.” is total bullshit. The only thing I truly appreciate about my country now is the scenery and nature it provides.

To you 2020, as I finish writing this letter on December 31st. You’ve made me cry a lot, including right now. You’ve deeply effected my life and brought me lots of sorrow. Despite all of this, I don't feel upset about you. Yes, you gave me some events that will always haunt me but that’s okay. 2020 even though you’ve hurt me, you’ve also shaped me. Yes, you also made my lose faith in my country and humanity, but I can only hope for the best. You’ve pushed me to become a better version of myself.

So to you 2020, you’ve been a hell of a year. I’ve hated and loved you, but mostly hated you. I went through some shit, but others have gone through worse this year. To those of you who have had a very hard time this year, I love you. I sincerely hope things get better for you. Friend or stranger, you can always rely on me as someone to talk to, to rant or vent to, and to cry to. This year was excruciating, but don’t give up. It has ended and a new year has begun. Sure 2021 may also be bad and we’re all exhausted from 2020, but let’s fight till the end.

#sorry if there are any mistakes in here #I was emotional and listening to music #which always messes up my writing #I love you all #and to myself I hope 2021 will be better #2020 #new year's eve #fuck 2020 #2021 here we come #personal

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bifinmediasres · 5 years ago

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(The following post is courtesy of Facebook memories putting me in my feelings-CW: Medical issues, trauma-Syd's still working through stuff)

Time is weird. Four years ago I'd just had my first piece published by a disability activism group; I'd just gotten my first paycheck at my big girl job, both seriously cool and amazing things. A year later I was leaving a summer position and my big girl job for the job that I would be fired from in three months.

This time three years ago was also the beginning of the pressure wound that would cause a blood and bone infection that led to me having a picc line for 6 weeks. This would be followed by a shunt malfunction (there's a whole week of my life I'll probably never remember). After I recovered from my surgery, and my pressure wound healed several months later, I found myself dealing with intense anxiety and depression that I continue to deal with.

I've finally begun to take steps to better manage my mental health, but only very recently. I waited entirely too long feeling like I had to be worse before asking for help (spoiler alert: that's not true). I recently told a friend that whole period is so murky for me. It feels incredibly far away and suffocatingly close at the same time. I still have a long way to go to get past that period and make up lost ground, but I finally feel like I might actually get where I want to be some day.

#syd's having feelings #syd gets personal #medical trauma #disability #chronic illness #chronic pain #spina bifida #hydrocephalus #mental health #depression #executive dysfunction #anxiety

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kmartinez10289 · 3 years ago

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I've gone back and forth about writing this because up until now I've kept my life and my struggles on a need to know basis. Some of that is because I didn't want my business out there but more of it was the judgement or worse the pity that it might bring. But with the holidays coming up and after months of therapy, the loss of my father, my god parents and my marriage I decided that it's time. It's time to share my story because I know I'm not the only one. I've sat in therapy and group sessions and just had frank conversations with people like myself over the last year that have shown me that even if my story speaks to only one person: then all the judgment or pity in the world doesn't matter. So here goes:

I've struggled with anxiety and depression for most of my adult life but always thought I had a handle on it. Never realizing until I had a mental breakdown in July of 2020 that I was not handling it. I was in denial, I was surviving but I wasn't living. I was drowning and hopeless. So I took a break from work, went to intensive therapy and things were slowly starting to get better.

Then in December of last year when my dad passed away my entire world shifted and what I thought was grief turned into what I now know was major depressive disorder. I was drinking heavily, I had a careless disregard for my own life and the lives of the people around me who wanted to help.

In March of this year I attempted to take my life. I was tired, I was sad, I was hopeless and I thought I was done. But I was one of the lucky ones who had people around me that called 911. I was taken to the hosptial and held there for treatment as a danger to myself. And at first I was furious but as I met and talked with others in the hospital with me I began to find something that no one else had been able to give me: understanding. I had all the love and support that many could only dream of but when it came to what I needed it was understanding that broke the door open and allowed me to heal and admit to myself that I was not okay. I didn't have it under control and I needed help.

I was fortunate enough to have the financial means to start working with both a psychiatrist and a counselor who worked with me to improve my mental health. I accepted that medication was necessary for me to help me manage my conditions and that there were a lot of things I needed to change in order to get mentally stable.

Through therapy I was able to admit that I was never being my authentic self because I was scared that I would lose people I loved. Spoiler alert: that's exactly what happened. I lost people because ultimately who I was didn't fit what they wanted or needed me to be....and that's okay. It's taken me years to understand that. Years to accept myself for who I am. Years to fight for what I want and be okay with it when someone rejects or doesn't want to associate with me because of it.

My anxiety and depression stemmed from my desire to be liked at all costs. I had no boundaries because I wanted my friends and family to love me. I was raised by so many wonderful people who were incredibly selfless. They gave their all to their friends and family and that's who I aspired to be. So I would do and become whatever anyone needed even at my own cost because that's how I truly believed you were supposed to live. But what I now understand is that they lived that path because it's what they wanted and felt called to do. What I had to accept about myself is that I am not a bad or selfish person for leading a different path than theirs. I am not a bad person for advocating for myself and my own needs or wants even though it feels bad to me when I can't or don't want to give other's what they want from me. I now truly understand that I do not owe anyone anything and vice versa.

My path forward is living my truth, however I see fit. Living in anxiety and depression took a toll on so many of my relationships but perhaps the most impacted was my marriage. I'm a true believer that only the two people in it can ever truly know what goes on in a relationship so I will never go into details but our marriage is over and we are both moving on to the next chapter of our lives. I wish him nothing but peace as he moves forward. As for me I want to maintain peace and faith in my life. I want to be better tomorrow than I am today and to continue to nurture the genuine friendships and relationships I have found on my journey: and hopefully create more as I go along.

But most of all I want to give to others what was given to me at my darkest hour: grace and understanding. I want anyone who is struggling with the feelings of helplessness or hopelessness to know that it's okay, that you are not alone and that there is light if you can find it in yourself to fight for it. I will fight for it with you like so many did for me. And if you don't want to talk to me, talk to someone, because holding it in and surviving is not thriving and everyone deserves to feel at peace. I'd like to say that I don't have anxiety or depression any more but that wouldn't be true. I will probably always have it but the win is being able to manage and overcome it so that I give myself the opportunity to live a full life.

If you made it this far thank you for reading and for those that continually pick me up by my boot straps and help me fight my demons: I love y'all more than y'all could ever know.

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zombolouge · 7 years ago

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Adventures in Weightlifting

I’ve been saying I was going to make this post forever, and since I’m on vacation I figured I would go ahead and bite the bullet.

This year, as some of you might remember, I had myself a nice concussion. After that, I had trouble controlling my depression/anxiety/PTSD. My therapist has suggested the fall “shook something loose” in my head, although I’m pretty sure she’s joking. Anyways, I was presented with a choice: go to the doctor and start testing medication, or try some alternative methods.

I settled on starting some exercise, and below the cut you can find out a little bit about that journey if you’re interested.

My mental illnesses usually flow like tides.

I have a spectrum that sways back and forth depending on which one of my illnesses is taking the lead at any given time. With depression, I’ll get sadder and slower, and my self-care usually requires days of doing nothing, sleeping more. With anxiety, I feel like the emotional pain is sharper, but my mind is moving faster. I fall into endless productivity pits, where I can complete inhuman amounts of work (you all wonder why I can write so fast, well this is the true reason). I have extremely productive and active days, followed by a couple of hours at night where I experience intense sadness. The moment I stop working, I feel as though everything stops around me and I am trapped in a sea of wrong, left to sit there and reflect on all my (perceived) shortcomings. My PTSD comes into play by complicating either one of these. I always assume that things are my fault, I will find a way to make it my fault if it isn’t obviously so, and I doubt my own thoughts and experiences. This can make it difficult to cope with the standard issues of having mental illness, though not impossible. I had been coping with it fairly well until the concussion.

As I said, my mental illnesses were like the tides. I would spend a few months camped out in anxiety land, then drop off into depression as I recovered from the strenuous workloads. It was not always the healthiest coping paths, but it worked for me, and overall, I was happy. I think. This is perhaps less true the more I reflect on it, but it was a functioning system, at the very least.

In any case, the tides were interrupted by the concussion. There was no longer a pattern. Instead of three months with anxiety and one month with depression, it would switch every few days. I felt like a yo-yo strung along barbed wire, flinging up and down and getting shredded all along the way. It wasn’t sustainable, and I knew it. I was rapidly approaching a precipice, and I wanted to have some options while I still had my feet on the ground before all I could see in front of me was the empty sky as I fell.

I first decided to start exploring weightlifting on a Friday. I was on the commute home from work and I was stressed. Stressed to the point where I had tears burning at the edges of my eyes. My nerves were shot from all the anxiety, I could feel the empty despair of depression rolling through my chest like a storm. I knew that I was out of time to think about the changes, and I had to start acting.

My commute home is about an hour. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I had a plan. I had a journal tucked in my bookshelf, and I pulled it out the minute I got in. I wrote down a list of exercises I could do with the little 10lb dumbbells that I had in my room. I took a picture of myself for posterity because I’d been told that if I didn’t do that I would regret it later. I hadn’t planned on caring about the weight loss and the physical changes of it all. I was doing this for mental health, after all.

(04/21 - sorry about the dirty mirror)

Then…I picked up the weights and started lifting.

In weightlifting, there are sets and there are reps. A rep, or repetition, is a single movement or lift. If you pick up the dumbbell in your hand and curl your arm to lift it, then extend your arm to put the dumbbell back down, that’s a rep. A set is a collection of reps. I explain all this so that it makes it easier to follow the rest of this story, because I’ll be mentioning sets and reps, and I wanted us to all be on the same page.

My first session, I did 15 different types of lifts, and I did 3 sets of 5 reps. I used the 10lb dumbbells for all of them, and I was absolutely wiped out at the end of it. Everything ached, I felt like I was shaking, all the inches of muscles that I had were vibrating with the exertion. I crashed backwards onto my bed and stared at the ceiling, listening to my heart, and my face broke out in a smile so wide and so bright I can’t be certain that it didn’t light up the room. I felt accomplished and alive for the first time since my concussion, and I started to cry. Not because of depression or anxiety, not because of any kind of sadness, but because I felt good. I felt like all my mental illness had been put back in their corrals, placidly staying where they were supposed to so that I could be myself.

In the beginning, I was only doing lifting. I didn’t try to add in any kind of cardio, it was all about pickup up weights. I noticed benefits almost immediately. I was sleeping better, I had more energy during the day.

(04/26)

It took three and a half weeks before I was wondering if I was shrinking at all. Three and a half weeks before I was wondering if I was losing weight. I hadn’t touched the scale because I was worried about making that my focus. I have been anorexic in the past, and attempts to do any kind of dieting or calorie counting or weighing in the past had, ultimately, led to starvation attempts. I didn’t want this to be about that. I wanted to be doing this to make myself stronger, to be the best version of myself. It wasn’t about the weight, but three weeks in…I was getting curious.

(05/15)

I knew that my weight back in April had been 280, on the dot. I hopped on the scale on 05/15, and discovered that I now weighed 273. Not a huge drop, but there was a drop. Still, I looked in the mirror and saw changes.

I bought a tape measure, and I took my measurements. I was a bit miffed that I hadn’t done it at the beginning, but I was glad I was doing it before changes became massive. Now, I measured just about every place on my body that I could think of. Bust, bra band, waist, stomach, hips, thigh, calf, and bicep. I won’t list all my measurements here, but for progress’ sake I will tell you my initial stomach circumference. It was 56 inches. Now, I’m not going to sit here and lament how bad it was. It’s a measurement, a number. It represents a size, and I make no judgments on that size. I was capable of believing myself beautiful at that size, and I do NOT want to imply that my previous size was in any way some evil that I was vanquishing.

For me, it was a size that made me unhappy, but that’s because it wasn’t really me. I was not myself at that size. I initially gained all my weight the first year of an abusive relationship, so this weight was a suit of armor that I had been wearing for years, even after my abuser was gone from my life. It wasn’t until I started dropping it that I realized that, because gradually, bit by bit, I was recognizing the girl in the mirror. The fatter me, that girl was fine. She was lovely. But she wasn’t me, she was an illusion. An illusion that I built in the hopes that an abuser would leave me alone.

On May 29th I measured again, and my stomach was now 53 inches around. I was pretty astounded. Three inches in a week didn’t seem feasible, but I had checked the numbers. Math doesn’t lie. I wasn’t going crazy when I looked in the mirror, I really was shrinking.

Now, by this point I had added in cardio. I was running in place in my room, because I didn’t have the confidence to exercise outside, where people could see me. It wasn’t even that I had bad experiences, but my anxiety told me that I wasn’t GOOD at exercising, and because of that I felt like I had to hide it until it was good enough for the light of day.

On June 2nd, I finally needed heavier weights. The 10lbs weren’t enough anymore, so I upgraded to 15lbs. This is, if you’ve never lifted before, a low amount. 15lbs is like, recovery from injury levels of small. I was a puny, noodly-armed weakling when I started. But, it was 5lbs heavier than I was lifting before. I was so proud of myself.

(06/12)

After that, I started doing a lot more research about lifting. I had been learning and tweaking things throughout, and as I learned I got better. I learned the different types of sessions I could have, the different ways you could grow your muscles, the myths and truths about “bulking up” (spoiler alert: you have to try really fucking hard to bulk, you aren’t going to do it by accident, please stop lifting 5lb weights and never going heavier because you’re afraid of watermelon biceps, because you would have to chew protein powder like bubblegum and launch steroids up your ass until the veins in your eyes touch the ceiling before you look like Hulk Hogan).

I started figuring out how my body responded to lifting, and how it responded to progression, or gradual increases of the weight that I was lifting.

I bought a barbell and some plates, and started lifting much heavier, much faster than I intended. By June 28th I was doing all my lifts at 40lbs, and my strength was growing faster than I could purchase weights to match it. I started doing yoga, as well, which was an exciting experience. I have a love/hate relationship with yoga. I hate the breathing and the dumb positions, I willfully listen to loud prog rock while I do it because I want to rebel against the soft, babbling brook Enya that is more common. I like to tell people that my favorite pose is “corpse pose” because all you do is lay down on the floor. Still, after you finish a session of yoga, your muscles will feel like they’ve been soaked in golden, fizzy champagne, and that’s a high that is worth putting up with feeling like a fumbling pretzel for 15 minutes.

My stomach was now 50 inches around.

(07/07)

In early July I joined a gym. This was an interesting experience for me. This meant that I was going to have to do my thing in front of people, out in the open. Whether I was good or bad, I was emerging into the “light of day”, because I couldn’t afford to buy new weights to match my growth. I was nervous as hell the first few times that I went, but…it wasn’t that bad. Most of the time, nobody at the gym gives a flying fuck about anybody else there. In fact, I started my very favorite game after my second visit. I called it “Manhood Booster”.

You see, a funny thing happens when a fat girl walks into the back of the gym and starts picking up weights. I would get side-eye. Not in an aggressive way. It was more in the “yeah, good for her” kind of way. Like a subtle, quiet kind of encouragement. It was a mild, socially acceptable form of a high five. Actually giving me a high five would be invasive, so instead they look, nod their heads microscopically in approval, then return to their own workout.

Except with some of them, they also check out the weight that I’m lifting, and this provoked an interesting reaction. Most of the time, for most men, they would look at what I was lifting and not only approve, but then stare dejectedly at their own weights. You see, by the time I was hitting the gym, I was lifting heavier than your average joe. I didn’t know this, and was surprised to find it true, but after seeing what most people lifted at the weight I found that I was ahead of most of them.

I started giving myself points for every time this happened and it resulted in the guy going back and picking up a heavier weight. Boosting their manhood, as it were. Now, if you’re serious about lifting, DON’T do this. You should progress at your OWN pace, and trying to lift heavier than you can before you’re ready will result in injuries that could lay you out of commission for weeks.

(08/06)

I’ve had some ups and downs since then, but I’ve kept up with it. I’ve kept making progress.

Currently, the lowest weight that I lift is 70lbs, and the heaviest on one of my exercises is 250lbs. My stomach is 47 inches around. I have gone from pants size 26 to a size 18, shirt size 2XL to M. I’m stronger, faster, capable of more. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I wanted to drop the weight, because the weight wasn’t me. It was, as I said above, a suit of armor. I don’t want to wear the armor anymore. I want to be myself, the best, strongest version of myself that I can be, and part of that is losing the last of the weight.

I’m making good progress, but I have a little way left to go. I don’t know how long it will take to get there, but I’m going to keep up with the fitness until I do.

I wish that I could say it’s all happiness and rainbows, but I’m sure you can all guess that mental illness doesn’t always work that way. Part of the reason that I’m writing this post right now is to force myself to review all my progress, to remind myself how far I’ve come. After a recent death in my family, I’ve developed body dysmorphia, and so now when I look in the mirror I see the girl that I was back in April.

(09/30)

I’ve got a therapist now, and we’re working on it, but I wanted to share my story. I wanted to show off my progress and remind myself to be proud of it. I think it worked, too. I realize now, looking back at the beginning, that I’m so much stronger than I used to be. I’m going to take up hiking, which has been something I’ve wanted to start again since I was a little kid. It was always out of reach because of my fitness level, but it occurred to me this weekend that I’ve reached that level. I can walk for miles at a time, I can lift heavy things, I can push through hours of strenuous activity before I need a break.

All this in a few months.

Going forward, I think I’m going to share my progress more often. Talk about how far I’ve come, where I plan to go. I’ll probably make a nice post after each hike that I go on, full of pictures of the great Pacific Northwest. I think it’s good to share my experiences. I think it’s good to share.

After all, sharing our stories is how we really grow. The journey is the gift, but when you reach the end of it…it’s the story that keeps on giving.

(11/11)

#weightlifting #weight loss #what has been keeping me busy this year

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amzbailey · 7 years ago

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time for a personal post! because it’s been a while and things are happening and honestly, why not?

let’s see... where to begin...

I’m still jobless, so that’s a thing. I thought I had a job in the bag recently because my recruiter set up a phone interview, then we had an in-person interview last week, and my recruiter said she spoke to the manager and got “lots of positive feedback” and “should know something early next week”. well, it’s “early next week” now. the interview was a week ago. I really thought I would know at this point. oh well. they probably found someone else and haven’t gotten around to telling my recruiter yet. she has tons of other clients so I probably haven’t even crossed her mind yet.

and honestly, this job isn’t really something I want. it’s just... a job. I’ve finally reached that point where I really just need something to do. and we need money. about a month ago. our AC unit went out so we had to get a whole new system installed, so that cost us quite a pretty penny. then we went on vacation and made a few other large purchases... so I’m starting to feel the need to contribute so we can continue paying bills and living the way we’ve been living. at any rate, I still have no idea what I actually want to do, and I can’t just refuse to work while trying to figure out where my career is going. so... I’ll just take whatever comes along at this point.

on a separate note... my grandma is dying. she was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia a few months ago and has been a pretty rapid decline. she was admitted to a hospice yesterday. I’m going to visit her tomorrow. if I’m being honest, she’s been sick for a really really long time... I think we’ve been saying “this Christmas may be her last” for about 6 years now, and every year she’s still hanging on. but with this pretty intense diagnosis, she’s been deteriorating before our eyes. last week when I visited her, I was pretty surprised to learn that she no longer can walk to the bathroom by herself. she can’t even get from the couch to the table without someone helping her up. my dad and his family can’t afford assisted living so my dad’s been paying nurses to come once or twice a week to bathe her, and then paying friends and family members to just come be with her and help her move around the rest of the time. but apparently this week a professional nurse came to bathe her and couldn’t get her out of bed. I don’t know what all that entailed, but it ended with the nurse recommending that she be admitted to a hospice. which really means that she doesn’t have long left.

to be honest.... I’m not sure how I feel about it. I mean, of course I’m horribly sad that my only living grandparent is about to die... but I’ve watched her deteriorate these past few months and that’s horribly sad to witness. at this point, I honestly am just ready to see her pain and suffering end. what’s even worse, though, is watching my dad deal with it. basically, his siblings are all shitty, selfish people, and even though he’s the youngest of 4, he’s the only one who has been taking care of his dying mother. he’s been working his ass off week after week trying to make sure she’s being taken care of on a daily basis, while his siblings not only contribute no time or money to my grandmother’s well being, but also have the audacity to criticize how my dad does EVERYTHING. it’s infuriating and disgusting. I know for a fact that after all of this is over and my grandmother is gone, we won’t see that side of the family ever again. my dad’s siblings are worthless shitty people who refuse to even VISIT their mother, let alone contribute financially to her care. it’s disgusting.

but watching my dad go through this has been devastating, and I’m not even living with them. he’s been working tirelessly to care for her, provide for her, and make sure that her last days are as pleasant as possible. my family has never been wealthy, and this is especially true right now while paying for most of her medical expenses (almost entirely because of his worthless siblings--did I mention that one of his brothers is a FUCKING DOCTOR?). but he’s had to balance all of this with a stressful job, too. I can’t really grasp the amount of stress he’s under right now. but to make matters even worse, my grandma has a very advanced stage of dementia. my sweet, loving grandmother is often far away when he’s around. she often criticizes him, snaps at him, constantly complains about the pain she’s in and how she feels like she’s going crazy. and my dad knows that isn’t really her, but I still imagine that it has to hurt when the person you’re breaking your back for is constantly criticizing you. I honestly can’t imagine. it’s just... it’s devastating. so honestly... I think we’ll all be glad when it’s over.

while all this is happening, though, I can’t escape the very real existential thoughts that come with a family member dying. it’s the same kinds of thoughts everyone has: why didn’t I spend more time with her? did I appreciate her enough? why is life so fragile? what happens when we die--really? how do we know? why is time so short? what am I doing with my life? am I wasting it? am I spending it doing what I love? am I spending it with people I love? how much time do I have left? it’s really terrifying, so I try to avoid those thoughts as best I can. but it’s hard.

anyway, in the midst of all of this, Jackson and I just finished Bojack Horseman, an amazing show on Netflix. I had no intention of loving this show. one of my newest and closest friends basically begged us to give it another chance (because we tried it years ago and didn’t like it). but we did, and we got hooked, and we binge-watched all 4 seasons in a little over a week. it’s such an incredible show. I honestly have considered writing an entire whole spiel about it, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. it’s clever and funny, while also being very dark, nihilistic, and uncomfortably real when it comes to depression/anxiety. and while I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly as a beautifully crafted story... a lot of it has struck a little too close to home. the series focuses on a very self-centered and self-destructive protagonist that--spoiler alert--is never really redeemed, which in and of itself is difficult to process. you repeatedly see that his character is deeply flawed, and despite his attempts to confront his abusive past and clear mental illness, he is still horrible and never changes. in most movies and series, at some point something happens that brings the character out of his “funk” and he works toward healing or recovery. Bojack never really does. he is all the things wrong with him and he never fully takes responsibility for it. he hates himself to a debilitating degree, and no matter how much he says he wants to get better, he never does. it’s... distressing. especially for someone like me, who always seeks stories with closure and resolution. Bojack is very unique in its realism, and in a way, kind of slaps you in the face with how dark it is. especially considering it’s a show where some of the characters are animals with human qualities, and it’s hilarious how the Bojack world functions.

anyway... this has kind of been my life recently. trying to wrap my head around my grandma’s impending passing and my inevitable existential dread, coupled with my lack of job and career prospects and consequently still questioning my purpose in life, all while being deeply influenced by a very heavy show that essentially outlines how we’re all flawed individuals that will always be flawed but in order to be decent and functioning people we have to find ways to cope with our trauma and our parents’ trauma while clinging tightly to the relationships that we have or else we’ll be lost to our own self-destructive cycles of depression and abuse.

also I’ve been trying to hang on to my friends, family, and husband, and not let them know how close I am to losing it on a daily basis.

but, as usual, the memes definitely help! :)

#personal #wow

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aion-rsa · 6 years ago

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How Queer Romance Red, White, and Royal Blue Hopes For a Kinder America

http://bit.ly/2VtjJJ4

The West Wing meets Jane Austen in this queer political romance set in an alternate universe where Trump was never elected.

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It's often exhausting to live in contemporary America—and not, generally, the fulfilling kind of exhausting, either. We spend our days at bullshit jobs (she writes, affectionately) making less money than we need in order to get out of debt, contributing to crowdfunding campaigns to pay our friends and colleagues' medical bills, and then we go home and consume stories about how dark an imagined past was or an imagined future will be, pretending the story we're consuming isn't actually about the dystopian world we're currently living in.

I don't think the world is without hope, joy, community, or love—far from it—but I do think nihilism, violence, social isolation, and the abuse of power tend to be the realities of our modern world that are most often reflected back at us through popular culture.

read more: Best New Non-Western Fantasy Epics

Grimdark storytelling is way overrepresented in our pop culture to the exclusion and deprioritization of other, kinder aspects of contemporary life. It actively affects how hopeful we are about our current world and our potential futures, which actively affects how motivated (or not) we are to engage with working towards that future. That's why it's so worth celebrating when pop culture puts something softer in our paths...

Red, White, and Royal Blue is a queer romance novel about the relationship between the U.S.'s First Son and the Prince of England, set in a fictional alternate universe where the president is a divorced-mom Texan Democrat elected in the 2016 Presidential Election. (Can you imagine? Within the pages of this book, you don't have to.) It is emotionally-engaging, politically-soothing, and a whole lot of fun.

Our protagonist is Alex Claremont-Diaz, the brilliant half-Mexican son of his mom the President, who is up for re-election. Unlike his sister, Alex has always seen his politically successful family as a fortunate stepping stone to his own ambitions: namely, his own career in politics, through which he hopes to make the country and world a more just, inclusive place. #goals

read more: Check, Please! — The Queer Hockey Bros Comic You Should Be Reading

The other main character in Red, White, and Royal Blue is Henry, the seemingly stuffy, unfeeling Prince of England. Alex has hated Henry since he met him a few years prior at the Olympics (as you do), but, when the tension between the two causes a PR problem during a royal wedding, they are forced to pretend to be best friends for the 'gram.

This isn't a straight-forward "coming out" story (if that even exists). While Alex is initially surprised by his bisexuality, he doesn't freak out (much) about his attraction to men. He's never afraid that his family will disown him, so much as he is worried how the public knowledge would affect his mother's chances at re-election. As she is running against a bigot with a cornucopia of abuses of power in his history, the stakes are quite high.

Much of the angst Alex has surrounding this development in the understanding of his own sexuality is about the identity of the man in question—a person he kinda, sorta thought he hated until five minutes ago—rather than that man's, um, manhood.

The relatively quick progression of Alex and Henry's physical relationship is perhaps one of the most notable differences in telling this story about twenty-something adults for the new adult field rather than about teenagers under the YA book umbrella, the latter of which is often where queer romances tend to be most frequently championed.

read more: Best New Young Adult Books

Alex and Henry are two characters who are much more comfortable in their sexuality, generally, compared to teen characters. While neither character has expansive relationship experience, in no small part due to the added pressure and scrutiny that comes from their fame, they both have a fair amount of dating (in Alex's case) and sexual experience (in both of their cases).

When Alex and Henry first admit their attraction to one another, there is very little waffling in terms of their sexual relationship. It gets steamy and, as they spent more time together, finding time for clandestine hookups on both sides of the Atlantic, Alex realized that it's quite possible he has been misreading his intense feelings towards Henry for a long time. (Spoiler alert: he has been.)

In fanfic slang, if you speak that language, this is the Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Royalty, Fake/Pretend Relationship-ish AU with notes of Families of Choice and depictions of Anxiety that you've been waiting for. It pairs well with Netflix's Knock Down the House documentary, the wonderfully soft hockey bros comic Check, Please, Mackenzi Lee's The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, and Frank Turner—or all four! Make it a month of hopeful media. I dare you.

read more: Best New Fantasy Books in May 2019

This book made me cry—not because of the excellent, well-written romance at its center (which is both fun and emotionally rewarding), but because it imagines a world in which Trump was never elected, a world in which powerful men who have grown up in power respect and love women, a world in which America's soul is challenged and found whole.

The world of Red, White, and Royal Blue, as touched upon in the book's excellent author's note, is not a perfect one—"still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic." When McQuiston began writing the book in 2016, she said it was meant to be "a tongue-in-cheek parallel universe," but, as our sociopolitical cycle progressed, it became an "escapist, trauma-soothing, alternate-but-realistic reality." Oof.

read more: The City in the Middle of the Night Review

It's hard to truly understand the ways in which most mainstream storytelling is not made for you until you find a story that feels like it is made for you. Red, White, and Royal Blue references Jane Austen, quotes Alexander Hamilton's love letters to Eliza and John Laurens, and obviously thinks Doctor Who is cool. It is a millennially-minded West Wing meets Jane Austen meets the Hallmark Channel meets something much more diverse than anything that has ever aired on the Hallmark Channel.

Most of all, Red, White, and Royal Blue is incredibly hopeful and empathetic, which is a perspective I am actively trying to hold on to in a world that seems to always be finding new, terrible ways to try to steal it from me. Reading this queer romance political AU felt a bit like coming home: a safe, familiar, cozy place to rest my head for a while. Red, White, and Royal Blue doesn't ignore some of the very scary realities of living in our world right now, but it hopes with everything it has nonetheless.

read more: Best New Science Fiction Books in May 2019

Sometimes, it can feel like we punish ourselves with the pop culture we make and consume, as if engaging with fun, hopeful, or kind storytelling is an irresponsible luxury we can't afford rather than a practice that makes us better equipped for dealing with life's complex, devastating, sustained challenges.

Yes, seeing the ways in which things are bad can be a helpful tool for both conversation and action, especially when grimdark storytelling has something important and specific to say, but it can also often make us feel like we are doing something when we are not—as if watching The Handmaid's Tale is the same thing as taking place in direct actions against institutional misogyny or actively supporting and believing the women in your life. As if watching consuming the "right" media makes us more moral.

I don't need fictional reminders of the ways in which our society is failing; it's all too clear in the world around me. What I do need from stories is hope that there are futures that look different from the grimmest parts of our present extrapolated out into various flavors of apocalypse. I need stories that hope engaging with real-world problems can make a difference, and call that hope something other than naive.

I need stories that fill me up with something other than anger, fear, and desperation, that offer possible solutions or at least sources of comfort in the face of solution-less problems rather than simply pointing out the harsh realities and stopping there, as if there is more skill involved in screaming your pain into the darkness than there is in finding love, healing, and empathy in spite of that pain.

read more: Why We Need The Expanse More Than Ever

"What I hoped to do, and what I hope I have done with this book by the time you've finished it, my dear reader, [is] to be the spark of joy and hope you needed," McQuiston writes in her author's note. Mission so very much accomplished, Casey McQuiston.

Red, White, and Royal Blue is now available to buy via Amazon or your local independent bookstore.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

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Feature Kayti Burt

May 15, 2019

Romance Books

Hopepunk

from Books http://bit.ly/30o3Szm

#aion-rsa #Books

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brentrogers · 5 years ago

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Podcast: Panicked Over Finances? Why Money Influences our Mental Health

The rent is due tomorrow; but then you’ll be left with only $10 for the week’s groceries. What do you do? Many people panic over money (or the lack of it), but for those of us with mental illness, it can feel like a life or death situation: It can trigger an even greater anxiety attack and/or depression. Or it may mean not being able to afford the medication that keeps you well enough to work. What can be done?

In this Not Crazy episode, Gabe and Jackie discuss how you can gain a sense of control in these situations, and Jackie shares her own big money scare.

(Transcript Available Below)

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About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Jackie Zimmerman has been in the patient advocacy game for over a decade and has established herself as an authority on chronic illness, patient-centric healthcare, and patient community building. She lives with multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, and depression.

You can find her online at JackieZimmerman.co, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Computer Generated Transcript for “Panicked Over Money” Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast. And here are your hosts, Jackie Zimmerman and Gabe Howard.

Gabe: Hey, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Not Crazy podcast. I would like to introduce my co-host, Jackie Zimmerman, who lives with major depression and anxiety disorders.

Jackie: And you know this guy, Gabe Howard, who lives with bipolar disorder.

Gabe: Jackie, we’ve been friends for a while now, we’ve been doing this show for several months and I decided that I want to risk all of that by talking about the one subject that causes more fights than any other subject known to man.

Jackie: And what would that be?

Gabe: Money. I want to talk about money.

Jackie: Money, money, money.

Gabe: So in a recent poll, the three things that married couples fight about more than anything else are family, religion and money. And I would argue that money is at the top because nobody is taking people like onto the People’s Court or Judge Judy to sue over political and religious differences. Money is everywhere. If you talk to anybody, literally just go grab a stranger on the street. Be like, hey, you ever lost a friend over $10? Almost everybody will have a story of a friendship that just imploded over what we would consider a small amount of money. Money just creates an intense amount of anxiety in our society.

Jackie: And the thing that I think is unique about money and anxiety is that it’s something that I would assume everybody experiences, not just people who are prone to anxiety, not just people who live with mental illness, but everyone has had some kind of issue with money that has given them anxiety.

Gabe: When I was younger, I used to watch golf with my grandfather and, you know, they always do these expose on the multi-millionaire golfers, and they were interviewing one of them and they said, hey, when you have a putt and if you make the putt, you win $100,000 and if you don’t make it, you lose $100,000, does that cause you anxiety? Does that make you nervous? And the guy said, you know, the most nervous I’ve ever been playing golf is when I bet another golfer a hundred dollars that I could make this putt and I didn’t have the hundred dollars in my pocket. That really spoke to me because it wasn’t the amount of money anymore. It was the awkwardness of discussing the money, finding the money, figuring out the money like this is what gave this guy anxiety. And again, he’s famous. I don’t know, maybe it was just a cute story he was telling, but that makes sense to me. You ever been in line and been a dollar short? Like, how embarrassing is that when you thinking that everybody in the store is like over on register five, there’s a tall, fat redhead that does not have one dollar to pay for his groceries.

Jackie: I can feel that because if you’ve ever had your credit card declined for any reason, your debit card and you want to justify it. I know there’s money on there. That’s so weird. I just used it like I just got paid. I swear I’m not a poor person. There’s this like panic where you just want to justify why it didn’t work. And my assumption is all of this comes from the scarcity model, right? We’re all afraid of not having enough. What happens when we don’t have enough? So how hard do we have to work to get enough? What if we’re working really hard and we still don’t have enough? And the anxiety around all of that of how much do you have? What happens when it’s gone? I think is something that is underlying in our society and in everybody but amplified for those who live with any kind of illness. Because for me specifically, when I worked at a big, fat corporate job and I made all kinds of money, all I thought to myself was, I’m staying here forever. So that way I make so much money that I never have to worry about what happens if I actually can’t work again because I will just bank so much money. I’ll have so much. I’ll always pay my health insurance. I’ll always have all of this stuff. And spoiler alert, I don’t work there anymore. I didn’t bank any money when I did work there. But when you have an illness, whatever kind it is, you’re worried about money not just because of normal reasons, but you’re worried about like, what if I can’t work forever? What if I can’t pay my health insurance? What if I can’t afford to be healthy?

Gabe: There’s a meme that works its way around the Internet that always says that we’re all three bad months away from being homeless. I don’t know if that’s true for all of us, but that really spoke to me because it took about three bad months to really put me in a bad way where I started to need help. On an interesting side note, none of us are three months away from being millionaires. So I think that we need to take that into account when we’re determining how to like maybe, you know, structure our health insurance and things like that. But but wrong. Wrong show. We’ll just put that aside for a moment. But think about this. The whole world is discussing being three bad months away from homelessness. Whether or not that holds up is really irrelevant. I think that does speak to the majority of people. Now, let’s apply that to people living with mental illness, people managing a life long and chronic disorder, because I know that if I couldn’t afford my medication, if I couldn’t afford therapy, if I couldn’t have afforded hospitalizations and on and on and on. Gabe Howard would not be sitting here. That’s just a hard fact. Yes, I worked hard. Yes, I have a loving family. But you know what really saved me? Resources and that resource all boiled down to hundred dollar bills. And that’s sad.

Jackie: The catalyst for this specific episode was from about a week ago, I sent Gabe a text and basically I had a full blown anxiety meltdown because my husband had called me and said, oh my God, our health insurance doubled on my last paycheck. And I said, wait, what do you mean it doubled? They didn’t tell us that. Like, they obviously would communicate that because that’s what normal people think happens in the world. But they didn’t. They just took it out of his check and it was doubled. And I panicked. And I have not had an actual panic attack in, I can’t tell you how long, but I felt it. It was the heart racing, soul crushing. Can’t breathe like, oh, my God, what are we going to do? Because we are people right now who are living pretty paycheck to paycheck. And that is even questionable because I don’t know when my paychecks are coming in, because I work for myself and I don’t have regular paychecks. And my husband took a pay cut a year ago to take the job he’s at now. So all of this is spiraling around my head and I’m like, how are we gonna do this? This is $400 we didn’t know we needed and I could just work harder. But where am I going to find the clients? Just, you know, anxiety spiral talk in your head. And I reached out to Gabe because we were already talking. I said, hey, I know you’re telling me something important right now, but I’m not really listening honestly, because I’m worried about this health insurance thing. And I realized in that moment how money is something that can cause high anxiety. And within a split second, like he sent me that text about our health insurance doubling. And almost immediately I was in a full blown panic about it.

Gabe: There’s so many directions that we can take this, and that makes me excited. I love it when Jackie, says, oh my God, X, and I’m like, Oh my God, we can do y z bat symbol. So we might have to create multiple timelines. And let me ask you multiple questions about this, because the first question that I’m going to ask you is if your health insurance would have doubled and you had a million dollars in the bank, would it have bothered you at all?

Jackie: Me today thinks no, but I also think that people who have a million dollars in the bank are really good about money and any sort of unexpected expense that comes up, they’re upset about it also.

Gabe: I understand what you’re saying because paying attention to our resources is a vital part of money management. But a year ago I was sitting on my couch at like 2:00 in the morning and it was storming and I felt a drop of water on my head. And I looked up and the roof was leaking like leaking a lot. And I saw all of this damage. And I thought, oh, well, that’s a bummer. And I went to bed. I just went to bed. That’s it. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t stop the rain. I don’t know how to fix a roof. I don’t know how to fix a ceiling. But the reason that I didn’t freak out and panic is because I had the money. I flat out had the money. I knew that I could afford to fix it. There was nothing I could do. And I slept well. And I think about this because I think about Gabe when he was in the little six hundred square foot apartment living paycheck to paycheck with a thirty five hundred dollar deductible. And anytime my car made a noise, I just white knuckled because I couldn’t afford it. When oil change time came around, I thought, shoot. Where am I gonna get 30 bucks? Because it was hard. It was so hard. And I want to point out and this is where I want to go back to the timeline again. You were perfectly healthy. You weren’t having a medical problem. This was just an expense that rose in price. Right?

Jackie: Correct.

Gabe: So now imagine if the text message you got was from your doctor that you needed to go on a different medication that wasn’t on generic and therefore cost five hundred dollars a month versus the $10 co-pay. Or imagine if you were just diagnosed with bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, and they were recommending an outpatient treatment program where the deductible was thirty five hundred dollars. And I can’t help but notice in all of these scenarios where we get diagnosed with all of these awful things, we all have health insurance. Some of the health insurance are better than others, but health insurance is always present. Now, imagine that you get diagnosed with a serious mental illness or I don’t know, is there such a thing as not a serious mental illness? And you have no health insurance? Because I know that my inpatient hospitalization. What, 17 years ago cost like $80,000. It didn’t cost me because I had health insurance. And I thought that was normal.

Jackie: I think this is a good time to point out, Gabe and I, we both understand our privilege in this conversation. You know, like I can make my bills and I do have health insurance. Gabe, same for him. And I can only imagine what it’s like in this moment where you’re choosing between paying for health insurance and feeding your kids or one of those other really intensely awful choices you have to make in terms of what to do with this small amount of money that you make. Granted, if our health insurance. Rewinding for a minute, our health insurance didn’t double. They just had an error on his paycheck, which is like makes me want to write them a heavily-worded note about how rude and anxiety-causing that was. However, if it did double, we would have to make some really, really difficult changes. Not difficult in which kid to feed? Kind of difficult. But where do we rearrange money? The reality is we probably could have found it, but it would have changed the way we live our lives. It would have changed what we do with our time and our energy. And I would have honestly had to work a lot harder to make up for that money. I would’ve had to find more clients. But it’s not lost on me that that is an option that I have is to go find more work. So I want to be cognizant of that in this conversation that Gabe and I both have the ability to figure it out pretty flawlessly in these situations for the people who don’t have the ability to figure it out or they can’t or they’re already working their ass off so hard that making more money is just not an option right now. Like I see you, I have no advice for you. None whatsoever. But I recognize that money and anxiety is significantly more prominent when you don’t have the ability to just get more money.

Gabe: And this is the multiple time line that I want to reconnect back to the beginning. So Jackie, finds out that her bills go up and she freaks out and things. OK, how am I going to find more money? But ultimately, I can do it. If it happened to me and it went up, I’d be like, well, that sucks. I would rather spend the money on something else. But ultimately, I have excess income. I’m fortunate I have more budget, so I’ll just bitch about it to my friends that, ugh, the cost of health insurance is ridiculous and not lose an iota of sleep. Somebody else is like you have health insurance that can go up top. How lucky are you? I would kill to have health insurance at all, let alone have it doubled. And then other people are just so rich that they’re like, I don’t have health insurance. I just pay for everything in cash, because I’m Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ lovechild that gets one hundred and eighty five billion dollars allowance a day. And then there’s people that are I don’t even know what the right word is for it.

Gabe: They have a level of financial insecurity that I can’t even adequately explain. And any explanation that I gave would just make me an asshole. There’s really no other way that I can put it. They don’t have a six month wait for a psychiatrist. They’re not even they don’t even have enough money to make the list. And all of us. And this is the takeaway. We’re all fighting each other. We all have mental illness. We all have mental health problems. We’re all trying to figure out how to make it through. And instead of figuring out how to make resources more abundant and accessible for all of us, we’re all like Jackie, she got health insurance complaining about the price. Or, well, she’s so rich, it doesn’t matter. Oh, well, he said he doesn’t even care if his roof falls and he just goes to bed. And that becomes the talking point. I really think that we need to come together on this one and find out why it is not accessible regardless of your socioeconomic status.

Jackie: I don’t know that I totally agree with you. And that’s because I think that if you’re somebody listening to this podcast and you’re going, wow, that asshole is complaining that their health insurance went up and I don’t even have health insurance. Honestly, I don’t think they’re that worried about me and judging me. I think they’re going. I don’t have fucking health insurance and I don’t know how I’m going to make things happen. I agree that obviously we should find a way to like pool resources or ideas and make things happen together. But my assumption and if you are a if you’re that wealthy listener, please sponsor us. We really could use your help right now. But if you’re not that wealthy person and you’re everybody else listening, I don’t think people are necessarily holding grudges against other people in this space. I think everybody’s just trying to survive.

Gabe: That’s a really good point, Jackie. But what bothers me is that what we all have in common is that we’re all fighting really, really hard to survive. And I do think that we determine how much effort the person is putting into survival based on the resources at their disposal. And that’s what I would like to remove. I don’t know that I worked any harder to survive because I had a lot of resources. I just think I didn’t have to work as hard. And I think that society judges people on the lower end of the socio economic status very, very harshly. They say things like, well, why don’t you have savings? Why didn’t you save for a rainy day? Because that’s not an option. That’s really not an option. They say things like, why won’t you be med compliant or why won’t you go see your doctor? They are trying to see a doctor. They’re on a 12 month waiting list for the free clinic. They can’t afford their medications because medications can cost thousands of dollars a year. And they’re choosing between eating, being homeless. And this goes back to something that we really need to discuss. And I’d really like your opinion on it. Jackie, sincerely if you, Jackie Zimmerman, had a choice between paying for safe housing, a safe place to live and food or your mental health care, which would you choose?

Jackie: I would choose a safe place to live. Hands down.

Gabe: And I think that most people would. And I think that we need to understand that many people are in this position.

Jackie: We’ll be right back after these messages.

Gabe: We’re back discussing money and anxiety.

Jackie: Gabe, you’re not wrong. Right? Like, these are all really good points that we need better access to health care. We need a better support system. We need all of these things. But if you’re somebody who doesn’t have any money right now, today, like, for example, I got a stat for you. We know that I love stats. There was a stat by the Royal College of Physicians, whoever the hell that is, that said that half of people with anxiety also have a problem with debt. So are you predisposed to one or the other? That’s not even talking about medical debt. That’s just talking about debt in general. So how do you get out of this kind of debt? How do you save if you’re not making any money? You can’t even pay your bills. How are you going to save these things?

Gabe: I’m not sure that there is an answer that doesn’t involve like high-level advocacy work and this is where I get stuck, Jackie. It really is where I get stuck. I you know, I don’t know. Marry well?

Jackie: That is one of the crux is of talking, is the plural of crux cruxes? I don’t know. That is a crux, we’ll say, of talking about money in general is that there is no one size fits. All right. Yes. Save more, make more done. Easy. But that is literally not an option for most people.

Gabe: Spend within your means, I love that one.

Jackie: Right? All that bullshit.

Gabe: Live within your means is the phrase that everybody uses, and depending on where you are on the socioeconomic ladder, that might mean to move down. You don’t need four Disney vacations a year. You don’t need a new car every year. Like that’s understandable, right? This could be really good advice for some people. We’re not saying that it’s not.

Jackie: I think it’s bullshit.

Gabe: We can all save a little more and clip another coupon. And we all don’t need to buy the biggest house that we can find. But like you said, it’s bullshit for a lot of people. It’s bullshit for a lot of people. They can’t. There’s no money to save. What do you have to say to those people? How are we going to relieve those folks’ anxiety, Jackie? I am afraid that somebody is going to listen to this and be like Gabe and Jackie said that I’m fucked. Their conclusion was I am fucked and I don’t know what to say to folks. And whenever we talk about money and anxiety and anxiety and money and driving it together, I think that people don’t want to dive deep into this. So they say platitudes like save for a rainy day. You don’t have to get dessert. Clip coupons. I use an app that tells me if Amazon has better prices. I’m not saying that any of these are bad ideas. But does it solve the big problem? For real, what is your coping mechanism for this, therapy guru Jackie.

Jackie: Well, for me personally, I use spreadsheets. I love a good spreadsheet one, because I am terrible with math and the spreadsheet will do math for me. So the way that I handle this is seeing all of the money and I won’t lie. Sometimes when you look at all of the money and all the way it’s being spent and how little money you actually have. It feels worse because you’re like, wow, I really have nothing. But then at least I know what I’m working with. I think in a lot of these situations, people don’t know actually what their overhead is in their life. Right? If you’re living outside your means, how do you know that if you don’t know what your actual means are? So I don’t have any great tips on how to get out of this situation, how to make more money, save more money. If I knew that, I’d be doing it myself. I don’t have that. But what I can say is for me, looking over it does help. Like pretending like it’s not there doesn’t help. Some people, I think, just go. I know that I can’t afford these things, so I just don’t think about it and then pretend it’s gonna go away. And I’m not going to say that’s a bad idea. If that helps you and you can get through your day by just not thinking about it. Maybe that’s the right choice for you.

Gabe: I am going to hardcore disagree with that. I see that as a short term solution.

Jackie: Oh, for sure.

Gabe: It sort of reminds me of, don’t open your bills on the weekends. I dig that. I dig that advice. It was it was advice that my grandmother had. She’s like, look, I don’t bank on the weekends. Weekends are for my family. I don’t open my credit card bills on the weekends. I didn’t want to tell her that, you know, now credit card bills or text messages where they send you every second of every day and maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe there’s a token of good advice in the advice that I just called bad. Which is that you need to have a time and place. Now is the time to manage money and now is the time to be present in other areas.

Jackie: Well, yes, obviously, I didn’t mean ignore it forever. That doesn’t solve anything, but like compartmentalizing what you’re doing with your money.

Gabe: I think that that is really, really good advice. I can get on board with that. Some other hints and tips that I want to give to people are self-advocacy is real advocacy. So often we have this desire to help other people that we don’t help ourselves. And you’re probably thinking, well, how can I help myself? And here’s how. Ask your doctor if they have a sliding scale. Ask your doctor if they have a zero interest payment plan. Google the medicines that you’re being prescribed and see if they have a prescription card that offers a discount. Many of the newer medications do, and it will reduce your co-pay in some cases from $300 all the way down to $10, but almost always by at least 50 percent. And this can make medications more affordable. Google free clinics. You may have to wait longer in the waiting room. In fact, you probably will have to wait longer in the waiting room. And that makes it not available to everybody. But if it is available to you, use it. There are ways that you can lower health care costs or get a payment plan that’s not at 29% interest or 22% interest. Like if you put it on a credit card, you do have to ask. They’re not offering it to people. I believe like Jackie, that taking control lowers anxiety because even if the thing around the corner is bad. I myself am less anxious if I know that it’s around the corner. It’s the things that pop out of the shadow at the last minute and go Boo! Those are the things that scare me the most. And finally, I don’t mean to steal Jackie’s thunder, but I kind of want to. Talk about your money anxiety in therapy. People don’t want to talk about money. Tell the people in your life that you’re anxious about money. Tell your therapist that you’re anxious about money. There is nothing wrong with being anxious about money.

Jackie: Thunder stolen 100%. I did talk about money in therapy last Friday, but I agree wholeheartedly. The idea of asking for help. Nobody is going to help you if you don’t ask for it in terms of reduced rates. I once got a $8,000 MRI for $10 because I asked for help. And then telling people, like Gabe said. I mean Gabe and I got together a couple of weeks ago and had a pretty in-depth conversation about money and he gave me some cool ideas I hadn’t thought about. I probably gave him zero ideas. But it was one of those things where just having a dialogue about money made it less scary to talk about money.

Gabe: We’re taught in our society not to discuss money. I don’t believe in this at all. I discuss money constantly. I discuss money with my family. I discuss money with my friends. And I believe this is why I have a different, and I’m going to say healthier relationship, with my finances. It’s also why I never pay too much for a car, because I know what all of my friends and family paid for their cars. I know the horror. But listen, your family may work differently, but your friends might not. And the Internet absolutely does not. Google the average cost of things. Google places that offer discount cards or lower end solutions. I am as shocked as anybody that I have gotten medical care at Wal-Mart, but I’m not going to lie. I’ve gotten medical care at Wal-Mart. The clinic there is fantastic. And it’s set up for people who need to pay less. And it helped me a lot when I needed help. There are lots and lots of those options. You just have to look around for them because they’re not the popular ones. They’re not the hospitals. They’re not the doctors. They’re not the ones that people commonly think about. All of these things can give you more control. Remember, having more control does not mean that negative consequences aren’t coming your way. It just means that you’re out in front of them. I believe that that’s empowering. I believe that matters. I believe that that will put you in a better position to deal with it. But most importantly, I believe that you’ll feel better when it’s all over. At least the negative thing didn’t get the satisfaction of yelling boo and scaring the shit out of you. And I think I really believe that from a personal empowerment perspective that has just a tremendous amount of value. Yes, the bad thing happened, but at least it didn’t trick you.

Jackie: And I believe circling back to the beginning that this is not going to be the last panic attack I have about money. But to Gabe’s point, I do try to get in front of it. I know what’s happening, which is why the unexpected cost made me lose my shit. But there is something to be said about being in control of it. And much like we’ve said about being a patient in general, nobody is going to advocate for you except for you. So this stands for how you handle your money, how you ask for help when you can’t cover your bills and how you move forward if you’re somebody who is in a position who literally cannot make any more money than they are currently making.

Gabe: Jackie, I couldn’t agree more, did discussing money with me make you anxious?

Jackie: I do not find discussing money with you to be anxiety-causing. And maybe it’s because we’ve developed a rapport based on brutal honesty. But I think this is one of those simple ways to take away the power that money has over us is just to talk about it.

Gabe: Listen up, everybody, we have some favors to ask of you, and don’t worry, it won’t cost you a dime. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please subscribe, rank and review. Share us on social media. And when you do, tell people why they should listen. And if you have buddies and friends, email it to them. Tell them what to do. You know what? You should make it a full time career promoting the Not Crazy podcast. Jackie and I would love that. Stay tuned after the credits because hey, there’s outtakes and Jackie and I, we mess up a lot and we’ll see everybody next Monday.

Jackie: Have a great week.

Podcast: Panicked Over Finances? Why Money Influences our Mental Health syndicated from

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erraticfairy · 5 years ago

Text

Podcast: Panicked Over Finances? Why Money Influences our Mental Health

In this Not Crazy episode, Gabe and Jackie discuss how you can gain a sense of control in these situations, and Jackie shares her own big money scare.

(Transcript Available Below)

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About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

You can find her online at JackieZimmerman.co, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Computer Generated Transcript for “Panicked Over Money” Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast. And here are your hosts, Jackie Zimmerman and Gabe Howard.

Gabe: Hey, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Not Crazy podcast. I would like to introduce my co-host, Jackie Zimmerman, who lives with major depression and anxiety disorders.

Jackie: And you know this guy, Gabe Howard, who lives with bipolar disorder.

Jackie: And what would that be?

Gabe: Money. I want to talk about money.

Jackie: Money, money, money.

Jackie: Correct.

Jackie: I would choose a safe place to live. Hands down.

Gabe: And I think that most people would. And I think that we need to understand that many people are in this position.

Jackie: We’ll be right back after these messages.

Gabe: We’re back discussing money and anxiety.

Gabe: Spend within your means, I love that one.

Jackie: Right? All that bullshit.

Jackie: I think it’s bullshit.

Gabe: I am going to hardcore disagree with that. I see that as a short term solution.

Jackie: Oh, for sure.

Jackie: Well, yes, obviously, I didn’t mean ignore it forever. That doesn’t solve anything, but like compartmentalizing what you’re doing with your money.

Gabe: Jackie, I couldn’t agree more, did discussing money with me make you anxious?

Jackie: Have a great week.

from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/2HS0nJq via theshiningmind.com

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