#stigmatization

[cuties-in-codices]

st. francis receiving the stigmata

in the "buch der heiligen dreifaltigkeit" ("book of the holy trinity"), alchemistic illuminated manuscript, bavaria, late 15th c.

source: Munich, Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 598, fol. 166v

[neuroticboyfriend]

struggling with mental health does not make you a bad person. having an illness or disability is morally neutral. and even if you do bad things, you deserve support. mental health care is a human right. and there is always hope, for both our wellbeing and who we want to be.

[violet-phoenix-nebula]

Stigma and illness

"We do not want to reckon with a world that is merely unfair; where some people get sick, not because they did something wrong but because the world is unjust, and insofar as it is just, it's random.

"And so, we tell ourselves we understand, which too often means creating explanations that blame the sufferer. Stigma is a way of saying 'you deserved this to happen', but implied within the stigma is also 'and I don't deserve it, and so I don't need to worry about it happening to me'.

"Stigma can become a kind of double burden for the sick. In addition to living with the physical and psychological challenges of illness there's the additional challenge of having their humanity discounted. Think of the word universally used in English to describe Tuberculosis patients in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were called 'invalids'. They were literally invalid.

"People living with TB today have told me that fighting the disease was hard, but fighting the stigma of their communities was even harder."

...

"Finally, the origin, or perceived origin of a disease also matters. If an illness is seen to be the result of choice it is much more likely to be stigmatized.

"So for instance, people with major depression are often told to just 'choose to be happier' just as those with substance abuse disorders are told to just 'choose to quit drinking'. And some cancers and heart diseases are stigmatized for resulting from purported choice as well.

"Of course, this is not how biology works. Illness has no moral compass, it does not punish the evil and reward the good, it doesn't know about evil and good. But we want life to be a story that makes sense, which is why, for example, it was commonly believed up until the middle of the 20th century that cancer was caused by things like social isolation, parents were actually told their kids got leukemia because they hadn't been adequately loved as infants.

"If a clear cause and effect isn't present, we will invent one, even if it's cruel."

John Green - The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time

[owlbloop]

I really hope this doesn't sound condescending , but me and a lot of people around me struggle with this.

Sometimes you have to sit down and accept people are going to be assholes.

When you're disabled, particularly when you have a heavily stigmatized condition, people are going to think they know more about you than you do about your life and body.

It's tempting to get into drawn out fights trying to get other people to recognize your humanity, but if they aren't willing to listen, you're just going to end up upsetting and exhausting yourself more in the long run. I'm not saying it's not good to provide more information, but sometimes you have to cut your losses and realize when you aren't changing that teacher or doctor or relative or stranger's mind.

Self care can be stepping back and saying this isn't worth engaging in, it can be giving up on people even if it sucks. You shouldn't have to convince people you deserve to be treated like a person in the first place, and you don't need to keep listening to. Focus on the people who are willing to treat you with the kindness you deserve.

Have a good day everyone<3

[demonized-infodumps]

sometimes I wish I could exist in peace without people looking at me like a witch in Salem

I’m not going to eat your kids I swear

.

[purplehalnw]

For the love of god stop using the word narcissist for when someone is acting like an asshole just say "selfish" or "egotistical". You don't need to be a narcissist to be an asshole. NPD is an actual mental disorder and when you use the term narcissist so casually you are furthering the stigma against ppl with this disorder.

Also btw narcissistic abuse is not real, that's just emotional abuse. The abuse ppl can receive from those with NPD can also be received from those without NPD. For instance, you wouldn't call yourself being abused by an autistic person as "autistic abuse".

And just in general, the person who abused you didn't do so because of some mental disorder, they did it because they chose to.

[mold-skinned]

hey guys, not so gentle reminder: comparing vitiligo to animals/drawing human versions of spotted animals as having vitiligo is fucking gross. stop it.

[guiltyidealist]

stigma stigma stigma ! doom and despair? :0✨ cesspool of, ~problems~ 😬😬 drama given consciousness, stir everything up out of nowhere. can try lov butttt may be best to no?t bother...... always ouch :( forever tragedy is bu t! WILL hurt you-- reserve pity or WILL take advantage of your merciful 💖. unfortungt

[gleeandshame]

[ID: Lisa Simpson giving a presentation on stage meme. The slide reads, “Men’s mental health should be taken more seriously.” / end ID]

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[brumeraven]

👺: Those Thankless Years || mech pilots, stigmatization, expectations, victimhood, disability, dehumanization, guilt, oww oww owww, somehow ended up with at least 3 references in this

There was an alley I passed by every day, twice a day, back and forth, morning and evening, as my schedule demanded, as I left my home before dawn and returned after nightfall.

Wasn't actually an alley; an intercostal space, between the ribs of a Beast that had fallen here years ago, now reclaimed by the city. Ghastly thing to leave standing, but then it'd been years since one of them had gotten anywhere near a population center, and memories had faded.

Was a sort of shrine now, what passed for one; a few more true believers crowded into the narrow space each time I passed, stringing lights of all sorts together in garish reverence.

Never bothered to look inside. Didn't need to; already knew what I'd see.

Another fucking Stig.

See, the world had needed the Seraphs back then, when the Beasts came. And that man? The one who'd made angels? Well, he'd given the people exactly what they'd needed.

Hope.

Hope and a belief in the future. No matter what it cost him. No matter what it cost us.

The first ones we cobbled together from dolls and half-assed prayer, pushed both machine and pilot to their breaking points. But people hated seeing their idols broken and shattered. We needed Seraphs to be impeccable icons of our cause, striding hymns of human exceptionalism.

So we did what we always do: hid all our dirty little secrets behind a facade and made it someone else's problem.

Don't remember who realized we could invert Halo fields. Don't want to.

All I know is I every morning I leave home and work at forgetting until it's time to sleep.

It was the dirtiest kludge of them all, to feed it back at the pilots, but it made the Seraphs truly were unstoppable. I've seen a Brumeraven put three talons clean through a core without a mark, the cruelest Flame any Beast could muster left our shining protectors unsullied.

All of that turned inwards instead, hollowing out the pilots instead.

Seemed kinder at first. No more broken bones or necrosis. And when they couldn't maintain a field any more, they got a grand send off.

"Compassionate Discharge," out the door with accolades and nothing more.

We never asked if they'd wanted it. We'd made them, but we never thought to ask if they wanted to be heroes. If they wanted to be martyrs.

That's how we ended up with this problem. People stopped caring about the gods we'd built. They'd rather worship the ones we'd made instead.

The kids had seemed physically fine when we'd released them. Wasn't until they began to turn back up as Stigs that we knew what we'd done.

Today...today I decided to take a look on my way home.

And there she was, at the end of the alley, in the middle of that neon necropolis.

Alone, staring at nothing, eyes glazed and unfocused, careless of the meager hundred kneeling all around her, heedless of the mismatched flowers and benedictions and prayers heaped at her feet, if none closer than a meter. No one would touch the divine.

It was all worthless.

Even from where I was, it was easy to see her marks. Half her jaw' torn away, a perfect simulacrum of golden light in its place, crazed lines spiderwebbing outwards across most of her face.

Golden scars covered most of her body, cuts here, burns there, cracks shot through her.

All of that hope. All of that conviction that had once shook the heavens, moved machines that towered over the city, stood tirelessly in guard of us all...

It was all wasted now. Twisted up and turned inwards, an endless struggle to contain the Void that tried to tear her apart.

And her devotees, well, they worshipped her.

They worshipped her fragility.

Worshipped her resilience.

A whole fucking church, crying out her name.

A hundred voices praising her bravery. And not a one asked what she wanted.

But I could. I could care. I could push my way through the crowd. Give her the bread and cheap wine I'd bought to get me through the night. Hug her, show her she was still human, try to fill those cracks, show the congregation how little she was, how great she could still be...

Phaw. What did it matter anyways. They believed in her past.

Tannin and ethanol as bitter ablution, the screw lid cast over my shoulder in lieu of salt. Who believed in a future anyways?

I put my head down, pulled my hood low, trying to hide her. From her.

Maybe tomorrow.

~👺

[owlbloop]

The simplest breakdown I can manage on what empathy is(plus related vocabulary) and why low empathy is not the same thing as terrible person

If anyone wants to make a less convoluted version please go ahead

Empathy: Comprehension of others emotions

-This can fluctuate depending on situation. Like many people have more empathy towards people who share their morals or towards animals

Affective empathy: A subcategory of empathy surrounding sharing in others emotions

-Examples: Crying at a sad movie, feeding off other people's emotions, phantom pains

-Similar things that are not empathy: Being happy for someone else or angry on their behalf, getting angry that someone is unfairly angry at you

Cognitive empathy: understanding and recognizing other people's emotions

-Examples: Noticing when someone is happy, being able to intuitively determine the source of other people's emotions, recognizing that someone is yelling due to excitement

-Similar things that are not empathy: Having a list of reasons from past experience that could apply to a situation, copying or scripting off other people's conversations, treating others' emotions clinically(Aka I had a hyperfixation on psychology growing up and I base my interactions with others off studies+statistics. This isn't empathy because I'm not figuring this stuff out, I'm literally using generalized facts someone else told me. It's not empathy to go according to google malnourishment lowers grades, therefore consider that someone being malnourished may be lowering their grades. It's empathy to go, being hungry is distracting for me so I bet it's what's distracting this other person.)

High or hyperempathy: Unusually high levels of empathy. Often but not always connected to mirror empathy

Low empathy: Unusually low levels of empathy. I have low cognitive empathy so I struggle to read other people or understand viewpoints that don't match my own

No empathy: Does not experience meaningful or relative amounts of empathy. I have virtually no affective empathy. I have maybe cried or teared up twice actually related to the plot of a movie, gore has little effect on me, I do not wince or get alarmed when other people get injured, honestly this subject is difficult to elaborate on because I have almost zero experiences with affective empathy. I genuinely cannot wrap my head around the concept

Compassion: Your "warmth"/caring and desire to help other people.

-This is SEPARATE from empathy. You can have empathy and not compassion. You can have compassion and not empathy.

-I am a very compassionate person. I do not need to understand how you feel to care about you. Heck, I do not even need to care about a person at all to consider it the morally correct thing to help them

Low compassion/high compassion/no compassion: Same as empathy, just for compassion instead.

Altruism: Many people consider this a subcategory of compassion/Many don't. It's basically the idea you do things because it's the moral or right thing to do.

Sympathy: Nearly as hard for me to explain as affective empathy. It's like.. How you feel about others kinda? Usually expressed in a negative sense, like I am so sorry that happened to you, but it can also be I'm so happy your happy if that makes sense??

None of these things single handedly decide someone's morality.

Heck, I've met people who consider themselves low empathy, compassion, and sympathy who still rock. But those nuances are better left to those people

People who are low or no empathy don't need empathy to be good people.

Low empathy is NOT morality, and everytime people act like it is they are furthering stigmatization of low empathy.

A lot of really awful people have medium or high levels of empathy. A lot of really good people have low/no empathy. If you don't understand how that is refer to what I said about you do not need to understand someone to care about them or want to help them.

I don't judge people who want to learn or didn't realize this stuff.

If you got this far thank you for reading this.

[sparethedreamer]

Yeah probably lots. Chronic illnesses are often ignored, stigmatized, unresearched, and those of us with them often face large levels of medical neglect, gaslighting, and abuse.

For instance, me/cfs (myalgic encephalomyelitis) (before COVID happened, which undoubtedly skyrocketed the numbers) was estimated to affect between 17-24 million people worldwide. 1/4 of those of us with me/cfs are house or bedbound. Even a mild manifestation of me/cfs is debilitating and disabling.

There are soo many chronic illnesses out there that aren't talked about or even believed.

Friendly reminder that:

Young people can have arthritis too.

There are hundreds of life long conditions and diseases out there that are typically diagnosed between 12 and 30.

There is a vast difference between being tired and having chronic fatigue.

Just because you can’t tell that someone is unwell from looking at them, doesn’t mean that you should assume that they are ok.

Many chronic illnesses are life long, and incurable. Many of them are potentially fatal.

If you have a disease like Lupus, on good days you still feel like you have a bad flu, 24/7.

Many of the medications used to treat chronic conditions have side effects that can really affect someone’s self esteem - like extreme weight gain, skin changes and hair loss.

Most chronic illnesses have very little awareness - its unlikely that you’ve heard of Sjogren’s Syndrome, Scleroderma, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or Fibromyalgia.

However these diseases can cause symptoms as varied as joint pain, fatigue, constant nausea, kidney failure, pneumonia, photo sensitivity, full body rashes, paralysis, strokes etc.

So please remember that invisible illnesses exist too :)

[demonized-infodumps]

I’ve recently gotten told about what could be wrong with me, and one of the things requires using a mobility aid.

My partner is wanting to go ahead and get a mobility aid for me but I’m afraid of how much stigma there is about those already paired on top of us being a system with demonized pds (npd, hpd, & bpd).

I’m afraid that we’ll be going out one day and I’ve already promised to ease their worries that I’ll use it or have it with me as a just in case and someone will see the opportunity to take it from me as a means of “joking.”

And I’m afraid that our chronic pain will flare and will make it to where we can’t walk for minutes to hours on end and be stranded. Or have to be carried through the entire park.

I’m trying to prepare myself for the dirty looks I’ll get or people coming up to me or mocking me while we’re trying to have a fun day, but I know it’ll still be harmful to see in person.

I wish there was less stigmatization and demonization of people using a mobility aid to help them. I wish I didn’t have to have the worry of having it taken from me or being mocked/laughed at just for living. I want to be able to do things.

That and then being babied and told to rest constantly makes me feel completely useless and upset. I can still do things for myself. Just because I’m having to use an aid doesn’t mean I’m instantly just not able to fend for myself.

Though, I appreciate people opening doors for me. That’s a gesture I enjoy having.

.

[mold-skinned]

growing up being treated like I was gross and horribly diseased, only for society to suddenly switch up and start acting like vitiligo is the most beautiful thing feels like some sort of cruel joke.

[agentfascinateur]

#destroying children