#this post brought to you by... mental illness

[respectthepetty]

wrt joong being emotional on social media (ie public), my personal take isn’t that someone shouldn’t have emotions, but rather that a public figure should be aware that anything the share or tweet in a moment of pique will last forever—not just in an archival sense but in the fandom’s collective memory as well. i come from a background where i am legally held responsible for anything i put on social media that could be ‘damaging’ to my company even if it’s on a personal account. not saying that’s fair or right, but that’s the reality for myself and many others. beefing with someone also signed to your company and intimating and dissatisfaction with your coworkers is something that would personally get me brought before a manager at minimum. again, this is just how it would work for me, but i’m guessing some other people in this fan space may be in similar circumstances and this also see these tweets and insta posts as unprofessional. there’s another possible discussion to be had here about the way society deems anything undesirable in a sort of mental illness-unprofessional venn diagram, but this ask is already long enough.

Anon (if this is the same anon), your response wasn't too long! It was perfect! And so was @waitmyturtles' response because it's getting at what I'm trying to highlight - his behavior could be deemed unprofessional, but not mentally unwell. I understand that the tweets and retweets are crude, but my resistance is aligning that with his mental health.

Just like you, I have a job that monitors my social media activities (if they can be found *wink, nod, Tumblr*), and if I wrote about my department mates the way Joong and Dunk are interacting, my department chair would have me in the vice president's office after the second tweet. I get it. But even if I did shit-talk my department mate on Twitter because she threw a party with my professional enemy (business instructors), I would be displeased if my chair connected that with me being mentally unstable.

There is definitely a "discussion to be had here about the way society deems anything undesirable in a sort of mental illness-unprofessional venn diagram" and after reading yours and turtle's responses, I feel we are all in the same boat, but coming at it in different ways. However, I want to emphasize that regardless of Joong's actual mental health, I do not attribute his social media behavior as a reason to claim he is unwell. Unprofessional? I see it. Unwell? That falls into that Venn diagram of unrealistic societal norms you mentioned, and I think both of us can agree that is unfair for us to place that label on him.

I appreciate your initial ask to me because it let me know that Twitter was popping off during all of this, and gave me more details to add to my "We Got Beef: Joong & Est Edition" pile, but I'm even more thankful you replied to the follow-up question.

[thelampisaflashlight]

Dew, walking into the living room: "Hey, cosmic twink, can you, like, send me the title of the video you wanted me to watch instead of the link?" Aeon, confused: "Huh? But the link brings you directly to the video." Dew: "I know, I know, just humor me here, okay?" Aeon, typing out the name, sends it: "Better?" Dew, leaving the room: "Much." Aeon, looking at Rain: "I don't get it." Rain, shrugging: "Dew has this thing where he doesn't like receiving links, blame being a computer geek for so long, he'd rather find things on his own or something... I dunno." -stretches- "He won't even use the smart speaker in the kitchen. He keeps trying to throw it out." Dew, from down the hallway: "IT'S AN ANGEL SENT FROM HEAVEN TO SPY ON US!" Aeon: "...I feel like I've heard that before, but, like, about us." Rain: "He does say that a lot-"

[gaylordthethird]

So... your telling me there are people who are just, completely fine???

Not in any pain, not in any discomfort. Not overwhelmed, not anxious. No intrusive thoughts or imposter syndrome?

Just fine????

Not even any allergies?????

[slavhew]

Beach episode

[twopercentboy]

no, you don't get it, this isn't self-harm, this is solo knife play

[oodlenoodleroodle]

Pretty much every mental health issue has a diagnostic criteria of "disrupts daily living" or something to that effect. There is often also a time length criteria.

"Everyone has obsessive thoughts sometimes" – but not everyone's lives are disrupted by them, therefore they do not have obsessive thoughts in the sense that we use the word to talk about a mental health problem.

"Everyone is depressed sometimes" – I really don't believe that every single person has felt a persistent low mood for weeks or months. It's normal for your mood to go up and down but the very thing that characterises depression is that it doesn't go up for a long time.

"Everyone gets anxious" – yes but not everyone has anxiety, which is a mental health problem defined by their anxious feelings disrupting their life. Everyone feels anxious but most people don't therefore stay home instead of going to do something they really really want to do.

"Everyone is traumatised" – everyone has experienced bad things in life, but not everyone gets traumatised by their experiences. It is a complicated system that causes some people to be traumatised and not others – even by the same event! People can be in the same event and one gets traumatised and another doesn't! I have had bad things happen in my life but I don't have to drag those things around me at all times the way traumatised people do, and therefore I am able to do things that traumatised people can't, I am able to live my life in a way traumatised people aren't.

.

If someone tries to dismiss your mental health issues by saying "everyone" has it, please know that they are wrong. Either they are using the word wrong, or they just straight up are wrong. If 20% of the population has the same illness, that is an enormous amount of people and really significant in terms of public health – but it is so so far from "everyone." It is still a minority. It is not "normal" to have that illness.

Mental illnesses are disabling. People who don't have them don't have that experience of being disabled by a mental illness and therefore it will be difficult for them to understand what it's like to be disabled by a mental illness.

[akuma-tenshi]

there are some characters where i look at them and go "i don't want anything bad to happen to them ever" and others where i look at them and go "i need them to suffer so fucking much until they b r e a k" and there's no telling which is which until you talk to me about them

[ourceliumnetwork]

apparently we're not out of the woods on holiday trauma responses just yet - i'm hoping we're on the tail end of it but like. good lord.

[racxnteur]

Me at 2-3am, having slept approximately only 1h last night (…/day), yawning: Hmmm. I could go to sleep before dawn for once, or perhaps read a bit of that fic I have been meaning to keep up on.

Me, 50min later, accidentally ruminating on vampires instead: OR…………. I could spend the next five hours & notable craft mess on creating a couple of assemble-able little clay puppet dolls, for the sole purpose of having better anatomical and positional clarity when playing out ephemeral little scenes between fictional little fool men inside my mind 🤔

(Three guesses which option won, and the second two don’t count)

[sunnwalker]

hii heres a doo doo dogshit colored pencil sketch of a very special he/they (body double oc that i have been sitting on and thinking about for a while ). Their name is Thomas ( i ❤️ biblical names)

annnnnnd this song fits him well i think :)

[angelkittycore]

intrusive thoughts are the most vilified mental illness symptom ever. forget about splitting and whatever. people look at you funny if you ever mention "yeah i have unwanted thoughts pop into my head that disgust and horrify me like how easy it would be to crush a cats neck" and all they hear is the latter half of that sentence and act like you're a psychopathic serial killer or something Xd

[the-maddened-hatter]

I've seen less than 5 episodes of Dungeon Meshi, but Senshi's power is so strong that through that and some Tumblr posts I still think "Senshi would be so proud!" sometimes when I put in just a *little* more effort and have a more balanced meal than I immediately feel up to putting in. Like even just having a fruit with some chips or something when I'm like "but I'd have to wash the grapes and I'm tired :( " He'll pop into my head and I'll be able to get myself to do it

[burnoutventaccount]

Some days everything feels normal and fine to the point where you gaslight yourself into thinking 'it wasnt that bad'

And others you're shaking as you try to convince yourself to eat because you need to eat and you're hearing echos of things people who have long since left you life said to you and you feel like a goddamn angsty novel character.

[phlyaros]

"why does adding butter to coffee make you have more energy for longer as opposed to black" you added nutritional value that's why. the human body NEEDS fat, it's why we can survive off of mostly-meat diets way better than meatless (look up rabbit starvation). Fat is fuel, and like most fats, butter provides more than just fat - it has vitamins, protein, electrolytes, cholesterol - regular coffee just doesn't have those things. (and yes, cholesterol IS good for you! Much like everything else, it's all about dosage in relation to your body's individual factors!)

Butter is probably one of the more 'palette friendly' fats you can add to coffee but mind the quality of the butter you add - coconut oil is also very nice in my personal experience. anyway yeah it doesn't give you a crash because you're actually fucking eating something and not just shoving stimulants in your brain to tell it you ate something

[weirderscience]

(remembers literally anything i did when i was 19)

[discountdyke]

interesting to me that ocpd online communities seem so obsessed with the idea of egosyntonic and egodystonic? like thats just a way to look at or categorize mental illness. i see ppl saying over and over again that the only real difference between ocd and ocpd is that ocd is egodystonic and ocpd is egosyntonic. but what ppl dont seem to realize is like, personality disorders in general are seen as egosyntonic, not just ocpd. 

and what all that really means is just that ppl with personality disorders generally dont realize that it’s their behavior thats causing a lot of their problems. it doesnt necessarily mean that everyone is actually super happy with their behaviors and sees them as 100% rational all the time and it doesnt mean that if you get frustrated with your symptoms then you cant really have that problem, because if you really had it, you wouldn’t notice anything was wrong.

imo its a really bad way to look at your own mental illness, bc with PDs especially we want to become more aware of our choices, behaviors, and thinking patterns so that we can make more informed decisions rather than what comes naturally to us. not trap ourselves into thinking that we can never change our behavior or heal over time.

the thing about ocpd is that in capitalist societies it can come across as advantageous. people are often praised for being hard working, caring about detail, being organized, taking on lots of other responsibilities, etc. its very easy to ignore the complications these traits cause when we’re achieving success with them even at our own detriment. 

so i can see why looking at ocpd through the lens of egosyntonic makes sense - its really easy to think these traits are helping you when they actually arent. but in the grand scheme of things that label is just....not important for healing, managing symptoms, or really even explaining the disorder.