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

[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-"

[drdemonprince]

on the topic of your "bad gender" posts, the one you made mentioning sexual abuse (especially by mothers) is something nobody talks about at all and I'm glad you mentioned it.

My psychiatrist said I have CPTSD after I went through a huge breakdown after putting pieces together that I've been experiencing long-term sexual abuse from my mother (incredibly long story, but you get the idea). I still completely struggle with seeing what she's done and does as abuse, because it is totally buried in my mind that it is not abusive or strange because she is my mother. No matter how many times my friends and partner say it's wrong, or things like "imagine if it was your father", or my DBT therapist is straight up with me and tells me I was groomed by her, I just cannot get the idea that her being my mother specifically makes her behavior acceptable. (especially since I didn't come out as broadly transmasc until I was 18, and was thus seen as a complete extension of her and her body prior to).

I genuinely cannot comprehend where the line is between normal care and abuse because of what I've learned (from her or otherwise) maternal care looks like "compared to" paternal. And I just haven't found anything that's been able to really help me grasp what I've experienced because I just cannot understand why, or what I can do. The only thing I've found with others describing my specific experience is the MDSA subreddit, which is usually just extremely triggering for me to browse (obviously the content, but also the daughter framing and just the everything about it) so I don't go there, but it has shown me that many of us have lived very similar experiences, we just rarely recognized it as abnormal because it was our mother. Perceiving men as the inherently "bad gender" especially in terms of sexual abuse just makes me see red, and is a lot of why this can keep going on unnoticed. I don't really know what I'm trying to say, and I'm sorry to dump this here. It's hard to discuss the nuance of it without being kinda specific. I just saw you mention it and I rarely see the topic brought up, so I guess I just wanted to say thank you for doing so

Thank you so much for sharing this, anon. SO many children endure parentification, spousification, covert incest, and sexual abuse at the hands of their mothers and never get that mistreatment recognized as such because people view women as benevolent, passive caretakers rather than full human beings who are capable of harm. Adults wield immense power over children, particularly parents, and this power structure functions in much the same way men's power over women does -- it makes children into the property of adults, and facilitates abuse.

You are not alone in this experience at all. I'm sure you've heard all about Jeannette McCurdy's Memoir, but if you haven't read it, you might find it affirming. The poet Anne Sexton also sexually abused her daughter, Linda, who wrote a memoir about it called Searching for Mercy Street that is also a powerful read. The host of the podcast The Mental Illness Happy Hour is an adult survivor of covert sexual abuse at the hand of his mother, and he speaks about it quite frequently and thoughtfully on his show, and has interviewed numerous guests who have also survived covert incest. As a male survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of a woman, he's a rare, needed voice, and I've gotten a ton out of listening to it. There's also a self-help book on covert incest that I've read and appreciated called Silently Seduced. You may also find value in Issendai's analysis of estranged parent forums -- lots of documentation of abusive female parents and how they justify themselves to be found there, and the author eviscerates it expertly.

I hope that reading and listening to some of this material will help you to more clearly see the outlines of your own abuse and to recognize it as wrong and distinct from true maternal care. It wasn't my mom who was the chief boundary violator in my household, it was my dad, but a lot of what he did mimicked the traditionally "maternal" abuse profile, and all these resources helped me wrap my head around it a lot better. It's triggering stuff, but I think it is worth plunging these depths when you feel safe to do so, to what ever degree you can comfortably manage. You might want to dig up the Mental Illness Happy Hour episodes specifically about the host's abuse experience first, since that focuses on a man's experience of having been groomed by his mom.

Thanks for writing. My inbox is open if you wanna talk. This stuff was a foundational trauma for me that I have processed heavily and I'm always willing to discuss it more with people who have been there. <3

[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.

[slugandthorn]

The coolest gender thing in the 2009 Japanese video game persona 3 100% how hard they coded shinjiro as the dead mom

[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

[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

[cnidarian-tidalwave]

plagued by the horrors (hallucinations and phantom pains)

[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.

[hungersauce]

"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)