#which is the more important part than them being relevant regardless of whether they're temporary or not''

[swamp-world]

"Why are we exclusivising behaviours everyone experiences" because something like RSD for example is not, in fact, something everyone experiences. It is a symptom and has a name for a goddamn reason. The literal point of it being dysphoria is that it is disproportionate and difficult to manage. Dyphoria is not just "I felt bad", it is often anxiety. Like. @goodguydotmp3 is 100% right and I am so fucking tired of this rhetoric repackaged as being "humanizing" and "the emotionally mature thing to do".

A disability is a disability for a reason and you need to fucking get comfortable with that fact.

The idea of "pathologizing vs humanizing" and "using it as an excuse or cop-out" and "it's not relatable" is so transparently uninterested in actual mental health, wellness, and any acknowledgement of what mental illness and disability actually are, and while here the example is directed at ADHD and RSD, which are the Hot New Brain Worms Of The Month, the logic is a million times more insidious and often seems, if you haven't been on the receiving end of it, to be good and sound. But like.

A condition is often a condition for a reason, and those conditions can be Fucking Debilitating. This applies even if you experience the same condition as the person you are speaking to. If someone says to you "I'm sorry about this thing, I am severely depressed" it's actually pretty fucking gross to say "So what, I'm depressed too" (a thing which I and many others have experienced, and which has been gleefully shared in the notes of this post).

Frankly, it actually strikes me as worse in a lot of ways to act like a condition is universal, and that us both being depressed cancels out like a math equation, or that you are depressed in an identical way to me, or to the same degree, or in the same circumstances, than it does to say "I'm sorry I did XYZ thing, situations like this have been difficult for me or volatile because I have depression".

Like. Has the whole point of mental health activism not been the literal Invisibility Of Mental Illness???

The second response demonstrated by OP demands obscuration of the disability or condition or situation. To claim that it's pathologizing and therefore bad to use the phrases which are formally recognized, have been given to you to describe your circumstances and situations, and are literally designed to give phrasing to experiences so that you can identify and work with them more easily, is fucking insane.

Frankly the idea of "humanize your mental illness instead of pathologizing it" is just a reworded version of "don't use the scary medical words that might indicate that you have an actual medical condition because then people have to acknowledge the reality of your situation instead of just getting to believe that you are a bad and/or lazy person". It is functionally just "It's just easier for everyone else if you don't actually say that you're disabled and frame things as a personal failing instead of a contextualized struggle, so you should just not say it".

Because vital to note is that this wasn't "make sure you aren't ending at using clinical terms to explain your response to a situation", it was "use Normal People Words instead".

God this feels like such a fucking nuclear comparison but if court systems can have a fucking Not Criminally Responsible clause—where a person is literally understood to be mentally ill in a way that they literally, in fact, cannot take responsibility for their actions (which apparently is the "emotionally mature thing to do")—then you should be able to fucking integrate that idea into your day-to-day life, and at much less severe levels.

The other implication of this post (intentional or not), specifically the reblog with the tags on it, is that mental illnesses are not in fact as severe as people are making them out to be. RSD does not mean "You said something to me and it hurt my feelings", it is a clinical lack of ability to regulate emotions and responses, and to acknowledge that is not to pathologize, or to excuse, but to understand that this is a core symptom of the medical condition that a person has been diagnosed with.

The issue is not in most cases that I think that my experiences are unique and need to be explained in clinical language to The Other People Who Couldn't Possibly Understand My Feelings, it's that there is some modifier to those shared feelings, and that modifier is not shared, and is likely not self-evident. To refuse to acknowledge the difference between that and the idea that a person is "self-alienating" through using clinical language is transparently uninterested in the actual matter at hand, or at any attempt to get a ground level understanding of disability, mental illnessness, and what it actually means.

And as the above poster mentioned, jesus christ, extend this logic to anything beyond the more publicized conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc. to anything such as bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and related conditions, psychosis, personality disorders, etc. and it becomes much more obvious how this rhetoric is used as a cudgel.

Other people are more qualified and better-spoken on the matter of the fact that The Core Issue With Hallucinations And Delusions Is That You Are Unable To Distinguish Them From Material Reality, but like. That feels worth mentioning here.

Not to mention things like (hypo-)mania, where you may not have control over your actions, or do things you otherwise would not do. I know of at least three people in my life who, sometimes in efforts to treat other disabilities (mental and physical alike), have experienced workplace issues because of mania, and in at least two of those cases they were given compassionate medical leave because they Had A Medical Condition, not discipline because they refused to take responsibility for their actions which apparently is "the emotionally responsible thing to do".

Because the core of it is: mental illness and disability are things that happen to people, not things that other people are doing. And when things happen to you, things that you do become difficult for you and everyone else. And the idea that acknowledging and explaining that fact to other people is not humanizing or is alienating or is avoiding the problem or not taking responsibility or pathologizing instead of...experiencing often invisible situations which often are not just out of your control but actively remove your control over yourself?? The idea that explaining or acknowledging that doesn't actually lend anything to the situation, even when it is a part of reality and ought to be recognized as such, and that even when there are literally medically-recognized conditions that contribute to an action or response, the person should still take responsibility for their actions that medically they are often unable or significantly more challenged to control??? Responsibility not as in, I must respond to this matter and attempt to correct it, but responsibility as in ownership of the action or blame on an immediate level???

That feels pretty gross.

Sick list of symptoms bro. Now try humanizing your behavior instead of pathologizing it.