Hey

You're important

Please take care of yourself

Drink water. Eat something. Rest if you need to. Do something fun.

You deserve good things

I'm proud of you

Destroying yourself over your mistakes will not make those mistakes go away, nor will it make you feel better.

It is better to utilize your mistakes as a lesson instead, that you will do better in the future.

You are human. You will make mistakes. There is no such thing as perfection. Be kind to yourself.

You can't be perfect at everything all the time, and holding yourself to that standard will do more harm than good.

No amount of guilt or wishing you could do things differently will change the past. It’s okay to forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made and look to your future.

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

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Why is it when we say "don't blame mental disorders for your abuse" people immediately jump to """YOU'RE DEFENDING ABUSERS AND INVALIDATING MY SUFFERING"""

No. No no no no no. We are not excusing abusive behavior, and we believe you when you say you suffered.

Your abuse was real and you should have been treated better, and there is no excuse for what was done to you.

We're just saying, "don't attack people who are just trying to exist."

Those are two separate statements. Why do you not see that those are two separate statements?

Your abuse was real! Just quit attacking unrelated people over it! Your trauma doesn't give you the right to hurt whoever you deem a convenient target! Abuse is the problem. The lack of resources and support for victims is the problem. Not people suffering from a disorder. You are attacking strangers who have never so much as spoken to you, you are assuming people you have never met are cruel and evil for the crime of their brain working a little differently than yours. That is the problem.

The answer to your suffering is not going to come from screaming at people who were never involved with your situation. You are lashing out at the wrong thing.

I was browsing tumblr comments earlier(terrible idea I know). Came across one that was like, "hey. You. Stop reading the comments. You know they're all upsetting. Don't seek out anger."

And you know what? I closed the comments and did something else.

So here's your reminder to check in with yourself. Are you doing things that will serve no other purpose than to negatively impact you? Please stop, and go do something good for you instead.

I exist.

I do not need to make myself small. I do not need to feel bad for taking up space.

I am allowed thoughts and opinions.

I'm allowed to ask for things.

It is not my job to avoid annoying people.

I exist and I am allowed to be here and I do not need to be perfect.

There's a bunch of adhd advice out there that's like "people with adhd tend to work better under deadlines due to the anxiety so here are ways to artificially induce a stress response in order to get you to get work done" and it's like well what if I don't want to be stressed out all the time in order to function

If "loving yourself" seems far away, aim for treating yourself with the basic kindness and respect that you aim to treat everyone else with. Or if even that feels unrealistic, aim for not hurting and neglecting yourself. You don't have to move from 1 to 100 all at once. Just start, even if you gotta start slow, even if the journey in front of you is long. It's okay to be a work in progress. We all are, for life.

If someone you know experienced childhood neglect, they may not know things that you or other people consider “basic knowledge.”

Don’t shame them for not knowing. Making them feel bad because you had someone in your childhood who taught you things, while they didn’t, is not even a little bit helpful.

And yes, this post applies even if that person is you. Give yourself some patience and understanding. It’s not your fault.

No child deserves to be hit.

And it's fucking sickening how society wants to point at shitty people and go "they're like that because they weren't hit enough as a kid!"

Fuck you. Okay? I'm so sick of this. The solution to selfish assholes is not to beat children more. Why the fuck are people so obsessed with their """right""" to hurt someone who can't fight back.

And yes, it is hurting. It is beating. It is hitting. If you did that to an adult you'd be charged for assault.

It's not discipline. It's abuse.

Hitting children is wrong.

i say this with love: yall will make yourselves feel bad about fucking anything, i swear to god. you feel bad about feeling too much. you feel bad about feeling too little. you feel bad about what makes you feel good. you feel bad about not knowing what you like. you feel bad for not being able to survive easily in a world hostile to you. you feel bad for the tactics that you use to survive. you feel bad for how you identify. you feel bad for being unique. you feel bad for experiences that you share with millions of people. you suspect that every feeling, experience, desire, fear, and question in your brain is somehow evidence that you don't deserve to exist.

i can be so so reassuring about all of these things but ultimately you are the one that's gonna have to make a conscious choice to stop measuring yourself in these ways. there is no authority who gets to determine whether you have the right to exist or not. you already do. there is no body that votes on whether you get to feel, identify, or think as you do. you already do. your existence as it is is non-negotiable. stop trying to justify yourself. you're already here. the world is going to have to deal with it anyway.

Doing something bad doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You aren’t defined by any one thing.

Beating yourself up for the bad thing won’t erase the bad thing. It’s unlikely to help. Moving on, and using your experience to do better in the future, is usually the best thing you can do. It’s more likely to do good for you and others than endlessly beating yourself up.

Frustrating that a lot of the behavior that's expected of me now was punished when I was a child

Like, yeah, they're two entirely different networks of people, and the problem comes from the fact that the folks who raised me suck

But like, I remember so many moments from my childhood where I stood up for myself, called out mistreatment, was loud about what I wanted and was justifiably upset at being hurt. These behaviors were punished until doing them no longer comes natural. It's not even a thought in my head, it simply doesn't occur to me, and on the off chance it does, the follow through feels impossible.

But these are the things people expect of me as an adult. The fact that I can't do these things is a problem. Part of improving myself means relearning all the shit that used to be a part of me that I had ripped out because my family didn't want to see that behavior.

The things that made me a "good child" are things that make me struggle as an adult.

The things that made me a "bad child" are considered normal and expected adult behavior.

How can I perform what is expected when I was taught for decades that this behavior is wrong?

Ugh.

Recovery is a process. It's not a linear process, you'll have good days and bad days, and sometimes the bad days will make you think you're not moving at all.

But you are moving.

You are moving, every day. Every day you are taking another step. You are learning. You are experiencing.

There are things you have yet to learn. It will take time to get there.

But you will get there. Even if it is slow, you will get there.

"You need to raise your standards"

I...

I've been raising my standards

I've been raising my standards for several years now

Yes I know the bar is so low it's underground but I've been trying to raise it

I'm trying to raise my standards

I'm trying

you have to stay alive. you're going to be such a beautiful middle aged freak. young freaks will see you in the street and know that things can be okay.