Also horrible is knowing what you have but being undiagnosed. I wanted a diagnosis to be sure, but therapists just wouldn’t take me seriously. Mentally ill people are supposed to be clueless and their therapists the educated, kind individuals who know the client better than they know themselves, so if they didn’t come up with the answer themselves, it’s wrong. I know myself and Google is right there. Ugh.

tbh the worst thing about being a self aware mentally ill person is that people assume that because you understand your illness you’re automatically able to actually apply your knowledge to your life and cure yourself

“When a daughter or son made the difficult decision to sever the relationship, it was usually because they felt that maintaining it was too emotionally costly, that they had to distort their soul into shapes that did not feel right to them in order to please or pacify a parent.”

— Has the author heard of the term “emotional violence“? Those are not “mismatched expectations about family roles and obligations“. (via relievingquotes)

my therapist: how are you??

me, flinging myself down on her couch:

Bruh I’ve been learning to let my anxiety go so I got all the wires off the floor and put blankets by the doors and let my hamster run around my room. I don’t know what happened!!!! But she disappeared and I thought I could hear her inside the wall. I was so fucking scared. I was begging for her to come to me, I had treats. And she fucking just appeared out of nowhere. Don’t know what the fuck. Literally. Nowhere. All I can think is that she somehow actually just got into the bathroom??? Even though the door was closed??? Kill me, dude, holy shit. She’s alive though!!! She’s in her cage!!! I’m just gonna go die now

Did you know that,,, bad things happen sometimes??? And when those bad things happen...sometimes, there are bad consequences!!! And people, like, feel hurt and are damaged!!! We are not,,,, robots....*mind explodes*

“You’re just playing the victim!”

In our society, if something traumatic or bad or negative happens to you, you get penalized for “making a big deal” out of it (ie calling it out and admitting you’ve been horribly affected by it) and you get rewarded for hushing it up and acting like it’s not a big deal.

(One of the worst accusations anyone can say to someone who’s survived something horrible is “You’re just playing the victim!” - when all you’re doing is being honest about what happened and how f*cked up you are from it.)

I don’t know if anyone else experiences this, but I wanted to write about this to share my realization with anyone who might need it.

I’m pretty terrified that I’m being lied to all the time. Like, when I was a kid, if I asked my parents for something, sometimes they would go ahead and do it. This includes implicit things, like having a conversation--it was implied that they were okay with talking to me, but sometimes they would explode, saying I was boring them, or they were busy or tired. And it was my fault, of course, because I should have known--should have known they didn’t want to do what they were explicitly or implicitly agreeing to, and I would feel ashamed for the “trouble” I put them through. 

This has caused me, in my everyday life, to ask over and over if someone is okay with what they are agreeing to do with/for me. Before, during, after. I never feel like I can know, for sure, if they’re lying to be polite, and I would die inside if they were to come to me later and tell me they were upset with me for what they said they were okay with doing. I talk to my best friend on the phone almost every night, and I inevitably start going on a monologue about my recovery--recovered memories, new realizations, questions I was asking myself. And I ask, over and over, if it’s okay that I’m talking so much, and he keeps saying yes, it’s fine. “Are you sure? You promise?” And sometimes he would get aggravated, which I took to mean that he actually was upset about listening to me. But last night, he told me, “I just have to remind myself that you need reassurance. It just hurts that, even after all this time, you still don’t trust me.” It’s true, I’d dated him for a year and we lived together for six months! And I still wasn’t sure! I told him it was my childhood, not him personally. But still.

In thinking about this, I came to several conclusions and realizations, which I will share.

1. It’s the other person’s responsibility to communicate what they’re thinking/feeling. No one is obligated to comply with any request you make. If they do, they do so of their own free will, and they cannot hold that against you or be upset with you for it. They have the right and ability to say no, they just chose not to exercise it for personal reasons--and even if those reasons are feelings of obligatory politeness or “doing the right thing,” that is still not on your shoulders--at all.

2. It is wrong of them to lie to you, explicitly or implicitly. Flat-out. Abuse victims often feel bad for not being able to read into someone’s face or words to see if what they’re saying contradicts what they’re actually feeling/thinking. We’re indoctrinated--at least, I was--into this idea that we should be able to tell when someone is unhappy with complying with a request. Like it’s our responsibility to figure out if they are lying to us, and what they’re hiding. Like we are responsible for the consequences of their lie(s). We’re not. They are. Any discomfort or upset they feel about doing what we asked is, again, on their shoulders. And we’re the ones who should be upset at them, for lying.

This is still very hard to put into practice. There is a desperate urge to scan for lies, anyway--in order not to lose relationships, but also to not get hurt. If you are currently in an abusive situation, that makes sense. But remember, if you’re an adult, if you’re independent and free, no one has the right to hurt you. You have the ability to protect yourself psychically by creating and enforcing boundaries. If you lose a relationship because someone didn’t communicate something they were upset about with you, and they don’t change or back down when you explain why it’s not your fault--it’s not a relationship worth keeping, anyway. 

do not put up with passive agression. the people in your life should respect you enough to be straight forward with you. If someone does not come to you directly with an issue, it is not yours too fix. you can’t spend all your time picking apart your relationship with someone, searching for what you did, and blaming yourself when you don’t even know what for. it’s not fair for people to put you through that.

Happy No Father’s Day

For those who were abused by their fathers, father’s day is one of the suckiest times of year. We constantly come across nice caring dads who love and adore their kids, billboards with gift ideas on and generally a good atmosphere. But it’s not always roses and rainbows.

More than any other day of the year I dread Father’s Day. I am literally brain damaged as a result of the constant, repeated pyschological and emotional abuse from him during childhood. So instead I’m celebrating cutting him off. Happy no father’s day. 🖤

I’m thinking of changing my name. My dad gave me my first name, and also obviously my last. And it just doesn’t fit me anymore. I think it’s a cool way to start a new life. Have my own name. It would be a complicated process but also awesome

I wanted to add something about unintentional child neglect/endangerment as well. My cousin was complaining about how exhausting it is to single-handedly look after 2 kids. How many children have been seriously injured, or even died, because there was only one person watching them, that person was exhausted, and/or they were too impoverished to afford a babysitter or daycare??? Communal living = many adults sharing those parenting responsibilities, and older children looking out for younger ones as well.

The nuclear family is probably the greatest enabler of child abuse, ever.

Putting two people in complete control of another person (who is particularly vulnerable and has few legal rights) and then having no oversight for the whole arrangement is the absolute worst idea.

Families are garbage.

i crave simple things in life like fresh sourdough bread with a shallow but ornate dipping bowl containing olive oil/balsamic/fresh herbs on a moonlit evening overlooking the sea in some fuckall, Mediterranean location where i’m left alone to eat my bread and let the iodine from the sea air heal my torn up spirit & also six hundred million dollars in unmarked duffle bags stuffed into a swiss bank account box i receive for completing a job of dubious morality

if before knowing about autism you always thought your meltdowns were just you being “too sensitive” raise your hand

okay so what’s the mood for june?

Newton’s first swim (Source: https://ift.tt/2lf8LYe)

i’m not trying to be rude but y’all have got to stop marching into the inbox of complete strangers and telling them how much you want to kill yourself or how miserable you are completely unprompted. like i understand that you might need somebody to talk or vent to but i can’t express how anxiety inducing and triggering it is to open up my inbox or IMs and see somebody randomly talking about how they want to kill themselves. and this definitely hasn’t been an isolated incident in my experience like it’s happened multiple times now

there’s a serious problem on this website with people treating their favorite bloggers like certified therapists. you have to understand and realize that these are people with problems of their own…you can’t just approach somebody randomly and start unloading all your problems onto them like that without permission. if you need help, don’t seek it out that way. it’s uncomfortable at best and really upsetting/triggering at worst. this shouldn’t even need to be said.

I never thought I’d think a snail was cute, but now I’ve seen two big cute snails! Magnificent!!! A++

Haven’t posted the slime puppies in a while, this is Astro and he’s my second largest snail

I was with my therapist yesterday and once again he said something that really stuck with me.

Before I begin, let me explain about my mother. She’s very set in her ways. She hates piercings (I have 13) she’s not fond of LGBTQ folks (both me and my brother are part of it), she hates hair dye (again, me and my brother do that) and she will flip her lid if you whistle. (I can’t whistle, but I would if I could). I have spent almost 23 years desperatley trying to get her approval. I wanted so much to be accepted by her, that my own personality didn’t develop properly. She lived through me, I was a product, a miniature her. I tried to be my own person while simultaneously emulating her, which failed horribly.

I asked my therapist if I should be myself or try to keep pleasing her, and I did not get the answer I expected (‘be yourself, don’t please anyone’.) Instead, he looks at me slightly sideways and says “there is no shouldn’t. If the word 'shouldn’t’ comes up in a question ignore it. Ask yourself what you WANT to do, not what you SHOULD do. That word implies that there are rules somewhere, there are no rules when you want to do something. Perhaps your decision won’t be the best at that time, but it’s better than living by some kind of fictional moral book that stops you being okay”.

So on my 23rd birthday, I will be dying my hair, getting a new tattoo and piercing, I will try to learn to whistle and I will wear my Bi pride socks. I will be myself and be happy.