something bad happened to you, and you died, and you came back wrong.

not wrong all the way. the little ways. you forget important dates, stopped going out with friends. it's harder to make you smile. you're apathetic towards things you used to love, afraid of places you used to go to cheer up. quieter. flinching. different.

you came back for love. you're still here for love. what pulled you back was a brightness so loud that even death couldn't outshout it. death heard the call and smiled at you and said okay. go home. somebody is waiting for you.

but you came back different. like lot's wife; you've turned into salt. you used to chirp through life in hops and skips; but now you lose skin just standing up. you have to move slower, skimming across this world without-touching-it. most things feel dull - until they're suddenly all-too-much. life, and being alive just rushes up and over you and you get hopelessly crushed.

you try to explain it to them: it is ugly, but this is what you are, now. the huge golden hoop of your halo now a little bronze ring. you are still watering your plants and wearing the same clothes. after all, you worked hard to come home. this life; so odd and off-color, now that you are wrong.

but they waited for you - it's just that they wanted the "you" that happened before this. the "you" that could sing in the show and hug people tight and look at a blade without breaking down to cry. the you with a smile in pictures. god, holyshit, it's like looking at a completely different person, isn't it. that other-you; the one they actually wanted.

you are the consolation prize. you are the body that forgot the ghost. you are the memory of the bad thing, and the death after; like you are wearing that memory as a banner. you are a fragment, an assembly. simulacrum. you don't make eye contact in mirrors, afraid the light will glance off and your true nature will flash back at you.

you hear them talk about it in their hushed, desperate whispers. sometimes they even admit it to your face; harsh and violent, acid thrown at christmas dinner. god, can you just fucking be normal again. you do not remember what normal is. you had to climb so far to get back here; you are far too exhausted. you want to open the glass door of your heart and show all the gears. can you help resolve whatever got messed up?

you try so, so hard. you came back for them. because you believed they would love you, even when you were so horribly broken. because you believed they would be patient. because you believed unconditional meant "without exception." you cannot do things the same way. you just get tired too quickly these days.

you want to put them on a couch and pour them the tea with hands that shake more than they remember. you want to line them up and draw them a map of where you have had to wander. you want to show every bruise in a backsplash; the little helpless ant of your soul carrying all that weight, over and over. you want to say: yes! it is different! but i did it for love!

you want to say: "i'm not the same, but i'm yours and i'm here. can that be enough?"

Fucking hate when queer people talk about transhets like "Ew why would anyone choose to be straight haha" I chose to be straight and I would choose to be straight again and again and again and again, fuck you.

Spring is here , the true beginning of the year , the season where my soul reborns and blooms .

I have made some progress in terms of the person I am becoming, truly in all my honesty all that i have done is to stop caring for everything that once used to matter , the less I care about anything in particular the less I am bothered and the happier i stay. And i really hope everyone here is doing well and I appreciate all the love that was sent.

The problem is I care a lot about everything and i don't even get the bare minimum in return and when i do get it it's too late, so much time has passed by then ,when it comes by then i do not want or need it because it's the not care that came out of love it came out of their guilts. And the longer i wait for it to come by -the more I learn why I don't need it anymore .

I am slowly learning to value myself ,trying to put myself in a position where I can agree that i too deserve all the good things and love even on the days when i have nothing to offer .

Idk guys I am just here to rant and to be stupid

Better late than never they say , I guess it's not too late for me either, I will start my life and live up to what I want & how I feel ,i don't have to care about anything else as long as I feel alive in my bones things will eventually flow, I will fall in love with myself little by little day after day.

I will choose myself instead of choosing others and I will fall in love with my solitude instead of bearing it with me , i don't care if I end up alone if I do end up all by myself I will be with someone who i know has a tendency not to give up .

Life is really short i just don't want to sit and watch it pass by , if I am lucky enough I will have 40 more springs to experience , I have clear boundaries and thoughts in my head now, eventually i will find peace through it I hope so.

Ramdan kareem to people who celebrate it here please remember gaza in your prayers and fastings

Favorite animal/animal you want us all to see?

Here is a toad tum. Pretty therapeutic, I think.

haven't seen anyone talk about this but. after the lightning strike, where did crowley go? because we see him walking away from the bentley after he got Lightly Singed:

and he doesn't walk around the back of it, and get into the driver seat whilst maggie and nina are trapped (second image is the last shot before it cuts to heaven):

and then we next see him in his hidey spot (that btw im fairly convinced is meant to be in shadwell, london (no, really)), but he's strolling sadly up to the bentley:

could be that there's a really simple explanation for it, like he just needed a walk or something to shake off the residue tantrum, and then parked up and went out for another stroll... or if he walked back to the hidey spot and the bentley just miraculously took itself there/crowley miracled it to meet him there...

...but idk seems strange that he wouldn't just. get straight into the bentley and screech off, pull up in the cobbled street, park, switch off engine, and then the scene launches into beelzebub's fly-arrival...?

find it sooo funny that foreman is cuddy now and chase is house because although cuddy was an enabler she at least had some semblance of what you’re meant to do as a doctor. so she could hold up the facade a tiny bit. chase is gonna walk in like “I need approval to amputate this guy’s perfectly working legs and then re-attach them using dental floss. without anaesthesia btw. and we’re gonna hypnotise his medical proxy to get consent. we think he has a mild mint allergy and I need the answer” and foreman isn’t even gonna look up from his paperwork before responding “k lol”

Okay but TJ being a doctor like Thomas but an at home one and he would be Batman when desperately needs him to be (Bruce is sick or hurt or away on business for example)

This makes so much sense for some reason and it seems canon to me

I hear you but chaotic deli owner TJ is so near and dear to me, — don’t get me wrong, guy is canonically a genius, and he FOR SURE hooks Bruce up with the latest tech (thanks to Lucius too, ofc. They’re science bros)

I truly do think TJ wakes up every morning , and his first thought is “hm how can I make Pop twist in his grave today” and just. Does it. Alfred has to live with the fact that his boys are walking disasters, and he wouldn’t change them for the world

I love being like “I know why Orym is doing this thing and it makes sense from a role play perspective cause LOB is fantastic, but its so unhealthy I’m begging this halfling to go to therapy” because I know he wont and he’ll keep getting worse and more avoidant and I’ll eat that shit up cause its good role play but I’ll keep shaking him begging him to go to therapy anyways

It’s always Bolas forever until one guy is a cop… 😔

We keep talking about jealous Buck and how Eddie is going to assure him he's not being replaced but how about we talk about jealous Buck and how that makes Eddie feel?? Can you imagine, if that's what gets Eddie going?? Like, he's over there thinking fuck, this man is literally so hot for me he's going feral because I'm friends with some dude. Can you imagine Eddie liking this side of Buck? Liking the fact that someone loves him enough that they're getting possessive of him? And even as he assures Buck (which he always will), he can't help but think he wouldn't mind Buck being jealous over him again and staking a claim on him? Like, he's Buck's and Buck is his. There's nothing or no-one who can change that but the thrill that shoots up his spine at the thought of Buck staking a claim on him makes him go oh, O H. No one has ever fought for him before. Shannon chose to leave (twice) and Ana didn't even put up a fight (not that he wanted to but still) and here is Buck, they're not even together and he's all bothered by this guy who's apparently getting too chummy with Eddie and while everyone doesn't think twice about leaving Eddie behind, here is Buck, choosing Eddie, fighting for him, getting jealous and possessive over him, to keep him in his life and fuck if that doesn't make Eddie feel all kinds of thrilled.

Well, Legarde's dead so I guess Cahara's taking his new daughter and their weird dog home

Genuine question, what’s wrong with the DSM?

[OP refers to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which I mentioned being unpopular among mental health professionals.] Disclaimer: I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a therapist, and I'm not trained in counseling. I'm a social psychology researcher. If a therapist contradicts me, listen to the therapist.

The problem with the DSM as I understand it: a lot of counselors/ psychiatrists/ etc. want to move away from a category- and source-based diagnostic system, toward a symptom-based treatment system. For example, think about Pepto Bismol: you feel nauseous, you chew pink tablets, it ends your nausea. It doesn't matter if your nausea is indigestion or seasickness or lactose intolerance. You match a treatment (pink bismuth) to a symptom (nausea) and don't waste time or money on diagnosis unless that treatment proves ineffective.

A large percent of counselors etc. would like to take the same approach to mental health. So we'd be researching treatments for nightmares (neurofeedback? MDMA?) in the long-term, and giving clients treatments for nightmares (meditation! Ambien!) in the short-term. All without worrying too much about whether the nightmares are caused by General Anxiety Disorder or a phobia or Seasonal Affective Disorder. There are many strengths to that approach.

Only, see, there's this big purple dinosaur holding us back.

[Image ID: Hardcover copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association; the title is white text on a purple background.]

So if everyone who uses the DSM also hates the DSM, why does it still exist and why do we keep buying it every time a $100 text revision gets published? Two reasons, in order of importance:

Insurance

Communication

Insurance is, I kid you not, the DSM's #1 reason for existence. American insurance companies won't cover treatment unless it's for a diagnosed illness, and so therapists put diagnosed illnesses on what they'd often be more comfortable describing as "bro, this dude is hella distressed and I'm trying to help undistress him." Note the word American on the cover; other countries have other manuals, and no other country's counselors are as chained to theirs as we are to ours. This means that the DSM helps — yay, affordable therapy! It means the DSM hurts — sets of symptoms get grouped artificially, spectra get split into categories, and diagnosis happens way too early in the therapeutic process.

Another comparison to unmental health: I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome, but my insurance provider thinks I do. I only announce that I don't because I haven't told you who I am or where I live. (If the insurance companies find us... Well, we just won't let them find us. The thing you should know is everyone is getting screwed by health insurance. Yeah, even you.) I have wrist pain and tingling. It has the wrong antecedents for carpal tunnel, and it has weird manifestations — pressure on the base of my thumb causes pain in my pinky — but my OT wrote down "Carpal Tunnel" on the forms because the alternative was a $500+ round of diagnostic scans. No one cares whether my median nerve is inflamed or not; occupational therapy still looks like "try this stretch, that stretch, this brace, that brace, and these activity changes; keep whichever combination makes the pain and tingling go away."

This kind of thing also happens in mental health all the time. Many therapists don't care — and neither should you — if your serotonin levels are low; if you're miserable and an SSRI prevents the misery, take the dang SSRI. If your mother was harshly critical and now you feel panic at any hint of criticism, it doesn't matter whether that better fits C-PTSD or NPD; it matters whether you cope with soothing self-talk or if you cope with alcohol. Put something from the DSM on the forms, and focus on finding which stretches (breathing exercises) make the tingling (panic) go away.

Communication is the biggest strength of the DSM. It means that clients can benefit from labels ("I'm not lazy, I'm ADHD") and consistent standards of treatment can be applied across different clients in different states. The DSM has huge lists of things like "if your client shows memory problems, be sure to check for alcohol abuse" or "if they have self-harm, make sure it's non-suicidal before you do anything else" that are tremendously helpful. It can help therapists who encounter a set of behaviors they've never seen before to go "client is rigid, rule-bound, and lacks insight... huh, looks like I'd better refer them to an OCPD specialist." (It's also the source of a lot of toxic misinformation on social media when symptom lists get taken out of context without that all-important differential diagnosis information, but I digress.)

However, diagnosis should never be the beginning point for therapy — it's impossible to know your client's mind without first building trust and transference — but reliance on the DSM for insurance often forces it to be. Diagnosis should never be the end point for therapy — knowing your perceptions don't match others' because of Bipolar I won't stop you hearing the dang hallucinations — but home use of the DSM often acts that way. Categorical diagnosis is limiting if your therapist is primarily interested in how depressed you are but the Beck Depression Inventory uses an absolute cutoff point for "depressed" or "non-depressed." Categorical diagnosis is useless if over 50% of people diagnosed with a depression are later diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and vice versa. So it's an imperfect book that does a lot of things well and a few things badly, and many of its heaviest users would argue that it shouldn't exist at all.

For further reading, I recommend The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. I don't agree with all the axes he grinds or all the ways he grinds them, but he's got decades of psychiatry experience and is (I hope) predicting the next paradigm shift in mental health.

For instance, van der Kolk argues that it doesn't matter if at intake your client has long blond hair and is named Linda, only to show up the next time with no hair and the name Gerald, only to come next time with short red hair and the name Taylor. The therapist should only be asking "how does the client feel about these changes?" and "what are these changes doing for the client?" If Linda can't remember what Gerald did, then focus on the terrible memory gaps that alter identities create. If Taylor became Gerald to try and please you, then focus on teaching mindfulness and self-compassion. If this is a happily genderqueer person, then figure out why they're seeking help and don't worry about the appearance changes. If this is someone who thinks in absolutes and regards their personality as constantly changing, then work on teaching them to see the world and themself with moral complexity. It doesn't matter whether Dissociative Identity Disorder exists or not; just ask your client what they need and how you can help, then go from there.

Anyway, the DSM is an imperfect solution to a complex problem, and a lot of mental health practitioners view it as a relic of a more paternalizing era. No one has come up with a really good solution for how to remove and replace it, so for now it's the least-bad option.

As a Kandreil enjoyer and known Kandrew lover, I think it’s weird and embarrassing as hell when Kandreil/Kevin stans who’s least favorite pairing in it is Andreil try to frame them prioritizing each other more and more as the series goes on as somehow insidious or toxic. Like, you can dislike the direction For Sure and wish it was written differently, but be honest that it’s because of Kevin being your favorite (perfectly valid, I also react disproportionately when my favorite character is hurt by something narratively vs when it’s other chars even if I like/love them) and has nothing to do with *problematic messages about romance* (BAH!) or whatever you are trying to frame it as being the concern instead. 

when you see a cute trans post but then half the replies are transphobic and that brief moment where it was just you and your mutuals in your lil corner of decent humanity is gone :(

otk spoilersish again uh

(said by Japeth, father in question is Rafal btw) this specific passage devastated japeth enthusiasts AND rafal enjoyers everywhere. "but it wasn't enough for my father, was it? And it wasn't for me" might be like my favourite quote in this chapter and its got a LOT of good ones

lee felix is the absolute best at giving comfort, i think anyone can agree.

as you’re trying to explain that you’re fine, to not worry he’s shushing you as he delicately tugs you down into his lap. no matter how much you protest, he won’t stop until your bum meets his lap and he has you snugly cradled against his chest.

“shh.. shh.. it’s okay.. you don’t need to think..” felix would say softly as he runs careful and meticulous hands through your scalp.

only after he’s sat with you for a solid ten minutes will be finally ask you to slowly tell him what’s wrong.

felix just wants his baby to be okay. he cares so much, he could cry.

shit.. he’d never admit it, but sometimes he does.