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jonathandotjon · 6 months

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I feel this post is something that has been a long time coming for me. I've been trying to reach this point for a long time, and I realize either I still haven't been successful in achieving it, or, it finally is so close that I realize maybe I can make it.

Moments ago, I made a tweet thread regarding my issue as fellow Christians tend to be who I interact with most on Twitter, or... was Twitter.. What I said was:

This evening, my Tues. night small group, a casual bringing of 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 in the aspect of spiritual Warfare may have been eye opening for me. My fickle mental health may be due to my inability, not in recieving forgiveness from others, but myself could be my own spiritual war. What may be a funny conclusion is tragically poetic for me. I wonder if the voices that constantly tell me that I'm not worth the air I breathe and the voices that tell me that the world would be better off if I just offed myself are demonic. By no means am I possessed, but oppressed, perhaps. The biggest challenge it seems I have faced is failing to forgive myself for things I did in my upbringing, for mistreating friends, for unbeknownst behavior towards them. Often failure in being able to control myself and my personality, or failure in controlling my emotions. Failure in dealing with habitual sin (another aspect of spiritual oppression) and especially failure in being more attuned to God and His commands. If there was a way to simply forgive myself for these shortcomings as a one time deal and be able to successfully just move on, I wouldn't hesitate to take it. Yet, it seems that there may be a bit to unpack and it may be as simple as truly forgiving what I had to deal with in IFB upbringing. The short term solution in that aspect logically seems to simply block those who would trigger feelings of resentment within me. I'm always welcoming to those who wish to reconcile from my old church, so long as they are seeking to be forgiven. I've forgiven the people, I just need to forgive the past, and in doimg so, may need to far distance myself from any reminders . In forgiving the past, maybe then I can truly be able to forgive myself. I don't know how coherent I have been here tonight, or if what I have said has made any sense. I just want to know what God's forgiveness feels like in a way where his forgiveness towards me can be reflected into my own sense of self-worth... if that makes sense.

In trying to further break down this and the plethora of emotions I am just, oh so privileged to deal with, there are a few things I want to lay out first.

I am not seeking pity

I am not seeking sympathy or empathy

I am not seeking to vampirize anyone's positivity

I am especially not seeking, or at least trying not to seek anyone's attention away from what's important in their own lives

Because I use Tumblr as a personal blog to chronicle my own deepest thoughts and to make attempts to self-reflect, I see it as a safe place to freely write and anyone I would share it with is someone who I've put a lot of trust in. I do not endorse Tumblr per se, I just see it as a great tool for this.

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I've made it no secret to those who know me that I deal with mental health issues ranging from ADHD and OCD to less complex issues like depression and anxiety. What I am not always open about is that I have had some brief speculations at times of possibly being on the spectrum but I don't have sufficient evidence or reason to believe at this time that I am. I also think there are possibilities of religious induced PTSD, but I do not claim that this is actual fact.

In writing what I did on Twitter, what has really begun to reach out to me are the different aspects of what I deal with mentally and the simple conclusion is that I've failed in being able to forgive myself for the past or current repeated failures of my life. It's easy to forgive others because you aren't them but it's difficult to forgive yourself because you know who you are.

I strongly believe that the constant feeling of loneliness I deal with honestly comes from the demonic influence I've probably allowed unknowingly into my life. There is an aspect of my personality I truly despise which is what I believe to be an obnoxious level of extroversion. And honestly, I'm believing the only way in being able to grow is through self-forgiveness. The goal is not to make myself an introvert, but in at least walking the gray line where either or is comfortable; the silence of others does not have to be scary.

A moment of vulnerability I need to come to terms with, when you repeatedly have to fight, as most Western men, the battle with pornography addiction, the sense of self can become highly degraded. Habitual sin, though mine is repentent, is exactly what the enemy wants and if one is caught believing he cannot forgive himself, the offense logically will only be repeated. Those dealing through this tend to question themselves.

Not everything negative I deal with is entirely the product of self-unforgiveness, but it's probably the biggest battle I'm going to have to fight. Maybe the head of my issues?

I did mention that I do fight with mental health disorders and those are legitimate. The endocrine system as well as the brain are still subject to problems as every other organ of the body is and invalidating mental health as just spiritual attack is a tactic only scumbag or misinformed Christians adhere to. Yet, my argument is more so on the basis of if some issues are because of surrendered ground to the darkness. There can be so many different avenues to approach from, and every case if different, and should be treated individually. For me, I just believe that after taking medication and it not working as it supposedly should, my own issues could be more of my own spirit being in constant Warfare.

There's too much for me to go back and feel the need to edit this. It's 3:33 AM upon writing this paragraph and I want sleep. As I said in my thread, I hope I made sense and was coherent. To those I have wronged in my own wrongdoing towards myself, I am sorry, and I ask that you would forgive me. I ask for prayers that I'd have a sense of God's grace in being able to forgive myself.

I'm just sick of all the bullshit in life and honestly, Christ who is in me, He rightfully deserves all of my shit back.

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kai-writes-fan-fiction · 3 years

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In Hiding Part 6

Author’s Announcement: Hey guys! I really appreciate all of the recent feedback and the patience. My life has been pretty hectic these last few weeks, so as a reward for your patience, this is the longest part yet, and I’m really proud of it! I hope you all enjoy it!

P.S. Doctors scare me so sorry if the “medical” part of the story is shitty.

Word count: 2567

Warnings: mentions of blood, bodily harm, non-consensual medical treatment, reader is StRaNgLeD, tiny OCD routine, slight language, non-descriptive violence, and grammatical/spelling errors.

The Avengers were everything you hated. They were destructive, they took whatever they wanted without a thought about anyone else, and they loved behind a façade. You’d seen who The Avengers truly were; they were menacing, inhumane, and lacked empathy. They could’ve just left you alone; you weren’t hurting anyone. You may have been doing some illegal things, but they were minor offenses! You’d never killed, and you were against terrorism of any kind. You just wanted to go home, wanted to be left alone. Your freedom had been stripped away after you’d made your final decision. You wouldn’t fight with The Avengers; you’d do everything in your power to get away from them.

You looked up from the floor of your cell, into the eyes of Steve and Bucky, and you could tell they knew what was coming next. You were stronger than them; you could easily overpower them. They’d seen it earlier when you grabbed their wrists, and every second you sat in that godforsaken cell, you became more immune to the effect of the material blocking your powers around you.

You intimidated them, and you knew it. You knew that your time in this compound was running out, and soon you’d be free. Free. Free. Free. Free. You repeated the phrase in your head five times to lock it in.

You felt that you were ready to share your decision. “I’d never fight for you people, never. Never. Never! NEVER! NEVER!! You people are killers; you take everything for yourselves! You’ve destroyed cities, taken the lives of so many innocents. How can you live with yourselves?” You yelled. Your eyes had begun glowing, and your hair was lifted off of your head as your volume increased. “How?!” You questioned, your eyes shining brighter.

Steve and Bucky were backing into corners of your room, staring down at you. A blue aura began to form around you, illuminating the room in a vibrate blue. Your crossed legs began to levitate off of the ground, and a strong wind began to sweep through the room in a circular motion.

You didn’t want to fight, this trick took all of your energy, and the two super soldiers were helpless, so you decided this would be the perfect time to escape.

As soon as you turned to the wall farthest from the room, which you hoped would lead outside, a particularly strong wave of fatigue hit you. The wind and your aura began to dim, but Steve and Bucky knew not to lunge at you yet.

A string of mumbled curses fell from your mouth, and you let your feet descend onto the ground. This might conserve your energy so you could put more into escaping this wretched complex.

Being back on the ground and looking less powerful, Steve decided to go for it. He jumped forwards and wrapped his arms around you, pressing you into him; you could only wiggle your hands.

Lifting you off the ground, he tried to make it so you couldn’t use your feet as any leverage.

“Fucking dick!” You yelled, thrashing in his arms.

“Language!” He yelled.

You’d had enough of his bullshit and began thrashing more. His grip only tightened, but you were still stronger. There was a vent located right above you, so you flew out of his arms.

You tucked your legs into your chest after he tried to reach out for them and stretched your arms, reaching for the vent. You swiftly pulled it off its hinges and forced yourself into the circulation system.

The tunnels weren’t dissimilar to a maze, you tried to go in one direction, but after 20 or so corners, you have turned around. The alarms blaring throughout the compound, warning everyone of your escape, were bringing about an awful migraine, and you were becoming more and more fatigued by the minute. You wouldn’t stop, though.

You had heard a few voices in the tunnels with you, as well as footsteps. You made sure to avoid them, and after 10 minutes of wandering through the ventilation, you found an air vent to the outside. You pushed hard, and with the last bit of strength you had left, the vent became dislodged. You tumbled out and plummeted about two stories before hiding the ground with a painful ‘thud.’

You crumpled into a ball on the grass, and you felt blood trickle down your forehead. You could also no longer feel your right foot, meaning it was broken. Everything hurt, but your ribs were also a very obviously damaged part of your body. Every time you moved, you felt a shooting pain.

You slowly sat up and wiped the blood from your face, and the amount of blood on your hand was startling. You looked around other parts of your body to assess the damage and found that your knees and elbows were also bloodied, as well as a few scrapes here and there. You lifter up your blue scrubs to get a better look at your side, where a wide purple and blue patch was starting to form. Hesitantly, you placed two fingers on your side, looking for anything broken. The shooting pain was the response, and you pulled your hand away. It was most likely broken, as was your right ankle. It was also a swelling purple and blue mess, and the pain was begging to hit.

You let your eyes fall away from your body to look at your surroundings. You were greeted by vast green forest on all sides, and behind you stood The Avengers compound. It loomed over you, and you could still hear the alarms blaring from the inside. You struggled to get up, and, to no avail, did you.

So, you lay on the ground, your tribulation had failed, and you were doomed once more. You tucked yourself into a ball and cried.

‘How could you be so weak?’ You thought to yourself. ‘How could you let people like the Avengers-like HYDRA-control you like this?’

It would be best if you found somewhere to hide, and quickly. You wouldn’t let The Avengers control you anymore. You couldn't.

You pushed yourself up, so you were on your hands and knees, but you were weak, and I’m so much agony. You kept pressing on, though. You crawled your way to the forest and let yourself fall behind a tree. You must’ve hit a tripwire or a perimeter alert, as a new set of sirens went off and an automated voice yelled your location. You cursed, but you couldn’t go on much longer. With your injuries and your temporary inability to shift, you had to surrender.

—————Avenger POV—————

“We’ve got a location!” Tony yelled through the team's comms. “Kid’s headed East, and it looks like she’s stopped behind a set of trees. I can see her on cams.”

“Who should we send out there? You saw what she did to Steve and Bucky.” Implored Natasha.

“She looks pretty tired. We could probably take her if we needed to, but I don’t think a fight is in store.” Bucky advised.

“How about we all just go out there?” Steve added sarcastically.

“Oh yeah. Good idea, capsicle.” Tony agreed. “Everyone grab your things and meet me in the common room; we’ll all go out and surround her. Bucky, Steve, you go from the East. Natasha and Clint, you guys, take the North. Strange got here a few hours ago, so he and I will take the West. Loki, you’re just going to ignore me, so Thor, go with him and make sure he doesn’t do anything rash. And Bruce? You stay inside; we don’t want a code green, big guy.”

‘Okay’s and ‘mhm’s sounded through the Comms, and three minutes later, everyone was gathered in the common room, looking at one another surreptitiously, not knowing what would greet them on the other side of the doors. They didn’t know whether or not you’d be putting up a fight, but they were about to find out.

“We’re all here? Let’s go then.” Tony commanded. His suit's helmet fell over his face, and he strode forward, everyone else in close pursuit.

—————Your POV—————

You were weaving in and out of consciousness, and you still lay crumpled on the ground in your ball. You felt weak, and you couldn’t think straight. The world was a spinning vortex, and you almost thought you heard voices and feet. You opened your eyes and were met with the face of Tony once more.

SNAP! SNAP! In your face again, but with metal fingers instead of flesh. Tony likes snapping, it seems. You, however, did not. You attempted to growl to ward him off, but you couldn’t produce any kind of sound.

You turned your head slightly to face the rest of the team. They towered over you, weapons drawn and aimed at your face. Typically, you wouldn’t fear them, but in your fragile state, they were pretty threatening.

This wasn't very pleasant. You, one of the most powerful enhanced humans ever, were lying on the ground, bloodied and broken, at the will of The Avengers. They stared down at you, pity written all over their faces. Pity, not a feeling you wanted to be affiliated with.

Two metal arms reached out and wrapped around you, hoisting you up. A sudden rush of adrenaline caused your limbs to begin thrashing about, and the pain from your ankle and ribs subsided. Your sudden movement caused the metal arms encasing your body to pull you closer to the body they attached to. You felt the metal chest and put two and two together. You were in the mostly impenetrable arms of the Iron Man.

Tony picked you up carefully and began walking back into the compound, and the team followed suit. You tried to summon the adrenaline once more, but it didn’t want to come.

Feeling completely vulnerable, you decided to surrender. Yes, it was the cowards’ way out, but did you have another option? Your body was giving up on you, you couldn’t use your powers, and your opponents happened to be the killers of Thanos, another very powerful being.

There was no hope, so you just closed your eyes and allowed the sleep that had been creeping up on you to take over. Your vision faded into black, and the last thing you remembered was the mechanical hum of the Iron Man's suit.

——————————

You awoke to quiet chatter, and a beeping machine you could only assume was a pulse monitor.

As soon as your eyes fluttered open, your senses were flooded with a bright white and the smell of rubbing alcohol.

You looked up from your supine position to find yourself strapped to a table once more, but stronger and additional restraints were added this time. You still felt weak, and your side and ankle were aching, as well as your head.

An IV was embedded in your forearm, and as your eyes traveled the length of the tube up to the bag supplying it, you found it contained a thick blue substance. It must’ve been combating your powers because you couldn’t shift.

You took in your surroundings and found various members of The Avengers watching you. Creepy.

“Welcome back to the land of the living (Y/N).” Chuckled Tony, “You gave us quite a scare.”

The rest of the team went silent, and Bruce, dressed in a white lab coat, whipped around to face you and ran to your bedside. He whipped out a flashlight and shoved it in your face, his fingers following to hold your eye open while the flashlight shined in.

“Pupils are dilating, so no concussion.” He hummed, moving to your other eye.

He moved to pull a stethoscope from his neck and pressed the bell to your chest. You bit your tongue to stop from yelling out when the cold metal touched your bare skin. You must’ve bitten it when you fell because you sensed a metallic taste in your mouth. Bruce was in spitting distance, so you let the blood and saliva pool in your mouth, and you prepared to launch it towards him.

As soon as he lifted his head, you released your spit bomb. Bruce recoiled and began incessantly wiping his face with gloved hands. A hand flew around your neck, preventing you from spitting again.

Blood dribbled down your chin, and you looked up to the face the hand belonged to. It happened to be the winter soldier, and you grinned up at him, blood coating your teeth. He stared you down, and you did the same. The rest of the team just stood by, wearing “What The Fuck Just Happened” expressions.

Bucky finally released your neck, and Banner walked back over, blood-free and with duct tape.

“Shouldn’t have done that.” Tony mocked from behind Bruce as he and Bucky taped your mouth shut.

You tried to shake him off, but your movements were no use. Barnes had a firm grip on your head that prevented you from thrashing about, and Bruce was wrapping your face.

‘Duct tape is the best they can do?’ You thought to yourself. ‘Do they know that duct tape loses its stick when wet?’

You laughed to yourself, and Bruce and Bucky ceased their actions and looked up at you, as did the rest of the team.

“What’re you laughing about?” Bucky snarled.

You only shook your head and rolled your eyes. If they didn’t know, why tell them?

Banner ripped the tape and stepped back. Bucky released your head, and you stared up at the ceiling, hoping they’d all leave.

“The rest of you can go. Bucky, you stay here. I need help controlling her.”

“You got it, Banner.”

The rest of the team reluctantly left, leaving you, Bucky, and Bruce. You looked over to them and stared them down with undeniable murderous intent.

“So, uh, what’re we doing next?” Bucky turned to Bruce, who was still staring you down.

Bruce snapped out of his trance and looked over to Bucky. “She’s still got some injuries from her fall; I need to check those out. Do you have any medical training?”

Bucky nodded. “A little bit, from when I served. Just basic stuff.”

“We can work with that.” Bruce crossed his arms and walked in the direction of your injured ankle.

You tried to get away, but the power suppressors and restraints prevented you from doing anything, so you just wriggled around uselessly.

Banner pressed two fingers to your swollen and bruised ankle, and you bit your tongue to stifle a muffled scream. He moved his fingers to another part of your ankle, and you hit your head against the table to suppress another outcry.

“Bucky, can you grab some Ace bandage? I think the Talus is fractured. We’ll need an X-Ray to make sure, but I doubt she’ll cooperate.”

“I can make her, or we could try sedation.” Bucky offered.

Bruce seemed to rather like that idea, as his brows raised, and he procured a metal syringe.

Forcing it into your arm, you let out a muffled, yet surprised yelp. Immediately after the syringe was removed from your arm, your world began to darken, and you became dizzy.

You tried and failed to resist, but your body gave in, and the last thing you saw was Bucky and Bruce watching you.

To be continued…

Taglist: @oldtrashbin @fleurlovesbucky @hopefuloperaangelnerd @sevenmorningstars @dev-loves-siri @cinematicfanatic123 @sweetpeaflower01 @kinny-away @mangobangi @cumulonimbus34 @oakiedokie @coollemonsaresour @screechingshepherddeputygoth @trinity-1002107 @padmoonyfeorge @laurenced1l @vaaalexandra @big-galaxy-chaos @thoughtsdrought-blog @the-nonsenseblog @inlovewithjohnmulaney

@play-morezeppelin @hi-i-1 @ohashley101 @kaelyn-lobrutto24 @marvelfansworld

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lokislittlesigyn · 3 years

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//okay just a personal post, carry on and ignore it if you like!

//tw for mental health mention, ptsd, some.. general vent-but-good stuff

So. Ah.

I’ve been wanting to make another personal post for a while. It’s just never felt right. I don’t want to upset people,or seem like I’m begging for attention, or over-share, but I also really appreciate the kind words and support people have. And.. I think I’m supposed to share? I should talk, if the time’s right? I won’t say it’s comfortable, because it isn’t always, and right and comfortable aren’t always the same thing. But I think this is right, even if it may not be comfortable.

Long story short, I brought my parents along to a therapy meeting with a new specialist that my original therapist transferred me to. I was worried my first therapist didn’t have a full grasp of the severity of what’s going on, and I needed my parents help - as the people who spend the most time with me - to express just how bad things are. The new specialist was.. Incredibly kind. He listened and cared and believed us, and suggested two things.

1. We pursue a higher level of care. Because of the severity, meetings every few weeks (or, maybe even once a week) might not be enough.

2. We conduct a series of screenings and tests to gauge what we’re dealing with, and the severity, with the possibility of getting medical necessity for further help/testing.

So this Thursday, we did the tests.

It’s a strange thing. I’ve been desperate to know what exactly is happening. What’s “wrong” with me so to speak. I suppose wrong isn’t a kind word for it, but it’s certainly not fun, the things that are going on... But I digress.

Only one came back truly negative: turns out I probably don’t have ADHD.

But depression? Positive. Moderate-severe. Anxiety? Positive. Moderate, but only because I have coping mechanisms - the specialist thinks it’s more severe than the test shows. OCD? Positive. Extremely high. Stress? I tested in the highest possible section. The same section as first responders. As people who charge into burning buildings. In the specialist’s own words, my stress levels were “off the charts.” And PTSD... I was abundantly positive and severe on that. He said if the population of the US were likened to 100 people, me and only 3 other people would be dealing with the level of PTSD I do.

And after talking to him, he confirmed my suspicions. I struggle with complex PTSD. Multiple traumas happening multiple times over... Years. Over almost my entire life. CPTSD, with symptoms of depression, anxiety, OCD, and high stress, all stemming from the underlying trauma. It was both validating and humbling to find all this out.

On the upside, these are all connected issues, like a bundle of roots from an invasive plant. On the downside, these are all connected issues, compounding on and feeding off one another.

I did another test too. A test for a certain “disorder” that came back two points away from positive. The specialist recommended better testing on that, because the written tests are flawed, and can be biased, and depending on the day results can be different. As I think about it, I realized, I think I answered some of the questions wrong. I misunderstood. And if I’d answered differently - more honestly - I think it might have been positive. I’m not sure.

I’m a little scared, honestly. I desperately want to know what’s going on. To have a name for all of this. To have a name so that I can start knowing what to do. But if I do have this... I’m going to need time to accept and process it.

I had a feeling this summer would bring a lot of self-discovery. I felt I’d find out a lot more about myself this year. Maybe these tests are part of how that happens.

For now, I’m grateful for what we know. We’re pursuing more treatment. We’re getting help. My parents have asked me to make lists of things they can do to help soothe me and make everyday life less hard - even just little things, in the hopes they’ll compound on one another. Good to balance out the bad.

It sounds very strange to me. I can’t help but wonder why we’d change anything. I’m coping well enough as is, aren’t I? I haven’t given up yet, so why should we change anything? But I think that’s the coping talking. I’ve learned that life will only ever get worse. Maybe things can get better? I just have to put faith in the fact they can... Which is immensely difficult. So many other things in my life have proven just the opposite.

But I hope I’ll be victorious one day. I have to hold onto that, right? Hold onto that and keep trying?

For what it’s worth, everyone I’ve told the test results to has been extremely kind. I wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting people to treat me different, I guess, and maybe reveal how exhausting and frustrating I am, or have been, and.. Leave.

But they didn’t.

I’m glad.

if you read this far, i commend you. this is very long and probably a lot of information. i don’t know if this will help anyone but... if you’re struggling, with anything, and you’re able? maybe try to get help. i know it can be hard, and scary, and it might not make sense. but even just in these sessions, i’ve tasted a little bit of kindness, a little bit of relief, a little bit of validation and understanding and proof that what i feel is real. i’m not just making it up or being dramatic. and that alone is worth the trouble.

be gentle with yourself.

#sigyn says words #personal #woah im a person??? wild #tw ptsd #tw mental health #tw ocd #tw ocd mention #tw anxiety #tw depression #tw adhd #tw #in which sigyn says a lot of words and proceeds to go collapse in bed #i am so tired.#i am just so tired...#but i hope this will lead to good change #onwards and upwards #right?#sigyn the victorious

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schmergo · 4 years

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I've noticed a trend online where, when somebody talks about a loved one who's experiencing mental illness-- or when somebody makes a post that reflects symptoms of mental illness-- people will flippantly reply variations on, "Get help" or "They need therapy" or "Please take your meds" or even, "You need to cut this person off until they start taking care of their mental health."

Like, on one hand, I'm glad that the concept of mental health care is less stigmatized these days than it was several years ago, and on the surface, what they're saying is good. But there is an implication there that 'getting help' will mean a solution to the problem, that taking medication or seeing a therapist will mean no more troubling or annoying symptoms. It almost sounds like a way to... try to get people to shut up and stop talking about their feelings, or a way to make 'I don't want to see someone experiencing mental illness' sound progressive.

I don't want to get into how expensive and inaccessible mental health care can sometimes be-- that's a well-known fact-- but the truth is that someone who is receiving care for a mental illness... still has a mental illness. And they may still have bad days. 'Just get therapy' doesn't mean someone will no longer experience depression, anxiety, OCD, a personality disorder, Bipolar disorder, eating disorder, you name it. They may learn to understand themselves better, have an outlet for their feelings, and learn new coping mechanisms, but it can still be pretty darn hard for people to live with a mental illness. Medication doesn't always make someone with mental illness indistinguishable from someone without. It's not like an antibiotic where you take it for 10 days and you're back to 'normal.' It also comes with challenges and downsides of its own. And it can be difficult to take the initiative to begin treatment when you're feeling super depressed.

Someone whose behavior may seem unusual or upsetting... may already be in therapy. They may already be on medication. They may already be taking care of their mental health as best they can, but they may still need an extra listening ear or a little bit of patience and understanding. They may not react or respond to situations the same way that you do. The idea of 'get some help so you stop acting like that' can give off a whiff of the 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude toward mental health challenges, or push the 'you're not trying hard enough' myth, that all you need to beat mental illness is to try harder.

The reason I'm making this post is because someone in one of my meme groups was talking about how much he hates people whining about their depression and how they need 'professional help.' This is a really, really challenging time in the world, and some people are not doing their best even if they're trying their best. We could all do with a little compassion right now, because you never know what someone else is going through.

When reading the post, I thought about some of the sad stories we've seen in the news in the past few years about beloved celebrities who have died by suicide. These public figures could DEFINITELY afford treatment. They probably had received treatment. For example, Kate Spade's husband said that she had been actively seeking help, attending therapy and taking medication for 5 years before her death. Mental health diagnoses can often be a lifelong battle. And not everyone feels up to giving 110% every day.

Our current world still doesn't have advanced enough medical science to come up with foolproof treatments for all mental illness. It feels easy to recommend therapy and medication, and a lot of people could use more mental health help, but please try not to assume that someone isn't already doing that. Right now, even many people who had figured out a great system that works for them could use a little extra help from friends and family.

#mental health #mental illness #cw: suicide #cw: mental illness #suicide cw #mental illness cw

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suekre · 3 years

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So ive followed you a VERY long time (like from the deviantart days lmao) and i only just realised that you were talking about ocd in that post. Just wanted to let you know that i have ocd as well and god it is exhausting and i know exactly how you feel! I finally start therapy for it in 2 weeks. Pls know that i love your art and you very much and appreciate everything you create and share with us. All the best!! X

Hey you, I know you! Thank you for coming to my inbox and sharing this with me, I appreciate that so much. :) I am SUPER happy for you that you are about to get the help you need, that is awesome. I wish I could have had it at the time!

(And oh boy, the good old deviantart days, haha! Always happy to have my longtime followers around! :D)

OCD is exhausting indeed. People who aren’t affected can’t imagine what a nightmare it is. I, personally, am more prone to intrusive thoughts than actual obsessive-compulsive behavior. When people hear „OCD“, they usually think of obsessive hand washing or „leaving out every black tile while walking through a kitchen“ or so, while it can manifest in other ways. I didn’t know back then. I just thought I was going completely crazy at the time. I think I mentioned my disorder at times but I never actually openly talked about my own experiences (where I come from, mental disorders are a big NO NO, because it’s all in your head, just pull yourself together, other people are ACTUALLY suffering, it’s just dumb thoughts, you just need to think positive, y’know).

I kinda feel like doing it now. Just to get it out, and also to occupy my brain and hands and hey, maybe someone else can pick this up and find themselves in my own experiences. I sure know how relieved I was when I found out I wasn’t alone with my what I thought was a ‚Very Weird, Unique and Niche Problem‘.

I gotta admit first - I’m doing much better nowadays. Even my worst days, as horrible as they may feel at the time, do in no way compare to the hell I went through in the second half of 2015. I have come a long way since my last (and so far worst... omg, oof, I hope there won’t be another) episode of intrusive thoughts. But, oh boy, was it intense. It was the absolute worst time of my life, ever. I’m not writing this to scare anyone. Anyone who is familiar with this, will know how bad it is and anyone who can’t relate at all won’t feel affected anyway and will maybe even think something along the lines of „What the fuck?!“. I get it. It DOES sound crazy.

I have always been an overthinker. I always needed more validation and reassurance than other people around me and for the longest time I had no idea why that was. It was usually subtle - always kinda there but never strong enough to actually affect my life in a negative way. I just felt off at times, and not always super good. But I was generally ok, I could always manage.

Until that one episode that changed my life forever. I know that sounds dramatic but, even though I am in a good place nowadays, it sure DID change my life. I was 31, I lived together with my then-boyfriend and I still remember the exact date. Friday, July 24th, 2015. I remember the exact moment when my entire mind collapsed. It’s so weird, it literally happened from one second to the other. I am not making this up to sound more dramatic, it was a matter of seconds.

I was on my way home after work and I felt… restless and stressed. It felt good to get off work (it was my first full time job and... it didn’t go well, to put it nicely) but I was no longer really looking forward to my week off, and our trip to our favorite Open Air the following week. I picked up some dinner on my way, I came home, and I saw my boyfriend in the middle of the living room, he was making some preparations for our upcoming trip. When I saw him, tall and handsome and smiling at me, I smiled back but inside I felt like crying. My smile was fake. Kissing him felt weird, and also fake. And all of a sudden, there it was. The life changing thought:

„I don’t love him anymore.“

A simple thought. I had weird thoughts before, like anyone does, but they never had any greater impact on me. This time, though, that one thought knocked me off my feet. Not literally, I had turned into a pillar of salt somehow. This was the Perfect Man Of My Dreams (at least that was what I thought back then). The man I wanted to spend my life with, the man who made me happy every day! How could that even be, how could I even think something like that?

I felt even more restless. I didn’t tell him, of course. When he asked how my day was, I put on my fake smile again and said it was okay. We ate our dinner (although I had instantly lost any appetite), and I kept looking at him and the thoughts... just kept coming back.

You don’t love him anymore. What if you don’t love him anymore?

On repeat. It was awful. I just couldn’t shake them off.

It’s the stress, I tried to tell myself. You’re overworked. It’ll be good, you just need some rest.

But I couldn’t relax. My heart was racing, my blood was pumping. I didn’t know what was going on. I begged him to leave his work undone and take me out for an after work drink and he agreed. All the time, the thoughts wouldn’t leave my mind. I didn’t want to think them, but they were merciless, they just kept coming back. I felt so helpless.

A few drinks later, I had calmed down a bit, at least so much that I could stand to look at my BFs face again without feeling guilty. There you go, I said to myself, not quite convinced, you’ll be good. It’s already wearing off. When we crawled into bed later, I was tired and relaxed (and tipsy) enough to sleep and convinced that this was just a little glitch, that things would be just fine in the morning.

When I woke up, I felt exhausted. My heart was racing... and the thoughts came back IMMEDIATELY.

You don’t love him anymore. You gotta leave him.

What. The. HELL!? Why are these thoughts still a thing? Why are they still there? Why do they keep coming back?

I kept trying to push them away but the more I tried, the more intense they became. As if they tried to spite me. I started losing focus on everything else around me, the world slowly started to blur. It was just Me And My Thoughts from here. I tried my best to hide my state, and I think I managed for a while, but I felt like a robot any time I talked to someone. When people would pick up on my confusion, I usually brushed their concerns off. It’s nothing, I’m good.

I mean... how do you even tell someone that you just. can’t. stop. thinking. about whether you still love your boyfriend or not? According to the world, that is something you “just feel and know” after all. Except that I didn’t. I had no clue. I couldn’t feel anything. But, according to the world, that was perfectly normal, too. “Honeymoon phase is over at some point, babe. That’s everyday life, you grow comfy, it’s no longer a flash of feelings every day, you know that. You guys have been together for a while after all, what did you expect?!” ... what I felt didn’t feel like comfy everyday life either, though. Comfy everday life shouldn’t come with high key anxiety, sleepless nights and a loss of appetite at any lived second. If that was comfy everyday life, I sure didn’t want it.

So, what do you do when you have no clue about something? Right! Google! Go and ask the world! “How do you know that you still love your partner?”, “Is the love gone?” ... I spent hours, DAYS doing that, but no answer I found was remotely statisfying (or maybe it was for a minute, but the reassurance never lasted long) and I felt that those articles didn’t actually understand what I was asking in first place. I would spend every day like that. Permanently asking myself the same questions, analyzing myself, testing if the Big Feels for the man had decided to come back... nah, not really. Maybe NOW? If I just look at him close enough?! ... maybe if I squint a little?! Fuck, still nothing! Niente! Nada! I am a horrible person, aaah!

(Our open air trip was an emotional disaster by the way, I felt horrible all the time, and the permanent rain didn’t help. -3/10, do not recommend).

If I had known at the time that I wouldn’t spend just a few days but (more or less) six months with this shit... oof. I was already exhausted after those few days.

Over the course of the next weeks I stopped eating almost entirely. I just couldn’t. This permanent tight anxiety knot in my stomach made me want to throw up at the mere thought of food. At my worst point I weighed 138 lbs (63 kg), at 6 ft 1 (1,85 m). I often joked about how I had almost reached runway model standard. I was sick, I was weak, I was scared, but I just couldn’t eat and the bits I DID force myself to eat were burned almost right away by my crippling anxiety. (I still have clothes from that time, and I sometimes beat myself up for no longer fitting into them before I remember that I should NEVER fit into them EVER again.)

Instead I smoked a pack a day. I hardly got any sleep and when I did, it wasn’t relaxing. Always in Fight and Flight mode. My body was at alert level any minute, any day. I’m still asking myself how it could be that I never actually... collapsed. I was always tired, exhausted and malnourished... I dunno, you tell me.

The thoughts never really disappeared. They kept coming back in all variations. You don’t love him anymore. You have to leave him. You may not want to, but you have to. You don’t love him. I had very few “good moments” in between but in those good moments, my mind was usually frantically looking for explanations and reasons behind all this. For ways to improve my relationship, to feel better about my boyfriend. I came up with the WEIRDEST shit. Almost every day I found something new that bothered me. One day he was a little boring. That’s it! We gotta go out more, do more stuff, that’ll change everything. ... aaah, no. Guess not. The next day, it was something else. The day after THAT, it was something entirely different again.

I was suddenly prone to making some HELLA weird impulsive decisions, too. „I gotta break off contact to that one person RIGHT now, THEN I WILL FEEL BETTER!“, “I gotta talk to my mom about THAT particular incident in my childhood right now, THEN I WILL FEEL BETTER!”, “I gotta make a trip to the mall JUST NOW, THEN I WILL FEEL BETTER!”… the decisions made total sense to me the second I made them, for about ten minutes at most, but the initial rush of relief started to fade again quickly and I frantically started looking for new solutions. Google was my best friend. I couldn’t go a day without googling exessively. Overthinking, pacing, googling. Any day, any hour awake. Over weeks. A few months even. My mind was constantly reeling. It was a bottomless pit.

I cannot put into words how exhausting that was. Sometimes the idea of throwing myself out of the next window seemed SO tempting, not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted the thoughts to stop tormenting me.

(I was out of regular therapy at the time, btw. I thought about calling my therapist about it but never did it. I felt isolated, I literally thought I had to do this all by myself.)

At some point, a few months into it, I somehow transferred to zombie mode. The thoughts became a little less intense over time. They were never gone but not quite as nagging anymore. But any time I wasn’t in alert mode, I felt just hollow instead. Sucked dry of any joy, of any emotion, of any sign of life. I just... functioned. Still tried to hide it. I dunno how well I did with that. Probably not at all well. I kept it all to myself, just because it felt that ridiculous. Tried to find excuses. “I’m just tired.”, “You know, there’s a lot going on in my head right now, but I’ll be good.” ... truth is that I don’t remember a whole lot of that time, it’s all blurry. There are just a few significant moments.

Such as that one evening, after work, when I left the building, made a few steps and stood five (or ten? fifteen??? who knows?! not me.) minutes on the spot, motionless, because I could no longer remember my way home.

I got fired from that job, by the way. I’m sure it was mostly due to low performance, I get it, but I can’t blame my poor state alone - they were also assholes.

Anyway.

I had, of course, never stopped the googling and one day, after hours of browsing any niche I hoped I hadn’t browsed yet, I somehow found a blog written by a young woman like me. The description tackled almost all of my thought patterns and I was blown. away. She asked herself the very same questions, with the very same twists, and... she even had a name for it.

ROCD. Relationship Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I cried for what felt like hours. Out of relief. There was a person in this world who knew exactly what I was going through. And she even had tips how to overcome it. It wasn’t the first time I had heard about OCD, but as it had never affected me in any way before (I, too, associated it with compulsive hand washing and tile jumping), I wouldn’t have thought of it. After doing my own intense research on the subject, a huge part of me and my life finally started making sense to me. Not much was known about ROCD at the time, but it kinda didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was the OCD part. The subject of the thoughts is entirely interchangable. It’s the chain of thoughts itself that has to be broken. Don’t focus on the relationship. Break the chain instead.

The internet also recommended exposure therapy but as therapy wasn’t an option at the time (weird German laws... regular health insurance covers only a limited amount of therapy lessons within a certain span of time and I had used mine up and there was no way I could pay myself), I decided to try it myself, the key points being:

* No more googling, no more reassurance. Learn to live with the uncertainty, learn to live with Not Knowing.

* Let the thoughts happen. Watch them pass by. They’re just thoughts, they can’t harm you. Don’t fight them, just recognize them and let them stay, they’ll get less scary over time.

* Focus on other things, as hard as it is. Try to occupy your mind and your body. Any minute you spend doing something else but brooding is a win.

It all sounded so very abstract at the time, but I was determined to give it a try. Oh gosh, was it hard. After months of emotional torment and getting used to unhealthy ways of coping, it was SO DAMN FUCKING HARD to NOT google. To NOT think. It felt like torment all over again. How was I supposed to just let the thought sit with me!? It was scary, I didn’t want it! Just ONE little peek, only a second, come ON! I won’t do it again after that?!

Oh god, it was the worst, it really was. Trying to break the chain while I was so desperate to save my relationship was terrible. I honestly don’t remember HOW I made it... but I made it. I somehow... clawed and bit my way out of it. I went right through the pain and made it. It’s not actually a linear process but there comes this point (and I know a few people I met on online platforms who would back me up on this) when you know the worst is over. You just know it. Things weren’t exactly good by the time the thoughts were history but I had reign over my own head again, I could actually SEE the world again, and that was worth everything plus my body weight in gold.

I’ll stop right here because the following months weren’t about my OCD anymore, but about figuring out needs, figuring out myself and what I wanted from life and this particular relationship and it’s not quite relevant and another story. (I DID love my ex-BF but it turned out he wasn’t at all good for me, I had ignored all the red flags for too long, and it didn’t take long after this for us to go separate ways)

I hated this particular time in my life while it lasted but I have learned and taken so much from it. It has changed my life in so many ways. I learned that things are never set in stone, not for anyone. That there will always be uncertain times on our ways. That change is always scary. That it’s okay to be scared. That staying in crappy situations for the sake of it isn’t always the right thing to do. Sometimes, doing the right thing (aka leaving a relationship that isn’t good for you) can make you sad. Love does not equal compatibility.

Looking back, I am - in a very bizarre and twisted way - grateful for the experience. It was an incredibly important lesson for me that taught me to be kinder to myself, to look out for myself and to listen to my own needs. That I should put myself first at times. For the first time of my life, I really got in touch with myself and my own emotions. I learned to understand them, I learned where they come from. I learned to cut myself slack at times.

The list goes on and on, but you get my drift. I know myself inside and out at this point. That wasn’t always the case. Not until 2016.

It still comes back at times. Not with such full force, but it keeps creeping back in, pretty much any time I have to deal with uncertainty in my life. Bad news at work, not hearing from a friend for a while that I’m dying to hear from (inevitably thinking that they MUST be mad at me) or when I spot a few symptoms of sickness that I’m not familiar with (I practically never get sick). Not Knowing What Will Happen drives me CRAZY. I hate uncertainty, I need my life to be stable and calm to fully function.

Now, in COVID times, it’s mostly the fear of suffering from an incurable disease. AGAIN. I’m familiar with that, too. I’m not even scared of catching the virus, I just fell right back into overthinking any symptom I have, even if it’s just a short pain in the neck or whatever (you know, things that one usually brushes off). When my life was busier, I was MUCH better at handling those thoughts. Most of the time, they didn’t even come up in first place. Sitting inside and avoiding contact 99,9% of all times, and having little to no actual distraction („reading/watching movies“ doesn’t help me personally, it does’t occupy my mind enough, I usually just stare right through the pages/screen), however, leaves FAR too much time for the thoughts to unfold, once they come up.

This subtle but lingering concern for my health puts my body into a permanent state of anxiety once more. Fight and Flight mode. The pace of my heartbeat is always slightly, but perpetually, increased. It isn’t always outright panic attacks, it’s this constant state of having to be… alert. Something MIGHT happen, y’know. Be prepared. Relaxing and doing nice things becomes almost impossible. Instead, I get tired and exhausted. Depressed, even. It sucks the joy right out of me. I feel like living under a glass dome. I see what’s happening around me but I am unable to connect, emotionally. People keep living their lives and I can watch them, but I can’t be a part of it. It’s a deeply crushing feeling. I manage to somehow function but I don’t really feel alive. My abandonment issues and fear of „getting left behind“ kicked in again, too. I want to catch up and take part but can’t so I stress myself over THAT, too. This only adds to the exhaustion and makes me feel even more isolated.

Hello, vicious circle, my old friend.

I didn’t even realize that I had such huge potential to fall right back into it. It all started… I dunno, by mid/end of January?? It’s a bit blurry this time. It is directly connected to Germany’s recent lockdown, though. A massive case of Not Knowing How Things Will Turn Out. I failed to take better care of myself in the past few weeks. And now I’m here. AGAIN. Ugh.

But well, as I said, it’s not as bad and, as I said, I have at least learned some important things over the years. In this particular case of intrusive thoughts, the first rule is: NEVER GOOGLE SYMPTOMS. And never google shit like „chances to survive (whatever illness think you have at the time)“, either. The mind longs for reassurance but googling symptoms is BAD, as we all know by now. It’s not even reassuring when you do it. Because you’ll inevitably end up diving through the vast internet for HOURS, picking up an entry that some person named Kevin made on a cancer forum way back in 2004, saying that his uncle died the next day after finding out he has cancer and that is, OF COURSE, what will happen to YOU, too. There is no other way. YOU WILL DIE.

Excuse the text walls. I took an opportunity to ramble about my own experience, for the first time ever since it happened (not including the few short talks I had with the few people I met on internet forums).

To anyone who made it this far: Thank you so much for reading. It sure felt good to write this down for once, even if it’s just a short summary (yes, really, I mean, we’re talking six-ish months here), and the descriptions fall woefully short. If anyone affected by the same happens to read this - I am so, SO sorry you are suffering so much. You are NOT alone and you are NOT weird. Talk to someone. Open up. To your doctor, or you therapist, if you have one. To a person you trust. It is the worst but there are ways, there is help. I wish I had known at the time it started for me.

You know now. :)

P.S.: DON’T FUCKING GOOGLE:

#ocd #rocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #relationship obsessive compulsive disorder #mental disorder #sanne rambles

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silenthillmutual · 4 years

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[ID: Anonymous said: this isnt like, a demand or request, just an expression of interest - you mentioned in your daniil-is-autistic post that you also think artemy is neurodivergent, and i would really enjoy seeing a similar post on that topic. thank you, have a nice day.]

(anon is referring to this post!)

i do have some thoughts that i would like to share about that topic! however comma, it probably will not be as in-depth as my post about daniil, as i am myself autistic and have had a couple years since being diagnosed to ruminate on places where that has affected my life, and so it’s easier to write about coming from a place of personal experience. i can do the same with depression, for the same reason.

i have a couple of ideas about what artemy could have:

adhd

ptsd

ocd

i won’t really be going into ptsd or ocd on this post because i feel like it’s more difficult to point the ptsd out (artemy doesn’t talk much about or flashback at all to being on the front) and because i think ocd should have its own post. it is severely misunderstood, even by other neurodivergent people. plus i think all four of the healers have it (or aspects of it), and this post is about artemy.

i feel like… something about the dsmv diagnostic criteria for adhd feels condescending to me, like it feels the way it’s worded places a lot of the blame on the person who has it? and some of the criteria like “fails to follow through on instructions”, “does not seem to listen when spoken to directly”, “has trouble holding attention on tasks” can depend greatly on the player. not as much of that is baked into artemy’s character and dialogue in the same way that social ineptitude, which is a core feature of autism, is baked into daniil’s character and dialogue.

with that being said: while i will include a few things from the diagnostic dsmv diagnositic criteria as listed on the cdc website, i am going to primarily be thinking about accounts from people with adhd. i have several friends with adhd (and i suspect that i may have it, though i’ve only come to suspect this recently and have had less time to think on it) whose experiences i will be taking into account.

other links to sources i am referring to: [adhd/autism venn diagram by tfw-adhd] [what those symptoms look like in adults, by chadd] [ptsd criteria on brainline] [ocd criteria on beyondocd]

vague spoilers for pathologic classic & pathologic 2

very briefly & quickly: ptsd & ocd

the problem with going into it is this game is already a very difficult and anxiety-inducing world because of the plague and i’d argue that any of the healers could have one or both of these either before the outbreak or after it, so here are some things that stick out to me for

ptsd - overly negative thoughts or assumptions about oneself or the world (can overlap with adhd; artemy has the option to repeatedly blame himself for his father’s death), negative affect, feeling isolated, irritability or aggression, risky or destructive behavior, hypervigilance (any game that dabbles in horror aspects will expect this from you), difficulty sleeping (overlaps with adhd), depersonalization (this is a core aspect of the theatre theme of the game)

ocd - without going through the entire ybocs, i’ll just say that i think all three healers struggle with hoarding (understandably and by necessity) and hypermorality (all three protagonists believe they are the one and only person who is right, rubin is awfully judgmental of people who don’t abide by his personal standards). compulsions would be easier to point out in the game than the obsessions they are linked to, as we’re not exactly privvy to intrusive thoughts outside of the dreams. you could, however, say that artemy struggles with intrusive thoughts of causing harm even inadvertantly and argue that he takes measures to ensure that he doesn’t, won’t, and hasn’t. in classic, this is highly dependent on playstyle.

[this is my standard disclaimer that i have an official diagnosis of ptsd so i’m not just pulling this out of nowhere and am about 98% sure i have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and have researched it thoroughly.]

what’s built into the game: making careless mistakes, poor planning skills, time blindness / anxiety, executive dysfunction

pathologic is a game that sometimes feels like you’re being set up for failure. something that i missed talking about in my previous post is that it often feels like an autism/adhd simulator because it is, in classic, so very easy to screw yourself over and get locked out of an objective by picking the wrong dialogue option. while some of the correct dialogue options are obvious, others feel like a guessing game and you have to just hope you’re picking the right thing and have made a save file at the right place to go back and pick different options in the case that you’ve bungled something. hence, “making careless mistakes”. it’s a little bit easier in 2, as dialogue options that end a conversation are indicated with a diamond (thank you to whomever decided on that!), but it makes up for this by being unforgiving in other aspects. i believe the difficulty settings for imago state that the game is intended to be “almost unbearable” - and lots of people have difficulty completing it on the intended difficulty without cheats. (do not discourse about this on my post.) the game invites you to make careless mistakes and either live with or learn from them.

keeping this in mind, you’re kind of expected to have “poor planning skills” on at least your first time playing it. part of the game’s point is that you can’t do everything, and you can’t save everyone. not paying close enough attention or interpreting the instructions of the game just right in classic can cost you the lives of several of your bound.

that also feeds into time blindness & time anxiety. classic & 2 do these in different ways. in classic, you can’t run, so you have to hope you’re not busy doing something else or else hope that all of your letters come in at a time where you can hit up all the places you need to go, or you’re going to be cutting it short on time for the day. in 2, you can run, but there are far more sidequests to be completed than in classic.

i’d also argue that executive dysfunction is a core aspect of the game. you are very busy and very poor and items are very expensive, meaning that unless you know what you’re in for, either you or the town is low on resources or funds or time to do things like eat, sleep, and take care of your aches, immunity, and infection. all of which can be avoided if you don’t make careless mistakes, have good planning skills, and can manage your time wisely.

“interrupts or intrudes on others”

i don’t appear to have a screenshot of him doing this in 2, but he and daniil do have at least one conversation in which they keep interrupting each other. peak autism/adhd solidarity.

i do, however, have a screenshot example of him doing this to clara in pathologic classic

Haruspex: …Wait a second. If there was nothing but the great Bull, where did the stars and light come from? Changeling: Oh, don’t interrupt!

and as for intruding - khan feels that he does this frequently: intruding on him and capella at the station, intruding on him and notkin at the broken heart, and here he is intruding on kids at the nutshell:

We have so few places of our own - only a couple. And yet you feel the urge to impose yourself even here. Do you know what childhood is? It’s slavery. Herders treat their cattle better than parents treat their children. They lock us up like objects, mold us like statues, and still never take us remotely seriously.

he also intrudes on clara talking with block on day 11, either completely oblivious to the fact that he’s doing it or outright ignoring that he is.

“is often ‘on the go’“

i could say that this is one that is built into the way the game is organized, and it’s true! but his time spent with lara comes to mind. she’s not the only one to mention his restlessness, but i don’t keep screenshots of big vlad on hand so their day 1 dialogue is lost to the wind.

Aren’t you supposed to be terribly busy? I don’t understand why you keep coming. Or do you need my help again? I’ll wash your clothes. You’re filthy, like a chimney sweep. Revolting. While they dry, have some sleep.

“often fidgets […] or squirms in seat”

like with daniil’s body language, i don’t have any gifs to show to prove this. i’m really looking forward to seeing what idle animations he gets in the other two routes. for now i know that in the lucid dream, if you use flycam you can see him idling by swaying and rubbing his chin & that in other pantomimes he can be found constantly turning his head and looking around.

sleep problems

i don’t have the screen shot so just pretend that i do - he mentions this to the fellow traveler on, i think, day one when you go to the dead item shop. in either game, you can also only sleep for a maximum of six hours at a time, which is like..two hours less than the recommended amount, unless that’s changed.

little sense of danger & impulsivity

As usual, I act first and think later. I’ve made a panacea. But from what? What blood was that? Whose blood was that? To cure the Town, I’ll need to figure that out.

there’s actually no dialogue i can think of that addresses the danger of the situation he’s in - which is sort of the reason why i included it! though i am absolutely obsessed with classic artemy threatening grief, kingpin of the villains in town:

Bad Grief: That ain’t good! Got too soft a heart or something? Soft, eh… Well, can’t blame you. Haruspex: Got too hard of a bone structure? You watch it. I’ll break them in no time.

artemy has little to no problem offering to help daniil get ahold of organs and blood:

Bachelor: Exactly. I need tissues of a person who died of the Sand Plague. I need them today, right now! I’ve tried to get them at the cemetary, but failed miserably. The patrolmen are vigilantly watching over the dead. Haruspex: Would you like me to get you some? Bachelor: I’d reward you generously for that. Haruspex: Deal. I’ll do what I can, even though I still don’t have the right to.

‘even though i still don’t have the right to’ - he knows it’s illegal and could easily lose him reputation, but he jumps at the chance to do so. part of his route requires you being in constant danger, but later on there are options to tell daniil you won’t help him. this isn’t one of them.

in pathologic 2, you can also instigate fights with people by, to name a few: refusing to leave the house in the atrium where they have a person bound and gagged upstairs, not leaving barley the barber in grief’s lair, and picking the wrong dialogue option with the guys in the broken heart on day 11.

as referenced above, his impulsivity sometimes shows in the dialogue options you can choose. you can say things that clearly haven’t been thought through all the way. for example, this is what he says to clara bout her parents:

I wonder what you did to your old ones. There was someone gullible enough to adopt you?

and this is how she replies:

Clara: What? Why would you say that? I never even knew them. I’ve been an orphan for as long as I can remember. Artemy: I didn’t know. Right, that’s what I figured.

it’s not all that different from the sort of tactless comment a person with autism might make.

no motivation for tasks you are not interested in & hyperfixations

in pathologic 2, on day 3, daniil asks artemy to be his aide in developing a vaccine. artemy’s responses are all something dismissive and frequently quite rude. here’s the end of that conversation:

Bachelor: I will make the vaccine, but I can’t do it without you. All you need to do is be at hand and do as I say. I will take full responsibility for the situation. Haruspex: Perhaps I’ll drop by… if I have the time.

guess what never happens?

it’s understandable that the panacea is artemy’s main goal. what makes it stick out to me as a hyperfixation specifically is that, while a vaccine is daniil’s main goal, daniil manages to ask artemy about his progress with the panacea.

Bachelor: Anyway, how’s it going? Any progress?

the interest is never reciprocated.

emotional dysregulation & rejection sensitivity dysphoria

i personally think this is the most striking piece of evidence. every single perceived sleight can invoke a drastic reaction in artemy. just take day 3 for example - the perceived sleight here is the belief (based on no evidence) that daniil was snubbing him or trying to exclude him from the meeting:

Bachelor: Burakh. The situation is regretful. I just didn’t have time to warn you. Haruspex: This was ugly of you.

and then he proceeds to get into an argument with him. he can, in fact, get into snits with not just daniil, but with rubin and lara as well. i will not be taking sides in this, because who is right / who is wrong is not really the point, the point is how artemy responds to perceived sleights with increased emotional agitation.

when capella upsets him by telling him she’s taking the kids from under his care for their own protection, he can respond by comparing her to her horrible capitalist pig of a father:

You truly are your father’s daughter. Children always succeed their parents…

i can’t even remember what was said to him to get him to reply this, only that it was said to him by a teenager:

I’m a surgeon. Ever considered having your tongue removed?

he also holds onto murky’s repetitious “what is there about you to love? nothing. so i don’t.” and brings it up to her when she is infected with the sand plague on day 10. though it does bring the rather heartwarming line about murky having loved him from the start, my point remains that he has not been able to stop thinking about something murky has said that she has obviously already changed her mind about by this point in time in the game.

difficulties making & keeping friends

remember what i said about the interest in daniil’s vaccine not being reciprocated? yeah. friends, acquaintances, colleagues - they all kind of expect you to take an interest in their lives. this is where autism & adhd overlap, from my understanding - both can come with an inability to recognize social cues. in fact, i’m going to use the same example now that i used in my post about daniil (it is, after all, what inspired this ask):

Bachelor: From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

daniil thinks they’ve been having a normal conversation, but artemy hasn’t picked up on whatever social cues he’s been using. this could easily be on either one of them. though i will say, some of my easiest friendships as a person with autism have been with people who have adhd. which is why i’d suggest that daniil saying he’ll tell artemy about thanatica “the way i’d tell a close, intimate friend” is autism/adhd solidarity. despite initially not getting along, they are clearly able to communicate with each other.

i think the rest of this is really self-explanatory. despite being from the town in classic, artemy doesn’t actually appear to have any friends in it. could be a symptom of him having left much ealier (ten years ago as opposed to the five in pathologic 2), but in pathologic 2 his friendships are constantly under threat of spontaneous combustion. this day three conversation with lara sums it up nicely:

Lara: Ugh, whatever. Like it’s any of my business… Do whatever you want. Did you make peace with stakh? Artemy: Doesn’t look like it… Forget Stakh. I see now that I’m one step away from falling out with you. Why?

there’s a variety of reasons why his friendships are falling apart. but it occurs to me that there’s no mention of artemy communicating with his friends at all while he was gone, and maybe that’s contributing to it. this is not an attempt to pick sides (i think everybody’s wrong), i am just pointing this out.

adhd in adults: history of academic or career underachievement, relationship problems due to not completing tasks, chronic stress and worry over failure to accomplish goals, chronic and intense feelings of frustration / guilt / blame

artemy did not finish med school. classic has him described as a “vagrant scholar” traveling from town to town to learn instead of staying in the capital where he was sent (”always ‘on the go’” indeed). in pathologic 2 he simply states that he doesn’t have a degree and that he sucked at latin.

relationship problems mentioned under “making and keeping friendships”, but it should be noted that you can repair your friendships by completing a sidequest on day 3 to gather everyone together.

“chronic stress and worry over failure to accomplish goals” is sort of the entirety of pathologic 2. you could say it’s built into the game, but artemy does express a lot of stress over not knowing where to turn for answers, has bizarre prophetic dreams, and is plagued by… well, the plague taunting him for not being to save his bound. both when notkin gets sick on day 4 and when all of the children get sick on day 10, he can express an extreme amount of guilt for not having the ability to cure them.

i mentioned under ptsd that artemy has a tendency to be able to blame himself for his father’s death, and i think that fits under here as well. there’s also this:

I get anxious thinking about my kids… Are they faring all right in the Lair without me?

conclusion

i do not know if i have adhd myself and i am sure there are things i am missing, especially as i have not completed artemy’s route in classic yet or started clara’s. feel free to contribute to this, i would love to see others’ input!

#icarus.txt #icarus answers #artemy burakh #pathologic meta

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 3 years

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Okay. In the last couple of days, I’ve been reading through this old folder I have. It’s where I write stuff when I need to vent, so I just start a new Word document and write for a while and then save it. In the last little while, I’ve started occasionally writing some of those vents in Tumblr posts instead of in Word documents. But most of the most messed up ones still say in Word docs on my computer.

I found this file that I created on August 26, 2020. I know that was only a week or so after I first watched A Little Bit OCD by Jon Richardson – when I was still quite triggered by the material in that video. I already posted a little bit of what I wrote during those couple of weeks, but I’ve just found this other page or so worth of stuff that I also kind of want to post. If nothing else, because I wrote it in August 2020 and talked about how I’ll probably get really emotional whenever I get to the episode of The Russell Howard Hour with Jon Richardson as a guest. It’s been about eight months since then; that’s how long it took me to go through all the stuff I had on my list before that show. But I’m not just starting season two of The Russell Howard Hour, which is the season where that episode will happen, and I’m still pretty sure it’s going to make me unreasonably emotional. It may go some way toward explaining why I do realize I am getting way too emotionally invested in this stuff right now.

Anyway. Here’s what I wrote:

It’s 5 PM. I haven’t eaten since last night. That’s because all day, my roommate has been either in the kitchen, on the patio right outside the kitchen, or in the living room that’s next to the kitchen. Sometimes I have days when I just can’t be that close to other people. Usually if I wait long enough the kitchen and areas around it become free, but today that didn’t happen. So I went on Skipthedishes and ordered Subway. I ordered three sandwiches. Two can go in the fridge for later tonight/tomorrow. That’ll get me through for a bit, mean I can have a few meals that don’t have to be preceded by waiting for the kitchen and areas around it to be free for long enough to cook eggs and bring them up to my room to eat. It takes much less time to cook something substantial if I only have to heat it up.

When I got a text saying it would be here soon, I went downstairs to wait for the food. My roommate was in the kitchen cooking. I sat down on the steps and could hear him making noise, moving around. I looked around at the parts of the house where I never spend time (everywhere outside my bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen… and the latter two rooms I only spend the minimum time necessary there), and things weren’t right and it messed me up. Nothing was in its place. I froze. I sat down on the steps and I couldn’t move. I got a call from the delivery driver, who wanted to make sure he was in the right place. I answered the phone but couldn’t get the words out when I tried to talk to him. Eventually he just dropped the food on the front step and I heard the doorbell ring.

I managed to get up and get the food, but I froze again and sat down on the steps with it for several minutes. I finally managed to get up, put two sandwiches in the fridge, put another on a plate, and come back up to my room. Then I spent several minutes crying and then I came over to my desk to write this. My sandwich is on my bed but I haven’t opened it because the panic attack I had downstairs has drained my appetite.

I don’t want to have days when I can’t leave my bedroom. I don’t like it. My roommate is a nice guy. It’s not his fault. He had to walk around me to get upstairs while I was on the steps, and he asked if I was okay. I know he would help me if he could. I know he doesn’t mean to trap me in my room all day just by being in the main part of the house while I can’t be around people. I know he doesn’t mean to mess me up by putting things in different places or doing things that feel wrong to me but are not in any way objectively wrong.

Ever since I saw the A Little Bit OCD documentary a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Every bit of it affected me, but the part that really sticks in my mind is the bit where he went to see John Robins and Mark Olver and Russell Howard. Make no mistake, if I could afford to live by myself I absolutely would. If I had the money, I would get away from these people who make noise (a reasonable amount of noise, just not reasonable for me), who mess up the house, who exist in my space. I would move to Swindon and live as a hermit for six years. But I can’t afford to not share rent.

That part of the documentary just got to me and now I’m thinking about it again, as I monitor my heart rate that’s slowly coming back down and try to calm down enough to be hungry again. The look on Russell’s face when Jon said he used to sleep in his car to escape them. I have seen that look on so many people’s faces. Good people in my life who never wanted to hurt me and never knew they were hurting me and I never told them they were hurting me because what they were doing was just normal stuff and I was the one with the problem.

Obviously I know the whole situation in that documentary was a bit reality TV-ish, quite contrived and one could argue borderline exploitative. Obviously any conversations those ex-roommates would have of any importance on that subject would not and should not take place in front of television cameras. But it just rang so true for me, the way mental illness can do that to a relationship. Can drive one person into depression and hiding while the other person doesn’t even know they’re making it happen and would of course feel bad if they did know.

And it can destroy relationships. It’s destroyed some of mine. The guy I live with now has never been a close friend of mine, and that’s actually a saving grace because it means there isn’t a close relationship to destroy by my inability to share space with people. But this has destroyed relationships I’ve had in the past. Relationships with people I lived with, or just with people who’ve spent a lot of time with me. I can barely live with myself; I have to do so many things just to make my own presence bearable to me. When other people do not do those things, it messes me up. Of course I can’t stand living with most people. Of course most people can’t stand living with me.

I know I make jokes sometimes about Russell Howard and Jon Richardson being an ex-couple, because honestly, their whole saga sounds very very much like they’re a couple that broke up years ago and I find that amusing. But in reality, I know full well that you do not have to be a romantic couple to have a relationship go that way. My mental health issues have fucked up some of my romantic situations (and potential romantic situations), but they’ve fucked up far more of my friendships and family relationships. The whole saga of what seems to have happened between Jon and Russell is so personally familiar to me that I can’t watch that bit of the A Little Bit OCD documentary without crying (and I’ve tried several times now). Then I put on that episode of Catsdown where Russell showed up on Jon’s team and it cheers me up a bit, because honestly I find that to be genuinely inspirational. Something about the idea that it is possible to move past things and fix relationships that have been broken by mental health problems. I do have The Russell Howard Hour on my list of shows I want to watch at some point, and I’m pretty sure whenever I get to that cuddle therapy episode I’m going to cry for about three days straight.

Of course, mentioning couples brings me to a whole other question that I still don’t understand: How the fuck does Jon have a wife? I’ve always known that, if at some point I manage to get my shit together and get proper treatment and get my mental health in order, I could maybe manage to be in a long-term relationship if it were a situation in which my partner and I each had our bedrooms. But I couldn’t just do a normal and traditional relationship setup.

And then you add a kid. I’m almost thirty, of course I’ve thought about whether being a parent is something I could do. I’ve dedicated a huge amount of my life to working with kids and teenagers; I know that’s something I love to do. But honestly, I can’t imagine having a kid. It would be so irresponsible. I can’t imagine putting a kid in a situation in which if I had one of my days where I just can’t leave my fucking bedroom, that kid doesn’t get taken care of. And I’m so far away from imagining a time in which I don’t have days like that.

I watch that A Little Bit OCD documentary and I relate to so much of it and I wonder how the fuck Jon went from that to married with a kid in just a few years. Whatever the hell his secret is, I want to learn it. Anyway. I actually do feel a little more relaxed just for having written this. I don’t know. I’m starting to feel hungry again and I’m going to eat my fucking sandwich.

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blazingstar29 · 4 years

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I had an idea

Tony has an idea whilst high off of pain killers at University. He never realised it would be a reality.

Fluffy Drabble about Rhodey and Tony

----

1988

AUGUST 12th

12:22 AM

MIT DORMS

“Tony, I swear to god. Go to fucking sleep.”

“Don’t wanna, honey bear.”

Rhodey sighed, he had taken home a delirious, wisdom teeth-less-Tony a couple hours ago from the hospital. Turns out the teen has a very slow metabolism, and was still working through the anaesthetic and post op pain killers.

Currently he was sitting on the floor surrounded by construction paper that had endless equations.

“It’s twelve-thirty Tony, you’ve had a procedure and you need rest,” the boy pleaded his friend. Tony simply shook his head and wiped a sneaky bit of drool from the side of his mouth.

“Nah, working. Something, something real big,” he looked up to Rhodey with big doe eyes. His eyes shifted down again and quietly mumbles, “might even make dad proud.”

Rhodey sighed, that, that was heard to hear from young teen he shared a room with. The boy genius had vastly different upbringing than the older boy and it showed in his vulnerable moments of pain or drowsiness.

He decided to change tactics to try and entice him to sleep, “alright, tell me what this is about then. What’s got you so worked up?”

Tony instantly starts, “okay, so what if we had a way of mass producing clean energy? So like a big magnet, producing an electromagnetic field with nuclear fusion?”

Rhodey smiled, no offence to Tony, but something about pain meds made the kid sound insane. But, Tony was convinced, that if he could workout how to keep it running, he would crack the code and be able to make the final set of equations. Amongst other obstacles that is.

In the end, the only thing that got Tony to move, was his need to dispense his lunch. From which he was carried back to his bed, Rhodey careful not to step in any of the papers. Useful or not, when Tony came to his senses he would file them away carefully. The teen was probably suffering from some sort of untreated OCD.

Tony became very distressed when his routine changed or his things moved with out his knowledge. Rhodey always felt like he should talk to someone about it. When Tony felt like he was loosing control he would often go down to the dorm kitchen and categorise all the mugs and crockery. It’s an unexplainable urge he feels, and not one that is new .

But one night when he felt like he had nothing, he went down to the kitchen to find there was twenty seniors doing shots.

To say Tony lost his shit was an understatement. His thing, the thing that kept him grounded was unattainable. Out of reach and Tony was desperately clawing for a substitute. Rhodey recalls the distressing night as he lays Tony down. He came back to the room after his shift and found his friend surrounded by every single sock in the room organised beyond belief. Before he could come to his senses the teenager was hunting die every pen he could find.

It took a few moments before Rhodey could connect his brain to his mouth, he struggled to focus Tony’s attention which ended in a panic attack.It… wasn’t pretty. At one point a Sophomore came up to their door and yelled for them to shut up. Rhodey, all 5’6 of him, told the guy that if he didn’t lay off he’d kick his ass six ways from Sunday.

Rhodey stood back from rearranging the sheets. Climbing into bed he switched a dim lamp on and tried to salvage a decent nights sleep.

2007

MAY 19TH

2:19 PM

“So what does Obadiah think?”

“Publicity stunt, Honey Bear. That’s all he needs to think.” The two friends were observing the newly implemented Arc Reactor that was now powering Stark factories. “But I think this has potential far greater than keeping the hippies happy, I just gotta figure out what.”

Rhodey put an arm around the younger man’s shoulders, “what ever it is. It will be great.” He encouraged with a smile.

Whilst Tony may not remember, Rhodey keeps the memory like he experienced it yesterday. Putting his friend to bed after he rambled about something with an electromagnetic field, something that produced green energy. An idea both of them had scrapped, obviously, Tony did not. And now, that idea was a reality.

Tony Stark.

Merchant of Death.

A man who never gave up.

#marvel #tony stark #howard stark #james rhodes #fluff #bros #mit #Iron Man #arc reactor #fan fiction #ao3 #cross posted

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finding-hope-strength-courage · 3 years

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My Life With Anxiety #1 - 05/01/2021

*Warning Long Post!

Tonight I thought I’d write a post about my experience with anxiety during my life. This is obviously only my experience and anxiety is different for all who suffer with it.

It’s difficult to say when I began suffering with anxiety because I probably didn’t even know what it was or recognise the feelings I was having were caused by anxiety. As a young child - pre secondary school I don’t remember worrying particularly day to day but I think there were some signs if I was to try and really dig deep.

Something I do recall from being a young child was I did develop a fear of people dying from a young age after losing my mum. I’m unsure of my exact age but it would have been between the ages of 6-11 because my Granny sadly died shortly after my 11th birthday. I remember during the night if I woke and needed to go to the toilet on my way back I would stop for a few seconds and make sure I could hear my Granny breathing in her bed. I mean it sounds bizarre in my head now because I’m not actually sure what prompted this behaviour but I guess I felt I needed to check she was okay before I went back sleep - I never told her I did this. I guess you could say this is a form of anxiety - I was worried about something happening to her and clearly felt some responsibility for making sure she was okay.

Of course these behaviours don’t appear all that strange given my early life experiences. My experiences told me that people I love died and so I clearly knew this could happen. As I got older I’d say I maybe became more concerns with friendships and hated falling out with people or upsetting them. This was definitely true during secondary school and actually has never really changed as still to this day I worry far too much in case I’ve said something wrong or upset anyone! When there were friendship dilemmas between people I hated feeling like I needed to take a side (if it wasn’t me that was part of the fall out of course). I just wanted to please everyone and stay friends. This was difficult and so often I’d just remove myself from the situation and spend time alone - I’d sit somewhere alone and listen to music or go to the school library and do homework instead. This was better than conflict for me.

I did develop some anxiety around exams during school but this only really became noticable at the end of Year 10 I’d say. I think because there was extra pressure of GCSE coursework too it just got on top of me. I usually managed to get through the exams and actually would do better than I thought I had anyway! I always came out of any exam saying I’d done rubbish or probably failed, even if I thought I may have done okay (which wasn’t often). It was easier to tell myself I hadn’t done well because then if I hadn’t I wouldn’t be as disappointed. I got through my GCSEs and A Levels at school and did well for me, I mean I was never a straight A student but I put all my effort into revising and working hard. So I did well for me and got the grades I needed. I always found it frustrating that there were people who didn’t appear to work that hard but would still do so well. If I hadn’t have worked as hard as I did I’d have failed most subjects.

It’s difficult to talk about my anxiety without mentioned my OCD but I do want to write about this in a separate post because obviously it’s an anxiety disorder but I feel like I have general anxiety and OCD so they manifest in different ways and different times in my life. I first noticed OCD tendencies when I went to University. I became obsessed with worrying about leaving the light on in my room or making sure I’d locked the door. I would film myself turning out the lights and locking the door when I went home for the weekend so I could check if I was worried. I also was so worried about people leaving the hob on in the shared kitchen that when I knew they’d all gone out or to their rooms I’d go in and check. I’ll probably write about my struggles with OCD another time but feel it makes sense to mention it here because during that year at University that my Dad sadly and suddenly died.

I would say my Dad’s death was probably the event in my life that really set my anxiety off because although it was clearly there beforehand in various ways and the emergence of some OCD traits too, it was almost still under the surface and fairly manageable I’d say. After my Dad’s death I just felt anxious full stop, I think the suddenness of it all was just so scary and then the emptiness that he’d just gone. I’d always known people to get ill and die but because it just happened with no warning it just made realise that anything can happen in life. Obviously it taught me some good lessons too like how short life is and to make the most of every day etc and I do try to always do that regardless of my own struggles.

The months that followed my Dad’s death are difficult to remember that clearly now but I remember just feeling a bit lost and scared. It’s hard to explain now as it’s been nearly 10 years but I was just so worried. As the years went by I became more anxious of most things in life to be honest, but it didn’t actually stop me doing them. As in I managed to keep living and doing the things I enjoyed but just feeling anxious about them too. I studied for my degree with The Open University in the 3 years that followed my Dad’s death and this was brilliant for me. I had a hard time adjusting to University and had already decided to leave before my Dad died. Doing my degree from home worked perfectly for me, I didn’t need help being motivated to study and do the work as I have always loved learning so almost enjoyed it more reading textbooks and writing assignments. I guess I was in control of my studies abs study schedule. I realise many would find this way of studying difficult but it worked for me.

I was still anxious during these years. Driving became an issue I was always worried about doing something wrong and OCD quickly became a big issue with this (I will write about this another time). It’s difficult to remember exactly how things were back then as it’s been a few years but I know I was anxious and just scared I think of what might happen. Almost on edge the whole time ready just in case something went wrong in life.

I did take medication for my anxiety for nearly 5 years I think. It took me a long time to actually go to the doctors and do this but I did. It’s difficult to say whether it helped or not, I think it did in someways but not others. The worries were still there it didn’t fix my mind but I guess it helped it become more manageable at times. For me personally I wouldn’t go on medication again as I don’t feel it did enough for me but I know it’s different for everyone and for some people it helps so much. I decided to come off it before my Husband and I started trying for a baby. I did get withdrawal symptoms when I came off it, not in terms of my mental health feeling worse but more I felt physically not well. It was hard to actually say how I felt , I described it as kind of dizzy / wobbly and my head felt funny but not an actual headache. I was tired too but just didn’t feel great. Again it’s different for everyone but for me coming off them was tough because I absolutely hate feeling ill.

Since then my anxiety I would say has been okay in terms of I feel positive about it and although it’s never actually gone away I feel I’ve copied fairly well. Being pregnant was tough because I worried about every little thing but thankfully all was fine and I couldn’t be more grateful to have our little girl, she changed my life in the best way. I have a fear of hosptials in general, which I think stems from visiting my mum as a young child on ICU, so going into hospital to give birth was so scary even before it started! Becoming a new mum was obviously a massive learning curve as it is for anyone and I was worried about everything and probably still am!

I felt quite proud of myself (which is rare) for how I managed the first months becoming a mum but obviously then with the news of Coronavirus it definitely just made me so anxious. I was worried about it before most people even realised it was happening I think! I was premature in my fears compared to most I guess. I remember the first cases in the UK even though it was like less than 10 at that point!

I think for me having Anxiety, becoming a New Mum and then The Pandemic was obviously a recipe for me to become a bit overwhelmed with my worries. I don’t think I’ve really relaxed in nearly a year now since I first started hearing about the virus on the news. Despite this I actually think for me I’ve coped pretty well, unfortunately my OCD now is more about germs and washing my hands far too much whereas originally it started with checking things but I guess it’s my way of feeling like I’m doing what I can to keep me and my family safe. Being the kind of person I am I’ve made sure to follow the rules which I believe are incredibly important as I do believe we all need to do our bit and I get anxious knowing and seeing others breaking them but I know that’s life and people do have different views on things.

I’ve had to stop watching and reading the news at times because that is the worst thing for my anxiety. Seeing pictures of hosptials and reading figures terrifies me and also breaks my heart too. I do look sometimes when I feel able to without becoming overwhelmed by it. I do just find it so scary. I know other people who maybe don’t usually have anxiety feel just as scared by it all so I guess my feeling on this are justified. It’s a Global Pandemic I guess it’s understandable to be worried about it all.

I think the difference for me is that it’ll take me time to adjust back to how things were before. I’ve almost been grateful for the lockdowns and restrictions in some ways because then I feel I can follow them and keep safer but I guess then you get used to that and feel secure in your own bubble and way of doing things. When restrictions were lifted over the summer and into autumn we did do some things like some trips out to places for our little girl which was so lovely and seeing some family and friends too. Mostly outdoors because that’s where I’ve felt more comfortable but we did meet indoors with some people on a few occasions (when it was permitted) after a bit of pressure and feeling judged for still being worried and wanting to be more careful (or they would have seen it as over cautious). Some hurtful comments were made about my mental health which I won’t go into now but it’s affected me and I guess I’ve been seeing myself as not doing well enough or needing to be “fixed” since then - despite actually thinking I’ve copied pretty well with it all! It’s complicated and I won’t go into it now but the funny thing is when I feel judged it actually makes my anxiety worse for some reason? Like I then feel I need to work harder to not be anxious which makes it stronger.

I’m going to stop now but this is just a bit about my anxiety, there’s a lot more to it than just what’s written here. I know there are people out there who struggle more than I do and I do hope they have people to support and listen to them. For me I would love to be more open about it (I do have some people who I can be which I’m so grateful for) but once I feel judged for being a bit different I guess I then feel like I have to change who I am and hide part of myself if that makes sense. Then I feel awkward because I’m overly aware of my behaviour and what I say in case I come across anxious or they say something more about it.

I hope mental health and anxiety becomes better understood and less judged in the future. I know we’ve made a lot of progress on this since I was younger but I do think there’s still stigma out there and judgement and the view that it can just be fixed. I believe I will always have anxiety or be an anxious person but I hope to keep learning how to cope with it better and that I find ways so that it doesn’t limit me in life - that doesn’t mean it just disappears though.

Just some of my thoughts on the topic, probably a lot of waffle but I enjoy making sense of the thoughts in mind, goodnight world and stay safe.

** I should have mentioned that I have had counselling a few times over the years and I’ve always found this incredibly helpful and for me it’s offered a lot of support and allowed me to explore my feelings and life in more depth and understand and accept myself more.

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c-est-la-vie-82 · 4 years

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I feel so awful right now. Everybody I know on Facebook is posting about changing their diet to eat right and starting to work out and here I am crying because I can’t help ordering pizza yet again. I know I’ve got to get this under control. I want to SO bad. I want to be one of those people. I want to be healthy and start losing weight again. I know I’ve gained probably at least 10 lbs. since I was last weighed on the doctor’s scale 4 months ago. I’d already gained almost that much when I was last weighed in general.

I might or might not just say screw the next 5 days. Just say it doesn’t matter till the 1st. Then when I do get weighed and have a number I can just work my ass off to bring that number down. No more step, I’m going to do an actual workout video that makes me sweat, feel sick, and gasp for air. I don’t just want to lose anymore, I want to actually get in shape. Something I’m most definitely not. Granted, losing and lowering my blood sugar are still priority, but might as well kill all my birds with one stone.

I’m hoping once I have that number and am working out hard and know I’m burning all those calories that eating right will just fall in naturally. That it will feel good to be eating foods that up my feeling of general health and my energy. I’m also going to start drinking a lot more water. I’ve heard that’s good for keeping you feeling full as well as all of the other obvious benefits.

Basically I’m a lazy person that wants to learn to work hard. A and I had a conversation the other day about pushing one’s self to reach their full potential. That potential is different for everyone and there are some things out of some people’s reach. Just because one person can push themselves to do a certain thing doesn’t mean another person can reach equally as high. But I’m simply not reaching anymore. I keep making excuse after excuse for myself. I’m not the strong person I used to be and that has been entirely by my own hand.

Since the kids are older and can take care of themselves and do more around the house, I find myself doing less and less. I make plans (like cleaning my room) and I’ll half ass that for a day or two taking breaks after every tiny bit and then all of a sudden I “just need a day off.” This has nothing to do with my mental illness anymore. This is just plain laziness. I’m starting to use my mental illness as a crutch to make excuses for myself. I am much more capable than what I am pushing myself to be and I need to get over it.

Even if I do say screw the next few days. The 1st of the month is coming up in no time and that gives my OCD an excuse to kick in as well. I get my teeth cleaned that day and I’m also going to head in to get myself weighed. Gonna get all the bad news out of the way so then I can start pushing forward.

I decided against getting my A1C done before next May when the doctor was going to do it again. There have been things like the kid’s birthdays and my birthday that would throw off the results and make it out to be even higher than it otherwise would be. Also, that will give me ample time to get my shit together and maybe, just maybe by then I’ll come out ok. It’s in the back of my mind, as it should be, but I’m just not going to be able to allow myself to dwell on it.

Soon, I shall be fighting the good fight and by god, I’m going to win!

Such is life.

#Vent Post #Health #Forward Thinking #Goals #Mental Illness #OCD #Prediabetic Worries #One Day At A Time #Tomorrow Is A New Day

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madd-information · 5 years

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Maladaptive Daydreaming: Tic Toc Breakdown

A recent post on Tic Tok got some attention. I’ve transcribed the videos here to make some comments on them and provide some additional information. Here are the relevant bits, full transcription below.

“Maladaptive Daydreaming is when you daydream so intensely that you talk to yourself or you act out scenarios by yourself. It's not like psychosis, you're not seeing things, it's daydreaming out loud. Like you're letting your daydream out. And some people have severe maladaptive daydreaming, that's when they do those things in public and kinda don't realize they're doing it.”

MD is not “daydreaming out loud”, movement is not even a requirement. It is very common among us, however, about 21% of MDers don’t have any movement associated with their daydreaming behavior. Severe MD is when more than one area of life functioning is impaired by clinically significant distress or dysfunction stemming from the daydreaming behavior. It makes no difference if it happens publicly or if the MDer realizes they are doing it. MD is not like psychosis, she’s on point there.

“Maladaptive Daydreaming, itself, is not a disorder but it is a trait of quite a few different mental disorders and could be a trait of someone on the spectrum. But there are creative and healthy ways to deal with this… if you make characters and story lines in your head cosplay them. Even if you put it on private and it's just for you turning what you've created into something tangible. People like this are so creative, so you guys are good at writing, could do scripts, skits, like TV shows, plays, like novels, incredible things!”

A little more murky. MD is not an officially recognized disorder, this is true. It will take many more years of study to gather enough evidence that MD is a unique disorder, if, indeed, it is. MD researchers are pursuing MD as a possible disorder in their studies and have developed reliable measures for it, here is a link to the MD [proposed] diagnostic criteria.

MD is a construct that stands alone, though it may be closely related to other constructs. Excessive or vivid daydreaming is a trait found in many disorders, many of these are not MD. This seems to be a matter of not distinguishing other forms of fantasy from MD.

There is not, yet, any research on MDs relationship to ASD. If they experience MD at higher rates than the general population is unknown.

As for the ‘healthy ways to deal’, recent research suggests that MDers are less creative than both normal daydreamers and non-disordered immersive daydreamers. This is because we don’t make anything from our fantasies in reality. Giving yourself a creative outlet is good advice, even, as she says, if you never share it, the act of making fantasies tangible is a good way to engage in reality in a safe and artistic way. I do think there is an underlying misconception here though; that MDers are naturally good story tellers. That’s just not how MD works, fantasies do not play out like readable scripts, they are often repetitive and derivative and impossible to make sense of or turn into anything readable.

Writing is a wonderful skill, and an absolutely accessible one. If writing interests you, or if you just want to get things out of your head, or if you think it will be therapeutic, for any reason! Do it! Don’t be upset if you suck at first because your’e “supposed to be a naturally good story teller”, you’re not, and sucking at something is just the first step to being kinda good at something, keep at it.

“So, it's not considered a disorder but there is like the lighter form of it... just when you're by yourself sometimes when you're bored, you're not doing anything, you just start imagining things, and do it out loud. And then there's the severe which can be unhealthy because some people create like whole fictitious worlds and characters that they form friendships with and fall in love with and they would rather spend their time by themselves, like, locked up in their room or their house than actually go out and interact with real people in the real world. And that is when it can get tied in with OCD, but it's not a disorder that's in the DSM.”

I think what the underlying problem in these videos is that OP doesn’t seem to be making a distinction between IMers and MDers. IM is not the “light form” of MD. Maladaptive Daydreamers are a subset of Immersive Daydreamers. Immersive daydreaming is not pathological. MD is always, in every case, unhealthy or negative for the daydreamer in some way. That is the definition of MD. If it is not then that person is not an MDer. And, again, the ‘out loud’ part is not true for many. She does tap into some reasons for MD distress/dysfunction, preferring fantasy to real world responsibilities (being ‘locked up in their room’) is a common experience for MDers.

Research does show a link with OCD, though it’s unclear if MD is (in at least some cases) an OCD spectrum disorder. It is likely a behavioral addiction and is almost certainly a disordered form of dissociative absorption. She’s not wrong here, just making OCD sound a little more at the forefront than it might actually be.

“I went about those first videos, I feel like, completely wrong because maladaptive daydreaming isn't a healthy thing to do and I went about it in a way of not wanting people who did this to call themselves weird. Because if you are the type of person that mouths and gestures in front of people they're already going to do that for you.”

Her final video makes it more clear that she was trying to be more reassuring than informative and perhaps didn’t present what she had to say in a way that was appropriate. She just didn’t want MDers to get down on themselves, so, thanks for that.

Full transcriptions below:

Video 1: If you do this now you know it has a name.

So I'm willing to bet that a lot of you never heard of this and a lot of you might do this so I wanted to talk about it so you'll know you aren't that weird. I mean, just, you're not weird. So I've done this thing my whole life that I thought everybody did until about two or three years ago when I started asking people that I was very very comfortable with, like, do you do this and they were all like "No?"

And that thing is Maladaptive Daydreaming. So it is going to sound really weird for the people who don't do this but Maladaptive Daydreaming is when you daydream so intensely that you like talk to yourself or you act out scenarios by yourself. It's not like psychosis, you're not seeing things, it's daydreaming out loud. Like you're letting your daydream out. And some people have severe maladaptive daydreaming, that's when they do those things in public and kinda don't realize they're doing it. But now, if you do that, now you know that it has a name and it's not weird, you're just creative. It's cool.

Video 2: Maladaptive Daydreaming again

So let's talk more about Maladaptive Daydreaming because I never thought that so many people would say that they do this and it's really cool because now you guys know you aren't alone and it has a name.

So Maladaptive Daydreaming, itself, is not a disorder but it is a trait of quite a few different mental disorders and, I found out in the comments, could be a trait of someone on the spectrum. But there are creative and healthy ways to deal with this or like find a way to make, what I would believe would be really cool is to make it tangible, right? So, this [Tictok?] is a wonderful outlet for that, if you make characters and story lines in your head cosplay them. Even if you put it on private and it's just for you turning what you've created into something tangible. People like this are so creative, so you guys are good at writing, could do scripts, skits, like TV shows, plays, like novels, incredible things!

Video 3: Pt2 Still doesn't mean you're weird.

I wanted to do a little more about Maladaptive Daydreaming because there's actually a bunch more to it than what I could get out in the last video and it can get to an unhealthy place. So, it's not considered a disorder but there is like the lighter form of it, which is like what I would do like when, just when you're by yourself sometimes when you're like bored, you're not doing anything, you just start imagining things, and do it out loud.

And then there's the severe which can be unhealthy because some people create like whole fictitious worlds and characters that they form friendships with and fall in love with and they would rather spend their time by themselves, like, locked up in their room or their house than like actually go out and interact with real people in the real world. And that is when it can get tied in with OCD, but it's not a disorder that's in the DSM so, I don't know, if you want to know more let me know.

Video 4:Pt 3 I'm sorry

So I'm doing thing backwards because I should have made the captions in my maladaptive daydreaming videos, like, not that. Like, I went about those first videos, I feel like, completely wrong because, it's, maladaptive daydreaming isn't a healthy thing to do and I just went about it in a way of not wanting people who did this to call themselves weird. Because if you are the type of person that mouths and gestures in front of people they're already going to do that for you. And I, so I went about it wrong, it's not that you're weird but it isn't a healthy thing to do and if it's to a point, guys, where, like, you would rather live in this place that you've created it may be tied in with OCD, which is just like that need to have things a certain way that you would rather live in this place that you've created. If your parents aren't understanding this YouTube it, there's lots of stuff on there guys

#maladaptive daydreaming #actuallymadd

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zombutt · 5 years

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Your military based OCs inspire me to want to make one, but I'm nervous about that kind of stuff being inaccurate about facts D: How do you do it?

Hello!!Oh man, thank yoU ❤️. And YES, join the heist!I will put it under read more; since I wanna answer your question best to my ability, a.k.a extensively.

OKAY, SO, to answer your question: I’d gone through the same ordeal and it can be a struggle. I didn’t know much about the military except for the scarce tidbits you can find online, but, there are few ways you can educate yourself in that aspect:First of all, the very basics. What nationality your OC is, where will they serve, what were they like growing up and what made them join, etc; it might seem trivial at first, but trust me, it’s important.What I suggest doing is, if your OC happens to be, say, British, you can search up reputable British authors (preferably former soldiers or SoO) and pick books specifically describing combat maneuvers. Keep in mind, however, that those are largely made up scenarios inspired by real events; still, they provide valuable insight as to how specific groups operate (a bit of a hit or miss that one, but it’s better than nothing).Then there are authors, who, given their broad knowledge and experience, pile it all up and provide you a guide of sorts. Usually, there’s a thorough description of the inner structure, chain of command, the history behind the unit and the reason for its formation, preferred weapons and equipment, the selection process, and so on. I find these to be immeasurably valuable, especially once you are satisfied with your initial draft.Therefore; if you have an idea already in mind, go with it and then search up the bits and pieces of information online before you supplement it with additional literature.If you want to come up with a soldier from the eastern part of Europe, books detailing the Russian army will do for the most part (the post-soviet countries that is; the military structure’s been largely untouched since that period). The writers/titles I can suggest on top of my mind are:Supervivencia - “CCCP Red Army Special Forces Spetsnaz”Viktor Suvorov - “Spetsnaz”Mark Galeotti - “Spetsnaz - Russia’s Special Forces”William H. Burgess - “Inside Spetsnaz: Soviet Special Operations”For British SAS, I’ve found John Wiseman’s “The SAS Survival Handbook” to be of great use (he has a really extensive bibliography for that very purpose tbf)If we’re talking about hired guns, a.k.a Soldiers of Fortune and all corporate manners of mercs, my two hot takes:Peter W. Singer - “The Private Military Industry and Iraq: What have we learned and where to next?”Christop Kinsey - “Corporate Soldiers and International Security, The Rise of Private Military Companies (2006)”The third option, which can be either a very frustrating experience or a goldmine; join forums where retired soldiers and vets offer their fair share of experience.If you do, keep in mind that people who join these are folks aspiring to become recruits one day; so having me prep a thread in there and explain as to why I did was met with various reactions at the time. Few members seemed weirded out, while others were delighted to see I wanted to be precise in my fiction and were very eager to help. I have compiled a massive doc for personal use thanks to’em, and the experience altogether was very satisfying; everyone was super kind and pleasant to deal with. Lastly; I can offer a bit of a small trivia that might help get you started:- There is a cultural gap between East and West, and that, too, affects the military structure and people’s view on it. I find West to be extremely formal, as they treat the army as a separate way of life. It’s a completely different take in the East; the army is actually viewed favorably upon (same applies to Poland, though we’re right in the center we used to be part of the Soviet Union. You could say we have this weird mixture of both mindsets intertwined together).

Oddly enough, this also seems to affect how the soldiers themselves tend to behave? It’s a weird statement, I know, but I happen to see Russian/Ukrainian/Polish soldiers much more easy-going and open to discuss the cons and pros behind their job. Westerners usually skip the subject altogether or give very vague answers (especially if they’re part SoF)- Not every special force soldier is a black belt.CQC (Close Quarter Combat) adds up to around 25-36 hours per the whole training course, therefore it boils down to pure essentials and bare grind. Soldiers are taught how to tackle down their opponent quickly and efficiently; it’s all about speed. There’s no such thing as self-defense techniques; that’s the kind of unrealistic horseshit you get from Hollywood movies. Additionally, there are no secret techniques regarding hand-to-hand combat. Krav Maga, despite the popular opinion, is not that special. It’s neither good nor bad, but nothing sets it apart. If you happen to get a hold of a SoF, they will admit that the best techniques stem from… MMA.

I’m dead serious; hear me out.MMA, in all fairness, is a system that compiles the best moves of all available techniques out there. A combination of MMA and BJJ (especially the latter) seems to be favored by a wide variety of Western forces due to its effectiveness. As far as you are concerned, you want to tackle your opponent down the moment you see them (speaking strictly of unarmed combat) - render them vulnerable. For some cool trivia; look up the involvement of Gracie Brothers and Delta Force (and the logos for both; Delta Operators and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu School )Keeping that in mind, it’s worth noting that CQC can be referred to combat that takes place at 100 meters or less; so gunfights are in!- Special Operation Forces are very, VERY quirky people! I noticed everyone has this belief that operators tend to be serious, no-nonsense people that fear nothing and no one.Let me tell you, that’s an exaggerated statement. During my time at the forums, I’ve met a handful of people that claimed to be SoF and few even provided actual proof. Regardless, some of them asked me very throughout questions about the nature of my fic (good morning I want to RP a realistic soldier, huge fan thanx) and apologized in advance in case I found all the attention overwhelming. I asked whether or not a trait like that is common amongst their colleagues, to which they replied that it depends on the person more or less, but it’s not an isolated occurrence! Normally you want to figure out your surroundings and adjust well enough, adapt so to speak; if you can learn something new, they’re all in for it - it may come in handy sooner or later. And they really do grasp stuff quick, fuck me.In general, they are polite, quiet and laid back people. There were one or two cases of somewhat “arrogant” fellows I’ve had to deal with, but it was nothing too drastic IMO.- Soldiers who claim to fear nothing and no one. Doesn’t happen; unrealistic af. In fact, there was this one interview, where a Blackwater executive admitted to having turned down so many potential employees exactly because of that. A man who thinks himself fearless is not only delusional but becomes a liability to himself and his own unit. In fact, most recruitment officers are in favor of hiring already married soldiers; these men will always take fewer risks and make for a more compelling fighting force in the end.- Whether an ordinary ground troop or all-out skilled SoF, no man can singlehandedly cause havoc or prevent it. Another Hollywood trope so to speak; one-man army. It simply doesn’t happen.

-RPing/writing about soldiers includes, besides occasional gunfights, figuring out basic medical terminology and educating yourself about respective procedures for each sustained injury.- SoF soldiers usually excel at two roles; a single special forces operator can be both a remarkable marksman and a field medic.- Humor is essential - it helps elevate pressure in between skirmishes.

- PTSD doesn’t always boil down to sheer anxiety and sleep insomnia. A PTSD can well enough turn into an OCD of sorts; looking out of a window for hours on end despite having no reason to do so, counting your possessions, hoarding objects of no importance. It can be very personal or right at your face- Some individuals find themselves unable to retire early; the bond between them and their unit, the belief of doing something good (or of putting themselves to better use out there) and constant adrenaline rush are too appealing of an option to refuse. IMO it’s completely normal if you consider the following: those people had worked together for a couple of months and under extremely hazardous circumstances.

Danger brings people together, it’s only natural; all of you want to survive and help one another while doing so, having formed a prior bond.

All in all, everyone’s different and everything can influence your OC’s choices and decisions, hence why I feel having come up with their backstory, such as nationality and alike, shortens the process significantly; you know where to look at and for what.

Hope you’ve found my lil wall of text useful! In case you’re in need of literature for that exact purpose, feel free to shoot me a message!

#Hello my name is Jasmine #welcome to my TED talk #Anonymous

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genoshaisforlovers · 5 years

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Reproductive health has become one of the major political topics of our time and I see many feminists, usually referred to as "white feminists" and "TERFs" who are bewildered at the fact that old men don't understand how ridiculous it seems that they are making life and death impacting laws over specific body parts that they don't even have.

I understand the logic behind this but let me explain how these kinds of things work

If you have a uterus can get your period try to imagine you don't. You don't have to try to imagine you have penis, simply try to imagine if you only about menstruation as well as the average guy and then imagine if someone explained it to you

For one week every month your hormone levels will drop causing the lining of one of your organs to be shed and for that entire week it will come out of your genitals along with a constant flow of blood. Sometimes working lining sticks together in a blood clot and you are constantly passing them at different sizes. Gross but it actually seems much harder when you factor in the effect hormones and blood loss has on someone. Cramping, headaches, nausea, diarrhea, anemia, insomnia, and those are just the most common symptoms people have.

And as soon as it stops your body heals itself in the best way I possibly can for you to give birth to a child and if you don't get pregnant be doing it again next month. Adding to the frustration is has physically you also live in a world where people judge you as abnormal to a point that it will limit how successful you'll be in every aspect of your life. It's so shameful that you do everything you possibly can to hide it from everyone.

You hide your tampons, freak out over a little bit of blood on your pants, make it look like blue Gatorade on commercials so most people grow up thinking all those pads were for people who were incontinent.

Yes, it would be great if we had equality but we don't. For whatever reasons the people who can grow a working penis are in charge. You simply have to try harder. And from most men's perspectives actually have a little bit of involuntary privilege already because menstruation is kept in whispers and it's created a culture where because women are looked down upon because of things like having a uterus people pamper them. Women have an excuse to get out of anything and the only way to prove it to a man would be to put the two of you in a sexual situation. Life is generally easier for women because they may have to pay for tampons and whatever else their insurance doesn't cover but they are constantly getting free meals and there'll always be some guy willing to give her anything else she needs. Not that that's okay; that women shouldn't depend on living off of gifts from men even if we all agree on that there's nothing to do about it right this second. Men get more jobs so they can support themselves and the females in their life. Society can't just simply stop until things are figured out and wait for the right people to be in office, it would hurt women as much as men.

I know that this is probably a little hard to admit to but at least to admit to yourself, you can understand how men could feel the way they do and simply be unable to understand everything. You can understand because it's exactly the same way you feel toward disabled people.

Right?

You don't not like disabled people. You know disabled people, some in your family, you broke a leg and spent one summer in a wheelchair so you get it. In fact, you have allergies or "a bit of OCD." Of course you don't know what it's like to be in a disabled body but it's not completely foreign and not even all disabled people are the same so even if you are disabled you can't claim to know what everyone's problems are.

It's not like disabled people have to keep their disability hidden. Everyone knows that there are disabled people and aside from a few crazy people everyone usually tries to help them. People have to use wheelchairs or something obviously have no way to keep that hidden and that sucks but there are also a lot of disabled people who have things you can't see, like their disability is invisible, so they never have to worry about hiding anything because no one's going to really know how much they are suffering just by looking at them. Besides, you know what pain is and we are all human so no one can insist that you couldn't comprehend it because people are people and pain is pain.

And society already does a lot to help disabled people. There is legislation protecting them which was created by people who had no idea what they were talking about, kind of like with abortion legislation, but that legislation is changed all the time even if the only people who get to change it are more people that have no experience with the it.

And they get to stay home. They get to choose not work. They get to have privileges like their own bathroom stall and we all know how comfortable everyone is with who uses which toilet. They even get their own parking spaces but the spaces are right in the front and if anything happened more than often someone would see and do something because it's not like they live in a world cultured by bigotry toward people whose bodies don't work the right way.

And, and, they do get things for free unlike the free things men give women. They can get free meals without feeling degraded and it must be relatively easy to get these males and then shortly people would get at least one for each day of the week. And the lives of disabled people are important so there are definitely a lot of checks and balances in place to keep all this going smoothly. And people are doing it; I'm sure someone in my city is doing it. Housing is also free and it should go just as easily as the meals. Disabled people can get money for rent or free rent in a group home which normal people pay for. It's the normal people of all genders and sexualities to equally support disabled people who were born into a world where society simply wasn't structured to accommodate people like them. Disabled people do get paid less, like literally as low as $0.22 an hour in America, but they also have to work less and of course it would be impossible to live off of such little money and work more, you would never break even let alone survive. So it's like disabled people are all required to be completely dependent on normal people was that they want to or not. And there's nothing to feel ashamed for for feeling normal; normal is just simply regular, it just means like, the average. Like the degree that society deems acceptable.

Oh, and, not everyone is born disabled. A lot of people aren't disabled until they are adults, and there's not many people living with genetic mutations resulting in disability because they all die pretty quickly which isn't so bad because it's really just putting them out of their misery. It honestly must feel like kind of a relief to the people around when they do die, having to take care of someone like that is really sad. Sometimes families do some horrible things but it can't be that many more disabled children that are murdered in Third World countries like England. Obviously there are some people that aren't going to want to have a disabled child or friend or partner but everyone loves their children and their nice people like you out there and no one has sexual hangups on prevailing social bigotry so it's completely fine.

Don't forget they also get really great healthcare like in Canada or Australia which you don't know all the particulars about, even if you are Canadian or Australian because who really looks into the laws affecting people that aren't like them? And it may be just normal people who have ever been in charge of or changed those laws but people are better than they used to be. People aren't that ignorant or hateful. No one would ignore like, and entire genocide of disabled people aside from the one that happened last year in yet another Third World country, Japan.

And since we are on dark things let me mention everyone has to deal with violence and rape, it can't possibly be that much worse for anyone who is disabled let alone GSM. Bigotry toward disabled people is not so embedded in our culture that assault and rape statistics would be in the 80–90s regardless of whether the person was white or not or a man or not. And you are sure it's not so much of a problem that given how ingrained this bigotry is that the only social identify they can identity as is disabled, that such a low bar with their race, their gender, their sexuality; nothing could be piled on that could make their likelihood of a happy life let alone survive any worse. But they could be so disassociated in society that disabled people (or is it people with disabilities? I can't remember if so whatever) are not seen as human. That raping a disabled person was the legal equivalent to having sex with an animal in some American states

things really aren't that bad unless you live in a bad place. Like, what? Eugenics is still illegal anywhere normal. It was only until three years ago that it became illegal to forcibly sterilize prisoners in California

BTW, your cities pride parade was handicap accessible because you saw handicap so they could obviously get in somehow and if they could get in they could obviously get in and do everything else

BTW part 2, your tweet or post about how not at the women's March, a trump protest, BLM event, wasn't meant for them. It wasn't meant for disabled people. When I didn't mention disability or disabled people I wasn't saying that they deserve what they get, I'm just saying that this particular thing you said wasn't about them. Unless you specifically say it's about them then nothing is about them. It is going to be dealt with, separately. Surely there must be someone helping anyway, who wouldn't help them? More people will help but they are busy with issues that they are a little more familiar about because

like that ugly is an incredibly ableist term given that disabled people had to wear a sign around her neck that said "ugly" because to acknowledge that means you would have to stop saying normal words, words you didn't even know were offensive and that everyone says them and you haven't heard anyone complain about before. It would be inconvenient. Not that disabled people are an inconvenience, this isn't about them. None of this is about them.

One more thing: I get irony but also satire

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transgenderteensurvivalguide · 5 years

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help! urgent! this is a serious cry for help, my mom has blocked basically every website on my phone including yours, i recently came out to her and she is very unsupportive. makes me dress extra fem and won’t even let me trim my hair. when i see a female with shorter hair in public i’ll always say “oo i love her hair” and my mom just says no. my dysphoria has been very bad recently and i was wondering if you had any tips to help me, but without links as i cant visit any websites including yours

Kii says:

Here are two posts from our transmasculine resources, but I linked to reblogs of them, so my personal blog is the origin site, not TTSG.

Lee says:

Since you said “i cant visit any websites including yours” it’s probably easier if I just copy the text of the posts here bc I’m assuming there’s a chance that reblogging our post to Kii’s blog might not get around the block if she’s blocked all Tumblr urls and not just our blog specifically.

You may be able to see our blog if you go to the public library and use one of their computers, but here it is in case you can’t

We get a lot of questions asking how to get short hair, so I’ve gathered some info that may help you in your quest to chop off your long hair and finally be free!

Take baby steps:

First cut it to just below shoulder length, then after a month or two to chin length.

After a month or two of that, say it’s inconvenient because you can’t tie it back with a hairband because it’s in-between long and short and you’ve been enjoying having less hair to deal with and get a feminine “pixie cut”.

Then just progressively got it cut shorter and shorter each time you go for a haircut.

Reasons and excuses to convince your parents to let you get it cut:

Short hair is easier to maintain and take care of! If you’re disabled or mentally ill this is a real bonus to having short hair.

Other ‘girls’ you know have short hair (if you’re closeted). If any of your friends who are girls (or who your parents think are girls) have short hair, point them out to your parents.

Celebrities who are women/girls have short hair. Find pictures of the celebrities that have short hair in the style that you want and ask your parents to get that haircut.

It’s hot out in the summer and short hair would keep you cool and or/ exercising makes your head/hair gross/sweaty.

You want to try the style for the summer and “grow it back if you don’t like it” (ie pretend the summer is a trial run and if you don’t like it you can start growing it back for school).

You want to swim/do sports and short hair would keep it out of your face. You could claim short hair will make you faster under a swim cap because you won’t have the bun and the weight or that it’s hard to keep all your hair inside the cap.

It looks cute/pretty and is fashionable and you want to try a change of hairstyle.

You’re tired of dealing with having long hair as it always gets stuck to/in things.

You want to keep it out of your face/or stop it from touching your face. If you have sensory issues, you could say it’s related to that.

It’ll make your showers quicker which is good for the environment, and you’ll use less hair product and it’ll save you time getting ready in the morning.

If you have OCD or trich, you could say you want it shorter so you won’t pull at your hair as often or you think it’d help reduce the urge to pull at your hair.

You have gum/glue in your hair. Stick some gum or glue in your hair, a bit closer to the end than you want the length to be when it’s cut. Say that it was done by accident (maybe you fell asleep chewing it) and then hopefully you can get it cut or have an excuse to cut it yourself.

You could say you’re experimenting, or it’s just part of being a “Rebellious teenager” if you think they’d allow it to happen if it’s part of a so-called phase and not permanent.

You think you’d look better with short hair/you think you’d be happier and more comfortable with short hair.

Short hair will help you pass better which can be important for your mental health and physical safety, and if you change your mind you can always let it grow out again.

It doesn’t matter what kind of face you have, anyone can rock short hair. The majority of cis guys have short hair. So does that mean every single one has the same type of face? Nah! Some of them must have round faces too. Nobody says anything about having the right shape of face to them, they just get their hair cut short automatically. Sure, some haircuts may be more flattering than others, but short hair can look good on anybody.

Say you’ll pay for the haircut yourself, and you’re X years old now and your body and your hair is your own responsibility, and nobody can make choices on what you want to do with your own body for you.

“I’m growing up and I think I should be able to decide how my hair is cut and styled. I think I can handle the responsibility of making my own decisions about my appearance.

Say you want to donate your hair to an organization like Wigs for Kids or something, and they prefer longer lengths of hair to make longer hair wigs for the kids, and you’re willing to have your hair cut short for a good cause and you’ve been thinking of trying a new style anyway

Act now and ask for forgiveness later:

You could cut your hair sort of short with a pair of scissors, like I did, just a few inches longer than you’d like it to end up. If you watch YouTube tutorials on how to cut hair, it might go better. Or ask a friend for their help.

Then go to the barber shop or hair salon if it didn’t turn out satisfactory (get a ride from a friend, bike, uber, lyft, or walk) and say you usually have short hair but you didn’t get it cut for a while so you let a friend cut it on a dare and now it’s messed up so you need a trim to fix it.

You can show the barber/person cutting your hair a picture of what you want it to look like, and say it usually looks like that.

You will need to have money to pay for your haircut, so check out the How to save money post.

You also should be confident that your parents will not hurt you when they found out you’ve cut it short. But once you’ve cut it short, they can’t magically make it long again so if they won’t react dangerously, it’s worth a try if you can’t convince them.

Helpful links:

Short Haircuts and the Barber Shop

Pos and cons of cutting your hair yourself

A website you can look at hairstyles on

Look at people’s hairstyles on trans selfie blogs for ideas

Gender neutral hairstyles

Get the Perfect Haircut: How to Talk to Your Barber

How to speak hairdresser

Best haircut hairstyle tips

FTM Hairstyle Guide: Tips and Inspiration

Four Great Haircuts for Trans Masc/FTMs

Haircut anxiety

Hair tattoo designs

Anything with one side shaved like this is popular in the lgbt community

15 Best Black Man Haircuts / 27 Hairstyles For Black Men / 22 Haircuts for Black Men

Can I pass with curly hair?

@ftmhaircuts

You can also look at people’s selfies on blogs like @brownandtrans for ideas

Here are two asks that have been answered about masculine long hair before, along with some other links:

On Being a Longhair

Caring for Men’s Long Hair

Long Hairstyles for Black Men

How To Grow Your Hair Out

It’s easier to look masculine with long hair if you’re on T, if you’re pre-T then having long hair will make it harder to pass.

5 Basic Tips for Healthy Dreadlocks

16 Terrific Long Hairstyles For Black Men

#kii says #mother m #caps #Anonymous #Lee says #transgenderteensurvivalguide #trans #transgender

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