My Face Is Having Uncontrollable Spasms. Great. It Hurts Really, Really, Really Bad.

if you feel like your bipolar doesnt present in the same way as other people’s its okay. 

if you feel like you dont relate to other people with bipolar disorder its okay.

if you feel like you dont experience symptoms that you “should” or you do experience symptoms that you “shouldnt” its okay.

youre not secretly faking. 

bipolar disorder is a complex mental illness that wont look the same on everyone. whatever it looks like on you is a normal way for bipolar disorder to look. you’re valid and loved and welcome in our community. 

Reminder: Spring is coming so take the time now to update your mania crisis plan

OP what.is.mental.illness [Instagram]

Every person need to be taught disability history

Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.

Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”

Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.

Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.

Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.

Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”

Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.

Teach about us.

As it was requested by quite a few people, I made a Venn Diagram showing the overlapping symptoms of ADHD and PTSD. I really hope this helps!

( click here for other diagrams )

Pals, I’m gonna tell you one of those hard truths, and I hope that you can read this and think about it in the spirit in which it’s intended.

The vast majority of you do not have “triggers”, you have “squicks”. If you learn the difference, I promise you will be happier and healthier, and you will feel much MUCH less as if all media is attempting to personally attack and traumatize you. 

It is ABSOLUTELY LEGIT to dislike something in a piece of media, or to feel disgusted and revolted by it, or to have an aversion to it for any reason and to any degree. That’s normal! That’s absolutely normal, and if that has happened to you, then you are normal too.

But… Words matter. Words have power. There is a difference between “disgust” and “trauma response” – if a person without PTSD or other forms of trauma calls something that disgusts them a “trigger”, they are giving that thing undue and dangerous power over them. You do not have to legitimize your disgust, because your feelings are already valid. But saying “this triggers me” if it doesn’t actually trigger you in the clinical definition means that you are voluntarily giving up some of your own power and agency to the thing you dislike. It means that you are allowing the thing to have a disproportionate impact on your life, that you are giving it power to affect you and get under your skin and stay there. You are building it up into something much more terrifying and monstrous and serious than it deserves to be. Calling it a “squick” makes you bigger than the thing that’s grossing you out – it makes the gross thing into something that you can have power over, that you can vanquish and reject and entirely discard from your life according to your own whimsy. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term “squick”, it’s something you don’t like which causes that icky squirmy “ew! no thanks!” feeling. Here’s the Fanlore page for more detail.)

We live in a society that wants to take power away from so many of us at all costs. Nobody hands you power or agency or confidence or strength – you have to claim those for yourself. If you have the ability to take control over something that squicks you, do it. Stand up for yourself and your media experience, and use the word that gives you power. You can turn your back on a squick and walk away without more than a lingering “ugh” feeling; it is almost impossible to do that with a trigger. A trigger ruins your whole day (ask me how I know!).

Words have power. Disgust is a normal human emotion. Your feelings are valid even when they’re not severe and catastrophic. 

We need to talk more about this.

prescribe me adderall or i will start cooking meth in my fucking bathroom you fucking psychiatrist