What is the difference though? /Gen
so this is coming from what i've learned in hospitals/psych wards/my own experience so it's not perfect but basically, everything with psychosis is rooted in a disconnect from reality while gad is linked to anxiety surrounding the present and future. there is no logical connection with psychotic anxiety and paranoia bc your brain is literally pulling shit out of thin air. bc of that, it is a lot harder to calm down bc you have to find a way to wrap your head around the fact that it isn't real. it can also be practically impossible to do that for some people, meaning the anxiety and paranoia are near constant. the paranoia is often tied to delusions-- so, once again, no reality-- and can be of the wildest shit that don't make sense. for example: someone with gad might be scared someone broke into their house and feel anxious. i get scared that doctors broke into my house to experiment of me and get anxious. same feeling but very different causes. someone with gad might be able to walk around the house and check the locks and calm themselves down. i could do that and still be terrified bc my fear isn't logical.
does that make sense? i can try and explain more if need be!
I see this a lot in leftist circles but mental illness, trauma and abuse will exist with or without capitalism, your βmental illness is a social phenomenonβ might be true for your depression and your anxiety but I beg all of you to think about psychotic people, systems and people with personality disorders when you make posts like that. It might be true that we wouldnβt be labeled as mentally ill but we would still need resources to help us cope, thereβs still something we would need help coping with and you should focus on making that help available and accessible and free of bigotry for all of us instead of living in a βno mentally ill peopleβ pseudo progressive eugenicist dream.
listen to me. thoughts do not have moral weight. a thought will never hurt anyone. the actions you take because of a thought can hurt yourself or other people, but the thought itself is powerless and there is no such thing as thought crime.
"but i have thoughts about being violent towards people! towards children! surely that makes me dangerous!" are you being violent? for real? with your actions? if not, then you are not actually hurting anyone
"but i have thoughts that are offensive and hurtful! they're bigoted, or they're horribly rude, or they're invalidating to others! i'm a horrible person." and what are you doing with those thoughts, exactly? are you taking bigoted actions, or saying those rude things, or taking steps to actually invalidate people? no? well then. no one is getting hurt. and in the meantime, if it really bothers you, doing things like helping unlearn your biases (both against minorities and just, like, against furries and theatre kids and shit) might help some of those thoughts go away, but sometimes you just get shitty thoughts.
"but i have horrific thoughts about sex!" are you hurting people. are you forcing people to do things they don't consent to. or are you just playing the upsetting possibility in your mind over and over again, and acting like that's even remotely the same thing?
thought. crime. is. not. real. OCD. is. hell. (and anything else that may cause intrusive thoughts.) but it does not define you. your thoughts will always, always come secondary to your actions. you're gonna be fine.
adulthood really does hit you like a fucking truck when you spent all of your teenage years thinking you were gonna kill yourself eventually,
Not the βoh Einstein was probably autisticβ 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 βThree generations of imbeciles [were] enough.β
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, whoβs 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 βdonβt mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And weβre here waiting for you.β
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.
It is still a balance of trying to let go and not be rigid despite knowing this. I am not expecting to reach perfection, but just getting through every day, Β a day at a time, and knowing that bending is okay.Β
ive been wanting to take a swing at making this kind of thing for ages, and since im manic I figured iβd do it!
color explanation under the cut
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