[video]
More porch porn.
(via courageisgraceunderpressure)
(Source: aberrantbeauty)
I guess it just wouldn’t be my last day of work here for the year without having to tell 17 people “The house is not open yet.”
There’s all these posts about people’s professors saying things that any educated and intelligent person would not say. Seriously, if you want to say something, then just say it. Don’t say it’s a professor’s opinion like that’ll get your opinion more approval. In my opinion, that’s cowardly.
And believe me, the people who actually regularly talk to college professors will see right through it.
Oh, I dunno. I’ve heard educated and intelligent people say some pretty astonishing things.
(via wiildantlers)
Something that can happen in therapy for disabled kids is:
People hold out hope that the kid won’t be disabled anymore, when they grow up.
So they push the kid as hard as possible in childhood, and tell them (often without saying this explicitly) that if they just work hard, their body won’t be wrong anymore.
This doesn’t work.
People who are disabled as children are usually still disabled as adults. Even if the therapy helped them. Even if they gained new physical abilities. Even if they learned things from it they wouldn’t have learned without it.
Even if they learn to walk. Even if they learn to talk. No matter what other skills they acquire. Their body is probably going to stay very different from most other people’s bodies, and far from the cultural norm.
And… part of living well as a person with a disability is accepting the body and the brain that you have, and working with it rather than against it.
Because you can’t live in an imaginary body; you can’t live in an abstraction. You have to live your own life, as you actually are. And sometimes that involves medical treatment, sometimes it involves equipment, sometimes it involved therapy - but always, it involves reality. You can’t willpower yourself into being someone else.
Disabled kids tend to get taught the opposite message, because childhood therapy is usually cure-oriented even for conditions that aren’t anywhere close to curable. It’s about normalization, much more than functioning well.
Then they go through all manner of hell unlearning this once they’re old enough that everyone gives up on pretending that a cure is going to happen.
If you’re responsible to or for kids with disabilities, do what you can to protect them from this. Make sure they aren’t being pushed to hang their self-worth on accomplishing things that are physically impossible or implausible. Help them to understand hat their bodies aren’t wrong. Teach them that they already have lives worth living.
And “physically impossible” can extend to things that aren’t apparently connected to having an atypical body. Social and emotional tasks and issues of time, energy, and language usage fall under this phenomenon, too.
Also file under, equating “really trying” with “doing it the way we want you to.”
(via m-i-s-e-r-e-r-e)
I don’t understand. Insulting someone based on their religious beliefs is frowned upon. However, showing someone’s political views complete disrespect is okay.
I don’t think anyone should be personally insulted based on either. But someone’s religious beliefs are as open game for criticism to me as someone’s political beliefs, if those beliefs function so as to reinforce a system that does harm to people.
The difference isn’t between religious and political views; it’s between ad hominem attack and criticism of the views rather than the person.
“If you believe [fill in the blank] then you’re a [personal insult]” is always wrong.
“This particular belief or political stance of yours is wrong and harmful because [reason]” is criticism of the belief, not the person.
And yes, there are both political and religious beliefs for which I have complete disrespect. And yes, it reflects on how I see the person. But you don’t attack the person, you criticize the idea.
(via clatterbane)
Severely wanderlusty.
(Source: between-letters)
[video]
People really need to stop self diagnosing themselves with disorders. You haven’t got OCD, you have pet peeves. You haven’t got social anxiety, you get nervous when meeting new people. You haven’t got depression, you’re a little sad when things go wrong. Shut the fuck up with your self diagnosis. Attention seekers, it’s not fun to be mentally fucked up, stop acting like it’s a fucking fashion accessory.
No, OP.
You’re wrong and you should feel bad.
So here’s the thing, OP: I’m autistic. I figured this out through interacting with other autistic people and the autistic community.
I think… sometimes people who are unhappy about their mental conditions don’t get that there are ways of dealing with them other than being miserable.
I’m not especially miserable about how my brain works. I like my brain and want to keep it. Some things about being autistic are a pain in the ass. But I only get the one life, and I’d rather focus on figuring out how to live it than wishing I was a different kind of person or that my cognitive abilities were totally different.
And, when I first discovered that people like me exist and that there are words for all of this, it made me really fucking happy. Because I could finally talk about it. Because stuff started making sense that never had before.
I’ve always been disabled, and I spent most of my life godawfully confused about it because no one realized or explained and a lot of what people told me about how people work just didn’t apply to me. So, being able to think about this — it’s good. Really, really good.
And yeah, I seek attention. Because dealing with this stuff alone is awful. Talking to other people who have similar mental configurations to mine is really helpful. And so is getting attention from people who know what my brain is like *and actively respect me*.
And you know what? Sometimes being autistic *is* fun. It’s fun when I’m with my friends and we all have stim toys and we’re sharing them and rocking and understanding each other. It’s fun when I get animated about things I’m passionate about. It’s fun when I can find a marble fascinating. It’s fun to understand things about communication that I understand that aren’t the NT things.
Having a disability or mental condition isn’t all misery and limitation and sorrow.
And self-pity really, really doesn’t help to build a good life.
OP is talking about illnesses and not neurotypes. I think that’s important.
I am tired and I should be studying rn and there is more I could say, but I think that’s an important distinction.
I would say that ADHD and dyspraxia are different ways of being. Depression is just shit and there isn’t a fun bit. And these are all things I have diagnoses for.
I guess there’s potentially a difference in whether there’s an upside. I think everything else I said is equally applicable to unequivocally negative conditions, though.
Seeking attention and affirmation is no sin; neither is preferring to deal with things outside of the medical system.
Yeah, well, wackyshananigans? Sometimes people have to diagnose ourselves with ILLNESSES as well. Like when our doctors lie to us about our blood test results. (Yup, has happened to me. Yes, I know it, because I obtained a copy of those results after being told that they were all normal.)
Whether or not something is fun some of the time is not, I don’t think, a meaningful distinction as to whether something is self-diagnosable. I had to self-diagnose and self-treat my hypoglycemia, and it is not fun. Hypoglycemia can go die. There is no upside. No, I don’t think whether there’s an upside is really a factor. I think whether somebody has educated themselves and ruled out other possibilities is. And I’m not all pro-self-diagnosis here…I think people should seek a professional opinion or professional care for things. For documentation should they ever need to prove their condition, if nothing else. And because symptoms of things like depression can be caused by dietary/metabolic issues, and it’s important to know what you are physically actually dealing with or else you’re not going to be able to make yourself better. But sometimes the medical system fails us. What then do you expect us to do?
OP—People who claim a psychiatric diagnosis they don’t have over normal daily experiences? Like people who are a little neat-freaky claiming to be OCD, or people who are a little nerdy claiming to be Asperger’s? That’s something totally different, and there’s already a word for it, and it’s appropriation. But you cannot claim to know what someone really is feeling or experiencing on the basis of the fact that they started to suspect, themselves, through research or through talking to people, that they might actually have a serious condition. Just because someone is self-diagnosed, does not make them wrong. If they’re wrong, they’re wrong…but a heckuvalot of us turn out to be right.
Nothing else is changing tonight, Emily. Go to sleep.