#dissociating has made it impossible to socialize

[roachemoji]

#bo posting #vent #ouuughhhhiiiihhghg #i justcneed to talk to the void #no where feels safe to talk again but here #idky #ik that im spiraling itd that time of night #but i dont want to brush it off #bc its how i feel normally but amplified #and thats scary #i feel. stuck. stagnent #trapped between a rock and a hard place #and idky #i cant convince myself that theres more. that things will get better #its starting to feel like it was never good at all but ik thats not true #it just feels like i either stay where i am as i am or die ig??? and ik thats not true either #but im scared. and i feel very alone #dissociating has made it impossible to socialize #its isolated me and i need help socializing i cant initiate anything bc im not aware of anything #it feels. like an excuse. like im letting people down #its hard to be fun and engaging rn tho and that naturally deters company. i dont want to sit in silence but its all i can do #i just. i need help. i need someone to support me. but im scared and i dont know how to ask for that or what i need #i just. need someone

[owlbelly]

body thoughts (fatness, self-image, social dynamics, etc.)

just coming out of a period of dealing with more intense internalized fatphobia, which happens pretty regularly when my stress over other things goes through the roof (it's an extremely frustrating "coping" mechanism because it is absolutely not coping & in fact makes everything worse, but it is a thing my brain does, this rerouting of uncertain stress into certain self-shaming)

& it's weird to emerge from it, even though i always do, for the past 12-13 years since i actively committed to deprogramming from diet culture & engaging really intentionally with fat lib. i have some tried & true methods of helping myself - the most effective one is to really up my intake of photos of fat people, especially queer/trans fat people, living joyfully & being loved (the photography of Shoog McDaniel is my lifeline), because it helps me reconnect to the idea of myself as a whole person & my fat body as natural, complex, awe-inspiring/beautiful/striking/impressive/whatever-i'm-good-with-feeling

i spent a LOT of my fat life (which is not my whole life - i'd say i was an "average" child, increasingly "chubby" as a teen & finally "small" fat in college - now in my mid-30s i am definitely fat, but also much more aware of myself in the spectrum as being on the upper end of mid-fat or the lower end of large fat) - even after getting into fat lib! - hiding from photos & avoiding mirrors. i have also, for my entire life, most often been the fattest person my social circle, which has extremely skewed my self-perception & made me feel very consistently conspicuous. i think this has a bit to do with the general class/race dynamics of the places i've lived but it could also just be shitty luck. at this point i am craving in-person friendship with people my own size & not sure how to go about facilitating that as i am pretty fucking exhausted by social events & also not really up for just hanging out with a bunch of college kids (which is most of the valley scene)

i think i'm also just carrying around a lot of grief over how forcibly disconnected i've been from my own body via growing up with a fucked up relationship to food, a fucked up relationship to sex & desirability (first ever experiences were non-consensual/abusive, my fat/trans/disabled body is culturally devalued/dehumanized), a fucked up relationship to movement (diet culture & fatphobia make "exercise", sports, dance, etc. inaccessible or actively hostile to me, sometimes i can't move anyway due to pain/fatigue even if the environment is good). like when i see people who seem to be enjoying their bodies in an uncomplicated way (which is probably impossible so we'll say less complicated way) i get so fucking jealous & sad. i've been trying to work on it but i think i still mostly just dissociate from my body a lot of the time, which means when someone takes a picture of me & i see it there's usually an element of shock & i'm so tired of it. i'm so tired.

anyway i was at a workshop recently where folks were taking pictures of us & a friend sent me one of me & i actually liked it, which is how i know i'm coming out of the rut - i looked at all the pictures from that workshop & yeah, there i was being the fattest person in the group (though not the only fat person thankfully) & looking like myself & it was fine. good even. but god what wouldn't i fucking give to be in one of Shoog's photoshoots with a bunch of other queer/trans fat people. what wouldn't i give to experience just enjoying my body without the hooks of fatphobia constantly ripping me apart. i used to think i could experience that if i somehow managed to get thin & now i know that's such a rancid fucking lie - if i did i would still spend the rest of my life in terror of regaining weight & i would still be obsessively measuring myself against some ridiculous ideal. i figured out years ago that the only way out of this is to completely let go of trying to control the shape of my body - to make my goal just caring as best i can for the body i have - and it's been the same thing as letting go of gender for me. i am so much happier & freer without it, and also there's such a huge fucking target on my back because of it. internally i am more often at peace & externally i am more often at risk. i don't regret making that trade but oh my fucking god what if people could just live free!!!!!!!!!

#do i even have a personal tag i can't remember #on my old blog it used to be “rambling thoughts” #guess it can still be that #rambling thoughts #fatphobia #fat liberation #long post #idk sometimes it's just good to write shit out. i missed that about tumblr #love that i can make things unrebloggable now

[ina-nis]

Hmm... I guess the perceptions of feeling myself as unwanted and unlovable - while knowing with certainty they're untrue - are probably other of the many symptoms I'll likely have to deal with for the rest of my life, huh?

I can't quite pinpoint where they come from. I don't really know if it would make any difference? Oh, maybe it's the Complex PTSD, even obsessively ruminating from OCD, or AvPD's rejection sensitivity and inferiority complex. It could be all that, too.

I've been trying to get around my head how is it possible to have a good self-esteem and still feel that way (since, supposedly, your self-esteem will make things like that improve).

My reaction (after the fact) has improved, a lot.

I still get these feelings triggered. They still cause bad meltdowns. It doesn't last for days anymore, thankfully.

I'm able to get back up almost right away because I know they're untrue, because I know my worth, because I know it's not about me or not about anything I'm doing wrongly, etc... it just is.

I'm not unlovable, or unwanted, or uninteresting and I know how special and unique I am - me and each other person, too. Everyone is important simply because they exist.

Dealing with people triggers those feelings all the time.

Even though I've been trying my hardest to just not take it personally, to start seeing it more casually and not looking into things too deeply, I find it extremely difficult... if not, straight up impossible...! And I can, at least, understand why.

Complex trauma rewires the brain.

I'm sure most my disorders originated from it.

Considering it's (still) an ongoing issue, considering I've been mostly unable to tilt the scales for long enough, with good enough experiences... it just keeps on digging deeper and deeper in my skin.

So... ultimately, it doesn't really matter how much I love myself and tell myself how wonderful I am when that doesn't translates into real life experiences outside of myself.

My individual, personal experiences with myself are but that: individual and personal experiences starting on me towards me. There are environmental and social factors and influence, too, obviously, but this is something I mostly go through in the solitude of my own mind.

This is, I think, where AvPD thrives a lot...

Good luck getting out of your head once you get to that point... the alienation and disconnection will only get worse and worse as that goes one - I know it did for me, I eventually stopped caring because it was just too exhausting and dissociation-inducing to care I guess.

Ironically... here I am! My self-esteem has never been this good, I have never liked myself more (and never been happier with my life overall) and yet... I can't shake off these feelings. I can't help but feel unwanted and unlovable with every rejection, perceived or not; I can't help feeling unimportant and disposable even though I know my worth; and so on...

Even when I do understand where these feelings come from - and it's so frustrating that I do! - even when I understand that taking a more casual and not-letting-it-get-to-me approach would be the way to go, even when I understand this is natural and part of social relationships, even when I understand most connection are not what I'm looking for (so I need to keep on looking anyway!)... even when I know all these things, I can't really help my feelings.

I can't wish them away, I can't pretend it doesn't hurt and even if I try to reframe it or look on the bright side, see it as a lesson, etc, it doesn't really address the pain, it doesn't really make the hurt go away - oh goodness, do I even want to "reframe" these things? No! It sucks, it hurts, it feels awful.

The pain is made so much worse because I know how lovable I am.

The pain is made so much worse exactly because I know my worth.

But yes, most people don't really care? And that's fine. Most people don't really see all that in you either, which is also fine. I can understand that too.

Where are the people who will love me in the way I need to be loved?

Where are the ones who will actually want me? Who will choose me?

Where's that someone who will think I'm invaluable, so important they won't want to lose?

I already know I am that person for myself, that doesn't change my predicament because it doesn't address this emotional loneliness that withers me.

#avpd #avoidance #avoidant #avoidant personality disorder #loneliness #romantic love #ocd #inanis post

[strangestcase]

ok genuine question here. as someone who has a special interest on jekyll and hyde (the book) and its social impact as a piece of media: where the hell did the tumblr fandom trend of infantilizing hyde come from.

i know the trend of depicting hyde as the evil alter trope comes from a combination of factors in the pop culture derive of jekyll and hyde adaptations and their social impact

for instance, DID/OSDD being first described and presented to the public (at least in the way we do know them now, since earlier descriptions were less specific) the same month strange case came out, kickstarting a Victorian fascination with dissociative disorders and what their existence means to the paradigm of the christian soul, how those discoveries would shape proto-psychiatry (which strange case was touching upon), a chronic impossibility to accept a fictional character could be as complex and contradictory as jekyll, the hard pill to swallow that the book's themes and morals are, the story being simplified for adaptations, and Stevenson being contacted by the brother of dr Myers (the man who first described DID and OSDD as we know them today, albeit using terminology that is considered outdated and offensive nowadays).

like all that added itself to the unreliably narrated plot twist to build up, year after year, adaptation after adaptation, a pop culture derive that culminates with 21st century readers assuming strange case depicts the evil alter trope (to the point of systems and their allies being wary of the book!) and modern retellings thinking using the evil alter trope is more accurate, realistic, or edgy, than the classic and more correct -and much less problematic- concept of jekyll literally playing a part and it spiraling into him losing sight of who he really is. ok? ok

but like

while a lot of adaptations have toyed with this concept, and some (fortunately, a minority) have gone full steam with it, i can't think of any adaptations that depict hyde as a "child", be it literally or metaphorically, with the exception of (siiighs) The Glass Scientists (in which Hyde being infantilized by other adults is treated as a joke, everybody laugh now)

but i get the feeling that this wasn't as much as an adaptation starting a trend but as an adaptation cementing it; i've seen my fair share of posts calling hyde "a baby man" or "a baby" or whatever with various degrees of irony (which is weird but funny at first, fucking gross once you become aware of the implications). and i think a fair share of them predate the "official" tgs run (2015 onwards). in fact i would say that fandom trend is what made tgs hyde be as infantilized as he is currently, because he certainly wasnt infantilized in the concept art stage of the comic, in which he was consistently depicted as a dangerous, violent person (if rather childish, silly, and immature; but those traits a child dont make, and i will say, they are also shared by book!hyde, who isnt infantilized at all beyond ironic comparisons to a child wearing adult clothes, and i remind you that those comparisons are played for horror rather than humor)

so like. when did it start, and why? is it because tumblr users can't be fucking normal about a short adult, is it because tumblr users are by nature contrarian and begun to infantilize him as a "response" to hyde being depicted as a sexual predator in most adaptations, or did something else happen?

#jekyll and hyde #the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde #dr jekyll and mr hyde

[effervescentdragon]

galex + ducks

The fact is, George knows something is wrong between him and Alex. He knows. He's not stupid. He's the farthest thing away from stupid actually, if he may say so himself. (And he does; often. Just not out loud, and not to other people. His mother told him it makes him look self-conceited, even if it's just facts. Georege's mother is a very smart woman, though, so he figured he should listen to her.)

So he knows something is broken, but he cannot, for the life of him, figure out what exactly it is.

He's tried everything. He went through his memories, went through every single interaction they've had since the beginning of the year. Went through social media, and went through it extensively. Watched all the videos they did together, ever since George's move to Mercedes and Alex's move to Williams. Tried to look at it all objectively, and see if maybe he overstepped at some point, or if he accidentally offended Alex.

(He wonders if he came off too strong. He wonders if his feelings for Alex have become obvious, if he gave himself away, if Alex finally saw what every tease and every touch and every look meant. What it has always meant to George, and what it still means. Sometimes he thinks Alex can't not know how George feels. Sometimes he feels transparent, made out of celophane, his feelings out for the world to observe, and it seems impossible to him that Alex doesn't know. Alex muat know, he thinks. He must. It's obvious. And sometimes that thought hurts so much, he can't breathe.)

"Hey Georgie, what's up?"

George looks at Alex, fist-bumping him automatically. Alex's smile is wide, and beautiful, as it always is. He looks expectant, like he wants to know the answer to his question. Like he cares. George can't take it.

"I have to go feed the ducks," he says. Alex's face scrunches up in confusion, and he looks around to where Charles is just pulling up in his Ferrari, fighting with Pierre about something in the front seat, with Lando and Carlos behind them in a McLaren, everyone congregating to the golf course where they're all supposed to play a game now.

"Georgie, I - what -" Alex stammers, but George can't take it. It feels like he's suffocating, like he can't take a breath that isn't permeated with Alex and with pain and with pure hurt.

"I - ducks - I have to go," he manages to bite out, and turns around, and gets back into his car, leaving a very confused Alex to explain, well. He doesn't know. He can't think about it. He needs to get away.

*

The fact is, he does actually go to feed the ducks.

It's a thing he's been doing since he was a kid. His older siblings would be made to take him along when they hung out with their friends, and one day one of them bought him a packet of bread and told him to feed the ducks. So he did, and he loved it, he begged to be taken again, and again, and again. It calmed his mind, which was prone to overthinking and overreacting, so now whenever he needed a moment, he'd search for where there are ducks and then go and feed them.

So he sits on the bench, and tears pieces of bread metoculously, and feeds the ducks, and forces himself not to think about anything.

Someone sits next to him. He barely notices. He hopes it's not a fan. He's too tired to play nice, and he will, because he has to.

"Wanna tell me what the fuck that was about, Georgie?"

George closes his eyes. Of course; he should've known. Alex is still his best friend. He still knows George.

He can't speak, so he just shrugs, his gaze firmly on the ducks in the pond. Alex shuffles closer, his thigh close enough that George can feel his body heat.

"Well, I have nowhere else to be, since my partner ditched me right before the game," Alex says conversationally, but there's something deeper underneath his tone. George focuses on tearing up more of the bread. "So I left the lovebirds to demolish each other, and I came to see what it is that's bothering my best friend so much that he has to go dissociate to his happy place with his ducks on a Saturday afternoon."

George's eyes sting. He hates that Alex knows him so well. It hurts, because that's all they are. Best friends. And that is amazing, but George has never known how not to want it all. He's never known how not to want Alex.

They sit in silence. George knows Alex can be patient. It doesn't come easy to him, but he tries. He always tries for George. And George can't - he just can't.

"Georgie, please," Alex says softly. "Just tell me what's wrong. Whatever it is, it's not the end of the world. I promise."

George can't speak. He can barely move. He also can't go on like this. He throws the rest of the bread at the ducks, and they descend on the big piece, and he turns to Alex for the first time since the golf course.

Alex is looking at George softly, only the crease between his brows betrays his worry. He is beautiful, like the sun, and he looks at George with such affection, Gworge thinks he may die of it.

"I want to kiss you," George says, because he can't hold it in any more. "I've wanted to kiss you since you were fifteen, and I can't take this anymore, I can't keep thinking that you know how I feel and are choosing to ignore it, or that you really don't know because it hurts, Alex, it hurts here," he puts a hand on his chest and tries to breathe through the thunder that is his heart. "I need you to know, and I need you to tell me you don't feel the same, because I can't be in this limbo anymore. And if that means we can't be friends anymore, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I just - I can't live like this anymore."

He looks away feom Alex's face then, scrunched in surprise, a turmoil evident in his expression. He turns away, because he is a coward after all, and he can't look at Alex as he breaks George's heart. He looks at the two ducks fighting over the last of the bread, and hopes the smaller one gets it.

"Come with me," Alex says in an even voice, and grabs his wrist, and pulls. "We can't talk about this in public."

George stands up and follows Alex to his own car, and gives Alex the keys when he asks for them. He feels numb. He sits in the passanger seat and lets Alex drive, not able to concentrate on anything.

The silence in the car is deafening.

Alex drives until he finds a secluded road, and he drives some more until they are parked underneath a sycamore tree. Alex shuts off the car and exits it, and George has no choice but to follow.

Alex is on his side of the car when George gets out, and when he closes the door, Alex crowds him against it.

"Georgie," he says, and his eyes and voice are too gentle, and they cut at George's heart. "You are so stupid sometimes," Alex says, and smiles. He brings his hand to George's cheek, his thumb caressing George's collarbone. "I've wanted to kiss you since I was fifteen, too," Alex says, and George stops in his tracks, and then stops breathing, because Alex leans in and then his lips are on George's.

It's just a peck on the lips, their first kiss. George is frozen. Alex's other hand comes to his hip as he moves a bit away.

"I'm in love with you," Alex says, and George blanches. "And I want to kiss you all the time, and we need to talk about how you absolutely weren't obvious and how I was the obvious one, but right now, I'd like to kiss you properly?"

George doesn't think this is real. He doesn't think he can breathe. He doesn't think he's awake, he must be dreaming, or something equally heartbreaking.

But Alex's hand on his hip is solid, and Alex's thumb is still caressing George's cheekbone, and Alex's eyes are doing that thing where they crinkle around the corners because he is honestly, genuinely happy.

"Alex," George says, and chokes up, because he wants to say Are you serious and Please don't joke with this and Please don't break my heart and I love you, but he can't, so he just repeats "Alex", like a plea, and a promise, and a prayer.

Alex smiles. "I know, Georgie," he whispers, and his lips are so close, George can taste his breath. "Me too."

Their eyes meet, and George swallows, and brings his hands up to touch Alex's hair, and to hold onto his shoulders, and then he nods, and Alex ducks his head a little and then they're kissing, finally, properly.

It's the best first kiss of George's life. Alex steps closer, and George can feel the Mercedes dig into his back, but he doesn't care, can't care, because Alex is right there, and he's kissing George with everything he has, holding him close, so close George can feel his breaths on his own chest.

They kiss for a long time, and then they kiss some more, lips and tongues and teeth, and through it all, their hands find each other and they hold onto each other. They have a lot to talk about, lots of things to clarify and deal with, but for the first time in forever, George doesn't care about the future and what it holds.

Why would he think of the future, when in the present, he is finally kissing Alex, and Alex is holding him like he's somting precious, something to be cherished, and kissing him back?

George knows many things, really. But the thing he is most certain about is that whatever happens, whatever was wrong with him and Alex, after today, it can, and will be fixed.

That's all secondary, though.

Alex sighs into his mouth and kisses his top, then his bottom lip, and George kisses him back and thinks I need to take more bread to the ducks, as a treat, and then Alex pulls him closer, ane George forgets about everything that isn't Alexander Albon, his best friend, and, if he dared say it, probably also the love of his life.

He doesn't dare say it.

At least not yet.

#akira answers asks #galex #george/alex #one! braincell bestie #my writing #f1 rpf #effervescentdragonwrites #starting on absolute insane amount of niamhs prompts #i n3eded something soft #i tyoed this in an hour on my phone excuse the misrakes #soft bois <3 #im a sucker for them but nobody ever prompts me #anyways lmk what you think

[phlve]

Feeling In The Extraverted Attitude

Feeling in the extraverted attitude is orientated by objective data, i.e. the object is the indispensable determinant of the kind of feeling. It agrees with objective values. If one has always known feeling as a subjective fact, the nature of extraverted feeling will not immediately be understood, since it has freed itself as fully as possible from the subjective factor, and has, instead, become wholly subordinated to the influence of the object. Even where it seems to show a certain independence of the quality of the concrete object, it is none the less under the spell of. traditional or generally valid standards of some sort. I may feel constrained, for instance, to use the predicate ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’, not because I find the object ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’ from my own subjective feeling, but because it is fitting and politic so to do; and fitting it certainly is, inasmuch as a contrary opinion would disturb the general feeling situation. A feeling-judgment such as this is in no way a simulation or a lie—it is merely an act of accommodation. A picture, for instance, may be termed beautiful, because a picture that is hung in a drawing-room and bearing a well-known signature is generally assumed to be beautiful, or because the predicate ‘ugly’ might offend the family of the fortunate possessor, or because there is a benevolent intention on the part of the visitor to create a pleasant feeling-atmosphere, to which end everything must be felt as agreeable. Such feelings are governed by the standard of the objective determinants. As such they are genuine, and represent the total visible feeling-function.

In precisely the same way as extraverted thinking strives to rid itself of subjective influences, extraverted feeling has also to undergo a certain process of differentiation, before it is finally denuded of every subjective trimming. The valuations resulting from the act of feeling either correspond directly with objective values or at least chime in with certain traditional and generally known standards of value. This kind of feeling is very largely responsible for the fact that so many people flock to the theatre, to concerts, or to Church, and what is more, with correctly adjusted positive feelings. Fashions, too, owe their existence to it, and, what is far more valuable, the whole positive and widespread support of social, philanthropic, and such like cultural enterprises. In such matters, extraverted feeling proves itself a creative factor. Without this feeling, for instance, a beautiful and harmonious sociability would be unthinkable. So far extraverted feeling is just as beneficent and rationally effective as extraverted thinking. But this salutary effect is lost as soon as the object gains an exaggerated influence. For, when this happens, extraverted feeling draws the personality too much into the object, i.e. the object assimilates the person, whereupon the personal character of the feeling, which constitutes its principal charm, is lost. Feeling then becomes cold, material, untrustworthy. It betrays a secret aim, or at least arouses the suspicion of it in an impartial observer. No longer does it make that welcome and refreshing impression the invariable accompaniment of genuine feeling; instead, one scents a pose or affectation, although the egocentric motive may be entirely unconscious.

Such overstressed, extraverted feeling certainly fulfils æsthetic expectations, but no longer does it speak to the heart; it merely appeals to the senses, or—worse still—to the reason. Doubtless it can provide æsthetic padding for a situation, but there it stops, and beyond that its effect is nil. It has become sterile. Should this process go further, a strangely contradictory dissociation of feeling develops; every object is seized upon with feeling-valuations, and numerous relationships are made which are inherently and mutually incompatible. Since such aberrations would be quite impossible if a sufficiently emphasized subject were present, the last vestige of a real personal standpoint also becomes suppressed. The subject becomes so swallowed up in individual feeling processes that to the observer it seems as though there were no longer a subject of feeling but merely a feeling process. In such a condition feeling has entirely forfeited its original human warmth, it gives an impression of pose, inconstancy, unreliability, and in the worst cases appears definitely hysterical.

Source: Psychological Types

#personality theory #personality types #typology #cognitive functions #jung #jungian typology #ef #fe #ef(n) #ef(s) #enfj #esfj

[angelsaxis]

In Disaffected, scholar Xine Yao looks at the racial history of unfeeling. Trained as a nineteenth century Americanist, Yao, much like Lauren Berlant, shows how sentimentality was used for nation-building. Sentiment promised to unite disparate people into a single, stable country if they all “felt right.” Of course, who is allowed to feel “right,” and who is punished for not doing so, is socially determined. While this suffocating framework of universal feeling is writ large in global modernity, Yao theorizes unfeeling as modes of disaffection and dissent that emerge from different entanglements of biopolitical difference. If feeling is implicitly for white people and only taken as valid in accordance with power, can a case for racialized unfeeling be made?

In addition to these relevant theoretical interventions, I argue that Yao’s analysis of Affect Studies and its persistent “race problem” also provides a much-needed corrective to Trans Studies and its white-washed dissociation rhetoric. While this discourse helpfully seeks to unstick trans people from obligations and stereotypes of maximal, spectacular feeling—inspiration, humiliation, violence—it often ignores how emotion is racialized. If dissociation is a way to survive the routine shame of getting clocked, not everyone can just check out. As Yao reminds us, overt disaffection in response to white feelings has historically been met with punishment.

This conversation with Yao touches on boundaries and detachment; we also discussed our deeply grateful, deeply ambivalent relationships to Berlant’s scholarship. Talking with Yao made me question whether we still live in a cruelly optimistic era, or one defined by un-optimistic cruelty.

—Charlie Markbreiter

▼

CHARLIE MARKBREITER. Could you talk about the history of sentimentality, its role in the American nation-building project, and how both you and Berlant address this topic?

XINE YAO. Part of the founding of the US as a nation had to do with ideas of sympathy: how do you draw together disparate peoples for a national project? The right feeling is supposed to lead to the right type of politics. But trying to just cut feelings out (as if we could) is also not an answer. Think about the alt right phrase “facts don’t care about your feelings” (as if white supremacy was based on fact). One thing Berlant’s work does so well is take seriously what sort of politics are enabled by feeling: what sort of effects does it produce, what also does it limit.

But I also have a hard time with how feelings are talked about––not just by Berlant, but by Affect Studies in general––which is like: isn’t it cool how sticky and porous emotions are? And my reaction is just, what about boundaries? What about the possibility of detachments? As black feminists like Audre Lorde have pointed out, boundaries are a way to refuse the constant demands for gendered and racialized emotional labor.

That’s so interesting. We know that boundaries are important, but when you talk about them as a topic of academic inquiry, people don’t take you seriously. I wonder why. Maybe because, with increasing neoliberalism and austerity, universities increasingly discourage academic workers from having any boundaries at all, as near-constant, precarious labor becomes the norm.

I’ve been thinking about the pedagogical aspects of unfeeling, and what it means in terms of our engagements with our students. Because we’re in a time when there’s so little in terms of emotional resources—or any resources for that matter. And what we’re seeing is that students need us to be resources of care, but also that we barely have enough care for ourselves. And as a result of this scarcity, you see many different types of cruelties manifest. Like there’s this impossible, cruel demand, and people are either suffering from trying to meet it, or inflicting cruelty by doubling down on their methods of discipline and control.

So what I’ve been trying to enact in my own teaching instead is: how can we teach not just give care and be a resource for care, but how do we teach care as a methodology of engagement? How do we teach students to think about building care laterally, and to think of care as necessarily reciprocal?

One way of doing this was not just by asking for feedback, but by showing students what that feedback would be used to do, and how the results would impact their learning experiences. This not only made students more engaged–-it also made them give better feedback, which of course helped us in turn. Another thing I did was separate students into pods of six and set aside time for them to share work online or just hang out. In both cases, the aim is to build laterally in a way that isn’t naive to existing power dynamics.

In Tamara K Nopper’s recent TNI piece, she describes how, for bell hooks, the personal is not an end in and of itself. I mean, it is helpful—it shows people that that they are the experts of their own experiences. But, most of the time, we see the reverse: instead of this movement out, structural forces are reduced to the personal.

In an abolitionist context, something like de-escalation is, in a way, also about feeling less. Because in a moment of heightened conflict, what both sides need is to just like take a second and be like, “Wow. I need to chill. And touch grass.” And one way to de-escalate is actually to reframe the conflict so that it’s less about individual blame, or saying that the pain anyone feels is unreal, and more about how the situation is socially reproduced by structural forces which oppress everyone involved.

I remember this tweet that Mariame Kaba had like maybe a year ago about how social media functions and exploits our experience in the activism of escalation. Which is often less helpful in an actual organizing context, which is when you have to compromise with each other to get things done.

This reminds me of my “getting in fights with people on Twitter” era lol. I’d tell my enemies, “I’m right,” and they’d just be like, “Why are you so obsessed with me?” Which was embarrassing because it was true. I’m obsessed with you in that I’m giving you so much of my energy. And, in an attention economy, what could be more of a self-own?

It reminds me of the bullying we experience as children. And how it heightens your self-surveillance and our attempts to become as non-responsive as possible so that the bullies don’t get any pleasure out of picking on you. When people portray the trauma response of dissociative shut-down, they usually vilify it. But just because you need to switch off doesn’t mean you’re dissembling. You’re making a decision about the allocation of care. Maybe you failed to “rise to the occasion,” but would it actually have mattered if you did? Maybe you’re just saving your energy for those who actually need it.

Lauren Berlant famously also examined “not feeling it” as both a trauma response and a survival strategy.

Lauren Berlant came to Cornell while I was doing my PhD there. They also did their PhD at Cornell, and at one point jokingly referred to the “Cornell school of sentimentality.” Berlant’s writing has been so informative for me. But it’s also not the sole determinant of how I approach the world. For example, their diagnosis of citizenship and the good life as exclusionary mechanisms is both extremely helpful and an over-reification of the US and citizenship as the ultimate model. And while they know that citizenship is built upon exclusions, what they don’t really explore is: what if you don’t want citizenship? What does it mean to read their work in the US, as someone who’s not a US citizen and it’s not really interested in being a US citizen and then to feel and stay with that dissonance? In the nineteenth century, Chinese sojourners didn’t always want to stay. Many of them wanted to go home. Which, again, isn’t even about Berlant, but the problem of sympathy, and how the solution is always just, “Okay. We’ll do better next time.”

I hate the obsession with finding, denouncing and then reclaiming each of racial capitalism’s niche effects. It’s supposed to reveal the contradictions of life, but more often performs a siloing function in addition to justifying harms caused via a mode of cost-benefit analysis thinking—which is more neoliberal than anything else. As if to say, “It’s all worth it, so long as...” some queer theorist can reclaim your pain. Which is actually quite different than saying, “Decades of dissociating causes lasting trauma, both individually and collectively. How do we heal from that?”

And this actually also resonates with the question of identity politics that I tried to analyze towards the end of my book. The point of identity politics was never about this hyper focus on individual; instead, it is the starting point for methodology. Now there are so many jokes about people naming their privileges and then they go off and do whatever they are going to do anyway. But actually you’re supposed to look at the nexus of differences and privileges and then realize therefore, “This is what I’m responsible for.” Which doesn’t just mean that feelings are valid, but about looking at the attachments to those feelings, and what they may but also may not actually index. Which is part of why the work coming from Trans Studies by scholars such as Maxi Wallenhorst is so exciting, and why I’m also grateful for Queer of Color critique, which looks at how white gay/trans feelings are overly universalized.

Along those lines, I’m curious if you could talk more about how dissociation is racialized, both discursively and in life. Trans Studies has done a great job of showing how dissociation is gendered and sexualized by analyzing it via dysphoria; “Fucking Like a Housewife” by Jamie Hood is a great example of this kind of analysis. But one reason I really appreciated your book is the way it shows who is allowed to access unfeeling, who is forced into it to survive. Which helpfully undercuts the liberal sentimental practice of associating maximum feeling with maximum truth, as if those who felt most and best were automatically the most valuable. Trans Studies dissociation discourse has a race problem, is maybe what I’m trying to say.

When you’re talking about affect, there’s always the temptation to make a universalizing move. Because you want something that speaks to the individual, but is also more generally useful. But this is when it becomes useful to bear in mind Sylvia Wynter, or Denise Ferreira da Silva, whose work analyzes the way universal affect leads to the Enlightenment’s universal “Man.” We don’t want to do that. What we’re trying to do instead is make frameworks that speak deeply as a theory in the flesh, both to us and to those we care about in our communities. So how can we push back against universalism’s portability, which is of course based on racial violence.

That makes a lot of sense. Because most of the time, when white trans people universalize, they’re not like, “I looooove whiteness,” more like, “This thing helped me, so it will help you, also.” Without understanding that it might actually not. It’s perhaps another example of what historian Jules Gill-Peterson called “white gender.” That term is from her piece on Christine Jorgensen, who was the first mainstream American trans celeb, and also about her own experiences with white trans women.

Feelings are valid, but sometimes there has to be a type of distancing to really understand the attachments that are involved.

As dissociation has become a more prominent topic in both Trans Studies and mainstream culture, how do you feel the concept of dissociation has been racialized?

Following Wynter, we might say that “universal feeling” over-represents whiteness and the Human, and that, in this case specifically, it leads to an over-representation of the white trans person. So, dissociation is gendered, especially via its contact with dysphoria, but that experience coheres differently for different kinds of subjects in a way that can’t be extricated from the sort of wider colonial biopolitics of difference.

It’s less about proving that dissociation isn’t actually a theoretical panacea, because of course it isn’t, but asking: how was dissociation produced as the catch-all answer in the first place? And if dissociation is the catch-all answer, then what was the question?

#went over my head a lil but this was an interesting read #something that I understood implicitly but obv seeing it in writing #is validating #angel posts #angel reads

[partsofminnies]

Labels

I've never been diagnosed with anything formally, despite having been in treatment for mental health for the past 7 years or so. It's just not common practice since mental healthcare is close to non-existent in my home country.

I've been described to be symptomatic of major depression, general and social anxiety then ADHD and finally bpd. My doctor back home always made me feel like I wasn't sick enough and was just complaining (and often blamed my symptoms on my period), so when I moved to Canada and my psychiatrist/therapists discouraged using labels to describe my mental health I felt kinda upset like I was being dismissed again.

But I kinda agree now. So many of my symptoms border on different mental illness labels. My mood swings, anxiety, dissociation, hyper fixations, obsessive tendencies, identity fluctuation and sensory issues make me relate to a plethora of mental health labels but also not extreme enough in any of them for me to feel comfortable using the labels.

bpd (often sometimes rarely)

fear of abandonment

idealization and devaluation

lack of stable self image/identity

rapid mood swings

impulsive dangerous behavior

repeated self injury/suicidal behavior

persistent feelings of emptiness

inappropriate anger

paranoia and dissociation

My frequent dissociation and mood swings have made me feel like I'm different people at different times and it's out of my control. This has escalated since a suicide attempt a few months ago and an angry part that's been absent for 5 years or so resurfaced. I'm informed about osdd/id because my ex had did and I've learned to empathize with their struggles by applying the same framework on myself.

I'm scared to consider myself having osdd/id, just letting myself think about it causes a bit of panic. But there's an undeniable part of me that believes I/we are a system — regardless of labels. I feel delusional but the shuffle in my identity makes my life unpredictable and impossible to plan with. My parts that I'm less present with when they're out have made impulsive decisions that have undesirable consequences I've had to face.

If I have to put a label on it, my system fits criteria for osdd-1a or p-did best. I notice my parts are mostly versions of me at different ages, especially my more emotional parts. I only really experience grey-outs and feeling "taken over" by other parts and I was just in the back seat watching.

Currently I'm working with my system through ifs parts work. I don't completely identify with the theory of "self" in ifs. I'll probably use system language talking about me and my parts. I don't want to participate in syscourse, let me question in peace.

#dissociation #questioning system #osdd #pdid #pdid system #internal family systems #journal #profile #median system

[thebleedingeffect]

fierce deity is the only one I know so 💢💤🕷

YEAAHHHHHH YEAHHHHH FIERCE DEITY MY BELOVED!! (ignore how this took me a whole day to respond cause I got into playing minecraft oops)

💢 ANGER - what are some habits they have that will take some getting used to?

okay I'm just gonna say it, fierce deity gives me the vibes of being SO bad at both divine and mortal social cues, my man's has just stared at all the Link's while they're sleeping. He's done that several times, he won't stop and he doesn't blink at all so I hope you're okay with a literal god staring down at you unblinkingly in your sleep!

Another thing is that... he's kinda overprotective, but isn't extremely obvious about it, if anything he's so quiet about it that it takes awhile for anyone to notice. One of the worst things when anyone does realize? He doesn't uhhhhhhh stop, he can lessen the overprotective tendencies or be sneakier about it, sure, but he just will not stop. The issue is that he's so freakishly strong that most other people just come off as being painfully delicate! He can shrug off fights with literal gods and people just? Fall over after one little stab? What the hell?

Another thing is that the fierce deity doesn't know customs, or social norms, and doesn't really care about sounding nice if someone is annoying him or just made him mad. He doesn't have time for this shit, leave him alone or you're being tossed off a cliff.

Also I gotta emphasize the overprotective part again! ^-^ man's will straight up be the equivalent of the most intimidating guard dog alive but won't say a word, he'll just fucking stare at you. Unless you do something against someone he cares about, then your entire hand is suddenly gone !

💤 SLEEPING - do they fall asleep easily? what helps them sleep?

So here's the thing, as in the name- the fierce deity is a god and doesn't really... sleep, the next best thing he can do instead of sleep is meditate or sorta be in a relaxed doze. But the fierce deity doesn't resent this, not at all, if anything he's very happy that he has no need for sleep. This is because sleeping is actually the closest thing he could ever relate to when it came to being sealed in the mask. Hundreds of years passing by with every blink, reality seeming closer to the murky memories of Demise and Hylia that haunt him for centuries and the anger towards the golden goddesses.

When he was in the mask it was near impossible to understand a thing, his consciousness was closer to sand falling inbetween his fingers despite how desperately he wanted to perceive the world around him. Sleeping inside the mask meant dissociation, endless nightmares, and the complete inability to have any sort of free will. For this reason the fierce deity is secretly relieved that he doesn't have to sleep, it brings back for to many bad memories whenever he tries.

Instead of sleeping he typically just watches over the group and let's them all sleep instead, it brings him far more peace to see them all together, alive and safe.

🕷️ SPIDER - what is their biggest fear? do they have any irrational / mundane fears?

Ooohhhhhh he has a couple big fears, but here's a few: loss of free will, inability to protect, failure, and a loss of control. Most of these stem back to the golden goddesses and Hylia, both of which he has extremely complicated relationships towards and has no wish to forgive them for any of it. Another fear of his is allowing for his incarnations (the link's basically) to fall under the goddesses/Demise's control again as he blames himself for all the shit they've gone through up to that point.

Basically he fears failing the ones he cares about most and them being hurt from his own weak-will/inability to protect and being trapped in the mask again <3 the mask is one of his BIGGEST fears and he will outright fight the goddesses in hand to hand combat to not go back in it <- there's a good chance he would win ANYWAY

#thebleedingeffect talks #thank youuuuu I'm kinda sleepy but I wanted to answer this ask so so badly hshshs I just love him alot <3333 #I see the fierce deity as a rly intense guy. but he doesnt mean any harm and he's genuinely vry friendly for the most part #just imagine a guy who never blinks and his eyes fucking glow pure white. staring at you and shit #another thing is that I think sometimes he struggles with paranoia and will wake one of the links up if he thinks theyre dead or dying #he has god ptsd :( he'll also just kinda hold them until the paranoia calms down because he cant handle how damn delicate they truly one #anyway. deity guy can fit SOOOOOOO many issues in him <3333 #thank you beloved for letting me ramble about fierce deity >:]!!!!

[bunnidid-reviews]

Waking Madison Review

DID Movie Review

Facts -

Movie name: Waking Madison

Date of Release: 2010

Fiction or Nonfiction: Fiction

Was there a diagnosis of DID? Not explicitly; ‘Possible MPD’ is noted on doctor papers

Was the person with DID presented as evil for having DID? No

Major Trigger warning list:

-          Attempted Suicide and threats of suicide

-          Self harm

-          Abuse in the name of Christianity

-          Hospital and mental ward scenes

-          Blood

-          Screaming, pleading

-          Flashing and blurred images

-          Verbal abuse (Guilting, insulting, threatening, possible gaslighting)

-          Physical abuse implied but not explicitly shown

-          Attempted drowning

-          Sex scenes (one of which turns nonconsensual after a switch)

-          Implied child sexual abuse but not explicitly shown

-          Drug use, smoking

-          Bondage in a hospital setting sort-of way

-          (If there are more, please let me know)

  Subjective Review(this is how I felt about it) -

Personal triggering scale from 1 to 10 (1 being not triggering at all, 10 being a badly overwhelming experience that might cause personal harm): Possibly a 6 to a 7 at most?

Personal relatability scale from 1 to 10 (1 being unrelatable, 10 being OMG THAT’S ME!): 7 or 8 (some parts really resonated with me)

Personal avoidance scale from 1 to 10(1 being eager to get on with it, 10 being impossible to finish): 5

My interpretation of the media(Includes spoilers): To start off with, I was prepared for it to be a much more triggering movie than it turned out to be. Compared to other media that’s shown explicit abuse scenes, I was thankful that Waking Madison seems to cut off just before in most cases or leaves it as words in the other alters’ mouth. Or in many cases they don’t even say, but it’s heavily implied and obvious. The suicide attempts, although we see the aftermath(cleaning up blood, being bandaged), we don’t see her cuts or bleeding (save for one scene later on that’s quickly cut off)

The story broken down goes like this: Madison is a woman with DID. She’s had many suicide attempts she doesn’t seem to remember and mysterious hospital visits in her life. No friends, no job, living in a shotty area of town. She’s decided to lock herself in her apartment for 30 days until she finds out the root of what’s wrong with her.

The ‘side plot’ is about a therapist(Dr. Elizabteh)  who’s working in a small mental ward with three other patients, all survivors of child abuse. As the movie goes on and Madison herself shows up in the ward, it becomes increasingly more obvious that all the patients are actually different alters/parts of Madison and this mental facility is her inner world.

In a heart-wrenching twist in the end, we find out that Dr. Elizabeth is actually one of the parts too – a child’s version of an adult to save them all, the illusive Helper.

Waking Madison is a confusing movie. Even coming from the already spoiler-ed point of view of knowing the whole twist was that she had DID and picking up on typical DID cinematography tropes(like the use of mirrors), some points of this movie still caught me off-guard and a bit befuddled. I think it’d be worth a rewatch with the full perspective of knowing the story and seeing if it’s more cohesive than I thought. Mild confusions aside, it really seems like a movie that’s made less as a horror trope and more from a very personal understanding of DID and trauma and the separation and truths about alters being parts of one whole. It’s what I wish Sybil was, I think.

Actually, I might go out on a limb and say that the confusion of the movie is almost purposeful. What is the time? What does it mean to be real? Is any of this real? All these were prominent themes in the movie. A very good representation of what it’s like to live through dissociative fugues.

The characters are written like real parts in the way that they interact. Nondescript positions of where eachother stands socially with one another that feels extremely true to my own dissociative parts experience. An obvious persecutor part that holds a lot of hurt and has a way of getting in the other’s heads in the way persecutory parts tend to. The age-sliding young part felt very real to me. A sexual protector who makes herself seem bigger and older than she actually is(like stating the abuse happened at 16, when she was really 13) The therapist part who, when broken down, was really a traumatized child all along.

If you’ve seen the last few(?) episodes of Moon Knight, this whole movie is basically the whole inner world scene there, but uncondensed.

What they got Right in my opinion:

-          The relationships and strains between parts felt very very real to me, even if the conflict was triggering at times.

-          The portrayal of confusing lost time. The obsession over what is real and what isn’t. The obsession with wanting to become real all hit home for me.

-          The switches weren’t dramatized with shitty horror music from what I remember(I don’t pay much attention to the score but it’s a trope that grates on me and I would’ve noticed)

-          Madison used warmth from the candles and hot candle wax to ground! (I hardly ever see grounding in DID media!)

-          The use of notebooks and video recordings as a means of communication. The communication between parts being a step in healing

-          Parts being seemingly simple stereotypes, as if they were a traumatized child’s idea of what the world should look like. 

What they got Wrong in my opinion:

-          The abusive mother was implied to be mentally ill in a nondescript way. While I know this is true in many abuse cases, there comes a very slippery slope when it comes to depicting that in media and should be approached with caution

-          The whole ‘nobody actually matters but the Host’ trope. Disappointingly disregarding the other parts into integration is dated

-          Seemingly hallucinating other parts to actually be seen there. I don’t know If this is something that other people experience, but it’s not something I’ve heard about being a DID symptom

-          The paper at the beginning stating her possible diagnosis to be ‘MPD’ (This is just a nitpick more than anything, because there are people who were diagnosed much earlier who still identify with MPD)

Would I recommend this to someone with DID to watch?: If you regard the triggers listed above, then yes, actually! I think there’s a lot of relatable DID content in this, like it wasn’t just made to be an interesting side accessory or horror show for someone without DID.

#DID in media #dissociative identity disorder #dissociative identity disorder media #waking madison #DID movie #bunnidid reviews

[mimasroomaapi]

Perfect Blue (1997): An Extreme, Yet Relatable Depiction of Female Rage (Aditi)

(image description: Mima at her lowest, killing her attacker, contrasted with an image of Mima smiling on a screen)

The film Perfect Blue examines through its’ protagonist, Mina, a young aspiring starlet, taboo topics such as female mental health and self-expression within Japanese society. The concept of “wa”, meaning harmony, is incredibly important to Japanese social interaction: people often engage in conflict avoidance, hiding negative emotions and opinions in order to preserve “wa”(Carosi, phmuseum). Additionally, Japan, compared to other high-income countries, has a higher stigma towards mental health: “the proportion of mental health service use by all persons and those with CMD [common mental disorders] was lower in Japan compared to most high-income countries from the 2000s to the 2010s”, and many within the country believe that having a mental health issue is “shameful and signifies a lack of willpower” (Kirk, Borgen Project). In addition to the stigma of expression of emotions and mental health, Japanese women also face high rates of misogyny and sexual violence in the workplace and in public. Research has reported that at least 75% of Japanese women have been groped, most often in public transportation (Guevara, Asian Media). However, these assaults are rarely reported or talked about, with victims taking personal responsibility for preventing these attacks by covering themselves with various preventative measures. These cultural norms coupled with violent misogyny create an environment where the expression of these frustrations are seemingly impossible to communicate without seeming “difficult”.

(image description: Mima breaking down in her room)

Satoshi Kon explores these topics in depth in his film, as Mima faces many inappropriate interactions with male writers, producers, and photographers as well as extreme advances from obsessive male fans, but never publicly confronts them. In public, Mima is always smiling and acting in a fairly calm manner, even as her mental state increasingly unravels due to the abuse of the industry as well as the actions of her stalker and manager/impersonator, Rumi. The few times she dissociates (or even hallucinates) during work, she immediately bows to her cast members and the director and apologizes profusely. However, in private Mima breaks down severely, having severe fits of destruction, screaming, panic attacks, and even hallucinations. For instance, after filming a scene in which she plays a stripper violently sexually assaulted by her audience, she continues to smile in public, thanking people for the acting opportunity. In her room however, she completely breaks down, becoming destructive and curling into her bed, sobbing uncontrollably and crying out “of course I didn’t want to do it”. This recurs frequently in the movie, as Mima is taken advantage of by a creepy photographer as well, and her agency does nothing to protect her from her stalker nor the men in the industry, and she is unable to assert herself, choosing to be pleasant in order to move ahead in her career. Additionally, Mima hides the symptoms of what may likely be schizophrenia or PTSD, her panic attacks and hallucinations, from those around her, finding private places to break down or going non verbal and apologizing when she experiences a hallucination. Satoshi Kon uses Mima as a vehicle for the choices Japanese women make everyday: to speak up about the things that upset them or play along silently in order to not be deemed a problem.

(image description: Mima screaming under water after nude pictures of herr were published. She is screaming "bastards!")

While the film is a commentary on sexism and mental health in Japanese society, the film also has a cult following in the West. In the last two years, Perfect Blue has made a comeback on social media. Aestheticized GIFs of the movie’s beautiful cinematography have become popular, and many young women dressed as Mima, the film’s protagonist, for halloween costumes. Many users have also commented how they relate to Mima as she descends into madness throughout the course of the film, becoming more unhinged in her expressions of sadness, anger, and frustration. The film makes her breakdowns deeply relatable because Mima never publicly expresses these emotions despite her deteriorating mental state: these breakdowns are private or channeled into her work as an actress. While the events that cause these breakdowns are extreme, ranging from her manager being a serial killer to sexual assault, these emotions are relatable to even those who haven’t experienced these things: women are taught from an extremely young age that politeness is valued over more “unpleasant emotions,” like anger or frustration. Expressing these emotions leads to being labeled a “bitch,” and deemed aggressive or unpleasant to be around. 

(Image 1: Mima on the train, experiencing a hallucination. Image 2: Mima filming a graphic assault scene as a stripper. Image 3: Mima's hallucination of her ex-idol self, leaping around town. These images are a few snippets of the beautiful cinematography of the movie)

Naturally, the discussion of the film within a modern context has led to discourse over its content: does the film overly romanticize suffering? The film’s stunning visuals and cinematography are the primary reason that it has regained popularity, with people posting and taking inspiration from beautiful scenes of Mima at her worst: covered in blood, having panic attacks, and breaking down. However, is the aestheticization of mental illness and hysteria a result of the objectification of the female body, including the emotions women experience? And another question: would people be able to stomach this delve into the darkest, repressed parts of a woman’s psyche if it weren’t presented with a beautiful protagonist and dreamy cinematography to mitigate the ugliness of rage and mental illness? 

Works Cited:

Carosi, Alessandra. “Hiding One's Emotions and Feelings (Honne*) Keep the Harmony Safe ?” PhMuseum, 2018, https://phmuseum.com/Alessa_C/story/hiding-one-s-emotions-and-feelings-honne-keep-the-harmony-safe-e099d7d261.

Kirk, Eliza. “Mental Health in Japan: Stigmas and Low Inequality.” The Borgen Project, Evan Winslow , 26 May 2021, https://borgenproject.org/mental-health-in-japan/.

Plate, Andrea. “Japan: Riding the Rails of Sexual Harassment.” Asia Media International – A Publication from Loyola Marymount University's Asia Pacific Media Center in Los Angeles, Loyola Marymont University, 15 Oct. 2019, https://asiamedia.lmu.edu/2019/10/15/japan-riding-the-rails-of-sexual-harassment/.

[voyageviolet]

A shard of memory: I’m in kindergarten, walking around the playground. Just walking and walking, a favorite activity throughout my life. Feels good, helps me integrate. I’m letting my hands move around as they are wont to do, letting them hover in the air around me, now flapping like butterflies, now floating like seaweed. No language spoken by non-autistic people has words for what this does for me. I’m jolted by the sudden sound of boys laughing. I look and see a group of bigger boys horsing around nearby. I think they’re the same boys who taunted me and hit me at recess a couple of days ago, calling me “freak” and “retard.” This time it’s not me they’re laughing at, but they might turn their attention to me at any moment. I remember that other kids have mocked and sometimes assaulted me for the way I move my hands. It occurs to me that if these boys spot my hands moving it will draw their attention. I quickly jam my hands into my pockets and walk on, pretending to be going somewhere. The boys ignore me. It worked! Next time I walk around the playground, I keep my hands in my pockets. It makes me a little bit safer, and I barely notice that I feel a little bit less alive.

I hardly think that was the very last time in my childhood I moved my hands like that; it’s just one moment I happen to remember, one representative glimpse of the story of my childhood. The suppression of my visible stimming habits was a long and gradual process, and even the stifling of any one specific form of stimming, like those particular hand movements, can’t be boiled down to any single decisive moment. To repress the embodiment of one’s truest and most vital self, to extinguish the unique dance by which that self intuitively seeks to engage with the world, takes countless tiny decisions, most of which end up lost to conscious memory if they were even consciously made in the first place. A slow accumulation of moments in which the spontaneous dance of stimming is put on lockdown for the sake of the partial safety of briefly passing for semi-normal, until the lockdown becomes habit and the dance is buried and forgotten under layers of rigid armor.

It’s never a price worth paying. For autistics, especially, stimming is essential to our well-being in every way—essential to ever attaining any measure of ease in navigating our world, essential to self-regulation and stability, essential to accessing our best gifts and highest potentials.

In the long run, suppressing our visible stimming and other aspects of our natural autistic embodiment doesn’t even buy us the safety from abuse it appears to offer. We can never truly pass. An autistic person can’t thrive and find social acceptance as an imitation of a non-autistic person just by forcing themselves not to move like an autistic person, any more than an eagle can live comfortably as an ostrich by forcing itself not to use its wings.

Locking the beauty of our autistic dance away under layers of chronic tension warps our embodiment into a perpetual state of awkward rigidity, a clumsy stiffness and dissociation, lacking in vitality and physical confidence. In the eyes of non-autistics this sorry condition, combined with our inability to convincingly perform the subtleties of non-autistic social norms, marks us as Other and as targets just as surely as our stimming ever did. And without access to the dance, without the integrative and restorative power of stimming, it’s impossible to cultivate the sort of resilience we need in order to thrive in this world.

By the time I turned twelve, the years of accumulated stress and trauma, compounded by the loss of resilience and vitality from repressing my stimming, had taken a severe psychological and physical toll on me. I was depressed, wracked with tension, often dissociated. Pale, anemic, and skeletally thin, I was often unable to eat due to ulcers and other stress-induced digestive problems. My posture was hunched, shoulders up and head down, always curling inward as if to shield myself from the unrelenting rain of abuse. I was plagued with headaches, illnesses, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and an assortment of nervous tics and twitches. Most of the time, all that kept me alive was sheer stubborn defiance: the world didn’t want me, so as long as I stayed alive the world didn’t get to win.

-“Somatics and Autistic Embodiment,” by Nick Walker. Compiled in Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: Toward an Inclusive Somatics. Emphasis mine.

#please read this #actuallyautistic #autism #neurodiversity #stimming #neuroqueer #quotes #books

[lindwurmkai]

I often feel a certain disconnect from my age that is separate from dissociation because it's more about observing others in my age group and finding their words utterly unrelatable, or perhaps even thinking they sound very wise and it'll take me at least another decade to get where they are lol. Now I'm starting to realise that this has a lot to do with being much more "online" than most people my age in a way.

Of course many of you are also Very Online, but I am talking about the percentage of one's life experience that has taken place offline vs. online. Things like only having been exposed to queer communities online - I have never been to pride or anything like it, the only time I ever went to a queer event was the one time I accompanied my partner to a nonbinary meet-up back when I was still only visiting instead of living here (which made it impossible to come back regularly, and then the pandemic started).

Most of my social interactions since middle school have been online outside of people I lived with. Even the forms of online interaction that are closest to actually hanging out with someone (voice chat, video chat) are mostly inaccessible to me (I can count the video chats I've participated in on one hand and voice chat doesn't work for me at all). I am literally just reading and typing and occasionally watching a video.

The lack of participation in audio/video-based communication also sets me apart from younger people, but from the perspective of someone my age I am more like a young person in terms of ... what problems I might have or how my opinions might have formed. It's embarrassing to read someone's musings on what young people these days might be struggling with and recognise myself in that although the writer is younger than me and talking about teenagers/people in their early 20s. Yikes.

#weirdo chronicles

[peachesand-dream]

Today I feel so overcome with rage, I could scream until my lungs give out. There are so many contributing factors and in my true dissociative style I learned as kid, I sit here peaceful and quiet - like nothing is wrong because god forbid I show my emotions. For all my life showing emotion has felt like a rebellious act. Which is absolutely ridiculous, really. So here I am furiously typing a way what will inevitably sit in my stomach, in my nervous system - a deep pit of despair, fear, guilt and anger - all brewing into one big concoction of shitty feelings, gugrling around in my stomach. I feel so much heaviness mentally and physically from holding everything in. Before I grab my phone to seep into my blissful little dissociative state any further - this is what is currently preventing me from functioning.

I am angry and hurt with my parents. Because all my life they;ve made me feel like I don't matter, my feelings don't matter, and my pain is invalid. Any sickness or injury would be met with a joke or taunting or a serves you right - or what became the most used "this is probably your fault" and somehow attributed to my eating disorder and the inability to take care of myself. Always reinforcing this notion that I'm pathetic and weak. Something I still struggle to convince myself otherwise of. Now I'm 31 years old. I have a rare and at times debilitating disease with no cure. I also have a secondary disease that causes my body to feel constant nausea 24/7 and bloating - which fuels the eating disorder even more. I'm angry with my parents because they never ask how I am. They don't care. If I bring up my health they change the subject. So I've learned to do the same to myself. health fears creep in and I instantly dismiss and invalidate them. Until they become so loud I have no choice but to pay attention to them. I'm angry at myself for having so little friends at this point in my life. For being so introverted, shy and anxious that social events make me completely spiral, that sharing how I feel is is near impossible, and that my illnesses feel even louder, that I constanty feel alone and unsupported. I'm angry at my partner because I cannot deal with another night like last night where he came home so drunk he was unable to stand, picked a fight with me over an open blind and left 4 inches deep of vomit in our bathtub. Some people might feel this is unfair of me but it's not the drunkenness that upsets me. It's who he becomes when he drinks and how uncomfortable and unsafe I feel in my own home when he comes home like that. I feel so disrespected, hurt and disgusted. I deserve better than this. This has happened too many times. I've had too many sleepless anxiety filled nights waiting for him to come home yet not know what I'm up against. I wish he respected me enough to stop doing this. If he wants to become the father of our children, then I need him to stop behaving like this. Because at the moment, one more night like this would probably send me to breaking point.

[ao3feed-danganronpa]

Here With Me

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/nZgYPNV

by Anonymous

Shuichi hated nights like these, where he finally had the free time he always yearned for, yet found himself faced with a different symptom of his array of mental illnesses.

He was stressed out when he couldn’t seem to keep on top of his work. Frazzled by his ADHD that made it practically impossible to focus, yet anxious that he wouldn’t get what he was working on done in time. He was so plagued by his social anxiety that any outing with his friends led to hours of overthinking after; tearing apart every little thing he said that day and overanalyzing every little expression and tone shift in any of the conversations he was involved in.

And yet, when he finally had peace, with no work to stress over and no interactions to overthink, he found himself spacing out. It wouldn’t be a bad thing, really, if he wasn’t unable to come back.

Words: 1336, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Oma Kokichi, Saihara Shuichi

Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi

Additional Tags: Background Momota Kaito, Anxious Saihara Shuichi, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Saihara Shuichi Needs a Hug, POV Saihara Shuichi, Saihara Shuichi-centric, Saihara Shuichi Needs Sleep, Author projecting onto Saihara Shuichi, Fluff, Saihara Shuichi Is a Mess, Comfort/Angst, Dissociation, Saihara Shuichi Dissociates, Oma Kokichi being a good boyfriend, Stargazing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Sleepy Cuddles, Saihara shuichi has adhd, Saihara Shuichi Has Social Anxiety

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/nZgYPNV

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #dangan ronpa #danganronpa #dr

[colby-k]

Being Diagnosed With Bipolar Depression

I have recently been writing about my anxiety in my posts. It has plagued my life for years in many different ways. Now I want to switch gears and tell you more about my depression, specifically my bipolar depression.

I have been struggling with depression for a long time. I first started noticing it a few years after my anxiety started to blossom. It was before middle school. I had this feeling and, at the time, I didn't know what to call it. I was feeling sad in a way, but also not interested in life. At recess, I didn't want anyone to talk to me. I would often sit alone on the swings or grass. It seemed like the only thing to do.

I learned to try to ignore it. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't have anyone to tell, and I thought that everyone would think I'm faking it. I worried that they would see me as someone who wants attention. Shortly after this realization, I was able to find a word to match how I feel: worthless. Yet, I was also confused because it felt like nobody wanted to be around me, but I pushed them away.

The longer I kept this up, the more I was suspicious of myself. I was afraid that I was possibly falling into an asymmetrical rhythm with my social skills and experiences. I didn't want to fall into the pattern of being socially awkward and not being able to attain and retain friends. So, I decided to try to make more friends and socialize more.

This became good for my mental health. I was less depressed after a while of getting to know my new friends. But, then, the bullying started. This is when I remember my first interactions with bipolar disorder. I didn't notice it at the time, but the bullying triggered my mood inconsistencies. I went from being content and at ease one moment, to depressed and feeling like garbage the next.

I wasn't educated much on mental health, and what I did know was stereotypical and mostly false. I grew up being fed misinformation and being taught that having a mental illness makes you useless.

I was afraid to talk about it. I didn't know who I could talk to. My father didn't understand mental illness or even feelings. He basically thought it was a joke. It was the same for the rest of that family as well. However, my mother's side was more understanding of my problems. I still felt like I couldn't tell her or anyone else in the family. My friends were out of the question because I couldn't trust them completely. It was confusing.

After I started therapy and worked on identifying my feelings, I started to understand what was causing my emotions to become so intense. Although my self-perceptions began to evolve, I still didn't understand how to untangle my ups and downs. I wanted to discuss this with my therapist, but I couldn't put it into words. I wanted to get it off my chest, but I couldn't.

I continued to live with it for some time. As I got older and went through high school, it slowly became more intense and problematic. In ninth grade, I specifically remember being at my lowest of lows.

At 15 years old, girls can be mean. There was a group of girls who had spread many rumors about me, one being that I was pregnant. They said I had sex with my stepbrother and got pregnant. However, what they wouldn't understand is it was actually sexual abuse. But, we won't talk about that.

This is just one example of how much my life was ruined. It wasn't the sole cause, but it made me go into a deep depression. I felt invalidated, worthless, and numb. It was awful to the point of self-harm, but we won't talk about that either.

It felt like I was surrounded by black opiates, all of them, just for me. To feel like nothing was almost an addiction. Keeping myself growing and moving forward felt impossible. It was as if all I could do was dissociate and use pain as a grounding tool.

This strong episode lasted for almost a year. But there were a few times when I felt content and happier than I'd been in months. I wasn't the happiest, but I felt lighter. This didn't last long, though.

This was the time that I started to hear voices, too. At first, I thought that it was just that little voice inside my head that everyone has. But, the thoughts soon became more violent. I kept this a secret from everyone because I didn't want them to think that I was a psychopath. They slowly became worse and worse until they just kept repeating themselves. Sometimes, it has been phrases or shorter sentences like "Just do it, you know you want to" in regards to self-harm.

Once I started college, the voices were primarily male and rusty-sounding. Before I started therapy at college (about halfway through my second semester), a new, female voice joined in and was even viler.

Even though it took a while to get my mental health controlled, after I did, life became somewhat easier for me. I was very grateful. I still had my highs and lows, and most of the time they were dramatic changes. The voices were just as mean and manipulative. As I progressed through the rest of high school, I learned to live with these emotions. Unfortunately, letting them just exist wasn't healthy. Just coping isn't healthy. You have to actively heal.

I didn't learn this until I was in college, though. I was taking a general psychology class, and we were learning about basic mental disorders. Bipolar depression was touched on, and it caught my attention. It seemed like it was describing how I was feeling. I thought there is no way I could have bipolar depression. But, I'm not a psychologist, so I cannot diagnose myself. Later in the semester, I thought that it was time to see a psychiatrist.

I sat down at my desk one day to research psychiatrists that I could contact. Through a Google search, I came upon an eye-catching psychiatric clinic. I read its introduction on Google, read some reviews, and decided to call them. After I made my appointment, all I had to do was wait.

I was nervous on the day of my appointment. I was truly hoping everything would turn out okay, and I wasn't as crazy as I thought I was.

As I connected with my psychiatrist over video chat, I was surprised to find myself somewhat physically relaxed. Looking back, I think it was because of finally meeting with one. She introduced herself as the psychiatrist's nurse practitioner. I was interested in this. I wondered what type of case it took to see the psychiatrist. But, I tried to push that aside so I could focus on the meeting.

Once we got started, the first thing she asked was why I was there. From there, we discussed my background and how I feel about it now. She asked me how my traumas affect me and if I feel like I dramatically go from a high to a low often. The more questions she asked, the more I realized that I actually might be crazy.

An hour after the start, I finished answering questions. She said, "Okay, well here's what I think based on what you've told me here today." She then proceeded to tell me that I have an anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and bipolar depression with psychotic features. I wasn't ready for the last one.

I never considered myself to be anywhere near bipolar, but I've learned that that was because I was suppressing it. My nurse practitioner then prescribed me a few different medications to try. She told me to contact her after a week of taking them to touch base on how they were working for me.

They ended up working wonderfully. I decided to stay on the dosage I was originally given, and I've been doing so much better these last two and a half years since the diagnosis.

However, it was still difficult to take in this diagnosis. It wasn't because of the stereotypes of being bipolar. It wasn't because I had to take more medication or anything like that. I thought that I wasn't going to be diagnosed with a disorder more than just anxiety and depression. I thought they were my peak, even though I was still hearing voices.

Today, my mental health is controlled by medication from my psychiatrist and by going to therapy. I have a rough past, and there's more that I haven't shared. But, being diagnosed with mental disorders, especially bipolar depression, gives me a guide to continue the process of healing. It provides me a starting point for learning how to be proactive.

Having a mix of mental disorders can exhaust me, especially when I fall into an episode that I can't control. But, with the help of medication, patience, and therapy, I have become okay with my mental imbalances and will wear them with pride.

#blog post #lifestyle blog #bipolor #mental health #mental #mental illness #mental disorder #mentally fucked #mentally unstable #depressing life #deppresion #kinda depressing #depressing shit #diagnosis #medicine #therapy #actually psychotic #psychiatry #psychology