#healthism | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

disabledunitypunk · 10 months

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[Image ID: A tumblr post with the username cut off which reads "i mean this in the gentlest way possible: you need to eat vegetables. you need to become comfortable with doing so. i do not care if you are a picky eater because of autism (hi, i used to be this person!), you need to find at least some vegetables you can eat. find a different way to prepare them. chances are you would like a vegetable you hate if you prepared it in a stew or roasted it with seasoning or included it as an ingredient in a recipe. just. please start eating better. potatoes and corn are not sufficient vegetables for a healthy diet." /end ID]

No. Just no.

You don't HAVE TO do anything. ARFID is called an EATING DISORDER for a reason. What's it going to take to get it through your heads that some people cannot, under ANY circumstances, eat certain foods because of their neuroDISABILITIES. It's almost like disabilities of the brain can still make you NOT ABLE to do things!

You also have no moral obligation to be healthy. Healthism is one of the fundamental pillars of ableism. Health is a personal choice that must be fully, enthusiastically consensual (which does not mean you can mumble-grumble about the steps it takes to get there or have complex feelings that include resentment about the process or what caused the unhealthiness in the first place).

The "hi, I used to be this person!" is, get this, ALSO ABLEISM. Like good job, you had the ability to do something with effort that some people with your same disability can never do! Something that, might I add, you had no obligation to do but chose to because YOU either wanted it or were unfairly pressured to. Plus, the narrative of "you can overcome your disabilities if you try hard enough" is incredibly insidious even in disabled communities (in my experience, especially so in neurodivergent communities, but I'll also add my experiences aren't universal).

Just, everything about this post reeks of ableism. A "hey, if you're wanting to eat more veggies but can't because of sensory issues, these ways of preparing them might make them edible for you!" would have reached MORE people and accomplished more than... all of that.

I'd also like to add: healthism is how you get involuntary psychiatric holds for even people who are self-harming or using substances as a form of harm reduction. Healthism is how you get psychiatric and medical abuse that forces or manipulates you onto meds you do consent to being on (including coerced consent, as that is not consent).

Healthism and ableism both is why insurances and doctors require you to go to physical therapy to "get better" before even considering prescribing a mobility aid because "what if the mobility aid has health consequences when PT could 'fix' you?" Healthism is responsible for "do no harm" stopping at bodily harm and not taking a holistic, whole-person approach to making sure disabled people have a good quality of life.

Healthism is also a primary driver of fatphobia and to a lesser extent, medical intersexism. There is a normative idea of what "health" even is, one that is often incorrect and based in bigotry, that means deviations from that norm get blamed for any symptoms a person expresses while actual causes are ignored. "Corrective" measures are forced are many people who neither want nor need them to be healthy.

Healthism aims to make people more abled (or at least more able to conform to abled standards) without regard for their quality of life, personal wishes, or even consent. It is directly responsible for medical abuse.

It is also responsible for medical neglect, in that if you *can't* pursue a treatment option, doctors will often refuse to explore other treatments. Instead, they assume you're simply lazy and don't want to get better, and are therefore a waste of their time.

("Can't" here includes 'is technically possible but the consequences of doing so make you as sick or sicker/in as much or more pain/as or more disabled than not doing anything at all.)

Often there's another treatment option that would work just fine. Sometimes there's no viable option, and GOOD treatment then becomes exploring how to still live as fulfilling a life as possible with the condition untreated. Sometimes it's only possible to manage a disability that is usually fully possible to send into remission. There's a wide spectrum of experiences here.

But the most important thing is: what do YOU want for your body? Will conforming to standards of "health" help you feel happier and live a more preferable life for you? Will the requirements in the process of becoming "healthy" end up just making you sicker or more disabled in one way or another?

Also, are there access barriers or direct obstacles caused by your disability in the way of seeking the health outcomes you want? Are those outcomes not possible because of your disabilities, and if so, is healthy OR helpful to keep pushing yourself past your limits or trying and failing to do so? Have you made sure this is what YOU want, and not what you feel pressured into doing*?

*(Reminder to BELIEVE PEOPLE if they say it is what they want. We respect autonomy above all here.)

I've talked about this before, but recovery is about what YOU want and are able to do. There are no milestones you have to make or requirements you have to meet. It's okay to be unhealthy. Often, disability means you don't have a choice in the matter, and moralizing health is therefore moralizing disability.

It contributes to the myth that disability and chronic illness especially is a result of "bad choices", and especially the culturally christian idea that it is a "punishment" for "sinful behaviors" and "righteous behaviors" will be rewarded with the person becoming abled again.

As I said above, remember: Autonomy above all. What matters, first, foremost, and forever, is what each disabled individual wants. Helping other disabled people with tools to reach their desired bodily and psychiatric outcomes? Yes!! Do that!!

Disabled people don't owe anyone health, though, and certainly not standards of health that may make us sicker or more disabled than simply not conforming to them.

#ableism #healthism #intersexism #fatphobia #disability #culturally christian #recovery #neurodisability #eating disorder #ARFID #just another reminder that if YOU want to recover and be healthier we FULLY support you #this is about respecting people's autonomy and not moralizing or forcing 'health' on anyone #I also would welcome commentary on how healthism interacts with medical racism as that's not something I have experience with #cw medical abuse #cw psych abuse #cw medical neglect #cw self harm #cw substance use

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xxlovelynovaxx · 8 months

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Okay I know this is referring to a very specific phenomenon but takes like this still PISS ME THE FUCK OFF. Screenshot below.

STOP FUCKING MAKING OTHER PEOPLE'S EXPERIENCE OF AND APPROACH TO THEIR ILLNESS ABOUT YOU.

Screenshot end.

[Image ID: two screenshots of a tumblr post which reads: ive been on tumblr a long time and i remember when everyone said "oh don't romanticize mental illness" and it was agreed that doing that was gross and a good way to kill people indirectly

but somehow we've come full circle and there are people who legit defend their right to be anti-recovery there are people who don't want to get better and spread the idea that you can't get better as if it's gospel and it's fucking frightening to me bc nobody seems to want to say "hey? this is toxic and untrue and is your disease speaking, and it's not something you should accept."

and i feel like every recovery post gets about 500 of these people saying "this isn't something that will work" "cool karen i'm depressed" "maybe it worked for you but it won't work for other people" and that's... just... im so sorry if you're 15. i'm sorry if you're in high school and watching grown adults tell you it doesn't get better. that nobody says that with time and help and patience the world stops being so heavy, that accepting your illness as a fact is one thing but accepting it as the only way to be is just wrong, that you can learn to live with it and still find some degree of "happy".... if i had seen this shit back when i was ... oh god starting at 12 when i was already self-harming .... i think i'd have actually honest-to-god killed myself. not a joke, not a funny tumblr punchline, i would have actually just killed myself.

i'm saying this right here and right now to the adults on this site. if you for any reason shoot down positivity that's causing no harm - you might have indirectly worsened someone else's condition, and you should try and do better in the future. if you find it necessary to tell people "recovery is a lie", you need to do better. i know everyone has different circumstances, but i also know that mental illness behaves in such a way that everyone thinks they can't recover. if you feel like you should be spreading the Word Of Relapse, you are causing toxic language to be normalized and you need to do better.

im team "cool karen ive got depression and that means i'm going to try this because i've got to try something" i'm team "romanticize recovery" i'm team "it isn't working now but it might in the future and it's worth staying to find out” im team “hey this didn't work for me but it might help somebody else out"

fuck guys it shouldn't be an unpopular opinion to say "i don't want any of you to die". /end ID]

Stop denying the autonomy of mentally ill and mad people and saying "this is just your mental illness speaking and if you think this you need to be forced to recover for your own good"!!! You're a huge fucking ableist if you do this! It's something I've fucking accepted because constantly fighting against it was causing me MORE HARM than learning to live as a person with mental illness, fuck off!

Some people genuinely can't recover! Get this, some people have MORE SEVERE mental or physical illness than you. How is this fucking different than saying "[medication] or [treatment regimen] made my MCAS/POTS go into complete remission, so why are you still experiencing anaphylactic episodes despite trying every possible intensive treatment/med?"

(I try to only use examples I have personal experience with whenever possible to avoid unintentional ableism. This one is especially apt though as depression and most mental illnesses are not an acute injury, but rather a chronic illness. Remission is possible for some people. At least currently, a "cure" isn't, and recovery is usually closer to management than complete healing. Ofc not all injuries can heal either, but I think it's more apt to compare apples to apples here.)

Also, depression isn't the only mental illness, double fuck off!

Get this, I know my own needs and my own brain and my own illness better than you, triple fuck off!

Like yes, don't shit on positivity posts. In the same way anti-recovery posts aren't for everyone, if a recovery positivity post isn't for you, just move on. Filter or block if you need to.

That being said, there's a difference between positivity posts and posts that say "recovery/this aspect of recovery is mandatory". That kind of "positivity" IS causing harm. Stating "hey this isn't mandatory for recovery and recovery itself is optional, do what helps you most even if that means remaining mentally ill" isn't fucking "spreading the Word of Relapse".

Also "maybe it worked for you but it won't work for everyone" is quite literally not an attack and CERTAINLY not anti-recovery. There isn't a single recovery tool on the PLANET that will work for everyone. That's just a fucking fact.

All I can think of when I see this is that OP probably reblogged that post that basically said "you need to brush your teeth, if you don't you're harming yourself and are therefore a Bad Person, and if you can't, you can actually and are basically just refusing to recover out of laziness I mean because you're not trying hard enough I mean because you don't want to and your poor mental health is basically therefore your fault." Because yes, that was the implication of that post.

Refusing to acknowledge that people can be disabled enough BY ANY ILLNESS to not be able to recover isn't actually helping mentally ill people.

Like, even setting aside that I literally romanticize my mental illnesses as a healthy coping mechanism (signed off on by my therapist, in case you only believe people certified by the oppressive institution known as psychiatry), even setting aside that I have mental illnesses that can't be cured and that I don't want treated in part or in whole (I don't want meds or therapy for my schizophrenia, I only want to achieve functional multiplicity with my DID, as examples)...

It's not "spreading the idea that you can't get better" to acknowledge that SOME people can't get better. First of all, fucking curate your own online experience. Second of all, me saying I will never live without severe anxiety, as one example, is exactly the same as me saying I'll never be able to navigate the world without a mobility aid. It's fucking acknowledging my material reality. It's better for ME to stop wasting all my energy on the stuff that I either fully can't do or that hurts me to try to do and focus on what PERSONALLY makes my quality of life better, even if it makes me MORE ILL.

Finally, even if someone CAN recover, they don't fucking owe you that! There is no moral imperative for them to recover! If them choosing to continue to be mentally ill (by which this post only means depression, but even then), is triggering to you, that's a fucking you problem.

Give people the tools to recover, but forced recovery is inherently a form of violence because it violates a person's autonomy! Why don't you focus on building a society where the social conditions responsible for a good portion of depression are simply gone instead of yelling at mentally ill disabled people on the internet who make choices about their own illness that you don't like?

And stop fucking saying "if you make a decision I disagree with, it's your mental illness speaking and you're not actually capable of recognizing that or of making your own decisions (and therefore need "rescuing")"!!!

That's the justification used for institutionalization and psychiatric abuse.

That's the reason so many psychotic people who are not harming anyone have their psychosis forcibly suppressed via nonconsensual medication. (And quite honestly, even for those few that are causing harm, there are other options besides "lose all autonomy" and "be harmfully medicated into an approximation of a sanist concept of normalcy that is actually just drugging someone into docile compliance". Make no mistake, antipsychotics themselves are not inherently harmless and DO require informed consent. Though I am all for their usage by people who DO grant noncoerced informed consent; I'm not anti-med, I'm pro-consent.

It's not "normalizing toxic language" to literally argue for mad liberation and respecting the autonomy of mentally ill people. To say "I actually know my own self and experiences best and can therefore say this is not coming from the mental illness" or EVEN "it is coming from the mental illness, but I am still capable of making the decision to choose this anyway, because mental illness does not make me inherently incapable of consent" (yes, even if it causes the brain to be in an altered state, stop with that paternalistic bullshit), isn't something you need to "do better" about.

Fuck off.

Another thing: why do these posts ALWAYS go hand in hand with childism. It's a bunch of "15 years olds being hurt by the meanie adults who say they can't get better" and "toxic evil adults harming kids by teaching them that it's okay to make peace with being unhealthy because what's best for people isn't universal and our idea of recovery is very rigid anyway as proven by the idea that accepting your mental illness as it is isn't recovery".

I see you, 15 year olds who ARE mentally ill and are writing about mad liberation and anti-recovery and are wildly more capable and coming up with ideas in those veins that are blowing us all out of the water. For what it's worth, I'm proud of you, and my only wish for you is that you find the peace, whatever that means, that is best for you.

Just...

"if I had read this at 12 I would have actually killed myself" I'm glad you didn't, then, but that doesn't mean the sentiment shouldn't exist.

If anti-recovery isn't for you, that's fine. What's not fine is acting like it's inherently harmful and is a form of violence against every mentally ill person ever. Because many of us have been harmed by a culture that is "pro-recovery" and its logical extreme, forced recovery.

#anti-recovery #anti psych #ableism #childism #sanism #psych abuse #forced recovery #autonomy violation #nonconsensual medication #forced medication #normalism #healthism #institutionalization

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bloodyscott · 5 months

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fuck my life my mom just bodyshamed me for gaining weight and she doesn’t gaf that i literally can’t exercise because of my cfs and not to mention im also on risperdal yet shes trying to force me to. literally shaming me for my stomach protruding and talking about how im making my health worse by gaining weight and will get diabetes and all this other bullshit. i hate it up here

#fatphobia #ableism #cfs/me #healthism #sizeism #dysautonomia #diabetes mention #delusional disorder #risperdal #disabled

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sitronsangbody · 3 months

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There's something sinister, to me, about how we're encouraged to track everything and boil every part of existing down to numbers. Steps. Pulse. Calories eaten. Calories burned. Sleep. Amount of water consumed.

I realize there are medical circumstances where tracking these things can be necessary, I hope it's obvious that that's not what I'm talking about. And I'm sure some people find this sort of thing helpful regardless (judging by how people love to post about all the steps they got in and so on).

But if I had that much focus inward I would spiral into panic mode on a daily basis. Holy shit. There would be no part of living that wasn't tied to a daily goal, a perfect number. Endless little sub-categorical standards of perfection. Endless ways to not be good enough.

Being a fat person with health anxiety is a lot. The pressure to perform good health increases, as does society's need to remind you that you're classified as inherently unhealthy. With every weight loss ad, every diet tip, every article about how processed food is the devil, every tiktok fitness coach preaching "no excuses", every time someone I know brags about how healthy their lunch is, I feel a little bit heavier and more stressed.

I'm trying desperately to live a life that works for me, one where I'm not constantly thinking and stressing about these things. Just an intuitive existence where I actually listen to my body and take care of myself. And every single day I'm presented with the option of having an app tell me how I could do better and be more in control. Because bodies are there to be improved, apparently. Being content with yourself as you are is not an option. Caring more about other stuff is laughable.

That doesn't seem the least bit healthy to me.

#musings #diet culture #healthism #fat liberation

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fatphobiabusters · 7 months

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People say weight loss is for sure possible...but no one agrees on how to do it.

Dieting works...but there's now an "ob*sity epidemic" despite people lining the pockets of weight loss corporations more than ever.

Weight loss products work...but weight loss corporations are making the Exact. Same. Claims. about their products that they did in 1910 with the products that were sold and then discontinued over a century ago.

Humans are all meant to be thin...but there are families of fat people who stay fat no matter how much "willpower" they muster and have fat ancestors going back generations.

It's about health and not looks...but people who are losing weight due to smoking, cancer, illness, mental disorders, and other health conditions are praised for their weight loss and told to keep going.

Fat people aren't oppressed...but fat people have no positive representation, no proper access to clothing, face a wage gap, endure deadly medical neglect and abuse, have their deaths by police brutality excused with their fatness, and countless other aspects of oppression that they deal with every single day.

Fat people are all fat because they overeat...but you can point to any fat person on the sidewalk and there's an extreme likelihood that they're on their 30th diet attempt in the past 10 years while there's thin people who eat whatever they want, however much they want, and don't exercise yet never gain a single pound.

Fat people are privileged because they gorge on unnecessary food...but fat people are overwhelmingly living in poverty, are not paid the same amount of money for the same work as their thin peers, are not chosen for promotions, are turned away from jobs that an employer wants more than a "pretty face" for, are at major risk of workplace harassment, and endure oppression even beyond just that.

Fat people aren't treated badly...but people use the word "fat" as a metaphor and synonym for "ugly," "unlovable," and "unworthy," while at the same time believing "fat," the most basic term for a specific body type, is a dirty, taboo insult you should never allow to leave your lips.

Professionals agree that fatness is inherently bad...but almost any weight-related research study that people, especially weight loss corporations, use to justify demonizing fat people has the worst methodology imaginable with validity errors and logical fallacies galore as well as conflicts of interest due to how many of these studies just happen to be funded by the corporations that make millions and billions of dollars off of the demonization these studies promote.

All health conditions a fat person has are caused by their fatness...but there is not a single health condition that only fat people obtain, many fat people developed the health condition in question when they were thin or thinner, weight gain is often a symptom of said health conditions, fat people are not given the same amount or quality of healthcare as thin people, and repeated starvation attempts (also known as "yo-yo dieting") have been shown to worsen a person's health.

Fat people can't have eating disorders...but fat people are the group encouraged to partake in disordered eating by this fatphobic world the most and then are not given any support to recover.

Thin privilege doesn't exist...but thin people who see the way fat people are treated in society do their absolute damndest and take whatever drastic measures they have to in order to prevent themselves from ever becoming one of "Them."

Fit and fat are mutually exclusive...but there are fat athletes as far up as even the Olympics, and sports are intentionally made inaccessible to fat people to the point of fat children even being turned away when trying to join a sports team.

Fat people are ugly...but all we grow up ever seeing in media are thin, conventionally attractive people painted with layers of makeup next to fat characters who were intentionally designed with an ill-fitting outfit, matted hair, and all other traits that fit the "ugly" stereotype that the character designer could manage to slap onto a single person.

Fat people are big, bad bullies...but studies show that weight is the number one excuse that children use to bully their peers, outcompeting a multitude of other oppressed identities considered.

Fat women are just men and vice versa...but sometimes they're androgynous, and sometimes they're basically nonbinary, and sometimes they're just things, and sometimes they're nothing at all depending on what labels a fatphobe decides will hurt a fat person most that day.

Fat people are subhuman...but fat people deserve the same love, respect, compassion, and support that all people are born inherently deserving.

Fatphobia isn't real, but—

-Mod Worthy

#fatphobia #healthism #diet culture #fat liberation #Mod Worthy #o word

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hussyknee · 7 months

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Idk if there's enough people talking about what a gigantic energy drain Complex PTSD is. It's not just one single traumatic event, it's having lived in a traumatic situation for a long time. And in the case of child abuse, your entire formative life period. Everything is a trigger, anxiety is your default, and your brain keeps trying to keep you safe by yelling at you about everything you're doing "wrong", which will lead to pain. Your brain is a constant war zone, braced for attack, rarely relaxed, at least some part of you always hypervigilant. The stress it takes on your body is insane. It's why trauma is linked to autoimmune issues, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and, according to one study, cancer.

Physical disability leaves you even more vulnerable and less able to live up to the impossible standards of control and "correct" behaviour your brain insists on, not to mention the free gift given to all patients of chronic illness that is medical gaslighting and patient-blaming, all of which simply compounds the trauma. Reduced physical and mental health obviously leads to systemic risk factors such as inability to pursue academic and professional qualifications, poverty and financial struggle, malnutrition, becoming unhoused or bad living conditions, exacerbated medical issues and further lack of medical resources, reliance on welfare and care networks, and becoming trapped in codependent, abusive or toxic relationships. The knock-on effects are endless.

This is all to say— if you're wondering why you can't seem to do more than the bare minimum every day when you haven't been diagnosed with a physical illness, or you're "not that disabled", or you think your symptoms are "just psychosomatic" (which means your brain is under so much intolerable stress that it's started taking a chair to the windows and destroying the furniture just to get you to NOTICE AND MAKE IT STOP): the answer is that your body is actually struggling under the kind of stress that kills trained soldiers and disables them for life. So stop trying to convince yourself that you're just not trying hard enough when what you really, desperately need to get your life on track is community, care, rest and ease.

#the medicalization of mental health is just capitalism trying to cover its ass #isolating physical and mental illness makes the entire medical complex an abject failure actually #''disease'' should refer to a state of being rather than its outcome imo #i've never heard of one that wasnt simply the visible symptom or ramification of the core problem or situation #like I'm grateful for the anti-depressants and bipolar meds and all but i just think a lot more problems would be solved #if someone gave me a place to live with peace and quiet and living assistance #i mean I'd still need the meds its not either/or #but I wouldn't need to be on ever increasing doses for the rest of forever #also if there was some kind of holistic understanding of health that bridged psychiatry with the fest of the medical complex #they could have taken one look at how badly I broke down at age twenty and worked to prevent my inflammatory disease being triggered #or at least not gaslit me about it for seven years until i nearly lost a colon #you just absolutely bloody cannot treat health as separate from socioeconomics and community support #this shouldn't be new or revolutionary #actually cptsd #complex ptsd #ableism #disability #healthism #child abuse #emotional abuse #domestic abuse #intimate partner violence #parental abuse #chronic illness #spoonie #knee of huss #mental illness #autoimmune disease #social justice #psychosomatic

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