#refusing to acknowledge mental illness

[mxlign]

Being black and mentally ill has me feeling like a fucking joke. Apparently, I’m abusing substances because there’s absolutely no way I’m actually mentally ill. No, no, that’s a myth. According to them: “black people don’t get sick, that’s white people shit.” ..?? Are we not human too???? We are not immune to developing disorders, people. But unfortunately, to them it’s like this made up concept and in their eyes, the professionals “must be lying.”

And with being trans, apparently, I am just confused and probably just a lesbian… like what?? My gender identity has nothing to do with my sexual orientation and I wish they’d stop coming up with that conclusion.

Also the term “Psychopath” has been thrown around more and more every time someone does something that doesn’t fit their ideal image of a “respectable person” and it can be something as simple as some person driving too fast on the road. It never made sense and it’s only adding to the problems we face. Racism, stereotypes, stigmatization, etc, The more closed-minded the community is, the more we are adding to our own problems/struggles.

You can’t push for respect and acceptance outside the community while still being unaccepting and cruel to the people within that same community.

[ghst-boys]

thinking about the way the yellowjackets fandom treats mental illness. like yall accept it in lottie because... idk? but shauna is "insane", "psychotic", "evil". like. yall are weird.

[lillykatt1273]

Me and my sister recreated a screenshot from a show I like and yes I did completely recreate the background in a lineless way

[slightlycomicobsessed]

they should let dani have schizophrenia

[qumiiiquinnquin]

this family very much does not understand mental health, but i cant talk to them to educate and be able to talk to them about what is wrong, without them always getting frustrated at me or demanding an answer as to what i want them to do. i often get shot down or my answer isn't good enough for them. they've accused me of using anxiety and depression as excuses to act shitty, which is not true. ive explained my problems to my sibling numerous times only for them to snap back at me and they refuse to read what i wrote. every time, it is up to me to apologize for displaying symptoms, though i cant phrase it like that, but rather apologize for "how i acted." my dad does not want me to say i have anxiety and depression because self-diagnosis is bad. he has yelled at me and been physical with me during multiple depressive episodes or anxiety attacks.

i cannot say i was abused or have trauma either. just, people werent very great, thats all i can say, but i cant talk about those that hurt me too much because "they're family" and "they loved you." my mom did not care about my sa story, responding to it with "that happens" and moved on to talk about her own trauma. i hadn't told anyone but her in my family about the incident and i do not want to. in 2021 she stopped me from talking to her about the abuse from my nana because "its not nice to talk about people behind their backs." even though my dad has since apologized and stopped when i was 12, my dad's yelling and spanking since we were little made me nervous to accidentally set him off. i dont know if im wrong to feel that way about spanking, but he intentionally would do it very hard and my sibling and i would feel pain for several hours or longer. but since he feels guilty about it, we aren't allowed to call it abuse and i cannot say it caused me trauma. this same situation gets applied with my stepdad who has yelled at us for numerous things. and, of course there is what my nana and "aunt" have done.

apparently, this same lack of understanding and ignorance of mental health was present when my parents were still married, where my dad did not know much about bipolar disorder, which my mom has, but would not listen to my mom or try to understand.

my grandma seems to be the only person i can talk to and actually understands and cares about mental health.

i want to be able to tell my family whats going on. they're my family. i do not want to separate from them both physically and emotionally. i genuinely feel at a loss.

[brokentoys]

honestly to love ed you'd have to be the most understanding & patient person in the world.

[amayikes]

Then on my, private, untagged post:

Turning this shit into receipts because I swear I was too kind and lenient to someone whose only goal is to misunderstand, poke and coax until I lose my patience or god forbid word something a little too ambiguously so that she can interpret it as lesbophobia, eugenicism or what have you.

Fucking tired.

"Eugenic politics" clarification because she insisted on picking on that too. I'm using Nürenberg laws (1930s germany) as my basis for eugenic politics.

[inkskinned]

you balance the catholic guilt & you still eat too many servings of pasta. you split the pomegranate but you think of the lord jesus and his guts spilled across your dining room table. yesterday was father's day and you went to church. your father is also a deacon. he wants you to marry a nice man one day, when the lesbianism wears off.

you are religiously traumatized, probably, but also the world is in absolute chaos. you feel guilty all the time about not being endlessly informed - about the mini breaks you take between in-person activism & volunteer work and doomscrolling through online news articles. you feel guilty you dropped a sweater on the ground. you feel guilty you cannot afford rent. you feel guilty, and you quite actually feel guilty that you feel guilty.

your father isn't a tall man, but he is good at being imposing. yesterday was hard. all father's day activities are. you watched him radicalize in the last 10 years, moving from a man who had some ignorant views to - whatever this is. he crowed at you that 250,000 people showed up to trump's military parade. you have seen the pictures and think that it's very unlikely there were more than 100k. but your father has no shame. your father just says the thing without checking it.

you have a conspiracy theory that, in some small part, the parade was also to rebrand june as military appreciation month. how often they have said why is there no veteran's month, even though there is. the white house's stance on pride this year was that they did not want to acknowledge something that "only affects 7% of the population." you don't know where they got that number, but it's guilt-free. it's just, like, out there. they get to just say things. you can't even fucking imagine.

you haven't grown up. you still wear the 2014 tumblr style shit sometimes. you are still on tumblr. you are still thinking about girls and "holy holy holy" and it always does feel magical and rebellious and incredible to kiss her. nothing is new about love until it is your love, and then it is impervious. and yet - still you feel stuck, and guilty, and the acid in your stomach refuses to settle. all the yearning and the stupid shit, and the fucking guilt.

you make a little poem in your notes app. you make your hands into a little prayerful steeple. your mother tells you that you make yourself crazy. you have a running joke with your friends that if you had no mental illnesses, you'd be unstoppable.

but when you kiss her, you feel it. when you buy groceries. when you forget to text back - you feel it. the little thing inside of you, always fucking chipping away at things.

[astronomalyy]

Thinking about the lifespans of Dungeon Meshi elves... The fact that they're completely unnatural alters my brain chemistry, because you can tell just how haphazardly the demon implemented their wish. They live five times the length of tall-men, so they age at a fifth of their rate. It's simple maths and the implications are terrifying. No wonder their birth rate and population are declining - their early development is so slow that at the age of two, they're still unable to stand.

They don't reach adulthood until their eighties. What does the infant mortality look like? How many elves succumb to illness or injury before they're fully mature? It only takes one accident to lose the child you've been raising for decades - and could you bring yourself to care for another? Add to that the implication elf culture has no idea how to process grief... just look at the way the Canaries treat Rin after the death of her parents. They're callous and insensitive and detached - part of that's racism, but there's also an element of pure cold ignorance. They don't even recognise the emotion on her face.

And that's just scratching the surface... does elven memory accommodate their extended lifespan? Once you reach two hundred or so, do the years start blurring together? Kabru mentions that their temporal awareness is remarkably poor.

Two years feel like a few months. Their lives are longer but not fuller. They're older but not wiser than the short-lived races, and most refuse to understand this. Those that do grasp it are interesting - namely Otta, who's ostracised for pursuing half-foot women.

A 30-year old elf is a young child; a 30-year old half-foot has entered middle age. Otta is in the equivalent of her late twenties. She knows that her elven lifespan makes her no more mature than a half-foot - but she also acknowledges that it creates a rift between herself and her partners, and not just in the eyes of society. 'She dumps them as soon as they pass 30', but probably not for the reasons Lycion assumes. For this to be a pattern, decades must have passed - it's possible Otta doesn't want to watch them die as she herself barely ages. No doubt some of her previous lovers have already passed away. In the end, all living 400 years accomplishes is leaving them out of sync with the rest of humanity.

Marcille's perhaps the best example. As a half-elf, she's got 95% of her life ahead and the thought terrifies her. She's going to lose everyone she loves, over and over and over again, and this cycle has barely even started. She runs at a different pace. This context adds so much to her dynamic with Falin in earlier chapters.

Marcille loves her! She's scared for her! Maybe even of her! She's grown attached to a short-lived girl who she met as a kid when Marcille was a teaching assistant! Biologically and developmentally, they're the same age, but chronologically she's twice as old as Falin! Considering what happened to her mother, is history repeating itself? Her feelings towards Falin are tangled and messy and fascinating. They're also more than a little homoerotic, which makes Marcille's infantilization of her friend all the more interesting. It feels like her way of resolving their power imbalance, of remaining a responsible (former!) authority figure... but it's also a coping mechanism. She's frightened by the ways Falin is maturing and changing - aging - and keeping her mental image of her friend as young as possible is her way of denying the march of time that's destined to sever their bond.

Marcille's dream of lifespan extension would remove the need for this obfuscation, render them equal... only, they already are! This desire is imposed onto Falin, but it's primarily for Marcille's benefit. Watching her fight for a world nobody wants, for reasons both selfish and altruistic... it's as tragic as it is understandable. I love this manga.

[butchhamlet]

i also think some of my hamlet takes/interpretations are somewhat inseparable from the fact that i read hamlet as at least fairly young, regardless of exactly how old he is, because the way the older characters in the play treat him resonates very deeply with my experience of being a mentally ill teenager. like, you know something is wrong, you know this thing you're experiencing (in hamlet's case, grief, but also the knowledge of the murder) is real and it's unimaginably painful and it might actually kill you, and yet not ONLY are the people around you telling you to just Be Normal and Get Over It, they are ALSO?? acting like everything is FINE?? they're walking around and living their lives like everything is perfectly normal and the same it's always been, and they're interacting with you like they expect you to live that way too, and at some point you inevitably hear the siren song of "just how much do i have to act out before they're FORCED to acknowledge it?" and then you put on an antic disposition and kill your situationship's dad, you know how it is.

this doesn't mean hamlet has to literally be a teenager. like, hell, you could have your thirtysomething hamlet and still lean into this reading, because it would be really compelling to highlight that a thirty-year-old hamlet is a fully grown adult being shoved into the role of a teenager/youth because the generation above him refuses to treat him like an adult or allow him autonomy. but i do think this is why hamlet as, like, Traditional Handsome Brooding Protagonist man almost always falls flat for me, because your average traditional handsome brooding protagonist man isn't being constantly infantilized, denied, ignored, told his emotions are meaningless, told he can't possibly be an authority on his own experience, etc. obviously some of this is stated in the text (particularly claudius's get-over-it speech), but in performance it falls flat for me if he's just stalking thirtyfiveishly around the castle as Some Guy Who Also Lives Here. no!!! they put that prince in the INCONVENIENT TEENAGER WE DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH box and you're gonna ACT LIKE IT

[mlmxreader]

it's schizophrenia awareness day, so here's some reminders:

no, schizophrenic (and schizospec people in general) are not inherently dangerous. yes, you thinking they are solely bc of their schizophrenia IS a dick move.

schizophrenic people are often most likely to face abuse from family, friends, and institutions (such as psychiatry), esp if they're people of colour. the whole "insane asylum" schtick refuses to acknowledge that, and by you engaging with it, you are also refusing to acknowledge the historical and present abuse of schizophrenic people (particularly those who are also people of colour).

no, schizophrenic people are NOT your "uwu soft baby can't be in the world". infantilisation is a form of saneism.

yes, jokes based in unreality ARE harmful.

yes, jokes abt "I'm in your walls" (and similar sentiments) ARE harmful.

no, schizophrenic people are NOT your "so scary, so evil!" stereotypes.

stereotyping people w schizophrenia (as well as ASPD, DID, NPD, BPD, etc) DOES make you a dick!

no, schizophrenic people do not abuse others bc of their mental health. abusers will abuse people REGARDLESS of mental health. (and most abusive people do not have a mental illness! they are just cunts!)

your "psych ward" jokes ARE harmful

your jokes abt lobotomies ARE harmful

"insane"/"crazy"/etc ARE harmful phrases to use and minimise the way of which people w disorders like schizophrenia are treated ABHORRENTLY

sanenoir (saneism + anti-Black racism) is actually real and schizophrenic people of colour are the most likely to be murdered by the police during mental health episodes. schizophrenic Black people, such as Sonya Massey, are killed at the hands of police REGULARLY and ignoring it (or erasing the saneism aspect) is a cunt thing to do.

the ""psycho killer"" stereotype has done more damage to schizophrenic & psychotic people ever since people decided that hating us for existing was okay and HAS caused a spike in the abuse that schizophrenic and psychotic people face DAILY.

no, not all schizophrenic people have the same symptoms, the same experiences, etc.

no, schizophrenic people aren't clairvoyant or supernatural or anything like that. you are just a dick.

yes, the term "schizo" is offensive and you should not use it UNLESS you are schizospec.

yes, "schizoposting" is harmful

yes, you (a non-schizophrenic person!) writing That Character to be schizophrenic and turning them into a serial killer IS harmful. you're saneist!

yes, you (someone who doesn't have schizospec, psychospec, ASPD, DID, etc) writing That Character who has that disorder to be a stalker, a murderer, etc IS a harmful stereotype. you're saneist!

and finally: stop being a dick to schizophrenic people. we aren't your fucking entertainment or your toys. fuck off and cut the shit. stop making jokes every 2-3 months to purposefully trigger & harm us, you're a dick and you look like it. just stop, maybe get the fuck off of social media, and try to be a good person for once in your pathetic life.

[bornfreediedcaged]

i hate it when, purely because i have npd, people assume everything i’m doing is trying to make people feel bad for me/get attention because when i hurt myself or i am genuinely upset with something, it is seen as me fishing for attention and being hateful or spiteful towards family and friends but it ISN’T about them it really fucking isn’t. and that’s what neurotypicals do not get, no narcissists are not specifically targeting your feelings or doing everything for the attention, pity or admiration of others, we are human beings as well, not everything we go through has some kind of ulterior motive.

they forget that people with npd are MENTALLY ILL and not complete and total all the time grandiose masterminds who manipulate everyone we see. most manipulative behaviours PWnpd inflict are completely unconscious and uncontrollable because of the environmental pressures they grew up in, these tactics are not to cause pain, these tactics are to stop us from getting hurt physically or emotionally. we are actual human beings, we just don’t experience empathy the way most people do because we weren’t shown empathy, which is a made up concept btw. our self importance is a survival strategy in stressful situations, it’s not an insult to you because despite you not having the “evil bastard disorder” you’re more ‘textbook narcissistic’ than most narcissists.

and nobody, not even researchers of NPD, will acknowledge our hurt and see that we are in fact humans with pressures that have caused us to be this way, psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists have refused to help me because even they have this stereotypical and ableist view of PWnpd, and because i live in Britain, they’re allowed to. it is extremely hard for anyone get treatment for this illness anywhere because of the stigma, very least anyone can do is treat us like humans instead of manipulation machines, and the very least you can do is not act as if we are some unfathomable evil out for blood and stop with that ‘every narcissist is an abuser’ bullshit.

[cartoonscientist]

I feel like one of the most insidious types of sanism is this thing I’ve noticed lately where mentally ill people report that their doctors just refuse to treat them or acknowledge their health problems, especially GI doctors; they’ll refuse to read the patient chart, tell the patient they’re lying about their officially recorded diagnoses and test results, and insist they see a therapist instead when usually the patient has been in therapy for years already

my own GI doctor refused to treat my ulcers or hernia or test me for gastroparesis after multiple scope exams and told me it’s all in my head, and my GP is currently gaslighting me about not having scoliosis and never having it on my record when I have actual adaptive devices prescribed to me

only my psychiatrist and therapist, dermatologist, pulmonologist, gynecologist and physical therapists take me seriously as a mature and cognizant person

this is really disturbing to me for obvious reasons

[maximumqueer]

Yamato, Transness, and "Passing"

Now that we're nearly a full arc removed from Wano and Yamato's introduction, I want to talk about the reaction that a subset of the one piece fandom had to his reveal as a trans man/transmasc person, the transphobia behind that reaction, and how the concept of passing plays into that reaction. I'm not going to be arguing that Yamato is a trans man, as I think it is very obvious that he is given how he is referred to in the canon text. This is instead going to be more of a fandom dissection of why (in my personal opinion) so many people refuse to acknowledge Yamato as a man.

When we are first introduced to Yamato, he is dressed in a way that gives him the appearance of a flat chest, and is wearing a mask to hide his face. He looks like a man in a cis-heteronormative way

When Yamato was depicted like this, he was (from what I can tell) mostly referred to with he/him pronouns by the fanbase. This is based on comments underneath his chapter debut and episode debut. There are comments under his episode debut that do use she/her pronouns and refer to him as a woman, but because these episodes have been out for a while, it would make sense that these kinds of comments would be left on his debut after his second design was revealed.

Then, when he removes his mask and outer layer of his outfit, he is depicted like this

After this reveal, more people began to refer to Yamato with she/her pronouns, and refer to him as Kaido's daughter, despite him referring to himself as Kaido's son, as well as the people around him using he/him pronouns exclusively for him. What changed? Well, Yamato went from having a design that looked traditionally masculine to having a more traditionally feminine one. As such people who associate only women with having breasts and more "feminine" features began to insist that Yamato was a tomboy, or a delusional woman, anything but accept that fact that he is a man.

There is a phenomena with trans "acceptance", where a character is accepted as trans only if they look like their gender according to the cis-heteronormative ideal, and questioned and denied if they don't. Kiku, a trans woman who "passes" as a woman did not receive nearly the same level of speculation and denial of her trans identity. (This is not to say that Kiku received no hate or transphobic comments, but that because she looks like a woman to the average cis-het viewer, she was treated as a "real" trans person, whereas Yamato was not).

Yamato has been repeatedly referred to as mentally ill for being a "non-passing" trans man. He has been called bad representation (despite large numbers trans men/transmasc people, myself included, saying that his IS good representation). People have made claims with no canon backing in an attempt to hand wave away his transness because he "looks like a woman", a popular one being that Kaido some how forced Yamato into being a man, despite his backstory telling us the exact opposite.

And the reasoning for all of this speculation is that trans people are held to such high standards in terms of appearance and presentation, even in fictional media. A trans man must have a flat chest, deep voice, facial hair etc. or he isn't actually trans. A trans woman must have breasts, a high voice, a lack of facial hair, etc. or she isn't actually trans. Non-binary people are dismissed entirely. This denies the many different and diverse ways that a person can be trans. Sure, some trans people wish to medically transition, get the "surgery" and go through life as if they were cis. But not all trans people want that. Gender is messy and complicated, its not nearly as black and white a we have been taught to believe. There are many trans people (both binary and non-binary) who will never medically transition. That does not make them less trans, it does not make them delusional. Yet because we have this black and white thinking ingrained in us from childhood, any deviation from the strict boxes of "man" and "woman" are immediately questioned, and that includes gender non-conforming people - both trans and cis.

This type of transphobia is not talked about enough, as the people doing it will so often hide behind the idea that they are protecting "real" trans people, and just want to make sure that they are respected and taken seriously. But, respect for a persons gender identity CANNOT be conditional. It does not matter if they "don't pass". It doesn't matter if they are a good person, a bad person. The second you start dictating who gets to have their gender respected is the second you stop being an ally. And that includes fictional characters like Yamato.

[caniaskwhoiscallingplease]

I have some thoughts about the next to normal proshot that I need to share because I have never been less normal about any musical ever and no one I know irl has seen it. Spoilers below if you care about that sort of thing.

The whole plot happens because Diana wants to connect with Natalie! She sees her reaction to Henry and wants to relate to her and feel how she feels, so she dumps her meds and it's only when she acknowledges Natalie in therapy that she really starts making progress. It's also only when Nat tells the truth of their lives that Diana starts to remember it. Natalie really is the driving force of the story.

Gabe corrects Dan on Henry's name! In my mind this means either Diana's subconscious pays more attention than Natalie thinks she does or Dan's guilt extends to how little attention he pays to Natalie.

In I am the One, Gabe only speaks after Dan says "could you leave me" to Diana. Gabe really is Dan's fears in that moment, not Diana's, and it's about what will happen if Di leaves and he is left alone with his grief. The next time we see Gabe around Dan is after the suicide attempt, and he's refusing to hear his fears even when they're screaming beside him. "I've never had to face a world without her by my side". When she does leave him officially that is when he is finally able to acknowledge (and name!) his grief and he is terrified.

The Break is Diana finally taking her mental health into her own hands. She's not just trying to be 'normal' for Dan any more, as his 'normal' is ignoring Gabe. The staging is just amazing, showing how she acknowledges Gabe in a healthy way, instead of relying on him to get her through the day.

The hand touch! When Nat sees her dad (Dan "it's going to be good" Goodman) crying in the dark, Natalie feels a small part of the grief that has been haunting her family. She has always known about Gabe, but she didn't overtly feel the grief of the loss until she sees it in her dad.

The references to weather throughout are crazy, but I don't see people talking about references to the light/night! At the very beginning, Diana is waiting up for Gabe. She says it's the seventh night this week (obviously insomnia due to her manic state) but also because when Gabe was a baby they would stay up all night to make sure he made it through. During the last song, Dan finally acknowledges those nights "night after night, we'd sit and wait for the morning light, but we've waited far too long". Then Diana comes in with "day after day, wishing all our cares away, trying to fight the things we feel but some hurts never heal, some ghosts are never gone" she's again acknowledging that she doesn't need to be normal! And she can live with her illness and her grief in the daylight.

And that's it!! Maybe now that I've put all my thoughts out there I can stop thinking about this musical but unlikely.

[mi-co-uk]

𝒆𝒙𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓:

- or MORIBUND: the word for someone who is near death; terminal decline.

- or IN EXTREMIS: Latin for 'at the point of death'; or extremely difficult situation.

EXPIRED READER - has been told there's an 15% percent chance of her surviving her illness which decreases slowly everyday.

EXPIRED READER - has a history of mental health issues and was not sad when she found this out, rather relieved.

EXPIRED READER - only starting enjoying life once she found out there wasn't much of it left for her.

EXPIRED READER - tried to live more optimistically for the sake of those around her.

EXPIRED READER - doesn't take her life seriously.

EXPIRED READER - has debilitating stomach pains on a lot of days so she can't even get out of bed.

EXPIRED READER - is able to run around freely on her better days.

EXPIRED READER - doesn't like the pity she gets.

EXPIRED READER - refuses to acknowledge how her death could impact others, as its too hard to think about.

EXPIRED READER - is a relatively popular youtuber and influencer.

EXPIRED READER - who's videos consists of conversational themes (sharing stories of her life and philosophical personal topics) and a lot of vlogging.

EXPIRED READER - who met the triplets when they came to LA.

EXPIRED READER - who made a lighthearted video talking about her diagnosis which got a lot of attention online.

EXPIRED READER - who didn't collab with the triplets initially to avoid hate but appeared in vlogs after being diagnosed.

EXPIRED READER - gets accused of lying about her illness by people online.

EXPIRED READER - gets invited to red carpets and interviews following her video on her sickness.

EXPIRED READER - who has never been in a relationship.

EXPIRED READER - who has always been career based.

EXPIRED READER - wants to try a lot of new things before she dies.

best paired with.. MATT

MATT - who is EXPIRED READER'S best friend.

MATT - who has always tried to help EXPIRED READER with her mental health and bonded with her over it.

MATT - who tried to hide his upset over her sickness in order to stay lighthearted and not upset EXPIRED READER.

MATT - has always adored EXPIRED READER.

MATT - who invited EXPIRED READER to stay in him and his brothers house after she was diagnosed.

MATT - who goes to all of her appointments and will always take care of her on the worse sick days when she'll let him.

MATT - loves being shipped by fans with EXPIRED READER online and gets annoyed when she's shipped with chris.

MATT - who unashamedly has a crush on EXPIRED READER which has become almost an inside joke with their viewers.

MATT - who thinks he'll never love anyone else but EXPIRED READER, especially if she dies.

MATT - always spoils EXPIRED READER with anything she could want to try and keep her happy while he can.

taglist: @pair-of-pantaloons @oopsiedaisydeer @corspebridedelrey @faiyaz555 @izzylovesmatt @sturniolosrtewsexy @courta13 @sturns-mermaid @emely9274 @baebadoobee4ever @fw-lee @afr8idofrats @stvrniolotrxpl3ts