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OCD symptom i struggle with but don't see talked about a lot: inability to trust your own memory and/or perception.

as an example: i put my headphones in my bag. i say im sure they're in my bag, but what if i imagined putting them in my bag? i have to check, so i stick my hand inside and grab them. but then i have to check *again* because what if i just so happened to have another object shaped and sized exactly like my headphones that i just forgot about? so i have to pull them out of my bag and look directly at them to fully confirm they were in my bag

this is a fairly benign example but this also happens with other worse scenarios for me and it's. not fun

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tumblr ocd advice is kind of astounding bc youll see posts like "OCD LIFE HACK!!!!! if you have [obsession] try [compulsion]" and people are passing it around like its genuine advice and not literally the worst possible thing you could do in that scenario

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no matter how much you say a space is “neurodivergent friendly” you have to be ready for people to have a wider diversity of needs than you expected and you need to be able to negotiate some kind of best case scenario compromise when those needs clash with each other. you also need to remember that “neurodivergent” doesn’t just mean autism/adhd but yknow. there’s only so much I can ask for here

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Types of dissociation

You feel like the present moment is a memory you're recalling

You feel like the "real you" is a fictional character and you are someone else having some kind of delusion that you're them

Your body is a car that someone you feel safe with is driving while you're in the passenger seat getting sleepy from the streetlights

Your body is a car that someone who puts you on edge is driving very very badly

You experienced an emotion so intensely it overloaded and short-circuited your brain into failsafe shutdown mode

You got so dizzy that you fell over and fell through the floor and now you're in the mirror world

You feel like every next movement you make is going to be the one that clips you into the Backrooms

You feel like every slight decision you make is going to be the one that traps you in the timeloop

You're dissolving into the air around you like a vapor

You're trapped underwater in a cave and no one above can hear your mortal panic

You're lines of code watching the real world through a screen

You feel like you'd relate to a Radiohead song

You feel like the present moment is currently being written by Kurt Vonnegut

The curséd amulet

Trapped in a painting

Animal with its leg stuck in a trap mode

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yesterday when working with my case manager, she went through a long checklist of my comprehensive needs to refresh our treatment plan. as a part of the questions she was asking me, she asked for various areas of my financial struggles, including if i was able to afford social activities such as hanging out with friends, going to the movies, etc. as part of my necessary purchases. the question was specifically phrased as "Do you have enough money every month to be able to afford social activities?"

this was not proposed as a "luxury". the question was not phrased as "Do you have enough money every month to afford luxuries/luxury purchases?" this was listed with the necessities like food, housing, medical needs, transportation, bills, and clothing. this made me burst into tears when i realized it was considered a necessary part of everyone's mental and well being. my case manager told me that not a singular person on this planet deserves to have to "earn" the right to socialize, interact with leisure activities, or to do things that bring you personal fulfillment. your money does not, and should not entirely go toward survival and practicality. it will ruin your mental health.

to any poor person who has ever been told that they don't "need" or "deserve" social or leisure activities or that your money "needs" to go 100% toward survival: they are straight up lying to you. it is a fundamental part of your mental health. don't fucking listen to them.

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I hate how often some (typically abled) people will go “well, if you can’t [get a specific support], then what?” when it comes to disabilities. As if it’s a “gotcha” moment. And then act like you’re exaggerating when you answer that question honestly.

Disabled people often die from a lack of support. A lot of disability aids are not a luxury, but a basic need in order to live.

“Well what happens if—” people die. People hurt themselves. People hurt others. Disabled people don’t magically become abled if our needs aren’t met.

If a bedbound quadriplegic is caught in a housefire, and there’s nobody there to save them, they’ll probably die. They won’t magically become able-bodied out of sheer will.

If a nonspeaking/nonverbal autistic is denied access to alternative methods of communication, they’ll suffer in silence. They won’t spontaneously become capable of speech.

Disabled people are disabled all the time. Our disabilities don’t go away just because they’re inconvenient, or if we’re in danger.

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AAC users like me, who are able to convey their thoughts and feelings, arent the majority. I think people have to realize that.

The majority and the most marginalized of people who use AAC are those who cant always convey their thoughts. Who use AAC infrequently. Who prefer pointing, spelling on a letterboard, who use PECs. That is the people that many people don’t see because they often don’t have access to the internet, and cant use the internet like we can. And their caregivers aren’t sharing their stories because they have other things to worry about.

It’s frustrating when people don’t realize that those people ARE around, and they’re the most marginalized. We need to talk about them more. We need to make their voices known, and heard. No matter if they can efficiently communicate or not. Every part of them deserves to be seen while respecting their own privacy and autonomy.

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yall will respect disabled people until theyre the "funny" disabilities and it pisses me off.

i am a little person. i am 4'0, i have ccd and achondroplasia. i have various other genetic conditions that affect me but i will be mentioning my identity as a little person mostly.

quit using little people as the butt of your jokes. no, you cant use the m slur it is a slur, no you cant call us gnomes or elves or dwarves or whatever the fuck you call us. we are real people, we arent little characters or creatures. we are LIVING BREATHING PEOPLE. quit treating us like kids or idiots. you dont have to baby us. quit making fun of little people's heights, ESPECIALLY PEOPLE WITH DISPROPORTIONATE DWARFISM. you are fucking ableist if you make fun of little people, you dont see us as people you see us a joke. im sick and tired of people i love and care for treating me as if im a joke and making fun of my height. fuck off

i dont care if we "look funny" or "haha tiny" its so fucking annoying and disrespectful to be treated as if the body isnt a living, breathing, full grown adult.

be better.

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more products of my chronic boredom.

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"People with no empathy are more likely to hurt others because they don't have any reason not to!" so you're telling me that you'd... Go around hurting people if you had no empathy? Because you'd see no other reson not to? That's the conclusion we're coming to righht? Okay..... Stay away from me. <3

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People tend to think that when you're not able to do work because of chronic illness or disability (taking days off, not doing housework, being unemployed etc.) that you're just able to have fun and chill out like it's a holiday but that's so far from the truth.

The symptoms preventing you from working usually also prevent you from doing things you enjoy, or at least make doing those things significantly harder and less enjoyable.

It may seem like someone not working due to an illness has lots of free time, but that's not correct. The time is not free, the time is being used to rest and recover, which is really a task in its own right.

When I'm in a state where I can't go to school, I usually can't do much else either. I'm too fatigued, or in too much pain to make art or play games, too fatigued to read and actually comprehend what I've read. The only thing I can really do is lie down and scroll social media or watch TV, anything I don't need to actually think about or put physical effort into.

And it's not enjoyable. I'm still suffering from symptoms. I want to do other things, but I can't.

I would much rather feel healthy and work than be ill and stay home

(Disclaimer: this isn't to say that everyone with a chronic illness or disability is always suffering and unable to do anything or that disabled people can't have fun or that anyone who is able to participate in hobbies and fun things must be well enough to work, just that it's frustrating to see people think disabled people are "lucky to not have to work". Wanted to say this in case anyone gets the wrong idea or feels invalidated - you don't need to suffer greatly to be valid in your illness)

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it is so incredibly unfair that inpatient psychiatrists are given the legitimacy to make sweeping judgements about our madness, twisting and shaping and classifying it into the schema that reassures their worldview when they have only ever seen us in conditions of confinement. if i am locked up, put in restraints, drugged against my will, kept from seeing the outside world for sometimes weeks at a time—my madness will respond incredibly differently to the hostile conditions of a total institution. How in the world can psychiatrists extend their analysis to make judgements about my illness/wellness/way of being in the world/way of being in my head? they have only ever seen the way I am Mad when i am surviving confinement. they have no idea what I look like when i am free.

of course i will start pacing for hours when I am locked up with nowhere to go. of course i will start screaming, and tear apart my room, and hurt myself when i am given no other options for exercising autonomy. of course i will become paranoid and start hearing things when I am under 24/7 surveillance, 15 minute checks, and cameras in every room. but every action i take is then used as evidence to fit me into a system of symptoms and diagnosis that are further used to justify my continued incarceration—it becomes an inescapable labyrinth, it becomes an irremovable cycle. every attempt to argue against their flawed interpretations just ends up as another bullet point on my medical record: "Patient lacks insight."

psychiatrists treat themselves as inherently and perfectly neutral—seeing themself not as an actor who is actively engaging and contributing to our experiences but as a removable spectator who can somehow cordon themselves off from madness (lest they catch it from us—don't you know madness is contagious?) the first confinement of psychiatry is the kind of confinement the psychiatrist does to themself: locking their emotions/perceptions/opinions behind the guise of scientific, objective neutrality. there is no psychiatry without confinement: they are bedfellows who rely on each other from the very conception of the field.

i could make a satirical joke about diagnosing psychiatrists with "Thinks They Can Be Neutral While Ignoring Their Material Conditions" disorder, but i don't want to reify their system of classifications even a little bit. What I want is to destroy the entire fucking system. it drives me crazy to watch this dynamic play out again and again and again with no recognition that putting people in conditions of confinement drastically shapes the way that we can then exist in that space.

it makes me sick—it makes me MAD.

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when the autism is being an actual mental health problem instead of making me obsess over fictional characters again:

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a bottom-tier autistic experience is being told throughout your entire childhood that you are just an overthinker when it comes to social situations and later finding out that your friends did, in fact, hate being around you and tried to communicate that through weird little hints

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'being disabled is a full-time job' actually with most full-time jobs you get evenings and weekends off, plus holiday time and potentially other benefits like healthcare and dental. we don't get to clock off from being disabled nor do we reap any benefits, material, social, or otherwise. hope this helps