howdoufunctionagain

[howdoufunctionagain]

okay i need people to *assume competence* when they're dealing with me. i'll make fun of myself a little and you can join in that's fine but we all have to understand that at the end of the day i know what i'm doing. if i tell you a funny story and you get lost in telling me how to avoid an issue as if i don't know what i'm doing or, god forbid, ask "what did you do to make that happen" i'm going to lose it

[howdoufunctionagain]

People eventually get diagnosed BECAUSE they are already disabled and struggling. The symptoms don't appear AFTER the diagnosis. So don't expect everyone without a professional diagnosis to be basically fine. That makes no sense.

[howdoufunctionagain]

hoooooooly shit i miss them

[howdoufunctionagain]

at what stage of relationship do you call them when you're having ptsd episodes

genuine question

[howdoufunctionagain]

Having your main anxiety response be Avoidance is crazy cause you'll think you're chillin and then one day you're like waitttt I've been paralyzed with fear this whole time. Damn

[howdoufunctionagain]

Problem #1 regarding child abuse is that a lot of people seem to struggle to imagine normal, respectable-looking parents and other authority figures ever doing it despite the statistics so instead they do the stranger danger panic and completely overlook some of the greatest threats.

Problem #2 is that even when people understand, even if in an abstract way, that parents can be abusive they just... don't seem to actually register that as something that can apply to real life. It's just hypothetical to them and doesn't actually guide their ideas of how to prevent child abuse.

Problem #3 is that even after overcoming the above biases a lot of people have a very narrow image of what abusive parenting is where they imagine like... people doing violent things basically out of sadism and without provocation. They don't seem to think it's "real" abuse if the victim did something that "justifies" punitive violence, like disobeying the parents.

In fact, most people think parents have a right to do a whole lot of awful things to their children beyond just hitting them, like violating their privacy, controlling their access to information, and deciding what/when/if they eat, among other things.

[howdoufunctionagain]

[howdoufunctionagain]

i hate when the teacher’s like “write about a bad time in your life” like i ain’t tryna get a social worker up my ass, thanks tho fam

[howdoufunctionagain]

[howdoufunctionagain]

Living in long term abusive situation, the abusers will often require you to ‘act normal’, as if everything is fine and good, even if you don’t feel okay. They present it to you as necessary, polite, ‘don’t be rude to xyz’ or will straight-up belittle and humiliate you until acting 'normal’ will be the only safe option for you. It creates the illusion that everyone is secretly falling apart inside and suffering silently only to be polite.

Acting normal in every situation can become a compulsion, something you do automatically to protect yourself against possible or imagined backlash; you live as if you’re unphased by anything, because showing pain feels like showing weakness, and being hurt while you’re weak is worse. You additionally might feel that your feelings are too much, nobody would want to deal with them, you’re oversensitive, overdramatic, over-emotional disaster of a human and you keep it all in to save yourself rejection and embarassment.

The abusers will enforce the 'play normal’ rule even when the situation is desparate, when you’re seriously hurt, panicked and in need of help, you’ll find that you’re expected to extend any effort to 'act normal’ or else. They also use the fact that you’re able to 'play normal’ to prove that 'nothing is actually wrong and you were just dramatizing for attention or pretending to make them feel sorry for you.

After being gaslit like this for a while, you start to believe it. You start to think that if you can still play normal, then you’re clearly not suffering enough for it to be adressed. Even if you’re in such bad state you’re dissociated for the most of the time, you dismiss your own pain and fear just like the abusers do, it must be nothing, if you can still keep yourself from screaming, you must be okay. You wonder if everyone lives feeling like this, and envy their acting; you’re barely holding it together. You feel ashamed and pathetic for every second you’re not able to 'keep control of it’, or every little feeling that bleeds out thru your pretense. You feel like you’re weak and failing to control yourself, when everyone else does it so easy.

So let me relay some facts: Most people don’t act. They’re allowed to be upset, and don’t try to control their feelings at all. Most people aren’t exposed to the amount of trauma that would require them to control their feelings 24/7. Most of people were never told to 'keep it in’ or to 'act normal’ when everything is falling apart. The amount of effort people put into being polite is way below containing trauma. What you’re enduring is completely unimaginable pain to them. You’re keeping together what they never would, or could. You’re not weak for a moment of distress; anyone else in your situation would be fully freaking out, full time.

Even if it’s possible, by insane effort, to act okay when terrified and hurt, it doesn’t mean you’re 'okay enough’ to dismiss it. Your abusers lied. Being forced to keep horrible feeling unexpressed makes them that much worse; not only you’re in pain, but you’re in danger, unsafe to express distress, unable to call for help. It’s being trapped in a world where only 'acting okay’ is safe, but there’s a time limit to how long you can do it without breaking, and every time you break a little, you experience terror and shame. You don’t know how to keep it up, and you blame yourself for it. It’s a world where nobody cares what you’re going thru, and you can’t make anyone care.

This is what abusers do to gaslight, isolate and force the victims to hide the trauma and abuse that’s been caused. It’s a tactics to protect the abusers, at the immense cost to the victims. If you felt this, your abusers are monsters, and they lied to you; you’re not supposed to act okay. You were supposed to get a relief from pain, you were supposed to get help, comfort reassurance, to be taken seriously, to get protected, safe, understood, and your pain removed. They denied all of this to be able to abuse you some more. Your self control was never the problem. Their control of you was.

[howdoufunctionagain]

smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

[howdoufunctionagain]

Watching ancient danish movies and found this gem

[howdoufunctionagain]

parents are so crazy because they can say the most fucked up shit to you when your brain is forming and it sets the tone for your whole adult mind set and then they forget about it the next day

[howdoufunctionagain]

[howdoufunctionagain]

[howdoufunctionagain]

The most terrifying part of having memory issues is when you can feel something from 5 seconds ago be thrown out the window and there's an empty hole where it once was. You remember that you forgot something.