#Destigmatization

[entity56]

i think what people struggle fundamentally to understand is that schizophrenic and schizophrenic-adjacent people often hold so tightly to their delusions not just because that's the nature of delusions in and of themselves, but also because it's often the ONLY thing they can trust. (at very least in my experience if not a general thing. please correct me if i'm wrong.)

i implore you to imagine this for a second: you can't trust ANYTHING. you don't know what's real or fake. there are a bunch of different people and things shouting different ideas and opinions at you at all times all day every day and you dont know what to believe. it's like having a blindfold put on while people spin you rapidly in a chair and then let you go to stumble towards a moving goalpost.

it's not just opinions, either. it's people, and yourself. but let's focus on the former for a second. you don't know who to trust anymore. this black and white way of thinking makes you suspicious of everybody, because in your mind, you HAVE to be. otherwise you trust the wrong person and get hurt. it's like BPD in that way.

and you can't trust yourself, either.

so eventually, something comes along that, to you, feels like Undeniable Truth. in the case of delusions, it's not actually True, but you can't (fully) convince your mind of that, regardless of who or what tells you it isn't real. your mind has clutched to that truth like a vice because it's the first truth you could actually rely on in a while. it's security in a world that doesn't otherwise have it, regardless of how unpleasant the delusion is. a little part of you, conscious or subconscious, takes comfort in it.

that's why delusions are such a struggle. it's not just 'ooh i got abducted by aliens hehe i'm crazy'. delusions are both a symptom and a coping mechanism for other symptoms. at very least for me.

[divinerapturesys]

Welcome to my Ted Talk about AsPD, or Antisocial Personality Disorder, which the internet likes to coin as sociopath 👌🏻 if you don’t like long infodumps about stigmatized mental disorders from someone who is diagnosed, move on.

Quick toxic rundown: People with AsPD are generally characterized as emotionless, violent, manipulative abusers who kill animals and like to make other people their bitches. The biggest pet peeve we have is the emotionless, sadistic and abusive generalization.

Personally, we are highly neurotic, with highs and lows of: depression, frantic drive, self abuse tactics, chronic fear, lapses of rejection, overwhelming over-analyzation, grey area thinking, false goods and false bads, ultimatums, obsessive compulsive behavior, harsh self demands, and irritability.

AsPD is a disorder that is caused primarily (according to current research) by trauma and abuse in childhood; most notably being emotional neglect and absent caregivers that cause a child to have emotional shutdowns and repression episodes in an attempt to self soothe. Primary caregivers who do not bond with their children are also a factor. Children learn how to behave from those around them. If a primary caregiver is emotionally distant and unavailable, children will learn that is normal behavior and that’s how people are. If a primary caregiver does not provide empathy and sympathy during moments of distress and fear, children will learn that aloofness and disregard of others feelings is normal behavior. If a primary caregiver does not keep a child safe, children will learn that they should not prioritize their own safety or the safety of others. You can find my follow up post regarding this here.

Neglected and abused children often act out trying to get attention and help, often acting out in bad ways because they lack the ability to articulate what they’re feeling and what is happening to them. The pipeline for AsPD typically is: Oppositional Defiance Disorder as a child, Conduct Disorder as a teen, AsPD as an adult. There are a lot of warning signs cueing that AsPD is becoming a risk for development, but often kids do not have a support system to help negate it as it’s their support system that is usually a factor in its creation.

Being AsPD is like being an emotional La Croix 70% of the time. If you’re depressed, then it’s like someone in the other room has depression and is telling you about it. The other 30% of the time, if you’re depressed, your brain doesn’t understand how to handle it so it’s an ultimatum between doing something drastic to remove the Trigger or ignoring and dissociating for days on end.

People with AsPD are very good at ignoring things. Honestly it’s problematic as fuck but it’s not hard to ignore major issues when you just, don’t care. It’s not in the terms of being cruel or making ourselves not care, but the fact that finding the emotional willpower is so far out of our feasible reach we don’t do it. This causes us to piss people off because we don’t have the capacity to care as much as they want us to, even if we can and do to an extent.

Think of it this way: empathy/sympathy is a deep tub of water that everyone has. They can easily fill their measuring cup for the needed amount of empathy without any issues and it’s easy for them. People with AsPD don’t have a tub of water. We have shallow skillet. When we try to dip our cup to fill it, we can’t, it always comes up short and it is difficult to get any water in it as there is no room for the cup to dive. Our ability to care is limited because we do not have the same emotional resources everyone else does.

❌ False Positives & False Negatives ❌

I operate on what I’ve learned are called false positives and false negatives. These are things that are trained into the brain from an early age based off of childhood trauma and other factors. False positives are a distorted version of why we do something to help ourself and for our own good, meanwhile a false negative is something we do because it’s a threat, or based out of fear.

❌ Some of my false positives:

- It is good to be afraid of nothing

- It is good to adapt to someone’s personality if they are stronger than you

- It is good to isolate yourself

- It is good to be a silver tongue because you can get into any place you want

- It is good to become a social chameleon and shape yourself to whatever those around you need/want most, because then you have no chance of being abandoned

❌ Some of my false negatives, which can explain the false positives as well as core beliefs:

- it is bad to be afraid, if I am afraid then I am vulnerable and it can be used against me

- It is bad to be emotional or show concern for others emotions because they do not care for mine

- It is bad to be able to be exploited, because I believe it is everywhere

- It is bad to allow myself to be bored, because boredom begets bad thoughts and no one can or wants to help me when I spiral

- It is bad to not shape yourself to the social circle, because people quickly grow tired of those who do not match them perfectly and being discarded means I failed

My core beliefs can be viewed as the root for the false positives and negatives, because they are based on the core of trauma, abuse and neglect. They come from patterns and instances that make someone with AsPD become the opposite of what they experienced:

- eat or be eaten

- If I don’t show that my bite is worse than my bark, I will be taken advantage of and I must remain on top because the ones on top are safe

- I must look out for myself because nobody will do it for me

- It doesn’t matter what happens to me, therefore it doesn’t matter what people think of me

- If I cannot do something well, then I should not do it at all

- If you are dependent on others for emotional and mental well being, you are weak, therefore I must isolate myself to avoid becoming codependent and a burden and useless

- If I can handle the stress of a situation better than everyone else, therefore I will keep the problem (financial, emotional, mental, etc) to myself to reduce chances of being abandoned due to failure of perfection

People with AsPD are hard to get along with. We often:

- are always anticipating a fight

- lack respect for authority

- ignore social structures to an extent

- tendency to lie if it’ll lessen punishment or if we feel the lie is more acceptable than our actions

- limit social support because it’s wrong to be dependent on others

- have an inflated view of our own importance — which turns into a self ridicule for believing someome like me could be found important to others —

- can be rude and inconsiderate of others feelings somewhat unintentionally

- are unable to read the correct social cues in relation to empathy towards people and animals

- am constantly confused by others dependence upon empathy and inability to make desicions from logic based standpoints

We can’t speak for everyone who has AsPD, nor are we saying that no one with AsPD is capable of being a murderer/abuser etc. but we are saying that y’all need to stop automatically classifying someone as a certain “type” as soon as you know about their disorder.

One last thing I do want to point out is that it is not uncommon for people with AsPD to derive some sort of enjoyment in causing harm, doing something illegal, hurting someone or animals, etc. This entirely stems from lack of environmental control as a child. Being able to control what happens to others or being able to control the things you say or do that hurts someone else is a hefty high to get addicted to; it soothes the underlying itch of not being able to control your own trauma and abuse, so in turn you push these behaviors onto others and enjoy it because it gives you a sense of power and control. Some people with AsPD do genuinely love hurting others, and some enjoy hurting others when they believe it’s deserved or their ire has been stoked. Some enjoy causing pain to those they think deserve it, and others don’t care who they hurt as long as they feel like they’re in control of the situation.

Hope this have some insight into AsPD 🤙🏻 if y’all have any questions, shoot.

[meepmrop]

Hi guys!! Just a little PSA I feel the need to say, especially given how many people I see self diagnose with autism or ADHD

Please do your research. I'm serious. The media has downplayed both of these disorders to simply autism being passionate about something and ADHD as having a low attention span or being insanely hyper

These are just common traits. You can have traits of a disorder without actually having it. I repeat, you can have traits of something without actually having it.

All forms of neurodivergency (yes, autism/adhd aren't the only ones. Get it through your damn head.) are disabilities. It needs to disable you from being a fully functional human being. I understand there's people with low support needs, but this is directed towards the people who claim to have medium/high support needs.

A special interest isn't just someone you're insanely passionate about, it's a coping mechanism that can take over your life. I hate to admit that I have spent hundreds of dollars on useless things that have made me think of any of my special interests.

Hyperfixations are the same where they take over your entire thought process. For many, their hyperfixes come to mind even in situations it shouldn't. Some people have said that is happens during tests, essays, funerals even.

If you're 16 or older, I highly recommend that you take the RAADS-R test since it's widely accepted by many psychologists world wide. If you're under 16, I recommend you still take it and then take it again when you're 16 to see if you get the same score. I also highly recommend talking to people who are diagnosed and listing to them your symptoms. I have 3 friends who have been diagnosed tell me that I cover more than enough symptoms to qualify for a diagnosis.

Addition to this (because i got a bit of feedback): No online test will be completely reliable. I highly recommend keeping all of your symptoms somewhere to show a psychiatrist. The main reason I recommend the RAADS-R test is because you can download a PDF that shows not only your score but also your answer to all 80 questions. Psychiatrists are a lot more likely to believe you if you can give a list of your symptoms and how long they've been occurring. I keep a notebook for every time I show an autistic trait (since I struggle most with social situations as an autist, many of mine are moments where I can't tell apart the tone in what people say and I take things way too literally...)

Also, if you mask or used to mask, jotting down your experience with masking is important. Keeping a journal of how things affected you when masking, writing down how things affected you when you started to unmask. I started to mask (quite horribly...) when I was 13 and had a bunch of social norms shoved on me. Due to heavy burnout, I'm 17 now and don't mask anymore because I can't take it any longer. Since unmasking, I've noticed how much my autistic traits have hightened. It's like I've been bottling everything up for so long, and the river doesn't stop flowing.

Also, another thing to add on top of all of that, OCD isn't the same as being super neat either. Compulsive disorders like OCD are consuming. As someone with a compulsive disorder, in my experience, basically the thought does not leave your mind until you act out the thought. It's like having a huge pile of intrusive thoughts that only get bigger the longer you hold them back. It causes immense distress that will constantly bother you until something is done about it.

I also feel the need to point out some ableist language that has somehow become normalized.

1) using "narcissist" to describe someone who's egotistical and selfish. Also the term "narc abuse" to describe a pwrson with NPD traits who are abusive. Go talk to people with NPD. Go to blogs that educate on NPD. Seriously. You will find that NPD isn't just appearing selfish and egotistical. NPD (or any disorder for that matter) are inheritly abusive. I had to snap at one of my friends for calling her brother a narcissist when he's just a little asshole.

2) the terms "sociopath" and "psychopath". These terms have typically been used against people with ASPD/ASPD traits. My partner has ASPD and reclaimed the term "sociopath".

3) "yandere". There are many mixed feelings about this term in the BPD community, ranging from people saying they have no issue with it, some considering it a slur (key word: consider. It's not an actual slur, but some people consider it one. I've had some asshole harass me for saying this, and I don't want any more drama about it.) because it romanticizes the trait in BPD and OLD (Obsessive Love Disorder) of having unhealthy relationships, some saying the term gives them comfort because it describes their symptoms as someone with BPD (which would be like reclaiming the term). I personally fall under the group of people who consider it a slur, and I will be blocking people who use the term who aren't reclaiming it for their personal selves. I am heavily uncomfortable with the term and ask that anyone who uses the term on any character or person a big fat serious DNI.

4) "psychotic", "delusional" and "schizo". I hate that I feel the need to say this, but schizophrenia and psychosis are serious mental disorders. Can we stop using fucking mental disorders as insults or as some quirky label. I experience psychosis, and it has ruined my life. As a hellenic polytheist, I often struggle to tell the difference between psychosis or one of my deities talking to me. As a DID system, I sometimes struggle to tell the difference between psychosis and an alter talking to me. As an enjoyer of EPIC: The Musical, psychosis makes it hard to tell if we have a new fictive, if it's psychosis, or a deity.

If anyone would like to pitch in, I highly encourage it. I would also appreciate it if anyone could give us some blogs to tag that help educate people on disorders that are downplayed or aren't talked about enough.

I'm gonna tag my partner's blog @zerasocial if anyone wants to ask them about their experience with ASPD

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

Psychotic System Culture is...

Proudly making/wearing things that signify you're psychotic in an attempt to destigmatize psychosis/psychotic disorders

Because psychotic people (whether plural or singlet) deserve to exist in peace, to be treated with respect and not fear/hatred/condescension

Bottlecap pin with psywiggle painted on

[nonbinarymlm]

We Need to Accept that Silly Things Can Hurt People

Please allow me to ruminate a bit more on mental health on this blog. I have ADHD and OCD, both disorders commonly stereotyped and conflated with minor, silly behaviors like yelling SQUIRREL when you see a squirrel and organizing things by color. These stereotypes can often minimize and erase the genuine difficulties and harm that these conditions can cause. That’s very true, and it often causes intense sensitively and knee-jerk denial around stereotypes around this. I don’t think that’s necessarily the best reaction, because sometimes people can have symptoms very similar to these stereotypes.

I think we need to accept that silly things can hurt people. Silly, ridiculous symptoms can devastate people’s lives. People shouldn’t have to react into their painful past and trauma to get people to take their symptoms seriously when those symptoms are silly on their face, because that turns things into a pain competition and can result in gatekeeping how much people must suffer before their seemingly ridiculous symptoms get taken seriously.

I think we just need to, as a society and culture and social norm, accept that silly things can genuinely, sometimes intensely, hurt people. Yes, I do have the impulse to tell an animal’s name when I see that animal, and yes it’s part of my symptoms that makes it harder to me to drive and hold conversations and do basic functioning. Yes, I do worry about incredibly tiny and silly things, that the world’s tiniest cut means I’m literally dying, and this has at times been incredibly miserable to live with and severely inhibited my functioning and nearly lost me a job. Also I’m going to joke about it sometimes because it’s funny. I’m not going to find a joke about it from a stranger with no OCD funny, because they have no idea how much pain it can cause me.

Sometimes these conditions are absurd in ways that are funny. That’s true and people with the conditions should be able to joke about it. But everyone needs to understand, just because a symptom is absurd doesn’t mean it can’t also devastate you and ruin your life. So if you don’t have these conditions and aren’t super close to someone who has them, I think you should be sensitive and avoid joking even if it seems silly and funny. I think there is where true destigmatization lies: accepting that the silly brain can also really hurt.

[nolshru]

yk, I've noticed the whole extreme stigmatisation of mental health stuff a few times recently from people I tend to respect - I mean, it's just like, kind of weird to hear HBomberguy, in a video about dismantling Tommy Tallarico's vast web of lies occasionally dip into personal attacks on Tallarico - including speculation as to whether this lying is pathological, like, that's played as an inherently negative aspect of the lying, like, yes, Tommy Tallarico's actions are contemptible, but like, please don't attack people personally for one, but also don't frame something that is definitionally a mental helth disorder (that is literally what "pathological" means when applied to something like "lying") as an additional thing to hold against this person

similarly, a YouTube Short by John Green about the founder of the payment service Braintree, Bryan Johnson - who is famous for his unethical systems of attempting to stop ageing and delay death with no scientific backing - attacks Johnson primarily for this persistent fear of death and the fact that he is trying to put work into preventing his own death, as opposed to the manners in which he's doing this being... fucked up, but like, persistent phobias are also generally considered pathological if they're severe enough, yk? like, what Green ends up doing here is effectively make fun of someone for having an anxiety disorder, or something that is a less extreme version of one

like, it's just... weird, like, Brewis and Green have both historically supported causes relating to mental health, but seem to have some subconscious cognitive bias that permisses them to make fun of people for having mental health problems if the victims are bad people

I think it's just a thing they haven't noticed, because, yeah, missing subtle things like that is easy when they aren't explicitly called out and like, yeah, I haven't noticed people really call this kind of thing out for this context, but yeah, I do hope that people do start to realise how fucked up all of this is in the future

oh, yeah, please do some introspection too, like, I think that it should go without saying that these are not isolated cases, this applies to many people - try to identify this bias and correct it if you can

alright, thank you, bye

[fascistsarefreefood]

Maybe we should all start trying to be compassionate to people who fake disorders for attention, you've got to be in a pretty bad headspace to wake up and think to yourself "today I'm going to put hours into faking an illness so people will pay attention to me" and Munchausen syndrome is a real thing that affects real peoples lives

[sappy-sabbath]

as a society can we stop making mental illness/neurodivergency trendy and romanticized. i know more mf who faked claim than ppl who actually had the condition. at the end it just makes the people who are diagnosed with the condition the butt of the joke or look disingenuous.

ALSO IF I MAY be real for a sec!!! it’s because of the “destigmatizing XYZ 🥺” tiktoks and self diagnosing that make this happen, i know they are good intent and not all people have resources but its one thing to be concerned about your mental health and another to claim to have a disorder that you haven’t been diagnosed with!

autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, BPD, bipolar disorder, psychosis, OCD have all became quirks than serious debilitating condition and as someone with ADHD and psychotic depression IM SICK OF ITTTT, it’s different with things like depression and anxiety bc you experience that at least once in your life but it’s getting out of hand

[homicidal-awareness]

Homicidal Ideation in Criminal Psychology and True Crime

An informal essay analyzing the field of criminal psychology and how it affects the perception of people who experience HI. This is based on MY OWN PERSONAL THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES! This is closer to an opinion piece and a call to action than a researched analysis. Interpret as such! I may edit later to make it more informative/objective.

See below the cut.

Following the increase in severity of my homicidal episodes, I've been trying to research HI, largely to better learn how to cope with it. I've been searching for professionally written literature, any at all, describing HI. What it is, how it works, how it feels, etc. There's just about nothing, and what does exist is bare bones, is specified to a certain homicidal/suicidal profile that doesn't match a lot of people, and/or is full of stigma.

So, since there's nothing substantial focused on general patients, I've delved some into criminal psychology. There is a fair bit more information there analyzing how HI works, how it can develop, and how it can 'go wrong'. If you read between the lines, you can pick out specific factors that can contribute to it.

Of course, it's all focused specifically on serial killers.

There's plenty to be said about what it does to your perception of yourself to have the only actual portrayals of something you struggle with be in serial killers. But I digress.

I mentioned some information I'd learned from a book on criminal psychology to someone, and they asked an interesting question.

"Do you think these portrayals are abelist?"

I thought that was a nuanced question.

In many ways, yes, it is abelist. The literature tied to this field analyzes these different mental health issues, and specifically in a way where it treats them as components of a murderer. It ignores people who experience these symptoms but do not commit crimes. It may give a brief note that people like that exist, but sortof dismisses their existence as an inherent nuance to the field.

Though, it is important to realize that this field and the literature that exists is designed specifically to look at existing murderers, and work backwards to try to understand how they came to be. They're not analyzing each symptom in a grander context because their field's context is specifically tied to those criminals. So in a way, the individual literature is not really as abelist.

Of course, that doesn't mean the field in context of HI and other stigmatized symptoms isn't abelist though. The overall focus of HI only in criminals, the inherent treatment of HI as only ever a component of a murderer, and the only actual information being as it relates to murderers, THAT is all abelist for certain.

But it all made me realize something as well.

As I read more criminal psychology, read more psychoanalyses of serial killers, I found that none of these descriptions ever mention a treatment plan. They're all fairly detailed, and go pretty in-depth on what exactly happens throughout a serial killer's life, the symptoms they experience, the emotions that contribute to their murders, etc. Many even cite failures of the system in identifying high-risk individuals. But none of them actually propose what steps would need to be taken to remedy an individual going down that path.

I used to think the field of criminal psychology was dedicated to understanding the factors at play in these extreme 'gone wrong' cases, so that psychologists would be better equipped to identify and address similar symptoms in high-risk individuals.

But with the critical lack of treatment plans in any criminal psychology literature, it made me realize that this field is dedicated more to morbid human curiosity. Criminal psychologists want to know what makes a murderer because they want to know what makes monsters tick. They don't care about helping people in similar spots. They barely acknowledge the existence of non-criminals with similar psychological profiles. They seem to think these serial killers appear out of the blue, instead of being products of mental illness spurred on by a failed system.

It makes the field inherently much more abelist, and it all just adds to the stigma and invisibility of homicidal ideation.

I dissociated for a month straight after watching the Netflix Dahmer documentary a few years ago, because I finally saw a portrayal that reflected a lot of the shit I feel. I felt seen. I felt understood. And then I hated myself because I found that in a dramaticization of one of the most infamous serial killers in American history. I was disgusted that I felt so much like Dahmer. And then I was afraid that I was going to end up just like him one day. And with all the stigma and lack of information on HI, that fear has never really gone away.

I've known people who experience HI, who felt similarly regarding that documentary and similar true crime content. Hell, every person with HI I've ever talked to about it has gone through that internal journey, of trying and failing to find resources to help them cope, of seeing serial killers and having to grapple with that being the ONLY representation of their experiences, of having to find out on their own through trial and error how to manage their symptoms. I'd argue most of us have experienced that. And that's unacceptable.

We need actual research, and actual treatment plans, and maybe even some actual fucking representation, beyond serial killers and the morbid entertainment of non-homicidals. HI urgently needs to be destigmatized, because it's the stigma keeping us from getting actual research and resources on how to help us.

[autistic-wolf-pack]

Hey! So, I’m not sure if this is a weird or invasive request since I don’t really have a point of reference to go off of except my own, but would you mind making a post just a talking about yourself? Like, if you’re ok with it, It’d just be interesting and informative to hear about the type of system you have and what the others are like. If you interact much, do you prefer to talk with them in your head or out loud? Do you ever decide on important decisions by casting votes? Just those sorts of things, or whatever else you’d feel like sharing.

I’m more than fine with this! I always enjoy getting a chance to de stigmatize these disorders!

Quick disclaimer: You cannot dx based off of a tumblr post, you cannot determine if you or someone else is or isn’t a system based off of one tumblr post!

What type of system do we have?

For a while us and our therapist thought it was OSDD, but after further digging we found it it was more likely to be DID (amnesia covered up amnesia until we really started tracking it and realized it didn’t have to occur between every switch)

How do we interact?

For us communication is hard. We can’t really talk to each other unless we’re dissociated, with the exception of like one gatekeeper, we tend to use notes and things to make it easier, we will talk out loud sometimes but that’s more of a “thinking to myself out loud” type of thing than it’s really intentional for communicating.

How do we decide on important things?

We usually try to do something similar to a vote, but we only really communicate with frequent fronters, just because communication is a pain in the ass for the most part for us. Sometimes someone will make an executive decision in the moment out of either impulsiveness or necessity.

What is it like living with this disorder?

It’s really hard, to be honest. There’s near constant dissociation and half the time I don’t feel like a person. It’s scary to not remember when something happened, and knowing someone else can make a life altering decision for you. It gets even trickier when not all parts are okay with final fusion but a lot don’t want to be in a system. There are some good times, don’t get me wrong, and life isn’t all suffering when you have it, but overall it’s not a fun alternative disorder, it’s kind of terrifying.

What does switching feel like for us?

For us it feels like one of two things things:

One person phases in while the other phases out- The best way I can describe it is when you have two different colors, let’s say blue and red. Blue is the base, and you want to add in red, you add the red in at 1% opacity, and lower the blue down to 99% then you go to 2% and 98% and so on and so forth, and it’s a very gradual shift, but it’s noticeable internally if you take a moment to reflect if you’d have said this say 3 hours ago. This tends to take a while longer and is more covert both internally and externally.

Just kind of spawning in- I don’t know how else to phrase that except when you’re doing something and then you just randomly get the feeling like you stopped zoning out, only you never zoned out, but you can’t remember what you were doing and then you look around and you go “oh ok, guess I’m doing this now!”.

If anyone else has any questions feel free to ask! Worst comes to worst we just wont answer because it’s uncomfortable, but no shame on anyone for any questions!!

[bonezaw]

Shoutout to all the other skin condition havers out there - it isn't the worst currently, but I have Excema, and these spot recently reappeared on my neck, and eyelids. With, or without it, I think I (and my outfit) look great.

I often think when I have flare-ups that it makes me look awful, gross, or infectious most days, even making me hesitate to venture into public, but I've been starting to feel better. Skin conditions don't make you scary, bad, or wrong - they're just things you live with.

[entity56]

"mental health symptoms are not an excuse to be a shitty person" and "dehumanizing someone for having struggles you don't understand is inherently a shitty thing to do" are both statements that can go hand in hand btw

[schizoetic]

The war on drug use is like a war on the inevitability of the oceans tide.

[wayward-haze]

I got to playtest the game I contributed artwork for yesterday!!

We Are Your Neighbors is a teamwork game in the style of MicroMacro which invites players to follow a community member on their journey with a social issue, from food scarcity and housing to health care. It was designed to facilitate discussion of:

Issues a diverse community faces

Available resources

Shortcomings and possible solutions

Pathways to advocacy

Empathetic responses to a variety of situations

Players' own stories, in a safe space that fosters compassion

Recognizing and breaking down prejudice, unconscious bias, or stigmatization

The rules are simple and fast to learn, the board was fun to search, and overall the thought-provoking route we played (1 of 4 available) took about half an hour.

In addition to helping develop the storyline of the game itself, local teens from Waypoint created a bundle of companion zines. Proceeds go to their creators and help them stabilize their living situation!

Copies aren't officially in the online store yet, but if you message them directly they'll certainly be able to help!

To learn more, visit Queerlective's website:

[upset-to-dead]

watching Unpregnant right now and bro we need more silly fun movies about abortion.

[ladydisdain5]

Society should prepare us for disabilities.

Think about it: most people will become disabled at some point. Sickness, accidents, just plain age. And even if it's not a disability, exactly, as your body declines, you just can't do as much. Everybody's going to experience this. So why aren't we prepared for it?

You've heard stories of seniors who fall into depression when they can't do everything they want to, everything they used to - maybe you know someone personally. The same goes for people who, for one reason or another, lost abilities relatively quickly. Obviously, we can't stop it from impacting people at all, but acknowledging it happens and giving people an idea of what to expect might help. Teach people to have for themselves when their bodies (or minds) can't do what they used to - and not just in the long run, but on days when you're burnt out, or tired, or feeling unwell.

But I think there are a couple reasons we don't do this. One, because disabilities and declining abilities are seen as shameful somehow, or something to be cured, not just as a different, acceptable state of being. And two, which is in large part responsible for one, because of capitalism and the mindset it's instilled in us that we have to be productive all the time and anything less than our all-time best is unacceptable. It doesn't allow us room for calm, for grace, for anything that isn't making money. If we prepare for the day it becomes impossible for us to reach that all-time best again, we'll have grace for ourselves and not continue pushing ourselves to do more, make more money, feed the machine.

Nobody can give their all their entire life, and nobody should try to, and nobody should expect or be expected to. We should prepare ourselves. Preparedness includes understanding it and making our peace with it before it happens, destigmatizing disabilities, seeing worth in things other than productivity, and building infrastructure that makes life easier to live (like normalizing ramps leading up to houses, for example, or accessible public transport, etc.). Aging and/or becoming disabled are not bad things - it's just a learning curve, one that can be incredibly steep, and that's why society needs to do better in preparing ourselves for when that day comes.