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Jake Lockley-the lies we tell ourselves au
buckle in, this one's long next
my biggest inspiration for this whole au was this man right here. mostly from reading fanfiction and thinking-who is this man to me? and noticing the pattern that jake had become kind of one note.
the fanon jake lockley had become a kind of stereotype-the rough macho man, slinging Spanish and banging ladies-and rarely did I see anything go past those interpretations. now there's nothing really wrong with that and I don't mean to shit on anyone's perception or enjoyment of the character.
in the show, the only things we know are that
he fronts in violent moments to get marc and jake out of a bind
he speaks spanish
he has to be the one who asked the woman out at the museum
and thats exactly why we get the jake that we often see.
personally, I just wanted to explore beyond that. maybe as a black person as well i found that one note portrayal to almost be in poor taste and starts to infringe on some Latino stereotypes even if it's not purposeful. (again you do you. and I don't mean to speak over any Latino voices who may feel differently)
but jake to me can go so much deeper than that. the framing of him as the "violent" alter is so harmful when it comes to D.I.D. we all remember split. those that are uninformed about disorders like D.I.D usually don't see the harm that can come in that kind of portrayal or can be dismissive. I don't have D.I.D myself, but I do have an unfinished psych degree focusing on abnormal psych and dissociative disorders and a LOT of free time.
my main point being that I didn't want jake to just be the violent alter. it was so obvious to me that jake engages in violence as a form of protection. and that alone brings so much more depth to his character. jake only fronts in the show to get them out of a dangerous situation. and when he doesn't have to kill-he doesn't. like with the kid.
so jake immediately screamed protector to me. and the violence that comes as his form as protection is the most effective that we've seen. it's not about making sure that marc feels okay with what's been done or happy. it's about keeping them physically safe.
tw for discussions of abuse, bullying
the show shows us that marc, and in extension all the boys were abused by their mother. it may be jumping to conclusions but my next thought would be that's where jake gets the violence from. and I don't mean that he enjoys it or wishes to hurt people like he was hurt as some sort of outlet. but that now they get some kind of control over when and how they are hurt.
to make some more leaps, I thought that it's not far-fetched to believe that there could be bullying in their childhood due to potentially being seen talking to themselves. or if I wanted to make it sadder, for being both Jewish and Latino. I've seen my fair share of mixed people being forced to "pick" one or being ostracized for not fitting in the way they are supposed to.
hell, I'm fully black and have had to deal with not fitting the standard due to the way I speak, or dress, or what music I listen to, etc. if something like that was going on, I can imagine dots being connected. that in order to be left alone-violence can actually be the answer.
my mom beats me -> I tend to stay clear of her as much as I can -> these kids are bothering me -> I can make them steer clear of me
and if I'm hurt -> then its my choice -> a side effect of being in a fight -> not something done on purpose to me
I imagine that's jakes origins. he's not great for anything else in his eyes, that's all he's used to. marc wouldn't register these fights as anything abnormal. marc sees himself as broken and angry, and even as a child I think that's what he would boil these fights down to. he wouldn't remember the specifics of it-just the aftermath. feeling so angry then nothing but seeing the bully on the ground holding his nose. and just fill in the blanks for himself.
as a physical protector, jake's concern is physical safety. as they get older and they end up in psych wards or other mental facilities after their dad's growing concern about the out of character behavior. (steven, not knowing how to be covert) jake would be more aware. they are in this strange place, away from what's familiar and being treated like an invalid.
I think jake would front much more often, even if he's just watching from a corner of marc's mind. he'd be used to that kind of hyper vigilance. I don't want to demonize mental health facilities, though I know that a lot of them can be very harmful. but I don't think marc would be the one causing "trouble" in there, nor is steven.
this is where the other alters that I want to add for this au to come in. where marc remembers these wards as no big deal and steven has zero memory. but jake remembers more of the unpleasant aftermath caused by outbursts of a different alter leo. I'll get into him and what I imagine his character to be in a different post but just know that this is leo's origin: the wards they were in and out of as a teenager.
I think that once they left, they weren't fully an adult. maybe 17, about to turn 18 but marc hits the bricks. tired of his mother's abuse and his father's enabling of it. I imagine that in those couple months before 18, marc would rather be anywhere else. and jake would be the one helping with that, guiding marc without him realizing. turning them away from potential areas of danger, fully fronting in order to fight off a robber. I don't think this would be a long period-maybe a month or two. and that's why marc thought they could just leave until the military. (jake, tired of being the one to watch marc's stupid ass would wish that marc had just toughed it out at home until their 18th birthday. their mother was a known danger, the streets are not)
joining the military and everything after is mostly marc. jake only fronting similarly to the show, in life and death situations. steven and the other two alters wouldn't be fronting at all. and in these long year periods is where I think jake's role would change slightly. as marc learns how to better protect himself on his own, jake would become more of a gatekeeper. maybe not a great one, still concerned more about their physical safety than anything else.
"survive. don't die." that's jake's priority. so in these combat scenarios it is impertinent that alters who can't fight, won't. in this sole endeavor, he becomes a gatekeeper. anything that might trigger steven and the others gets heavily locked down. he has a tight hold on the front, making sure only he or marc could possibly do it. I can't imagine he'd be able to keep that tight hold at all times. maybe there's small moments where their guard is down and any of the others could front for a moment. but for the most part, he's successful.
and when he gets tired of this, maybe the others are starting to front more or marc's fatigue starts to impact him, he makes the decision that in order to stay alive, they have to go. and that he's the one who tried to leave in a fugue state.
we all know what happens next and fast-forwarding through that, jake has less of a need to front. marc has the suit now. but jake is still a gatekeeper. marc's belief that steven and everything that came with that was over is partly due to jake keeping them all neatly held back and marc unaware.
due this backstory of jake's I don't imagine him getting out much. he hasn't had time for much else and doesn't know who he is outside of protecting them. after their mother's Shiva, I think jake would be the reason why marc and steven's life start to recombine. that he'd notice how shaken marc is after her death and know that it's not a problem that he can fight. so steven starts to front more, taking the brunt of these emotional moments. jake takes an even further step back, thinking steven has his role. as a caretaker and emotional protector this would be good for marc.
in this relative calm, where marc is trying (and failing) to balance his life and steven's, jake has a lot of time on his hands. maybe he watches how marc crafts a fake life for steven and thinks that it'd be nice to have one of his own-but not know how to go about it. he's never really been a person. in his eyes. he doesn't know how to be. so maybe he takes a small step on asking out the woman at the museum (I can't remember her name or if it's ever been mentioned, sorry)
thats the last part of fanon jake that I would like to dissect. I know in the comics I've read (and its only the 2016 and 2021 ones I apologize for that) there are references to this "woman-loving" personality. there are scenes where marc, steven, and jake are all talking and jake is in a club environment with dancers. and for me, it's never read as him being some kind of playboy hounding or thirsting after woman. in most of these scenes, jake is namely talking about finding community and people to care for in the rougher crowds. the crowds that might frequent these types of areas and crowds.
that's what I'd like to focus in on. jake may be a part of a system but it is a fairly isolated one. and part of that is due to his choices, but that doesn't mean he can't yearn for community. jake would be around during the time that marc was with layla. I imagine he'd probably have fronted a number of times as well. jake wouldn't know to navigate more emotional and intimate moments making him uncomfortable around her. he's covert enough to pretend to be marc in day to day scenarios, but not this. at the same time he'd see the way they interact and clearly love each other and become envious. so when he gets a chance, he tries it out for himself. though he never gets to go on that date.
all this to say jake lockley is aroace. he wants connection, community, family. due to circumstances both in and out of his control he'd never experienced that. and the couple times he has, it's been in a romantic sense. so he tries to copy that, thinking maybe that will be the key. but it isn't. he doesn't need that. he just needs some form of intimate connection to help him learn and remember how to be human. not just as a weapon, not just as a human shield. but as a person with his own wants and needs and personality outside of what the system wants.
that's my jake lockley.
the lies we tell ourselves au masterpost
#tlwto au#moon knight#moon knight thoughts#moon knight system#moon knight comics#jake lockley#jake lockley meta#marc spector#steven grant#my writing#current wip#writers on tumblr
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the thing is though that these checklists don’t mean if you have BPD it is not allowed that you have nightmares / if you have CPTSD you are legally obligated to never experience impulsiveness etc etc; it’s not just “making stuff up” — though ig in the strictest sense yeah, first you make stuff up but then you test it and see if your hypotheses align with the population. Basically chances are if you meet 8/9 BPD criteria and some for CPTSD but not enough to meet the diagnostic standard (which afaik isn’t recognized just yet but i think they’re trying to get it recognized in the diagnostic manuals but correct me if i’m wrong) then it’s pretty likely you’re going to respond better to BPD treatment and ALSO if your practitioner completely ignores one diagnosis in favor of the other they’re probably not that good at their job. Psychology doesn’t speak in “rules” and absolutes, it speaks in trends and likelihoods and everyone trying to sell you a 100% true and immovable psychology fact is a sham
as someone who unfortunately has a degree in psychology (and whose undergrad began right as the infamous replication crisis became more widely acknowledged in the field), yes, historically a lot of this field is bias and hegemony imbued with some metric. when homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder, the conversion therapy program by masters and johnson (who were like, some of the earliest pioneers of research into human sexual responses lmao) would often boast high success rates due to participants merely adopting signifiers of heterosexuality. the modern day pop psychology movement (and it's subfields, new ageism, self help books, uhhh Market Christianity) also cannot be disentangled from academic psychology, which further bends the way in which people understand and interact with psychological phenomena. this of course does not mean that all data is junk data, or that methods of measurement are without some rigor, or that therapy is completely useless, but it's just patently incorrect to insist that this field is even predominantly an apolitical force attempting to further our understanding of human beings. it's bizarre that you acknowledge that credentialized individuals in the field can be flawed while also being uncritical of psychological categorization for mental illness.
It's not that I don't get what you're saying, but it's not reflective of reality. yes, I know that practitioners are supposed to help you feel out your symptoms and see what treatment works for you, but that isn't just what they're doing (assuming it's even being done with care and competence). it's inaccurate to insist that psychology doesn't speak in absolutes- I know that we are taught not to do this, but for any social science related field this is the equivalent of going "stop hitting yourself". in any practical real-world setting where accredited institutional psychology is present, there are rules. in a clinical setting, there are rules, and you can be inpatiented against your will for breaking those rules (or recently here in canada, randomly stripped of your driver's license). in neuromarketing (<- yes this is a real discipline.), which is intensively oriented towards results due to the profit incentive, there are rules. the conditions of release for many offenders necessitates staying on court-mandated medication or participating in specific programs. when H.B. Phrenology from The Heritage Foundation wheels out his thousandth manicured study on crime and race (and when a different journal publishes a study indirectly debunking it), that is him tacitly acknowledging that there are rules.
anyway did I ever tell you guys that in my first year at University of Toronto (UTSC campus baybee) they brought in a guest speaker to my abnormal psych course who gave us a lengthy talk on how autogynephilia theory is objectively true. this was like 2013ish maybe 2014 btw.
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I recently came to the realization that I struggle with intrusive thoughts.
According to Dr. Kerry-Ann Williams, a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in a 2021 article by Kelly Bilodeau for the Harvard Health Publishing site.
"An intrusive thought is usually very different from your typical thoughts. "For example, it might be uncharacteristically violent. If a thought is disturbing and it’s something you want to push out of your mind, it might be an intrusive thought. Intrusive thoughts are often repetitive and won’t go away. The more you think about it, the more anxious you get and the worse the thoughts get,"
I wish that this was not something that I had to learn from the internet. Maybe that would have saved me hours of feeling stuck in therapy, wasting time contemplating suicide and feeling like an overall shitty person.
Not even studying psychology could give me the knowledge to fix myself. It is something that I don't remember being spoken about. Even when I tried to enquire about my own experiences.
I remember while we are discussing personality disorders in Abnormal Psychology class, I ask my lecturer the following risky question:
"How do I know if the voice I hear in my head is my own or not?"
I know. It is a strange question. I had always heard wellness spaces in the media tell us (the audience) that the voices we hear in our heads that we are not enough, that we're stupid, and/or that we will fail, were not our own. However, I grew up with a great-uncle who had catatonic schizophrenia. All I knew about myself was that I had a delibating anxiety that turned to loud thoughts.
With barely any context provided by me, my lecturer replied "Well, if the voice sounds as if it is outside of you, that is a concern. If the voice sounds as if it is within you, that is your voice. However, I am concerned that you cannot tell the difference."
The last night sent tingles throughout my body. Not good tingles, not shivers either.
A few months to a year later, a friend of mine was committed to a mental health facility after experiencing a crisis that led to an unalive attempt. He spoke about an inner voice and I defended him by saying that he doesn't have the vocabulary to appropriately express himself. He was a french-speaker, Defending him was not a good choice either. His voice led him to harm himself.
I need to give myself grace for this situation. Through trial and error, I learn to judge situations more appropriately. At the time, that entire situation made me feel like such a failure that I had convinced myself that I wasn't cut out for psychology. That I was not cut out to help others.
One argument that I can give for my difficulties in navigating mental health conversations, despite my interest in them, is that I am an African woman. Knowing a little bit about African spirituality adds extra layers to my understanding of the psyche, that my white acquaintances and lecturers may not understand. On the other hand, it also meant that I needed to be sure about my mental health knowledge. Mental health was not widely spoken about in African communities and it is sometimes unnecessarily linked to spiritual causes. That may be the case but finding a middle ground is hard when both ends of the philosophical standing do not want to meet at the centre.
As an undiagnosed autistic, that is something that I could never express appropriately. Some people spend their entire life learning how to express their emotions properly. As a black person, you're told to persevere, hide your emotions or sweep them under the rug. You can talk about it but if you let your emotions take control of you then you are weak.
Now taking all of this into account, I was back to being forced to figure out what was happening to my head. After a traumatic 2018, a depressing 2019 and a stressful 2020, I believe that I was overdue for a breakdown. In 2021, I spent countless hours trying to control the thoughts urging me to harm myself because I could not control the thoughts that begged me to feel shame.
I had spent years, consistently telling people that I am scared. These thoughts are loud. However, I know that they are my thoughts yet still a regurgitation of words that were thrown at me throughout my life now morphed into something more harmful. I told professionals and religious authorities that my thoughts were dark. Only to receive not enough urgency from my therapists about my dark thoughts, though I understood that it was not their role to panic for me, Therapists are there to observe and guide. Dealing with religious leaders on mental health is a mixed bag of reactions.
At the end of the day, only you alone can face the darkness with the guidance of professionals. However, the work is 100% yours to do to dig yourself out of a hole.
I spend hours consuming mental health content on Tiktok, learning more in a year than I did in my two years studying psychology and my 5 years dedicating my life to my religion.
I learned that I might be autistic (I formally got a diagnosis last year). I learnt that living as an undiagnosed autistic was stressful and traumatic. I learnt that the thoughts that I was experiencing were intrusive thoughts and that they were not a reflection of who I am.
Intrusive thoughts can be caused by PTSD and stressful events in general. It can also be caused by OCD.
Thank you to Dr Kali for affirming me through her videos and the other mental health professionals
The knowledge that the thoughts did not make me a bad person made me feel so much more at peace. My thoughts eventually quiet down, after a year of purging and doing healing work such as writing, therapy, research and watching films that helped me make sense of my inner world a little bit more.
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Lack of dysfunction and distress and danger from the presence of symptoms
ABSOLUTELY DOES MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE A DISORDER
If you don't struggle to function or feel any distress or are in any danger of doing anything harmful to yourself or someone else, not even a little bit, it's not a disorder.
By. Very. Definition.
The people trying to claim that disorder = divergence from the norm are WRONG.
It's THAT kind of thinking that put homosexuality, asexuality, and being trans into the DSM - when we all know those aren't inherently disorders.
It's that kind of thinking that made an anti-endo forcefully insist that I must have a sensory disorder simply because I am a synesthete - when every bit of research on synesthesia explicitly states that it's not inherently a disorder.
It's that kind of thinking that got so many nondysfunctional plurals slapped with a dx of MPD back in the 70s-90s leading to decades of medical abuse. (Seriously, it was BAD. Something a lot of antiendos seem to have forgotten or dismiss because it's ~soooo much better these days!~ when really, it's not that much better and we shouldn't forget how bad things were.)
I am NOT about to let people slap me and other nondysfunctional, nondistressed systems with a dx that does NOT fit us.
To lightly paraphrase a quote from leading trauma and dissociative disorders expert Dr. Richard Loewenstein, "If it doesn't cause you distress, it's not a disorder."
It's genuinely upsetting to see people challenge this very foundational principle of abnormal psychology. This is Abnormal Psych 101.
Challenging this principle is historically proven to be horrifically wrong.
And multiplicity isn't an exception just because it's inherently "more" abnormal than things like synesthesia.
It all boils down to the same essential thing: a brain, working in a way different from the norm.
And if that difference doesn't cause problems, particularly if it solves problems instead, then it's NOT A DISORDER.
Being able to spell better than the average person because words I hear, I see spelled out in the air? Not a disorder.
Being able to talk out personal issues with headmates, or even switch with someone who has a better handle on what would, to me, be a pretty stressful situation but isn't hardly a thing at all to them? Definitely not a disorder.
So quit fucking insisting that it always is.
Thanks.
#Anna Nita.txt#Mama Bear.txt#Syscourse#abnormal psychology#Dysfunction is an ESSENTIAL CRITERIA#Not an optional one#It is Not saying that the symptoms are inherently dysfunction causing either
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Learning Styles - [Reid x Reader]
Summary: Reader has worked hard to get to the FBI, but a misunderstanding has her feeling insecure.
Pairing: Spencer Reid / Fem!Reader
Word Count: 2.5k
Genre: Fluff
Rating: PG
Content Warning: Mention of normal criminal minds stuff briefly.
A/n: I got these two requests and they were so similar I decided to combine them. I hope that’s okay, but I feel like the stories would have been almost identical.
Requests: - I have a fic suggestion. Reader pretends to be dumb but is actually really smart. I’m thinking of that quote about marilyn ”you have to be really smart to pretend to be dumb”. One day spencer realizes that reader is smarter than she lets people know.
- Hi! Can I request a spencer reid x reader fic where reader isn't great with numbers but brilliant with behaviour and humanities (i.e. literature, history, sociology, up to you)? Maybe a dash of insecurity to spice things up?
-- Learning Styles --
My favorite professor in college told me that everyone learns differently; what works for one person won’t work in the same way for another. We are all different human beings that are shaped in different ways.
I had always been oddly insecure about my intelligence level. One of my earliest memories was my mother yelling at me while I sat at the kitchen table when I was in first grade. I was the only kid in my class who still hadn’t learned how to read. I just didn’t understand. All of my friends were progressing so much quicker than me and my mother was losing patience.
It wasn’t until my grandmother stepped in that everything changed. My elementary school teacher was training children to read by memorizing sight words, a concept I didn’t understand. When my grandmother sat down and taught me phonics. I distinctly remember everything snapping into place.
I was in 1st grade and reading at a 7th-grade level by Christmas. Once I finally understood my learning style, I really began to thrive.
But no matter what I did, I could still hear my mother yelling at me, telling me I was stupid.
In my line of work, I see just how much the throw away comments that parents make can shape a child’s development. Luckily, those comments just made me a bit insecure, not a murderer.
Up until I was 22, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do beyond this desire I had to help people. SSA David Rossi had come to guest lecture in one of my abnormal psych classes during undergrad. After I heard him speak, I was done. I couldn’t have done anything else with my life. I had obtained my master’s in psychology before I joined the FBI.
It took some time, but I was finally assigned to the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico. I was so excited on my first day that I remember my hands physically shaking.
Until they weren’t.
I can still remember my first day so clearly. SSA Hotchner had introduced me to the team, saving the “best” for last.
“And this is Dr. Spencer Reid,” he had said. “He’s our expert on…well, everything.”
Reid was my age and he had his Ph.D. I remember feeling awed by him.
Until I didn’t.
"I hold 3 Ph.D.'s in Chemistry, Engineering, and Mathematics. I also have BAs in psychology and sociology."
I remember my jaw almost hitting the floor. While I was impressed by him, I wasn’t insecure about my place on the team.
Until I was.
My grandmother may have helped me master reading, which opened the door to me mastering anything else I put my mind to…except math.
I was fine at statistics, luckily. You couldn’t get a psych degree without a ton of statistics work. But statistics was different, I could see the practical use of statistics. I just couldn’t wrap my head around calculus or algebra.
On my first case with the team, Reid had calculated some insane mathematical equations on the whiteboard, running down the probabilities and applying a mathematical formula to the unsub’s behavior.
It wasn't until later, after the case was solved when I was standing in front of the whiteboard that my confidence was hit. Reid had come into the room and saw me looking at his work.
“Don’t bother trying to understand it,” he had said. “You’d have to be a genius to understand what I do.”
I didn’t have a word to describe the feeling that settled in my stomach at his words, I wasn’t sure such a word existed. The feeling was cold and heavy, but also made my body burn with shame.
I had just offered him a tight smile before I left the room.
On the plane home I had made a decision. I was no match for Dr. Reid, I doubt anyone was. So, I would take myself out of the competition. I couldn’t get hurt if I wasn’t playing the game.
And that is how the next year of my life went. I allowed Dr. Reid to explain things to me that I was an expert in, never saying a word. I acted like I didn't understand concepts that I had written papers on. The only thing I didn't dumb down was my profiling skills. Those were necessary for my job and for saving lives.
I don’t think anyone realized what I was doing.
Until they did.
--
The team had been called to Colorado to assist in capturing a serial rapist.
All of our cases bothered me, every last one…but something about ones with this vile element really struck me.
We had the unsub’s name, Tyler Childress. He had spent time in prison for sexual assault and burglary. It seems while he was in prison, he spent time perfecting his methods; it was only by pure luck that we found his fingerprint inside the victim’s house, making him the main suspect.
When we paid Mr. Childress a visit, he had managed to get the drop on Prentiss and Morgan, allowing them to escape. Morgan was furious.
All of us were sitting around a conference table in the local prescient while we let Dr. Reid talk.
I was trying to be calm, I was, but my nails were digging into my palm so deeply I was worried I was about to draw blood.
“Guys,” the expert on everything said. “He has to have some sort of accomplice.”
Rossi just sighed. “But the profile doesn’t point to him being the sort to do well with others; he’s a narcissist.”
Reid wouldn’t budge. “I know that, but he isn’t intelligent enough to pull this off alone. He’s just not. He had an IQ test done when he was 20. He scored in the mentally handicapped range. I’m telling you he has to have help.”
“Are you sure, Reid?” Hotch asked.
“Positive. I have his results right here.”
“IQ tests aren’t a good measure of intelligence on their own.”
I was so startled that someone had contradicted Dr. Reid that it took me a second to realize it was me who had contradicted him.
He turned to face me; his brown eyes wide. “What?”
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “IQ tests aren’t a good measure of intelligence.”
Dr. Reid laughed. He laughed at me like my comment was funny. “I don’t know where you heard that,” he began.
But I interrupted him. "IQ tests are classist and oftentimes racist. The man who invented the IQ test never intended for it to be used as a complete measure of intelligence. He regretted making the test.”
Reid sputtered. “You…it’s not racist!”
“Yes. It. Is.” I ground out. “If it wasn’t it wouldn’t be illegal to administer an IQ test to a black child in the state of California.”
"Wait, it's illegal to do that?" JJ asked, her brows drawn together.
"Yes. There was a court case in the 1970s over it. Teachers were using tests to separate white children from black children. The black children were put into special education classes they didn’t need to be in. Just because the teachers didn’t want those children in their classrooms.”
I should have stopped, but I was on a role. “They’re also inherently classist. How can you expect a child to answer a question about Romeo and Juliet if they haven’t heard of it?”
That had Dr. Reid scoffing. “Everyone has heard of it.”
I shot to my feet, unable to hold back anymore. “No, they haven’t. Children in underfunded schools that don’t have access to resources might not have heard about the most famous play in history because their school wasn’t able to provide the materials to teach them about it. There was a study done in a remote part of Russia right after the IQ test was invented. Every. Single. Person. Scored in the mentally handicapped range. Because they didn’t understand.”
I knew my voice was rising but I couldn’t stop myself. “Once the researcher took the questions and applied them to things they understood, they all scored as above average. They didn’t understand math as an abstract concept, but they understood it when it was applied to their businesses, to something they actually knew about.”
I cleared my throat. “The test isn’t fair, it’s not equal. Tyler Childress didn’t go to a good school and he didn’t have a stable home life. You can’t use one measure to calculate his intelligence. He’s gotten away with 7 assaults so far that we know of. He’s not stupid.”
The entire room was silent once I had stopped speaking. I couldn’t bring myself to regret it though. What kind of person was I if I played dumb because I was afraid of being mocked when a monster was out there attacking women? No, those women deserved to have me at my best.
And I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t give it to them.
Rossi spoke first, his eyes twinkling when he looked at me. “Took you long enough,” he said. “But y/n is right. We trust the profile; we don’t let personal bias cloud the way. That’s how we catch this bastard.”
--
Later that day, we were cleaning up the conference room while the local police processed Tyler Childress.
Pathological narcissism is a complex disorder, but we followed the profile and Rossi was right. Hotch set up a press conference in which JJ and Prentiss took center stage. They tore Childress’s ego to shreds on live television.
His narcissism wouldn’t allow that to slide. He got angry, he made a mistake, and we got him before anyone else got hurt.
While the cat was out of the bag about my intelligence and that made me nervous, I couldn't regret any of it. I got to be the one to tell our last victim that we got him. I got to hug her while she cried because now that he was locked up, she felt like her healing could begin. I wasn’t sure if my rant about structural racism and the classism of IQ tests actually helped anything, but that didn’t really matter. There was one less monster in the shadows.
Today was a good day.
I was alone in the conference room, untacking photos from the evidence board when I heard someone clear their throat from behind me. I turned my head to meet the wide, honey brown eyes of Dr. Spencer Reid.
Oh boy, I thought. “What’s up, Reid?”
He shifted from foot to foot, his hands twisting in front of him before he crossed his arms over his chest. “I asked Garcia to look into you.”
My eyebrows drew together. “I’m pretty sure any nefarious things I had done would have popped up on my initial background check.”
“Right, I didn’t mean like that,” he mumbled, the apples of his cheeks turning pink. “I asked her to look into you academically.”
Shit.
He went on. “You double majored in psychology and sociology before you got a master’s in cultural psychology. She pulled your thesis. I just read it.”
“I see.” I turned my attention back to the board.
“You also guest lecture on cross-cultural psychology at Georgetown several times a year. And you’ve co-authored two papers since I’ve known you.”
Meh, it’s three. But that doesn’t matter. “Did you read those too?”
I took his silence as confirmation.
He was so quiet I almost thought he had left, but the crackle of energy I felt in the air told me he hadn’t. “Do you need something, Dr. Reid?”
"Why didn't you get your Ph.D.?"
I had answered that question many, many times. “I didn’t need a doctorate to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to waste time. Once I figured out what I wanted, I charged at it.” Which was a far more honest answer than most people got about that from me.
“W-why did you pretend to be dumb?” he rasped out, causing me to look back at him. “32 days ago, you let me explain the long-term effects of gerrymandering and the complex causes of poverty.”
“Of course, I did,” I said, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“One of the papers you authored was about generational poverty.”
“Just because I know a lot about something doesn’t mean I can stop listening to information. That sort of thinking breeds ignorance.” I smiled, unable to not tease him just a little bit.
Reid took a step closer to me. “You didn’t answer my question.”
I just shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t have a good answer.”
In all the months I had known him, Spencer Reid had never touched me, not even so much as a finger brushing against mine when he handed me something. That fact is why I was so startled when I felt his hand on my upper arm, turning me towards him.
He licked his lips, his eyes darting around. “Did everyone else know?”
I shook my head, my teasing mood long gone. "No. I mean, clearly, Rossi suspected but…No, I didn't tell anyone else."
“I just don’t understand. You’re brilliant.”
I scoffed. “No, I’m not. I’m decent a psychology, sociology, stuff like that. I can’t apply math to behavior to find patterns. I can’t even calculate how much something is gonna cost when it’s on sale without a calculator half the time.”
‘What do you…” Reid trailed off. “Wait. The very first case. You were looking at the evidence board.”
Goddamn eidetic memory.
The boy wonder was on a roll now. “I told you that you’d have to…is that why you didn’t tell me?”
What else could I do? I just nodded.
Those brown eyes closed, and he let out a groan. “I said that because I thought you were going to…I was worried…” He huffed out a breath and opened his eyes. “I wanted you to like me. I didn’t want you to think I was just a nerd.”
Now I was confused. “Why?”
Spencer Reid’s blush went all the way down his neck. “Well…I just…Morgan said I should just talk to you. But I’m not…I’m not good at that. I panic, then I start to ramble. Like I’m doing now…”
“Reid,” I interrupted. “I’m not playing dumb now. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I like you,” he blurted out right before he smacked both of his hands over his face. “Oh my god. I sound like a child.” I thought I heard him mutter idiot under his breath. “Emily says that my IQ gets slashed to 60 whenever I see a pretty girl.”
Much like that moment all those years ago when I was a child, I felt everything click into place. Oh.
I couldn't suppress my smile any longer. I rose up on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Well, we've already gone over how IQ tests aren't a good measure of overall intelligence."
With that, I quickly stepped away and hurried out of the conference room, leaving a stunned genius in my wake. When I turned back to look at him, I saw his fingers brushing over the place where my lips had just been.
--
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#Spencer Reid#Criminal Minds#Criminal Minds Fan Fiction#Spencer Reid fan fiction#Spencer Reid imagine#criminal minds imagine#Spencer Reid x you#Spencer Reid x reader#Spencer read x y/n#Dr. Spencer reid#dr. reid
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Promise
listen. i gotta write at least one fic per quarter centered around my psych class. this quarter is abnormal psych so yall get some psychiatrist Jaskier and neurology professor Geralt arguing over Conversion Disorder. I- i have no excuse. I am just this way. I don’t know what to tell you. Actually no, blame @geraltrogerericduhautebellegarde and @dani-dandelino for enabling me
Fun psych fact! Conversion Disorder is a malfunctioning sense or loss of voluntary motor abilities without a medical/neurological cause. Used to require a preceding stressor but the DSM-5 got rid of that and I’m no expert but im defs giving them some side eye for it. Think John Watson’s leg in the BBC Sherlock series, but it can be blindness or loss of hearing or any kind of voluntary motor skill.
Warnings: i mean, they swear? it’s them debating the causes/diagnostic requirements/ possible faking a disorder. it’s not something that would be a common trigger that i can think of but it’s worth mentioning?
_________________
“No, you’re not listening to me. The patient wasn't consciously feigning it. I’m not saying they were just in there to fuck with me,” Geralt huffed, setting his cappuccino down and glaring at Jaskier across the tiny café table.
Jaskier’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he took a deep breath for his rebuttal. The psychiatrist was adamant that he was right and damnit he would argue his point until he turned blue in the face, “But that would go against your theory of a physical root to the disorder! If there’s something neurologically wrong then malingering isn’t possible, Geralt! If you distract the patient from the problem and suddenly it’s gone then it must be psychological!”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear to Melitelle- you had better back that up with a reason,” Jaskier pinched the bridge of his nose, doing his best not to get angry at the neurologist’s blunt style of… well of everything.
“It’s your diathesis-stress model! Your discipline came up with it!” Geralt dug around in his bag for his tablet, ranting as he set it up and punched in his pin, “You said it yourself that it's stressors, not capital T Trauma that bring this on! So why don’t other people have the same problem every time they get bad news or a shit grade on their test? A physical predisposition!”
Jaskier’s eyebrows shot into his hairline, “Oh, so you’ve magically produced evidence of a genetic or physical predisposition when it’s been looked for for decades and not a single abnormality can be found? Please.”
Geralt leaned in and squinted to see his screen better, “No, a change brought on by the stressor that resolves when CD is ‘cured’. I like ‘resolved’ better but Yen insisted on ‘cured’.”
Jaskier snorted into his double sweet mocha with caramel and whip, “That’s not the diathesis-stress model. That’s wishful thinking.”
“If intense emotional stress can cause symptoms of a heart attack why can’t it change the brain structure?”
His tone was absolutely pissing Jaskier off. It didn’t matter if what he said had any kind of logical backing now. It was all out war.
“Don’t talk to me like one of your students, Geralt! I will-”
“Look at the thalamus on these scans and tell me what you see,” Geralt was smug. Fuck, Jaskier hated when he was smug. It was harder to stay angry at him when he looked so damn good.
He shot him a warning glare before inspecting the scans and sighing, “They’re normal.”
“Yes. Now these.” Geralt toggled to a different window of more scans.
“They’re also normal.”
Geralt looked at him in shock, then the scans, then back at Jaskier, “No they’re fucking not!”
The poor barista sent to their table tapped her knuckles on the edge, “I hate to interrupt but we’re closing soon. Can I get you two anything else?”
Jaskier flashed her an apologetic smile, “No, dear, we’re fine. We’ll get out of your hair soon. Promise.”
She smiled and nodded, then crossed her arms, “I have to ask. Were you two like, forced to work together? Some of the other girls have bets going.”
Geralt was still engrossed in examining his scans but he didn’t miss a beat, answering in unison with Jaskier, “We’re married.”
The girl laughed and turned back to her coworkers, “Karla you owe me your tips! Suck it!”
Jaskier shook his head and turned back to Geralt, “Darling, unclench. Maybe your grad student just mislabeled the file.”
Geralt shot him a glare over the edge of the screen, “Yen saw the abnormality too,” he grumbled.
“Yen wants tenure,” Jaskier reminded him, laying a tip on their table and standing to shrug on his coat.
“She’s not… You’re right. She would magnify a possible finding to boost her chances,” Geralt pouted as he packed his tablet and followed Jaskier out the door.
“Maybe send them to Ves?” Jaskier suggested, lacing their fingers together and swinging their arms a bit more dramatically than necessary.
Geralt shot him a grin, “I’ll put them on the big screen at home. I know I saw it.”
Jaskier rolled his eyes, “As long as you actually come to bed tonight.”
Geralt used their intertwined hands to pull Jaskier closer, planting a kiss in his hair, “I promise.”
#why am i like this yall#i just#they fuckin live rent free up there#everything is filtered through fandom i guess#geraskier#geraskier modern au#geraskier scientist au#psychiatrist jaskier#neurologist geralt#professor geralt#feral geraskier#arguing geraskier#married geraskier#geraskier husbands#soft geraskier#geralt of rivia#jaskier#the witcher#the witcher modern au#the witcher fic#geraskier fic#mkay next i gotta do a source write up for the imaging study i referenced to write this fic lol
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You should turn your post on the Uncanny Valley into a book or something. I am not even kidding, it's brilliant and sorely needed information. Thank you for it.
Tbh its just speculative that the uncanny valley is an inherent biological trait and not cultural or a learned behavior at the moment. A good example would be the cultural phenomenon of colorophobia where in the US we have a longer history of using clowns in our horror pop culture genres than countries like Japan.
Clown entertainment has been around since the Egytian times and maybe some people have always been freaked out by them it honestly just takes one director or author to have an disproportionately irrational fear and good cinematography skills to convince people that they SHOULD hate clowns just as much, (I could say the same about the movie Jaws but thats a bit of a tangent,) or a memorable event that damages the public's trust in something that SHOULD be innocent or harmless. (A good examples being the John Wayne Gacy trials.)
Clowns are also thought to be in the uncanney valley so ita a fairly good argument on cultural phenomenon versus genetic traits. Up until aroud the 60s-70s clowns were actually fairly well liked by the US general public and a lot of older generation still find a fondness in it that would scare the living shit out of their grandchildren.
As far as evidence that I may be right about the "uncanney valley might be because of rabies" theory, there has been a small case study suggesting that the movements of a non-human robot that trigger the effect in us, is also present in people with parkinsons but the sample size is too small for me to be thoroughly convinced.
And don't be mistaken I also dislike this concept because saying that ableism is an inherent human trait is just as bad as saying racism is an inherent human trait. There is little to gain from distrust in the disabled and little historical evidence to suggest it was common or beneficial to discard disabled people. Disabled people's remains have been found time and time again to live to incredibly long livea and be cared for, and participate in their communities. I'm highly critical of this particular case study and I take it with a grain of salt because its on cosmo, but evidence of human disabilities and compassion can be sourced by actual bones and it's been placed on VERY credible sources. NPR, NBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, NY Times, literally the clostest you can get to creme of the crop news articles on DOZENS of accounts and if you have a goddam problem then pay for a tour to the Smithsonian, find an archeologist and coherse them into showing you the bones and then explain phorensics to you because you probably wouldn't understand unless you too were a phorensic archeologist yourself.
What I DO BELIEVE tho is that if the uncanny valley is a legitimate inherent trait, that like most evolutionary traits, it made it this far for this long because it somehow served us benificially. And the biggest benifit I can think of is identifying neuro-infectious diseases because they can spread agressivley, many of them lead to death or lasting effects and are fucking MISERABLE to catch. We're talking brain swelling, fevers, uncontrollable vomiting, tremors, hallucinations, motor and vocal tics, difficulty swallowing, seizures. This could all happen because they eat infected deer meat or because of one bad fox bite. It's miserable if you survive and horrifying if you dont. Rabies can survive in your muscle tissue for years before infecting your brain and once it does usually you only live for about 5-10 days in and out of concious knowledge that you're going to die painfully, and disease aggrivated psychosis. It would be hard to pinpoint the causation because the amout of time before full blown infection would vary too much to assosiate for a long time. So your only option is to hone in on telltale signs.
The disabled people who would suffer from herdeditary or developmental neurological disorders run the risk of prejudice from mistaken identity, but if a human is part of a community, and doesn't die within a week from having a wobbly head, it would sooner or later become apparent that they're not dangerous. I think nowadays culturally people don't press to learn more about disabled people due to social and political prejudice and never fucking grow up past that. Mistaken identity or not. You learn about people from the patterns of their behaviors so even ones that seem abnormal to you become a normal recognizable pattern for them. Fancy that.
We don't get grossed out by chimps or gorillas, who are even more distant cousins, and the proof that we don't have a search and destroy button for anything immediatly related to us is a bunch of bullshit can be found in almost every human's blood on earth. And not just neanderthals, but denisovans as well. And that's not even accounting for genetic backtracking the crossbreeding of other sapiens species before we were whittled down to just the three. What makes the tweet even stupider is that when neandertals still roamed the earth humans were shorter, hardier, and overall more rough looking so we looked even indistinguished then. We Also Chewed On Bones and neandertals handled cold climates better than us based on a study on chest cavity density and, skull nasal intake and heat circulation, providing genetic diversity and the upper hand in survival in the tundras or mountainous regions spanning over Eurasia. If it wasn't for humans fucking neandertals we might not have been able to spread over the contient or diversify the way we did.
So my full hypothesis is that if the uncanny valley is a genetic inherent human trait it was used to benifit people from catching agressive diseases in a time where the benifit of fearing a group member with rabies outweighed the cost of fearing a group member with a disability like parkinsons.
WHAT PISSED ME OFF was the idea that we are DESIGNED to be unwary of our evolutionary cousins could easily be used for white supremacist spaces to justify racism BECAUSE IT ALREADY HAS
So that one tweet that might seem like a quirky thinkpiece in my eyes is just fuel for eugenics trend round whatever number we're on. It's like we don't fucking learn. It would be REALLY easy to retool the concept that it's natural for people to be fearful of whatever the bullshit definition of sub-humans are. Claiming that black people were sub-human thus deserving of mistrust and submission to white ownership worked like a fucking charm.
Maybe if I go to college and major in psyche/socio/civics it'll be my college thesis. Right now I'm more of a hobbyist than anything, but what I DO know is that anyone can make an untested hypothesis to combat another untested hypothesis and it should hold just as much goddamn value. I combatted the idea that the idea that human othering was funneled into an unconfirmed effect that causes disgust and terror based on non-human sapiens is in fact racist and gave what is in my opinion a more evoluntionary practical approach to the uncanney valley.
The generalized links that I used APARENTLY weren't good enough for some people but aparently a single tweet that says "hur dur heedle dee uncanney valley exists because of human cousins" was taken at face value even tho it was probably tapped out in five seconds without regards to the reproccussions. I find a huge discomfort that less than studious links about the evolution of monkey social behaviors that I used as a guideline to explaining my concerns became the focal point for people to nitpick without even having the gall to "well actually" on the subject. That absolute ravaging NEED to rip apart at it and devolve into name calling because I MENTIONED racism is fucking suspicious and I don't trust it. I had to stop looking at the responses because some people were only reblogging and arguing with barely half of my argument and i was getting nowhere fast.
There were a few people that made actual points with cited sources that made their own rebuttle arguments. That I respect. It's just as valid an argument as mine and I'm ALWAYS willing to take on more credible sources to strengthen my stance or gain perspective.
But it's the utter dismissal of a concerning concept that just seeped into the subtext that gnawed at my gut. Some people on top of hating the linked sources I provided, admitted they didn't read it, refused to read between the lines to purposfully misinterpret or derail my main points, and detract that my claim that the tweet was a result of systemic white supremacy saturated into modern science was a bunch of bullshit because I claimed that 1500s anglos invented racism.
The thing is we did invent the racism that we fucking currently subscribe to.
We practice the science that we formulated based on our own social prejudice. Real people die from this.
We remain uncritical of our own theorums that we postulate then pat ourselves on the back like we're philosophical geniuses even though racism is a family heirloom with a new paint job.
We preach the eugenics ideals that we pulled out of our asses to benifit from fearmongering, promises of national security and unpaied labor.
White supremacists create subtext with the intention of it being consumed by accident or in ways that seem palatable.
Fuck.
That.
I don't hate the person who wrote the tweet. Chances are that they gave the tweet as much thought as they took the time to write it and went on their day as a fun little thinkpiece. Everyone on the internet does it. But its that kind of thinking error that needs to be adressed as a progression of historic and scientific prejudice that gets rehashed, recycled and untouched and continually damages and is weaponized against marginalized people. I am not wrong for taking it seriously especially when a bunch of people were sitting around nodding their heads just as effortlessly.
I don't owe the internet any more sources than the tweet. I don't owe anyone on the internet a full scientific ananysis. And the people's reaction to what I had to say was actually what further convinced me I might have hit the nail on the head.
#answered asks#uncanny valley effect#eugenics#fuck white supremacy#systemic racism#racism#negative#slavery#luidilovins
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so weird to me that mental health and illness looks different in a lot of people, but we usually only recognize the prototypes? like obviously they’re prototypes for a reason, like they best encapsulate the cognitive behavior yadda yadda, but for big things (common things like adhd, depression, anxiety, etc) i feel like at SOME point we should get into a little more detail about the broader range of symptoms and manifestations??? (especially with all those godforsaken health classes US kids have to take like. no mr zimmerman i don’t need to know the chemical makeup of ketamine but i would have loved to know that memory loss is a common symptom in a ton of common mental illnesses and learning disorders)
like i didn’t know i had adhd til sophomore year of high school because my inattentive symptoms were different than my sisters’ hyperactive symptoms - i did well in school where they struggled and fell behind, so no one bothered to check with me, despite the fact that i took way longer to understand instructions compared to the kids in my class, doodled all the time on any paper i was given, daydreamed constantly, always had to be moving my hands, i was “too sensitive” to criticism, etc. and what that ended up with was me feeling like i was just horrible at being a “smart kid” instead of just a kid with a different process.
i doubted having anxiety because my panic attacks looked different than my sisters’ and the ones i saw on tv - those were always characterized by hysterics or dizziness and loss of breath, but mine were usually muscle tremors and chills/hot flashes and nausea. (i didn’t know my panic attacks were panic attacks until march of this year. and i only found out then because i read an expanded list of symptoms in my abnormal psych textbook for a project.) my anxiety got to the point of nightly stomach aches for months on end, to the point of an ulcer in 8th grade, and i was like “but i’m not always worried like my little sister is :(((” because that was what i thought anxiety was.
i had NO idea that there was more to dissociation than feeling out-of-body. my older sister told me all the time about how her dissociation felt like she was watching herself from outside her body, like she was floating or like life wasn’t real, textbook depersonalization stuff, and i had always been taught in psych classes that that is dissociation, full stop. i found out literally three weeks ago that feeling numb, completely forgetting what you were saying moments before, feeling bad like you just flashed back to something but not being able to recall what it was, finding yourself rocking back and forth or side to side, those are all possible symptoms of dissociation?? like are you serious?? you know how much that explains and validates??? dude
my point in this is like. at least in America, where i had to take literally five semesters of health in my time in the public school system (all of which taught me about marijuana and alcoholism over and over), there should be a period in health classes where we talk more in depth about these things. mental illnesses and disorders have prototypes for good reason but it would be great if we more widely acknowledged that those rarely describe everyone’s experience.
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I’ve spent over 16 hours in two different ERs and I’d like to vent
CW: Doctors hospitals, chronic illness, incompetence, female hysteria, humiliation, mental health stigma,
What follows is my original post made on Thursday, there is a update as of today at the end and the news is not all bad. This is made to spread awareness talk about an issue I feel is way too often ignored and most importantly let other people feeling this they aren’t alone.
So. I have ehler danlos syndrome, celiac, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, and an (so far) otherwise specified seizure disorder. So basically I am a medical dumpster fire. Getting a or in my case several diagnosis has been a long terrifying and grueling for both me and my partner. We have enountered many doctors and nurses who were kind attentive willing to listen and knowledgeable about my Miriad of admiditally uncommon diagnosis. But today I am so incredibly hurt, frustrated, angry and scared and I want to put this out there because this is part of the many problems that chronically ill and disabled people face everytime they walk into a doctors office, emergency room or even out in public.
So I look sick, it’s obvious and it’s been obvious for a long time. I sit at around a six to seven on a pain scale most of my life, which sucks. I have chronic nausea and weight loss that makes me weak and thin in a sick way, which also sucks. But by far the hardest thing is hoe many people refuse to take my seriously. So today after three months on a waiting list I saw a gastroenterologist. I was scared, underweight, sick and tired. I wanted answers like always and let my partner drag me into a beige fluorescent room to try and make some sense. Overall the doctor was nice, but put heavy emphasis on my past of CPTSD from repeated abuse, and implied that my weight loss and severe gastrointestinal problems could be “just a side effect of my anxiety”. That was dehumanizing to say the least. Because I know I’m traumatized, I’ve sat in therapists offices and cried, I’ve pulled myself together, fought addiction and anorexia and I know that I’m healing. I know it’s his job to look between the lines but I also want to just have a chance to be understood, and not dismissed as a psych case.
Later today I had an episode of vomiting and loss of consciousness, over all not great stuff. So my partner in their amazing sense of love and compassion took me to th ER. Because that’s where you’re supposed to go when you’re scared, sick, hurt, in danger and don’t know what to do.
My experience there was by far the worst I’ve ever had. My vitals were highly abnormal (high pulse at rest, low BP, and low pulse ox). I was having neurological symptoms related to my seizure disorder and instead was given a barrage of tests that had nothing to do with why I was there, the condition I repeatedly told them I had, or the worrying vitals. So after two hours a head CT and useless blood work the ER doctor looked at me and my partner (who was forced to wait in the car in 94 degree weather) and told me I was fine and dehydrated.
I’m a nursing student, I’m new, I’m a novice at the most, and I have a lot to learn. But never could I imagine having a chronically patient, with abnormal labs and vitals with numerological involvement be given saline and discharged. My partner and I were terrified because we didn’t know what else to do. I needed help. I needed answers. I needed them to hear me. After me panicking my partner told me that we should try again. Because doctors are here to help us, and if your scared and there’s something wrong they took an oath to help.
So I called the nurse who was awesome, he went and got the doctor and I was ready to make my case. My partner at this point as well as me were terrified frustrated and close to tears. And this ER doctor after hearing our concerns, my history (with chronic illness and anorexia) proceeded to throw up her hand and as’ my partner “what they her to do”. This was shocking but sadly it doesn’t end here. The doctor proceeded to insist that I was fine and the situation was both non emergent and out of her hands. I responded in a passive way because at that point I was scared triggered and exausted. And I asked what she thought I should do”. And the words that came of her mouth hurt me and made more angry than any four syllables ever has.
“Psych referral”
Now let me something straight. I am a survivor, I am working in me healing, I am growing and changing for the better. I take my meds go to therapy and work everyday to get a little better. But this woman who obviously hadn’t read my chart which denotes not only my diagnosis, psychological history, and notEs from speacialists on the severity of my physical condition has just implied that I’m crazy. This was horrible but 8 could see how it would seem that I am overreacting but, due years of gaslighting, medication being forced on me to cover abuse and trauma, I hate being called that. It’s not a real term, nor does it help anyone, nor does it doing anything but make me remember the nights I spent wondering if that word was me.
In one visit, one person managed to dehumanize, humiliate dismiss me and maybe risk my life based on the fact that 8 wasn’t worth the time it took to read my chart.
It so incredibly weird to have to say this but I as a queer, gay, chronically ill, Latin person am in fact still a human being WHOS painand concerns deserve as much respect as anyone else. We all deserve to be helped and heard and people like this are one of the many reasons that I and so many others are scared to ge5 help, scared to tell the full story, or scared to speak up. This kills people. This is killing people. And this is why I in all my chronically glory and working so hard to advocate and move forward in medicine as a whole. Because nobody deserves that. Because I didn’t deserve to sit in an ER terrified and be told I was crazy. Because my partner doesn’t deserve to be dismissed and mocked for being scared. Because I nor anyone else have to prove I am sick enough or disabled enough to be worth someone’s time.
I hope anyone who reads this and understands even a little. Who’s been through it, whose family and partners have been through it know that this is not okay, that this not your fault, and that you are by no means crazy. That the people who make feel like burden or an annoyance are the problem. Because you deserve to be heard. I m hoping everybody’s doing okay, I’m hoping your journeys are treating you well. Because as always no matter who are, where you are and what you’re feeling you are not alone, you are worthy and I believe you.
***Update**
I later went to a larger hospital not in my home town, and through a long stay in the ER got a formal epilepsy diagnosis, given a anti convulsants drug, and overall treated like a human being. I now have contact with their epilepsy unit and have the tool and education I need to start this part of my chronic illness journey. I’m exhausted and getting used to knew meds but am highly grateful for the good doctors out there, the nurses who listen and the partner who was angelic enough to be with me through it all.
#mental health#mine#system speaks#personal#chronic illness#spoonie#recovery#coping#rant#vent#medical struggles#mental health support#ehlers danlos syndrome#actually epileptic
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Season 1, Episode 5-- Heartwrench
Google Doc
[Henry’s hospital room. Day. There are no longer the sounds of life support.]
VICTOR
...You’re sure it’s okay?
HENRY
Yeah, it’s fine. Whatever helps. Record away.
VICTOR
All right. Thanks.
HENRY
...You don’t have to be nervous, you know.
VICTOR
I’m not.
HENRY
Then why are you doing that?
VICTOR
Doing what?
HENRY
You’re clenching and releasing your hand, and you’re rocking a bit in your chair. Both of which you do when you’re nervous. Seriously, how long have I known you? [Beat.] No, you don’t have to stop.
VICTOR
Oh thank God. [Beat.] ...How’re you feeling?
HENRY
Like I’ve been in a coma for the better part of a year. But lucid, so that’s an improvement, I guess.
VICTOR
Right. Right, yeah.
HENRY
...You know we’ve gotta talk about this, right?
VICTOR
Henry, shouldn’t we wait until you’re--
HENRY
No. We’re doing it now. While you’re recording. ...Victor, please tell me that I’m remembering wrong. Please tell me that I’ve just got some real bad brain damage and it’s fucking with me. That I didn’t walk in on some… first attempt at reanimating a fucking corpse.
VICTOR
[Mumbled] Second.
HENRY
Excuse me?
VICTOR
It was a second attempt, I’d done it before.
HENRY
Jesus Christ.
VICTOR
Also it’s not technically reanimation. If it had been a single body, sure, but I used materials from several donors--
HENRY
What the hell is wrong with you? In what fantasy could you ever see that turning out well? That’s the kind of shit that horror movies are made from!
VICTOR
I’m sorry, I--
HENRY
You were stupid! You were stupid, and reckless, and you didn’t think about the consequences!
VICTOR
I know, I just--
HENRY
Oh my God, that’s what the fire was about, wasn’t it? That had something to do with it. You freaked out, and you tried to burn the evidence. So what, you figured you’d risk more lives then, too? What if there had been people in there, Victor, what then?! Is that what attacked me? And did-- Did Justine really kill your brother? Or was that part of it, too? You have people’s lives on your conscience, all because you wanted to fuck around and find out if you could--
VICTOR
I just wanted my mom back, okay?! I know I fucked up. Believe me, I don’t need any more reminders. But I-- I had my reasons, it wasn’t just some ego trip.
HENRY
[Calmer now] ...Does Elliot know?
VICTOR
I’m sure he figured it out, yeah.
HENRY
What’s that supposed to mean?
VICTOR
Oh. Oh God, they didn’t tell you.
HENRY
Tell me what?
VICTOR
...Henry, Elliot’s dead.
HENRY
Oh God. God, I…. I’m so sorry, I…. How’s your dad taking it?
VICTOR
Well, considering he died two days later, I’d say not very well.
HENRY
What?
VICTOR
[Getting more and more distraught] He’s dead too, Henry. Him, Elliot, my mother, Billy, Justine. Everyone is dead, and I have been so alone and so scared, and I have no idea what I am supposed to do.
HENRY
...Hey. C’mere. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m just stressed, I shouldn’t have said all that shit.
VICTOR
You have every right to.
HENRY
No, being a dick won’t fix anything. Plus, you’ve obviously been through hell. Your glasses look like you were just at a 4Chan meetup.
VICTOR
[Laughs] I don’t know what that means.
HENRY
It means you need to get some damn lens cleaner, how the hell can you see out of those thing?
VICTOR
Just used to it, I suppose.
HENRY
You hear from Evelynn at all?
VICTOR
Take a guess.
HENRY
That’ll be a no. You try talking to her?
VICTOR
Of course not.
HENRY
...So you’re upset that you’ve been alone, yet you haven’t even tried to get in contact with your sister?
VICTOR
Look, I don’t need a lecture right now, okay? I get enough of those from Dr Walton.
HENRY
Wait, you’re seeing Dr Walton? Like, Robert Walton? Kinda short, always has a bow tie?
VICTOR
Yeah…? Do you know him, or…?
HENRY
Sort of, he was a guest speaker for my Abnormal Psych class during undergrad. He seems good.
VICTOR
Yeah, I suppose.
HENRY
How much you tell him?
VICTOR
I’m not sure I could tell him what happened even if I wanted to.
HENRY
...What happens when you try?
VICTOR
Don’t. Don’t do that.
HENRY
Do what?
VICTOR
That. You’re trying to… diagnose me.
HENRY
No, you’re my friend and I don’t have a license to practice. That’s illegal. I’m… offering informed advice.
VICTOR
Yeah, well, I’ll save you the trouble. Clinical depression, post traumatic stress disorder, and paranoid personality disorder. Though that last one is debatable. I might be missing some. Come back when you finish your Ph.D, Clerval.
HENRY
[Softly] Jesus…. [Trying to lighten the mood now] Doing it then it would be even more illegal. Then we’ll have two criminals here. [Beat.] Sorry. That wasn’t as funny as I expected it to be.
VICTOR
No. No, it’s fine. You’re not wrong. [Laughs] Should’ve seen what it was like trying to find a job with an arson charge. I’m lucky I managed to get the one I have.
HENRY
Yeah? What job’s that?
VICTOR
I’m over at Harris’ down on Main Street.
HENRY
Holy shit. The great Victor Frankenstein, the mad genius, the Prometheus of the 21st century, is selling discount hardware.
VICTOR
Well, I don’t actually sell anything most of the time. I’m customer service. Mostly returns, taking phone calls, fun stuff like that.
HENRY
You’re fucking with me. You hate talking on the phone.
VICTOR
And I hate my job. But if they’re willing to give a felon minimum wage, who am I to argue?
HENRY
Hey man, whatever works. I do have one more question, though.
VICTOR
Okay?
HENRY
Is that the hoodie I lent you that day?
VICTOR
Oh, um, right, yeah. I-- I was going to give it back, but then you-- You know, and then I was just so distracted, between worrying about you and the police hounding me--
HENRY
Hold on, police?
VICTOR
Oh. Right. They, um… They thought that I did it for a while. Elliot, too.
HENRY
Oh God.
VICTOR
I mean, I can't blame them. I've got a record, and that's a lot of people close to me who--
[The door opens. Both men are silent for a moment.]
HENRY
Hello…?
VICTOR
Sorry. That’s probably me.
HENRY
What?
VICTOR
Things have been… weird. It’s a long story.
HENRY
You built a person out of corpses, and I’m bedridden for who knows how long. I’ve got all the time in the world for the details.
VICTOR
...Ever since I…. Ever since the fire, things have been… happening around me. I know how this is going to sound, but you need to believe me, okay? Ever since I… made it… it’s like…. I don’t know. It doesn’t even really make sense, I-- The two concepts aren’t even remotely similar, I--
HENRY
Hey. Hey, breathe for me, okay?
VICTOR
Okay. Okay, sorry. ...That was the first night that I experienced something that I was unable to explain. Granted, I wasn’t exactly in the best mental state at the time, so for a while, I figured that it must have been a hallucination. I’ll be honest, sometimes I’m still able to convince myself that it was. But I know it’s not.
VICTOR (Cont.)
Sorry. Sorry, let me back up. [Sighs] The… first signs of life came at 1:15 AM. The rise and fall of the chest, the flicker of movement behind the eyelids. Whether or not there was cognitive function had yet to be seen, but… I suppose you know how that turned out. It was at 1:16 that everything started to go downhill. When I realized what I’d done, when-- when the possible consequences hit me all at once. The wrongness of the situation, I…. I almost didn’t hear it. Or-- No. No, I didn’t hear it so much as I felt it. I felt a voice throughout my body, in every single nerve, clawing its way into my subconscious. I-- I couldn’t make out what it was saying, but… I got the sickening feeling that it was proud of me. Proud of what I’d managed to achieve. Whether or not anything happened for the couple months that I was in the hospital afterwards, I can’t really say. I was in shock, I couldn’t tell you what was real and what was hallucination. Honestly, you’d probably be better at figuring out if anything odd was happening during that time, you were there. But what I can tell you is that it never stopped. Sometimes the TV would turn on in the middle of the night blasting static, a couple times I woke up in the morning to find my glasses outside on the windowsill. Then there are the more… sinister ones. Beings that aren’t quite human, there one moment, gone the next. Or sinking, terrifying senses of dread that lead up to disaster.
HENRY
So… you’re seeing ghosts?
VICTOR
No, obviously not ghosts, ghosts don’t exist. Jeeze, you sound like Elliot. [He laughs, but it fades] ...Not ghosts. But… something. Something that found me that night and hasn’t left me alone since. It’s all connected, I know it is. I just need to analyze everything. You know me, I work with data and research. If I can get the evidence, I can work out what’s going on. I even ended up setting cameras up in my house, but… they always freeze up whenever something happens. Typical. Either that or-- Or I don’t even have it happen myself, sometimes it’s other people who--
HENRY
Wait. Other people?
VICTOR
Yes. But it’s not like I want it to happen, it just does. I usually don’t even know them. I just… hear about them on the news, or sometimes they tell me themselves if I happen to run into them.
HENRY
...And strangers just tell you about all the creepy shit that happens to them?
VICTOR
...Sometimes, yeah.
HENRY
...You know what, I’m not going to even pretend to be surprised.
VICTOR
Honestly, that’s how I deal with it. So yeah. There you go. Spooky.
HENRY
...Do people get hurt because of it? [Victor doesn’t answer] Shit…. Well then. That settles it. I guess we’ve got work to do.
VICTOR
What?
HENRY
I said, we’ve got work to do. Maybe you’re content wallowing in self-pity while creepy shit radiates off of you, but I sure as hell won’t sit on my ass as it happens.
VICTOR
Henry--
HENRY
I know what you’re doing. You’re treating it like some punishment. Like you deserve it. Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t. And neither does anyone else. You fucked up, yeah. And I’m not going to lie, it’s going to take some time for us to get back to the way we were. But it’s like you said. You had your reasons. You didn’t mean for it all to go to hell. And you didn’t kill them. So you and me are going to buck up and--
[He is cut off by a sound of pain as he moves]
VICTOR
Hey, whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. We'll figure it out. We have time to plan, take action, whatever we need to do. But right now, what you need to do is rest. I'll wash the hoodie and bring it back first thing tomorrow.
HENRY
Nah, you keep it. It suits you, I can always get another. Plus, who the hell knows where you've been the past year?
VICTOR
[He laughs. This time it feels genuine] Asshole.
NEXT EPISODE➝
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thank you for the writing resource! are you open to talking about your grad school experience? what you did, what you wish you had known, how you prepped for grad school, what you did in grad school, etc...
hey yeah, i can talk about that!! this is gonna get long!! buckle up!!
( for reference, i am a recent msw graduate, a csw, and a practicing substance use disorder therapist )
quick disclaimer that i obviously know way more about msw program requirements than anything else but as far as i know, other programs that will get you into mental health therapy ( ms in mental health counseling and what have you ) have similar requirements. program requirements also vary across country, state, and university.
first thing’s first: look at program requirements as early on as you can to learn about their pre-requisites!! if you’re currently working on your bachelors degree, this is a great time to start knocking out those pre-requisites. most programs i looked at required statistics for behavioral science, research for behavioral sciences, human development, and abnormal psych before entry into a grad school program.
a bachelors degree at minimum is required, obviously. what you have a bachelors degree in doesn’t matter too much, as long as you have those pre-requisites and experience in behavioral / mental health ( THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT i’ll talk abt it in a minute ). there were people in my program with degrees in sociology, anthropology, human development, psychology, there were even a few people with degrees in journalism in my cohort!! one lady in my cohort had been a post-partum nurse for a long time before deciding to go back to school for social work. i personally have a bachelors degree in psychology and a minor in autism studies. the world is your oyster, baby.
all the programs i looked at required a 3.0 gpa but, even more importantly, they were looking for PRIOR EXPERIENCE in mental / behavioral health!! i worked full time while working on my bachelors degree with autistic youth and adults with intellectual disabilities. i also did some volunteer work at a crisis hotline and a lgbtq+ resource center. while i was in grad school, i worked full time as a front line staff at a substance use disorder treatment center. a lot of the people in my cohort had similar experience. not all of them worked while doing their bachelors degree. for msw programs specifically, they’re going to ask for references, and at least ONE of those references HAS TO BE A FULLY LICENSED AND PRACTICING LCSW. networking is important!! if you can’t work or volunteer while you’re working on your bachelors degree ( and i fully understand if this is the case, working full time and going to school is not for most people ), i would recommend a gap year or two to get some experience.
something else that was SUPER helpful for me in my undergrad was a grad school and career prep for behavioral sciences course that i took. because it was a behavioral sciences course, it counted as an elective and therefore counted towards the credits needed for my degree.
references, a personal statement, and a case study are standard for grad school applications. the university i went to required an additional timed ethical essay. this is also why it is important to look into grad school programs early on!! make sure you know priority deadlines and final deadlines.
grad school itself is a whole other beast. i decided to stay in state for grad school because in-state tuition is way cheaper and i did take out loans to pay my rent while i was going to school. nice little perk of pursuing social work though is that there are plenty of agencies out there that offer tuition reimbursement. as previously mentioned, i was also working nearly full time to pay my other bills. i did not have a life. i also gained 20 lbs and lost a lot of hair. this is normal.
again, depending on your program, the time you spend in school will vary. i did a 2 year full time msw program. i know ms of mental health counseling programs are generally 3 years full time. if you decide to go part time, you’re looking at 3-5 years in grad school.
on top of classes, you are expected to complete PRACTICUM HOURS. one program i looked at also required a thesis on top of practicum hours, i do not believe this is standard but if it is, Disgusting. but basically, you’re going to be doing an internship while you are in school and you have to have a certain number of hours in order to graduate. my school required 1,050 hours to graduate. during our first year, we did 15 hours a week and during our second year, we did 20 hours a week. we had the option to do our internship hours during a summer block, which was 40 hours a week during the summer semesters. most of our actual classwork was, while definitely time consuming, honestly pretty simple. those internship hours are more important than anything. i can’t speak for other universities but my university was partnered with local agencies and we would sit down with our practicum advisors, talk about our post graduation goals, and choose our top 5 agencies from there, which made the process of finding an internship fairly simple. practicum counted towards required credits though so if you were going full time, you were taking 12 credits of classes and 3 credits went towards practicum.
for as Much as grad school was, i honestly really enjoyed my experience. my program was really awesome, my professors were very knowledgeable and supportive, and i made lifelong friends. i do not miss it.
this is a lot!! it is confusing!! it is overwhelming!! you will do great!! i probably missed things!! my ask box is open.
#grad school#grad school prep#msw student#mental health therapy#college prep#university prep#what does one even put in the tags here??#grad school's stupid but do it anyway?? lmao#so u wanna be a THERAPIST?????#* mine.
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My Trip to Wonderland
CW: This is about my own experience with epilepsy. It’s long, it’s raw, and it’s real. Read on if you wish.
Lewis Carroll, the author of the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland series, is thought to have had temporal lobe epilepsy. Although there is little physical proof of such, due to the time period, his works of fiction have been taken as an allegory to what we now call auras. Even today, epilepsy is a condition that lacks understanding. This was the case even more so in the 1800s. Depending on culture, epilepsy was either thought to be divine, or a product of witchcraft for quite a while. During my diagnosis and subsequent events, I often described my auras as falling into a dark hole. I suppose I’ve spent a bit of time in Wonderland myself.
I wake up in an unfamiliar room. The lights are bright. They sing like high pitched crickets. Can anyone else hear them? Is anyone else here? Where am I, anyway? I try to move, try to speak, but I can’t. I must have made a sound of some sort, because I see someone’s face approach me. “Don’t try to talk. You had a seizure. We’re going to move you to a bed.”
A seizure? That doesn’t make sense. I don’t have seizures. Before I can tell this stranger that, I’m being moved by 3 people. I still can’t form words. I still haven’t figured out where I am, or who I’m with. I hear sirens. One of the girls has a stethoscope. They start asking me questions. I know the answers, but I can’t put the answers into words. I don’t understand what’s happening. The sirens get closer, and the larger group of girls starts to panic. Five of them still surround me, and they refuse to tell anyone else why sirens are approaching. These five must be characters in my own wonderland. The one telling me what happened is the Cheshire Cat. The girl who carried me to a more comfortable place must be the White Rabbit. The quiet one is the Caterpillar. The other two seem nice, but they’re giving me king and queen of hearts vibes. That can’t be a good sign. Now, the paramedics rush in with a bunch of equipment. They attach sticky pads to my chest and head. They poke and prod me with needles. They ask me the same questions as the girls. I still can’t answer them. I still don’t understand what happened. It’s frustrating. I know these are the good guys, but they really like to push my buttons. They’re the Mad Hatter. They rush me into an ambulance and out of the strange, bright building. I look out the back of the ambulance. I seem to be in the woods. How the hell did I get here?
The ambulance rushes me to a hospital that looks like something out of the 50’s. I’ve visited family and friends in hospitals before, and I’ve never seen anything like this. The five girls who were surrounding me at the cabin are still here. The only thing separating me from the psych patient in the next “room” is a thin curtain. I can hear all of her business, and I know that she can hear all of mine. The doctor asks me the same set of questions the girls and paramedics asked. This time, I can form one to two word answers. I still have no idea what happened that morning or the night before. Or why these five girls have taken such an interest in me, when I only know the names of two of them. I’m told that the sticky stuff on my head was for an emergency electroencephalogram. I don’t know what that means, but I’m falling in and out of sleep. My body hurts. This headache is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. And I’m hungry. I’ve been here for hours. Wait. I’ve been here for hours. Where is my family?
I hear the doctor whispering to the girls who came with me. He mumbles something about a psych transfer. I’m confused. Finally, my mom walks in. I don’t know where my dad is. She’s with her friend. They tell me they’re taking me to another hospital. I’m still confused, but too tired to argue. I just need food, first.
After a stop for food, my mom and her friend take me to another hospital. This doctor asks me the same set of questions, along with another set. He wants to know if I’m a danger to myself. I don’t think I am. Did I say something wrong? Had I told these girls something I didn’t remember? I don’t know. They tell me they don’t feel that they need to keep me for observation.
I leave the hospital around midnight. I have texts from strange numbers asking if I’m okay. I have a feeling I’m not okay. I’m not okay, and I won’t be for a long time. But I don’t really know how to answer that question yet.
It’s been about two months since I was given the official news. My EEG was abnormal, and I am classified as having “juvenile myoclonic epilepsy”. This wonderland is not one I’m accustomed to, yet. The name is misleading, because it’s not something I’ll ever grow out of. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. I still don’t remember what happened that weekend before I fell into the rabbit hole. I still wake up twitchy every morning.
The insomnia is the worst part. I wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, shaking. I’m not having a seizure, but I dreamt I was. In the dream, I was in a pool. Floating down the lazy river, when I began to seize. The pool was too crowded, and no one saw me. This is why I don’t sleep anymore. It’s easier to just stay awake. I’d rather not return to Wonderland anytime soon.
Another month, and I’m told I can drive again. This is a sense of freedom that had been stripped away after my first seizure. I’m ready for it to return. I’ve just returned from camping. I’m a bit tired, but I feel okay enough to go shopping. I think. I drive to pick up my friend, and we head to the mall. And…. into the rabbit hole I go. I remember nothing from arriving at the mall, to being awakened by paramedics. For some reason, I’m never wearing pants when these sons of bitches happen. The paramedics know me by name now. Their favorite question to ask me is, “who is the president?”. Depending on my level of lucidity, I usually make them laugh with my answer. At least I can be of comic relief to the people who save my life. My friend tries to tell them not to take me to the hospital, that I have a seizure disorder, but they won’t listen. My friend is quiet, but tries to help. She doesn’t visit Wonderland with me, but she’s there to hear about it afterwards. In my own wonderland story, she plays the role of Alice’s sister.
It’s another three months before I can drive again, but this time I can drive for quite awhile. It’s a feeling of freedom I haven’t known for a long time. That is, until I get myself into a situation at a swim meet. Maybe I have psychic dreams. Who knows. I can not stop twitching at the meet. I twitch so hard that I break my “Coach” clipboard. I’m lucky my iPad is still intact. I drive myself home, and remember nothing from there. I must have gone into the rabbit hole. My family greets me once I return from Wonderland. The good news here being, since I’m home, everyone knows not to call a paramedic.
After this, the seizures become more frequent and less life threatening. I was given rescue meds, just to be safe. They’re used once. And improperly. I sleep like a baby that day. And night. And the next day… and the next day. A seizure in Kroger, a seizure at the state fair, a seizure at the amusement park, seizures at work. They become a frequent occurrence. Simply a part of life that I would have to deal with. Luckily, my pants remained on for most of these. Despite the medic-alert bracelet I wear, so many people insist on calling paramedics. When four medications failed, surgery became a question. After all, why was I healthy for nineteen years, and suddenly I can’t walk out my own door safely?
One day in November, a year and a half after diagnosis, I walk out of my apartment door to go grocery shopping. I don’t know how long I am in Wonderland for this time. I am alone. No one familiar greets me when I return. This trip to Wonderland was different. I awake in an ambulance. These guys look familiar. The Mad Hatters. I try to talk, to no avail. I’m wearing a neck brace. This is not a good sign. I check. I’m wearing pants. I make noise to try to ask what happened. They inform me that I was found unconscious in the snow by the construction workers outside of my apartment, and I may need stitches. “Where?” I utter. They point to a bandaid on my chin while they take my blood sugar. Being curious, I rip the bandaid off. Yeah, I was going to need stitches. And some new clothes. At least I knew that was melted snow, and not pee. I notice that my glasses are nowhere to be seen, and my tooth is cracked. Great. I was nowhere near driving, but this is a major setback.
The less dangerous seizures continue. Falling in and out of Wonderland. It exists not only in seizures, but also in dreams, and in memories of seizures. Only being able to piece together events based on what I was told. Seizure on Christmas Eve, seizure at the zoo lights, random seizure here, random seizure there. The meds are not working.
January, I fall into Wonderland for a longer time. I’m there for three days this time. The actual seizure lasts thirty minutes, but the paramedics have to push meds to make it stop, otherwise I would be risking permanent brain damage. They rush me to a hospital, where I fall in and out of consciousness. They won’t let me get out of bed for any reason. I remember visitors, but I don’t remember who. I remember a lot of machines. I remember them finally changing my meds. This was another very different trip to Wonderland. No White Rabbit. No Cheshire Cat. Just me and the Mad Hatters.
After the med change, I only have one more seizure. I’m on my way to work, in the passenger seat, and I fall into the rabbit hole. It’s a quick trip. Uneventful.
And suddenly, the seizures stop. With one med change, they’re gone. No more rabbit holes. No more scaring the people I’m around. After three years of constant, terrifying, seizures; they’re gone. Alice has left wonderland. So to speak. Wonderland still exists. The nightmares are still ever-present. The memories are there. The twitches. I doubt those will ever go away. My journey in wonderland has been an adventure, that’s for sure. If I could change it, would I? Truthfully, I don’t know. It’s made me who I am. It’s made me mad, but after all, “we’re all mad here”, aren’t we? And I think the best are. I suppose if Wonderland is what it takes to gain perspective; just call me Alice.
#epilepsy#epileptic#neurodiverse#neurodivergent#adhd#actually adhd#neurological#neuro#alice in wonderland#cheshire cat#lgbt#queer#genderfluid#disability#hospital#personal#experience#story#creative nonfiction#love#alice#sagittarius#art#artistic
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We see that you're doing an abnormal pyche(?) course according to your recent posts. May we ask something out of sheer curiosity? And please do not feel obligated to answer if you do not wish to. Have you had any issues with psychology student syndrome within your system? I also wouldn't be opposed to any tips you may be willing to share about how to lessen the chances of anyone developing it. If you do happen to have any such tips, of course. I wish you the best of luck in your future studies!
Hmmmm kind of yes and no? It’s a complex question XD Cause really, I’ve considered myself a “psychology student” since I was like.... 10 or 11 when I had decided I wanted to go into social work, therapy, or psychiatry and have been trying to teach myself and study the DSMV and a lot of psychology principles pretty actively. I don’t really remember the early days, but I don’t think we exactly had the psychology student syndrome (for those that don’t know, its like medical student syndrome where you start learning of a number of conditions and start to get anxiety / stress / worried that you might have it and sometimes get excessive in looking out for symptoms etc) too particularly as much as we did do a lot of referencing to ourselves. I don’t really think any of us go too worried about it as much as checking in. This also might be a bit due to a really negative experience within earlier years of tumblr in parts of the community where self diagnosis was used in a really unhealthy manner and almost as a quirk.
((Note, we are NOT against self diagnosis, but we were in a corner of tumblr back in the day where it really was not being handled well and was a toxic environment))
So considering we’ve - or at least I have, I’m not sure on the rest of the system - been looking at it from a considerably young age, I suppose I’ve built up a tolerance and already built foundation on most disorders to not be bothered by it too particularly now that I am formally studying it.
The other “yes and no, complex question aspect” is that as someone with DID and C-PTSD, there are a lot of highly co-morbid disorders. So in that, I actually do have - as a collective single unit - a large number of disorders either diagnosed, under consideration, or traits of. It makes it so that it is a little hard to have psychology student syndrome when - I am joking and overexaggerating since it is a bit of a meme between those close to us and my system - you have been diagnosed or proposed to be diagnosed with the entire DSM-V.
With that being said, I don’t think we’ve ever had too much of a problem with psychology student syndrome. But with THAT being said, honestly in terms of that, I would really just suggest that something that seems to help people and help me rule out disorders is really trying to understand the core fundamental ideas of the symptomology and that for most disorders, everyone experiences the base symptoms to a degree and it is normal to look at something and feel you might relate with the diagnostic critera, but also realize that there is a normal level of feeling that symptom and there is a disordered level of experiencing the symptom.
It also helps to really try to understand the disorder and talk to professionals / experts to help ease any major concern that might arise.
Additionally, if you really are concerned you might have a disorder and/or psychology student syndrome is causing a lot of stress and anxiety, I STRONGLY recommend go seeing a therapist or even a general school counselor to discuss it because there is no shame in seeking help for mental health. Sometimes the anxiety is rooted in a genuine issue that may or may not be the one you have and in the end, the anxiety that comes with psychology student syndrome in itself might be distressing enough to be worth just seeing someone to work it out.
Just keep in mind that if you do go see someone, don’t go in kicking down the door and telling them “I HAVE THIS DISORDER” as much as you should go up and say “Hey, so I am struggling with these symptoms and I heard of this disorder and I wanted to work through that, discuss it, and see where it goes.”
Those are just my thoughts on it at the very least. To be honest, I feel in the college environment, there is a lot of stigma and fear still about going to a therapist, not feeling like it’s worth it, or feeling like you can’t see them long enough for it to be worth it, so I really just like to encourage my college friends and those in the Psych Major with me to be generally open to talking to a professional.
Just a reminder, you don’t need to be dying, suffering, or 100% dysfunctional to ask for help. If you are struggling, in pain, or just distressed about something, it is always okay and good to ask for help and to see a professional (may that be a therapist or a counselor) may that be for just a few sessions or for long term.
Thanks for the question by the way, it was a really interesting one that I had fun thinking about / talking about.
-Riku (Host)
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What do doctors look for when finding out if you are fit to have top surgery
Kii says:
Here’s an in depth medical article about what is looked for when someone is being assessed for surgery, but I personally don’t know enough about medical science to get helpful info from this. (Edit: Here’s another medical article.)
This article lists some factors that may affect a decision about an elective surgery as:
Conditions that cause a high risk of infection
Uncontrolled diabetes
Heart problems
Anemia
Being a smoker
Nutritional deficiencies
Mental health problems
Sleep disorders
The most common binding injuries I’ve seen cited as making someone unfit for top surgery are warped ribs (ribs that do not grow into the correct shape because of too-tight compression over many years) and broken ribs that did not heal properly and are either at risk of more damage or have healed in a shape that is abnormal.
This doesn’t mean that everyone with these conditions is unable to have surgery. It means that extra precautions or testing may have to be done to make sure that people with these conditions can safely handle anesthesia, surgery, and the recovery process. For example, this may mean that someone may be required to try various solutions to control their diabetes, or quit smoking, before the surgery can happen.
If this is something you are dealing with, you should talk to your doctor about your options.
——
Lee says:
I’ll add a few more things that surgeons consider when they’re deciding if you’re fit to have top surgery, or therapists consider before writing you the WPATH letter saying you’re fit to have surgery.
Weight:
One thing Kii didn’t mention that surgeons may consider when deciding if you’re fit to have top surgery is your weight. One of the mods here was told to lose weight or they wouldn’t be able to get surgery, as I recall.
As long as you don’t have any serious health complications because of your weight, you usually can get top surgery. It just might be harder to find a surgeon.
Fat folk are probably going to have to get double incision top surgery, since their chest would be too large for a keyhole or periareolar, but they can get just as flat as anyone else with double incision.
It’s more likely you’ll get “dog ears” at the end of your scars towards your armpits, but that can be dealt with by getting a revision which is often free. Make sure you ask your top surgeon what their policy on revisions are, and what fees you’d have to pay if you needed one.
There can be some fatphobia when you’re looking for a top surgeon- there can be some increased risks for overweight people going under anesthesia, and some top surgeons use that as an excuse to turn down a patient even when it is possible for them to get surgery safely.
You may have to “surgeon shop” a bit to find a surgeon who is competent, capable and willing, but it’s possible and achievable! I have two fat trans guy friends who got top surgery in the past year, and they’re totally happy with their results.
Acne:
Surgeons prefer to operate when you have unbroken skin- that’s why you usually aren’t supposed to shave your chest area on your own the day before surgery, they do it themselves in the operating room if needed. They want to reduce the chance of an infection, which could be spread by the bacteria in acne, and you’ll be taking antibiotics when you’re post-op to also help reduce the chance of infection.
I actually have heard about people having their top surgery dates cancelled or postponed because they had bad acne or pustules near the operative site, so it is a possibility that this could delay your top surgery.
I know Dr. Wilkins at UofM was hesitant about operating on a patient with acne, but in the end that patient ended up being cleared for surgery- I can’t recall if the acne cleared up or if the surgeon changed his mind, but I do remember him being on the fence about whether he was going to operate or postpone the surgery. I also remember Dr. Turkeltaub saying he wanted to wait to operate on a patient with acne until it was more controlled, and Dr. Lorianni has said the same thing- and those are just three of the surgeons who I can recall saying that off the top of my head, I’m sure there are more.
If you have acne, you should bring it up in your consultation with your top surgeon! Tell them you have bad acne, list any treatments you’ve tried, then say that you don’t think that it will be improving before surgery and ask if it’s possible to get surgery anyway.
If the first top surgeon who you have a consultation with says they don’t want to do surgery until your acne has improved, try getting a second opinion from another top surgeon in another consultation.
If you think your acne is bad enough that it’ll impact your chances of being able to get top surgery then you should see a dermatologist! However, some top surgeons want you to wait several months after being on Accutane before getting surgery. So it’s really best to have your consult with the top surgeon, ask if you’re good to go for surgery despite the acne, and then ask if any acne treatment like Accutane will need to be stopped a certain amount of time before your surgery.
So schedule your initial consult with both a top surgeon and with a dermatologist, and tell your dermatologist that you want to see what you can do to manage your acne without the Major treatments like Accutane at first, then you can go on that if needed after your top surgery consult.
But people have had top surgery with acne (example, example), and whether it impacts surgery really depends on the severity of the acne, whether it could be treated/reduced in the months before surgery, and the particular surgeon’s comfort level with operating on patients with acne. I’m not saying it’s impossible to get top surgery when you have acne- plenty of people have- but yes, some surgeons will delay your surgery because of it.
Dealing with Acne and Other Skin Breakouts
Psychosis:
I faced barriers to top surgery because the doctors in charge of my treatment don’t want to write me a letter stating I’m fit to make a decision on top surgery because I had a psychotic disorder, so I had to wait to get top surgery until they determined that my symptoms were under control.
The WPATH guidelines say:
“Any co-existing psychological, medical, or social problems that could interfere with treatment (e.g., that may compromise treatment adherence) have been addressed, such that the adolescent’s situation and functioning are stable enough to start treatment"
The presence of co-existing mental health concerns does not necessarily preclude possible changes in gender role or access to feminizing/masculinizing hormones or surgery; rather, these concerns need to be optimally managed prior to or concurrent with treatment of gender dysphoria. In addition, clients should be assessed for their ability to provide educated and informed consent for medical treatments.
When patients with gender dysphoria are also diagnosed with severe psychiatric disorders and impaired reality testing (e.g., psychotic episodes, bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder, borderline personality disorder), an effort must be made to improve these conditions with psychotropic medications and/or psychotherapy before surgery is contemplated.
Reevaluation by a mental health professional qualified to assess and manage psychotic conditions should be conducted prior to surgery, describing the patient’s mental status and readiness for surgery. It is preferable that this mental health professional be familiar with the patient. No surgery should be performed while a patient is actively psychotic.”
I did eventually get my letters, but it took about 6 months in an intensive outpatient program, 1 hospitalization in the psych ward for 2 weeks, and antipsychotics twice a day and anti-depressants once a day which I’m continuing to take before I was stable enough.
#kii says#medical#top surgery#surgery#Lee says#Anonymous#transgenderteensurvivalguide#trans#transgender
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Lucky
Kindness, at its most fundamental, is a form of human connection.
In 2014 I spent five weeks at a psychiatric hospital outside of Washington DC after a fantastically catastrophic display of all the plates I was trying to spin crashing down at once. It was at this hospital stay that I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I had to remain so long only because the doctors needed to make sure the lithium medication they started was at safe levels in my bloodstream before they could discharge me.
It was a weird little sort of summer camp. I met lots of different people, sometimes interesting, sometimes not, but none any more abnormal than people you’d meet on the street. I did a lot of coloring and crafts. I became a master of Connect Four. I was introduced to new kinds of group activities like Music Therapy with Tad!, this old hippie dude who brought his guitar and sang the songs we requested, whether he knew them or not. Once a week there was Movie Night where we’d vote on a DVD from the unit’s limited collection of Disney films -- three of the five weeks it was Babe, although I always voted for Angels in the Outfield. And every day, twice a day, we had group check-ins where we’d share what we were struggling with and try to find some kind of encouragement for the day.
It was at this hospital that summer that I witnessed the kindest act of humanity I have personally ever seen.
Kevin* came into the unit on involuntary admission. Like many of the men I’ve met in such places, his depression was masked by anger, and his anger caused a confrontation with the police that was enough to land him in the hospital in lieu of jail time. In group Kevin never shared much. We got a few things out of him: He had been in the military. He had some family issues. He didn’t think he needed to be in the hospital but it was better than jail.
About a week later, one morning at group Kevin raised his hand and said he wanted to be the first one to speak. He began talking about his 8-year-old yellow lab, Lucky, and for the first time since his arrival I saw Kevin’s face lighten and smile. He talked about how he got Lucky after his military discharge since he wouldn’t be on deployments anymore. Lucky lived with him through a divorce, several relocations and job changes, a few court hearings. He played with Lucky every day at the park and Lucky slept with him in his bed at night. They were best friends and constant companions. Lucky was the most important thing in his life.
Then Kevin’s smile twisted and his face crumpled. He was clearly in anguish. He told us that friends who were taking care of Lucky while he was in the hospital called to tell him Lucky had been taken to the emergency vet because he hadn’t been eating. The vet found a tumor in Lucky’s abdomen that was inoperable. Kevin spoke with them and made the decision to put Lucky down to spare him more pain. It would have to be done in the next three days though, well before Kevin would be discharged from the hospital. Kevin wiped tears streaming down his cheeks with his bare fingers until someone passed him a box of tissues. He wasn’t going to get to say goodbye to his dog.
Two days later, while everyone was hanging out in the common room waiting for dinner, two med techs came to get Kevin and led him out of the unit. Curious about what was happening a group of us coagulated at a window in the hallway facing the interior courtyard of the hospital grounds. In the middle of the grass we saw Lucky, sitting on his hind legs with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, waiting patiently on a leash. Then we saw Kevin enter the courtyard from the entrance on the left.
As soon as Kevin appeared Lucky jumped on all fours and began to bark, pulling on the leash until his handler finally let him go. Kevin and Lucky bounded for each other, with Kevin reaching his dog first, falling on his knees to look Lucky in the eyes while Lucky licked his face in giant strokes with his big tongue. Kevin kept giving Lucky full bear hugs and the two of them rolled around on the ground playing. Watching Kevin and Lucky, I had to wipe a few small tears from my eyes -- Kevin was getting to say goodbye to his dog.
Eventually a unit nurse came into the hallway and shooed the group of us from the window, saying something about giving the guy some privacy. Kevin told us later at dinner that one of the unit techs, a chill guy named Kareem* who everyone liked, had spoken to the hospital higher ups and arranged for Kevin to see his dog one last time.
When you’re in the hospital, even though you’re being taken care of, there’s a lot you miss about the outside world and a lot you’re isolated from. I don’t know if Kareem was a dog lover himself, but he understood that what Kevin needed in that moment was more than just medicine and therapy. Kindness, at its most fundamental, is a form of human connection. It’s a way of saying ‘I see you.’ And when you’re struggling to keep your head above water, when you find yourself in a place like a psych hospital, being seen reminds you that you matter, that what you love matters. I don’t know if Kareem understood this explicitly, but I did.
*not his real name
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If I understand correctly u have mi, and if you have something that might be similar to what sander might have, do you think this was realistic, I mean the way he acted before he ran out naked?
I was originally scared to answer this because i’m normally very closed off when it comes to talking about my mental health. But I also want to destroy the American stigma that it shouldn’t be talked about and that it’s something to be ashamed of so FUCK IT let’s talk about it.
LONG ASS POST BELOW
I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder when I was 16. I won’t get into my symptoms and my life with depression because that isn’t relevant to wtfock yet unless you count Sander’s sad ig post as a possibility of a depressive episode. When I was 19 the therapist I was seeing posed that maybe I had generalized anxiety. I didn’t buy it because I had never had a full-blown panic attack. I’m just an extremely high-strung person that is stressed 24-7 and tended to spiral quickly into worry. I didn’t think that constituted an anxiety disorder. Especially because I’m still very high functioning under stress. Me being anxious normally just triggered my depression rather than anything else. Not very exciting. I went to a psychiatrist to get my meds adjusted for like 4th time in my life because yet again, my anti-depressants stopped working after a six month period even with a dose change. This psychiatrist was brand new to me so I had to give a short spiel on my mental health history and symptoms. Immediately she said I was bipolar. I DID NOT BELIEVE HER. I still don’t kind of. But I’m starting to. I just want a second opinion from another doctor really. Here’s why she said I was bipolar and here’s why I was an idiot for thinking I didn’t have anxiety.
My thoughts go a hundred miles a minute. I get overwhelmed quickly by them and it makes it difficult to sleep 99% time. It also means I spiral VERY QUICKLY. Point A leads to point Z in 0.05 seconds and suddenly I’m stressed and then depressed.
I feel uncomfortable in my skin a lot. Leg bouncing 24/7. I started to pick at my skin so bad I have scars all over my back and shoulders from it. Blood underneath my fingernails. Blood on the straps of my prom dress because I couldn’t stop. Hugging myself so tightly I hope I collapse into myself. Stretching out my arms because I feel so off and strange in my own body. I’m too hot and I’m too cold and I toss and turn because I can’t get comfortable and I can’t get my thoughts to just shUT UP FOR ONCE. If there was a camera in my room you’d see me groan into my pillow a lot in frustration.
I’ve only ever had one real episode of mania, and it was actually hypomania (which sounds worse than mania but it’s not it’s actually more stable). And that was when I was put on a mood stabilizer after being told i was bipolar ii (non-cyclical, mostly depressive). Psych meds take about a month to properly enter into your bloodstream and for about two weeks I was... really interesting. I laughed at my own jokes for deadass ten minutes. I thought everything was funny. I talked a mile a minute and I already talk extremely quickly. The best way to describe it, according to what my mother witnessed, was that I was myself on steroids. My brain no longer filtered how quickly my thoughts moved to my mouth. She said you could actually see how fast my brain works because that’s how I was talking. I changed subjects very rapidly and was quite jumpy. I was also very agitated. And even more on edge than normal. I thought people would think I was just in an abnormally good mood because I have a rep for being very bubbly and animated but friends I wasn’t even that close with would be like Jess are you okay..? I’ve never experienced anything quite like that since then.
So yes. Sander was extremely accurate. I was upset watching the clip because it was like watching myself. His giddiness and then his quick breathing and clawing at his back and he couldn’t sit still and he needed air but he needed to go back to sleep but he COULDN’T sleep and so he needed to get OUT and do SOMETHING. Yes, maybe food will help. Food and some water and fresh air. That will make him feel better. I didn’t see him leaving as a super manic episode and impulsiveness, I saw it as him desperately trying to make himself calm down. And that shit hurted. What really sucks is that a lot of us don’t have a Lucas or a Robbe. We have to talk ourselves down. Calm ourselves down. Plead with ourselves to try and get more sleep. Tell ourselves to slow down because we’re going too fast and people are thinking something is off.
Idk if I have bipolar disorder. I was born “””gifted””” so my mind has always worked very strangely and quickly and I’ve always presented myself in public as very bubbly and animated and so I wouldn’t know what a hypomanic episode in me would even look like besides that one time (hypo-mania is different than regular mania! It’s probably what Sander was actually going through while a character like Even or Eliott was truly manic. Hypomania is a bit more toned down) esp because I’m not impulsive, have mood swings, and I’m not an impulsive spender. I do sometimes devote myself to things in totality for crazy amounts of time. Like spending a whole day on one thing and ignoring everything else or deciding I’ll do a whole project at 2am and not finish until 7 so maybe that’s hypomania? IDK I’ve always done shit like that! I know I have depression. I know i have some form of anxiety. I know that Sander and I were identical for a hot minute. So yeah. Pretty damn realistic.
If anyone wants to ask more questions or just talk then go ahead.
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