#get help if you need it

[brasideios]

Another of ‘those’ posts crossed my dash recently that shocked and pained me.

It made the point that therapy for mental health issues might not work. You might find an unprofessional therapist who cannot be trusted or one who wants to shove pills in your face and tell you to go away without doing anything else, and both those things really might fuck you up.

But you know what will 100% definitely fuck up your life?

Unresolved trauma. Untreated mental illness.

I have seen it and still see it in some of the people closest to me. People with such severe depression that they can’t make friends or hold down a job. People who have such little hope they give up on finding better things and settle for violent, nasty or simply loveless relationships which increases their misery and hopelessness. People who can’t have normal relationships with anyone at all because of their issues and have become progressively lonelier and more depressed and less able to cope over time. More people than seems right who have self medicated themselves into a mental institution or serious addiction or died because they overdosed or had a serious accident under the influence. And those who have tried to kill themselves. Some who succeeded.

I have been that guy myself. I have been the person who said, fuck seeing a doctor, I’m just going to get on it and bury it. I’ll get through this alone - high or drunk, or both. And I tried to end it, twice, before I got over my sense of deserving to suffer, that life was supposed to be painful and miserable, and sought help.

I get so angry and so sad seeing posts that push this fear of therapy on the slim chance that it might go badly.

People often need help. Sometimes they need medication.

It is completely irresponsible to push a rhetoric encouraging people to not seek the help they need.

It is OK to be afraid yourself - therapy is *a lot*; but it is not ok to fear monger to vulnerable people.

[leventart-den]

A normal person having a traumatic experience, injury, poisoning, and so on: oh, I need to get help. Me, an artist and fan writer as a hobby: now I have ExPErIEncE.

[kodoandsangha]

[kochei0]

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon

[bonesandthebees]

one of the most infuriating things about becoming an adult is when you realize that it actually is 10x easier to solve problems by making a phone call vs literally any other communication method

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[fefairys]

getting real fed up with my peers treating teenagers like shit. how did you forget so fucking quickly what it's like to be them. shame on you.

[fuckitydoodah]

Sometimes I feel like people need a reminder that it’s not cute to willfully disregard your own mental and physical health. I get brushing it off as a joke (“haha, I think I’ve slept 5 hours total the past three days”) if you’re in a legitimately difficult situation where self-care feels impossible, but I feel like I keep seeing people ruin themselves for no reason.

“Yeah I haven’t eaten all day and now my head hurts and I feel sick.”

“Oh shit, I have some snacks here, you can eat something.”

“Lol no it’s fine.”

It’s not fine, dipshit. It’s not endearing to actively avoid things like eating and sleeping and drinking water to the point of illness. If you ever find yourself in a situation like that, and a friend offers to help, jfc let them help. I promise you they won’t think you’re a ✨silly little guy✨ for “toughing it out”, and you’re not putting them out when they’re offering. Personally, I’m going to be way more pissed at you for hurting yourself on purpose when I’m right there, trying to help.

[mokeonn]

"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.

But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.

[egophiliac]

IT WAS ERIC AFTER ALL!!!! I'm so glad we got to meet him (before Vil snaps him away with those Infinity Gauntlets) (can't wait to see what happens when we get the matching Infinity Tiara to go with them, there will be no survivors)

(sorry to be so slow/rough lately, just got a lot of stuff on the ol' brain at the moment! alas, if only I could spend all my time drawing incredibly stupid characters I mean I do but)

[0h-s0-sarah]

My Posts... FYI : )

Just to let everyone know who stops by my blog, I post completely random things I also post about personal health too, its important to me even if it reaches one human and helps them. <3

[andthebeanstalk]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[italinafatlovers]

Candii Is so fat now 😍😍😍😍😍

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i vote that next year instead of reading Dracula we do a Jeeves & Wooster Book Club. those two never got the rabid tumblr shipping fandom they deserved (disqualified for the sheer technicality of being published a century too soon). we must correct this injustice

[machinerot]

[lanavecorona]

today i offer you tmnt art. tomorrow???? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯