#he also said that i clearly meet the diagnostic criteria | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silenthillmutual · 4 years

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daniil dankovsky is autistic and here’s why:

because i’m autistic and i said so

i kid, obviously. what sort of autistic person would i be if i wasn’t read to back up my silly little claim with an overly long post of evidence a total of three people will read? (hi ned hi jordan hi raven :))

i’m aware that this is cringey because adults aren’t supposed to have autism or interests or talk about either of those things, but this is my blog and you are free to block me if the cringe is too much for you.

these are some things i picked out from the DSMV’s diagnostic criteria, found on the CDC website:

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

abnormal social approach

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

defecits in […] understand[ing] relationships

difficults adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

repetitive motor movements or speech

rigid thinking patterns

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input

there’s also some misc. stuff not in the diagnostic criteria (though it may be in the adir or gars-3) i thought was worth noting.

important note from the diagnostic criteria: “symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning”. i’d say that in his case, they do.

spoilers for pathologic classic, pathologic 2, and the marble nest

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

in bachelor route of classic, daniil

seems completely oblivious to eva making advances toward him, to the point where she complains to him that he’s ignoring her in favor of asking questions about simon.

seems surprised when people mention maria being in love with him, despite outright asking her a couple of times if she’s flirting with him.

not to mention the fact that he asks her that at all.

his inability or resistence to making connections with others is typically considered one of his character flaws. although it is not outright stated in the dsmv criteria, one trait of autism and other neurodivergencies is “having extremely high or extremely low empathy” - and daniil, despite being a doctor, lacks empathy. which is not to say he doesn’t care at all. i think that he does, but is terrible at showing it.

for example, this scene from marble nest:

Sticky: You must feel terrible… right? That’s fine. I forgive you. You just got confused… Adults always do. Daniil: Oh yes, adults are always occupied with the most asinine nonsense. Like feeling anxious that a bunch of urchins keep roaming the streets, putting themselves in mortal danger!

daniil clearly cares about sticky’s wellbeing (and the wellbeing of the kids looking after him, though he’s not cognizant that he’s in a coma), but his way of showing it is… kind of by being a jerk. all of which bleeds into the next item on the list

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

he has no problem sharing his interests, but in both pathologic classic & pathologic 2, daniil speaks with a flat affect - which is to say that he lacks intonation. the words we read him saying may be dramatic or come across as passionate, but the actual voice reading his lines is very monotone, which may contribute to being read as lacking emotion.

and in pathologic 2, he has a voiceline lamenting not telling “her” (eva?) how he felt

in marble nest, he’s teased by the tragedians for being “heartless”:

Tragedian: Maybe. Possibly. But it’s useless to explain to a heartless man. …Take heart, Excellency! If you ever find it, that is. And then come back to us… Even though it all sounds like a rather implausible turn of events.

abnormal social approach

daniil has a tendency to say things that are tactless, odd, or just socially inappropriate. i probably don’t need to point out too many examples, as i think it’s fairly obvious - these are the things people love to pick at when it comes to him, but i do have a few in mind. like, for example, from haruspex route in classic:

Haruspex: What of the antibodies essential for making a serum? Bachelor: I don’t know for sure yet, I’ll send you a report in a few hours. Don’t go about cutting people’s hearts out for your panacea until then. It’s a… controversial solution, you know… Haruspex: What?! Do you even hear yourself? Bachelor: Sorry! I meant no offence… it was just a momentary lapse of… well, you know. Haruspex: None taken.

until artemy points out, daniil doesn’t seem to be aware he just said something rude. even with therapy, picking up on social cues doesn’t come naturally to people with autism, so we tend to say things that come across as rude or strange to others without realizing we’ve put them off. we tend to lack a “filter” that tells us when things are or are not appropriate to say. even when we may recognize it, the rules may not make any sense to us. for example, it makes very little sense that allistics favor politeness over honesty.

i think the glaringly obvious abnormal social approach in pathologic 2 is him threatening to hold artemy at gunpoint to get in the house, which is just overkill, but my personal favorite comes on day 7, when he’s complaining about the orders aglaya has given him. artemy stops him to say he doesn’t understand what daniil wants from him, to which daniil replies:

From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

to daniil, they were just having a normal conversation. but some part of this - his tone or his words or maybe even his body language - didn’t give artemy the impression that this was supposed to be a regular conversation. (we could, in fact, attribute the same idea to artemy here; why didn’t artemy pick up that this was a normal conversation? the reason i count it towards daniil is because artemy doesn’t seem to have this problem with anybody else. for the record: i don’t think artemy is neurotypical either.)

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

it’s hard to get proof of this in video games, but i will say i think it’s very funny that in pathologic 2 daniil’s idle animations are “pacing”, “sitting like he desperately wants to start bouncing his knees but is stopping himself from doing it”, and “standing unnaturally still” - but there you go. i don’t know anything about making gifs, or i’d gif this one specific talk menu idle he does where he holds eye contact for about three seconds, looks away uncomfortably, and then looks back out of the corner of his eyes.

deficits in […] understand[ing] relationships

mostly examples from his route in classic:

when the army arrives, he can claim to block that aglaya, whom he’s known for two days, is his best friend

he seems baffled by the fact that everone is smitten with maria and working with her, and seems equally baffled by the idea that she’s smitten with him

despite eva implying on day two that she is in a relationship with andrey, is completely blindsided by the revelation on day 6, asking him, “How in the world is she ‘your woman’?”

i’d also like to use his sign-off on his letter to artemy, day 2 of the haruspex route - he signs it as “Your friend (hopefully)”. i know i’m not the only autistic person who used to ask people if we were friends or not. pro tip, if you’ve never done this: don’t. it really weirds people out.

difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

the fact that he stands out is blatantly obvious even in pathologic 2 and in the haruspex route of classic. people will comment on him being an outsider and mention that they don’t trust him. but you can watch it happen in real time in his route, because he never fully acclimates to the town. he says something about this to aglaya on day 7:

Bachelor: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. Inquisitor: Your line of t hinking is obviously falacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you, no one can really tell the future around here: and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes… but hardly more often than anywhere else.

actually, there’s an example of him saying something similar to artemy on day 5 in pathologic 2:

Damn this town… I feel I’m trapped in a nightmare. The absurdity of it all… There’s no one to talk to. Everyone’s so volatile. They all seem to want to help, but… their help is worse than hostility.

some of this can be explained by the town’s strangeness, but keep in mind that the first instance happens after he’s been there and involved in the ongoing for an entire week, and the second at nearly a week in. clearly he’s struggling to adjust to the changes.

it’s also worth noting that his reason for fleeing the town in the nocturnal ending?

I have no place here anymore.

This town is no longer mine. No longer human. No longer rational. It doesn’t… accept the likes of me anymore.

repetitive motor movements or speech

it’s harder to see the motor movements in classic, but remember how i pointed out earlier that he paces? pacing is a form of stimming. murky, who is canonically autistic, can also be found pacing as one of her idle animations. having stock phrases for characters to speak when you come near them already ticks off the box on “repetitive speech”, but that by itself doesn’t really cover what they’re talking about - echolalia.

but you know what this does fit with? “‘quoting’ things(communication is HARD! sometimes we need to take shortcuts and use someone else’s words)“

i’ll get to the more obvious example in a minute - i want to point out something that happens very early in pathologic 2 first. you know how you first meet him and artemy accuses daniil of trying to guilt-trip him by asking if it’s true that isidor would still be alive if artemy had come sooner? keep in mind that he spoke to rubin first. and this is what rubin says, when you get a chance to talk to him:

Yesterday, I was told you had killed your father.

That’s not far from the truth, Burakh.

You betrayed him. You left when he needed you most. He cried out for your help, but you didn’t care. He was in peril, and you were too busy elsewhere, He believed, truly believed, that your arrival would put an end to his troubles. And, as always, he was right.

i’m not saying this was necessarily the game’s intent, but it’s entirely possible daniil is parroting back to artemy exactly what rubin said to him.

now, for what you’re probably expecting in this section: the latin. people love to refer to his use of latin as “random”, so let’s clear that up:

it is not latin daniil has made up. with the exception of latin that is mispelled in the game’s texts, all of them are proverbs or otherwise common sayings. you can find most of them on the wikipedia list of latin phrases, or through a 3-second google search.

he’s a doctor. him having taken latin isn’t anymore strange than a lawyer taking latin. in fact, if you pay attention, artemy also took latin; this is implied when artemy tells him he’s always sucked at it.

his uses of latin actually aren’t random at all. what he says fits the situation, and sometimes is used in place of him having to come up with something to say on his own.

prime example:

Forget it, Burakh. I have a splitting headache. If you have no urgent business, then we’ll talk later. Later, later… Qui non proficit, deficit.

qui non proficit, deficit - he who does not advance, loses ground. in other words, “i’m sorry, but i really do need to keep working.” one of his voice lines.

as for why he doesn’t translate the latin: it probably wouldn’t even occur to him to. these are not obscure sayings. the utopians all have a certain degree of education - what would he need to translate them for?

this bleeds into something that isn’t really mentioned, but that i’ve found i have a lot of trouble with in everyday life. autistic people have a tendency to either overexplain (and then have everyone get mad at you because they feel you’re being condescending) or underexplain (and have everyone get mad at you because you haven’t explained anything). the latin would be a case where it feels like a justified underexplanation. you’ll notice that when it comes to anything scientific, he tends to do the reverse, and overexplain. this also happens in classic, whether artemy has asked him to clarify or not.

rigid thinking patterns

the thing i had marked for this was simply his strict adherence to western medical practices and refusal to acknowledge the supernatural, even when it seems obvious - he has a conversation in his route in classic with yulia about this, and that is in fact how he manages to get to her: by asking saburov if there are any other logical skeptics in town. it should be noted they seem to be breaking with this in pathologic 2, where one of his voicelines is “I’m no positivist. There are things in this world beyond our mundane perception.” i have no idea where they’re planning on going with that.

there’s also a quote floating somewhere around twitter about him having been raised by a military man, and militaries tend to enforce very rigid routines. you could say the same thing of block - who (in classic at least) i also have my suspicions about.

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

special interests. the one that should obviously come to mind is thanatology, though i would argue latin if not classics in general is a special interest of his as well - in addition to his usage of latin, he also references pericles in the marble nest and was probably refering to the roman occupation of haruspicy in addition to augurs in the same text. he also makes references to shakespeare more than once in both marble nest and pathologic 2.

hyper- or hyperoreactivity to sensory input

i don’t have much written down for this one but there seem to be several places in classic especially where he asks npcs to stop shouting at him. we don’t really have the privilege to know their volume or how they’re interacting with him, but i think it’s also worth noting that he’s the only one of the healers who wears gloves. in pathologic 2 he’s the only named character i can think of who wears them at all. his thing in the lucid dream about the brain being “a border”? gloves are his border, as is his jacket, which may be worn to cut down on sensory issues.

he will also sometimes seem to “overreact” to the situation at hand - such as in classic, when some dogheads mispeak and say that daniil is going to “sterilize” them, and instead of understanding that they must have mispoken, freaks out over the idea that they think they’re going to be… well… sterilized. or in haruspex route, when his reaction to the inquisitor arriving is to threaten suicide.

miscellaneous

he never goes anywhere without that carpet bag. we don’t see it in pathologic 2, but we do hear about it and he doesn’t let it go for a second in classic - not even in the cutscenes where he’s using the microscope. his bag could be a comfort item.

“getting very attached to things like inanimate objects” could work for the bag - but you know what it actually fits the bill much more obviously? the polyhedron. in the haruspex route he recognizes that it’s a lost cause, but he’s still too attached to it to let it go.

in classic at least, daniil is absolutely terrible at lying. most autistic people either are not good at lying, or feel uncomfortable or anxious with having to lie. when he’s asked by yulia and the kids in the polyhedron to lie to block (for different reasons) he’s clearly uncomfortable with the idea that it’ll work. and when it actually comes time to come up with a way to lie to block about why he needs five rifles, your options are to either buckle and tell him the truth, or simply say that you need them for “self-defense”. block believes that you’re not lying to him, but daniil can’t come up with any embeleshments to explain why he needs what he’s asking for.

Commander: Are you hiding something from me? Bachelor: No.

he comes across as naive to other characters. in classic, capella has a voiceline saying, “The Bachelor is not smart. Intelligent, yes… but not smart.” in Pathologic 2, Daniil complains that Aglaya takes him for “a useless dreamer”. he’s also easily used by the Kains to fulfill their endgame in classic.

my final, and absolute favorite: he takes things way too literally. autistic people (and adhd people, from my understanding) have a hard time differentiating jokes and sarcasm. so my favorite moment in marble nest is a case of him taking that earlier advice - to “take heart” literally, by bringing the tragedians a literal human heart:

Tragedian: Oh… Excellency. What a sordid sight! Sorry for underestimating you. You definitely do have… how shall I put it… a creative touch. But this is pure madness. You can’t take things so literally! Daniil: You wanted me to come back to you with an open heart. Well, here I am. …It looked too fitting to be a coincidence.

your mind map, after this, updates to say “I misunderstood the tragedians.”

conclusion

people don’t stop being autistic with age and i think he’s a good example of what it’s like to be in your late 20s and be autistic. i’m sure i missed things as i haven’t finished haruspex route of classic yet and there may just be some other things he does or says that i missed! if anyone has anything to add they think fits i would love to know, thank you for your time :)

#icarus.txt #autistic daniil dankovsky #daniil dankovsky #pathologic meta #ok to rb but i'm not interest in your ''but he's just weird!'' arguments #please keep in mind that this post is about autism #and that this is written by someone w autism...#popular

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delusion-of-negation · 3 years

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top 10 (ish) ridiculous or annoying FAQs:

(click at your own discretion)

1) "kids today rely on others to do everything"

ah yes, damn those participation trophies! if it wasn't for them my hands wouldn't be fucked, and I wouldn't need people to write for me. but seriously, stop reading boomer comics, and go outside to meet some actual young people.

2) "sus that a non-american says mom"

yeah, because it's clearly the superior version, and I'm not too patriotic to concede a defeat.

3) "sweaty, the victims of abuse by catholics are real people, stop appropriating their pain just because you want to hate catholics; plus teachers abuse people just as often anyway"

so firstly, I don't hate anybody. and secondly, regarding the fact that victims really do exist, [insert "of course I know him, he's me" meme here]; although I don't often talk much about the abuse I went through or what my religious beliefs are. but, more importantly, statements like "survivors are people" can be phrased like "some people are survivors", and when you're unable to act according to the latter (like when you don't even consider that somebody might be one) then you display a failure to recognise the former - you're projecting; a survivor can't be appropriating their own pain, but you can be appropriating it to silence one. and thirdly, teachers do abuse - the problem isn't and has never been purely religion, rather that abuse is often done by somebody in a position of trust, power, and familiarity; and that the lack of a global minimum enables totally legal abuse on top of the illegal stuff. people with access and respect have more opportunity to abuse than those without, and that goes for teachers too. but, once again, you can be appropriating the pain of survivors to deflect and silence people. please remember this before you say that shit.

4) "get help/therapy"

way ahead of you - years ahead of you. but it's not magic - people who say this often act as if you'll start behaving differently overnight. not only are some things simply beyond the ability of talking therapy to completely rectify, it also takes time and has to be selective. you've got to pick your priorities, and that's definitely not whatever ship or joke you're mad at me about today. therapy is a slow, arduous process that can't guarantee results - it isn't "anti-recovery" to recognise that, it's honesty. while I've been in therapy for a long time, it is not necessarily going to change whatever you don't like about me - whether that's because it can't, because my focus now is on more important or urgent things, or because I don't want to change that.

5a) "tell your family you ship incest, see how that goes; normal people find it disgusting"

actually, some know, and they're fine with it. in fact, one prefers sibling pairings in fiction to all other dynamics because, to paraphrase, "it's a deeper level of messed up co-dependence". so unfortunately for you, my remaining family (by which I mean those not dead or cut out of my life after abuse and so forth) actually are able to distinguish between fiction and reality. plus, my reasoning for caring if they find it gross or not pertains only to recommending books and such - their opinions do not dictate my tastes.

5b) "don't sexualise/appropriate incestuous abuse" and "I bet you enjoyed being raped" and other attempts to upset me over 5a

firstly, as I've already said here, survivors can't be appropriating ourselves. in addition, you're not owed people's history or trauma - it's not okay to require people's personal information, or else you'll send anon hate and accusations of appropriation. secondly, I'm not sexualising our abuse (not just because I write horror, and so a lot of my writing is intended to be creepy, not sexy); these stories aren't about us, they're not us at all. entire dynamics/people (fictional or otherwise) aren't all going to be applicable to us or identical to us, just because they have something in common with us; they're not us and they're not accountable to us. thirdly, the fact that people send this stuff (attempting to trigger people's trauma over ships) is so much more worrying to me than somebody making our communal imaginary friends kiss. you're trying to hurt people. and finally, to the "I bet you enjoyed it" crowd (if you're at all serious): do you think you'd enjoy being in a real zombie apocalypse, alone, afraid, and really at risk of being eaten alive? a fictional scenario does not feel remotely the same as a real one. this isn't rocket science - things that look like you aren't you; fiction isn't reality; don't send anon hate. (edit: comparable "just leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone" sentiments for yandere stuff, and anything else you decide I'm naughty for.)

6) "you'll be sent off to do manual labour once your communist revolution happens"

while I don't know why people think that I'm a communist, a dictatorial regime probably isn't going to want me to do manual labour. they're more likely to just shoot me; I'm useless and a liability. call me crazy, but something tells me that "ah yes, we shall give ze deranged cripple ze power tools" isn't the communist position.

7a) "they/them can't be singular pronouns"

yes they can, and they're used as such in both shakespeare and the bible. but you don't have to say this - I'm also okay with he/him, so you could've just used those and chilled out. also, do I look like somebody who views the rules of grammar as fully immutable and imperative?

7b) "enbies/aros/pan/etc aren't valid"

do you really think that you're going to change any hearts or minds by putting that in my ask box or under my funny maymays? chill out, it's not worth the effort - you could be planning a party (in minecraft) and having fun instead. it isn't worth my time to rant at everybody who's saying something isn't valid, updating how I'm explaining it as my opinions grow and general discourse around it evolves; I'm just who I am, somebody else is who they are - why bicker in presumptuous ways about if that's enough? it ultimately is valid, in my opinion, but that isn't an invitation to keep demanding that I debate. (edit: old posts of mine probably don't phrase things incredibly, on this or anything... I tried.)

8) "what are your politics?"

my politics are informed first and foremost by the knowledge that I'm not cut out to be some kind of leader - I don't want to be the guy who tells everyone else what to do, I just offer what seem to me like valid criticisms of how we are doing things now, and general pointers on the values and ethics that I would prefer to move towards. things like individual freedom, taking the most pacifist route where possible, trying not to give excessive power to small groups of people (governments or corporations), helping those in need even when they're not palatable, and letting me suck loads of dicks. but please refrain from decreeing me something - there's not enough information in what I said, so you'll just be filling in the blanks with assumptions. (edit: workplace democracy seems cool to me; benefits are good; fair fines and taxes; and the "sperm makes you loopy" saga: 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

9) "you're a narcissist"

no, I don't meet the diagnostic criteria. joking on the internet that you're hot doesn't make a person a narcissist. the fact that I've chosen to keep my actual self-esteem issues to myself is not proof that they don't exist - you're just not entitled to that information about me. but it's also not narcissism to really like how you look. (edit: don't throw labels around carelessly too.)

10a) "kin list?"

the fabric of the universe, a zombie, dionysus, maned wolf/arctic fox hybrid, a comedian, big gay, big rock, ambiguously partial insincerity. (edit: kin list may or may not be incomplete.)

10b) "kin isn't valid/that's just being insane"

haven't we established that I'm deranged, and that sending stuff like this on anon is simply a waste of your precious time? besides, I do not care if it's invalid or insane - it's fun, I'm happy. (edit: see 7b for my opinion on sending me yet another ask with "that's invalid" in it; I'm not in the mood to discuss the nature of validity.)

bonus: "it gets better" and "trigger list?"

as I've said before, things just don't always get better for everyone - sometimes things can't be cured or even treated, sometimes they kill you; in some cases it could get better if not for a blockade or lack of time. the world is messy. it needs to be more normalised to reassure or comfort people without relying on saying that their issue will get better or be cured. it does suck to be this ill, but it also sucks to be made out to be a lazy pessimist, just because I have the audacity to not play along. and as for the trigger list, I don't like providing people with an easily accessed list of ways to hurt my feelings or harm me - upsetting me is supposed to be challenging, and thus rewarding. if you want a cheat sheet then you're out of luck, I'm afraid.

bonus #2: "FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, it doesn't need that s at the end!"

yeah, I know, I just enjoy chaos and disarray.

bonus #3 (edit): "what are your disabilities and how exactly are they incurable and/or deadly?"

again, I don't tell the internet everything about me, especially when it poses a risk, especially not as an easily accessible list for you to refer back to whenever you feel inclined to hurt my feelings. that is understandably a sore subject. (edit: that includes physical health issues btw.)

bonus #4 (edit): "so we shouldn't be critical?"

if it wasn't clear from my answer about politics or my post in general, you can have opinions about things, and you can voice that. it's just not realistic to exist at extremes: to think that you alone should dictate what exists in fiction, or to think that people shouldn't be expressing disdain or criticism of any calibur. say how you feel about things, that's fine, but it's also fine if people find that they don't value your input. plus we're all flawed, we can all be hypocritical from time to time, we all get bitchy, and we all make mistakes, or even knowingly fuck things up. that's important to keep in mind, whether we're talking about the one being criticised or the one doing the criticising - poor choices of words, imperfect tone, or contradictory ideas are inevitably going to happen occasionally.

congrats on reaching the end! if you have, at any point, said one of these to me, you owe a hug to your nearest loved one (once it's safe).

edit: might add more links/bonus points in the future when I think of things, but it's late now. (sorry for links where prior notes in the thread have my old url, that may get a tad confusing; also, not all links are my blog or my op, since it is to illustrate points/vibes, not to self-promo.)

#don't take life too seriously #nobody gets out alive anyway #tw abuse mention #tw csa mention #tw incest mention #tw for any tws I missed #idk why I did this

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apple-grass-and-smiles · 3 years

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Prodigal Son Appreciation Week, Day Two: Favorite Female Character

Hi, everyone! So, my favorite female character in PSon is Dani, but I’ll be showing her lots of love throughout the rest of the week, so I wanted to spread the love out a bit. I honestly have adored just about every female character on this show, but I really wanted to dive into Ainsley a bit and this was a good excuse.

What I have today for you is an exercise in walking through the possible personality disorders a psychiatrist/psychologist might consider for Ainsley, which are called differentials. What comes with this meta is an entire novel’s-worth of disclaimers but basically, 1) I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist; I’m a kid who is one class short of a psychology degree. 2) Personality disorders are not my main area of expertise, but I have tried to do some research for this, and to the best of my knowledge everything I share here is up-to-date with current research and psychology standards. 3) I personally don’t know if I think Ainsley could have a personality disorder (PD), but the show implies she does, especially in 2x11, so I’m running with it and trying to choose which one I think fits best. 4) This is FOR FUN! I am looking at a fictional character, who we definitely haven’t seen enough of to diagnose with just about anything, nevermind a PD, and guessing what disorder would fit best with her. I’m happy to discuss this topic further with people (especially since I know quite a few Prodigal Son fans are also psych students), just please don’t take any of this very seriously.

With that out of the way, let's get to the fun stuff. I’ll be looking at three possible PDs: antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), histrionic personality disorder (HPD), and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). All of the diagnostic criteria I am using comes from the DSM-V, which is the diagnostic manual we use to see if a person meets all of the requirements for a disorder.

Antisocial Personality Disorder-

ASPD gets thrown around A LOT in the crime shows, Prodigal Son, and fandom discussions. If someone is said to be a psychopath or sociopath, like Martin often is, in a fictional story, generally the implication is that they also have ASPD. (I say generally because those are both common terms now and also the differences/meanings of those terms are...messy.) It is also the diagnosis we usually slap onto a person when we mean ‘they did crimes because they’re crazy/unfeeling and that’s their motivation’, which is not really accurate. While I would not be surprised if the show claimed Ainsley has ASPD because of its pop culture connotations, I mostly am considering it here because there are some indicators of Martin having it and PDs, like lots of mental illnesses and disorders, do frequently have at least a small genetic component.

However, I can pretty quickly throw ASPD out of the running. One of the requirements for ASPD is there being “evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.” Conduct disorder is a diagnosis we give to people under 18 when they show consistent disregard for rules and other people. Some people with conduct disorder then go on to develop ASPD. (You cannot diagnose someone with ASPD if they are under the age of 18, hence why conduct disorder exists. For example, Issac from 1x06 couldn’t be diagnosed with ASPD, but he could, and likely would from what we’ve seen, be given a conduct disorder diagnosis.) Now to have a conduct disorder diagnosis, you have to be shown to have committed at least three examples of “aggression to people and animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness or theft, and/or serious violations of rules”. While it is possible Ainsley has a secret deviant past where she violated rules/broke the law that she kept hidden from everyone so well that her mother was willing to call her the perfect child in 1x01 and Malcolm is clearly shocked when she steps out of line as an adult, I don’t think that’s the case. There are other reasons I lean towards throwing out ASPD as a strong contender (I had to stretch to make her fit all the criteria, we don’t see a clear pattern of the criteria happening repeatedly, I think there are other diagnoses and situations/stressors that better explain her behavior...), this is the easiest one to break down in a Tumblr post that I’m trying to keep shorter than a dissertation. There are definitely elements of particular types of ASPD that we see in Ainsley, namely the traits tied to the limited prosocial/callous and unemotional tag sometimes given with an ASPD diagnosis, but you can also see those characteristics in other disorders. (Those traits can also appear in someone with zero disorders, but that’s not an option based on the fact that this post requires us to walk away with some sort of diagnosis because I make the rules and I said so.)

Histrionic Personality Disorder-

This isn’t a very well-known PD in comparison to a lot of the others, but the DSM-V introduces it very well, so I’m just going to include a quote. “Individuals with histrionic personality disorder are uncomfortable or feel unappreciated when they are not the center of attention. Often lively and dramatic, they tend to draw attention to themselves and may initially charm new acquaintances by their enthusiasm, apparent openness, or flirtatiousness…. They commandeer the role of “the life of the party.” If they are not the center of attention, they may do something dramatic (e.g., make up stories, create a scene) to draw the focus of attention to themselves.” A shorter summary: HPD is “a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.”

So, how does this fit with Ainsley? A fair amount of the HPD criteria fit Ainsley very well. She is incredibly charming and enthusiastic and a reporting job seems to imply that she’s comfortable being the center of attention. (Though I would argue that reporting for her is more about finding something she is inherently good at as opposed to getting attention, which I’ll talk about in the next section.) Other criteria she fits include using her appearance to draw attention to herself, being theatrical, and, depending on your opinion, being suggestible. To be diagnosed with HPD, Ainsley would need to fit with five of the eight criteria, which you can maybe meet depending on what you think is actually happening in her head. (For example, does she actual believe what Martin is saying about her or is she just going along with it.) However, I think it’s really important to look at what’s at the core of HPD, which is “excessive emotionality and attention seeking”. 2x11 throws that 'excessive emotionality' requirement right out the window with the conversation Ainsley has with Martin about not feeling enough and needing to fake emotions sometimes. Prior to that conversation, I could have seen HPD being a solid contender, but those comments make it seem like HPD isn’t a great fit anymore since she doesn't even meet one of the two main descriptors of the diagnosis.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder-

I first looked into NPD specifically because I was trying to figure out what exactly Martin may have been diagnosed with and one of the few things the writers consistently refer to him as is a narcissist. Granted, a lot of people get called that term who don’t have NPD, but Martin fits it pretty well. Additionally, PDs do tend to be at least a little tied to genetics, which is why I checked it out for Ainsley. (Ironically, when editing this, I noticed that NPD is one of the only PDs that the DSM-V does not mention a genetic component for, though more recent research does seem to indicate some heritability.) NPD is characterized by grandiosity (or “being excessively grand or ambitious” according to Oxford’s definition), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, all three of which I think we can say Ainsley has demonstrated at least a couple of times throughout the show. If I had to give Ainsley a PD diagnosis, NPD is the one I think fits best.

To be diagnosed with NPD, you need to have five of the nine criteria. Lack of empathy is one of those, which Ainsley and Martin seem to believe applies to Ainsley, while Malcolm would likely disagree. Others include using people for their own needs (filming Jin’s surgery and the pig’s blood prank), being envious of other people (we’ve pretty solidly established that she’s jealous of the attention Malcolm got as a kid), and being preoccupied with success and brilliance (Ainsley clearly cares a lot about being good at her job, which is part of why she is so competitive with Malcolm). Ainsley herself admits to being especially ambitious multiple times, which I feel is more in line with a NPD diagnosis than any other PD. The biggest weakness of NPD is that Ainsley seems to have very, very good control of it, if it is something she actually has. About half of the NPD criteria are ones that include the person thinking they are better than others. Ainsley definitely wants to be the best, but not really to put other people down as much as to earn her place in the world (a thought which is at odds with other NPD criteria). However, I promised some sort of diagnosis from this and I think NPD, if the show were to insist on giving Ainsley a personality disorder, would be the best fit as it incorporates her ambition, implied difficulties with empathy, and manipulative side into one diagnosis and is not clearly disproven by canon.

TL;DR: If you have to give Ainsley a personality disorder diagnosis, NPD is the way to go. She doesn't seem to have the conduct disorder history needed for ASPD, nor does she have the excessive emotionality inherent to HPD. However, she is characterized by NPD's ambition, need to one-up people, and willingness to use others to achieve that goal. Of all the personality disorders, narcissistic personality disorder fits Ainsley best.

#silence emily #prodigalsonweek #Ainsley whitly #please if you like psychology come and talk to me!#now I can finally stop fighting with stinking psychiatry online #90% of writing this was trying to get the database to recognize my school's credentials #I'm ready to drop the money for the dsm just to never have to mess with psychiatry online ever again #and in case you were wondering #this is the short version where I cut half the disclaimers and a bunch of the criteria analysis #also hopefully the colors help with understanding everything #I know my sentences tend to be longer than some novels and I apologize #the working title of this was:#so you want to give Ains a PD diagnosis even though we don't have the evidence to?#and I think that's how I'll title all research papers from now on

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cnrothtrek · 5 years

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The Misrepresentation of Mental Disability in Star Trek: Discovery

Season two of Star Trek: Discovery has teased us for half a season with Spock having vague mental health issues and Starfleet being a big dick about his experience. In episode 8, “If Memory Serves,” we finally get an explanation for Spock’s strange behavior and see what happened when he escaped the psychiatric hospital. It is... infuriating.

The set up was bad enough, with its dangerous mentally ill person and he can’t really be mentally ill because he’s a nice person, with the gross violations of Spock’s rights and Amanda’s dreadful comment about how “‘emotional disturbance’ is code for ‘psychosis.’” It’s honestly a clusterfuck of misused terminology and harmful tropes. With episode 8 we’ve added the mental illness fake-out and when modern medicine fails try magic (telepathy), as well as another iteration of the INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS myth that psychiatric hospitals are scary places that might lock you up against your will and threaten your safety.

I can’t help but think back to the season one arc of the the only major character who had a psychiatric diagnosis last season... who also turned out to be a mental illness fake-out and was insta-cured by sci-fi magic. Looking back at this parallel, we see that the dreadful bait-and-switch representation of mental illness in season two was also used in season one, indicating that Star Trek: Discovery is not quite as progressive and inclusive as it purports itself to be.

So let’s talk about Tyler’s PTSD.

The misrepresentation of Tyler’s symptoms

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), in order to receive a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder a person must experience a traumatic event that meets specific criteria (such as a life-threatening event or witnessing violence). Then, for AT LEAST A MONTH after the event, someone must experience symptoms from ALL FOUR of the following categories:

Intrusion (e.g. flashbacks or nightmares)

Avoidance (staying away from things that remind the person of the event, avoiding thoughts or feelings related to event)

Arousal and reactivity (hyper aware of surroundings, exaggerated startle response, explosive unprovoked outbursts of anger, feeling on edge, sleep disturbance)

Mood and cognition (e.g. beliefs that the trauma was one’s own fault or that they’ll never be safe again, memory disruption, loss of interest in activities or ability to feel pleasure).

Although it’s clear Tyler and Voq experienced multiple traumatic events, and we see Tyler having intrusive flashbacks and nightmares—although they were mostly used as a plot device to conveniently convey backstory and foreshadow a major plot twist—we didn’t see clear examples of all four symptom groupings. Moreover, the timeline for his symptoms isn’t clear, but if we start the clock at his escape from the prison ship, I have doubts that it was a month. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)

Now, I realize that no one directly gave Tyler the diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was Admiral Cornwell who recognized his symptoms as trauma-based and said she had experience treating PTSD from her former medical practice, and she used her training to help talk Tyler through his reaction to seeing L’Rell. Still, viewers were expected to buy into this explanation so that the reveal of Tyler as Voq would be a surprise.

In short, they indicated that Tyler had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but they didn’t seem to do much research into what the symptoms or criteria for that disorder are. They misused terminology and exploited Tyler’s suffering for the sake of the plot. Then, they used a bait-and-switch tactic to reveal that he didn’t actually have a real-world psychiatric disorder after all, but just some fantastical sleeper agent side effects. They sold viewers on an inaccurate but compassionate representation of mental illness, then ripped that representation away from us and laughed about it all the way to the bank.

The problematic way Starfleet (and the show) handles officers with mental disorders

Tyler is suffering in season one. Clearly, he wants help, but he’s afraid that if he talks to a doctor he’ll be relieved of duty. He confides somewhat in Michael, but swears to her that he’ll get help if it becomes too much for him to handle. We later follow him on a mission to retrieve a data core with a worker bee, where seeing Klingon bodies triggers a flashback and he almost blows the mission. We, the audience, are supposed to take this as a sign that something is very wrong with Tyler and he isn’t fit for duty.

But here’s the thing: The way this story is told is discriminatory and harmful. If Starfleet were as compassionate and utopian as we’re supposed to believe, then they wouldn’t take away the thing that helps Tyler cope and stay active. Working is good for him; taking him off duty—particularly on a ship that for some stupid reason doesn’t have even one mental health professional on staff—would mean... what? What would he do to fill his time? When someone is suffering from trauma symptoms, too much spare time can be counterproductive. It can in fact be very triggering, opening up mental space for the trauma symptoms to fill. It would likely also add to Tyler’s sense of being an outsider on Discovery. His comrades are all working, but he is not.

Tyler doesn’t need to be relieved of duty. What he needs is for his commanding officer to accommodate his disability.

Out of universe, this is important because PTSD is very stigmatized in the US military, and many people fear losing security clearances or even being discharged because of such a diagnosis. The truth is that the stigma of diagnosis is much more dangerous than the diagnosis itself. Avoiding help can lead to worsening of symptoms and unexplained behaviors (such as snapping at a at a superior or avoiding certain triggering situations) that could have been excused and perhaps accommodated by having a diagnosis on record. Tyler’s situation has real world implications, and the way the show undercuts him over and over is downright harmful to real people living with this condition.

Let’s look at his mission to retrieve the data core. Now, there was really no good in-universe reason for him to be on that worker bee. He was a security officer, not a technician. Why send him instead of, say, Owosekun? The answer is that the plot demanded it. The mission was an excuse for Tyler to have another flashback, and the viewers were supposed to believe that he was messed up and unfit for duty.

But let’s say he was the ideal person for that mission. If Tyler had been receiving treatment, his doctor could write up a list of special needs he has and some accommodations Lorca could make to help him. Lorca would be legally required to fulfill those accommodations as best he could. It is not Tyler’s responsibility to bear all the weight and consequences of his disability; as the ones with more power and privilege, it is Starfleet’s job to accommodate him. So, maybe one of those accommodations could be that he doesn’t go on missions alone. If something triggers him, another officer is there to provide support.

How hard would that be to do? Answer: it’s not. Not at all. Accommodations are usually not hard to provide, but refusing to make accommodations is ableist. Unfortunately, Starfleet—the beacon of hope and progressiveness in science fiction—is unwilling to make accommodations for Ash Tyler and other personnel suffering from PTSD. They’d rather pull them from duty and put them out of sight so they won’t inconvenience anyone.

Instead of giving viewers an example of how the crew came together to support Tyler as a person suffering from trauma-based symptoms, the writers chose to put the burden of Tyler’s suffering squarely on his shoulders. With this choice, they heavily implied that people with PTSD are not capable of contributing to Starfleet and must be set aside until they’re “better.” THIS IS HARMFUL REPRESENTATION.

As someone who has personally experienced multiple mental disabilities, two of which are chronic and a third of which is trauma-based, it makes me wonder... would I have a place in Starfleet? Based on what I’ve seen in Star Trek: Discovery, my answer is no. I am not welcome to contribute to their so-called utopia.

Not at all.

If you want to support positive representations of mental disability in Star Trek, please tell them. Share this blog post on Twitter and tag their official accounts, or just tweet them your own thoughts about how their portrayals of psychiatric symptoms and healthcare are hurtful to you or your loved ones. If enough fans give them constructive feedback about this issue, they’ll listen. Thank you. Good health and stay safe.

#star trek discovery #dsc spoilers #mental illness #mental health stigma #representation matters #mental health #mental health in media #ash tyler #voq #spock

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heysawbones · 5 years

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Congratulations, Me; You’re Slow

Surprise, me! You’re literally slow. As in, your processing speed - the rate at which your brain takes in stimuli and makes sense of it - is below average. Quantitatively. The average is 100. Yours is 94.

Three years ago, I was given a cognitive battery. I’ve had an unusually high number of these in my life. Most people will never have even one. I’ve had four; one to assess for the Gifted and Talented program in kindergarten, one to reassess for the same when I changed school districts, one to assess for ADHD, and yet another, the latest, to assess for the same, as the prior records were lost. ADHD runs in my family, but I seem to have been one of those kids who compensated really, really well. Was I organized? Not even a little. Lose things? Constantly. I procrastinated like a motherfucker, too, but it was usually easy to make up the work in class before it was due. I would drive hard to complete the GT project-based assignments at the last minute, and always did fine. Better than fine, even. Sure, I used to obsessively braid yarn or draw in class, but nobody had any reason to suspect I would have issues with things like maintaining attention or executive function later on. If they did, I never heard about it. Even today, it’s not obvious; people associate a certain flightiness with ADHD and that isn’t me. People associate a lot of things with ADHD that aren’t me. This has been so much of an issue, in fact, that despite meeting diagnostic criteria over and over, as admitted by clinicians, people have been hesitant to give me the diagnosis. The argument deployed tends to be: you have all the symptoms, but you also have chronic depression, which has the same symptoms, so we’ll just go with that one. The underlying rationale, the unspoken answer to “why can’t it be both? they often co-occur” seems to be: you are too articulate and self-aware to have ADHD. It boils down to you’re too smart to be slow.

This is unfair to me, and demonstrably untrue, besides. I recognized this long ago. I am the one who has to figure out some way to compensate for the symptoms. Yes, the symptoms of depression and ADHD overlap (especially if you are depressed for a long time), but the treatment of those symptoms is not the same. I have been in treatment for depression for over ten years. Am I better than I was? Unquestionably so.

Do I function at a level sustainable for an adult not on disability? Can I get places on time? Can I catch a plane without showing up 14 hours early, lest I show up 14 hours late, or at the wrong airport entirely, instead? Do I remember things people told me yesterday? Can I go to Target without the possibility of getting caught up in a weird cognitive trap where I want bananas, but am too guilty to buy them unless I do the rest of my grocery shopping, which I don’t have the mental energy for? Do I remember enough of my meds when I go on trips? Can I stop persistently putting things in places that make no sense, and then having no idea that I’ve done it 15 seconds later? Can I manage an adult’s schedule? Can I remember to pay bills on time? Can I remember what I’ve spent money on in the last week? Can I remember what I ate this morning? Can I hold down a job that is, honestly, below my abilities in many ways?

The answer is, of course, sometimes yes. Distressingly frequently, it is no. Where travel is concerned, it is always no, and somehow, I have managed to show up at the wrong airport entirely more than once.

Yes, I recognize that these are problems all people have, to some degree, at some time in their lives. If people are willing to act on the belief that I am too smart to be slow, why is it that when I account for my concerns and attempt to articulate the impact they have on my life, I am suddenly not self-aware anymore, and am only overreacting to what obviously MUST be the same degree of these problems that other reasonable adults experience? Why am I credible in other areas, but not this one? If I am so smart, why is it assumed that I’ve failed to account for my own emotional bias when gauging the difficulty I am experiencing? Why is it more satisfying to assume that I am not trying hard enough, then it is to accept that a smart, self-aware person may, in fact, have some kind of Brain Problem that, really, there is no logical contraindication to, and much evidence, for? When I do the responsible thing and insistently pursue all reasonable options to address my mental and neurological health, with the goal of being a functional contributor to society, why is this so persistently reduced to a fetish specifically for an ADHD diagnosis? I’m smart when it’s convenient for others, but not when it comes to the ability to draw cause and effect relationships from my own behavior, and make comparisons between those and the behavior of others? If I got treatment that worked, I wouldn’t care what the diagnosis was. Come the fuck on. I’m tired of this.

-----

Anyway. I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery. I’ve read the summary before; it’s peppered with lines like

“There is also considerable other evidence in this testing consistent with a diagnosis of ADHD”

“In my experience, some individuals who are very bright are able to compensate for some of their disability”

“this distribution of index scores is very typical of individuals with ADHD”

“Many of the behaviors she describes are certainly typical of individuals who suffer from ADHD. Unfortunately, the coexisting history of chronic major depression and PTSD make that differential diagnosis based on history alone difficult”

When I first read that last year, I was shocked because the therapist who requested the cognitive battery, only expressed surprise that I was “very smart” and said that my “scores were fine.” When I later confronted him after having read the summary myself, he merely admitted that some of my scores were “lower than others”. He never entertained the possibility that I had ADHD, which in an of itself, wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d been willing to just try the treatments for it, since clearly the two industrial-strength doses of antidepressants I was already on, were not cutting it. Alas, he was not, and it wasn’t until after he retired that the issue was addressed again.

Surprisingly, I was not the person who addressed it. When my therapist-MD retired, I needed at least a primary care provider to manage my medications. Since the appointment was for psych med management, I had to fill out a bunch of related intake forms - you likely know the kind. While looking them over, my new doctor peered up at me and asked, “Has anybody ever suggested that you might have ADHD?” I was taken aback by the question and wasn’t sure where to start. Them? Asking me? if I have ADHD? She asked me?

I told her that I’d had two full cognitive batteries done, and that both of them concluded roughly the same thing: yes, all the symptoms are there, no, we do not know if it’s ADHD because there’s too much background noise from other psych issues. Without skipping a beat, she said the most amazing thing to me:

Well, whatever it is, you have the symptoms, so let’s treat them.

God. Why didn’t someone say that years ago? Diagnoses are human constructs; we use them to group symptoms that tend to occur together, when they’re thought to have the same causes. Depression and ADHD have many (but not all) of the same symptoms, but the overlap doesn’t qualify as a diagnosis because the causes are assumed to be different. I think we often forget that diagnoses are containers for commonalities that we use to make talking about medicine easier, not necessarily biological phenomena unto themselves. If you remember that they are containers - a sort of conceptual shorthand - then it follows that if one treatment for a set of symptoms isn’t solving the problem, you ought to try a different treatment often used for the same symptoms, even if the minutiae of diagnosis means you aren’t sure you can apply the diagnosis typically associated with that second treatment*.

I am now on Vyvanse. Does it magically solve my problems? No. Does it help? Yes. I am in a much better position to actually address the bad habits and coping mechanisms someone like me builds up over the years. The notable insomnia should wear off over time, and besides, as a person with an existing sleep disorder, having fucked up sleep isn’t new. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.

-----

Anyway. So I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery, because I had to dig them up for my new therapist. Instead of reading the summary, I dug into the raw numbers: the related tests are the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale IV (WAIS-IV), and the Weschler Memory Scale III (WMS-III). I couldn’t find sufficient guidance on interpreting the WMS-III, so I’ll stick with the WAIS-IV scores:

At first inspection, these scores do look “fine”. Anything within 10 points of 100 in either direction qualifies as “average”, even if 100 is “the average”. But on further reading, both in the summary and out:

-Examination of these results reveals considerable significant variability between various functional capacities, with VCI of 141 a full 3 standard deviations above PSI of 94.** Problems with both working memory and processing speed impacted her overall IQ considerably, bringing her Full Scale IQ down to 120 (from 133).

-A significant difference among subtest scores can suggest a problem in the particular skill being tested; this might underlie a learning disability. A significant difference among standard Index Scores might also indicate a learning disability, ADHD

-when I see a difference in IQ scores such that the verbal and nonverbal scores are far superior to the processing speed score, I try to discern what could be causing the discrepancy.

-LD diagnoses are also reliant on score discrepancies. On the WAIS, a gifted individual with ADHD may look like this.

Verbal comprehension - 132

Perceptual Reasoning - 129

Processing Speed - 97

Working memory - 101

Absolute scores aren’t the only diagnostic tool. Relative scores are also important. For example, average scores across the board wouldn’t be indicative of a working memory or processing speed issue, whereas great discrepancies between those parameters and others, is - even if the working memory and processing speed scores themselves are the same in both examples. What I’m saying is, it’s right there. It’s in the numbers. There’s no wiggle room. My old therapist saw these numbers, and not only did he choose not to act on the information, he pointedly refused to do so. If he hadn’t retired, I’d look into suing for malpractice. It’s in the god damn numbers, my dude. I don’t care what you want to call it, the deficit is right. there.

What did I ever do to him? Did he just... not believe ADHD is real? More to the point, did he think I somehow, without knowing the ins and outs of the WAIS-IV, faked the deficits or something? Really, guy, what the hell?

-----

Do I feel bad about being slow? Honestly, no. I might have if I found this out 10 years ago, or in circumstances wherein that reality didn’t perfectly explain aspects of my experience that other people have been prone to downplay, or dismiss entirely. Instead, it’s the closest I can get to scientific verification that I’m not just losing my shit over nothing over here; that something has, in fact, gone awry, and may always have been awry. I couldn’t compensate forever (though the ways I’ve done it are many, and in retrospect, interesting) and now I’m on the other end of it, trying to rebuild. I am, as I like to say, building an exoskeleton - something that will hold me up when my brain insists on faceplanting. I’m just grateful there’s someone out there who isn’t too caught up in the semantic navel-gazing of diagnosis, to help.

*There are obvious exceptions here, such as when the two diagnoses have causes whose treatment is contraindicated in the other diagnosis. This is not the case with depression and ADHD.

** You see that Percentile Rank of 34? That means I performed better than 34 percent of people my age, at least according to the test sample. That’s. Not great.

#blah blah blah #twice exceptional #ADHD #depression #mental health

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bravonovel · 3 years

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Young Lover Is My Boss: https://www.bravonovel.com/young-lover-is-my-boss-8041

Young Lover Is My Boss novel is a romance story about He Nian and Pei Shaoyu. He Nian found out that she was pregnant after the one-night stand, but she was even more shocked that her young boss turned out to be her one-night stand.

Young Lover Is My Boss novel Trial Reading

Midsummer, T City.

"Have you heard? He Nian is pregnant!" The news spread like wildfire amidst the tattling of several women.

"She's pregnant? When did it happen? I didn't even know she was married!"

"Who knows? It's not like you don't know how messy her private life is. Remember when we saw her at Seduction Lore last month?" A lady wearing exquisite makeup mocked as her field of vision converged on He Nian, who had just come out of the chief's office holding a highly sought-after project, "God knows what she could be doing behind the scenes for her work to progress so smoothly."

He Nian had just reached her desk when a colleague bumped into her by accident, "Oh my, are you alright? Nian, did I knock into you?"

He Nian furrowed her eyebrows. It was Zhang Wan.

"Oh no, I didn't notice you standing there. Oh, I heard that you're pregnant?" Zhang Wan taunted, "When did you get married? Why didn't you tell us about it? If it wasn't for the medical report on your desk, we wouldn't have known. I didn't hurt you just now, did I? It would be bad if you suddenly say that I injured your child. Do you need me to send you to the hospital?"

Among the documents that were scattered across the floor, there was a medical report that He Nian distinctly remembered keeping in her drawer.

Written clearly on the report was her information.

Name: He Nian.

Diagnostic result: Two months pregnant.

These words alone were enough to throw the entire office into a frenzy.

He Nian pursed her lips and bent over to collect her papers. The only thing she could think of was how she met that man at Seduction Lore when she was picking her sister up two months ago.

Damn it!

How did I get pregnant? A virgin, got me pregnant? I'll be a laughing stock if this goes out!

It was out first time, how did I get so ‘lucky'?

"Nian, who's your husband? When are you going to introduce him to us?" Zhang Wan continued jeering, "We've been colleagues for so long, I've never once heard you mention your boyfriend before. Now you surprise us with news that you're pregnant. We haven't even met your husband yet. What does he do? How old is he? Does he have a house in T City? A car? What's his family background? No offense but, I wouldn't look for someone who has a similar background as yours. Women should treat themselves better. If only you weren't pregnant, even getting married into an ordinary family would help your current situation. How could you get pregnant before getting married?"

Snickering echoed throughout the office.

He Nian felt dizzy for a split second when she stood up. After steadying herself, the delicate woman set her project documents and medical report down on her desk. With her eyebrows raised and a smirk across her face, she tittered and said, "I didn't know Ms. Wan cared so deeply about me, so much so that she's willing to throw her morals out the window and rummage through other people's drawers."

Upon hearing that, Zhang Wan leveled a glare on He Nian.

He Nian tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then directed a crude satire at Zhang Wan, "I also just found out about Ms. Wan's criteria when it comes to selecting a spouse, it's no wonder...."

"No wonder what?" Zhang Wan asked subconsciously.

"It's no wonder you're thirty-five and still single."

Like a thousand stabbing knives through her heart, He Nian's words hit her where it hurt. Zhang Wan glared at He Nian, her hands itching to strangle her. Yet He Nian paid her no heed as she took her seat and sighed, "Do you think I wish to live this way? Take the baby's father as an example - he's not someone of high stature by any means, but it just so happens that he has all the qualities you desire. He has property in T City, and he owns a car. He even pops into Hotel Royale from time to time."

He Nian turned to look at Zhang Wan and gave her a saccharine smile. Her dainty face exuded confidence, leaving no room for doubt. The words Hotel Royale further backed what she had just claimed.

Hotel Royale wasn't just a place where anyone with a loaded wallet could enter. Just who did He Nian meet?

Before Pei Shaoyu was able to step into the Pei family's territory, he heard a woman causing a ruckus inside the building.

Hotel Royale?

I own Hotel Royale. Who would ever fancy such a superficial woman?

Pei Lihua didn't understand what was happening when he came out of his office. He was looking for his son, who told him he had arrived a couple of minutes ago.

When He Nian saw Pei Lihua exit his office, she waved and flashed a brilliant smile, "Chief, I'm pregnant. I'll invite you to my wedding at Hotel Royale soon."

Her voice was sweet as nectar, and a face equally as alluring.

Compared to the charming He Nian, Zhang Wan stood there, green with envy.

"He Nian, your man better be who you say he is, or you're going to be the one getting humiliated!"

......

Continue to read Young Lover Is My Boss novel: https://www.bravonovel.com/young-lover-is-my-boss-8041/chapter-1-159885

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superhusbands4ever · 7 years

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bring trans is a mental disorder. the US army doesn't let anyone with mental disorders join. also this is a policy from Obama's term. So you know, think before you reblog/post maybe.

I like that you conveniently left out that it was a policy already in place when Obama got there and it’s one he ended in his last year in office.

Fun fact: I’m currently a psychology major studying to get a degree in psychology with a focus in clinical/counseling psychology. I own a copy of the DSM-IV and I’d be happy to let you know that nowhere in it is simply “being transgender” listed as a mental disorder.

Okay, I’ll try to explain this to the best of my understanding, but I am a cis female so if I get something wrong, please correct me.

What you may be thinking of is the “"disorder”“ called gender dysphoria, which is listed as a mental illness in the DSM-IV. Now, I understand that this can confuse people, seeing as one of the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria is "a strong desire to be of another gender.” Often times, gender dysphoria and being transgender are linked together in conversation. But did you know it is possible to be transgender and not experience gender dysphoria?

There are many people who disagree/feel uncomfortable with having gender dysphoria listed in the DSM, myself included. The problem with gender dysphoria is this: for a psychological state to be considered a mental illness, it has to meet three criteria before even looking at the symptoms themselves. And it has to meet all three criteria, otherwise it’s not considered a mental illness. One of these criteria is for the psychological state to cause the individual severe emotional or mental distress. The problem with this in relation to gender dysphoria and being transgender is that many transgender people are not distressed by the fact that they identify as another gender. They may experience distress from societal pressures and views on their differing gender identity, but the gender identity itself isn’t causing them distress. Which means, as according to psychology rules and the criteria in the DSM-IV, not all transgender people experience gender dysphoria, as listed in the DSM-IV, because of the lack of distress. Because of this lack of distress, (regardless of what the other criteria are because, like I said, it has to match all three anyway), many people believe gender dysphoria should be removed from the DSM-IV as a mental disorder.

But, because it is listed as a mental illness in the DSM, there are treatments for it. However, the treatments might surprise you. Interestingly enough, one of the recommended treatments for gender dysphoria is gender reassignment surgery. The belief is that once you fully physically transition to the opposite sex, the gender dysphoria goes away. However, not all trans people want to or even have the ability to fully make the transition. That’s why other treatments are listed such social gender transition (e.g. having others refer to you by your preferred pronouns and/or preferred name) or HRT (hormone replacement treatments).

The debate for removing gender dysphoria from the DSM has been a long one, and will probably continue until the next DSM is released. Some people claim having gender dysphoria listed is important to be able to understand and help individuals who experience it. Others argue that it’s not a mental illness (for the reasons listed above) and that it is stigmatizing and leads to confusion and discrimination against transgender people. Another problem is that some gender reassignment surgeons require a history of diagnosed gender dysphoria before they’ll consider performing the surgery. As the next DSM won’t be published for a few more years, only time and the future discussion and acceptance of transgender individuals in our society will tell if gender dysphoria will be removed as a mental illness.

Now, Anon, I’m going to give you some advice.

Maybe instead of going around and accusing people of not understanding something when you clearly don’t know anything about it yourself, you could go out and learn what being transgender actually means instead of believing the ignorant information other ignorant people in society try to shove down your throat. It’s called research, maybe you should try it. Google is free.

Maybe you should also learn what mental illness really is instead of just throwing it around as a term to apply to things you are incapable of understanding.

You know. Just a thought.

#anon #anon ask #transgender #lgbtq

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fortheheavenssake · 4 years

Text

PG MM Anon Interpretation Collection - 18

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

115: Nov 14

MM ANON …… MAD-ISON AV. Re-Sunshine Sucks…… a tabloid too far…… LA thanksgiving? …… homeless shelter thanksgiving?……Royal Family thanksgiving?…… professional lie juggler …… $h!t scared of loosing tax millions …… HMTQ drops in 🤣🤣🤣🤣…… MM drops out…… “ it’s not rocket science Harry dear boy, she’s a s****!!…… “ but I love her” … “Really!!, sit down and watch this” …… “ now!! convinced!!”…… “ ones judgment is sometimes compromised Harry” …… “ But, But ,But …… “No ifs, no Butts. … just act royal

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜 l hope you’re well🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

November 14/2019 0855 hrs CST, Riddle #115

MAD-ISON AV. Re-Sunshine Sucks

Madison Avenue in NYC is Ad-is on Avenue🤣🤣😂. Every advertising firm, PR Firm etc etc has offices along that avenue . On madam weekend trip to see SW lose to our young Canadian sensation Bianca Andreescu !! Was that not beyond the pale exciting!! Madam’s PR Firm, one of them is SS Sunshine Sachs. Well everything they have done since they came on board, so to speak, seems to backfire, contradict previous information madam has shared in interviews or other PR or news reporting from royal reporters or her “besties” or OS. They basically ‘suck’ at their job. Suck, pardon the horrible pun🤣😂, is really a slang term meaning they are doing a lousy, terrible, job.

MAD-ISON, interesting upper caps and hyphenated. Obviously madam must be mad as in angry 😤 but has she gone mad, as in psychologically?? ISON, last four letters of Archie’s second name Harrison. I do frequently wonder, given the alleged extremely severe narcissistic personality disorder she exhibits, it’s Axis II in the DSM multi axial system of diagnosing mental illness, the actual book is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. I think the U.K. must have something very similar.It’s the standard by which mental illnesses are diagnosed, it lists the criteria for making a diagnosis. Axis l is the primary mental illness ie depression, Axis ll are the personality disorders, there are more several more levels but that’s all l need to tell you now. Getting to my point, l think at some point she allegedly has diagnoses along some of Axis l and Axis lll, depression, substance abuse, eating disorder. I hope l am not confusing you too much. I worked as a mental health clinician for 20+ years. This leads me to the uppercase MAD, mad is a word often use by laymen, regular not professional mental health workers, to refer to someone with mental illness. Phew, l hope l didn’t confuse you, but you see, l eventually get to my point, but l always think explanation and background information is so important to enable me to put things in context for you all.

a tabloid too far

The tabloids and papers have been following closely yesterday the back and forth one upsmanship, of the PR put out and then BP woukd respond affirming it and than madam didn’t want it she was playing games via SS PR articles. Which one is going to LIFTOFF first. They will release too much information?? More than is meant to? Or is madams PR going to release too much private information.?

LA thanksgiving? …… homeless shelter thanksgiving?……Royal Family thanksgiving?

The Thanksgiving holiday takes place in October in Canada, but in America, it’s very near Christmas, at the end of November. I always wondered why they put two big holidays so close together. It’s a big dinner turkey usually, with dressing, pumpkin pie and a whole table full of options!

So the PR yesterday was back and forth, are the Sussexes spending the holiday in L.A. , then BP PR said yes, Well for some reason which l will get into later, madam does not really want to go to America. So her PR put out the plan that she would spend part of the day, wait for it, deep breaths now🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂, being a fauxmanitarian by helping serve turkey and pumpkin pie at a homeless shelter near Frogmore Cottage. Are there homeless shelters for millionaires and royals? Turkey and pumpkin pie, on a holiday that doesn’t exist in her new home country that she soooo longed to live in. I have to digress, l have friends in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, one year, one came for a visit over thanksgiving week. My godmother made a huge dinner with my friends here and so my visiting friend could meet them and experience a Canadian Thanksgiving. She had NEVER EVER EVEN HEARD OF PUMPKIN pie or pumpkin muffins, l clearly remember sending her off at the airport with her suitcase loaded with cans of pumpkin purée 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. So l am not certain about England but l do know one of my other friends was from South London , living in Scotland working offshore, he had never had pumpkin pie either. Anyhow, serving unfamiliar food to the homeless, they need comfort food they are familiar with. MADAM IS WORKING HARD TO AMERICANIZE THE ROYAL FAMILY !!! No disrespect to our American friends, but just imagine the other way around? So so disrespectful of The Monarchy!

professional lie juggler

Madam, and l believe as do many, that her ‘family’ are working in tandem, in this plot allegedly. There is by now such a convoluted web of conflicting information about EVERYTHING about her. Every little detail, missing years, age, relationships, how they met etc etc etc. She is juggling all these stories and using different PR firms who don’t know what story has been printed or told elsewhere or previously it’s just a big mash-up of conflicting information, some call an alleged pattern of lies. The metaphor of a juggler is perfect. A juggler is someone who throws things up in the air and catches them, usually multiple items like balls, or plates etc. Well, picture madam standing astride, as royal ladies do, NOT🤣🤣🤣😂, juggling all her ‘stories’ in the air, ever increasing number of them conflicted, well eventually she started dropping them, it’s too much to juggle and people have been calling out the inconsistencies, some call lies.

$h!t scared of loosing tax millions

Here is where l told you earlier in my interpretation that l would explain. America is one of, l think two countries, maybe a few more, that when it’s citizens live and work out of country, they still have to file American tax forms and pay taxes to the IRS, Internal Revenue Service, the tax part of America’s government. One also would have to pay taxes on any bits received, income of the spouse and their assets come into play as well but we are just dealing with madam here..

Now just think of the $$$£££££€€€€€ she has made merching, wedding gifts, paid appearances and goodness know how else she has earned money. I have postulated this repeatedly in previous riddles. I think she does not want to go back to America because she has not done allegedly any tax forms since she has been in the U.K. and owes millions of back taxes!! Just think, her wedding dress allegedly cost @£250,000!! What would be the tax on that. And on and on. Put all the alleged stories/lies/feauxmegnancy aside, she is allegedly in a world of hurt facing when it comes to the taxes she owes her own country’s government. The country she is trying to turn the royals into, she /her PR call it ‘ modernizing the monarchy’. GIVE ME A BREAK!!!! Our Monarchy has existed over a thousand years and consistently evolves to adapt!

HMTQ drops in 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I read this AGAIN this mornings paper, HMTQ DOESN’T DROP IN REPEATEDLY OR AT ALL, YOU GO TO HER IF INVITED! END OF! FULL STOP!!! HMTQ spends the week at BP, unless attending appearances elsewhere. On weekends, she goes to Windsor Castle, nearer to PP at his ‘farm’. She likes to relax on weekends, just Monday we saw her riding this massive horse, was marvellous to see! So madam ALLEGEDLY has been living at FC with H!!M🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. So after her busy week NIT AT WC BUT AT BP, HMTQ”pops in regularly” on her weekends??? This is outrageous, 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬absolutely outrageous!!! She is the reigning MONARCH, PEOPLE GO TO HER!!

MM drops out

Well the idea has been floated around about madam running fir political office in America. Several articles l have read list the criteria to be able to do that and she does not meet the criteria, l cannot recall the minutiae of it. But sud no more such stories. Her PR is engaged in a game of chess with BP, when her PR cannot play checkers! I know l have said that BRF it it’s so true!!

She also dropped out, according to her PR yesterday but it’s like weather, wait a minute, it could change🤣🤣🤣😂😂. Suddenly she dropped out of the idea of going to L.A. for the holidays, now it’s at “an undisclosed location “ oooo everything is soooo secret.

“ it’s not rocket science Harry dear boy, she’s a s****!!…… “ but I love her” … “Really!!, sit down and watch this” …… “ now!! convinced!!”…

When madam first came on the scene to Harry, she allegedly knew everything about him and she played him like a fiddle, manipulated him seven ways from Sunday. Her backers had been allegedly working on this plan for years! He had blinders on, anyone who has had an experience like this, you’re being manipulated but you think it’s love, l know l had a relationship like that, l was in too deep when l realized. So, DM has a dossier, the Royal reports also. I am certain, why HMTQ called LG to help. They gathered information on madam.

I see this going like this, in very early days, Harry released the statement after madam told him she was frightened etc. The information was gathered and shared with HMTQ, PP,PC

and PW. They had Harry come to a sitting room equipped with a large HD screen. Harry was besotted and they were desperately trying to get him to see through the alleged lies and manipulations but he was besotted.

I do believe the first line here is PP bluntly telling Harry about madams morals or alleged lack thereof.Fire is crackling, remember what time of year this was, Harry staring straight into the fire 🔥, the other most desperately trying to bring him to reality of what had happened. He was unconvinced. They had to shock him back to reality . They played the tape, in HD on a 70 inch screen, madam allegedly performing acts so vile that most of us had never heard of them or the urban dictionary and it’s terms that are now in our brains. Imagine, just imagine, what went through Harry’s mind and emotions, utter and complete shock, devastation feeling filthy for having been with her intimately and feeling incredibly angry at being not only used by her allegedly, but used as an in to attack the a Monarchy. IMAGINE HIS RAGE!! So that was the moment, he vowed to do anything and everything necessary to seek justice for HMTQ, his grandmother. I picture him weeping, his head on her lap, him on the floor in front of her, so broken and used. He was convinced!

“ ones judgment is sometimes compromised Harry”

Reassurances were quick, his family loves and adores him, and wanted to protect him, yet an invasion took place. None of them saw it coming or knew who or what sort of individual they were dealing with and alleged backers who allegedly planned this assault. It’s true, we all have times when our heart rules when our head should, we make mistakes. But it’s different when you are a Prince, grandson if the ruling Monarch and the target point to invasion, allegedly. Oh dear Harry, how l have ached for your pain, and prayed for you. Yes, l believe in you and the role you are playing and continuing to play to seek justice ⚖️ and truth!

“ But, But ,But …… “No ifs, no Butts. … just act royal

Instructions for a reluctant madam! Surely this is not the NATO banquet! Being told to act royal despite her protests and uncertainty. BUTTS, is this a reference to video, photos, or the way madam dresses, keep her butt coverage. Or is it cigarette butts?

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦1035 hrs CST

PHEW that was a tough long riddle MM ANON and now l hear you sent another, keep me on my toes

Thank you so much dear PG….interesting that we are getting the happenings from the beginning……again confirming Harry being trapped….great job!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

——————

116: Nov 14

MM ANON ………… surreptitiously, “lift off”. …… who dares,bins…… 🎄it’s a wonderful strife🎄…… failure is not a-doption……Interstellar McCartney………me invito tactiost…… an act of con-passion…… “ therapy, the humanitarian solution Harry”. …… “serious emotional and mental disorders” …… it’s not her fault, she seems to have been born that way” ……… “ yes!! Section 8. … “ it’s your call!! “.

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

Things must be pretty serious with two riddles and the content. I am so thankful for my 20+ years working in adult mental health services!

November 14/2019 1035 hrs CST

Riddle #116 Riddle #2 today

surreptitiously, “lift off”

In a riddle previously, today was meant to be LIFTOFF day, the media was meant to have freedom to publish any and all information not yet published or respectfully of HMTQ,to not publish alleged information of a damning vulgar nature allegedly regarding madam. Something changed, to use your words MM ANON, there is a spanner in the mix!

What does surreptitiously mean and what’s it doing here. It simply means doing something in a manner or way that attempts to avoid notice or attention, or done secretively.

So some information may come out, but it will not be splashed on headlines. It will quietly appear. So kids we need to check twitters, instagrams, every social media place, newspapers online etc etc etc. Because there are now serious holes in the boat, and it is taking on water rapidly, so to speak and information will start to ‘leak’!

who dares,bins…

It’s like who blinks first in a no blink contest. Which media dares to first LIFTOFF or publish, bins, goes in the garbage. Or is it meaning to publish garbage. Sorry kinds my brain has been working rapid fire going on four hours here!!! So the editors are now at a crossroads, they had been told today was LIFTOFF! But then delayed, are some going to ignore the delay and publish or after waiting almost two years are they just going to dump the files in the bin, aka the trash can?

🎄it’s a wonderful strife🎄

One of my three favourite Christmas films! Jimmy Stewart, It’s a Wonderful Life! The others being Christmas in Connecticut and White Christmas!! Here we have strife and Christmas trees. Strife is defined as, an angry or bitter disagreement over fundamental issues or conflict So we are then to anticipate a lot of strife, or rather difficulty, tension, over where do they spend Christmas, with which family, or where. Everyone struggles with that, most people alternate Christmases, one year with one side, the next year the other side of the family. Madam only has her mum, which doesn’t appear particularly close at all. Oh HMTQ, l feel your pain Ma’am🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻.

failure is not a-doption

The usual phrase is failure is not an option, here we have a-doption, a for Archie. This must be AMW, the discussion if he should be adopted by the alleged surrogate or other parents. Certainly madam does not appear capable or stable enough to parent an infant or any child really. I am looking at the sentence structure. Failure is NOT adopting, so success would be adoption, am l reading that correctly? I hope you all understand, the first riddle was so long and such a bear and now another, phew! I am reading, rather interpreting this as, the best successful thing, the best life for AMW , is to be adopted formally by the surrogate mother or other parents, allegedly. He is not Harry’s son, and madam is not capable, plus she may, allegedly, have some serious legal issues and allegedly some vey serious mental health issues as l struggled so hard to explain in layman’s terms in riddle #115, riddle#1 of today.

Interstellar McCartney

Yes poor Stella, NOT! Stella McCartney, Paul’s daughter, is a fashion designer, although millions would disagree and don’t like her designs. She has dug herself a right hole so she has. Instagramweeting that madam was wearing her designs on RS on the Siberian balcony. The outcry of rage from the public on social media has been stellar!! PUN INTENDED🤣🤣🤣😂😂. Madam we know merches , all the time. People are outraged at SM talking about fashion and £££££€€€€$$$ when the focus SHOULD have been on the fallen, the veterans , those with injuries etc etc . Talk about being tone deaf!!

me invito tactiost

One is encouraged to take things gently, with tact and a calm manner. I marvel at this, after all they have been attacked with, the chaos and turmoil of the last few years, the absolute compassion they have for madam has moved me to tears. Herein lies the difference between good and evil. HMTQ is chosen and anointed by Holy water from the river Jordan upon Coronation and is the head of the a church if England. The Christian compassion they appear to be taking towards dealing with madam is truly God’s Hands at work. Taking a gentle, encouraging, tactful way to move forward.

an act of con-passion

Normally it’s an act of compassion, here MM ANON has written con-passion. We have discussed the whole origin of the word con, confidence game. You gain someone’s trust and then your fleece them for everything they have, money etc. This is madams fauxmanitarian PR about her serving turkey and pumpkin pie, that’s what it said in the newspaper, that was the menu. Serving it at a homeless shelter near FC. Spending part of Thanksgiving day there. As in riddle one, it’s not a holiday in England etc etc, please read riddle #115 #1 of today’s two, l hope there’s not more than two🤣🤣😫😫😫😫 my hands are killing me! Her PR putting this out is just more fluff and drivel, alleged con, lies etc.allegedly.

“ therapy, the humanitarian solution Harry”. “serious emotional and mental disorders” …… it’s not her fault, she seems to have been born that way” ……… “ yes!! Section 8. … “ it’s your call!! “.

In Canada each province has a Mental Health Act, which outlines in great detail protocols on psychiatric hospitalization and treatment. The most common is involuntary status, or a 72 hour hold. A GP can form someone, which means they fill out a specific form for GP’s to mandate the individual be examined by a psychiatrist, or a family member can go to the magistrate and get the paperwork. It’s a lot to make sure the correct assessment, treatment etc is provided.

In the U.K., Section 8 defines the authority of the guardian, as empowered under Section 7 of the Act. These are: being able to require the patient to live at a specified place. being able to require the patient to attend places for treatment, occupation, training or education.

Here we have an intense conversation with all the same individuals l described in the earlier riddle when Harry was shown the video. They are discussing madams mental health issues very very compassionately. Saying she was born this way , needs help, therapy. They are just trying to sort out what’s best to help her. As her husband, under the Act, he is her husband/guardian and has authority to compel certain things regarding her mental health status. This is sounding extreme serious hospitalization. However, l can tell you this, people with PD, personality disorders , don’t do well with long term hospitalization. They learn about the staff and manipulated them, it’s called staff splitting or simply splitting. They can cause an unbelievable amount of chaos and they enjoy that. Best is hospitalization for crisis only and then long term therapy. I am talking years of therapy and THATS ONLY IF THEY HAVE INSIGHT AND AGREE TO IT! Otherwise it’s just a game and someone else they can mess with.

Very serious discussion indeed, and at the end if the day, it’s Harry’s decision, or your call,as stated in the riddle. I wonder too if this conversation also included legal attendance and a psychiatrist as well. Folks this is no laughing matter. This is a seriously disturbed individual who should never have been able to get in. Evil wow that’s very scary.

Might l say, the Christian, compassionate approach towards helping madam get help and treatment is a marvel. But it’s not really, because this is exactly who HMTQ is! A strong, loving, intelligent, compassionate woman of faith. God bless you Ma’am, l am so deeply moved.

November 14/2019 1150 hrs CST

Thank you dear PG..two riddles back to back and you kept going! We so appreciate this, and your loyalty to HM to get this out there! Thank you so very much! We definitely want her to be mentally stabilized…..legal case pending, we want justice to treat her “fairly”…….🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

——————

117: Nov 17

MM anon .......... “wash spin repeat”......... no hole barred🤣🤣🤣......... reflect,deflect,infect...... DM is armed and dangerous...... court jester 🎭......... the light is Fading...... nice hypocrisy you’re wearing...... hunger-Ian...... GCHQ on the QT......... I’m not a row boat...... “they will unleash the dossier from hell”...... complete disclosure......... in case of emergency, pull handle. ...... sorry you’re out of time......... 🎼 …”rescue me”…🎼.

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

November 15/2019, 1620 hrs CST, Riddle #117

“wash spin repeat”

The shampoo cycle, they print that on the bottle so you use more and subsequently have to repurchase it more often, it’s a OR instructional ploy! Well we have seen that in spades this week. Madams PR puts out something BP confirms it, she panics and than her PR changes and BP PR responds in kind. It’s absolutely continued BRILLIANT strategy by the BRF and LG!

no hole barred🤣🤣🤣

Well it’s usually no HOLDS barred. For madam, I am thinking yachting, videos etc, any and all holes were on offer for the right price. I am sorry this is so offensive, but it will become far more descriptive and disgusting in court!

reflect,deflect,infect

Yep PR tactics, deny, deny, deny. When that fails you reflect it to something else like PA, deflect, deny, blame someone else and the results are complete infection. It has become known as the Markle effect or you have been Markled ! She wanted fame, well she now has her name in everyday vernacular!!

DM is armed and dangerous

Armed and dangerous, that usually is some criminal on the loose that police are looking for. Here we have DM a and d. Again to repeat myself, they have sat on this massive dossier on madam for two years give or take. She had the chutzpah to sue them, she has unleashed the hounds not on them but ON HERSELF!! Every bit of that dossier will be at play in court and the media likely. Oh this is getting really interesting now. She is bloody corned now, in 12by 6 protective custody. She is still playing PR games. William met with a main backer. She should be afraid, not spending time on PR!!!

court jester 🎭

Madam has fancied herself a serious actress. The entire theatre world gasped when madam was made patron of the British theatre, having never acted on stage professionally. Another master stroke by HMTQ/LG. She is certainly no actress, she is laughed at. When she appears in court she will be laughed at by the public for causing her own undoing for one, the public have many other reasons . Historically a court jester is someone whose clever jokes and stories has had the role of entertaining the Monarch at court, not legal court, but the court that was held when the monarch and all the courtiers gathered daily to spend time.

the light is Fading

Lighthouses help ships navigate coastlines in the dark. Nightlights help little ones and some adults either get to sleep or help find their way at night.The light is oft referred to in spiritual terms. Well it can be hope, the saying it’s always darkest before the dawn, meaning there is hope in the light of day. Her light is fading, Fading so fast that MM ANON uppercase the F.she truly is fighting a very losing battle, she really is cornered and it’s all by her own doing/life choices.

nice hypocrisy you’re wearing hunger-Ian

There has been continued fall- out regarding the Stella M coat madam wired on RS to merch. SM was pounded by the public on social media for posting the merching when the day was ,want to be fir the fallen. Today some investigating report the coat made in Hungary at extremely low wages and by people desperately trying to eke out a living. Not exact funds but £15 wages, £50 material coat price around £1500. Quite the markup. This is going to have major repercussions for SM brand! Another person feeling the MArkle effect!

GCHQ on the QT

Prince William, we know awhile back spent a week with MI5. It sounds like these visits have continued and he is directly involved with how all things are progressing. This must have been an extraordinary meeting between HRS and himself. No holds barred. I am extremely confident that he told her he knew EXACTLY what she and the other backers were up to, they have proof and very likely they have quite the information on BC related to JE in building a defence for PA! Oh l wish l could have been a fly on the wall! I know l say that every day but it’s true every day!

I’m not a row boat

Rowboats, often l think of the Titanic or other historical ships that have had horrific events happen, the people that get in the life boat/row boats basically, are the ones that survive. Is madam wanting Harry to be her rowboat/lifeboat? Who is saying this to her while her ship is rapidly sinking and she needs a row boat to rescue her. Perhaps it’s MA or a backer. But l don’t think anything an undo the things that she has chosen to do. Not can anything be done to undo the havoc she has wrought!

“they will unleash the dossier from hell”complete disclosure

Madam signed her own end so to speak, by filing suit against the DM. In court process there is discovery, where evidence is shared. They, the DM, have been sitting on this million £ dossier since before the wedding. All of it, every single bit of filth, coercion, lies, financial issues etc will be revealed in complete disclosure. She had no idea what she was going to unleash when she filed her lawsuit against MOS/DM! I can hardly wait! I hope they air PA interview on the CBC!

in case of emergency, pull handle

You see this on fire alarms 🚨 in various places. Well ,Adam is in the emergency if all emergencies, does she have handy handles left to pull? This diary, shows alleged coercion against the BRF, but what else is in there regarding her backers???

sorry you’re out of time

Madam perhaps has limited phone calls or visitors? As in custodial situations. I am guessing she was on the phone with MA, seeking rescue, or a backer? The custodial agent telling her, phones/visitor time limit is up, she must end the call.

🎼 …”rescue me”…🎼

Great song, rescue me, take me in your arms and rescue me! I am certain madam is pleading for rescue from MA! Or anybody by now. Given her 12 by 6 containment, she has little to do but think. And hope her backers will help her and rescue her🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂. She means nothing, a pawn. This supposed diary might be a worry to backers. Look at what happened with JE, Hence why madam is likely in protective custody for her own safety!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

November 15/2019, 1720 hrs CST

Fascinating! Thank you dear PG, I know you have a pounding headache and because of your loyalty you came through for us and did two! Thank you, we so appreciate it!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜

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118: Nov 15

MM ANON ……Ventura Highway …… “ yes, let’s go!!”…… GCHQ, on the QT…… W knows EVERYTHING!!…… PR pops in”🤣🤣……… “ one pops in , Philip”…… archificial pops out, when?……… “ bit of a soft interview “…… tighten security, NOW!!…… “ this ones out the bag , old thing”…… “ I’m looking forward to it Philip, all the little ones”…… “yes , one is a tad hurt”…… A good appointment.…… “ right up Her street”. …… 🎼give yourself a very🎄merry Christmas🎼…… “ Little ones?the service is too long,Philip”.

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

November 15/2019 1725 hrs CST

Riddle#118 and #2 today

MM ANON is this two riddles a day thing permanent? It’s taking me hours, just putting that out there! Guys you have no idea how much l put into this and l am having a bad headache today! I will continue my best efforts out if loyalty to HMTQ

Ventura Highway

Ventura Freeway is a major highway in San Francisco, or runs through it California, America. Also. Ventura Boulevard. No Ventura highway other than a song by America, coincidence? Anyhow the lyrics are all about sunshine, drinking at night, change your name, make up a new self etc. Sounds a bit like madam. Nobody knows much for certain even age, where Doria was etc etc etc.

Ventura Boulevard is like the Malecon. All sorts of shops, people rollerblading, every type of person great for people watching in the sunshine. Also a place where you can get anything and everything!

“ yes, let’s go!!”

Madam wanting to go to California?! I am not certain who is speaking this. Wanting to escape back home but the IRS awaits.

Or is William telling Catherine about California and she would like to go there.

GCHQ, on the QT…… W knows EVERYTHING!!

This was partly in the first riddle, as l proposed here it’s in the second part of clue clue. Of course William knows everything. We have seen the clue leave it to William several times . We know he spent a week at MI5 some time ago and now again at GCHQ but on the QT meaning quiet hush hush definitely not appear on the CC. He was well equipped to meet and deal with HRC!! WHAT A KING HE WILL MAKE!!

PR pops in”🤣🤣……… “ one pops in , Philip” archificial pops out, when?

HMTQ and PP, once again by the fireside, sharing their precious time together, talking over life’s issues. HMTQ, nice cocktail 🍸 in hand, adjusts the volume on the 📺. They are talking about madams OR stating HMTQ “pops in regularly” at FC to see madam and archificual🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. They are having a laugh. PR pops in?🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂They don’t live at FC , never have, the opulent is enjoying the fire and giggling! Oh how l can see it, years of hours together, talking every possible thing, memories of life experiences, they finish one another’s sentences, a long life together well lived and well loved! Joking about the pop sound when madam was fauxmegnant. Joking about just when does archficial pop out when a HRC/EDG or any of her PR claim visits madam and amw. Just , cannot make this stuff up! OH YES YOU CSN SBD MADAM DIES, HER OR DOES,😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣

tighten security, NOW!!

After William met with HRC, he immediately gave this order. Not only General security around the family but around madam who is contained for her own safety, that’s my interpretation! Whatever took place in that conversation alarmed William so, that this order was given!

“ this ones out the bag , old thing”…… “ I’m looking forward to it Philip, all the little ones”…… “yes , one is a tad hurt”

We are back at the fireplace, with HMTQ and PP. They have switch to the music now, soft in the background, refreshed their cocktails. PP is saying something was secret is out if the bag. The phrase letting the cat out of the bag means something fierce that was contained is now out there. Is this regarding PA interview set to air Saturday night?

HMTQ brings the conversation back to Sandringham, Christmas, lamenting the children that will not be there. This year, l believe William and Catherine will be with the Middletons, they alternate years. Is sounding official that Harry, madam and archficial will not be there either. PR can change in a second . HMTQ sharing her feelings are quite hurt. Oh how l would love to just give her a cuddle, respectfully of course!!! She has feelings just like any other woman, mother, wife, great and great granny!

A good appointment.

William, in charge of liaison with MI5 and direct day to day management. The “leave it to a William” that has appeared in riddles several time was indeed a good appointment!

Might this refer to an actual appointment, as in meeting. Then l think this refers to William’s meeting with HRC! All cards laid on the table!

“ right up Her street”.

The phrase right up someone’s alley means that whatever is being done or needing done, this person is well equipped to do it. So here, MM ANON has given us right up Her street” who is Her? Might this refer to legal team they have? Or madam? The information they have is something she is well versed at doing?

🎼give yourself a very🎄merry Christmas🎼

From my ALL TIME FAVOURITE FILM! MEET ME IN ST LOUIS

The song is actually have yourself a merry little Christmas. This sounds like madam will be alone except for protection officers and will have to give terse her own Christmas.

“ Little ones?the service is too long,Philip”.

Oohhh we are back with HMTQ and OO. Attending Christmas services and talking if the children could come. HMTQ replies just too long service for them to sit still. Just a few more year Ma’am and Sir!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

November 15/2019, 1815 hrs CST

Thank you dear PG! 😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

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119:

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119: Nov 18

MM ANON ……”too many eyes, it has to be privejet “…… SS , travel agent ……” NO more interviews “ ……” I’ll, give her away!!” …… 🎼”they had style,and well read,MM gave good head,vogue “🎼……… Aotearoa…… DM litigate big guns…… Subpoena demeanour ……… “ocean view,or the hills princess?”…… “ ones posterior is sore” …… “ I warned you old thing”…… “ Bugger them, tomorrow’s chip paper!!”……… “ I want a monkeeeeey!!🦄🐒

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

💜💜WELCOME BACK💜💜

Riddle #120

November 18/2019 1400 hrs CST

“too many eyes, it has to be privejet “

There was a rumour or report, yesterday, that allegedly madam had been observed flying out of a small airport in Oxfordshire, near the SoHo farmhouse. I tend not to believe that because up until now, MM ANON has given us the clue 12 X 6 , which l interpreted to be a containment of a sort, either ‘cell’ or a psychiatric facility. However, we have had few days with no riddle, so very possible, in this ever changing world, that circumstances have changed.

Notice she types prive jet NOT private jet! Is that a typo or have a meaning? We know for certain by now, everything means something! Prive , French for private. So has someone gone to 🇫🇷 France??? There is a company with this name also, several actually.

These days, after our massive CSIS security breach, when l read 👀 eyes, in these contexts, it immediately makes me think of Five Eyes . For those who don’t know, the Five Eyes are the U.K. , Canada, New Zealand, Australia and America. It’s a security intelligence alliance. There is plenty online should you wish to educate yourselves further. France is not in the Alliance, this very curious to me.

SS , travel agent

SS, we all know by now but lest you don’t, is SUNSHINE SACHS is a ruthless ‘dark arts’ PR firm, who works for madam, not satisfactorily, but also for almost everyone in her orbit, all these odd famous people that have come out of the woodwork offering support. They are also responsible for the dozens of headlines spreading lies. So was SS her travel agent, booking her private trip to France??

” NO more interviews “

After the disastrous interview although Sunday PA, in the daily mail, said he had told HMTQ it had gone quite well.There has been a ton, or several tons of horrible fallout and commentary led by photos of a sweaty man partying away in the papers on Sunday morning. In the interview he denied ever really partying and said due to PTSD of some sort from the Falklands war he was left unable to perspire, until recently when he had found “ methods to us” and he is now able to. WTH?? HMTQ, PA GET HERE NOW, ROYAL EDICT NO MORE INTERVIEWS, SO LET IT BE WRITTEN, SO LET IT BE OBEYED(sorry l borrowed a scene from the film The Ten Commandments there).

” I’ll, give her away!!”

Usually when a woman is given away, it’s at her wedding. Is this PA talking about Princess Beatrice’s upcoming wedding? There are two ways one could read this sentence, however with the comma, they are discussing this and who should do it maybe Fergie? He speaks, notice I’LL , give her away, with double exclamation marks, emphasis on him or I’ll. PA is asserting his fatherly role despite this horrendous scandal. It’s more than a scandal, it’s potentially legal at best, worst case scenario, you know what that is!

”they had style,and well read,MM gave good head,vogue “🎼………

It was Rita Hayworth gave good face, double entendre. Rita Hayworth, in Gilda is a MUST SEE!! She is so amazingly beautiful, takes ones breath away. She went on and married the Aga Khan, later died of Alzheimer’s l believe. Lots of old Hollywood mentioned in that song. Here we have a reference to madams skills🤣🤣🤣😂😂. Vogue is THE magazine! FRENCH VOGUE WOW!!! Has SS managed to get madam on the front cover of a French a vogue! Hence the prive jet???! Wow wow wow!

Aotearoa

Currently Prince Charles and Camilla, she joined him once he completed his time in a India and her chest cold healed. They visited Australia and once again smoothed things over with the High Commissioner’s wife and staff after madams foul language, verbal abuse and overall rude disrespectful treatment whilst they were there.

Charles and Camilla are now in Aotearoa, the Maori, Indigenous dwellers Maori for New Zealand. They will visit the site of the mosque massacre and complete other engagements on their visit.

DM litigate big guns

When they big out the big guns, it’s not always war, big guns are someone who is really excelled at their job ie Beckham/football. So either side of madam lawsuit against the DM will have attorneys. However madam or her backers are funding her, the DM has deep pockets plus the dossier and a lot of information, much of which we have no idea of. This is going to be very interesting to see if this makes it to court because the DM WILL NOT SETTLE!!! They want this information, all of it out there, she made the worst de by filing this suit!

Subpoena demeanour

A subpoena is an official notice, in paper, that one needs to appear in court. Demeanour is a manner if conducting oneself. So is someone behaving as if a subpoena were imminent or should they be? There are a whole number of individuals this could refer to. I cannot speculate further.

“ocean view,or the hills princess?”

Ha ha ha😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂, l can hear a jail guard or a very cruel psych staff workers jokingly asking her which room/cell she would like and calling her orincess😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣!

“ ones posterior is sore” …… “ I warned you old thing”… “ Bugger them, tomorrow’s chip paper!!”

Here yet again, let’s relax, return to my favourite place, it’s so cozy and warm, TV 📺 is on with , Keeping up Appearances, always good for a laugh and distraction watching Hyacinth henpeck poor Richard🤣🤣😂😂. Cocktails 🍸 arrive, nothing else desired. Fire is stoked, they are left alone. HMTQ and PP again that precious time, HMTQ is complaining, oh no never explain never complain🤣🤣😂😂. She is rather sharing with PP her posterior ie bottom is sore, likely from riding that massive black horse we see her riding so often at Windsor. Gorgeous great beast, l would love to know the name. PP seemingly has little sympathy because he did warn her😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣😂. Tv switch, the news is on, about the horrific comments on PA interview and it being in all the papers. PP then makes the comment. Chip paper, in the U.K., real fish and chips, doesn’t come in a fancy plate, it comes in a conical wrapped newspapers to absorb the grease. In America the next day paper would line the bird cage.

“ I want a monkeeeeey!!🦄🐒

We are fast approaching the biggest day in a child’s year, other than their birthday! CHRISTMAS, Oh how they squirm, search, leave notes, and very subtle, rather NOT SO subtle🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 hints of the litany of things they want from Santa Claus. Here is little Lottie, rather GRH Princess Charlotte , if you please, still clinging onto her unicorn whilst wailing loudly that she now wants to add to her menagerie A MONKEY ,!🤣🤣🤣😂😂🤣 Oh bless!!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

November 18/2019 1510 hrs CST

💜💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻SO GLAD TO BE BACK DOING THESE🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜💜

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120: Nov 19

MM ANON ………GM consults Chobanian…… Sharon,concerns about Forth Bridge. …… Charitable uncoupling ……… a worried sausage …… LG ‘quite confidence …… cogs oiled and ready …… Dark clouds over ninety mile beach …… “it’s a runaway train old boy”…… “PRUNING , autumn or Spring?”……” I’m only the messenger!!”……… W&K ,royalty personified …… “weathering the shower, it’s not a storm old boy”

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

Riddle #121 looks exceedingly difficult

November 19/2019

1920 hrs CST

GM consults Chobanian

Ghislaine Maxwelll was at JE side for years, she knows EVERYTHING and has been a part of EVERYTHING! She has now disappeared with sightings reported all over the world. Rumours are rampant that she has had plastic surgery to change her face and even her fingerprints. Dr Susan Chobanian is one the premiere plastic surgeons in Los Angeles. I shall say no more, l don’t want legal trouble!

Sharon,concerns about Forth Bridge.

This is one beautiful bridge in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 a cantilever bridge over the Firth of Forth. I have a gorgeous photo l took of the Firth of Forth hanging on my living room wall, along with one l took from a Edinburgh Castle looking out over the guns. I have been over it many times from Glenrothes into Edinburgh but it’s a bear in morning and afternoon traffic!!! It is a UNESCO world heritage site. Who is Sharon? Ariel Sharon was the Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006. That is the first name that popped into my head other than a Sharon Osbourne, and that name was not relevant. Sharon has held innumerable positions in his lifetime. Sharon, passed away in 2014. I am just starting with basic information.

Just as there is a plan in place for precisely what will happen upon the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II (Operation London Bridge), Operation Forth Bridge dictates what will happen when the Queen’s husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, passes. The Duke has been closely involved with the details of the Operation Forth Bridge, just as the Queen has been with Operation London Bridge.

I just do not know how Sharon fits, unless his funeral arrangements were similar. I think l just have to admit Sharon stumps me.

Charitable uncoupling

This is a cute play on words from the phrase conscious uncoupling that a Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow used in the PR statement of separation. This is charitable uncoupling, so a charity is separating? We know the Sussexes have left the Royal Foundation. However last l saw on the Royal family website, in the title it says both of the Sussexes have left, but in the actual,article a Prince Harry’s name remains without hers! Or a couple is separating charitably meaning one gets $$$$$

If that is the case it can be only one couple madam and ‘H’.

a worried sausage

HMTQ is very worried about PP health. This has been his nickname for her. The toll this is taking on both of them has been extremely concerning for quite some time!

LG ‘quite confidence , cogs oiled and ready

In a mechanical deceive the cogs are circular metal devices with grooves, when turning produce motion of the device. However friction creates heat and it can burn out, like the transmission of your car, it needs oil. Sounds like LG has everything greased and confident things are ready to go regarding madam. Pre NATO banquet or Post?? The NATO banquet is December 4/2019. As much as l think HMTQ would not want anymore public scandal before then, l can HARDLY see madam at that banquet! However rumours are madam has left the country , yet fromMM ANON last clue l know is 12 X 6.

Or, God forbid, does the reference Forth Bridge!?!

Dark clouds over ninety mile beach

This absolutely gorgeous world famous for some of the best surfing worldwide is this beautiful piece of a Gods creation is in New Zealand. Currently Prince Charles and Camilla are touring.

Has something occurred there that is bad news. Has Camilla’s chest cold returned? Is it pollution and erosion of this sacred place for surfers and tourism? It’s so hard sometimes in the riddle clues to know what relates to whom.

Have hey received news of PO’s ailing health??🥺🥺🥺🥺

“it’s a runaway train old boy”

PP talking to PA l believe. That hellishly creepy interview where he laughed when JE death was raised, the usage of the word honourable in odd places. Guilty or not, we need facts, etc but the interview did endless damage to him and via osmosis to HMTQ and the Monarchy! So things have sped up and the papers and other media are at it now, more than before because they have his own words on video. The metaphor of a runaway train, similar to the horses loose from the stable, things are moving faster and faster and there is absolutely no controlling of this or any narrative now!!

“PRUNING , autumn or Spring?”

Plants and trees vary, some are best pruned in springtime others are best pruned in autumn. This is all to optimize the health of the plant and maximize its blooms , foliage or fruit production. This is uppercase meaning it’s extremely important pruning. This is a metaphor, for ridding or pruning or a person from a group or famIly even. So this is telling me that they are, despite cogs being ready, madam may be still in play until spring. The Royal family is in a very precarious situation now since the interview, believe it or not, more precarious than before. Madam knows things from her previous years, PA knows things from his previous years of friendship with GM and his association with JE! Some of their knowledge may intersect. The extrication of madam now could blow the bottom of the Monarchy! The word pizza, that PA specifically mentioned in his interview, has a very dark meaning in pedophelia , HRC had pizzagate scandal. I am not explaining, don’t go looking there, trust me, you don’t want this knowledge!!! BUT I FIRMLY BELIEVE PA USED PIZZA AS A MESSAGE TO THISE BACKERS AND THAT GROUP FOR A REASON!!! So l just think they are unsure of the best time to prune, either way, the fallout will be explosive!! Remember HRC via social media was overtly saying she wanted to see madam and hug her. What she got instead was a face to face with Prince William, l am 110% every card needed was laid clear on the table, l am also 110% William still held back some aces!!!

I’m only the messenger!!”

There is a phrase don’t shoot the messenger, it’s when a person brings out bad or negative information and the receiver treats them poorly displacing their anger over the information onto the person who brought it. Someone has brought information which has really upset someone.

W&K ,royalty personified

OH I LOST MY BREATH!!! I do not know how our Catherine does it but each time l see her she looks more gorgeous! At the RVP, Royal Variety Performance, in McQueen, that black lace gown, oh🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 she looked so outstandingly Royal! William handsome as ever. He was born Royal, she married and became royal, but naturally possessed all of the the qualities necessary and beauty beyond compare. Oh how Diana would love her!!!! WE ARE SOOOOOO BLESSED TO HAVE THRM AND THEIR BEAUTIFUL FAMILY!💜💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

“weathering the shower, it’s not a storm old boy”

Conversation, PP. and maybe LG or a friend in conversation. Ever the strong soldier, he is weathering meaning bearing/coping, feelings generally not talked about by those of his generation and aristocratic life. But putting into perspective this interview and it’s fallout are a shower, little bit of rain, not a storm at all. Imagine all he has seen and experienced at his age! Those individuals are called The Greatest Generation! Tom Brokaw wrote with that as the title. The style of the book is easy to jump from section to section. I HIGHLY recommend it.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦2035 hrs CST

I PRAY I AM WRONG ABOUT THESE CLUES ABOUT PP🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

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////not pg Nov 21

MM ANON …… Hey’ RF!! I’m still not OK…… Daughters dilemma …… FBI delivers legal documents …… canary’s calling …… wittiness projection …… Max-well-on-Her-way-farer…… southern district documents verified …… Kuwaiti waity …… Lottie lustre camera caper…… DOC photo exhibition imminent …… “ I have a request”…… request denied !!…… USA demands archificial …… Northern flights.

Dear Skippy! Here is an MM Anon interpretation, including a lot of explanations to help people but I’m not as good at being concise with these as PG! My best thoughts to her and thanks to MM Anon. There are lots of neat clues where I agree with other anon comments, much credit to them all :) All speculation only.

…… Hey’ RF!! I’m still not OK…… This is MM talking. One story today is that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry feel “isolated” as “no-one from the Royal Family is texting them”. Note that the headline starts with MM, indicating that the story comes from MM PR. It continues to show weak work in my opinion, another sad attempt to stay relevant and play the pity card. But I guess there needs to be a gazillion stories pumped out to keep MM in the public eye during her ‘break’ and for SS to ‘earn’ their pay check. Another wonderful example of irrelevant and idiotic stories is one I saw today that she has a necklace with both PH’s and Darrens star sign symbols… why, just why, oh that’s right, to merch. I note that ‘both pieces are still available online’ according to Harpers Bazar. Good to know.

Daughters dilemma …… FBI delivers legal documents …… Poor PB and PE, they are in a dilemma not of their own making, but of their Dad’s. I wish them very well as they navigate this next chapter. There is talk of PA needing to answer a subpoena to give formal evidence under oath to to US investigation into Epstein. MM Anon has talked about a subpoena as long ago as August so interesting to see it potentially coming into play.

canary’s calling …… I think of ‘sing like a canary’ with this clue. If someone sings like a canary, they tell everything they know about a crime or wrongdoing to the police or authorities. Often this is done to ‘save yourself’, face lesser or no charges in exchange for your information on others. Something tells me that it refers to Ghislane Maxwell but it could be so many if connected to Epstein. MM Anon has referenced a canary singing in the past. At the time I thought it MM related, but in hindsight and rereading the context points more to the Epstein situation. I personally think and hope it is too big of a case for a major player to actually ‘get off’ charges.

wittiness projection …… On first read ‘witness protection’. Some believe JE is in witness protection and is not dead, others that GM is in the witness protection programme. As MM Anon has written it, Wit or Wittiness is is a form of intelligent humour. To have wit is also to be quick thinking, be intelligent. Projection has lots of meanings, the one I choose to go with is the way you project or present yourself, your image to others. Someone is smart and canny about how they are presenting themselves, is this GM quietly cooperating with enquiries, to get protection, to stay in hiding?

Max-well-on-Her-way-farer…… A wayfarer is a person travelling on foot. This clue again talks about GM. I take this as, she is ‘well on her way’, she is gone, undercover and away from the public. She is on foot, not literally, more that she is alone and not travelling in the highlife way she used to.

southern district documents verified …… The Epstein case continues in a way in the Southern District with GM being accused of recruitment for him. Currently there are a huge number of documents, naming 1000’s of people, that she is trying to block from being made public, the next court date to address the unsealing is 5th Dec. Is this saying that whatever/whoever is in these documents is true? As we know assuming truth in any story is a dangerous and damaging game, let’s just hope that justice can be served in an ethical and correct manner.

Kuwaiti waity …… The DOC was called ‘Waity Katy’ before becoming engaged to PW, a little play on this (not very nice) nickname relevant now is that PW has an upcoming solo visit to Kuwait and the DOC will be at home waiting for him with the kids.

Lottie lustre camera caper…… DOC photo exhibition imminent …… The DOC is a keen photographer, has Charlotte inherited this talent, or will we have the treat of more Cambridge kids pictures taken by Catherine? Christmas cards will not be far away now! I think it likely the clue relates to the DOC being set to launch a photography competition, called the Earthshot Prize via the Royal Foundation. It sounds a neat and relevant initiative for the DOC.

“ I have a request”…… request denied !!…… Sorry, not sorry. I don’t care what the request was, it clearly is MM asking for something and not getting it which is entertaining to think of.

USA demands archificial …… I don’t see any stories that the US public are scrambling to see Darren doll, as much as MM would not doubt love this to be the case. The only way MM could drum up some serious publicity in the US would be to play the Darren doll card and appear with him. But would she dare ???? The outcry from the UK when she showed him off in Africa, when they cry for privacy in the country that funds them was huge and just raised more questions about his birth, christening etc. I would be a spectacular second ‘own goal’ to repeat this mistake. My mind happily wanders in the direction of ‘USA demands archifical DNA’ with this clue, wouldn’t it be an interesting turn if a requirement to enter/stay/live/pay tax uncovered the truth about Darren doll. I don’t know enough on the subject to even speculate, just an interesting scenario to consider.

Northern flights. Flashback… In 2017 “Prince Harry ‘has taken girlfriend Meghan Markle to Norway to see the Northern Lights”. Hehe, yeah right Meggy just like you ‘had a date at the museum’, wait wasn’t that an episode of Friends? Anyway after that entertaining trip down memory lane, MM is probably heading off on a flight north sometime, Canada to see MA perhaps? A last hopeful note is that an aurora (northern lights) is a natural light display in the Earth’s sky at night. Maybe we should keep looking for the light in the darkness.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. PG will be so happy, as she stresses so about doing the riddles. 😊❤️❤️❤️ /// —————-

—-Dear skippy, whoever interpreted the riddle was spot on ……… amazing.

Thank you….felt Anon deserved to see this! 😊❤️❤️

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121: Nov 22

MM ANON …a cuppa and a trot…… “ no damage darling”…… “W&K will pick up the slack”…… “ let’s go visit the old bugger”…… A Christmas PR push…… “ she has to show archificial “……… Harry and Sandringham??……… “ for goodness sake,nanny had the night off” ……… “it’s a wonderful Christmas card darling”………… will boss baby go viral??………Mmm , Little punk Prince!

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜THANK YOU DEAR MM ANON💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

It is sooo good to be back, thank you all for your love, kindness and prayers!💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

Riddle #121 ( l missed two but it’s #121 for me)

November 22/2019 1530 hrs CST

a cuppa and a trot

Today’s papers are full of all sorts of controversy yet again regarding PA. He was to fly to Bahrain this weekend but that was cancelled when the palace got wind if it.oh how l ache for HMTQ 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻. She left BP yesterday for Windsor, seems a day early. Today she was riding her great fell steed in the rain with PA and two others. Spending time together, a mother who loves her son, it has been said for year that he is her favourite. I don’t care about that, just the pain she is going through, on top of PP illness, and everything madam…the last few years have not been kind to one who has so loyally and stoically served! A cup of tea can solve anything, so the saying goes, but l am afraid Ma’am not this.

“ no damage darling”

I can just hear Fergie, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York saying this to PA. She was seen being driven into BP waving at the cameras with this stupid big smile on her face. It’s said she was the driving force along with Amanda Thirsk, PA now no longer secretary but at the top not of Pitch at Palace program. Fergie looked crazy, smiling as if things were glorious. She just doesn’t get how serious this is! When the slashed budget comes, probably soon, she might just get it.

“W&K will pick up the slack”

How to reschedule PA patronage’s and schedule. He was patron of l believe 65 charities/organizations. Sounding like Prince William and Duchess Catherine will have more heaped onto the plate. There goes my plan for baby number four, if it was in their plans, but just my dreams!

“ let’s go visit the old bugger”

PA saying this to HMTQ about visiting ailing PP at his ‘farm’ at Sandringham. I think PA will get a Royal, pardon the pun, scolding from his father. He may be 98 and unwell but l am certain he still can turn a phrase and deliver a stinging opinion and dress down!

A Christmas PR push…… “ she has to show archificial “

Today in the paper quoting an anonymous friend People magazine spoke of the friction between Harry and William, how LG used to be a good influence but according to this anonymous ‘source’ aka madam, he was no longer there. NOT TRUE, MORE OF HER PR LIES!! LG is very much there, HMTQ called him back into service and he is the Chief Lord. The papers are also saying the Sussexes are now spending the holidays in England. Back and forth, it’s like Serena at the tennis!🤣🤣😂😂 If she goes to America or the holidays in the U.K. she has to produce Archficial. How can she travel to America for Christmas without him and how can she show him when she doesn’t have him? Oh dilemmas dilemmas. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive madam, yes Rachel, l am talking to you!

Harry and Sandringham??………

Is that the future plan? Is he staying there during his six weeks off? Is he spending that time with PP? It certainly doesn’t mention madam. So is Harry by himself attending Christmas at Sandringham. Oh the morning walk to church, madams first year, not yet married she stuck out her tongue. My sister and l were aghast and were sure it would be news. We looked and there was nothing. If Harry does that walk to church Christmas morning with him family and without madam, THAT WILL MAKE FRONT PAGE CENTRE!!

“ for goodness sake,nanny had the night off” . . There was a big too doo made in the papers the other night when Catherine cancelled the fancy dress night out, William went alone, looking smashing. Is it bad of me if l still want to know what her gown was like?🤣🤣🤣😂😂 The reason given was childcare, they had no one to look after the children. I have a hunch that one or more wasn’t feeling well. It was just the nanny’s night off, and being the mother she is, Catherine stayed with the children. Remember when William had a head injury and had surgery, Diana wouldn’t leave his side, Charles didn’t stay be he had the opera and was angry with her for not going with him. A mother is a true mother. Catherine, you made Diana proud, yet again!! ……… “it’s a wonderful Christmas card darling”………… will boss baby go viral?….Mmm , Little punk Prince! . The family photo at Christmas time has become such a tradition for so many, and of our our royals as well. It sounds like photos have been taken, boss baby wee Prince Louis will steal the show and go viral,, worldwide. Everyone loves the faces that he makes! Everyone loves all three of the Cambridge children, and of course their parents. By the punk comment, l am guess Prince Louis is up to his facial expressions. I can hardly wait to see! GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

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ellymackay · 5 years

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The Doctor Is Online: Joseph Krainin, MD, FAASM

The Doctor Is Online: Joseph Krainin, MD, FAASM is available on Elly Mackay's Blog

Sleep physician Joseph Krainin, MD, FAASM, founded virtual sleep center Singular Sleep, where technology brings sleep diagnosis and treatment to the masses.

By Sree Roy | Photography by Ketterman Photography

Many of us have had the thought, “If I were in charge, I’d do things differently.” But while most of those thoughts don’t translate into actions, sleep physician Joseph Krainin, MD, FAASM, actually turned his vision into reality—for himself and for patients across the United States.

With the web launch of Singular Sleep in November of 2015, Krainin entered new territory. Board-certified in sleep medicine and neurology, he’d until that point traversed a traditional sleep medicine career path, which included stints in private practice, academic medicine, and the private sector. But with Singular Sleep, Krainin would now be available for virtual appointments only. At the “virtual sleep center,” headquartered originally in South Carolina and recently relocated to Florida, he uses telemedicine for all consults, diagnoses, therapies, and long-term management.

“We hit the ‘go live’ button for singularsleep.com on Veterans Day 2015. One week later the AASM launched its telemedicine platform. I thought, ‘We’re doomed,’” Krainin says.

Though not doomed, Singular Sleep did get off to a slow start. “I remember our first sale and being so psyched. It was a white noise generator,” he says. “After we did the math and took into account shipping, etc, we realized that we had actually lost money on the transaction.” Loss notwithstanding, Singular Sleep now had a revenue stream—and it is growing.

Now, three years later, Krainin has a full schedule of patients each week. The majority are self-referred and the rest are typically referred by primary care providers.

Jacqueline Rubio is practice manager at Singular Sleep. She handles big-picture tasks such as maintaining inventory, troubleshooting technical issues, and patient communication for nonstandard situations. She is also Krainin’s wife. “I never had any misgivings about Joseph’s decision to leave the traditional route of practicing medicine and start Singular Sleep because the vision that he described to me was so unique, timely, and clearly thought-out,” she says. “His assessment of the current state of medicine and its future, along with the extensive amount of planning and self-education he had undertaken, convinced me that this business was bound to be successful.”

As a telemedicine practice, Krainin can be more flexible than bricks-and-mortar facilities in meeting patients at their convenience. Of course, sometimes people take that flexibility too far. “I’ve had to have some bizarre conversations with people who tried to do the consultation while driving,” Krainin says. “Texting while driving is bad enough but doing a video-consultation?” Perhaps the most extreme example is a patient who logged in from behind the wheel of a Tesla. Krainin says, “I started in with my typical, ‘You’re going to have to pull over if this discussion is going to continue,’ and he said, ‘Doc, don’t worry; it’s a self-driving Tesla!’”

After a consultation, Singular Sleep mails home sleep tests to patients as indicated. And for therapy, Singular Sleep has a durable medical equipment arm, which mails equipment such as CPAPs to patients who need them. Equipment troubleshooting and desensitization is done—”the same way I did it in my traditional practice,” Krainin explains, albeit by videoconference instead of in person. He virtually walks patients through steps such as, “Put the mask on in the evening, when you’re in a relaxed state and watching TV or reading…” He adds, “Cloud-based data acquisition capabilities have been revolutionary in PAP management. Forget about taking your machine or smartcard anywhere. When a patient is having a problem, we can see what’s going on immediately by getting a download remotely. Of course, we can also adjust machine settings remotely now too.”

Patient Demographics

Singular Sleep team members meet in a conference room. Left to right: Maria Gage, Jacqueline Rubio, Joseph Krainin, and Samantha Collins.

Singular Sleep’s protocols are not without controversy. Particularly when it comes to the specific patient populations it diagnoses via home sleep testing (HST)—including people with comorbidities and children. “At Singular Sleep, we put the power to order the test in the hands of the patient. The days of patriarchal medicine are supposedly over but we’re still clinging to some vestiges of it,” Krainin says. “We have information on our website about the reasons why an in-lab sleep study might be better in certain situations and let the patients decide what they want to do.”

In the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s view, “Research data clearly show that HSATs [home sleep apnea tests] are most accurate in adult patients with no complicating conditions and an increased risk of moderate to severe OSA. Outside those boundaries, the evidence is clear that HSATs may not provide the most appropriate diagnostic data. Therefore, it is illogical to expect an HSAT to work effectively in all patient populations,” says AASM president Douglas Kirsch, MD, who cites a task force of experts who systematically reviewed literature and graded the evidence for the AASM-approved clinical practice guideline published in 2017.1

Krainin says, “From a logical standpoint, it doesn’t make any sense why a testing apparatus designed to diagnose sleep apnea shouldn’t be used to diagnose the entire gamut of sleep-disordered breathing syndromes. To me, those exclusion criteria for HSTs amounted to throwing a financial bone to existing brick-and-mortar sleep centers when HSTs were finally accepted into the mainstream. Bottom line: If you want to know if the patient has sleep apnea or not, which probably accounts for something like 98% of all sleep study referrals, then an HST with good quality data is going to provide the answer. In 10-15 years, it’s hard to imagine that virtually all sleep diagnostics testing won’t be done at home.”

AASM’s Kirsch agrees that in the future more testing for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is likely to be done at home, but counters, “I anticipate that laboratory-based polysomnography will still be required to evaluate patients at risk for OSA who have other complicated medical conditions as well as those suspected of having other sleep disorders.”

The other controversial demographic is pediatrics. Singular Sleep offers home sleep testing to children ages 7 and up with the Nox-T3 device. (The Nox-T3 was FDA approved in 2009 for people greater than 2-years-old.) Krainin says, “I’m surprised at the massive wait times that some of these parents face to get their child into a brick-and-mortar lab that performs pediatric tests. These kids, and their concerned parents, are really suffering. There is definitely a learning curve with getting good data but we’ve found a process that results in a fairly high probability of sufficient data. We are up-front in our messaging that the AASM says in-lab studies are the gold standard for children but also that the AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] says that HSTs can be an alternative in certain situations.2 I predict the AASM will change its tune on this topic in the not-too-distant future; we are just ahead of the curve.”

But the AASM’s view, as articulated by Kirsch, is, “The AASM strongly supports patient-centered efforts to make sleep medicine testing more convenient and accessible. However, diagnostic and therapeutic decisions must be guided by objective evidence, and currently there is insufficient evidence to support the standard use of HSATs in children.” He cites a position paper published in 2017 in which a task force found insufficient evidence comparing HSATs in children to polysomnography, even less evidence available in young children and those with comorbidities, and a lack of studies evaluating the use of HSAT in the home with sensors applied by a caregiver.3 “The task force also was unable to identify literature on the use of HSAT devices that can identify arousals or monitor carbon dioxide for the evaluation of hypoventilation, which is important data in the assessment of sleep-disordered breathing in pediatric populations,” he says, adding, “I would welcome the publication of data supporting the accuracy of HSATs in pediatric populations, and I anticipate that sleep apnea testing in the home eventually will become a more viable option for children as diagnostic technology continues to advance.”

The demographic where Singular Sleep is making the biggest difference, in terms of number of patients served, is people in their 50s. Indeed, in 2017, an AARP initiative (administered by MedCity News) recognized Singular Sleep as a healthcare industry “50+ Innovation Leader” for bringing innovation to Americans aged 50 and older.

“I’m fond of saying that everyone is on his or her own journey with sleep apnea. Sometimes it takes people decades to move forward from the ‘precontemplation’ to ‘action’ stage. In my experience, this step often occurs in the sixth decade due to either becoming symptomatic during the day [excessive daytime sleepiness] or manifesting a medical disorder, like hypertension, that’s likely to be related to sleep apnea,” Krainin says. “This age group is relatively tech savvy, fed up with the current ‘this is the way we do it because we’ve always done it this way’ mentality of Big Healthcare, and looking for better, more convenient solutions.”

Beyond Sleep Apnea

youtube

At Singular Sleep, Krainin has treated restless legs syndrome, insomnia, and circadian rhythm disorders via telemedicine. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is “particularly well-suited for this type of healthcare delivery given the dearth of qualified providers and concentration of them in a limited number of metro areas,” he says.

Krainin sometimes encounters people who ask for prescriptions such as Provigil or Adderall for narcolepsy (whether diagnosed or not), and he says, “The answer is always ‘no.’ For various reasons, prescribing controlled substances is not currently part of my practice.”

A Way Forward

Consultations are done via videoconference.

Krainin is licensed to practice medicine in more than 40 states. Those licenses have been hard-earned. “It was a huge burden and included flying to Mississippi to sit for their jurisprudence exam and having to take a course to sit for Texas’ challenging jurisprudence exam,” he says. “The state licensing racket is a complete bear to deal with. There should be reciprocity between states.”

As of yet, accepting third-party payors isn’t part of Singular Sleep’s strategy. “I wouldn’t say it’s completely off the table but getting out of the hospital-insurance medical complex was definitely one of my biggest motivators to start the company,” Krainin says. “I had come to feel like I was just an agent of the insurance companies. That’s not why we doctors go through the pain of medical school and postgraduate training.”

Many of the rewards and challenges of operating a virtual sleep center are the same as those encountered by bricks-and-mortar centers. Singular Sleep clinical director Katie Simms, says, “The most rewarding part of my position is the expressions I have heard from our patients once they have started their therapy such as, ‘My CPAP has been life-changing!’ ‘I forgot what it felt like to feel good,’ and ‘My spouse has moved back in the bedroom.’” A challenging aspect is helping patients who are resistant to therapy, such as “not wanting to wear a mask or sleep with a machine, or they are embarrassed to sleep with their significant other with the machine and mask,” Simms says, adding, “but because I’m convinced and witness every day that they and their significant others will benefit from the therapy I do my very best to get them excited about starting therapy and the benefits that they will derive from it.”

Krainin has this advice for other physicians who want to add or increase their telemedicine use: “Don’t use Skype because it’s not HIPAA compliant!”

And for other sleep physicians who want to turn their—perhaps controversial—thoughts into action, Krainin says, “We need more entrepreneurial doctors. On the whole, we have become passive agents of the system. Doctors need to reassert their positions as the captains of the healthcare team. By becoming more entrepreneurial and developing an understanding of business and economics, there is tremendous opportunity for us to both reduce healthcare costs and improve outcomes while enhancing our job satisfaction.”

Sree Roy is editor of Sleep Review.

References

1. Kapur VK, Auckley DH, Chowdhuri S, et al. Clinical practice guideline for diagnostic testing for adult obstructive sleep apnea: An American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. JCSM. 2017 Mar 15;13(3):479-504. 2. Marcus CL, Brooks LJ, Draper KA, et al. Diagnosis and management of childhood obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Pediatrics. 2012 Sep;130(3):576-84. 3. Kirk V, Baughn J, D’Andrea L, et al. American Academy of Sleep Medicine position paper for the use of a home sleep apnea test for the diagnosis of OSA in children. JCSM. 2017 Oct 15;13(10):1199-1203.

from Sleep Review http://www.sleepreviewmag.com/2019/01/doctor-online-joseph-krainin/

from Elly Mackay - Feed https://www.ellymackay.com/2019/01/23/the-doctor-is-online-joseph-krainin-md-faasm/

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marclefrancois1 · 5 years

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The Doctor Is Online: Joseph Krainin, MD, FAASM

e0a9e1e9e6412908cf53cee25f32209b62d23d03e119cd2df63e6855e8fc22eee0a9e1e9e6412908cf53cee25f32209b62d23d03e119cd2df63e6855e8fc22eepostlinke0a9e1e9e6412908cf53cee25f32209b62d23d03e119cd2df63e6855e8fc22eee0a9e1e9e6412908cf53cee25f32209b62d23d03e119cd2df63e6855e8fc22ee See more on: https://www.marclefrancois.net

Sleep physician Joseph Krainin, MD, FAASM, founded virtual sleep center Singular Sleep, where technology brings sleep diagnosis and treatment to the masses.

By Sree Roy | Photography by Ketterman Photography

“We hit the ‘go live’ button for singularsleep.com on Veterans Day 2015. One week later the AASM launched its telemedicine platform. I thought, ‘We’re doomed,’” Krainin says.

Now, three years later, Krainin has a full schedule of patients each week. The majority are self-referred and the rest are typically referred by primary care providers.

Patient Demographics

Singular Sleep team members meet in a conference room. Left to right: Maria Gage, Jacqueline Rubio, Joseph Krainin, and Samantha Collins.

Beyond Sleep Apnea

youtube

A Way Forward

Consultations are done via videoconference.

Krainin has this advice for other physicians who want to add or increase their telemedicine use: “Don’t use Skype because it’s not HIPAA compliant!”

Sree Roy is editor of Sleep Review.

References

from Sleep Review http://www.sleepreviewmag.com/2019/01/doctor-online-joseph-krainin/

from https://www.marclefrancois.net/2019/01/23/the-doctor-is-online-joseph-krainin-md-faasm/

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nancygduarteus · 7 years

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Psychics Who Hear Voices Could Be On to Something

Jessica Dorner was lying in bed at her cousin’s house when her grandmother, a “pushy lady” in an apron who had been dead for several years, appeared in front of her. “I know you can see me,” Jessica heard her say, “and you need to do something about it.”

It was a lonely time in Jessica’s life. She was living away from home for the first time, and she thinks her grandmother was drawn by some sense of that. She eventually told her parents what happened, and according to her they were concerned, but not overly panicked. “My parents are probably the least judgmental people I know,” she said.

As Jessica tells it, over the next two years, spirits visited her every now and again. Her brother-in-law’s deceased father began forming before her, ghostlike, just as her grandmother did. And while the experiences were intense and at times made her feel “crazy,” she said, they were infrequent, and insists that they were never a real source of suffering.

Jessica later moved back home and got a job as a pharmacy technician, all the while figuring out how to cope with what was happening to her. At a co-worker’s suggestion, she went to the Healing in Harmony center in Connecticut. In 2013, she says, she enrolled in classes there that taught her to use her “gift.” A self-described psychic medium, Jessica tells me she hears voices that other people do not (in addition to sometimes seeing people others do not see), at varying intensity, and mostly through her right ear.

Meeting others like her at the center gave Jessica a sense of relief. “Just being around people who are going through similar things—that helps a lot, because I could talk to anybody about those things and not feel like I was crazy,” she said.

It was through a friend from the center that Jessica ended up in the lab of Phillip Corlett and Albert Powers, a psychologist and a psychiatrist at Yale. In a study published last fall in Schizophrenia Bulletin, Powers and Corlett compared self-described psychics with people diagnosed with a psychotic disorder who experience auditory hallucinations.

“A lot of the time, if someone says they hear voices, you immediately jump to psychotic illness, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia,” Corlett said. But research suggests hearing voices is not all that uncommon. A survey from 1991—the largest of its kind since—found that 10 to 15 percent of people in the U.S. experienced sensory hallucinations of some sort within their lifetime. And other research, as well as growing advocacy movements, suggest hearing voices isn’t always a sign of psychological distress.

The researchers at Yale were looking for a group of people who hear voices at least once a day, and had never before interacted with the mental-health-care system. They wanted to understand, as Corlett put it, those who do not suffer when “the mind deviates from consensual reality.”

What Corlett calls consensual reality—the “normative shared experience we all agree on”—is probably not something you spend too much time thinking about. But you know when it’s being violated. The sky is blue, the sun is hot, and as Corlett points out, most would generally agree that people don’t receive extrasensory messages from one another.

Jessica was quite frank with me about the way some people may view her. “We know these experiences are weird and they’re seen as weird,” she said. “You just can’t go into a room and say ‘Hey, I’m a psychic medium’ and people are gonna accept you.”

Finer points of what counts as reality can change over time, and vary based on geography or culture. For centuries people walked the earth believing the sun orbited around them, which today would be considered unreasonable. Who decides that consensus, and where along its boundaries voice hearers fall, depends on a wide range of circumstances.

The anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann, who has studied voice hearing in psychiatric and religious contexts, has written that “historical and cultural conditions … affect significantly the way mental anguish is internally experienced and socially expressed.” Noting that there is no question psychiatric distress and schizophrenia are “real” phenomena that call for treatment, Luhrmann adds that “the way a culture interprets symptoms may affect an ill person’s prognosis.” Every psychiatrist I spoke to shared the belief that unusual behavior should only enter into the realm of diagnosis when it causes suffering.

On the other hand, Luhrmann tells me “it’s a terribly romantic idea” to overinterpret the effects of culture. To say, for instance, that “anybody who would be identified with schizophrenia in our culture would be a shaman in Ecuador” is, in her mind, a clear mistake: “Flagrant psychosis” exists in some form in every culture where anthropologists have looked.

In the past decade, researchers have taken a greater interest in the experience of hearing voices outside the context of psychological distress. In his book The Voices Within, the psychologist Charles Fernyhough—who describes hearing voices himself—traces the way thoughts and external voices have been understood by science and society throughout time.

Reflecting on Fernyhough’s book, Jerome Groopman notes that in the early parts of the Bible, the voice of God gave direct commands to Adam, Abraham, and Noah. It spoke to Moses through the Burning Bush, going by the Book of Esther, making itself known again to the apostle Paul in the New Testament. Socrates, who wrote nothing down, heard a “sign” from childhood. The voices of three saints guided Joan of Arc as she rebelled against the English. Groopman cites Martin Luther King, Jr.’s autobiography, in which he describes “the quiet assurance of an inner voice” telling him to “stand up for righteousness.”

The social context in which these people lived can impact how they’re seen. It’s impossible to say how the prophet Ezekiel was understood within his cultural moment. But in most places today, if a person claimed—as Ezekiel does—that he ate a scroll because the Lord commanded him to do so, some eyebrows might be raised. In a community where a personal, verbal relationship with God is normal, the reception may be different.

Powers and Corlett’s work orbits the idea that schizophrenia is, as Powers put it, an “outmoded” label that describes a cluster of different symptoms rather than a single unified condition, he says.

“Goodness knows what psychosis actually is,” Luhrmann said. “There are clearly different kinds of events in the domain we call psychosis,” and when it comes to the relationship between voice hearing and psychosis, she says, “there’s so much we don’t understand.”

Many now antiquated psychiatric diagnoses reified fear, misunderstanding, or prejudice toward people at society’s margins. At the time of the women’s suffrage movement in London, hysteria was leveled as a charge against women who broke social codes. A Mississippi psychiatrist in the 19th century proposed that slaves who attempted escape suffered from “drapetomania.” And until 1973, homosexuality was considered a disease of the mind rather than an accepted way of being in the United States—and was only fully removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1987.

In his book Hallucinations, the late Oliver Sacks details a controversial experiment in which eight participants showed up at hospitals throughout the U.S. in the early ’70s and complained only of “hearing voices.” All of them were immediately diagnosed with a psychotic disorder and hospitalized for two months, despite reporting no other medical symptoms, family history, or signs of personal distress. The single symptom, Sacks writes, was seen as cause enough.

People with psychiatric disorders do hear auditory hallucinations in relatively high numbers. According to Ann Shinn, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, 70 to 75 percent of people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and between one-third and one-tenth of people with bipolar disorder report hearing voices at some point in their life.

In the case of voice hearing, culture may also play a role in helping people cope. One study conducted by Luhrmann, the anthropologist, found that compared to their American counterparts, voice-hearing people diagnosed with schizophrenia in more collectivist cultures were more likely to perceive their voices as helpful and friendly, sometimes even resembling members of their friends and family. She adds that people who meet criteria for schizophrenia in India have better outcomes than their U.S. counterparts. She suspects this is because of “the negative salience” a diagnosis of schizophrenia holds in the U.S., as well as the greater rates of homelessness among people with schizophrenia in America.

The influence of social context was part of what motivated Corlett and Powers: The two were interested in whether the support of a social group can help them understand where disorder and difference intersect. When they set out to design their study, they needed an otherwise healthy group of people who hear voices on a regular basis, and whose experiences are accepted in their social group.

Next, they needed to find some psychics. Corlett told me he got the idea to reach out to a Connecticut-based organization for psychics after noticing the ads for psychics and tarot-card readers on his daily bus route. When the two interviewed those participants, they noticed something striking: The psychics described hearing hearing voices of similar volumes, frequencies, and timbres as the patients. Powers and Corlett took this to mean that the psychics were actually hearing something. The two also vetted their participants with the same techniques that forensic psychiatrists use to determine whether a person is pretending to experience psychiatric symptoms, giving them more reason to believe what they were told.

Compared to their diagnosed counterparts, more of the psychics described the voices as a force that “positively affects safety.” And all of the psychics attributed the voices to a “god or other spiritual being.” The patients, meanwhile, were more likely to consider their voices a torment caused by a faulty process in their brain. Many of them described the voices as “bothersome,” and also claimed that the first time they told anyone what they were hearing, they received a negative response.

Just like Jessica, the psychics were more likely to say that they received a positive reaction the first time they spoke about their experience. Jessica’s mother, Lena, told me she maintained a supportive, nonjudgmental attitude toward her daughter’s accounts, just as she did when her other daughter converted to Scientology. She waited for Jessica to bring them up and discussed them with an open mind. She says she was happy Jessica found the center, adding that her only concern was that Jessica’s experiences did sometimes seem to be distressing her and leaving her “drained.”

When Jessica tells me about the people and things she hears, she describes a range of experiences rather than one consistent phenomenon. Her most meaningful episodes of voice hearing are those like the visits she had from her grandmother and her brother-in-law’s father. But she also describes things like hearing the number a friend is thinking, and the persistent and vivid presence of a childhood imaginary friend (her mother told me Jessica demanded the table be set for him at every meal). To Jessica, these experiences differ in degree rather than kind from the ghosts of the dead who appear in front of her with persistent messages for her and for others. Though these might not all fit into the popular conception of a psychic, she understands them to exist along that same continuum.

In his book, Fernyhough describes a series of experiments meant to provide evidence for the connection between inner speech and hearing voices. In one, participants were played recordings of other people’s speech alongside recordings of their own, disguised and distorted, and told to mark whether the voice was their own or someone else’s. Those who experienced hallucinations were more likely to misidentify their own altered voices. A much older experiment found a kind of unconscious ventriloquism among a group of people with schizophrenia: When participants began to hear voices, researchers noted “an increase in tiny movements in the muscles associated with vocalization.” The voices they heard came, in some sense, from their own throats.

(Sarah Jung)

These experiments suggest that auditory hallucinations are the result of the mind failing to brand its actions as its own. Watching what the brain does during these hallucinations may clarify how that works, and what differences in the brain create these experiences.

“When your brain signals to generate a movement,” Shinn, the psychiatrist at Harvard, told me, “there is a parallel signal [known as an efference copy] that basically says ‘this is mine, it’s not coming from outside.’” This helps creates the sense of where a person is in space, that their hand belongs to them and it is moving from point A to B. In this way, the body labels its motions, and a possible parallel may exist for speech and thought. When people hear voices, they may be hearing ‘unmarked’ thoughts they do not recognize as their own.

Beyond that, Shinn told me, what is understood about the experiences of people who hear voices is limited. She sees Corlett and Powers’s study as part of a growing interest in the lives of “healthy voice hearers”—an interest spurred, in part, by the Hearing Voices Movement. A network of advocacy groups, the Hearing Voices Movement presents an alternative to the medical approach based on the belief that the content of a person’s voices can reflect the hearer’s mental and emotional state. The groups encourage an approach in which, with the help of a facilitator or counselor, hearers listen to, speak back to, and negotiate with the messages they hear in hopes of learning to cope.

The hearing-voices advocate Eleanor Longden has said she considers her voices “a source of insight into solvable emotional problems” rooted in trauma rather than “an aberrant symptom of schizophrenia.” As Longden tells it, that’s how her own experiences with voices were understood when she first sought treatment for anxiety. Her psychiatrist told her how limited her life would be by her voices, she says, and the voices grew more adversarial.

Many mental-health-care providers—Shinn, Corlett, and Powers included—seem receptive to the Hearing Voices Movement’s critiques, including an overemphasis on medication and an imperative for patient-focused treatment. Shinn credits the network with encouraging an approach that treats voice hearing as more than a checklist item adding up to a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and helping to reduce the stigma attached the experience of voice hearing.

But “there are certainly a lot of people for whom that will not be enough,” she says. For some patients, voices can be impossible to reason with, and the burden of other symptoms of psychosis—disordered thought, delusions, the inability to feel pleasure—can be too great. And Powers and Corlett expressed concerns that the Hearing Voices Network may promote a false divide: the idea that the voices’ perceived roots in trauma—rather than some accident of biology—means hearers should avoid medication. Biology and experience, they say, can’t be so neatly separated. (Longden has written that “many people find medication helpful,” and that the International Hearing Voice Network advocates for “informed choice.”)

While Powers and Corlett don’t believe the psychics and patients are experiencing the exact same thing, the two are cautiously hopeful that about a potential lesson in the greatest difference between those groups: the ability to control the voices they hear, which is something the psychics, including Jessica, showed in greater number than their counterparts. “When I’m in certain situations, I’m not open,” Jessica said. For instance, when she’s at work, the voices “can come in,” she says, they “can hang out, but I’m not gonna talk right now. ... I still have to live this human life.”

While learning control was a major part of Jessica’s experience, so was learning to summon the voices she heard. Before training as a medium, she heard voices sporadically, she says, and began to hear them every day only after intentionally practicing at the center. Powers and Corlett acknowledge this general trend in their study: The psychics they spoke tended to seek out and cultivate the voice-hearing experiences.

In her work, Luhrmann has come across groups of people who—unlike Jess—hear voices only as a result of practice. She gives the example of tulpamancers: people who create tulpas, which are believed to be other beings or personalities that co-exist along inside a person’s mind along with their own. “Somebody in that community estimated to me that one-fifth of the community had frequent voice hearing experiences with their tulpas, that their tulpas talked in a way that was auditory or quasi auditory,” Luhrmann said, a practice that she was told takes two hours a day to develop.“That’s connected to work. Psychosis is not connected to effort. It happens to people.”

Longden, the Hearing Voices Network advocate, describes how she later learned to extract metaphorical meaning from the sometimes disturbing messages the voices had for her. Once when the voices warned her not to leave the house, she thanked them for making her aware that she was feeling unsafe, and firmly reassured the voices—and by extension, herself—that they had nothing to fear.

Though Jessica has a different understanding of her voices’ source, it’s hard not to hear echoes of Longden’s account when she speaks about the sense of control she’s developed. Longden talks to the voices as aspects of herself that call for a response, while Jessica addresses them as visitors who need to learn the rules.

Instead of tying these experiences to a discrete diagnosis, Powers and Corlett imagine a new kind of frame for voice hearing. Drawing a parallel with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the two are interested in the extent to which the psychics they saw “might occupy the extreme end of a continuum” of people who hear voices. “Much of what we perceive and believe about the world is based on our expectations and our beliefs,” Corlett said. “We can see hallucinations as an exaggeration of that process, and the psychics as a sort of way-station on that continuum, and slowly but surely we can creep towards a better understanding of the clinical case and therefore better treatment. We haven’t had new treatment mechanisms in schizophrenia for many years now.”

The two freely admit the gaps between their ambitions and what they know so far. The study is preliminary, qualitative work—a follow-up brain-imaging study is in the works—and they did only interview a small number of people. Psychics, they say, are not so easy to come by.

Luhrmann speculates that most of the psychics are experiencing something separate from psychosis: “I think it’s also true that there are people who have psychosis who manage it such that they don’t fall ill and avoid this stigma and who really function effectively.” This difference aside, she says, “it may still be possible to learn from people who have more control over their voices. .... to think about how to teach people.”

At least as subtext, Powers and Corlett’s study might suggest a kind of chicken-or-egg question: Were the psychics insulated from suffering because they were socialized to accept and cope with their voices, and were the psychotic patients suffering because they weren’t? The better question is: to what extent were the two groups experiencing the same thing?

Shinn believes the fact that far fewer diagnosed participants were employed at the time of the study (25 percent, versus 83 percent of the psychics), and that the diagnosed participants experienced more symptoms of psychosis, suggests that they were suffering beyond the point of being useful comparisons. She thinks, rather, that a “constellation” of symptoms—not just auditory hallucinations or the stigma associated with auditory hallucinations—explain the difference in functionality. “The Powers study provides interesting results with potentially helpful clinical implications,” she added, “but they compare very different groups.”

Shinn, Powers, and Corlett are all adamant that people who hear voices and experience psychological distress shouldn’t turn away from conventional psychiatric treatment, and that a “symptom”—in this case, voice hearing—only calls for clinical attention if it is a cause of suffering. But for those who are distressed, the level of understanding of their experience and the treatments available to them are still lacking. As Powers notes, many of psychiatry’s more effective drug treatments were developed by accident. Shinn likens the current body of knowledge of schizophrenia to a group of people describing different parts of an elephant while looking through a high-power lens: There are robust bodies of work on the trunk, the tail, and the ear, but no clear picture of the entire animal.

Shinn’s all too aware of the ways in which the diagnosis can overshadow the patient. “There have been psychiatrists,” she says, “who will tell a patient: You have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and you need to modify or adjust your goals in life, forget grad school, forget that Wall Street career,” Shinn said. “And that absolutely can be compounding and impairing. I don’t disagree that that’s a problem.”

As Luhrmann put it: “Are those cultural judgments the cause of the illness? absolutely not. Do those cultural judgments make it worse? probably.”

Jessica doesn’t live near the center anymore. While she’d love to find fulltime work as a medium, she says, she’s focusing on her graduate studies to become a dietitian for now.

Still, she’s grateful for the community she found at the center, she says, and for the help they gave her. “I cannot imagine having no control over this,” she told me. “I don’t know, if I never went to the center, maybe I’d be diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/psychics-hearing-voices/531582/?utm_source=feed

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