#honestly the best i've got is to validate their emotions and suggest communication

[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is realizing that no matter how hard you try, you just lack the ability to see a lot of nuance in your friends’ romantic struggles beyond what logically makes sense… so you begin to space out whenever they enter lengthy conversations about dating struggles that you’ve heard over and over again, because the only response you can think of is “that sucks” or “you deserve better, move on”. But these are probably best left unsaid, so you say nothing at all and let the alloros handle it

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[lost-spoons]

Hi.

My younger sibling (15) was just diagnosed with VCD, after years of struggling with an inability to breathe we thought had to do with their chronic asthma. They're really struggling, because their speech pathologist has banned them from soft drinks, caffeine, yelling, and singing loudly, the last two hitting them especially hard because the only two things they really enjoy doing are singing loudly as a stress reliever and taekwondo (black belt!! instructor until they had to drop out because breathing issues), which requires near constant yelling. They're really upset, and I guess my question is just is there anything I can do to help? I feel really helpless and hate seeing them struggle like this. their mental health is already not the best, with their depression and anxiety disorder getting a lot worse since dropping taekwondo. I wanted to ask someone whose been dealing with VCD for longer.

Hey there.

First off, congratulations to them on receiving the diagnosis. It sucks, but knowing what's wrong is always helpful as it makes it easier to find the lists of do's and don't's so they don't have to find them firsthand at random moments. I'm honestly not sure how much help I can be. I've technically only had the diagnosis for a year or two, but have been dealing with it since 2018 or 2019.

I think it's great that you want to help, and I'm happy to help you help your sibling, but I have two rules when it comes to people helping those with medical issues:

1) Their medical issues aren't about you. I don't mean that rudely or negatively. Like I said, I think it's great you want to help, and I am in no way trying to belittle your feelings because your feelings are valid, but your sibling's medical issues are first and foremost about how they feel, not you. Some people like receiving help, and some like their independence/doing things themself. Sometimes helping is seen as hovering, and giving them space to be independent is seen as isolation or abandonment. I'll trust you to know which one your younger sibling is, and how best to handle that.

2) Don't assume anything. Communicate with each other. I have an older and younger sibling so I know that you both love and annoy each other, but adding medical issues to the dynamic can cause issues, so communicating with each other is the best advice I can give.

With that said, here's the information I got.

VCD is annoying as hell and can be very frustrating, especially as time goes on. You have to limit yourself because your body has given you a new, smaller limit of abilities, and it's hard to follow those. This will cause a spiral of some sort. Usually into anger or depression, unless they've got 'lucky' and are neurodivergent/mentally-ill in the way that they, don't process emotions properly. I'm 'lucky' so I don't feel those things, other than being horribly annoyed, but if your sibling isn't 'lucky', as it sounds like they aren't, help them out of the spiral. Introduce them to a new hobby. Maybe a joint hobby you can both do, maybe a hobby they can do on their own. See if you can get them a companion, a fish, a lizard, a cat, a dog, just something else to focus on. Distractions are great, but it's a balancing act. You can't ignore the issue, incorporate things they need as accommodations into your normal day, but don't point out the accommodations unless they ask or talk about them.

Being mindful is really the best thing you can do.

My suggestion for them is to look up ways to KT-tape to reduce strain on their voice box. Another two are blowing raspberries (buzzing your lips) while going up and down the vocal scale, and blowing bubbles in water while humming. The two exercises use physics against you to help strengthen the voice box, and could also be a temp replacement for singing.

I love the well-deserved, subtle bragging, but am unsure what to do about the no yelling issue that limits them from teaching. I also don't know anything about taekwondo, other than it is an activity that requires a lot of discipline, so would it be possible for the kids/students to accommodate your sibling by being quieter or pausing for instructions so your sibling doesn't have to yell to teach?

If they want someone to relate to, here you go:

I've had VCD for around 6 years, and only 1 or 2 of those years have been with the diagnosis. At first, they thought it was just my asthma acting up. The fact that I have the cough variant of asthma did not help at all. My breathing doctor overmedicated me and I ended up in the hospital for a weekend stay. I've done the breathing tests that make you lightheaded, make your chest hurt, and set off your asthma. I've done those tests repeatedly. I've had the camera slid down my nose to see my vocal cords multiple times, with the first doctor saying everything looks fine and sending me to neuro, which I've learned, is often the doctor before they send you to psychic.

I've also had to cut carbonated drinks out, almost completely. The only one I still drink is ginger beer, not the sweet sugary stuff, but the strong spicy real ginger ones in bottles that do look like beer. It's good for upset stomachs and nausea so I drink it every once in a while. I've switched to decaf coffee and have limited my caffeinated teas and chocolate consumption. Key word, limited, not cut out. I still eat and drink stuff I technically shouldn't, but I'm prepared to offer every once in a while. I also can't actually speak more than a handful of strained words a day, because my VCD causes my subconscious to use my false vocal cords instead of my true vocal cords, which is very bad in the long term, so there's definitely no singing or yelling for me either.

[littlemissmanga]

Hey Beth<33 For the fic writing asks 🦋, 💥 and 🧿?

Hi Ezzie!

Let's see ...

🦋what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?

Honestly, it's that my intentions get across - with the characters, emotions, and especially actions. More often than I'd like, I'll reread something I wrote - not even just fics, I'm talking emails, texts, replies, etc. - and realize it was a lot clearer in my head and when I wrote whatever it is, I've left out context or didn't word something very well. So I'm hypercritical of areas of ambiguity ... which leads me to overcompensate and bog down my prose with exposition and unnecessary detail. It's a catch-22 lol. That's why it's so reassuring when a comment hits on something that I was intentionally trying to convey without blatantly spelling it out. It's like "Yes! I did it! I did the communication!" lol

💥find your least kudos'd fic - say something wonderful about it.

So I know I gotta correct this but I don't have anything posted on my Ao3 account and my stuff on fanfic.net are from when I was in high school so I'm not going to drudge them back to life lol. But I guess a general statement I can say about those early fics without details is that they let me process a lot of the isolation and loneliness I felt in those days. I had my self-insert OC and she could be everything I aspired to but fell short of, and of course she was loved by every character I respected. I needed that feeling, even if I had to create it myself. I wasn't really aware that's what I was doing, but looking back it was clear self-soothing. So they are wonderful for giving me a place to take what I needed and not worry about the quality of my writing. I was able to get through some tough times because of them and I'll always remember that.

🧿what steps do you take to not take things personally if a fic doesn't do well, or if your writing/posting/sharing experience isn't going how you'd like it to?

Oh I like this one!! If I fic isn't getting the same interaction I expect for some reason - because we all expect some level of interaction even if we do write for ourselves - is to reread it. This way, I remind myself why I needed to tell this story, what it meant to me, and what I like about it. If I can't remember those things, then maybe it genuinely wasn't ready to be published and maybe I should work on it more. But usually I can remember and once I do, I'll reread again but with my "editor's" cap like I'm reading a submission for work - that way I can find objective reasons it's not everyone's cup of tea - tone, subject, diction, characterization, etc. - that are understandable, rather than the subjective feeling of just not being good enough so I can shrug and move on. If the disappointment is persistent, I get a snack and tell my support people IRL (who haven't and will never read my writing but know I do write) that I had a disappointing reaction and just wanted to vent that to them so they can validate me without giving more suggestions. My best friend sent over her middle school poetry once to make me feel better lol.

Sorry these got long, but you picked the in-depth questions, so in-depth answers you get!

[an-actual-real-live-eevee]

why do people keep recommending DBT? I've tried it and from what I've seen I understand why it works, but it... pretty much requires believing factually inaccurate stuff about how things work and essentially turning yourself into the kind of "both sides kinda have a point" (the "dialectic" part of it) that ended up giving us people like Trump in power. and mindfulness essentially just sounds like self-induced dissociation.

....okay, first thing: I’m not sure if you have the wrong idea of mindfulness or dissociation, but dissociation is basically being disconnected or divorced from the present/yourself/your feelings to some extent. 

mindfulness? mindfulness are exercises that are about being in the moment. trying to get yourself to be as present and focused on the current point in time as you possibly can be. a lot of the exercises are designed to make you focus on the stuff going on around you and what’s near you right at that moment, what’s real. that is like....about as far as you can get from being designed to induce dissociation. which isn’t to say it CAN’T do that, if mindfulness is triggering for you or something, but that is...very much NOT what mindfulness is or is meant to do.

it is used to treat anxiety and depression, but in my experience, that’s largely used for anxiety of “but what if (bad thing) happens” or similar--anxieties that are based on being divorced from the present moment, but make you panic all the same. the idea is that by focusing on the things that are real and around you instead of the anxiety, you’ll ruminate less and hopefully feel better.

anyway.

I genuinely cannot tell you why people recommend DBT other than “it’s largely successful for most people with BPD”. I know it works for some people, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone! unfortunately, people tend to recommend the same things over and over because they work for 98% of people, which means that becomes the go-to suggestion. however, from what you’re saying about it, I again feel like you have the wrong concept of what DBT is. it’s not about believing inaccuracies.

DBT has four basic principles it tries to teach: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. I’ve already covered mindfulness, so let me talk about the others, I guess?

distress tolerance isn’t about telling yourself that you’re not in distress or that the situation’s not necessarily bad or shitty--it’s about trying to maintain some amount of control in a ‘crisis situation’. distress tolerance is about learning to tolerate situations without flying off the handle, emotion-wise. its skill sets largely revolve around tolerating a distressing situation until it can be dealt with WITHOUT harming yourself or others with how you handle dealing with the distress, learning how to not be totally caught up in the moment or your feelings so you can take a step back and deal with things rationally, knowing that bad situations don’t last forever but also learning to accept the things you can’t change or at least can’t change immediately (however awful they are, which is then where things like ‘tolerating the situation until it can be dealt with’ comes in), and looking at situations logically so you can make a sensible decision rather than a purely emotion-based one.

and if you’re going to be one of those people who’s going to say “bad situations never change”, then I’m sorry, but I really have no words for you. I can’t force you to believe things will change--I just know that as long as you keep an eye out for opportunities to get things to change, things...can definitely get better. but that’s the only way I can see any of these being considered ‘inaccuracies for how things work’.

emotion regulation, now, is about basically increasing your resistance to having negative feelings (self-care. it’s taking care of yourself and trying to learn to manage things that might cause negative feelings if left unchecked, like a chronic pain disorder, which left unmanaged can cause things like depression, irritability, etc.), and about understanding and acknowledging your emotions in a non-judgmental fashion, and then trying to handle them in a positive way.

like, say you’re depressed. the first step would be accepting you are depressed--putting a label to the feeling and accepting it’s real and something you have to deal with feeling right now. anything like “I’m weak or I suck or I’m a bad person for being depressed” are judgments that are unfair and untrue, and emotion regulation tells you to stay away from those as best you can, as well as statements like “I have no reason to be depressed”, which you can’t actually know. (sometimes depression is situational. sometimes it’s neurological. both of these are valid reasons to be depressed. and the neurological can cause you to feel depressed in basically ANY situation. so you probably do have a reason to be depressed. saying you don’t is a judgment and also likely untrue.)

the second step would be trying to do things that might help the depressed feeling. will these always work? no. but ‘opposite action’ and similar do, to some extent, work. watching a funny video when you feel like being dead can actually help. it’s not going to cure you, it’s not going to fix the feelings, but it can make things more tolerable, and that’s the point.

finally, interpersonal effectiveness. this one’s just about being...better at communicating with people. it’s about balancing wants versus needs in conversations with others, learning how to better maintain relationships with others (and when it might be time to STOP maintaining a relationship if it’s taking too much out of you or is unhealthy), gaining desired objectives in conversations, and maintaining self-respect in exchanges--don’t offer apologies for things that aren’t your fault, don’t do anything you know you’ll regret later, stuff like that. this one is the one I’ve found the most use of, personally, as it’s about communicating in an effective, respectful (to yourself and the other person), and non-emotionally-charged way, which are all things I’ve struggled with. and honestly continue to struggle with somewhat, but I’ve gotten better.

please keep in mind, this therapy was designed for BPD. a lot of us struggle with dealing with distressing situations to the point where “we need to talk” might cause anxiety that leads us to self-destruct, or we get depressed one day and suddenly everything is awful and we try to kill ourselves and focus only on how bad this is right now and how it’s clearly going to be bad forever. a lot of us also struggle with communicating in a way that doesn’t hurt us or others.

DBT focuses a lot, yes, on ‘being in the middle’, being moderate, but that’s because BPD is largely about being black-and-white, which is...just as inaccurate as ‘all sides have a point’ can be sometimes. but you are also not really meant to apply DBT...to politics. ‘all bad situations don’t last forever’ doesn’t really mean that if people are trying to bring conversion therapy back, you should sit on your laurels and try to ‘accept how it is’. DBT is built purely for emotion and distress handling. it’s also not designed for EXTREME situations--it’s designed to try and help people who tend to take a situation that’s not that bad and blow it up into the worst thing ever to take it down a notch from what is basically extremist thinking about how a situation is or will go. if a situation is genuinely terrible, you shouldn’t try and tolerate it. if you’re being abused, that’s not a time to apply DBT principles. but if you broke your foot? yeah, that’s a time to try and tolerate the situation and just remember it will pass in time. and that’s what DBT is designed for.

basically, like most therapies, it is not and never will be applicable across the board in everything. it’s made for dealing with BPD situations in an overall average kind of life--like, most people get stuck in traffic. lots of people break bones or spill sugar. it’s just, with BPD, these things can also end up seeming like the worst thing ever. DBT is designed to try and teach us to handle everyday situations in a more....emotionally moderated and rational fashion. but that’s it. that’s all it’s made for.

again, it really isn’t for everyone. and as someone who didn’t get a whole lot out of traditional DBT outside of the interpersonal part, I really wish that would stop being everyone’s first recommendation and seemingly the only thing people want to do. but your assessment of it is....incorrect, and suggests to me you are either expecting it to be applicable across the board (which almost nothing is) or that you are interpreting it incorrectly/have been exposed to something that wasn’t actually good DBT. which isn’t to say that it’s going to be effective for you. it might be totally useless! but you have the wrong idea.

....the only thing I can think of that could possibly seem “based in inaccuracy” besides ‘things can get better’ is the whole ‘positive self-talk’ thing. like “you’re great” when you feel like you suck, or “you got this” when you feel like everything is falling apart. and honestly, it is kind of difficult to determine the factual accuracy of ‘you’re great’, so yeah, it could be inaccurate, but negative self-talk falls into much the same thing. they’re judgments. opinions. they’re not facts. both are inaccurate. so even if it feels false, sometimes the thing therapists try to do is teach you to combat your own dubious mental judgments with the reverse of those judgments. but if that doesn’t work for you, then just try another thing from the skill you’re learning--not every one involves ‘positive self-talk’ or dealing in things that might not be accurate statements.

that’s all I can really say here.

....oh, no, wait, one more thing. if you really think “both sides have a point” is what got Trump in power, that’s not really it. what got Trump in power was reactionary thinking and talking points. he said what people wanted to hear. if you need proof, just look at the fact that there are gay people who supported Trump when his pick for vice president was a person who supports conversion therapy. Trump’s great at eliciting emotional responses from people and he kind of just ran with that, saying what would get the most intense response from whoever he was speaking to. and people didn’t look at things logically, they responded emotionally, and believed what he was saying. that, and a lot of Republicans who were leaning more radical than moderate also supported him, regardless of if they agreed with him right out the gate or not.

that’s really how Trump got into power--playing on people’s emotions and saying things that seemed in support of more radical conservative ideas. like, people who try and say “both sides have a point” about things where the ‘opinion’ in question threatens lives and/or freedom are totally not helping the situation, but most of the people I know who like to try and play “devil’s advocate” or be moderate in politics also did not support or vote for Trump, because he played the radical side.

...and also, DBT is never going to tell you that you have to listen to someone who’s telling you that a minority group you’re part of, or a minority group in general, doesn’t deserve things like freedom or rights. if a person tries to incorporate that into DBT, they’re doing it wrong, leave immediately.

now that’s all.