#i'm also struggling to try to define like... i'm disabled. i'm not who these conversations are about

[iatrophilosophos]

"Everyone" is not "worse at driving now" because of long covid. Yall.

Long covid is real, it is fucking people up, it seems relatively common, and that is precisely why everyone needs to stop attributing everything under the sun to it and actually adopt a sense of interrogative vigor*, especially among people who are 20-30 and have, lbr, SO MANY reasons to be miserable and ill including:

Shitty moldy apartment buildings & similar environmental hazards of slum&overcrowded housing

Dietary deficiencies/cheap mass-produced and fast food (no judgement! Eat what you can get down! But not eating vegetables WILL make you sick and crazy)

Onset of chronic illnesses folks would've gotten anyway &/ may be caused by factors like air & water pollution esp wrt environmental racism

Getting older 🤷 and conversely, being a young adult struggling to take care of oneself in a world that doesn't prioritize teaching you those skills & is often actively hostile towards using them

*by interrogative vigor i mean looking for information about why something ISNT covid or isn't long covid: lots of ppl are doing gr8 keeping up on the releases around covid! But yknow, when ur hammered you wanna nail everyone. Everything deserves a good faith effort to try on several explanations, you will learn a lot more even if it turns out to be your first thought.

I'm not saying any of this to try to downplay or deny anyone's suffering and im not interested in arguing with specific individuals about whether or not they personally have long covid (idk you! Idk ur history! Not for me to say! Lots of people definitely do!). I also understand that when doctors say things like the above^ it can feel really shitty and be really unhelpful. No one wants to feel like they're miserable and dying for months, finally get in a clinic visit, and be told "idk clean ur apartment, thatll be $400. Come back in six months to pay me another $400 when it doesn't work". That sucks!

What i can say is that whether or not any given individual has long covid, you almost definitely have at least one(1) other problem. this...really ain't my first rodeo. I have been watching especially younger adults who are breaking down & being disabled by the weight of The Everything get a pathology diagnosis, apply it as the root cause of most of their problems, proselytize how everyone, actually, probably has this pathology, and watch it catch on as the definitions get vaguer and the symptoms pool gets bigger. It almost always happens with diagnoses of exclusion & diagnoses that are very subjective: ADHD, autism, crohn's disease, hEDS...

Pathologies are most useful when they define a problem in a way it can be solved. I think in a lot of spaces, especially online, they can be leaned on as a source of validation or emotional support: it's the explanation that makes your misery make sense and justifies it to others. I would suggest that, as disability activists have been saying for decades: we do not have to justify our misery. We don't need an excuse to feel. We don't need an excuse to need help.

What we do need is a) a political critique of the state of disability that doesn't let the rest of the everything off the hook in favor of yelling about individual actions, and b) a personal and community scale understanding of misery that is useful to remediating misery AND!!! GATHERING BETTER DATA about the things that are making people miserable so we can fucking! Work on it!

One of the main things I do like, with my life tbh, is help disabled people understand their health and be less miserable, and when i work with clients in a more professional setting or just chat with friends, we don't start with a pathology: we start with a map. We look at housing, we look at food access, we look at environmental conditions, all in really granular detail, because everyone has so! Many! Problems! And we start work on solving like, two of them. How are we gonna beat the mold in your home back? How are we gonna get more food into you? & this starts to clarify things. One, regardless of what's wrong with people, these kinds of steps almost unilaterally help ease the burden p immediately, and two, fixing as much junk-data misery as we can gives us a WAY better understanding of what's going on and like, lets my clients have more productive relationships with their doctors because they can work up a smaller and more detailed list of complaints to investigate (& that are more within the realm of what those docs are actually trained to handle, most medical professionals just do not have skills for helping ppl with shit life syndrome.)

Caring about long covid as a mass disabling event (which i do, very much so!) should be pushing us to define DOWN the criteria for long covid by building a deep & rich understanding of the multiple other sources of misery and disability and using real tactics to help ourselves&eachother live with that misery. This in turn lets us build more concrete models of the things that are not currently well defined and thus strategize to figure out how to deal with those; rather than lumping everything into the nonspecific symptoms disease de jour and continuing to rot six deep in apartments where everyone's literally allergic to the fucking walls.

[acesw]

Reverse: 1999 : Neurodivergent Characters

I want to put my official disclaimer here that I'm not diagnosed with any sort of condition. I've taken time to do my research and take insights from my friends who are indeed diagnosed or well-versed in these subjects. So, I will try to be respectful as much as possible.

This is essentially a part 2 of the disabled characters series (which I highly encourage reading first!), but this will mainly focus on Reverse: 1999's characters who are implied to be neurodivergent. The term applies to a variety of conditions, and I found that the parallels mainly draw to autism. Because of this, over half the characters on this list fall under it.

I found that it is easier put out those characters first, and then place down the rest of the neurodivergent characters afterwards. Additionally, this is mainly focused on finding implications, but these are partially headcanons too. And also I apologize for the heavy word vomit that you'll have to endure. Now, lets begin.

Autism

37, Horropedia - The reason why I put 37 and Horropedia on the same line here is because they're incredibly similar to each other. Both of them are characters that embody one of the main stereotypes about autism: Incredibly intelligent characters who fixate on specific subjects. 37's focus is on mathematics, while Horropedia's is the horror genre.

They lace their speech with associations to their topic of interest, and will infodump about it unprompted. The two of them also struggle to pick up social cues, nor can tell if the information they're sharing is unsolicited because the information is normal to themselves. However, the difference between them in this is that Horropedia is more carefree about it, whilst 37 is more self-aware about the fact that she can't come to a mutual understanding with others.

Even outside of this their personalities are quite similar, arrogant yet kind and understanding.

Balloon Party - I explained this previously, but the main reasoning behind placing BP here is that her way of speech is unconventional. Her way of speech is slightly slow and having abnormal pauses, and it tends to be perceived as monotone and having a lack of control.

Like 37 and Horropedia, Balloon Party also tends to utilize her topic of interest (balloons and dreams) as a means of conveying her thoughts through word association and echolalia. She also struggles to catch on to social cues and (over?)compensates by association. (e.g. her praise voiceline describes Vertin being a great "party partner" and the "best kid and adult" despite not being able to exactly define the differences of a kid and adult.)

ADHD

Regulus - With Regulus, it's more of a headcanon than it is backed by evidence, but the main points that can be found for her is her restlessness and her impulsivity. They're common stereotypes in ADHD, and thus they aren't exactly conclusive. But I also found that Regulus also tends to bring her interests to light when navigating through conversations, and this with the reasons mentioned above makes me personally believe that Regulus not just strictly have ADHD, but also generally neurodivergent too.

Marcus - At first I believed that Marcus was autistic based on how she retreats back to reading as a means to calm herself, but the more I learn about her the more I believe that Marcus rather has the inattentive type of ADHD.

Firstly, Marcus heavily relies on having someone to guide them or support her, as she tends to struggle making decisions on her own. And in attempting to, she tends to overthink and get absorbed into it until something or someone snaps her out of her train of thought.

She also tends to take rejection very deeply, as rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD) is a common but not definitive part of ADHD. She would resort to immediately coming up with ways to resolve the sources of her being rejected.

Lastly, she also has her impulses. This shows more prominently when she's upset or makes a significant decision. Its mainly shown when she decides to leave the Flannan Isles to the Foundation, to when she tries to fight Heinrich herself when she's enraged, and when reaching out to Kakania upon realizing a solution to her mission.

Eagle (1.9 Spoilers!) - Here, Eagle also seems to have the inattentive type as well, but a more established indicator of her likely having ADHD is that in her anecdote, Eagle was classified as having some sort of attention-deficit.

And throughout the anecdote, Eagle continues acting on her own impulses such as jumping to try to find the missing boy scout, and even helping X if it meant that it progressed her mission. She also doesn't take her rejections from the boy scouts well, and continued to try to join them until she was invited to join the Lorentz.

While these alone aren't conclusive either, they still give me enough reason to believe that Eagle could be implied to be neurodivergent too.

Others

Mesmer Jr. (OCD) - I've already described it in the previous post too, but I will condense it down here. As a result of her traumatic experiences in her line of work, Mesmer Jr. has anxiety, has routines that she strictly follows, and tends to do drastic actions (i.e. self harm) when triggered from stressing situations like routines being disrupted.

Pickles - While I'm not exactly sure if there is any evidence about Pickles being neurodivergent at all, @abyss-idiot pointed out that he was nicknamed as an "indigo pup." While this might be related to his arcane skill, the nickname is also intriguing because its like the term "indigo children."

"Indigo children" are classified as those who are incredibly intelligent and possess special talents or powers according to the New Age concept. However, this classification is closely associated with neurodivergence due to the similar descriptions.

Vertin, AliEn T (AuDHD) - Mentioning Vertin and AliEn T in the same line seem to be incredibly out of place. But from the insights of my friend Bee, it made me realize that the two of them have some commonly shared traits. This will be the longest one so buckle up.

For one, both of them feel their emotions more greatly than others, and the main difference being how it's translated into external reaction. We have AliEn T being noted to be very emotional, while Vertin is a lot more stoic but will be direct with how she feels in some cases like stress.

Another point is that both of them have executive dysfunction, where AliEn T cannot do "simple" tasks and struggles with them. Meanwhile this was more prominent on Vertin as a child where she had difficulty focusing in school and doing more mundane tasks. I also think that Vertin still struggles with this in the present, but has a support system that allows her to work more efficiently.

They also have certain interests that give them an emotional anchor. Where AliEn T's is the general subject of the earth and human society, while Vertin is more focused on wildlife. (i.e. frogs)

Here is where their common points diverge, and I want to talk about both of them separately here.

Starting with Vertin, most of the "obvious" signs are present in her childhood, where she is mainly restless and blunt towards most situations, and has gotten punished often for both of these things. While currently, her main indicators are her tactile tendencies (i.e. tends to touch others out of curiosity) and being absorbed into her thoughts quite often.

On the other hand, we're not entirely sure about how AliEn T's home society is structured, but it can be argued that his and our societies tend to parallel each other. For example, AliEn T is seen as a bit eccentric to his kind like the regional manager and co-workers because of him being emotionally prone and being very fixated on the Earth. (which his society collectively avoids) A lot of his points here imply that in his home society, there is a case where they have their equivalent of some of the struggles found in the neurodivergent experience.

End Notes and Credits

I did say that I would give credit where its due, so this portion is dedicated to that. I want to give thanks to Lupjo, Jager, Bee, and Send Help, and Abyss for their insights and research on this topic. (Especially Lupjo and Jager for providing help with phrasing this entire word vomit still)

Like I've said previously, not everything here is conclusive and these can be speculation or some sort of interpretation. However, every experience is different, and I think these characters here openly show that. Welcome to the bottom of this post, feel free to add your own insights, corrections, and even your own headcanons here. Thanks for reading.

[nat20composure]

Man ok sorry I am constantly being critical on here but I keep thinking about how the shift from body positivity to neutrality happened and what sort of people spear headed it and getting really frustrated so I'm just posting it here:

I genuinely understand that a lot of people want to decenter the value of beauty from their lives because of the superficial nature of beauty and the Genuine Earth Shattering despair that caring about beauty can bring but like? One thing I have noticed is that a LOT of the people who are speaking in favor of body neutrality over body positivity are people who....are relatively close to or in proximity to the beauty standard?

And don't get me wrong, things like body dysmorphia and the Beauty Standard TM can hurt all sorts of people- It's kind of the point of them. The fact that nobody will ever be good enough for the standard is what keeps people consuming things and products that will bring them "closer" to it. But it does not escape me that a lot of the people who are pushing for body neutrality are also people that don't necessarily benefit from trying to broaden what we define as beautiful? Like....even if you don't FEEL beautiful, if you were a thin conventionally attractive white person, your proximity to the conventional beauty standard can leave you feeling like there is no need or benefit to actually challenging these beauty standards.

To clarify the perspective I am approaching this conversation from: I am a POC who is pretty "ambiguously brown". I benefit from colorism in the sense that I am of a lighter-medium tone of skin. And I have experienced some pretty drastic weight fluctuations since I was a child. I struggle pretty badly with body dysmorphia, and so I have no idea whether or not I am ugly or beautiful or whatever, but I have been bullied and complimented on my appearance on and off since childhood as well. For me personally the body positivity movement has been the Most helpful because it's actually forced me to confront and break down the preferences I was taught to have, whereas with body neutrality it was REALLY easy to slip into just. Passively allowing ableist, racist, and classist mindsets to wear me down.

I think it's also really important to recognize that allowing yourself to continue to passively hate YOURSELF for these things almost always always always leads to you inadvertently looking down on others for these same things. And these general beauty standards DEFINITELY inform how society as a whole treats people who do not meet the current ones.... When you're not being bullied because people think you are ugly, of course you do not feel any urgency about trying to fight the idea that you are.

I personally really appreciated the body positivity movement because of the way that it was proactively challenging those beauty standards to point out that one) our perception of beauty is rooted in a lot of racist and classist standards and two) that because beauty is subjective, it inherently applies to all of us?

I just feel like body positivity was doing a lot more to actually work on rewiring ones brain to confront the biases that they have and to garner more of a proactive appreciation for all kinds of bodies...Whereas with body neutrality, it can sometimes feel like it is? A bit of an excuse to never put in that work to acknowledge that fat people, or people with big noses, or people with acne, or people with darker skin, are also beautiful? It's really frustrating with me because I feel like it allows a passive coasting by of these mindsets that we were all raised with, with the argument that these are mindsets we were all raised with?

I think additionally I am also just a bit frustrated with the idea that there is a "better" standard to use when judging the value of one's body. I understand the mindset of prioritizing it's function over it's appearance....Also as a disabled person that does not make me feel even a little bit better or appreciatiative about/for my body.

I think personally what I wish the mindset was when it came to bodies was more like this:

-We acknowledged that the value of our bodies is priceless regardless of how functional or beautiful we are.

-We still worked towards unpacking our conceptions of what is and isn't beautiful: Challenged these harmful standards and allowed room for personal growth in the way that we view ourselves and other people.

-Prioritized personhood over both form and function while still allowing room and grace for the human parts of us that want to feel beautiful or want to not think about beauty at all.....

Just. Blah I have a lot of feelings and opinions about it but my main points are like) consider how your refusal to endure the discomfort of challenging your preferences affects and informs your treatment of other people and)

[thespacesay]

one thing I feel like people miss in the discussions around the ridiculously low pay rates allowed for certain groups of disabled individuals is that in order to effectively change that, we first need to tackle funding for programs that support the types of disabled individuals who receive these pays. while i'm speaking to my personal connections to this, those low pay rates typically are social programs. these programs create jobs that are applied for via social workers assigned to disabled individuals by the state, and not through job applications. they are notoriously underfunded, primarily run by companies or groups who want to be seen as progressive, and typically are shut down rather than given increased funding.

for example: a recent change in a local pay rate for disabled individuals made it so my downs syndrome brother got like... $7 every two weeks (low hours + low pay) instead of $3. cool! for people who need more hours and the money it gives them, that sounds great!

but the thing is, at least for all the programs I know of, these programs are typically designed with people like my brother as the primary goal: adult disabled indiviuals for whom the goal of work is not to have a job, not to make money, but to provide a consistent socialization system. my brother is financially supported by our family, and he's disabled in ways where financial wellbeing is beyond his cognitive abilities. almost no money is put into the programs beyond paying a program manager, and it's generally used as a public "look at us, being so nice to provide for disabled adults!" thing. when my brother's pay went up due to legal changes... the company decided to simply end the program rather than invest in paying more.

again, i'm fully for raising their wages. I think the absolutely pitiful amount of money they're paid for legitimate work is terrible, and i'm well aware that my brother works with others who need what finances they can get through these jobs. but there's more to this than just wages. there's campaigning for better social programs so that there's something for them to fall back on. there's looking into how your local programs for disabled individuals are run, and ensuring they have enough money and equipement to provide a safe working environment for their workers. there's understanding who is paying these wages, what their goals are, and holding them accountable to helping disabled people instead of using people like my brother on an endless stream of advertisements to show how socially progressive they are.

and i'm really not joking about those ads. god, I really, really wish I was. my brother is visibly disabled, adores public attention, and very friendly. he's in like... 3 programs and featured in newsletters or ads probably 3-5 times a year. those programs have also let him wander out the door and not noticed for over an hour, fired program managers for manufactured reasons after they request funding for small but meaningful changes, and... been the local police. guess which group is the only one that never shuts down from a lack of funding?

I honestly can't tell you how best to help disabled people in your area. my needs as a disabled person are vastly different than either of my brothers, and all of us have terrible problems with employment not providing for us in vastly different ways. but if you're just tacking on "disabled people deserve better wages" to a broader "people deserve a living wage" with no nuance, you have got to understand that you can be actively harming the very people you want to support.

[accessibleaesthetics]

Hi! I love your blog! If it's okay, I'd like to request a bit of advice.

I have a physical disability (born legally blind due to albinism). I had spent a lot of time "masking" my blindness since I was 8 or so. I stopped using my cane in public, only used a screen reader when I had  earbuds, read braille in private, etc. I suppose in retrospect it was me trying to play into respectability politics, so I would stop getting the "how many fingers?" routine. It feels even more reinforced that the field I'm studying is considered too dangerous for someone with low vision.

As an adult, I want to let go of that shame and integrate properly with this incredible community. Yet, I feel like a fraud just by interacting. I know that my disability affects me in a multitude of ways that makes me qualified to be here, but I struggle to shake the feeling that others have it worse than me. I am privileged enough to be able to mask myself at all. Short version is: how do I know that I'm enough to be here? If I am enough, how can I get over this imposter syndrome and support my fellow disabled people?

Thank you for reading this, regardless of if you respond or not. Sincerely, I hope you have a good day! :D

First off, I invite any of my followers to comment or reblog this with their own input, especially those who are blind or low vision, since I am not. But I will do my best to answer based on what I know and believe, and what has helped me with my own imposter syndrome.

While it is obviously a privilege to be able to pass as abled, anyone with an invisible disability will tell you that it is sometimes as much a curse as it is a blessing. I'd be willing to bet you could think of some examples from your life that exemplify that too.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that not being able to mask is also a privilege in some contexts. Being so visibly disabled that society no longer expects you to pretend like you are abled is a privilege, and not one that you enjoy, by the sound of it.

And that's the thing about privilege; too often, I think it's easy to get caught up in conversations about privileged groups and start to think that those are groups of people: the privileged and the not privileged. But it doesn't work like that. Literally every person on the planet is part of at least one privileged group and not part of at least one other privileged group.

You asked if you were enough to be "here," but where is "here"? I think defining that might help you zero in on exactly what arguments you are compiling against yourself, and more easily allow you to counter them.

For example, is "here" the disabled community? If so, I think it would be useful to remind yourself that everyone is part of some privileged groups and not part of others. Do others have it worse than you in some ways? Absolutely. But they might also have advantages that you do not enjoy. At the end of the day, the community isn't so much a place you need to earn a spot in as it is a collaborative effort to pool resources and find solace in the fact that we are not alone in our struggles.

[hiiragi7]

(**Note: This post is about CDDs and discussions of CDDs being trauma-based, not about origins or any relations between origins and CDD development, for clarification. This post also does not address any nuances of possibilities of CDDs which are genuinely not trauma-based, and centers the discussion around trauma-based CDDs, denial, trauma, etc.. Discussing any hypotheticals surrounding non-trauma-based CDDs is beyond the scope of this post and not the focus of what I am wanting to say here.)

So, I'm just chewing on a half-formed thought here, but... I wonder how many more conversations within syscourse and plural spaces would be more productive if we shifted our language in some conversations to "dissociation is often caused by struggles or suffering" rather than "dissociation is caused by trauma"?

Not because it's not traumatic, but because people get so... caught up on "What I went through wasn't trauma" that it feels like many discussions we have go nowhere.

This may seem like a very minor wording change, and you may argue they're synonyms in most if not all cases, but I want to remind people that... to most people, the word "trauma" is heavy, it takes time to accept, it's a big word to process, much less self-identify your experiences as being. Trauma is something which completely shifts your entire view of your life and your experiences. Trauma is life-changing.

Struggles or suffering may seem gentler as a word to some. It is an emotional state, it seems temporary.

Maybe some genuinely just do not view what happened to them as traumatic, maybe it's a symptom of the heavy denial aspect of CDDs, maybe it's a lack of awareness of what trauma is, either way we have people claiming heavy dissociative disorders without trauma, yet claim other life stressors as the cause - Things that they may not define as traumatic but another person absolutely would.

I think for a lot of people that... "trauma" is a very scary, big, heavy word with a lot of weight. And things that are not commonly discussed as traumatic may lead someone to believe their experiences were "normal" or "not bad enough to be trauma", even when suffering badly emotionally or mentally.

Also, within media and most social spaces most discussions of trauma and common trauma responses revolve around heavy things like war and trafficking and flashbacks and nightmares and addiction, it can be hard to know what trauma is and what a trauma response is for someone who is not familiar.

I've seen many people claim reasons that are either not as often spoken about in the context of trauma or those which have heavy stigma around them, such as chronic pain, lifelong medical issues, getting bullied at school, having neglectful parents, struggling academically, being socially isolated, growing up disabled, etc. as reasons they have a CDD without trauma.

These are all things I would personally consider traumatic, but I've had people argue with me about how it's not.

Trauma as a word also has a heavy and nearly inseperable association with abuse (even though not all trauma comes from abuse) which also brings up many, many complex feelings - Placing blame on an abuser for your suffering is not easy, not when it's someone who claimed to try to help you or love you or who told you it was love and that they were trying their best and only human. Especially not with those whose abuse is inconsistent or far in the past.

Most people cannot seem to view abusers and "good people" as being capable of being part of the same group. Because of this, people will go "well my mother is a good person, so she could not have abused me".

I believe with time many people will come to the conclusion on their own that it was traumatic, especially when given space and patience to process it as a traumatic experience, education on what trauma is, resources, and preferably professional help where possible, but I'm not going to force the trauma label onto them. That's their business and thing to figure out, not mine.

I think a lot of ways we discuss CDDs needs to be multi-approach and much more gentle.

Telling someone "DID only happens from severe childhood trauma, so if you have DID you have severe childhood trauma and need to accept that" will not often make someone come out of denial - If you have a person who does not even accept they have an ounce of trauma at all, how will they react to hearing they must have *severe* trauma, especially severe, often repeated, lifelong or multi-decade-spanning childhood trauma, likely beginning before they even reached their 10th birthday?

In my experience, often not well. It just leads to heavier denial, spiralling, worsening of symptoms, and in some people uncovering things they were not prepared for such as traumatic memories.

You cannot get someone to accept they have been traumatized before they accept they have been harmed, and you cannot get someone to accept they have been harmed before they accept their life was not all sunshine and rainbows. You cannot just skip steps like that without massive consequences. It is counterproductive and hurts people.

I really don't enjoy this culture within syscourse we have of someone with a CDD experiencing some of the most common symptoms of CDDs, such as heavy denial, amnesia, numbness to pain, not recognizing their own emotional reactions to their trauma, distancing from the trauma, etc. and viewing that as spreading misinformation rather than viewing this as a common struggle with CDDs. These people are not trying to be malicious, these people are having symptoms.

It may be maladaptive or unhealthy, but it is not an attempt to cause genuine harm.

The goal for them is not purposefully spreading misinformation, it is an attempt to make sense of themselves, their symptoms, their struggles, and their identity while also actively fighting off CDD symptoms such as amnesia and denial. That ends up with a person who may recognize some of the symptoms of a CDD within themselves but does not see the trauma or the harm done that caused it.

This is a disorder presentation, not a smear campaign against DID.

I personally find it much more helpful and honestly fulfilling to provide people with information on what trauma is rather than just saying they have it without explaining what trauma is, because I promise you when most people hear "trauma", especially "severe trauma", they are thinking rape, being beaten, warzones, being starved for days on end, kidnapping, trafficking, and things described in horrific crime cases.

They do not know that things such as feeling chronically unloved by your parents, failing in school, having an undiagnosed learning disorder throughout your childhood, being in chronic pain, being unable to connect with others socially or make friends, being forced into things you did not want to do which caused you stress or upset repeatedly (such as being forced to hug family members or the loss of autonomy many children may feel when being forced to go to events which may be incredibly stressful for them such as church) can also be incredibly damaging, because trauma is a response, not an event.

People also seem to misunderstand that trauma is not about your emotional reaction in the moment. People will say "I felt happy during it, and so I could not have been traumatized and feel weird calling what happened to me grooming", or "I felt numb or was able to laugh it off, so their comments or screaming did not hurt me, and so I am not traumatized by it".

People may recognize the actions taken during abuse as being wrong, but because they had an emotional reaction that was not complete panic and distress, they will not see the true extent of the damage done and will not see it as traumatic. This, ironically, is often a trauma response, if not even a trained response.

When we describe "severe trauma", it is not solely about the events or actions that happened to you, it's an extremely complex experience with a countless number of factors to consider. What may be highly traumatic to one person may not be to another.

Access to social and environmental supports during and after the trauma, ability to escape the situation, ability to regulate, your own natural reactions to the world around you, what mindsets you already had about the world and opinions about situations similar to the trauma before it happened, to give just a small handful of important factors to consider. It's not just about what happened but everything surrounding it too.

If you struggle seeing people talk about having a non-trauma-based CDD, consider just... blocking them instead of trying to bash it into them that they must have trauma, because it does not help.

If they are traumatized, there is a reason that denial is there and the reason may not be safe to peel back without a professional or at least a close friend to work through it with, and it absolutely isn't safe to do in a discourse setting with internet strangers.

It can be frustrating to watch someone describe what is obvious abuse or trauma in your mind while also watching them claim it was not abuse or trauma, but you will not get them to accept it by getting into an argument with them on the internet. If you don't know what you're doing, you can seriously fuck someone up by trying to strip those trauma responses away before they are ready and force them to accept trauma in an online discourse debate.

Vent about it in private, block them, create positive resources and information on CDDs and trauma responses which do not focus on forced sudden trauma acceptance, but don't go after others. Being pro-healing does not mean forcing someone to accept things they are clearly not ready for during a tumblr argument.

[olderthannetfic]

Partner with learned helplessness anon here!

Firstly, thank you, profusely.

Secondly, I think you hit on it in a couple places. They have an abusive parent with no boundaries who frequently berates and shames them when they try to set some. I'm sure it's that they don't feel empowered to seek information on their own because they've never had to; it gets dumped in their lap even when they're repeatedly saying they don't want it to be.

It's primarily asking me to explain easy, very common vocabulary with very simple definitions that they understand just fine when I link them. I had kind of hoped answering their questions by sending them wikipedia links might help them realize that the answers are easily found on wikipedia...but no dice.

There's definitely an element of anxiety, too. They ask for reassurance on things I think it would actually help them to seek out information about on their own, because their anxiety stems from lack of experience with the subject and learning about it would give them a sense of control and provide fact-based counters for their spirals. I understand wanting to hear it from your partner, but now that I chew on it, I think I'm enabling them a little on that front.

Just, for the record, we're long-distance and I have never, ever acted on any of my unkind impulses and snarked at them or snapped at them—the most I've done is silently step away from my computer for a few minutes. I know they're not doing it out of spite or to hurt me or from lack of intelligence. I also think they honestly don't realize it would take less time for them to look it up on their own than to wait for me to look it up for them. I can't hold my own avoidance against them; they have no idea I feel this way and it would be so unfair to put the blame on them because I struggle to assert myself.

(fwiw, there's no gendered aspect to this and we both have learning disabilities. It might be that they understand me more easily, but...I'm literally linking search results here, not actually changing the explanation in any way.)

I think...it's a lot of pressure. What if I got hit by a bus tomorrow and they don't know how to look things up on wikipedia? There's also that it interrupts conversational flow and I often feel like I can't just...talk about my day without having to stop and explain my word choices every three seconds. Especially when the thing that's easy to look up is the least important part of the story.

It's so petty and that's what bothers me. I feel like I shouldn't be irritated every time I have to divert a conversation to define vocabulary, but I do.

Thank you again. Even in a broad-strokes sense, I needed the gentle nudge that pretending I'm not silently seething doesn't actually stop me from silently seething, and the seething is the issue, not its volume.

--

I'm calling it now: this entire thing is a bad coping strategy for anxiety.

You need to essentially stage an intervention. They're not going to like it. No recipient of an intervention does.

But even if you were less annoyed, constant anxiety blasts at a friend or partner are not cool. That's not a strategy that overall manages the condition or leads to improvements over time. Asking for some reassurance is okay.

(LOL. I am legendarily allergic to being asked for reassurance about anxiety. One ping and I'm gone.)

But "some" is not what is going on now. Egregious levels are what is going on now. I suspect they feel cared for when you listen to their anxiety spiral, and it hasn't occurred to them to figure out what else would make them feel cared for or whether this is really a healthy way to get that feeling.

The constant asking for definitions while you talk about your day thing... hmm... I'd approach that as a flow issue: you need them to look things up more because it's hard for you to get your words out when you're digressing to define words. You don't feel listened to when they do this even though, perhaps to them, they're demonstrating how closely they're listening. That's the actual issue for that part, and one I think they'll be able to empathize with.

TBH, I think your reactions are entirely logical and more than justified, but even if they weren't, it's okay to be like "I know you love to give presents, but I need to hear the words 'I love you', and presents don't affect me very much emotionally."

The equivalent here would be "I know you don't mean to disrespect me, but that's how it ends up feeling, so I need you to do more X so I can feel more Y."

Like, emotions are dumb, yes? They come from chemical brain soup to ruin our days with irrational nonsense. It's okay to acknowledge that they're happening and that you need to do something about them.

You're both currently granting them this by letting them barf reassurance demands all over the conversation. Neither of you is currently giving your emotions this much importance.

With that garbagey parent, they literally do not know what a healthy conversation or relationship looks like, and whatever they've got with you is enough better that they're going to assume it's fine. It's time to put your foot down because they're never, ever going to figure this out without some concrete explanations in words.

And, to be honest, it sounds like they're causing you anxiety about how they'd cope without you. I think that is something they'd also be able to understand and find heartwarming instead of insulting. So maybe start with those emotions.

[sharkfish]

Ace headcanons for cas are actually. Kind of bad because they’re rooted in ableism, he’s coded as autistic before any headcanons come into play and people just LOVE to make every autistic character asexual.

if you’re not autistic and coming onto an ace persons post about how they don’t like ace headcanons about a queer autistic character you’re not the hero you think you are

Sincerely an autistic ace person who hates the way neurotypical aces write ace cas and wish you’d stop because it’s clear y’all hate us 🫠

i'm a little stoned so bear with me while i try to arrange vaguely coherent sentences to think through this. edit: i'm so fucking sorry for the disaster that follows. my brain is working about as well as my electric fence is rn, whose charger is currently in the red and says "CHECK FENCE" (because i guess the dial in the red doesn't make it clear enough i've got a problem). despite that... i hope someone out there has some idea wtf i'm trying to say and can help me out here.

this is literally the first time i have ever heard anyone express something like this, and i've seen a whole lot of talk from autistic people, ace people, autistic ace people, etc, about how much cas (& their reading or hc of cas as autistic and/or ace) means to them.

—background info: i am neurodivergent, but not autistic. i'm also ace.

—sidenote: thank you for bringing the ace autistic stereotype to my attention. i'm legit not sure how honest this ask is in general, but thinking back on autistic characters i've seen in media, i can see that being a thing. there's a long history of seeing people with a variety of disabilities* (*i know there's some nuance and conversation around whether or not autism can/should be actually considered a disability) as uninterested (even undeserving!!!) in sex or romance, as if PWD aren't fully-fledged humans with rich interior lives just like everyone else. that's not ok!

—sidenote 2: i made a mistake in my OG reblog of that post by even bringing canon into it. it's like pointing out bible contradictions to christians in an attempt to deconvert them--it's irrelevant because the bible isn't a real story. i don't fuck with canon. the author is dead. etc. BUT that doesn't mean the way people interpret a character can't be Problematic (for lack of a better term) when we compare it to canon. i just shouldn't have brought canon into it because i don't actually care about those specifics.

so -- i'm not doubting the validity of a character being "-coded," because that has been the only way for many people to see themselves represented in media (see: hays code, etc). i think there might be a convo to be had here though about how we define "-coded." ugh i'm struggling to articulate what i mean, but i guess... when is it "-coded" and when is it "i see myself in this character, regardless of authorial intent" and when is it "i will make this character x thing because i damn well want to and not even god himself can stop me." smarter people than i have talked about this i'm sure. i'm just not sure the threshhold where a character is "-coded" (or "similar to" or whatever) where it is canon to the point where representing a character otherwise is erasing a marginalized identity.

i'm trying to suss through in my head.... ugh, something about cas being non-human without any understanding of human mannerisms, culture, etc, in-universe. i understand people seeing themselves there. i see myself there — i often feel like an outsider, like someone who can't show my true self to any of the people around me, even the ones i love, i often feel lost in a world with rules i don't understand or agree with (some of which are around sex!). but i guess as an allistic person, i would feel really uncomfortable declaring a character autistic when the mannerisms/etc that tend to lead autistic people to seeing themselves in him are literally caused by him being non-human. to me that feels like some sort of implication that autistic people are not quite human.

if i'm understanding what you're saying, it sounds like it would have to be clear to everyone that he is autistic, and representing him as anything else would be ableist (bc erasure). maybe i'm totally totally off-base here. but i guess i'm asking myself if making him allistic is erasure, or if deciding a not-human character is autistic because of their alienness is a little hinky in itself.

—it is worth nothing that the OG post that led to this ask did not say anything about cas being autistic. maybe you're OP and you just forgot to include the most important part of your "cas can't be ace" argument (i would tend to think "it's ableist" is a better argument than "he's horny"), or maybe we're just moving off on a tangent, or whatever.

as an autistic ace person, i imagine you know how little (respectful) rep there is out there for autistic people and ace people, much less autistic ace people. do you legitimately not want to see someone like you in stories? do you legitimately want to put a ban on ace autistic characters?

because you're certainly not alone as an ace autistic person, and other autistic ace people deserve to see themselves. art exists so we can see and be seen. (art is also discovery, which is another reason representation is so important!) and i have cried, actual wet tears on my face, from seeing characters who look like me. i cried the first time i heard a character identify themselves as ace in popular media. shit, i'm old enough that i still get emotional seeing queer couples in media and just existing out loud. that shit really, really matters, not just to reduce stigma but to tell people they aren't alone. (i also cry when someone leaves a comment on one of my ace stories or trans stories or stories with mentally ill characters saying it made them feel less alone.)

i have bipolar. the optics on bipolar are not good and there are a lot of fucked up representations of people with it. people fuck it up more often than not. but banning people from writing bipolar characters is moving in the wrong direction. we have to be thoughtful, and we have to examine ourselves and others, and we have to do it right. there's just no way to do it right if you can't do it at all.

ultimately i'm just not sure how it's fair to say a character can't be ace if they are also autistic(/adjacent). hell, you're going to have a hard time convincing me it's fair to say a character can't be ace for any reason.

—sidenote: is this like the anti thing where you have to declare your traumas and diagnonsensicals so everyone knows it's Acceptable for you to write a certain topic? like, if it turned out i was autistic, would it then be ok for me to write ace autistic characters? as mentioned before, the OG post didn't say anything about autism and neither did i. or did you 100% know i don't have autism because i think it's ok to hc cas as ace? anon, are you allowed to hc a character as ace and autistic?

honestly this came so out of left field. the idea of "i am both x and y, but it is Wrong for a character to be both x and y" is so strange. it brings to mind people who are like "GOD you WOKE IDIOT SNOWFLAKES, i'm so TIRED of you forcing diversity in my face, WHY is this character black AND a wheelchair user?!" and of course the answer is... because some people are black and use wheelchairs? i think this is one of those situations where we go so overboard trying to do the right thing (e.g., not create disrespectful representations of autistic people) that we end up with the same result as the people who want to do the wrong thing (e.g., no one is allowed to write characters with multiple marginalized identities).

sincerely, a person who is sincerely confused by an autistic ace person saying characters are not allowed to be both autistic and ace

ps: just for funsies i was looking to see if there was an autistic ace mash-up pride flag (saw one someone suggested on reddit but there doesn't appear to be one widely used) and learned a fun fact! a survey of 2400 autistic adults found they were 3-9x more likely to identify themselves as asexual, homosexual, or bisexual than the general population. the article mentions that folks who answered the survey were specifically 8x more likely to describe themselves as asexual than the general pop. this is completely irrelevant to the actual discussion in this post, just something to say when mom asks if you learned anything on tumblr dot com today.

[angstywriterangst]

(Thought I'd answer this here rather than just the comments, hope that's ok, but it may make it easier for some people to read.)

I'm a chronically ill writer, but I have been an able bodied writer too. And even though I always had some weird health problems, it wasn't until I became disabled that I realized how many misconceptions and prejudices about disability and chronic illness I had. It was simply because I didn't know, I'd never had a conversation about disability and chronic illness with someone who had them. I didn't know many people who were disabled or chronically ill. And the little conversation I'd had, I was looking through the lense of societal prejudices and societal norms.

In this essay I will:

give tips on how to talk to disabled/chronically ill people about their health.

Explain why as writer, and human, we must redefine "happiness= no pain"

1) go out and meet disabled and chronically ill people. Go to "walk for the cure's" and other awareness events. Meet people, talk to them, make friends. And just talk, like normal friends, share your problems and your goals and you triumphs. Just listen. If they describe something you don't know how to relate to, just say something like "that sounds really hard. I can't relate because I've never experienced that. I hope you find something that can help." I now have many chronically ill friends, and I still struggle with knowing what to say sometimes, so don't feel too bad if you do too. But also, talk about things like movies and books, dating, pets, spill some tea, whatever you talk about with able bodied people. What defines disability isn't the disability, it's little and big differences in how we do normal things. Chronically ill people have limited energy, so friendships are mostly held online. I hardly see any friends in person, even before covid. Texting, messaging, zoom, Netflix online parties etc, that's how I spend time with friends. Offer to do those activities.

2) if you have a specific question, just put a post on tumblr for people to weigh in on, just like this post! Most chronically ill people are extremely touched an able bpdied person wants to try to understand and advocate at all, because we are ignored and deemed unworthy. Reading threads on reddit or comments on memes and posts tagged with chronic illnessor disability related hashtags may give some ideas too.

3) Be sure your definition of disabled and chronically ill are accurate. Not all disabled people are chronically ill, and not all chronically ill people are disabled. Not all disabled people experience chronic pain, and not all chronically ill people experience chronic pain. For example, someone born without a hand is technically disabled, but they don't feel any phantom pains an amputee may feel. Their life is basically normal. Many amputees work and live normally, while chronic illness often makes working extremely difficult to impossible. Some people with mild diabetes (a chronic illness) lead a fairly normal life, and don't really deal with chronic pain (some do though, diabetes, especially type 1, is a horrendous disease, and some people's lives are more negatively affected than others). Certain mental health disorders are chronic, and are therefore chronic illnesses, but if it's mild enough, some people function pretty much normally. I know several people with depression and anxiety who are unmedicated (even though it would probably help if they were), and they are not disabled by their chronic illness. But there are some chronic mental illnesses that are completely disabling, making working and living independently impossible in extreme cases. (I know people like the examples I gave above. )

4) The first thing I learned when I became disabled and dealt with chronic pain, was that societies idea of what a happy, joyful, worthwhile and fullfilling life was completely false. Literally, the college degree, happy perfect marriage, homeowner with white picket fence and kids, fitness healthy lifestyle was unattainable to the majority of even able bodied people. So are people unable to attain that ephemeral dream supposed to forever be unhappy, and can only be happy if they achieve societies life plan? Because disabled people have even less of a chance of achieving all those things in that order, so if able bodied people often don't get the white picket fence, there's little hope for me to be happy, right? As you've probably realized , of course not! There are plenty of other, even more important things that make up a life worthwhile.

5) I soon was forced to realize that this white picket fence didn't matter. When I became disabled, all that I thought was my identity, such as my degree, my work, my hobbies, my physical strength (I was very physically active), my friends and family (many abandoned and shunned me) were all burned away, and I was left naked, finally able to see myself in the mirror for the first time. I realized that this opportunity to fully see my true self was something few people recieved at my age. At least until they aged and got old, lost their powers, independence, and what they thought their identity was. Able bodied people don't want to think about the fact that all of us will become disabled when we become elderly.

So if we humans become disabled when we become elderly, does that mean that nobody gets a happy ending in life? No, of course not! And that means that disabled or chronically ill characters who know they will live in pain their entire life get a happy ending too. Same as any able bodied person when their body begins to decay.

6) There is a false belief that joy is the absence of pain. But as Wesley said in The Princess Bride;

"Life is pain Princess. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"

A lot of organizations, (wether they be religious, university degrees, businesses, products, pyramid schemes etc) entice people by promising that your life will be free of pain if you give them your money/time/obedience. But all spiritual/religious practices the world over usually say something to the point of "Pain is a part of life. It's sort of the point of life. Pain is how we learn"

Does that mean life is devoid of happiness, devoid of joy, if pain will always be a part of life? Of course not!

7) The first step to any character's happy ending is realizing that joy is a skill, something that takes practice to cultivate and grow. Joy is not dependent on outside forces, it comes from within. Happiness comes from outside sources; ex. getting a present, seeing someone you love, playing a game etc. But joy can be expiernced right alongside fear, grief, and even anger in equal measures.

8) The answer to how to give a chronically ill character a happy ending may be to change your definition of "happy= no pain", and instead focus on giving all your characters joyful endings.

Hey I started thinking, how should writers with no personal experience of it handle writing characters with chronic illnesses/chronic pain?

Naturally people with disabilities are still just people and should be treated and written like everyone else, but obviously if the stories that chronically ill people are given were satisfying, there would be no point to ask at all.

 One post about the subject was talking about how heavy-handed and awful chronically ill characters’ storylines tend to be, they either get killed off or magically cured (especially if their illness doesn’t have a cure in real life). The message - which I hadn’t even realised as a complete outsider - was that ill people can’t just exist, they or at least their disabled status has to be wiped out, and that’s terrible.

 Able-bodied writers are squeamish about writing disabled characters, it’s easy to never think about something that you never have to think about, and there’s no way to word this that would make me look good, so I’ll just have to ask, how do you properly write a character with chronic illness?

 How do you give a happy ending to a man who is not only in pain every moment of every day, but in his sleep as well?