#schizospec survival

[glitchdollmemoria]

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[221bluescarf]

My Psychosis Survival Guide

Things from my coping box that might benefit you too. Like any other skill, many of these things can be used to help any other mental health problem. This is just my own list of things I use in addition to seeing my pdoc and taking my meds:

Art

Grounding is my first and most effective coping skill. Among the skills in the grounding category, coloring and doodling are my favorites (bonus if you can color-in doodles you've made yourself) but any art will do, like painting or making collages.

This can distract you from hallucinations and keep your mind occupied to stop dwelling on paranoid or delusional thoughts. Art therapy is known to reduce anxiety and depression too, which is common with psychotic disorders.

Instrumental music

LoFi is my favorite. Something calming can reduce anxiety and help you rest or sleep, which is good for a brain bombarded with the psychotic experience. Lyrics can sometimes trigger unwanted thoughts and some people even find that the lyrics change and suddenly have special meaning, so this is avoided with instrumental music.

Some LoFi music has other sound effects which can help auditory hallucinations to blend in and be less intrusive. Cafe vlogs are excellent for this, as they have a background of people talking and kitchen appliances being used which disguise mild and pesky hallucinations.

Putty

It can be Silly Putty, Thinking Putty, or whatever you can find. Some of them change colors, some of them are even scented. This is excellent grounding. It involves your senses and you can completely turn off your brain and just play with it in your hands. It's also great as a fidget tool.

Letters to yourself

Writing letters to yourself while you're in a good and healthy mindset can be valuable to look back on while in a psychotic episode. Give yourself a pep talk. Remind yourself that this is real life, remind yourself of why these thoughts are irrational and why you really can trust your friends and family, etc.

I find it useful to write about past delusions, so that when similar ones happen, I have "proof" that this is unreasonable and I'm less likely to fall for it (nothing is perfect. sometimes I'll still believe the delusion despite everything, but it helps)

A list of people who can help

Keep a list of friends or family who are aware of your diagnosis and who are ready to help you if you're struggling. Keep the numbers to these people in case you chuck your phone. Also include the numbers to your doctor, therapist, social worker, or anyone else you may need to reach when you're unable to use your own phone. (It's also good to have these listed in case you get hospitalized and are unable to have your phone)

Also if you're dealing with paranoia around your phone, some people find it comforting to use WhatsApp because it's encrypted unlike text messages.

I hope these are helpful

[ink-asunder]

Look, not to get Bitchy on Main as a fussy psychotic again, but I hate how people perceive "going and investigating a noise" in horror films.

"If this were a horror film, you'd be dead," "you have no sense of self-preservation," "white people just wanna die," etc. It's all ableist if you are a) psychotic and b) experience paranoia when you hear weird sounds.

I suffer from perceptual distortions the most--thats a type of hallucination where you're hearing or seeing a REAL thing, but your brain just can't tell what it is, so you see or hear something different. So when I hear a noise that I don't recognize, my brain will literally start changing it and I WILL hear voices and shit. It's scary!! But if I go look for the noise and see that "oh, it's just rain dripping off the roof and onto a trashcan," then it's problems solved! Hallucination over! Peace is restored!

Why do 5 year olds who are afraid of noises get to go on "let's find out what that noise is so it doesn't scare you anymore" night walks, but psychotic adults DON'T?! It's sanism. Stop.

Furthermore, yall need to grow the FUCK up about sounds. Not everything is a murderer waiting to kill you. Sometimes the stranger in the house is a handyman who had the key to the apartment and just didn't realize anyone was home. I have psychotic paranoia and even I'm not as paranoid and frightened of everything as you. Grow up.

[lixzwithapen]

Hey guys!

Ik, ik, I've been gone forever.

I'm alive.

Just thought I'd let y'all know that I'm okay.

I haven't died or gone off the internet all together.

I'm just too sick to really be active here.

I'm still very much psychotic and struggling to keep anything together.

But time is moving and I'm alive.

I'm just very stuck in my issues.

I hope you all are still here too and hope you're all okay.

I'll come back to this blog when I feel I can handle it.

I'm sorry I just disappeared.

I hope I didn't scare any of y'all.

I'm still here. I'm learning to live despite it all.

I'm learning to live with him and then being here.

Its just really hard and painful.

I think I've really lost it by now.

I'm so disconnected and nothing feels quite real or of consequence.

But I'm learning that this isn't going to go away.

And I'm trying my best to live his life (not mine anymore) on top of it all, with it all.

I'm gonna Have to learn to live like this. Eve with them and him and the madness and rules.

I Have to.

But I'm starting to learn how to appear normal even though I'm very much not.

I wish you all the best. And best of luck and karma to you all. You'll need it too.

And know that I'm fighting my way to some sort of a life and stability inside this mess.

Know that I'm alive and safe (ish).

And know that I've spiralled into madness, but learning to live in it.

I'll come back as said.

Once I can find it in me to not be paranoid about it all.

I really do care about you all and this community.

It has given me so much, and taught me that within paranoid schizophrenia, I'm very typical and normal.

That has given me a normalcy and peace of mind nothing else could.

I no longer feel like I'm some alien that has something mysteriously wrong.

I know I'm schizophrenic, and that you all feel the same things I do.

So thank you.

From the bottom of my broken heart, thank you.

Until next time, stay safe as always.

I hope to return to poetry, art, and this community sometime.

Thank you for reading this huge post. <3

Thanks to you all. Truly.

I wouldn't have the words for any of this without you.

See you if I get better. And I care. I remember you all. I miss you. Peace out.<3

[schizospec-culture-is]

Schizospec culture is being floored by learning that your shitty childhood quite literally, in terms of genuine scientific psychological labels for something you can be diagnosed with, made you delusional. Like, my childhood was so completely loveless that my entire perception of reality warped in compensation order for me to fucking survive it. I need to just sit with that for a minute, fucking hell.

That being said, I don’t actually care: I don’t accept that my so-called delusions are actually that, since they’re not harming anybody and are in fact vital to me staying functional. I feel like if I was forced to believe they’re actually delusions that my mind would break apart, so we’re just not going there thanks very much. My fictional family are 100% real and just live in an alternate reality, and it doesn’t matter if nobody else believes that because it doesn’t affect reality as I see it. In summary, I don’t suffer from insanity, I love every minute of it!

-

[rachymarie]

I feel like anyone who suffers/suffered psychosis should be treated with the respect of like a war vet. I hope that's not some kind of blasphemy but bear with me: losing your mind (psychosis) is one of the most terrifying experiences anyone can go through and then we're expected to just get back on with normal life/business as usual as if nothing happened/we didn't survive the apocalypse/rapture etc in our reality. It's like you've been through a kind of war, and we're left with metaphorical shrapnel in our heads. (In fact interestingly I believe there is a significant history of war vets developing schizophrenia and such)

Like, damn right, we deserve a medal for getting through that. We should pretty much be allowed/supported to retire. Cos damn working is stressful and sometimes triggering. And whoever helped us through/cared about us gets a thousand blessings

To all my fellow schizospecs I wish you wellness and safety and the ability to get through the day 🩶🪙 you are important

[newcronomicon]

I really hate to be like this but erm

hi im a disabled schizospec transsexual who's been barely surviving through an abusive housing situation. I have recently learned I will not be allowed anything for my birthday which is in 2 days ( the 21st ). if you'd like to make my life a tiny bit more bearable, I've made an amzn wishlist ( currently don't have the means to take money ). thank you love you all.

DONT TAG AS BLOCKED D0NO TAGS

yaoi to get your attention ^

[redswaberkez]

TELL ME ABOUT ERLICH PLEASE, i thought about just replying to your reply on my post, but i figure an ask is better for this kind of request >:)

OOOOFFFFF cultural oc exchange ehehehe

disclaimer: my ocs lore is hellaaaaa messy and unstable. Nobody knows their story. Me neither LMAOO. So i perfer to look at the story like at rpg game with diff endings and stuff like that

Ok lesssgoo

FIRST his name pronunciation IS A FUCKING MESS. Everyone struggling with it: and in the ocs story and in real life. By design Erlich's name is pronounced with ch on the end like küche. Now we can go on. He is from Germany, yeah

The setting is in 2060-2099 i.e. basic the nearest cyberpunk to us. Where its always raining, anti-utopian, where you live in a Big City but in a ditch eating ants drinking benzin and etc etc. you got it.

Erlich's early life was neither tough nor easy. On the edge between living and surviving. His mother (name's Agnia) is a scientist, so he spent most of his time in labs and watching how "progress being created" or at home, where he tried to create his own silly little machines and mechanisms. Maybe hes schizospec. Maybe im just projecting my shit onto him (yea i do). We Will Never Know KDSLJFLSDFJ

Ofc his mechanic skills was not that bad for someone who just graduated from school (17-18 yrs). *blah-blah* and ofc later corpos will notice Erlich and his mech skills (not w/o mothers help tho). "Wow, succeeded in life, working in a prestige corp, and not fucking around in the junk" seems fair for cyberpunk setting imo

time flies, Erlich now is 23-26 yrs, THEN BOOM 💥💥💥💥 the main introduction plot. Big Corporate Boss assault, corporation collapse, OFC BRAINWASHING, massive staff reduction (he and his mother werent fired, they are valuable personnel).

What the assault you say? How it affected him? He was one of the main gears in the assaultion, with Agnia in the lead of it. Erlich even installed spinal augmentation and evolved from twink to himbo for this measures. Assault was done with the precision of a jeweler in the most chaotic situation. Only few knew that it was caused by them. And nobody knew it was Agnia's mindgame and brainchild.

What the brainwashing??? 'ignorance is bliss' - Agnia thought and decided not to burden Erlich with knowledge of what they had done. So he can live his life without endless regret. She had her motive

(i support women's wrongs tho. nobody is perfect or only good or evil.)

Few days after the assault he meets Mirrow in the medical bay. She was a bodyguard of one buisnesswoman (doesnt matter for the lore anymore). Mirrow was seriously injured and lost her arms while protecting The Lady. Erlich and Agnia saved her, bc Mirrow basically innocent and they didn't need extra sacrifices. So they saved her, installed new arms for her and while she was being rehabilitated, she became very friendly with Erlich (clueless and brainwashed) and said that she would like to find the person responsible for the assault. Now Mirrow attracted Agnia's attention and she decided to keep Mirrow in her line of sight.

Then the long separation of Erlich (to finland to russia) from Agnia (to america) due to corpos collapse. And reunion later to find the "the evil one in the charge".

(LITERALLY HIIIM)

Agnia's mindgames arent over yet (unfortunately) and now she needs to remove the trace from herself by "leading the capture of the culprit". and here comes rpg-ish quests and etc

Erlich knows that he somehow involved in the assault but he doesnt remember ANYTHING. And he blames himself for it. Real hard. Thinks, that he useless

Later he secretly tries to create the machine that "will help retrieve the hidden memories". Everyone was stopping him from its creation but ykno.) Overvaluated idea)

Running its tests was frying his (already once fried) mind. And at one moment it just gives a power surge, and Erlich remembers everything for a moment, but burns out and dies. BIG UNLUCKY REST IN PEPE

[jellyfishfem]

rant about friendship as a brown girl in Europe

I have female friends irl, I do. Just not the friend kind. I live in Europe and I have brown skin. I have hyperpigmentation spots. They make me look like I’m dirty. A teacher once asked me “What’s wrong with your forehead?”. My curls make me look masculine. My best friend even once said “[About our classmate] I think he has a crush on you because he’s gay and you look like a guy.” I have weird interests. Some talked to me like I was a pet. I was the one with the ugly mental illness (which is a schizospec disorder) and of course no one actually is tolerant towards those people. I always knew they looked down on me. I was fine with it. I still am. I know they think I’m less because of my feminist views and because I’m not as girly or fancy or “a baddie” like them. I don’t care, I don’t have the energy to care. i know, everyone does their best to survive under the patriarchy and I don’t really blame my friends… I am a bit tired of standing up for women, online and irl, who would and will turn on me for male validation in a second. I have to admit, now I overcompensate by dressing in hyperfeminine clothes. I am desperate to make myself less like an ugly monster. I am supposed to know that my worth is not based on my look. But my G-d, it’s hard when I get punished for not participating in beauty culture. I don’t know… I can’t do this much longer. I want to sleep forever.

[yves-and-scessernee]

the thing about growing up undiagnosed, unrecognized, is that everyone. tells. you. to. try. harder. everyone tells you that you are choosing to fuck things up for yourself.

I was trying as hard as I could. I was also just trying to survive. I was overstimulated to the point of not processing sound and melting down every other day, it felt like. I was so exhausted that, years later, I still feel burnt out. I was so exhausted that I had no friends, no hobbies. Like, as a child I used to love to read; as a teenager I was simply too exhausted, too busy, too burnt out. I still haven’t recovered that. So too with everything else.

I keep repeating exhausted, because that is my primary memory associated with my teenage years and early twenties: just pure, painful exhaustion. I literally broke my finger — like I broke the bone while stimming — and no one believed that it was broken, despite the fact that it was deeply bruised and too painful to twitch. I was too tired to protest. I simply tried to work through it. Weeks later, when a doctor finally got a look at it, he was so frustrated. It healed crooked. Maybe it would have done that anyway. Honestly, years later, I’m still too tired to care.

I still believe, deep down, that it was all my fault, my failure. I know I was giving everything I could. I still feel like I chose to fuck up — that there must have been something I could have done to make everything make sense, make it all better, and I just didn’t do it. I know that my teachers and the adults in my life definitely thought that about me. I gave it everything I had, I still failed — scraped through high school only to drop out of college to get diagnosed with schizospec stuff and go to therapy twice a week. And even with a diagnosis, so many people just assumed I wasn’t trying, and didn’t care.

I’m better now. I’ve been in therapy for years. I’m on so many medications and each of them is a godsend. I have friends now — something that I genuinely thought would never happen (hey, I was 15). I have a greater vocabulary for my past and present experiences. I still have bad days, but the worst bad day is still a better good day than my good days used to be. I’m happily married; they believe me when I say I’m trying. It’s hard to believe some days, but they do.

I’m trying to read more. It’s hard going, but it’s going.

I still feel so empty about those years, though. I feel like I lost more than a decade of just … feeling alive, and at such a crucial developmental period. I wish I could go back with everything I now know and try to have a happy childhood. Like a new game plus mode: I keep my meds and doctors and neurologists and therapists and psychiatrists and vocabulary and supportive partner, but I get a do-over of all the content.

There’s no point in playing what-if, but. All of my OCs feel so distorted and strange. And that’s just because I don’t have much else to give them right now.

So I guess the next step is learning how to write happy characters. Idk what comes after that, but, well, I guess we’ll see.

[mlmxreader]

“Back in my day people weren’t sensitive”

“This new generation are a bunch of winey babies, they wouldn’t have survived in my time”

Like bitch stfu, you bitches made a painter flee the country because he painted the Madam X portrait with one of her dress straps hanging on her shoulder.

“My word! Sir Benedict, I say, this woman is wearing her dress without a petticoat! Hang this succubus for adultery!”

Then you bitches went on to give woman lobotomies for having feelings😭🤚🏾

“Susan cried today because she thought of her grandmother that died yesterday. A good icepick to the little noggin should fix that”

people aren't "more" sensitive now, they just don't tolerate bigoted bullshit, like... sorry if I got offended bc you said you wanted to kill all the faggots like?????????

and like, yeah, using the example of ww1 (bc these cunts LOVE to bring it up!!!), the survivors of the war DID deserve kindness and compassion and decency like they'd (ideally) get in today's world. (I say ideally bc the symptoms of shellshock share similarities w psychotic and schizospec disorders and, like, we ALL know how we get treated 💀)

they get offended over fucking everything tho. a kid wants to use they/them pronouns? OFFENDED. a woman tells them to fuck off for staring at her tits? OFFENDED. a fucking kid's activity changes their name to Scouts to be more inclusive? OFFENDED. a fat person works out at a gym? OFFENDED. a person who ain't white talks abt white supremacy & how it's actively killing people? OFFENDED. a bunch of students protest genocide? OFFENDED.

like, everyone says abt how the "woke left"* is SOOOOOOO easily offended, but we aren't the ones crying abt a fuckin advert w a Black family innit, now, are we?

*I fuckin hate that term ngl, like, I'm an active member of the Communist Party so I'm as far left as you can get but the misuse of AAVE is so fucking vile and genuinely painful & grating to hear. also: the "left" isn't one organisation! you have the Communists, the Workers Parties fuckin globally, the African Nationalists! it isn't One Thing!!*

also, like, a lot of lobotomies were largely performed on Black Women for DARING to report abusive (esp sexually abusive) behaviour by white men and, like, isn't it FUNNY how the white non-psychotic crowd are the ones using it as a "teehee cutesy grippy socks vaycay!!!" bullshit trend? isn't that funny? (I fucking hate those motherfuckers, man, I will be truly honest 😭 "put a finger down if you-" you are a white woman. you are NOWHERE near as at risk as Black Women. ever. fuck off.)

[glitchdollmemoria]

also on the topic of that last post, poverty seriously is so fucking traumatizing lol. now that i have foodstamps i make sure some of what i buy is shelf stable food that i can stockpile if i dont eat it within the month, because i dont trust that my benefits wont be slashed or completely taken away at the whim of whoever is in charge. ill probably always be a food hoarder because of the complete fear i experienced when dealing with food scarcity. ill probably always be the type to try to spend as little as possible because the more i have in savings, the more of a cushion ill have if i lose income, the less ill have to be batshit fucking terrified if that happens. i hear people casually talk about having not worked for a while, saying "yeahhh haha i should probably get a job again" and i feel fucking insane because ive been living under the fact that if i lose my job, i either need to find a new one immediately or im dead. literally dead, i am not fucking exaggerating, because i as a very disabled person would not be able to survive unhoused, and thats what will happen if i miss any more rent payments. and like, im only talking about my own situation, but fuck dude. this shit is traumatic, that is the word for it, and governments are complicit in this trauma when they dont provide the support needed for people to live safe and happy lives. and thats its own sort of trauma too, really - realizing that the people in power, by and large, are not on your side, that they do not give a fuck about your comfort or safety or life, that they do not give a single fucking shit if you die. all of it is traumatic.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

AI discourse is infuriating.

Yeah, that's what art is too, but the human brain has vastly many more connections than any supercomputer we have access to and has abilities that we haven't determined how to program yet, like the ability to choose to discard data based on critical thought. Every art piece ever made put thousands of artists into a blender and pulled out little bits of inspiration - style, use of color and shapes, the ideas within the art - and made them untraceable via the transformations of the new artist.

There's criticism to be made about AI, sure - predominant among them that AI are not sapient in the same way we are, and therefore can be both biased and exploited by horrible people. But there is no way you can define art that doesn't exclude human art. There are no laws you can make prohibiting AI art that won't infringe on fanworks especially.

Ah, yes, the psuedo-intellectual "I don't care that the problem is people and not the tool because the tool can easily be used for harm, so I'll destroy it as if that'll fix the problem". So, if you succeed, what then? You destroy the next tool those people come up with? You play a war of proxies, never bothering to address the people leaving a trail of carnage in their wake via the actual material harm they use their tools to cause before they are destroyed?

Our medical system is set up to make it incredibly easy to practice eugenics. Every chronically ill person I know, myself included, has years, usually even decades, of being denied care, neglected, and abused, before accessing effective diagnosis and treatment, and that's if you're lucky. If you're fat, nonwhite, trans - in any way a minority - you better hope what you have isn't counting down your life on a clock, because if it is, gatekeeping of medical care ensures the clock will reach zero multiple times over before you find one of the rare doctors actually willing to help you.

So should we destroy medicine? Yes, medicine, not the medical system. Because when you blame AI for the legal system surrounding it that allows its abuses, you are not addressing the systemic issues at all. You are taking what could be a tool for good and blaming it for its own misuse. Or are you forgetting as much as any techbro that there is no actual intelligence in AI?

(To further the metaphor, medicine can also be used to maliciously actively harm people itself, beyond the systemic issues. Yet the use of AI and medicine to directly harm people both are rare. Doctors purposely poisoning their patients is so rare as to make a sensationalist headline. Where's the AI directly interpersonally doing harm that would serve to help prove the above user's point, outside of systemic usages involving systemic sociopolitical injustice?)

This person has it right. Techbros had me swing strongly anti-AI for a good while. Anti-AI people are swinging me nearly as hard in the opposite direction. The strength and vehemence with which you cling to your arguments with nearly religious fervor is revealing the flaws in the structural integrity of those same arguments.

It's clear you're missing the major problems with AI when you say these things. "AI is bad because it nonconsensually uses the work of artists". Why? Why is that bad? Fanworks do that. What's the difference?

Oh, right. Profit. AI driving PROFIT to big corporations who did not seek the permission of those in the training data sets who need the money generated by their art to survive, not to fund syperyachts. That's what's bad. Yet not a mention of profit, money, or the evils of capitalism anywhere.

So many people have latched onto "AI is bad" with the same unquestioning loyalty that is the single largest driver of problems in leftist spaces. It is the same thing that drives people to mindlessly spout antisemitic conspiracy theories, to engage in lookism against bigots, to treat schizospec people as dangerous and clusB people as abusers, to condemn kink, fetish, and paraphilia in a positively christofascist display of sex negativity, to parrot transphobic rhetoric against "acceptable targets" such as plurals, neurodivergents labeled 'creeps' due to their ND traits, and other related groups.

Put simply, it's an utter lack of critical thought.

And you know what? I have respect for the people I've seen who've clearly given critical thought to it and arrived at conclusions that I disagree follow from the arguments they've made. I still might get annoyed by them, but there's a world of difference between that and the just... quite honestly, "faith" driving the stock most people put into these arguments.

Most people have simply bought the leftist tagline of the week and swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. They don't know why AI is "bad", it just is. And sure, they might regurgitate the same simple arguments against them with as little thought as they say "AI is bad". But the holes in those arguments that a truck can be driven through betray that they are just vomiting back up the selling points they've fed on, satisfied with a substanceless meal.

I'm not anti-AI. I'm also not pro-AI. I'm just annoyed as fuck about the drivel that is AI discourse, and the refusal to have nuance that even some of my most respected nuance-enjoyers on this site display on this topic. Maybe we could all step back from the rabidity the annoying-ass techbros have more than earned and examine the actual programs that make up AI instead of the assholes using them, and have an actual conversation about it?

[schizospec-culture-is]

Schizospec culture is being treated like we can’t even survive on our own and then also believing that we are monsters.

-

[rachymarie]

If you liked that, I have another post in the works that I wrote yesterday detailing a group of schizospec symptoms (i ran out of spoons to actually hit post lol) so stay tuned

Trying to be better at writing some informative posts rather than just angry frustrated upset posts repeating the same thing because while we, the schizospec, are RIGHTFULLY angry and fed up with stigma and blatantly unnecessary, offensive social media trends etc (especially considering just how many of us are being neglected by the mental health system (even in New Zealand where it's supposedly better)/how hard it is for us to get the gd help/acommodations we need to simply function/survive in society*) I do realize the potential for angry language to likely just backfire and alienate non-schizospec, especially considering the disregard for us that many that need to be educated already show for us.

I guess it's true that people are more likely to listen to them if you aren't shouting in their face 😅, as much as it feels urgent for us/we want to shout from the rooftops that they need to do/treat us better.

That's something I'm trying to figure out, how to get people to really listen and open their minds to us. Cos the big schizospec channels on YouTube such as Living Well with Schizophrenia and Surviving Schizophrenia both speak calmly. But I haven't quite figured out how to quieten down a frustrated mind to get info out in a less-hostile manner that everybody can listen to.

Idk on the other hand part of me thinks maybe we DO need to stay angry, because sometimes righteous anger does get people going and sharing. Add your thoughts please

*PSA It's never ok to laugh at and demonize people who are disabled and needing help but being turned away from any avenues that could provide preventative help, or disabled people simply existing. If you think it is then you're the real "cringe" one.

[psychoticallytrans]

The info forms from my doctor about HRT said it could worsen psychotic symptoms (and weirdly enough it said that for both E and T). I didn't disclose that I'm schizospec when I startd HRT, but now I'm a little nervous that things WILL get worse and I might not even notice. I've looked online but can't really find anyone talking about what 'worsening' actually means/looks like. And now I'm afraid that if I'm honest, especially 6 months in, that the doctor will make me stop HRT. Do you have any advice or tips? Thonks so much, and thank you for creating a this wonderful blog!

I sat on this one for a while because it's above my pay grade, and because my own approach to it isn't ideal.

First, "worsening" can mean a range of things. It can mean experiencing psychosis more frequently. It can mean an increase in intensity, or additional psychotic symptoms in an episode. If you're worried, it may help to track them in a journal. List your current typical symptoms, their duration and intensity, and what triggers your episodes. If they do get worse, you'll have a track of them that you can show to your doctors when asking for help.

Second, I'm slightly skeptical of the idea that this is causation and not correlation. Psychosis is highly correlated with late teens to mid twenties, and with trauma. So is HRT, due to the trauma and barriers that trans youth face. If there are studies run on similarly traumatized cis youth that show an increase, then I'll be interested. Until then, I reserve judgement.

My personal approach to it is that I'm getting my hormones through Planned Parenthood, and my mental health care through my college, and I'm depending on the disconnected nature of the medical system to keep either one of them from pulling the plug on medications. This is my personal choice, because not having any of my medications, including T, destabilizes my health in such a dangerous way that I consider it to be an active threat to my life. This way, I have full command over my own health, and can receive competent treatment for all of my issues.

In the end, my advice is to monitor your own health, and make the choices that you feel are best for your own safety and health. If you are experiencing symptoms that put yourself or others in danger, Do what you can to manage and mitigate them, and get treatment as soon as you can.

No matter what, prioritize survival. I, and other psychotic trans people, are behind you and backing you up.

If any of my followers have better advice, please feel free to add on.