[Image description: a screenshot of a Tumblr post written by sorryimessedupagain reading:
“I spent three weeks in a mental hospital and what I discovered there I feel like should be put into words. We are not who you think we are. The boy with Tourette’s told the funniest jokes. The girl who raked her nails up and down her skin could create the most exquisite drawings. The girl who abused drugs had the wisest soul. The boy with schizophrenia had the biggest heart. The girl who tried to kill herself told the boy with insomnia stories to help lure him to sleep. The boy who wanted to kill himself had the deepest passion for cooking. The girl with slits and scars all over her body dried my tears and told me I was beautiful. The boy with anger issues gave the warmest hugs. The girl with bulemia told everyone every day that they looked beautiful in their bodies. The boy who was a compulsive liar told us that he wanted us all to get better, and that he was for once telling the truth. The girl who almost drank herself to death stood up for anyone who felt that they were being bullied. The boy with social anxiety made sure nobody sat alone at meals.
We are not who you think we are.” end image description]
NOW people with anxiety disorders can check their email replies and applications and stuff to make sure we’re coming across the way we want to
Do you have any idea how important this is right now? Making sure you sound right without having to ask a friend to proof read you? This just made my life a whole lot easier.
OMG analyzing someone else’s text to see if you’re reacting appropriately?!? To make sure you’re interpreting them the way they intended!
This is SO COOL
A couple friends of mine at my school are making a phone app like this for spoken English! It’s called ToneAware and it’s designed for autism spectrum people to be able to discreetly interpret the tone and/or mood of someone they’re having a conversation with and I’ve seen them demonstrate it, it works really well and is super cool !!!
I try, when talking about certain things, not to talk from a place of panic. Speaking from experience, panic spreads like wildfire and can just as easily burn down the thing you are trying to protect just as readily as the thing you are trying to protect it from.
The people in charge know this, and are relying on you being frightened of them. Wilful obedience would be better, but fear is also a malleable thing they can work with. It helps people to bend, thinking it will prevent them from being broken. Except the people trying to make you bend, don’t give a single fuck if it breaks you. Control is more important to them, control and the continuing illusion of power. Anyone else that gets smashed under the wheel of their authority is considered *gestures vaguely* negligible and acceptable damage.
So while I understand the inclination to run screaming in circles over certain recent events (trust me, I do it often enough myself) it is vital that you don’t let it own you. Fear is a vital part of our survival instinct, but only if we know how to use it. It lets us know, much like pain, that something is very wrong and we should do something about it.
And you don’t have to be fearless to be brave. To quote our dearly beloved Space Mother, Carrie Fisher, “stay afraid, but do it anyway.”
(And I know it’s hard for a lot of us, I really, really do. There are some days my clusterfuck of mental health issues are just so bad I can’t uncurl from the fetal position long enough to stay hydrated, let alone fight the good fight. But even on those days merely existing is an act of rebellious defiance.)
So you see, I’m not trying to be blase when I talk about certain things. Just because you don’t see me visibly screaming in terror doesn’t mean I’m not doing it on the inside. By remaining visibly calm, I am in fact trying to help other people to not be afraid. To give them some sense of understanding and feeling of control over the situation so that in turn they might be better equipped to help me and others so inclined like me, to fix this shit.
Acknowledge your fear. Let it pass over and through you, breathe it in and hold it in your lungs, then let it out like fire.
You do not need to be a ray of sunshine to be the positive change you want to see in the world. Sometimes you can be a very small, very afraid flicker in the darkness. Just don’t let that flicker go out.
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice – they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”
When you know what’s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don’t, or when you’re thinking of all these things as ‘nice things about my life’ rather than ‘load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person’, you’re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you’re really, really hurting.
Almost two weeks after reading this, and I’m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I’m like holy shit I’m so glad that there’s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I’m going to update my Spear Theory with this.
I moved 4000 miles away from mine. That’s it, that’s my coping mechanism.
I’ll level with you, I’m 30 and still trapped in a toxic cycle with my parents, even 4000 miles and an ocean apart. They are manipulative, guilt tripping fuckers and I still love them dearly and would be devastated if anything happened to them. And while I’ve had many conversation with them over the years which should have lead to progress or emotional growth…if the other people aren’t willing to heal with you, you need to concentrate on yourself.
I’m going to start therapy soon. For this exact reason. Cause I’m 30 and a phone call from my mother who is 4000 miles away can still send me into a depressive week long spiral because we have, quite literally in my case, a lifetime of knowing how to hurt each other on the tip of our tongues and while I try (oh my god do I try) to be better and not rise to the bait, it still leaves me exhausted and hollow feeling some days. Some days are indeed magical and great and I’ll spend the whole time laughing and joking and I’ll wonder why I ever felt like I needed to move quite so far away.
Other days I’m more than fully aware.
And I know the holidays in particular can be stressful, and I wish I had something more reassuring to say, but this thing you are going through is a process and it will take time. And sometimes all you can really do is just try to breathe and remind yourself none of this is permanent. Pain, guilt, anger, the feeling that you’re never going to escape or get better…these are all temporary things that will pass and you’ll be able to step away from it at some point and heal. Which is hard to do. I know it’s hard to bite your tongue and take the emotional baggage people heap onto you. But you’re stronger than how you feel in those moments and you’re going to be okay.
Self care. Make sure you have things to do that give you reasons to not be around them 100% of the time unless you want to be. It’s also okay if you don’t feel like you have the strength to fight and argue back. It’s okay not to engage, and to do whatever it takes to preserve your emotional well being. And remember, you’re not obligated to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.
No matter how tempting it is to burn it all down.
“You’re not obligated to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”
That is one helluva statement, and I agree wholeheartedly.
People with anxiety don’t have a train of thought. We have seven trains on 4 tracks that narrowly avoid each other when the paths cross and all the conductors are screaming.
Lisa Macleod the minster of child services and social services laughed when told about how ontario citizens on ontario disability support program and ontario works felt heightened in their anxiety and depression and suicidal thoughts when waiting to hear what the progressive conservatives were going to do with these programs. Then called the second part of Lisa Gretzky’s question a joke.
It is great to know as a canadian living with mental illness, my illness is seen as funny and a question about my livelihood is a joke.
Queer Fiction Writer 