Tag: brain stuff

geekgirlnd:

jillbert:

capacity:

autohaste:

If depression was a musical

This is a bop

ok this keeps coming on my dash and every time the notes are filled with people being like WHAT IS THIS so i am HERE TO ENLIGHTEN YOU, FRIENDS

this is from the musical Firebringer which is free to watch on Youtube. it’s by Team StarKid of A Very Potter Musical fame (think you recognize the girl singing? that’s Lauren Lopez, also known as the funniest Draco Malfoy the world has ever seen)

anyway, Firebringer is a female-driven, hilarious musical about bisexual cavewomen and you are going to want to watch it. trust me.

WATCH FIREBRINGER!

Our entire office sings this at least once a week.

thebibliosphere:

thebibliosphere:

Listen, I get it, life is hard and you’re dealing with some shit, but could you not tag my posts as “neurotypicals be like” when I talk about trying to remain positive in a world gone mad with apathy and suffering.

When I say I believe in taking light into dark places, I’m not talking soft pastel aesthetics and salt rock lamps. I’m talking burning this shit to the ground, I’m talking about rising up swinging against those who would put you down.

My hope does not negate my rage or despair. And it sure as shit does not negate my mental and physical illnesses either. 

I am hopeful, despite and perhaps even possibly out of spite, because I refuse to surrender my belief that we can do better. That we will do better. When you give that up, they’ve already won. And I’ll die kicking and screaming all the way before I let that happen. Neurodivergency and all.

And if you’re the edgelord off there in the corner talking about how hope is dead and the human species doesn’t deserve to survive? What the fuck are you doing to try and help fix that? This shit is your responsibility too. Fucking rise to it.

Also fuck the idea that softness is a form of weakness, cause I totally did not mean to shit on pastel aesthetics and salt rock lamp people. Fucking do whatever makes you happy and gives you the strength to get through what you’re going through.

I’ll take any light in the darkness over apathy being mistaken for realism.

faunmoss:

In her book Trauma and Recovery,

Judith Herman writes about forgiveness (in the context of atrocities and abuse):

“Revolted by the fantasy of revenge, some survivors attempt to bypass their outrage altogether throught a fantasy of forgiveness. This fantasy, like its polar opposite, is an attempt at empowerment. The survivor imagines that she can transcend her rage and erase the impact of the trauma through a willed, defiant act of love.
But it is not possible to exorcise the trauma, through either hatred or love. Like revenge, the fantasy of forgiveness often becomes a cruel torture, because it remains out of reach for most ordinary human beings. Folk wisdom recognizes that to forgive is divine. And even divine forgiveness, in most religious systems, is not unconditional. True forgiveness cannot be granted until the perpetrator has sought and earned it through confession, repentance, and restitution.

“Genuine contrition in a perpetrator is a rare miracle. Fortunately, the survivor does not need to wait for it. Her healing depends on the discovery of restorative love in her own life; it does not require that this love be extended to the perpetrator.
Once the survivor has mourned the traumatic event, she may be surprised to discover how uninteresting the perpetrator has become to her and how little concern she feels for his fate.“ 

(pages 189-190, Chapter 9, Remembrance and Mourning)

tl;dr: Forgiveness is not a requirement for healing. You can heal and move on without forgiveness. 

It can also harm you and it should never be demanded of you.

And you certainly don’t owe forgiveness to anyone. 

self-healing:

i don’t care how cheesy it sounds, sometimes when you’re suffering you really need to stop, sit down and have a conversation with yourself. no fighting is allowed with yourself. do not frame yourself as the problem. do not let your insecurities interfere with your thought process. be careful with them.

have a conversation with yourself as if there were two of you- facing each other. you’re hurting for a reason. you’re behind for a reason. you don’t care for reasons. returning to our bodies and understanding why can drastically change our relationships with ourselves, seriously. where does it hurt? your heart, why? because of heartbreak? are you repressing tears? can you wait any longer for something to come to you? are you afraid of something? are you distancing yourself without realizing?

sometimes i needlessly hurt without thinking about why- because thinking is something you do and i don’t want to do anything. i’d rather my head go blank than think of myself, to centralize myself, to deal with myself. but those steps are so crucial to improving the relationship i have with myself. if i can find ways to understand myself, i can find the origin of the hurt. it always trails back to something.

manyblinkinglights:

curlicuecal:

ave-boy:

facts

I was realizing recently that my need to be the best at everything I do is really just a desire to find some position where I can’t be judged.

This is also why I procrastinate.

I love both you girls for the same reason, is what I’m saying.

you gotta strongarm urself into feeling secure Failing Correctly, like: having thoughtfully tried without panicking, putting in a rational amount of effort without blindly causing more problems than you solve, asking for help, and recognizing and recategorizing tasks neurotypicals give you that actually ARE impossible and which they just want to see you put some mild effort in at, and won’t judge you poorly for not finishing/will judge you more highly for having nobly and loyally picked away at NO MATTER YOUR RESULT because they told you to.

A lot of RSD task problems just need a different perspective; most people suck and can’t get anything done. They display respect for superiors and win points by doing THEIR best, even if it isn’t useful let alone perfect, because what they’re demonstrating is compliance–they can be trusted to do what they’re told. They might have been mostly (horribly, painfully) imperfect or useless on this or that task, but they prove by “"trying”“ that, in the future, when conditions are right, they’ll get something done THEN without squandering luck or resources. It inspires others to provide for them better next time because they’ve actually won, in turning in failure or imperfection, by showing that they exerted reasonable and sustained effort and didn’t give up. It isn’t about just the ONE task, which usually isn’t RSD-style life or death or shameful-exile important.

You can fuck up every task you’re given for a long ass time and you’ll keep getting chances if you keep “trying” reasonably and sub-catastrophically, because your shortcomings will be attributed to an unfortunate lack of support from others (not trained right, lack of access to correct tools/materials/software) so long as you bring YOUR part, a patiently iterating “effort.” Displaying THAT is unassailable and judgement-proof, especially if you ask for help/clarification when convenient for others a lot!

the-real-seebs:

firelord-frowny:

Something that may come as surprising to folks whose needs and comfort levels are already catered to by the world around them, is that “coping” is exhausting. 

There are a great many people who are perfectly capable of adjusting to certain situations, be it a matter of social interaction, or physical disability, medical conditions, or whatever the case may be. Through trial and error we have discovered tricks and methods that allow us to function in a society that wasn’t created with us in mind, and we’re very good at making it look like we’re getting along just fine. 

But it’s tiring. Always, constantly having to be vigilant and on-guard while everyone around us takes everything in stride, and then no one understands why, at the end of the day, we shut down. Because we were able to “get by” throughout the day, suddenly our unwillingness or inability to cope is no longer valid. 

It’s like carrying a 20 pound weight all fucking day long. Just because you can doesn’t mean you don’t need or deserve a break. And then when you finally put the weight down, everyone around you scolds you and chastises you, accuses you of being lazy, insists that you’re just “faking because it’s convenient.” 

This is why it’s so fucking unbearable living in a home where everyone chooses to disregard your limits and your comfort levels. Family members will say, “I’m not going to cater to your needs, because the ~real world~ won’t cater to you and you need to get used to that.” 

Consider: People who struggle and cope through everyday life are already painfully aware that the “real world” doesn’t give a fuck about us. This is why we develop coping strategies that allow us to function. This is why when we finally come home, when we are FINALLY through with the “real world” for the day, we just want some goddamn compassion. We just want the people we live with to place value on our needs, comfort levels, and limitations. We want the people who say they love us to demonstrate that love through doing whatever small thing they can do to ensure that when we’re in the comfort of our own homes, we can actually be comfortable instead of having to continue carrying around that weight that we’ve been forced to hold up all. day. long. 

This is a very useful point.

The daydream that never stops

jumpingjacktrash:

newvagabond:

This is mostly about maladaptive daydreaming but there’s a part I really want people on this site to pay attention to, particularly young people who are confused about fiction. 

In 2002, an Israeli trauma clinician named Eli Somer noticed that six survivors of abuse in his care had something in common.

To escape their memories and their emotional pain, each would retreat into an elaborate inner fantasy world for up to eight hours at a time.

Some imagined an idealised version of themselves living a perfect life. Others created entire friendships or romantic relationships in their heads. While one man pictured himself fighting in a guerrilla war, another conjured up football and basketball matches in which he displayed his athletic prowess.

Their plotlines often involved themes of captivity, escape and rescue – being chained up in a dungeon, for instance, or leading a prisoners’ revolt.

My mother sent me this article because it reminded her of me. I saw why immediately. Even as early as age 5 I remember having elaborate fantasies about stuff like that. Being captured, escaping, adventures, scary things, torture. My first fanfic was literally about an Oddworld OC being tortured and killed. I was 7 when I wrote it. I talked to my mom a bit how a lot of people like me (abused, disabled, different) absolutely have grown up with fictional characters and stories as our reference for experiences, as the way we can try to make sense of our lives and the things that have happened to us. There’s a reason I feel more at home and with family when watching a favorite animated show with all the characters I love so much than in a big group of my actual family. Through these characters I was able to not only survive everything the real world threw at me, but learn very valuable things about myself, dissect my own experiences and feelings, even if at a younger age I wasn’t aware that that’s what I was doing. That’s the beauty of fictional characters. They really allow us the safety to go scary places with them. Even if that place is morally horrifying. 

A lot of us survivors explore these kinds of themes. Dark things, unpleasant things. 

Just keep that in mind before you get too deep into the purity culture of this site that states that anything dangerous, dark, or twisted being explored in fiction is worthy of, uh, telling that person to kill themselves. 

Most of the time, you’re telling a survivor that it would have been better for them to have died than to have survived their trauma, and that’s really dangerous considering most of us struggle with suicidal ideation in the first place. 

Not all of us like to deny the darkness that we came from. There is nothing wrong with that.

fuck, i spent so much of my childhood daydreaming badass adventures. and yeah, they were bloody and dark as hell.

my first attempt at a novel was about a disabled man named thorn who was imprisoned at the heart of a dystopic city and could act only through computers; he called himself thorn because the people that left him there called him the thorn in their side, and they’d made him forget where he came from, his name and everything. the antagonist and love interest was a woman with several robot prostheses who worked with a rebel group to sabotage the city, not knowing the ‘comptroller’ they hated so much was just as much a prisoner as they were. when she finally stopped trying to kill him and decided to rescue him, he died a few hours later, unable to survive without his machines.

melodramatic, i know, but i was twelve.

looking back now, as an adult, i’m a little disturbed by how lovingly i described the violence. but i needed it, apparently. it made me feel better, going into my dark world and writing about this pale, wormlike man and his sicknesses, and the cruel things he did without understanding them, because he was a great big obvious metaphor for dissociation. and it was cathartic writing the woman – i can’t remember what i named her, something very cyberpunk and edgy i’m sure, like razor or cobalt – just mowing through crowds of company grunts with a bewildering assortment of heavy weapons. i wasn’t even allowed to watch pg-13 movies yet but i sure did like to talk about guts.

it all felt more real than the real world, sometimes, because the real world was where i wore a rigid mask of neurotypicality and gender and so on.

The daydream that never stops