Mad Pride "mtl"

sometimes you say or do bad things while you’re in an awful mental place. sometimes you say things that are rude or uncalled for or manipulative. and i’m not going to hold that against you. mental illness is hard, and no one is perfect. but once you’re through that episode, you need to take steps to make amends. you need to apologize.

“i couldn’t help it, i was having a bad episode” is a justification, not an apology.

“i’m so fucking sorry, i fucked up, i don’t deserve to live, i should stop talking to anyone ever, i should die” is a second breakdown and a guilt trip. it is not an apology.

when you apologize, the focus should be on the person you hurt. “i’m sorry. i did something that was hurtful to you. even if i was having a rough time, you didn’t deserve to hear that,” is a better apology. if it was a small thing, you can leave it at that.

if you caused significant distress to the other person, this is a good time to talk about how you can minimize damage in the future. and again, even if it is tempting to say you should self-isolate and/or die, that is not a helpful suggestion. it will result in the person you’re talking to trying to talk you out of doing that, which makes your guilt the focus of the conversation instead of their hurt.

Even if you’ve never been sick a day in your life, everyone knows stress is bad.  It can cause insomnia, high blood pressure, headaches, depression…  But why is it that any time a Spoonie hears the words “It’s just stress” do we react so badly?  After all, having a diagnosis is practically the Holy Grail of chronic illness, isn’t it?  

Well, actually, no.

Let’s break this down and figure out just why many people would rather go on searching for a reason rather than take stress for an answer.

1. It’s an “End of the Line” Diagnosis.

Once a doctor gives you a diagnosis, they tend to do the logical thing: they stop looking for a cause and start giving you a treatment.  But have you ever had to do an equation where you needed to solve for x and then use x to find y?  Then you know that if you have the wrong x, it’s going to be near impossible to find the correct y.  The same goes for illness.  A wrong diagnosis keeps us from being given the proper treatment to alleviate our symptoms, prolonging our pain and increasing that nasty stress.

2. A misdiagnosis can hurt more than you think.

Probably tied for first with this line about stress is “It could be worse.”  Maybe that’s where the whole stress thing comes from, because stress doesn’t sound so bad when you compare it to say, autoimmune (but we’ll get to that in a second).  Now, I despise playing the “pyramid of misery” game, but for the heck of it, let’s go there.  Personal story time.  I have GERD, or chronic acid reflux.  My first symptom was chest pain that gave me difficulty sleeping.  I went to the doctor, was told I was too stressed, and that if I got some rest the pain would go away.  That’s right, by sleeping I would solve the problem of being unable… to sleep… (we’ll get to that in a minute, too).  But the thing about GERD is that left untreated (and sometimes even when it is treated), it can cause that thing that claims the tippy top of the pyramid: oesophageal cancer.  A misdiagnosis can delay treatment that lowers the odds of this happening.

3. It’s not “just” anything.

Let’s get one thing straight.  If you have a chronic illness, you probably do have a bit of stress.  Because come on, who wouldn’t?  Here’s the thing.  Every time you say the words “it’s just stress,” you are minimizing and belittling everything someone with a chronic illness suffers.  Imagine for a minute that it’s true, the disease fibromyalgia isn’t real and every symptom was caused by stress.  Did you catch the problem there?  The symptoms are still happening.  People are still suffering from constant agonizing pain, brain fog, and the dozens of other problems that fibro brings.  But hey, it’s just stress.  Except it’s not.

4. The odds are not in our favour.

Of course everyone knows the treatment for stress.  Do what you can to reduce it.  Yoga, meditation, trimming the troublesome things from your life.  With this treatment plan, the burden is on you.  If- when – your symptoms don’t miraculously vanish, it’s no one’s fault but your own.  You haven’t tried everything yet.  You didn’t try hard enough.  You haven’t done it long enough.  You’re still doing too much.    It’s like you want to be sick.  And once you have worked very hard and tried everything for a very long time and have nothing happen but everyone blames you… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

I’m not saying stress isn’t a legitimate problem.  Nor am I saying that stress relievers are a bad thing.  I and I’m sure many other Spoonies use them all the time and very successfully.  But not all problems are caused by stress, and yoga and some chamomile tea is never going to be a cure-all.

whatever you manage to do tomorrow; it will be enough

I have seen a lot of posts on here talking about individual extensions for chrome to help people, but I haven’t seen a place where they’re compiled together. So here you are! font/text

no caps - Makes everything lower case

Open Dyslexic: changes the font to Open Dyslexic and makes it larger. Personal favourite.

Dyslexie: changes the font to dyslexie and allows change to font size and colour (blue). Can be turned off. (Doesn’t seem to work on facebook)

Font Changer: Allows you to change the font on specific website or on everything using a Google Font. I believe you can also upload your own, if there’s a specific font you need.

BeeLine Reader: Uses a gradient so your eye follows along one line to the next

overlays/colour change

Color Overlay - Irlen Filter for Chromebook: Puts a coloured overlay over the screen. can choose colour and opacity. 

Sunglasses: Tints the screen grey to reduce contrast

Desaturate: Removes all colour and makes everything a greyscale

High Contrast: Change contrast or invert colour scheme

Deluminate: Similar to High Contrast, but tries to keep photos in tact

G.lux: Makes the colour of the display change depending on the time of day (also cuts down on blue light so it’s easier to fall asleep)

reduce visual distraction

Readability: Can change things such as margins, colours, etc… as well as reduce visual business

Ad Block Plus: blocks ads. What more needs to be said?

FlashControl: Stops flash animations running by themselves

Hide GIFS: Allows you to keep GIFS from displaying

Text Mode: Loads pages in black/white, covers images, with text only.

audio

SpeakIt!: Reads small section of highlighted text aloud

Chrome Speak: Reads small section of highlighted text aloud

Fighting your ass off to live a normal life and function as well as you can, and instead of getting credit and having people be proud of you for all the efforts you’re making, having people use your apparently normal behavior as a reason to invalidate you and think you weren’t that sick to begin with.

the depressed people who are unable to take a shower because they can’t get out of bed

the aggressive ones

people with hallucinations, people who talk to themselves on the bus

homeless neurodivergents

and all the others

a free link to the complete DSM-5

I like to have white or ambient noise playing while I study, so I thought I’d share a list of my favourite websites in case anyone else was interested.

Rainymood - Allows you to play rain, with suggestions of ambient music to play at the same time. Has an iOS and Android app, my personal favourite.

Calm - A visually beautiful website. Provides moving backgrounds and an option for guided calm which allows you to immerse yourself in the music and to relax. Has a free app for iPhone. Another one of my favourites.

Showertime - The experience of taking a shower without the water. Allows you to control features such as length of shower, size of room, water pressure, etc.

Coffitivity - The background noise of a coffee shop. Allows you to choose between different locations such as lunchtime lounge, morning murmur  etc. Has an app for iOS and Android as well as a desktop app for OS X.

Soundrown - A website with a sleek minimalist design, allows you to choose between rain, coffee shop, ocean, fire, bird noises, or a combination of the five.

Relaxing Snow - Visually beautiful falling snow, the website gives you the opinion to play music with the scenery, or to choose your own.

Raining.Fm - This website gives you the ability to adjust the rain to exactly how you’d like it, with options to tweak thunder, rain and storm noises. Has an app for iOS and Android, as well as a timer and snooze option.

Rain For Me - Simple rain effects with the option to download the audio files for offline listening.

Snowy Mood - Inspired by Rainy Mood, this website really makes you feel like it’s winter. Perfect for playing while snuggled up in a warm bed.

your life is worth living even if you are “letting life pass you by”

your life is worth living even if you stay in bed all day every day watching netflix

you don’t have to be big, beloved, important, beautiful, wealthy or famous

there is dignity in just being

it is ok to be

"You deserve help from a professional who is trained to treat you!" Agreed. "Mental illness is just as serious as any other illness and should be treated as such." Agreed. I agree with these statements, and I will say right now you all deserve the best treatment. For some people, the best treatment does not involve professionals.

Psychiatrists, therapists, etc. are not safe for everyone. While fighting against ableism and the fair treatment of mentally ill people, we must also be intersectional and remember the psych field’s unique treatment of women, POC, trans people, and other minorities. POC are misdiagnosed or undiagnosed all the time due to racism. A trans person with BPD may be denied hormones if they are diagnosed with it by a professional. 

"WebMD doesn’t replace years of medical training!" True. Google isn’t a great alternative, but sometimes it is a better alternative, considering how the psych field treats certain identities. Being forcibly institutionalized, being mis/underdiagnosed: these are things which minorities experience in great frequency. Even on this blog, I have had many people come to me saying they have been misdiagnosed by professionals. It doesn’t surprise me. 

The psych field is pretty fucking misogynist. Women especially experience a high rate of psychiatric abuse and neglect. Women are frequently diagnosed with mental illness when they display high levels of emotion, or they are not diagnosed with mental and physical illnesses they do have them because doctors tend not to believe women about being in pain out of claim their symptoms are due to ~*hysteria*~. Women, right?

The psych field is especially transphobic. (Just check the DSM.) Self diagnosis AND self-medication is the only way most trans people have access to medical transition at all, due to the medical field not caring about their comfort or their safety. Trans people suffer a high rate of mental illness too, and then their symptoms may be attributed to simply being trans rather than being taken seriously. Alternatively, like I mentioned earlier, some trans people can be diagnosed with a mental illness, and if they later come out as trans, their transness will be labeled as a symptom of that mental illness, and transitioning can become even more difficult for them.

Self-diagnosis is not trying to replace medical experts, of course. It is simply an alternative for some of us to avoid being fucked over by doctors. Because, surprise, doctors are not perfect and are still capable of being oppressive, and the fact they are doctors in positions of power makes them even MORE oppressive and much more powerful than the average person.

I understand the arguments of being anti self-diagnosis, but next time you take that stance, consider just who you’re hurting.

have you eaten today?

did you take any meds you need?

how about hydration?

maybe a nap if you need one

you are awesome