#eulusion

Something that will always urk me is the fact that language surrounding someone's experience with their perception of reality is so pathologized through an objective clinical lense. People talk about it as if anything outside the common sensory experience of the physical world is just "dissociation", and I hate it. It feels horrible, the fact that people think the experience of what reality is supposed to be can be talked about through an objective lens is preposterous.

The word "dissociation" has always felt like a buzzword for "hallucination" or "fake happenings" or the saying "it's all in your head", as if that doesn't matter and shouldn't be addressed as something that's considered "real" like the dirt on the fucking ground. It feels extremely dismissive as I've always seen the word used in phrases with dismissive implications or undertones.

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These dismissive implications and undertones have tainted the meaning of several words for me actually:

Dissociation

Real/Reality

Imaginary

Immaterial

Hallucination

Delusion/Delusional

Maladaptive*

Insanity/Insane

The meanings of these words and the context behind why I'd use them are vastly different from the common meanings held by the majority of people. It's burdensome to have to clarify this, but that's what my life has come to be.

To be gaslit time and time again by ableists using these words under malicious intent has driven me to reclaim these words and rewrite their definitions on what they mean to me and how they function under my perception of reality.

Fucking duh I know these things aren't happening in the same reality where my pet dog lives and where you eat food to maintain your body, but I don't remind myself that by dismissing the other things I experience in other realities besides the physical one. I see all of these words as happenings in seperate realities.

I will never use these words in a way to invalidate people's experiences, and neither will they ever be used against me to invalidate my experiences ever again. These words are now assets to describe the various phenomena of what makes up my realities and how it affects me and how it may affect other people, weather they hear about it or see me go through it.

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*Maladaptive has it's own little story:

With how most people used the word "adaptiveness", the implications seem to refer to how much one can contribute to capitalism, I believe it SHOULD mean how happy you are as a person and that you can take care of yourself with little to no obstacles. Of course capitalism infringes on this. And unfortunately the definition of adaptive is not the one I think it should be.

Adaptive - "The ability to change to suit changing conditions"

And people love to make the excuse that capitialism is this inevitable thing that is part of the "changing conditions" of this world and that you should be obligated to adapt to it. People have the audacity to say we should adapt to bigotry of all sorts as well, and it's so backwards. People created these concepts, therefore we have the power to do something about it. Make something better for everyone in the process.

People care more about how you contribute to capitalism and conform to white supremacy rather than being concerned about your own wellbeing and what makes life better for you. Autistic people existing the way they are is apparently wrong and that allstics think we'd really be better off masking and catering to them and capitalism.

If you're at home all the time because of a disability, visible or invisible, or with mental illness, especially maladaptive daydreaming. Apparently it's so bad to be in the comfort of your own home away from being discriminated against, being told you're "lazy" because you physically can't preform to people's expectations, being away from bigotry and being gaslit by 'professional' doctors.

Why is this seen as 'maladaptive' when we are trying to avoid ostrasization, discrimination, and trauma of some sort? Isn't that a good thing? That we do these things to cope and protect ourselves? Why do we use the word maladaptive as if it's a bad thing if wanting the best yourself is the context of it?

I think people need to stop calling things "maladaptive" just because they don't understand a person's coping methods or think it's "unproductive" to society... unless if the person themself calls their experiences maladaptive and wants some kind of recovery in the case it's a mentall illness.

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Conclusion & Clarification

This is my long ass take on all these words and how I've come to view them over the years I've been alive over all the times they've been used against me. And this is not to say I don't want these words to exist at all and neither is this me saying people shouldn't use them to describe their experiences; this is me saying that I view them under a different lens. A very uncommon one at that.

I am very aware that some people's mental illness is so bad that it literally stops them from functioning and having the will-power to live. I am not applying this long post to them, this is purely me sharing my personal experience, and the things I experience do not hinder my ability to function to the degree where I am bedridden and/or have no will-power to live. (Though I constantly quesiton why I continue to live despite all the shit I've seen an been through and how a person like me with all these minority demographics is viewed around the damn globe, but I digress. :P)

I am sharing this to say that people have called me these words out of the assumption that I *should* be bedridden or be placed in an asylum simply because I have other assets to my sensory experiences that neurotypicals don't. Because my experiences can and HAVE indimidated/scared neurotypicals.

In the past, I have been kicked out of school because of this shit and they thought I was "possessed" or some bullshit like that. (These people at school were cis-white neurotypical christians, [transphobic too] what else would you expect-?)