Here For The Ride

Calm Harm can be tailored to your needs and will provide strategies to help you get past those crucial moments of wanting to harm.

It’s also totally FREE.

It has a safety net feature where you can put in your contacts and call them from inside the app

It also tells you about the different kinds of anxiety so you’re not confused on what kind of anxiety you have

It has been literal years but every time I see Martin’s tweets posted somewhere and his word is shared as truth while her post is not shared it sort of reiterates the fact that we trust men to speak about feminism more than we believe women who experience it. 

Adding screenshots of her post. His whole post is there without needing a link. Hers should be, too.

So as a mini disclaimer: I myself experience psychosis (professionally diagnosed), among other things, but the point is I have hallucinations and delusions and reality is a tricky thing for me. I think it’s important to point out that I am not just making these claims that it’s ableist at random, I’m pointing out tropes and stereotypes that are harmful and dangerous for folks with psychosis. I also apologize if any of this is worded poorly, please feel free to shoot me an ask if you need clarification on anything. That being said, let’s give some context. In TMA, the fears are all based around very real things people deal with in real life, the Spiral is no different. The Spiral in canon, is based around warped realities and illusions. In other words, psychosis. Hallucinations, delusions, etc. In TMA canon, as far as I have listened to (I have listened up to ep 164) this is handled very well, in my opinion! Victims of the Spiral are not treated as evil, or stereotypically psychotic, they’re just people that struggle with identifying what’s reality and what isn’t. They’re just scared and confused and trying their best. To me, it never read as stereotyping clearly psychotic coded characters, it handled it as realistically as it could (since obviously the Spiral IS a real at least semi-physical thing in TMA’s world, unlike in real life). The problem comes in with the Distortion. I will focus on Michael Distortion specifically, since I’ve listened to his entire arc and have not listened to all of TMA yet so I know less about Helen, but it applies to Helen Distortion as well as the rest of the Spiral. In TMA canon, Michael as a human is portrayed as sweet and caring and maybe a little naive, or gullible. He’s just a person. Once he becomes the distortion, he is never, to my knowledge, described as being overly colorful, or eyestrain-y. Honestly for the most part, he is described as looking fairly… normal. Yes, his hands are fucked up, but he’s just in a coffee shop, casually, and there’s no mention from Sasha that he’s wearing the brightest, gaudiest thing on the planet, or anything like that. He blends in. How does this apply to ableism and psychosis you ask? It all has to do with stereotypes and harmful tropes! Psychotic stereotypes and harmful tropes. These little babies are hardly talked about in most fandom spaces, but they’re in almost any media you consume. Some examples being: characters that experience hallucinations + delusions being reduced to “crazy”  giggly killers, delusional characters being portrayed as stupid/incompetent, making hallucinations and delusions the butt of jokes, assuming that hallucinations are always funny, wacky little acid trips! So, to get to the meat of this post: The Distortion in TMA is, consistently by the fandom, portrayed as a colorful, wacky, psychedelic, manic, giggly stoner-type hippie.

The whole fear, that is based on psychosis, based on the experiences of psychotic people, is reduced by the fandom to a funny, colorful drug trip.

That is ableist.

I want everyone to understand what is it actually like to experience psychotic symptoms. I know I cannot speak for everyone, I know my own experiences, my husband’s experiences (He is also psychotic), and I have done a lot of research on this topic! And it’s not fun, it’s not wacky, or just eye burning colors. Hallucinations make you question if they are real. Because they could be.

They are shadows or they are so close to being real looking that you second guess yourself, if not just fully believe they are real. Some hallucinations I experience as an example, are spiders, just randomly, for a moment, crawling and disappearing under things. I never know if they are real or not, so I always check. Or people, standing places. I know they aren’t there, because in context, it hardly makes sense, but I’m never… 100% sure.

Hallucinations are seeing things out of the corner of your eye that look SO real and detailed, but if you look head on they disappear. Hallucinations are hearing voices you swear are real, you’re so convinced that you look around and see if anyone else reacts to it. They don’t, obviously, because it’s in your head, but you still wonder?

Hallucinations are sleeping with the lights on because if you don’t the shadows in your room become a person and move like a person and delusions are knowing that’s not real but also knowing in your heart that that thing that just formed itself out of shadows in your hall is very real and can hurt you. You become afraid and paranoid because you never feel safe! You question yourself! And throw in intrusive, violent, deeply upsetting thoughts and you have someone that no one even TRIES understand, and someone that constantly has their experiences reduced to something only crazed manic killers and hippies on drugs experience.

It’s not okay.

Fandom Michael Distortion, and the Spiral as a whole is heavily psychotic coded, if not an outright portrayal of psychosis. And the distortion, is constantly, nearly exclusively, drawn as if they are just a wacky, chaotic, manic killer hippie. Do… you see where I’m going with this?

This post is long, and I’m tired, and worn out. This specific brand of ableism is consistently ignored, and honestly I don’t expect anyone to pay attention to this post because it’s so much easier to just ignore the random person on tumblr then it is to actually reflect on how you portray a character you probably love. I get it, I do, it’s hard to accept that how you’ve been consuming something is harmful. Especially when the whole fandom seems to portray it that way. It’s easy to just say “well everyone else is doing it” or just say I’m being dramatic, etc, etc.

But I ask of anyone that reads this, to really think about this. I don’t blame most people that portray the Distortion how they do, there is a significant lack of education and resources on the topic of psychosis. It’s very easy to forget about psychotic people, or reduce us to the stereotypes. And it’s easy to not realize that you’re doing it, especially if you don’t experience psychosis. I don’t blame anyone for simply not realizing.

But, you do need to own up, and if you truly, really care about fighting ableism, this includes fighting ableist portrayals of psychotic and psychotic coded characters. the distortion has no canon design. The fans created the general Michael and Helen looks, and the fans can change them. You can be the person that fights against ableist stereotypes and tropes, you just have to accept that you too, can make mistakes, and that making mistakes is okay, so long as you make the effort to reflect on your own actions and change them when they’re hurting others.

Just… ask yourself, is the way the distortion is portrayed really more important than actual, real life people?

req’d by @quality-purple-trash​

spiritual sequel to