Carrie Fisher explains to a little boy what ‘bipolar’ means, at Indiana Comic Con 2015.
I love her so much.
I will always reblog this because it’s the best description of bi-polar I have EVER seen.
(Especially to people who don’t understand what mania means. You aren’t HAPPY, you’re very fast.)
It was SO important to 15-year-old me to learn that PRINCESS LEIA (whose hair I have envied since age 7, btw) was bi-polar.
she is so good and i love her so much, and so so much for TALKING about everything so frankly. (without losing an ounce of her humor).
I never gave Carrie Fisher much thought until she was the guest on Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me – If you aren’t familiar with the show, it’s a news-related comedy podcast recorded weekly in Chicago.
She was hilarious and everything I have read/seen since has made me like and respect her more.
Reblogging because it is so important not to hide things from kids. This is an awesome example of explaining something to a kid by relating it to things they already understand. Then they can accept it, process it, and move on. Otherwise, the hidden thing can become a source of fear or shame.
mental health
so i saw the man from uncle and throughout the movie armie hammer’s character is very obviously not neurotypical (my money was on autism) and at the end it actually said that armie hammer’s character has “volatile personality disorder” and i looked into what that is and apparently it’s like a 1960’s name for borderline??? a character in a big mainstream movie canonically has bpd and isn’t treated like a monster with no emotions???? and is shown with non-laughable symptoms and has episodes where he’s angry and shaking and loses control and you don’t feel uncomfortable or scared of him and he’s still treated like a competent agent (actually, like one of the best agents)???????
Those Things We Never Talk About, by A Mentally Ill Girl
[This is an attempt at a lighthearted (but informative) take on something that is absolutely horrible and destroys thousands of lives. Not lighthearted at all are the subjects you’ll find mentioned here: rape, sexual assault, suicide and child murder. So please, be safe.]
Welcome to the fun world of Fucked-Up Intrusive Thoughts! I’ll start.
When I was very young (nine? ten?) I heard a news story about ‘devil worshippers’ on the radio. My family were very religious at the time, but SURPRISE! I had severe OCD, although no-one knew it back then. By the end of the day I had convinced myself I was a devil worshipper, for no other reason than because things like ‘all that jumping around on the furniture you, a child of ten, are doing right now? That’s actually what devil worship is’ kept popping into my head. I lay awake that night fairly convinced I was going to hell, because OF COURSE I had accidentally worshipped the devil, and God was unlikely to care about whether I’d actually meant to or not. Eternity in hell for the ten-year-old!
Anyway, it got much much worse from there. Because intrusive thoughts are horrible, horrible things and while they can easily convince a little girl that she’s a devil worshipper they can also easily convince a grown adult that she just verbally abused someone in public, or needs to throw herself out of a moving car, or just sexually abused their newborn baby, or anything in fact. Fun times.
You would be amazed at how many people don’t understand intrusive thoughts. Even people in social justice circles. Like, it tends to go like this:
PERSON 1: I have disturbing, inappropriate sexual thoughts. Please help me get rid of them somehow.
PERSON 2: Clearly you are a Problematic™ potential predator/rapist. Away with you.
And so on. (This is actually not much of an exaggeration, by the way). But intrusive thoughts, be they of killing your child, committing sexual assault, pushing someone onto the railway tracks or anything – there’s one thing they all have in common –
You’re not going to do them.
No, you’re really not. I know this so firmly I’ve put it in both bold and italic. But don’t just take my word for it, everyone agrees and everyone knows that you’re not going to do them. Wikipedia agrees! OCD UK agrees! Clinical psychologists agree! The Huffington Post agrees!
Unfortunately, OCD and intrusive thoughts are designed to make you, brave soldier, completely disagree with this statement. But no matter what’s going on inside your head I swear that nothing horrible is happening outside of it. (Many has been the time I’ve had to look around and come to the conclusion ‘No-one is yelling at me or trying to hit me, so I must not have launched a torrent of slurs and insults onto a stranger in the street after all.’)
LASTLY, A VERY IMPORTANT THING: Apparently everyone actually gets intrusive thoughts – violent ones, sexual ones, disgusting ones – from time to time, but their brains healthily tune all that crap out. I cannot imagine what this may be like, and am somewhat jealous.
SOME FREQUENTLY RARELY ASKED QUESTIONS:
I keep having thoughts of hurting people I know/friends/family. Am I an abuser? – Nope. You have an anxiety disorder that keeps replaying scenarios that you’re afraid of. A thought alone doesn’t make you an abuser, the motivation behind those thoughts does. Your motivation is ‘oh god no these thoughts and these actions are horrible’. The absolute opposite of a abuser.
I keep having thoughts of harming my baby, am I a bad parent? – Nope. You have an anxiety disorder. (This point cannot be repeated enough). Also, if you’re a new mother scared of harming your newborn, you are very much not alone. Also also, no, none of the hundreds of mothers surveyed at that link actually harmed their children. Because that’s not what intrusive thoughts do.
I have sexual images of children pop into my head all the time. Am I a paedophile? – Nope, because you’re not sexually attracted to children. And in fact you’re terrified of the mere thought of it. What you’re getting is gross pop-ups from the internet server that is your mind, that’s all. Because you have an anxiety disorder (there it is again) that prevents you from crossing them out like all these mysterious normal people do.
Are you sure I’m not going to do the things my intrusive thoughts say I will? – I am very, very sure.
The Guardian’s had a couple of good articles about mental illness in Britain recently
Mara Wilson’s Important Message For Teens Living With Mental Illness
Looking back on her experience with, Mara Wilson wishes someone had told her that being depressed and having anxiety was OK. Since no one did that for her growing up, she’s taking the opportunity to tell young people now. The former child actress and current writer teamed up with, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping teens with mental illness.
Behold, the Moffat Stan bingo.
Okay, I don’t know where this came from- if it’s a creation of the OP, or one of those virtually untraceable images that people repost every now and again. So I’m not 100% sure whom I’m even directing my ire at here, but:
What is wrong with the statement ‘His writing saved my life’? I want an explanation as to why it’s emotionally manipulative. Ideally one that doesn’t mention Moffat at all, actually, this argument has little to do with him – you’d be hard pressed to find a work of popular fiction that hadn’t saved someone’s life. Harry Potter, John Green’s stuff, Twilight – god, I could reel off a whole list of problematic things I’ve heard people say ‘it saved my life’ in relation to. No reason why Moffat’s stuff should be any different. (Hell, I’m reliably informed that people can love a work of fiction, love what it did for them, and still feel disdain for the author’s opinions / hate the author as a person.)
So your complaint is…what? If this mysterious hypothetical Moffat-loving strawman is saying ‘his writing saved my life’, how is that any more emotionally manipulative than, well, the regular old emotional manipulation used when people are arguing? (And this is a discussion that includes sexual assault. I think it’s safe to say that emotions, very high ones, will be involved.) No, I think the crux of that snide little remark is that – as usual – any discussion involving depression or suicide is bundled away into a little box labled ‘romanticising’ ‘glorifying’ ‘glamourising’ and naturally ‘emotional manipulation’ so that people don’t have to actually think about it, and can neatly cast the victim as the villain for bringing it up in the first place.
I’d be very interested to see the discussion that inspired that particular piece of bingo card, and I’d also like to say to anyone of a similar buy-your-sanity-from-the-television disposition: fuck that shit. If Moffat’s Doctor Who, or RTD’s Doctor Who, or Teen Wolf or South Park or some terrible old TV show no-one’s ever seen saved your life, you be proud of that, you be very proud, and don’t stop clinging to it. Obviously you need to bear in mind other people’s triggers and fears (please do), but ‘talking about openly’ is very very rarely the same thing as ‘emotional manipulation’.
Jesus Christ, did this really go for over a thousand notes without anyone questioning this? Something mocking the suicidal? Well…I suppose it’s alright if it’s done in the name of ‘Moffat hate’. Comic sans and cruelty! That’ll show him!
This is fucking bullshit right here.
No, not the Ferguson crisis happening because that is important and critical, but this fucking post right here.
Some people use tumblr as a getaway from the world around them. Sometimes this is quite vital to them. So you can’t fucking blame a person for not reblogging current news posts if it means protecting their goddamn mental health.
I’m all for educating oneself about what’s going on currently, and I encourage that people at least make themselves aware of what’s happening where and why. But don’t you dare fucking hate a person because they are doing what’s best for themselves and their mental health. We’re not being fucking ignorant. We’re aware. We’re informed, which is the most a lot of people can do from in front of their computers and desks, but don’t you fucking judge people for not reblogging something or whatever.
What’s happening is terrible, yes, but hating people for not putting their mental states at risk is also fucking terrible and disgusting.
I’m fucking pissed off at a whole fucking lot of you. Bye.
This is important, because there’s a difference between someone ignoring whats going on because they don’t care, and someone trying to protect their mental health so that they don’t spiral down even worse from all the negativity that’s going on.
If you harass, attack, put blame on someone because they’re trying to keep themselves from falling into a very, very bad pit of anxiety/depression/any other mental health issue that could stem from any of this, then you are horrible.
I understand that what’s happening in Ferguson is inexcusable, hell I’m reblogging what I can to spread awareness or news or anything of the sort because it’s not right at all. But people with mental health issues who are badly affected by what’s happening there and need to tumblr savior/post block what is happening should not be shamed for doing so, because what good does it do to put someone’s mental (and maybe even physical state) at risk as well with what’s happening?it does no good at all.
So please just be aware that there are people out there who do genuinely care, but need to be safe for there own personal reasons and have to stay clear of what is happening, please.
Tag your posts, be conscious of and respectful of other people who are triggered by the events that are occurring.
Okay, I’d been holding this post back til The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was released worldwide, but it’s out now (and hell, this post is as spoiler-free as I could get it, anyway.)
Let’s talk about Harry Osborn! Or, more specifically, let’s talk about what the new film (and most adaptations in fact) leave out: his schizophrenia.
[trigger warning for mental health and child abuse discussion]
In the comics, Harry’s schizophrenia was brought on from a LSD overdose, although it was also probably partly down to genetics. Harry’s father, Norman, (who, while up against some pretty stiff competition, probably takes the crown for Worst Father In The Marvelverse) subjected Harry to various forms of abuse as he grew up. Neglect, violence, belittlement, it was all in there – Norman’s father had done the same thing to him. And Norman (as even casual Marvel readers know, I think) is schizophrenic himself – he’s also the Green Goblin, and also generally incredibly powerful and rich. His schizophrenia’s been a plot point in many interesting stories, but Norman’s pretty much out-and-out power-mad, cruel and violent. He’s a fascinating character, but – yeah, this is where this veers sideways into representation discussion – he’s not really good representation for mentally ill folk.
But – to me, at least – Harry is. While Harry grew up wanting for nothing material-goods wise – this is what most people use as the jumping-off point for his character, sigh – he also grew up, you know, abused. As is the case in many, many parent-child abuse cases, he still loved his father, but he also dearly loved Peter, and MJ, and Gwen, and Liz, and his own son. He became the second Green Goblin after a hallucination of his father goaded him to, but he wasn’t really very good at it at all. In fact, he went his whole run without killing anybody – don’t get me wrong, he hurt people, he was a supervillain – but he really didn’t have it in him to kill anyone, let alone his best friend or anyone close to him. (This is where I give a very, very dirty look to Marc Webb and co.) Peter himself even pointed it out once or twice: Harry wasn’t evil, he was ill.
Comic books and mental health issues really don’t go together- I think everyone’s aware of that to some extent. Heroes are heroes: villains are ‘lunatics’. DC’s even been called out on it; I dunno if Marvel has. But people with mental health issues deserve to be represented as something other than the bad guy. If you’re a teenage girl holed up in your parent’s house, avoiding your cat because you think there’s a chance it’s actually a demon and fighting off awful intrusive thoughts (yo) you’re probably going to cling like mad to anything telling you might be okay after all. It was 2007, Spider-Man 3 had just come out so there were Spidey comics available everywhere- I was lucky to get Harry. He was a big help. He had mental health problems, he lashed out, alienated people, scared his own son, and even though it all took place in a heightened comic-book universe it seemed to work. People in that universe even seemed to like him. (One of my favourite, favourite moments of the Parker-Osborn friendship comes in Amazing Spider-Man Extra #1, when Peter hears some jerks Harry’s doing business with mocking his mental stability – “Maybe I can get nutjob insurance! Then it might even pay for him to turn into a blithering psychopath!” – and promptly overturns a punch bowl on their heads.)
Anyway, while browsing comic book message boards and the like, I’ve heard more than one person say, “Wait, are you telling me that almost all supervillains have a mental illness of some sort – yet none of them ever seem to respond well to treatment, go to therapy, and settle down quietly with their loved ones?” Well – I don’t read that many comics, so I don’t know if there are others (I hope so) but Harry was definitely one who did, and that was a big relief. Which is why I wish TASM2 hadn’t done what they did to him: introducing him as a ‘trust fund baby hipster kid’ when he was a much, much deeper character than that – abuse victim, drug addict – and then turning him into a generic supervillain who cares absolutely nothing for innocent victims. (This is the guy who couldn’t kill Peter when he was lying unarmed in front of him!) By essentially making him just a younger version of Norman who was kindasorta Peter’s friend once, they’ve taken away what became, as the comics went on, the important thing about the Osborns, at least to me: yes, undoubtably there are mentally ill people out there who are Normans. There’d have to be. But more of them – like me, like most – are Harrys.
This isn’t to say that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a bad movie, or that Dane Dehaan didn’t do very well with what he was given or yadda yadda yadda. But, since Marvel’s been able to showcase issues like addiction, anxiety and PTSD, I was really hoping they’d show Harry for what he really was – absolutely having a severe, stigmatised mental illness and still being a good, loving person. It makes me so disappointed that they didn’t.
belbet:
fun tip:
anxiety is not cured by forcing a person into the situation that makes them anxious
EXACTLY GOD BLESS YOUR GOOD SOUL
it’s called systematic desensitization and/or flooding and it’s one of the most effective treatments for anxiety and phobias
but you know, whatever, let’s keep being fucking stupid and demonizing treatment because it’s unpleasant to go through
But you have to do it properly and in the right environment. (Which is what I did.) I imagine what people object to are their friends/family pressurising them into situations they’re not comfortable in. And with all the countless taboos on mental health that exist, that is…still pretty much what happens.
In other words, if someone wants to conquer their fear of the water, they should be able to trust someone to take them to a swimming pool (as scary and horrible as the swimming pool may look)…not jump up on them unexpectedly and push them off a bridge.
sorry guys I’ve just never run into a character that has this//this much discussion of it at ALL I mean shit I didn’t even know I had Sensory Integration until I was 14
I was so pissed that my parents didn’t even think to explain to me that I was different because my brain was different, because…
I am mostly still on my tumblr-cation (Val, pretty much I’ve been checking your Tumblr and John Green’s, so feel special, I guess?), but I logged back in so I could reblog this.
I had a similar experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder. �?My parents couldn’t really have done much about it, as they didn’t realize I had it and the one thing that might have helped—seeing a therapist—was something that terrified me as a child. �?My parents suggested it, and I begged and pleaded with them not to take me. �?But I spent a lot of time thinking I was a terrible person, when it wasn’t that I was doing things wrong; there was actually something wrong with me.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder does not always manifest in the counting of things, the touching of walls, the straightening and alphabetizing and organizing that television teaches us to expect. �?OCD has subtypes, some of which are oddly specific and quite different from what you would probably think of when you imagine a person with the disorder.
There is, in particular, a subtype of OCD called scrupulosity. �?This is an abnormal and unhealthy preoccupation with religious or moral correctness. �?I spent so much time worrying that I had accidentally sold my soul, whispering repetitive prayers to apologize for or “undo” a blasphemous thought, and crying over things I did wrong because all I wanted was to be good and it seemed like my mind was against me. �?I thought I was the most sinful of children, that I was doing things that could never be forgiven. �?
Everyone has ridiculous automatic thoughts. �?The difference between most of you and a person with scrupulosity is that if something absurd like, “I would like ice cream so much I’d pretty much sell my soul for it,” popped into your head, you would go, “That was a weird thought,” and move on. �?I, on the other hand, would probably spend the next thirty seconds chanting under my breath that I didn’t mean it, that I was sorry, and that the devil should go away. �?I know it’s stupid. �?I know! �?But it’s much easier to recognize your disordered thinking than to rewire your brain.
I didn’t realize that I had OCD until high school, and when I read an article about scrupulosity, it made my whole life make sense. �?I wasn’t a horrible person, and I wasn’t failing hideously at religion. �?I was just a little bit glitchy. �?
I am writing this because I don’t want anyone else to go around feeling evil when you’ve just got some wires crossed. �?If anything I’ve said rings a bell, you might want to check out the Wikipedia pages on OCD and scrupulosity and/or the OCD Foundation’s website. �?(I guess I can’t put hyperlinks in this type of post?)
As for what you do about it, well, that’s up to you. �?I have tried talk therapy, which for me personally was somewhat useful but not really mind-blowing; Cognitive Behavior Therapy, which is supposed to be quite good for OCD if you’re willing to work for it, although I never really kept up with the homework my therapist gave me; antidepressants, which didn’t like my body chemistry and gave me some weird side effects; and mindfulness meditation, which I think would also have been good if I had actually kept up with it. �?I’ve also heard good things about Inositol, which is a dietary supplement, but I’ve never tried it. �?So there are a lot of things you can try. �?Honestly, though, I think just knowing what’s wrong with you is a huge relief. �?Knowing that you’re not the only one and that it doesn’t make you stupid or a bad person.
I’m going to sleep now, and I don’t log into Tumblr all that often, but if anyone has any questions about OCD or scrupulosity, I would be happy to try to answer them, whenever the next time I check my ask box is. �?Which is to say, I am happy to help, but seldom here, if that makes sense. �?Good night, Tumblr.
This is how I feel!
Especially the scruplousity thing. I’ve had huge problems with that. My parents once had a copy of The God Delusion lying around and not only could I not read it I couldn’t touch it. I never used to be able to watch or touch DVDs of Supernatural, either, although that thankfully didn’t last long. (Then I started watching it and liked it.) I was afraid if I did anything wrong at all, God would punish me. Even though normally I don’t even believe in him…