Did It Actually Happen If My Brain Doesn’t Have A Firm Handle On It: A Delightful Guide To FUCKING MENTAL ILLNESSES THAT ARE FUCKING AWFUL
my mental health
the-snowflake-owl asked:
Why do you like Simon Petrikov?
This is a fabulous question that will involve a lot of Personal Stuff.
I mentioned about a week ago that I always really like characters who end up losing their agency in some way – be it due to their own weaknesses or outside forces – and having to fight to get it back. (See also! Harry Osborn, Grantaire, Boromir, Amy Pond to some extent, SO MANY) And there’s definitely a reason for that. I have a variety of…
…really demoralising mental illnesses, most of which appear specifically designed to twist my thoughts in not fun ways. OCD is a doozy: you end up going over your day listing all interactions, hoping you didn’t say or do anything horrible but you can’t be sure and some thoughts get so persistent (because you’re going over them all the time) that you end up absolutely certain that some bizarre, insane alter-ego got hold of you at some point and wrecked a ton of very anti-you havoc.
Well, you can probably see where that’s going!
So, watching Adventure Time, my boyfriend told me there was more to the Ice King than was let on in the first couple of series, but I didn’t know what until the bit with the tapes in Holly Jolly Secrets. There was a lot I could relate to in Simon’s words as he loses his mind – which is probably very sad, but there you go. Seeing glimpses of Simon in Ice King in I Remember You (I was told that episode would blow my mind, it did) and seeing him as a fully realised person (and a loving father and massive dork, two other character archetypes I adore) in Simon and Marcy and Betty only increased my love of him. I’m really glad he’s got such a large fandom and I REALLY HOPE he’s in more episodes soon.
You have got to be fucking kidding me–
Wow, thank god you’re above all that!
say-no-to-superwholock how are you not ableist/saneist as fuck again? when the fuck has my brain issues become some kind of mockery to pin to groups you hate? Im sorry but your apologies suck and you’re ableist trash for pulling this bullshit
lmao this is a satire/ parody blog
chill
Okay, I get the feeling you’re all young, hugely immature children getting a kick out of ‘haters’, so let me explain this to you carefully:
By pretending that ‘superwholock’ is a mental illness/addiction, that is making fun of people who (like me) actually have mental illnesses or addictions. I don’t care what you think of Doctor Who, Supernatural or whatever: I do care terribly about the mocking or belittling of mental illnesses and those who suffer from them. Also, you think people haven’t had hallucinations – yes, it’s a real thing, not just a cute ‘lol freakshow’ phrase to stick on a group you don’t like – about fictional characters? FFS.
Like, I don’t know whether to take this as a legimate statement, or more ‘satire’, but-
and yes, satire is offensive but we’re also trying to make a god damn point about how problematic this fandom is so y’all notice and actually do something about it.
Oh my god, and you’re doing that by throwing the seriously mentally ill under the bus? You have no idea, do you? You are not a ‘satire blog’ – you’re ableist bullies hiding behind social justice language, whose response to being called out on problematic behaviour is to laugh (just like Steven Moffat). It’s revolting, and you should stop.
Satire is about punching up, not kicking down young women who might be embarrassing sometimes.
Oh for fuck’s sake…..
Alright, alright, look
Us mods are just trying to poke at the ridiculous side of this fandom and how silly they look
We are not trying to personally victimize anyone and news flash, me and a few other mods have mental illnesses and felt incredibly offended by how this fandom treat them like a fucking accessory, so why not give them a taste of their own medicine?
Tastes bitter, don’t it?
Look, this is obviously a joke and literally no one is going to take our description seriously. And it’s also obvious that we are making fun of the part of the fandom that is extremely toxic (death threats, saying that SWL is better than trans rights, etc).
Tbh I honestly think you guys are just trying to point out things just for an excuse to get mad lmao
I just…
I can’t get my head around this. You’re told you’re being problematic and hurtful: your reaction is to basically tell us we’re overreacting, that it’s just a joke, and that we’re ‘looking for an excuse to get mad’. (I can guarantee no mentally ill person has ever, ever been told that. Ever.)
You’re mad that fandom is treating the mentally ill like ‘a fucking accessory’, so you retaliate by…treating them/their illnesses like a fucking accessory?
It does taste bitter. It tastes very bitter indeed, knowing that legitimate concerns about how the mentally ill are treated on tumblr (and everywhere else) are dismissed with a ‘just an excuse to get mad lmao’. (I guarantee you I’m quite mad already.) And yet I have done nothing to you.
Does anyone else think that we should put together a small, maybe a few pages long, list of things we’d like to see in DW? One without any rudesness or criticisms like moffat is used to? I think he doesn’t listen to the fans because we’re all rude about it, rude with good reason cause he’s ruining a loved show, but sometimes we ought to suck it up and give positive criticism instead.
Something like
1. Make the companions more relatable, we’ll care about them that way. Please call someone for help, someone with beloved characters that aren’t just loved for the culture, that you know….You have no conceivable idea how incredibly offensive I find the first one. I didn’t even get to the rest, so I can’t comment on it. For all I know it’s perfectly valid stuff, absolutely reasonable, respectful to both Moffat and fans.
But the first one made me feel sick.
How dare you.
How dare you.
Just… I’m done with this website for today.
I can’t.
This is utterly, utterly offensive, for those who see themselves in Moffat’s characters more than in any other characters on tv, who find inspiration and joy, and…
They are beloved.
I’m so so sorry that I can’t make everyone on this planet just see how utterly amazing these women and their stories are.
And I’m also sorry for my reaction, because I can rationally see that you didn’t mean to hurt a soul with this. I see the same sentiment daily, much less friendly. But I think can deal with “this character is crap and everybody who likes them is an idiot” better than with “he might actually listen to us”.
But this isn’t something to be fixed.
This isn’t something to be fixed.
Don’t you dare even insinuate that this should be taken away from me.
OP, honestly – this is a noble sentiment. I mean it. But this isn’t How It Works. Especially since this list oscilates wildly about between ‘things that are objectively wrong any any circumstances’ and ‘things I personally don’t like about this TV show’, and though I know full well it wasn’t your intention, it does look a little odd seeing sexism, racism etc put at the same level as the moon egg, or a complaint about an inadequate amount of respect being paid to Ten or the Brig.
The Amy/relatabilty argument has been gone over and gone over, by hundreds of people more qualified than me to talk about it. My defining feeling towards Amy is relief: here was a companion I didn’t just love, but whom I could point to and say ‘she is like me’. She doubted her mind, doubted her memory, that scene in The Big Bang where her parents and aunt groan and facepalm at her sudden supposed insanity hit me like a truck when I realised I’d been Amy in that scene. Relatives had groaned and facepalmed because of me, too. I had been the woman at that wedding table, saying things that couldn’t possibly be true, while my loved ones looked on in pity. (The difference here, I suppose, is that Amy’s thing actually was true. But I feel the point still stands.)
I am mentally ill. I don’t know if Amy, was she real, would count herself as mentally ill too; I don’t know if criticism critiquing her as ‘unrelatable’ or ‘not normal’ is truly ableist or just me projecting; I also have no idea what ‘loved for the culture’ means in the context you’ve used. But I do know that if you actually did put a list together and delivered it to the front steps of the BBC, I would physically fight you before Amy Pond was mentioned in the same breath as some of the genuinely terrible things you’ve listed here.
Another story:
I started watching Doctor Who with Series One, in 2005. I was sixteen, I think, and I fell in love instantly. When Aliens Of London aired, I observed Rose casually say to the Doctor “You’re so gay”, meaning in that context ‘wimpy’ or ‘cowardly’ or something bad, anyway. When she wasn’t told off for that, a mild mounting horror crept over me. But I happened to have Russell T Davies’s email address. (It’s a really boring story, not even worth recounting here.) After some considerable thought, I wrote him an email, explaining that whilst obviously I knew he was gay, I didn’t want Rose to be homophobic, I didn’t want the people I went to school with to continue thinking it was alright to call each ‘gay’ as an insult, was there anything he could do about it? Never got a message back.
Fictional characters who shaped my life (not in any order): Harry Osborn
Bein’ all mental (accompanied by incredibly elaborate bouts of self-harm) is a pretty big part of my life, although it’s lessed a lot now. Anyway, it so happens that during the time all that was going on, I was working my way through the Spiderverse, and you know what, I pretty much felt like Harry looks in the fifth image up there.
Anyway, the ironic thing is, a guy made out of ink (and occasionally personified by James Franco) actually helped me a hell of a lot more than the people who were actually supposed to/being paid to. Turns out that no matter how freaky and horrible the voices in your head get, they can eventually be beaten back, especially if you have the right people around. Harry managed it, after all, albeit with several bumps along the way.
And, perhaps most important to me at least, you can be a dick and alienate everyone and you’re still worth saving. (Straight out of one of the many, many Spider-Man companion books: “Peter Parker always believes Harry Osborn is worth saving.”) Always a handy thing to remember.
A very handy thing. So thanks, Harry, sincerely, you and your creators did good. Now go help somebody else.
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…
My mental health story
You know…I think it’s finally time to put this on the Internet. I want to talk about it, just to a) get it off my chest and b) hopefully help others….I don’t go into too much detail, but there might be some triggers…
Okay, so: I’d always had slight mental health problems, as far back as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is hearing about ‘devil worshippers’ on the radio news, and then later on it popping into my head that I was one, and that God would punish me. I was only nine or ten, and my family was quite religious then, and I was really scared. And I’ve always had trichotillomania, although it was never diagnosed (as far as I know). When I was little I had a bald patch from where I pulled out my hair, and even to this day I have this thing where I wind it around my finger and then pull it out. (I have sort-of conquered this now, by using a scarf and pulling out the tassles on the scarf instead.)
Anyway, I have a fear of a Thing (I won’t go into it, everyone has a different Thing anyway) and I do weird stuff to prevent this Thing happening. When I was in high school, the cafeteria sold these awesome hot cookies, but one day I was queuing up and a voice in my head said “If you buy and eat those delicious cookies, the Thing will happen.” So that was the end of the cookie-eating. I still can’t eat certain foods at certain times, although I am getting slightly better in that regard. Slightly.
Things really went downhill in the closing months of 2007, though. I think it was partly triggered by the suicide of one of my schoolfriends. My parents and her parents were friends too and it shook my dad up pretty bad. From about October 2007 to December 2007, I was a wreck, and I am amazed I didn’t get sectioned. I used to do things like go an entire uni day without water, because if I drank any the Thing would happen. I have vague memories of some guy trying to chat me up, offering to buy me a drink, and I thought he was the devil or something trying to tempt me. When I did eat or drink, it had to be in a specific order. The rest of the time I honestly just…sat there. I was too afraid to do anything in case it caused the Thing. When I say nothing, I mean…nothing. I didn’t watch TV or listen to music or anything. I just sat there.
And then there was the hoarding- I hoarded my hair. (I kept it on top of a chest of drawers) I didn’t clean up because I was afraid of throwing anything away. I didn’t clean the bathroom, even. You guys heard of Howard Hughes, and what happened when he had his breakdown? I went…kinda like that. I hoarded everything. And no, I didn’t cut my nails, either, or shave, even though I wanted to. I couldn’t.
This whole thing made university very difficult indeed. One of my worst memories ever is of some guys in my class stealing my pencilcase and finding hair inside it. (Any hair that fell out while I was out, I put in my pencilcase until I could take it back and put it with the rest). I’d give my right arm to go back in time and change that. I also remember scrambling about in a toilet looking for a hair that fell on the floor- on the toilet floor, I mean, come on. I remember thinking at that point, “What’s going on? What am I doing? This isn’t how anyone should live,” but by then I was too far gone to care.
There were so many uni problems. I’d be interested to go back and look at the creative writing work I handed in then. Because I did hand in all my work on time, but…oh god, uni for those few months was a nightmare. I actually met Louis de Bernières when he came to give a lecture and to this day I have no idea what I said to him.
I survived that time mostly because of the kindness of my boyfriend, who took me to a therapist and also to the cinema several times (the cinema memories are my only good memories of those few months). I did eventually start to come out of it. I met several very good therapists, and I started to get better. Obviously there was a lot to overcome. The hoarding started to go, but scrupulosity was another big one. For ages I was afraid of reading or even touching books that criticised religion, like The God Delusion and so on. And things like tarot cards and books about ghosts. Even Supernatural, I couldn’t touch! (I’m over that now, as fans of that show will probably be pleased to know). Maybe that’s related to my family’s earlier attitude to religion (when I was really little, I wasn’t allowed to say ‘oh my god’ because it was blasphemy), I dunno. That is mostly gone now, though.
So…yes. Other interesting stuff:
-I once spent an entire Wednesday morning thinking my cat was a demon. (This is the anecdote I usually use to break the ice whenever the topic of mental health comes up). It winked at me, and I didn’t like that, so I spent several hours avoiding it.
-I sometimes call myself ‘a mental’, but I’d never call it anyone else.
-I still have panic attacks over really stupid things, but that’s almost a good thing, because it means I can sort of analyse my emotions without there being any actual danger present
-I still do things to stop The Thing happening, but it’s (usually) much less painful and noticeable now
-I sometimes worry, when walking down the street or on the bus, that I’ve just shouted out something incredibly offensive out loud at someone. This used to be much worse (I used to worry about doing it during school assembly) but now I just make myself think ‘Well, no-one is yelling at me or punching me, so I must not have done it.’
-A lot of my OCD is focused around numbers, assigning different things to different numbers and so on. That’s why I have numbers in my screenname, they’re all numbers that mean something to me.
-I get nervous on Friday the 13th (like yesterday…which is why I wasn’t on Tumblr much yesterday) and I get really nervous typing the three-sixes number, you know the one. Fun fact: when that number cropped up in the Doctor Who episode ‘Midnight’ I thought I’d imagined it and got all nervous until watching Confidential proved it was actually said in the episode.
-I still get the voice that says ‘if you do this the Thing will happen’. It does stop me from doing things something. I don’t know if it will ever completely go away.
…Okay, that’s kind of it. My mental health history, or the important bits anyway. (Or all the important bits I can remember and am comfortable talking about). I hope it helps people in some way. If you have any questions, just ask. :)
(no subject)
Guys guys guys, I kinda want to talk to someone
Those who know me know I’m not…100% actually sane. I think. I once spent an entire Wednesday morning thinking my cat was a demon and refusing to touch it. I have OCD, SAD, CBT for the OCD…I basically take up an entire alphabet. I am, however, starting to feel better than I have in ages concerning the Big Problems, which is definitely good.
It’s just there’s all these little things bugging me right now. The guy who messaged me calling me a ‘retarded cunt’ om Tumblr a few days ago? Plunged me into this weird anxious state, to the extenct that Dave (my fiance) was pretty worried. And that’s just normal stuff that everyone on the internet has to deal with…and I apparentlycan’t, and it’s worrying me.
More ‘shameful’ to me though, is that I get anxious when my various OTPs/favourite characters are criticised. This has been a mild problem for ages, but it’s really kicked in pretty bad recently. I mean…other people just get cross seeing character hate, right, but I getanxious. Proper sick-feeling anxious. I don’t know why, and I hate it. I’m grateful that I have the option to walk away from the computer screen, whereas some of the things I get anxious about (things I literally cannot type, what the fuck is wrong with me) in real life, I can’t.
I may not be cut out for the Internet. I just…I needed to get this out here and see how everyone else deals with stuff, I guess.
(no subject)
I occasionally think I’m a bit too emotionally involved in Doctor Who- I dunno, I get obsessive about things quite a lot and it doesn’t tend to do me much good. I’ve just really fallen in love with last series, I suppose- and now they’re sort of unravelling it and I’m going mad to find out what happens next, to the extenct that I’m not entirely sure I’m enjoying it. Take Amy/Rory, my only ship- basically, I have a Rory. Except mine is better and prettier. He told me he’d happily wait outside a box for two thousand years should the need arise, and he also happens to wear plaid- and I’m more like Amy than I suspect I really ought to be. Back in the last series, when she talked about how everyone in her village thought she was crazy- I get that, sometimes. Here’s something I’ve never really brought up- I really obsess about what the people I went to uni with think about me, because in my last year of uni I essentially had a mental breakdown, and I went around with unwashed clothes and (gah) I hoarded my hair in my pencilcase and bag. It’s a long, unpleasant story and I’m kinda actually telling anyone these days. Sort of like I’ve got to tell people because I was tired of no-one ever telling me things when I was looking on the internet for help back those five years ago.
Er, yes, so, I latched onto Amy pretty quick, because I wanted to be Martha but I was much more an Amy. I want a companion with crazy shit going on. And last night I was typing something on GB (the spoiler thread, in fact) and I read it out to my boyfriend and he was all, “Why do I get the feeling you’re a different person on the Internet?” So now I’m beginning to think I am, and I’m not enjoying myself as much as I planned, so I may be turning the Doctor Who things down for a bit. Probably not by much, but still.