not doing well

sort of a vent/mental illness related blog

[lightintheattic222]

Intro

DX DISORDERS

("*" Denotes that the following issues are related to/caused by the previous one)

(I am working to get better at all my issues, but "^" means I am focused on that particular issue.)

•Level 1 Autism

*Sensory issues, particularly auditory or food-related

*^Pica (Xylophagia)

*Hyperlexia

•Generalized Anxiety Disorder

*Trichotillomania/trichophagia

*Dermatillomania

•^ADHD (Type C)

*Psychomotor Agitation

•Oppositional Defiance Disorder

I also have mild propagnasia. I need melatonin to sleep and have panic attacks, but I do not have insomnia or panic disorder.

I went through ABA therapy, but luckily was never physically restrained/assaulted.

^I have been bullied my entire life due to ableism and classism.

^I had very low/selective empathy during childhood that led to me harming people and animals, but have much gotten better at controlling violent/pyromanic tendencies as I get older.

I had a very bad childhood and am a ca/neglect/csa survivor with religious trauma, and grew up in poverty.

I was hypersexual for several years following being sexually abused, but have mostly gotten it under control by now.

I have abused drugs and alcohol and have attempted suicide before.

I have no friends currently and have not for most of my life.

If you relate to any of these topics/are interested in mental illness in general, feel free to follow. Life sucks, but it can suck less badly.

[lightintheattic222]

this is deeply disturbing but probably the funniest thing that's ever happened to me, and i could never tell anyone in real life, so i'm going to tell all here

the guy who raped me when i was 11 unironically described our relationship as being "similar to the joker and harley quinn"

we were both male

i need you to stop feeling bad for me or sad or anything and just realize how batshit that is

just like me fr fr on god

[rottingdollflesh-deactivated202]

i hated being the dumb kid. being the problem kid. the kid in class everyone picks on. the kid staff and parents hate. you know the one. the one always in the office, always breaking down. always mocked. having adhd and mood disorders as a child is hard. it changes you. the lingering pain doesn’t go away. you don’t grow into a confident capable adult when everyone mocks the way u learn instead of helping.

[valeria-sage]

Read about the controversy and hate towards @crippled-pvp, so I thought I’d add something.

I am very mentally disabled and decently physically disabled. I am very obviously disabled in both ways. If someone watched me for more than 5 seconds they would know (if I’m not using mobility aids). Thought I’d point out my ‘qualifications.’

He is correct. Plainly put, people with mental disabilities that do not affect mobility or abilities do not get to say that ‘their issues matter too’ when it comes to accessibility.

The difference between the two types of accessibility is that one can be provided yourself.

If I cannot get up the stairs, I cannot just pull a ramp or elevator or step out of nowhere. If I start to pass out, I cannot just unload a chair to sit on. I cannot magically fix my disabilities to do something that is inaccessible to me.

If I am having a bad sensory day, I can bring headphones or my own food or stim toys or whatever I need. If I am having a panic attack, I am able to remove myself from the situation. If I randomly switch out, I am able to adapt or, again, remove myself from the situation.

I am mentally able to go to parades and parties and things that trigger any one of my mental disabilities. Because I know I can a) accommodate myself or b) leave. And I still get the experience. I am not able to go to parades and parties and things that trigger my physical disabilities, even on good days where a mobility aid is not needed. I cannot accommodate a hike, or stairs, or a ramp that’s too steep. And I do not have the option to.

There are ways you can prevent and deal with things from mental disabilities. There are none for us physically disabled people.

That is the difference.

[lightintheattic222]

this post is extremely ignorant and speaks to just how little op understands mental illness.

cool, i'm really happy that stopping a panic attack is as easy for you as leaving the situation. i'm glad you don't have severe ptsd or anxiety, i'm glad your panic attacks are situational. it doesn't work like that for me.

i'm really happy for you that a.) your sensory issues can be resolved with stim toys and generally don't impede your life, and b.) you are capable of self managing 100% of the time. this is not universal. not everyone has the same kind of stress tolerance you do.

i'm genuinely, sincerely, really happy for you that you don't suffer from treatment resistant psychosis or severe dissociation or aspd or catatonia. because that is hell. it's a hell you can't negotiate with. it's a hell people don't even consider accommodating, because the general societal expectation is that these people should be locked up at all times. and if they aren't, literal murder is considered a reasonable (or even heroic) solution.

i can't wait to see the day when op tries to cure a csa victim with severe bpd with a squishmellow and finally realizes that their experiences with mental illness are NOT universal and their perceptions of severe mental illness as something you can just "get over" with enough willpower are inaccurate at best and ableist at worst.

[theorahsart]

Way way back I drew a comic explaining what we really mean by ‘The Autism Spectrum’ and posted it here back when Tumblr was Huge. Then the comic really blew up!! Last year I did a remake of the comic, with some updated language, and using Mia, a character from a graphic novel I made. Figured I’d share for Autism Acceptance Month!

[lightintheattic222]

isn't this basically the same as another comic? but the character was named archie

[lightintheattic222]

"gifted kid burnouts rise up!"

ok how about non-gifted kids who struggled?

here's to all my fellow "problem" kids, who severely struggled in school regardless of our intelligence. to everyone who was hated by student and staff alike. to everyone who has never been able to academically succeed for one reason or another. who never even got the opportunity. who were shoved in the back of the classroom, or back of the school in the SPED room, or out of school entirely. to everyone who never got the resources they needed or were exposed to abusive "treatment".

here's to everyone who never had a fall from grace because we were left behind on day one.

[tiniepuppie]

(Not mine)

Why didn’t you save me?

Why didn’t you do anything when I begged for death every night?

Was I not pure enough?

Why.

[thecoolestlosers]

[lightintheattic222]

TW PTSD/CSA

it feels bad. it feels like a disgusting leech on my brain. it feels like i'm a computer whose files are all corrupted.

it makes me sick to think about what happened. how it feels like it was my fault. how i genuinely convinced myself it was (what a fucking joke. i was 11. he was gonna kill me.)

it's always there, in the background. the omnipresent elephant in the room. sometimes something will bring it to the front and i'll want to claw my eyes out.

i hate how i can almost feel it. how i can feel it. how i'm teleported back into my room under the dim evening light and he's on top of me and everything is wrong and i tell him to stop and he doesn't.

how demeaning it felt. how scared i was. how i couldn't breathe but he wouldn't let go. how i could taste the bile as it came up my throat. how it mixed with something far more unsavory. how fucking terrible it smelled and how it wouldn't go away even after i opened all the windows and turned on the fan. how i threw up later. how he apologized for the smell, but not for raping an 11 year old. not for breaking my mind.

how it kept going. how it must've seemed so innocent from the outside. how he insisted on being around me and touching me and grabbing and kissing and ruining my favorite game by association.

how he tried to kill me when i threatened to tell. how he pretended it was just friendly horseplay at first. how he lifted me up and made me stop breathing. how i saw spots in my eyes. how he only let go because another boy walked in.

i hate it. i hate how it makes me feel. i hate how it can make feel things. i hate that it has this much control over me.

i feel like i'm wearing stained clothing. like i lost a crucial component. like i'm an unsolvable puzzle. like all i am is a camera frozen on a single snapshot of history. a tiny cosmically insignificant moment that made me stop believing in god.

i hate it so much

[lovearsonist]

consuming my favorite media isnt enough. i need to put my blorbos in a jar, shake it violently, then leave it atop a high shelf and only come back when i want to shake it more.

[lightintheattic222]

if fanfic writers could stop flooding neurodivergent tags with their stupid head cannons that'd be great thanks

[lightintheattic222]

a more in-depth look at my 'tism

yes i hate pep-rallies why do you ask

[lightintheattic222]

anyone else CONSTANTLY getting up to leave class so you can walk around for a bit bc you've been forced to sit still for too long and need to stim and the fidget toys just aren't cutting it and oh god my classmates must think i'm so weird

or is it just me?

[lightintheattic222]

type c gang wya

[queerautism]

This book was my BIBLE as a teenager with a zombie special interest, but I've only ever read it in Spanish, so I am very excited to be rereading it now in my zombie renaissance era

[lightintheattic222]

holy shit you just awakened a core memory

[an-enby-nerd-deactivated2025021]

I don’t think that a lot of people know what ABA/masking “therapy” actually does to autistic children.

(ANALOGY) If you’re taking a pan out of a hot oven and it hurts your hand, you’ll scrunch your face up and go “ow!” But then someone else comes along and tells you to be quiet, and then force you to keep taking out and putting back in the pan, until you don’t react when you do it. It still hurts, of course, but you’ve been conditioned to not react whenever you are burned by the pan. You could’ve used an oven mitt or had someone else get the pan for you, or maybe just not have done it at all, but you were told for years what the “right way” to take the pan out was. And now you’ve built up callouses, and take the pan out the exact way you were trained to, unconsciously ignoring your pain. It still hurts, but you’re not supposed to do it another painless way, and instead continue to hurt, because it’s all you were taught to do.

ABA doesn’t make autistic kids’ lives easier, it makes the parents’ lives easier, because now they won’t have to listen to their child telling them that they’re in pain. Your child is upset and hurting, but it’s too “hard/stressful” for you to acknowledge and help them.

WE ARE NOT AN ANNOYANCE OR A BURDEN. WE ARE YOUR CHILDREN. WE ARE NOT A BROKEN PUZZLE THAT NEEDS TO BE PUT BACK TOGETHER.

We are people, we have thoughts and feelings, and we feel pain. But we keep it bottled up inside because showing love and care for your child is apparently too “difficult” for you.

(EDIT)

Holy shit this post blew up real quickly

[mactiir]

i don't think we talk enough about how childhood bullying really just. fucks up your ability to make friends long-term.

I'm not talking about self-image or even like attachment styles, although peer emotional abuse affects that too. I'm talking about how it legitimately stunts your understanding of how positive platonic relationships even work.

Like, a few years back (pre pandemic) a classmate point-blank told me, "hey, you're pretty cool, do you wanna come out for drinks and trivia with us Thursday night?" and my first internal reaction wasn't "oh cool, a friend!" or even "I'm not really interested" but: "where is the trap?" My kneejerk response to an earnest overture of friendship from this guy was trying to figure out how he was trying to back me into a corner, trick me into something, or make fun of me. We were in goddamm GRADUATE SCHOOL.

Of course I did end up going to drinks and it was a lovely time, but sometimes I think about the sheer number of potential friendships I've missed out on because I read their intentions as potentially hostile, *even when their intent is clearly not hostile*. Getting asked out for drinks is SUPER NORMAL. Being invited to parties is normal. Meeting for coffee is normal. in fact it's a primary way of forging adult friendships. But i am immediately wary of it, because the years in which I was developing most of my crucial social skills were spent dodging cruel pranks, getting invited to fake parties or uninvited from real ones, getting asked out "as a joke", being given compliments that were actually somehow insults, and so forth.

I don't have problems making friends-- I talk to people for a living, I am overall extremely charismatic and get invited out a lot, but I struggle to forge new connections because my trained response is to be immediately suspicious of people who appear friendly, welcoming and well-intentioned -- even fifteen years later. This is why I don't get the "you should have been bullied more" crowd. Like somehow bullying makes you more "normal". It definitely doesn't, even if "normal" was a real thing. I am definitely a more antisocial weirdo as a result of prolonged peer-to-peer emotional abuse than I would have been otherwise.