I lay praying to a saint that nobody has heard of

[ID: A close up selfie an androgynous person standing in front of a faux brick wall. The bricks have a rainbow gradient painted on the wall. There's photo filters of rainbow glares, stars, and rainbow hearts covering the image. The person has a dark brown mullet with microbangs and is wearing turquoise rose tinted glasses. They have a subtle, smiling expression and have ear, septum, and lip piercings. They're wearing a black T shirt and denim vest, and are holding a rainbow paper fan and intersex pride hand flag. The paper flag says "#WeAreThe..." with the rest of the text cut off. /END ID] I'm a disabled 29 year old ambulatory crutch, rollator, and wheelchair user, part time AAC user. Don't call me a spoonie.

[neetpunk]

I'm an intersex, multiply disabled person. Medium support needs. I have substance abuse and alcohol abuse issues. I have many mental illnesses, schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, complex post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (scrupulosity), and generalized anxiety disorder affect me greatly. I'm also used to be diagnosed with agoraphobia, depersonal derealization disorder, borderline personality disorder, and dependent personality disorder, but I'm no longer diagnosed with those labels.

I have neurodevelopmental disabilities, level 2 autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder combined type, and a suspected intellectual disability. I don't know what caused it for sure but I got my IQ tested in middle school and was put in special ed after the results. I suspect the cause is an amino acids metabolism condition of some kind with my symptoms, or I'm becoming cognitively disabled from brain damage.

I also have a couple sensory disabilities, I have significant myopia with astigmatism and I'm hard of hearing from ménière's disease. I also see double from currently unknown reasons though I'm pretty sure it's some form of binocular vision dysfunction. It significantly affects my ability to read or see details far away.

And I'm physically disabled, too. I have suspected clEDS or cEDS, fibromyalgia, kyphosis, lordosis, herniated discs, stage 1 chronic kidney disease, grade 3 gastroparesis, GERD, colonic inertia, pelvic floor dysfunction, TMD, PSVT, orthostatic hypotension, circadian rhythm disorder not otherwise specified, chronic migraines and tension headaches, functional neurological disorder and vomiting issues unrelated to gastroparesis (either an adrenal insufficiency, hyporeninemic hypoaldosteronism, cyclic vomiting syndrome, or cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome). The doctors that think I have EDS can't diagnose me, I need to drive to a better hospital to be diagnosed. I may also have lupus or another autoimmune condition but I need to see a better rheumatologist first.

I don't know why I'm intersex, I'm still trying to find out, but I'm pretty sure it's classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to 3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency, and partial or tissue specific estrogen insensitivity syndrome. I have issues because my symptoms of hypoestrogenism no matter what my estrogen levels or at. I have chronic hot flashes, hyperhidrosis, lifelong hypoestrogenic vaginal tissue, low libido, and mood swings related to my estrogen issues. I also suspect congenital adrenal hyperplasia has caused at least a partial adrenal insufficiency.

If you're curious to how I got so many rare things going on with me, it's because I'm significantly inbred. Both sides of my family come from Amish ancestry. I've already come to terms with this, please don't ask any rude questions about my feelings on being inbred.

I'm a white passing (I think?), Hispanic, 29 year old person who lives in the US. Survive off SSI. I'm intergender (androgyne/bigender) and aegosexual/bisexual, use any pronouns and gendered terms, TME (not transfem. Not even trans).

I'm a part time AAC user, ambulatory crutch, rollator, and wheelchair user. I have an emotional support animal, an orange tabby cat named Papaya. Papaya is disabled like me, he has an autoimmune disease and a dislocated dewclaw. My mother and partner are my caregivers and keep me alive. My partner has his own emotional support animal named Reign. Reign is a 12 year old gray tabby cat, he has arthritis and chronic constipation. I also suspect he may have gastroparesis like me.

The current medications I take are Albuterol, Baclofen, Compazine, Estring, Finasteride, Flonase, Flovent, Geodon, Glycopyrrolate, Hydroxyzine, Lamictal, Lexapro, Lyrica, Motegrity, Omeprazole, Strattera, Zofran, and many supplements.

I don't identify as a spoonie, neurodivergent, or chronically ill, please don't call me these things. I reclaim the slurs cripple and retarded and will call myself these things sometimes. I'm not a punk, but I am a NEET, I just thought it was a good url name for my disability blog. I enjoy listening to music, playing video games, jigsaw puzzles, making jewelry and rosaries, and painting.

I reblog posts that relate to sex and disability, I won't say you have to be 18+ for my blog, because I'm not ever going to post porn or anything too risque. But I would prefer if people who follow me can be mature enough to handle posts about sex.

[bebsi-cola]

it's ironic that ableds love using disabled people for inspiration porn but hate actually giving the vast majority of disabled people the tools and accommodation to facilitate disabled people doing more with their time. it's almost like the point of it isn't to inspire but to create a false narrative that disability can be overcome with strength of will because look at these people who did it! now stop asking for help

[sparklingbog]

You need to respect the intellectually disabled and delayed I'm not fucking asking

[schizopositivity]

Happy pride to everyone who is schizo-spec/psychotic and lgbtqia+ !!!

We are real. Our mental illness doesn't invalidate our identity. Our identities aren't the reason we are mentally ill.

We are a crucial part of both communities and we are a tough ass group of people.

[disabled-dyke]

hey did y’all know that the SSI $2000 asset limit hasn’t been increased since 1989? [pt: 1989?]

$2000 in 1989 is almost $5500 in 2026.

[bebsi-cola]

you know what, "because i'm in pain" is a good enough reason as any. why do you want to take meds? in pain. why do you wanna cancel? in pain. why didn't you want to talk? in pain. yeah don't be a jerk to everyone you meet and expect them to welcome that. but why were you being a jerk? in pain. it's a reasonable explanation. being in pain should be enough of an explanation. it should be considered an immediate problem that we try to fix as soon as possible instead of expecting the vast majority of people alive to just get on with it.

[auti-starshine]

maybe this is a cancelable opinion but i think the statements “hEDS awareness is rising which is leading to more people being diagnosed and receiving the treatment they need” and “the increased awareness of hEDS is leading to faulty self diagnoses that can be very dangerous” can and should coexist

just bc you’ve seen tiktoks and looked at the symptom lists online doesn’t necessarily mean you have hEDS. A lot of conditions can have the symptoms of hEDS and it’s really important that you go to a doctor and actually get tested and rule out other conditions.

I do think hEDS is not as rare as previously believed but i am also weary of the self diagnosis rates i’ve been seeing online.

[kunaigirl]

Me: "Damn people are REALLY BAD at knowing when to tag their eyestrain art/images...either that or they just don't care about photosenitive epileptic people like me. I feel really sad now." Person: "But Allison, what if they just don't know or understand what qualifies as eyestrain and what doesn't?" Me: "You know what? That could be a factor...While it is always better to be safe rather than sorry (so YES people should always tag eyestrain even if they're unsure if it "counts" or not) maybe you've got a point?"

Anyways! HERE'S YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO WHAT CAN COUNT AS EYESTRAIN! I'm pulling this straight from the Artfight rules page about what needs to be labeled and filtered as eyestrain because it's VERY helpful and VERY accurate! I also know not everybody has an AF account and might not always have access to this handy guide, and this is an important resource; That's why I'm sharing it here! (under the cut)

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

Full eyestrain AF page link

"But Allison! How were you able to screenshot that example if you're so sensitive to eyestrain?"

I dimmed the HELL out of my computer screen and looked away while taking the screenshot and did the same when putting it into this post, that's how lol. BUT YEAH ANYWAYS!!! Once again:

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

[rightdownright]

by the way this is medical. this could save somebody from a migraine all the way to a seizure. this has always been serious. treat this seriously.

[creekfiend]

medical abuse opinions you can have are "that doesn't happen" "that doesn't happen" "that happens sometimes but definitely only to people who deserve it and they're not real people anyway so it's ok" "that doesn't happen" "that maybe happened in the past but its funny" "that happened in the past but it was empowering somehow" "that doesn't happen"

[creekfiend]

the thing is that if you look directly AT various forms of medical abuse it becomes so fucking instantly clear that the forms happening today (forced antipsychotic medication, involuntary institutionalization, involuntary sedation, electroshock, etc etc) all have the same goal that things like lobotomy did: to make someone more convenient to their caretakers. like. that and making money for drug corporations. i was put on multiple medications it was absolutely not appropriate to put a child on when I was institutionalized as a child. there's procedures and meds that they know parents/guardians and insurance companies won't refuse to pay for if their kid or family or whatever is institutionalized and the doctors get kickbacks from the corps to mass prescribe these to institutionalized people bc we're basically like farm animals to them. a captive population to experiment on and charge us money for the pleasure of doing so. this isn't a conspiracy theory, there have been infinite class action lawsuits about these cases. which drug corps work into their budgeting by setting aside Settlement Money bc they know that's cheaper than not illegally giving doctors kickbacks to overprescibe their drugs to vulnerable people. this is public information. it is happening now and it has happened to many, MANY people who are alive today and a lot of them are your own age and you probably interact with them in your daily life without knowing it.

"the kind of person who would be lobotomized" still exists and is still inconvenient to patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. they're still abusing us. stop ignoring us. STOP IGNORING US

[wheelie-sick]

okay I thought I'd give a little bit of information about antipsychiatry because I want to dispel some myths

What antipsychiatry is:

The assertion that psychiatry is an inherently abusive framework and institution that must be abolished.

What antipsychiatry questions

The way psychiatric medications are used

The way madness is categorized

The defining of madness as an illness at all

The defining of madness as "unnatural" and sanity as "natural"

The medicalization of behaviors that are perceived as inconvenient but cause no harm

The medicalization of behaviors, beliefs, and experiences that do not cause suffering

The use of mental health related diagnoses as a tool for the state

What antipsychiatry is not*

The belief that no one should take medication

The belief that mental illness is "fake"

The belief that mental illness does not cause suffering

The belief that seeking help for madness is "stupid" or wrong

The belief that no one has been helped by psychiatry

The belief that no one would benefit from help (generally, not from psychiatry specifically) for their madness

The belief that after psychiatry there should be no support for mad folks

*some antipsychiatrists may believe these things but they are not inherent to the ideology

What antipsychiatrists want

An end to psychiatry as an institution

An end to psychiatric abuse including involuntary institutionalization

Autonomy for mad folks

What antipsychiatrists don't want

People to kill themselves or otherwise hurt themselves

[meangirlnurse]

[vyvilha]

the thing about self-diagnosis is that to have an official diagnosis you HAVE to self-diagnose yourself first and write down all your symptoms and then present them to the psychiatrist like you are defending it on trial otherwise if you go to psychiatrist unprepared and just say you feel miserable all the time and don't know why they will say "ummmm uhhhhh you probably have anxiety. probably just stress from your work lol"

[bebsi-cola]

except if you're a disabled child , or too disabled to look up or write down symptoms, or can't understand that your symptoms are indeed symptoms of a condition, or were forcibly diagnosed regardless of how willing you were, or institutionalised or arrested, or so severely disabled that there's no question about it. or be one of the many disabled people who can't work.

it's not like none of the people i mentioned will have had to self diagnose and then advocate for a documented diagnosis. and it's not like there's anything wrong with doing your own research and advocating for your needs to be met. but there's no way the only way to get an official diagnosis is to self diagnose first. you have to forget about a lot of disabled people to say this

[dead-mad]

Seen a number of people saying things along the lines of "you can have X condition and not be disabled" and yeah that's probably true for some people but also I think people are forgetting how broad of a spectrum disability is and how varied the severity of the same disability can be for two different people. Sometimes disability does mean being bed bound, completely unable to work or go to school. It can also mean having a successful career or doing well in school but struggling with other things abled people don't. It can be needing medical care 24/7 or it can be needing to go to the doctors more frequently than abled people. There are so many ways to be disabled

[sapphling]

i'm just not going to tolerate any hand-waving sentiment towards forcible institutionalization to the effect of "oh, you know, that's mostly just done to the real crazies." i have been the real crazies! suicidal people and homeless people and schizophrenic people and people with "intrusive" symptoms are not asides in your argument about how soon this might start affecting real people who actually deserve freedom and self determination

[trans-axolotl]

another thing that was both cool and sometimes annoying to me when I became a wheelchair user is what it felt like to interact with a world at half the height then I used to. the annoying part is that so many tables registration desks etc are so tall I cannot see over them. The cool part is so many things I notice now that I never noticed before. I see so many more plants bc they are closer to me and sometimes literally brushing up against me, I see graffiti hidden at the bottom of bus stops, and details of architecture all throughout the city that look much cooler from my angle. it also puts me at eye level with so many young children and it’s kind of super whimsical sometimes when we’re experiencing the world on the same level. I just really love all the ways I feel like I notice and interact with my environment so much more as a wheelchair user then I ever did as a pedestrian.

[bebsi-cola]

autism cataclysm: chill ask games to answer invasive questions to

[note: this is not an extensive representation of all of autism. have fun but remember to copy the whole question out when sending asks for everyone. short term memory is a fuck]

1. If you have a diagnosis of autism would you choose to get that undiagnosed, if you have no diagnosis would you choose to get a diagnosis? Would you like to change when you got a diagnosis? Do you want a diagnosis off-record?

2. Are you able to maintain a routine by yourself or do you need someone or something to impose a routine upon you in order to follow it?

3. Which part of autism do you wish was better understood and more well known about the general populace?

4. Have you ever been in any in-person autism support groups? What were they like?

5. Have you taken part in any autism research as a participant? What was it like?

6. Which aspect of being autistic is most frustrating for you?

7. Do you experience The Rage? How is it for you?

8. Imagine a society that is geared towards catering to the needs of autistic people. What sort of reforms would you implement if you got to be in charge?

9. Do you collect anything? If you could collect an unlimited amount of anything, what would it be?

10. Money is a lie. True or false?

11. When people say "autism stereotypes" what do you think they mean by that? Does it describe you or anyone you know?

12. This will determine if you're in the clubTM. Did people joke about you becoming a serial killer/mass shooter just for being slightly different on account of being autistic?

13. Do you have autistic family members? Could you take them in unarmed combat?

14. What co-morbidities of autism do you have? How are they treating you? You deserve 500 in money.

15. Is there a topic or activity that just lives rent free in your head? Like it comes up and everything else fades away.

16. Autism on autism violence. Describe a bad interaction you had with another autistic person.

17. Autism plus autism alliance. Describe any good interactions you have had with another autistic person.

18. You get to direct the new upcoming research in autism studies. What are you researching and why? Feel free to lay out your whole methodology and write a literature review but I only accept APA, APSA, or ASA citation style. You can use Chigaco author-date but anything else is pushing it.

19. Do you observe occasions such as autism awareness month or similar? Why, or why not.

20. Imagine I am a 19 year old psychology student. You've just told me you're autistic/have autism, and I ask you what that is and what it's like? How are you going to explain.

21. Who is the best autism icon? It must be someone from death note. If you haven't read death note people go read it first and come back to me.

22. Autism is getting a slogan! What is it? You get to decide.

23. What does being autistic mean to you? It's an open ended question so write a lot.

24. How are you with mouth sounds? Do you make them? Repeat them? Are mouth sounds simply out of your reach?

25. I would like a funny or strange interaction with a healthcare professional that happened because you are autistic or they learned you have autism.

26. How do people understand autism in the country you live in, are from, or parents are from? How does it differ to what you experience online on this website? Do they call autism something else? etc.

27. How has your relationship with food been affected by autism? Any co-morbidities or other background information can be included as is relevant.

28. Where have you learnt the most about autism from? What things about autism did you learn that really made an impact on you? Are there any information sources on autism or autistic people that you recommend?

29. What support do you desperately need? Are you getting it?

30. Hahahahahahaha there's no thirty. Read them and weep. Or something.

[grub-muncher]