Social Justice Beard

[svmac]

[commander-ledi]

anyways can we start recognizing adhd as an actual and serious disorder that

can affect on functioning in every day life so badly that it interferes with taking care of very basic human needs

is not 10 yrs old white boy exclusive disorder

is not a fake disorder created to benefit medicine companies

definitely should not be reduced to “kid who cant sit still and wont stop screaming” stereotypes because adhd has a whole fuckton of symptoms ranging from serious memory issues to fine motor control difficulties

[lauramkaye]

ADHD is:

One of the most treatable “psychiatric” disorders (although it’s more accurately a neurodevelopmental disorder), with approximately 90% of patients able to find a treatment regimen that works well for them, given appropriate medical support. ADHD stimulant medications in particular (Ritalin and Adderall and their variations) are some of the most effective psychiatric medications in existence. 

Contrary to popular opinion, extremely under diagnosed overall, particularly in populations that are not young white boys (women, adults, people of color, etc.)

So there are a LOT of people out there who could be helped by getting a diagnosis and treatment but are not, in part because of the negative stereotypes around ADHD and ADHD medication that are prevalent in pop culture.

Able to coexist with a number of other conditions or traits that may change its presentation and/or impact, including mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression and various learning disabilities but also giftedness/high intelligence.

In fact, in adults diagnosed for the first time, it is extremely common to have comorbidities, in large part because ADHD can be so hard to cope with.

Sleep disorders are also frequently comorbid with ADHD. Additionally, being poorly-rested makes ADHD symptoms worse, which makes you more likely to sleep badly. It’s a hellish merry-go-round.

In some cases, “twice exceptional” people (gifted + ADHD) have extra trouble getting appropriate support, because some ADHD symptoms can be masked by intelligence (for instance, if a child is bright enough to do their homework in the ten minutes between classes and master the test material by cramming the night before, they may never see the poor academic performance that might lead to testing), and because the symptoms of ADHD may also mask their giftedness - so they end up stuck in classes that are too easy for them, and therefore boring, which makes the ADHD symptoms worse. Also, people who know they are intelligent but have untreated ADHD can be really prone to some of the other psychological comorbidities, especially as they become adults, because they know what to do and how to do it and that they SHOULD do it, and they WANT to do it, but they still can’t make themselves actually do it, so they start to beat themselves up, thinking “I’m too smart to constantly be this stupid, I must just be really lazy, maybe I really DON’T care, maybe I’m just a terrible person.” Ask me how I know.

Can also have less-common symptoms associated with it. I actually had my hearing tested before my diagnosis because I had so much trouble following conversations if there was background noise. My hearing is fine: my issue is auditory processing. My brain just can’t focus on conversations if too much else is going on. (This also applies to following dialogue on television if there is a lot of background noise/music. I use the captions a lot.

In some cases, extremely disabling. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, a disability is “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity.” A sampling of major life activities that might be substantially limited by untreated ADHD includes:

Managing finances (largely through impulsive spending, frequent lost items that need replacing, forgetting to pay bills, forgetting to do routine maintenance and having issues like larger repairs needed)

Basic self-care (remembering to take meds, go to doctor appointments, eat and drink at appropriate times, go to bed at appropriate times)

Employment (difficulty being on time for work or work activities, difficulty meeting deadlines, propensity to make “careless errors”, difficulty with emotional regulation)

Interpersonal relationships (memory problems so you never remember important dates, time issues meaning you’re late meeting them, forgetting commitments, easily distracted during conversations, impulsivity leading to interruptions/saying or doing stuff you didn’t think through, difficulty responding appropriately to social cues (through distraction/impulsivity), difficulty with emotional regulation)

Maintaining a clean and sanitary home (forgets steps in household chores, distracted away from finishing them, loses key equipment, impulsive purchases clutter up the home, loses interest in projects and leaves them out half-done)

If untreated, linked to higher rates of all manner of negative outcomes when compared to similar neurotypical populations, including: 

unemployment

divorce

substance abuse

injury or death in accidents, especially car accidents 

arrest

None of this is because people with ADHD as a group are, like, bad or lazy or evil or irresponsible or don’t care. People with ADHD are just people, and exist on the same range of good, bad, and in-between that all people do. However, the parts of our brains that are meant to help us regulate our emotions, plan for the future, remember to do important things, and not act on every impulse that crosses our minds just don’t work properly. A lot of us might lean in to an airhead, spacy artistic type, class clown, or similar persona to mask our deep shame over not being able to “just” do all these basic things that other people seem to do with no trouble at all. 

Additionally, even accessing ADHD treatment can be extremely challenging, because stimulant medications are controlled substances and there are so many false and damaging perceptions about the condition and medications out there. And even when you have a well-established diagnosis and are well controlled on a medication you’ve taken for years, you are never far away from potential disruptions to your treatment. I personally am a white professional with good health insurance and was able to get diagnosed and medication prescribed - which in itself is often really difficult - but even from that position of privilege I have experienced multiple gaps in my treatment for reasons like:

My pharmacy lost a prescription and had to get a new one. (My medication cannot be refilled; each month has to be a brand new prescription.)

My pharmacy was out of stock of my medication (I can’t transfer that prescription to a different pharmacy, and even if I had a paper prescription, you can’t call a pharmacy and be told the medication is in stock, you have to physically go there and ask.)

I forgot to make a doctor appointment in time (I have to have a doctor visit every three months to continue to get the prescription.)

I forgot to fill the prescription (since I, you know, HAVE ADHD, and you can’t set them up to auto-renew like you can other meds.)

My prescription is really expensive and there aren’t many savings options because it’s a controlled medication. (Even with savings I pay over $100 out of pocket for my ADHD meds every month. If the manufacturer isn’t offering a coupon that month it’s close to $300.)

Again, this is a LEGAL medication that I am LEGALLY prescribed by my supportive doctor with consultation from my supportive psychologist, for my actual disabling medical condition, and which all parties involved agree is extremely effective in helping me manage said condition. I’m in about the best situation you can be in short of being a millionaire who doesn’t have to worry about things like preapprovals or copays or taking sick time from work. 

I’ve also heard from others who have had to change doctors due to moving, job or insurance changes, etc., only to get issues like:

medical practices that flatly refuse to prescribe any controlled medications at all.

medical practices that don’t deal with ADHD specifically at all.

doctors that “don’t believe in” medicating adults/women/people with good jobs/people with good grades/anyone for ADHD.

doctors that won’t accept existing diagnoses or treatment plans.

ADHD is a treatable and manageable condition, but it isn’t a joke, it isn’t “made up,” we aren’t “all a little ADHD these days anyway”. It’s a complex and wide-ranging condition that can impact nearly every part of your life in serious and possibly very damaging ways.

[shirecorn]

Hold on I need to schedule an appointment

[nonbinaryidiot]

OP you could’ve gone to my house and punched me in the face

[gleefully-macabre]

Wait, sleep disorders, too?!

[canadianwheatpirates]

There’s a reason the joke goes “five out of 100 people have ADHD. One’s diagnosed, one’s getting by, one’s depressed, one’s an addict and one’s in jail”.

Seriously though, I quit binge drinking cold the week that I got properly medicated for ADHD. If you have substance use issues, gambling (including loot boxes etc), or other significant behavioural addictions, and you recognise the things described here as problems in your life, for the love of god please go get tested. Even just take a look at the Brown Adult ADD Self-Report Scale and see if it reads like a callout post.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

#eddie izzard voice: ‘i’m an executive dysfunctional!’ (via @natalunasans

[elucubrare]

The chronicle of the monk Herbert of Reichenau for the year 1021 ends “My brother Werner was born on November 1.“ 

1021 was not an uneventful year. The emperor began a campaign into Italy. Illustrious abbots died. There was an earthquake. But Herbert took the time to note, at the end of the year, that his brother was born. 

Of such acts of tenderness is history made. 

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

This post broke through the shell of crustiness on my medievalist heart and made me go ‘aww’.

[marzipanandminutiae]

There was a medieval parenting manual that recommended parents smack pieces of furniture their toddlers bumped into and scold the furniture for being so naughty as to get in the way, so that the kids would laugh and forget about their bumps and bruises 

I read that and my heart melted

(source: Medieval Women by Deirdre Jackson. She cited the primary source but I cannot for the life of me find the book to check what it was called)

[shredsandpatches]

We should hold a thousandth birthday party for Werner in a couple of years.

[theoutcastrogue]

In 11th century Constantinople, the historian, philosopher, monk, and general insufferable know-it-all Michael Psellos once wrote a letter to his infant grandson. He begins like this:

“Perhaps I will not live to see you, dearest newborn and offspring of my soul, when you reach adolescence, if God so wishes it, or when you mature; for the days of my life are failing and the time approaches when its thread will be cut short. I have therefore decided to address this speech to you in advance of that day and reciprocate your innate charm with the graces of speech. I should be ungrateful and entirely thoughtless if at a time when your perceptions and thoughts are undeveloped (though as far as I alone am concerned you are perfect in these respects, insofar as you hear my voice and feel my affection, cling to my neck, slip into my embrace, and put up with my annoying kisses), I should be ungrateful, I say, if I myself failed to render to you a fitting return.”

He then goes on to praise his grandson, who is the most HANDSOME and INTELLIGENT and RATIONAL child ever born. (No seriously, he calls a four-month-old baby “rational” – rationality and moderation were considered important virtues so OBVIOUSLY his grandson was full of them.)

He observes every little thing the baby does – breastfeeding, taking baths, fussing, babytalking – with unrestrained marvel and delight, complete with flowery descriptions:

“[Your eyes] moved cheerfully, whenever a smile was about to come upon you. It sufficed for me to take note of this only once—I needed no Delphic tripod or bacchic ecstasy—to prophesy without hesitation from the kindly look in your eyes that you were about to laugh. And, true enough, you moved your lip slightly, blushed, and, behold! you laughed.”

He takes special pride that the baby likes him, and puts himself in the picture too:

“And when I would see you becoming perplexed, I immediately snatched you away from your toys, took you up in my hands, and lifted you up in the air until you were full of joy.”

He wishes him to lead a happy life. He calls him “my living pearl, the ornament of my soul”. And he ends the letter like this:

“May you obtain all that you love, but especially education and good sense, which alone can elevate the soul to its proper beauty and which constitute understanding of the more profound things. I wrote all this for you while holding you in my arms and kissing you insatiably.”

Isn’t it incredible? Translation by Anthony Kaldellis, from Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters: The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).

[draculasstrawhat]

I love the fact that “anyway, BABY” especially, “BABY RELATED TO ME!” appears to be a fairly universal emotion.

[bogleech]

If you point out that mass produced vegetable crops destroy land and flood the ecosystem with poison you’ll always have someone saying that an omnivorous diet is still ostensibly worse because “most corn is grown to feed cows,” and on a related note, there’s still a popular narrative that cattle are responsible for more climate change than anything else. But here’s the thing: Cows are not supposed to eat corn. They can’t digest it. Feeding corn to cows actually makes them produce abnormal amounts of methane to begin with, and we do not at all need to feed corn to cows either. We actually just over-produce corn so badly that it gets used as animal feed just so the corn lobby can dispose of it all at a profit.

This land used to sustain buffalo as far as the eye could see, far more biomass than all of America’s cattle put together. Buffalo ate nothing but grass and wildflowers and all the shit we now consider “weeds” and poison to death. Nobody had to feed them corn for them to exist and the environment only thrived in their presence. Most of the carbon they produced was sponged up by the healthy meadows and wetlands and old growth forests we’ve since turned into the fucking cornfields, artificial toxic lawns or just big grey valleys of dust.

There are so many things wrong here interconnected so many ways I couldn’t even keep this on the track of “stop feeding corn to cows” we just built our whole American society like the biggest fucking idiots we possibly could

[shining-supernova]

The thing thats getting me here is that apparently, a lot of american society, and I guess by extension the global economy, seems to be set up to appease specifically corn growers (corn barons?). Also cheese producers? I don’t understand, why do these people have so much power the world has warped around them, what did they do

[bogleech]

It’s a complicated history, but decades ago when America was still undergoing massive economic growth, many businesses saw it as the time to strike; the time to put everything they had into aggressive marketing and lobbying, hoping that their products would come out the other end of the boom as ubiquitous to our culture as toilet paper and soap. Unfortunately, several succeeded on nothing but money, power and luck. They weren’t actually the best products or the most efficient to produce, but they were good at making deals with other industries and even government programs.

When it comes to food, the Corn Lobby is pretty much an unstoppable evil dictator. Only a small fraction of corn (something under 10%) is eaten by human beings directly in its natural state and almost everything people buy at the grocery store is made with some combination of corn filler, corn oil or corn sweetener even if it actually makes the product worse. It’s environmentally damaging, it requires so much fertilizer that the resulting pollution also causes an estimated 4,300 human deaths per year (a quarter of all air pollution deaths), it significantly increases diabetes and rots teeth worse than any other source of sugar but the lobby is also wealthy enough to wage non-stop war against the ongoing publication of unfavorable data so those are just the things we’ve had the chance to hear before it was bought and buried. This monopoly over so many markets and so much sheer land is insidiously the very thing that keeps cheaper, healthier alternatives from being able to meet the demands necessary to threaten corn’s supremacy in the first place, and it’s SO bloated, so powerful that its impact spills out into the rest of the world. Corn is one of America’s only major exports besides beef, which as established also has a forced dependency on the corn industry, and because we make enough corn to basically throw it in the garbage without losing money, we can export it cheaply enough that hungrier, poorer countries are forced to depend on it as well. Unable to compete, their own local farms either sell out to U.S. corn themselves or slowly die. It’s like a running gag that I hate corn because I also just find it gross as food but for anyone who doubts that it’s this bad for society there’s plenty more resources out there. The real worst part is that it’s one of only several things that have this kind of megalomaniachal empire going on, like food equivalents to the fossil fuel industry.

[anarchistmemedistro]

at a certain point of accumulation power becomes self-perpetuating

[queeranarchism]

I was interested in the ‘more buffalo bio mass than all cattle put together’ claim so I ran the numbers: North America held approx 60 million buffalo at the height of the population. North America currently holds 106 million cows, 110 pigs and 1115 million chickens.

So in raw numbers, that claim is exaggerated. If you read ‘bio mass’ as weight, it also doesn’t hold up because dairy cows actually weigh roughly the same as buffalo.

The current cattle population of the US is significantly larger than historic buffalo population. And many places that currently have large cattle populations, like Europe, never held that many big grazers to begin with. So some part of the problem probably is pure numbers too.  But also, yes, definitely stop feeding corn to cows.

–

It also seems relevant here to bring up that herds of roaming buffalo that evolved with their environment were part of a genuine self-sustaining ecosystem. It is important that we remind each other that roaming grass-fed cows most definitely are not. See: The Myth of Regenerative Ranching: https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ranching

tl;dr: Grass-fed beef and dairy are not ecologically benign. Nor are they a solution to climate change. Nor yet, in offering a more expensive alternative to industrial agriculture to those who can afford it, do they offer a clear path for reducing meat consumption society-wide. If anything, regenerative ranching lends itself either to niche locavore indulgence or large-scale corporate greenwashing, but it offers little promise for sustainable food system transformation.

[dissociacrip]

i want all victims/survivors of abuse/trauma, especially if it was/is long-term, to pay close attention to your physical health if you’re able to

i say “if you’re able to” because for people who experience trauma-related dissociation or particular triggers around their body/physical sensation, that may not be so easy and i see you.

experiences such as -

being tired and/or in pain all the time

getting sick very frequently ( whether it’s actual infections like the cold or flu, or just “feeling” sick. )

- or having abnormalities in -

blood pressure ( e.g. hypetension, orthostatic hypotension )

blood sugar ( e.g. hypoglycemia is a rare occurrence outside of people with diabetes taking insulin medication )

digestion

heart rate

menstrual cycles

impotence or infertility

- shouldn’t be immediately brushed off as benign and could very well relate to being a trauma victim/survivor, even if you know for a fact you didn’t endure any kind of direct physical trauma (e.g. forms of abuse that aren’t physical.) chronic stress (such as experienced by people enduring long-term traumatic experiences) can have a number of impairing physical effects on the body, which can become chronic themselves. long-term stress also correlates with chronic, low-grade systemic inflammation - this can be indicated in bloodwork as a c-reactive protein level between 1-3 mg/L or 1-10 mg/dL, which can lead to immune dysfunction and autoimmune conditions.

some other links, though searching “chronic stress” or something like “trauma autonomic dysfunction” or “stress inflammation” should bring up some more results for those who want to find out more:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323324#health-consequences

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20046037

https://www.rn.com/featured-stories/stress-inflammation-immunity/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120402162546.htm

regardless of if these issues are or aren’t related to trauma though, both your mental needs and physical needs should be taken seriously and managed or treated to whatever extent that they can be.

[scotianostra]

The educator Alexander Sutherland Neill passed away on September 23rd 1973 in Ipswich.

Born on October 17th 1883 in Forfar he is probably the second person I have posted about today you are not familiar with, but A.S. Bell, as he was known, was a pioneer, or indeed a rebel against the conformists views of the era in education. I first came across his name when researching for a post on the late great Ivor Cutler, who taught at the school for a time.

The son of a schoolteacher, Neill graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an M.A. degree in 1912 and became headmaster of the Gretna Green School in 1914. He recorded his initial teaching experiences in the autobiographical novel A Dominie’s Log and wrote several sequels to this work, with some of them being reprinted in 1975 as The Dominie Books of A.S. Neill, dominie being the old eclesical word for schoolmaster.

Neill and others founded an international school near Dresden., in 1921. The school was moved to Sonntagberg, Austria, three years later but was soon closed because its unconventional curriculum and teaching methods were opposed by the local authorities. In 1924 Neill moved the school to Lyme Regis, Dorset, in England, and named it Summerhill after the building he had leased for its quarters. In 1927 he moved the school to its permanent home in Leiston, Suffolk. Summerhill School became internationally known for its self-governing student-teacher body and its flexible curriculum that emphasizes the student’s own motivation to learn. Neill drew considerable criticism for his permissive attitudes toward academic discipline, but by the 1960s his school had become popular for its progressive approach to child rearing.

Neill’s principal book about his educational methods, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, stimulated debates about alternatives to conventional schooling. The book was more influential in the United States, West Germany, and Japan than in the British Isles.

His other books include The Problem Child, The Problem Parent, The Problem Family, The Free Child, and an autobiography, Neill! Neill! Orange Peel! In 1973 his health declined and he was admitted to Ipswich Hospital. Later he was taken to the small local hospital where he died peacefully on September 23rd 1973. Neill’s daughter daughter Zoë, as seen in the second pic, with her father, and has been Principal at Summerhill  since 1985. The school continues to thrive in it’s centenary year.

.

You can read more about the Summerhill here http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/

[boazpriestly]

[thatchronicfeeling]

[Caption: Screenshot of two twitter posts by ‘jazdia (bat emoji) deep sea cryptid @swampflora from 17 November 2020. The first post reads: “Don’t identify with your illness/disability” is deeply ableist nonsense. It keeps us from things that vastly improve our lives, like mobility aids & disabled community. It’s based on the idea that being disabled is a bad thing & that limits don’t exist unless we believe they do. The second post reads: So many people, including doctors, think encouraging us to ignore our limits, needs, and the ways disability/chronic illness shapes our lives, will magically make us nondisabled. It doesn’t. It makes us miserable, isolated and often worse off.]

[blood-ichor]

i think what bothers me most about the anti argument of “if you’re ACTUALLY writing to vent your trauma, then why do you need to share it” isn’t even how like, grossly victim shaming that is because it’s really abhorrent to tell people that their trauma is unattractive and shouldn’t be shown to other people;

it’s that it completely ignores what is cathartic about sharing your fucking feelings. we are social creatures. when we are sad, or in love, or angry, or happy, or have any strong feelings, we want to share them. and arguing that it’s inherently evil to want to share painful and difficult feelings just because YOU have decided that it is is so fucking ugly of you. not everyone processes things by journaling or writing to themselves, or meeting with their therapist.

some people find healing and catharsis through sharing their experiences and saying “here, here is something beautiful that i was able to make from something ugly, and i’m proud of that.” some people find value in themselves again by realizing that other people who have been through the same things still have value, too, and they find those people by saying “hey, this is what my experiences are.”

to suggest that someone deserves to sit with their experiences alone because their way of coping and connecting with others COULD be misinterpreted or make other people uncomfortable is disgusting. therapy isn’t a fix all for everything, you don’t magically become healed from all trauma and have the answers to all things coping just because you’re in therapy. talking to people you trust isn’t always an option because some people don’t want to disclose their trauma to people that they know, and they may only feel safe disclosing to people who have no way of knowing who they are in real life.

i’ve been to lots and lots of therapists over the course of my life, been in and out of psych hospitals, and whaddya know, i even have a degree in psychology now! and you know what psychology DOESN’T say?

you know what not a single one of my therapists has ever told me? “don’t share the parts of yourself that hurt because they might hurt someone else.”

you know what they HAVE said to me many times? “when you share with others, you have to remember that not everyone can handle the same things you can, so be mindful of that.”

and that is not AT ALL the same as your “stfu and don’t show this to other people” argument, especially when someone is sharing on a platform like ao3 that intentionally makes it so that we can cater the content we see to our specific needs and wants and comforts, which allows us to be extremely mindful of others. and breaking down the tag system- which is literally the key feature that allows us to be able to do that- is not an act of protest; it’s throwing a tantrum because you don’t want to take personal responsibility for the content you consume on a website that nobody is forcing you to be on.

i started writing fanfic when i was a teenager in the first place BECAUSE my therapist encouraged me to do it, and she encouraged me to share it online, because it made me feel fucking proud of myself. it helped me make friends in an environment that i felt comfortable in for the first time. it gave ME control over my narratives.

so i don’t want to hear this “well if it’s REALLY to process your trauma then go to therapy and don’t share it online” bullshit. because that proves you sincerely have no idea what the hell you’re talking about and why what you’re saying is significantly more psychologically damaging to someone who is trying to express themselves in a way that they feel comfortable with.

it’s really, really ironic that people are using 1984 to wreck the tagging system, because antis are the ones wanting to punish people for thoughtcrimes and pretend that every person who has ever had an intrusive thought/ fucked up fantasy/ dark interest and has written or read about it is an irredeemably guilty evil maniac for doing so.

[evilwriter37]

Oh my gods, this. I recently had a purity policer tell me not to share my shit online because then I was just making trauma survivors look bad. I’m a trauma survivor. My therapist supports what I write and posting it. Telling people that their trauma is too ugly and that they shouldn’t share it and just to keep quiet is basically the same shit that abusers will say. It’s disgusting and harmful.

[sacrificethemtothesquid]

One of the benefits of sharing trauma is that it can normalize the experience. One of my favorite Brene Brown quotes:

“If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”

It’s that moment of “oh god, it’s not just me,” and having even a split-second of validation can change the entire course of your recovery. Humans have always explored our trauma through storytelling. Like OP said, It’s cathartic. 

Trauma exists. Silencing survivors from sharing their stories just perpetuates the cycle. Air is free and each one of us gets to shape it into the words we want.

[marigoldwitch]

Growing up my parents taught me that if you’re too sick to [insert responsibility here] then you’re too sick to [insert something that makes you happy here].

It took me a really long time to unlearn this. When I would get sick or have a “bad day” I would deprive myself of anything that made me happy. Watching movies, eating something I enjoyed, going for a walk, playing video games or just browsing online looking at funny cat videos. I wouldn’t let myself do these things because I was always told that if I’m too sick to go to work, or do homework, or go to school then I must be too sick to play Mortal Kombat or watch Unsolved Mysteries lol.

Whenever I wouldn’t feel good, which I later learned as an adult was due to sleep deprivation caused by my ADHD and depression (and of course the depression itself would cause me to feel like shit), my parents would tell me “if you’re not throwing up, then you’re not sick.” And when I would stay home from school (or even work in my later teen years) my parents would make sure that I didn’t have any “fun.” No TV, no movies, no games, no going outside, no arts and crafts, no books, no nothing. Just lay in bed and feel miserable.

I’m happy to say that I no longer do this to myself. Now when I’m having a bad day or I’m sick (cold, flu or whatever) I allow myself to do the things (within reason lol) that I actually love doing. If I’m not too sick to step outside for a few minutes then I’ll go for a walk. I’ll watch my favorite movies and if it’s a bad day or a cold (something that doesn’t hinder my appetite too much) I’ll eat my favorite foods. I don’t guilt trip myself anymore for having a “sick day.”

Just because you’re sick (whether physically, emotionally or mentally) doesn’t mean that you can’t do things you enjoy. You’re not any less sick because you watch TV. You’re not any less sick because you’re playing video games. 

Actually you SHOULD be doing these things when you’re not feeling good because they make you feel better. The better you feel, the faster your heal. 

[neuroticgaymusings-deactivated2]

Thank you! I needed to read this.

[sun-flowers-sam-deactivated2019]

oh. oH. OH. I needed this omfg

[fuckingconversations]

Staying home from work when you feel sick means you are;

Not spreading disease to your coworkers

Trying to relax so your body can fight the disease faster without extra stress holding you back.  

Too tired to concentrate for 8 hours straight 

Too tired to do laborous physical activity for 8 hours straight

Not risking aggravating your symptoms and passing out or vomiting on the job

Staying home from work does not stop you from;

Doing relaxing things, like reading a book, browsing the internet, or watching a movie. These things take little mental effort, and are not comparable to working. 

Doing some chores, or mildly laborious hobbies like knitting, writing, painting, or playing video games.  Just because you are shedding germs that could make others sick doesn’t necessarily imply you are incapable of physical activity. Even people who are recovering from a surgery that removed an entire organ can knit and play video games while they heal.  Part of their GUTS are missing and they are ENCOURAGED to do hobby stuff. 

Going outside for a walk. Fresh air and the sight of trees and animals is actually proven to help you heal faster. It’s a verified form of physical and mental therapy. I encourage you to do it. 

Feeling happy, feeling relaxed, feeling positive and stress-free; those things help you recover faster. 

Take note of the COVID virus. Some people feel perfectly fine while infected. They might feel like they have a tiny cough, or a little tired, but they certainly are not bedridden. 

However, it would SAVE LIVES if that infected person would STAY HOME and not go in to work or school. 

To prevent the spread of disease to your classmates and coworkers is an ETHICALLY and MORALLY GOOD reason to stay home. You are a part of society. Extend that kindness to the folks around you. 

[moniquill]

Addition to this: the rationale of this among many parents us “my kid will fake sick to get out of school” - that was why I malingered so much as a kid. Neither of my parents ever wanted to examine why I hated school enough to induce vomiting to avoid it.

[problematize]

If you’re worried your kid is pretending to be sick, it’s worth examining why they would want to “pretend” that in the first place instead of assuming the worst of them and instilling in them the fear of being seen as “not sick enough” if they don’t perform misery to your standards.

[elementalsight]

Oh hey shit I wish I could have laminated for my mother years ago.

[bpdohwhatajoy]

Recipe for bpd~

•unstable childhood

•never witnessing a healthy relationship

•parental abuse

•chronic invalidation

•isolation

•neglect

•shitty relationships as you get older that make your childhood trauma worse and reaffirm it

+bonus points if one or both of your parents are mentally ill themselves

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

I saw a Tweet today from a doctor who caught COVID even though she was vaccinated after spending two days seeing COVID patients. But here’s the kicker - she saw the patients briefly, she wore a mask and she saw them outside.

That’s how contagious these new variants are. Be careful folks and don’t forget to mask up. Personally I’m back double masking with an N95.

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

[ID: Two Tweets from Dr. Claudia William MD, MScHAL @DrCSWilliam “I woke up and feel like shit after seeing > 60 ppl with COVID symptoms in the last 48 hrs. Headache, Runny nose, my body hurts, coughing, feeling hot & no it’s not allergies. It’s called a breakthrough infection, glad I’m vaccinated but this is not good at all. 🥺😢😬 I spent very little time with patients face to face, if I did, it was outside. Fully masked up. Why am I saying this? Because this means the variants are HIGHLY contagious, which matches the data we have seen about the delta variant. We need to be taking EXTRA precautions not less.”]

[mad-dyspunktional]

CDC warns in internal document that 'war has changed' with the coronavirus

Vaccines continue to be effective, particularly at preventing severe disease, according to the document. But they may not be as good at prev

July 30th 2021

Highlight 1

The document, obtained Friday by NBC News and first published by The Washington Post, explains the scientific background behind the agency’s change in mask guidance earlier this week.

It concludes that the delta variant is “highly contagious, likely to be more severe” and that “breakthrough infections may be as transmissible as unvaccinated cases.”

Researchers have been focusing on viral load — a term for just how much of the virus is present in infected peoples’ bodies — which can affect transmissibility and severity. Infections with the delta variant lead to higher levels of virus in the body, even in breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated individuals, the document said. Virus levels can be as high in breakthrough cases as in unvaccinated people, even if vaccinated people don’t get nearly as sick.

Highlight 2

The document notes that the risk of infection is threefold lower in vaccinated people, and the risk of severe disease or death is at least tenfold lower in vaccinated people.

One piece of evidence cited in the document came from an outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where 74 percent of cases were in fully vaccinated individuals. In a report on the outbreak published Friday by the CDC, researchers said that the delta variant was implicated in 89 percent of cases, and in the breakthrough cases, 79 percent of people developed symptoms.

Of note, PCR tests, which are used to determine if someone is infected, showed similar levels of the virus in vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated people. PCR results, the CDC wrote, “might reflect the level of infectious virus.” In other words, it could suggest that vaccinated people are as contagious as unvaccinated people.

Highlight 3

The internal CDC document also provided more concrete numbers on breakthrough infections, estimating that at current levels, there are 35,000 symptomatic breakthrough infections per week among the 162 million fully vaccinated adults in the U.S. The agency stopped providing public information on most breakthrough infections in April, when the tally hit 10,000. From that point on, the CDC website only posted data on breakthrough infections that led to hospitalization or death.

It also details just how much more contagious the delta variant is than earlier versions of the coronavirus. A chart included in the document states that it is more transmissible than the flu, the common cold and even smallpox and is on par with chickenpox, considered among the most contagious common viruses.

[mad-dyspunktional]

If that’s not enough to convince you to go back to taking the same precautions as you were taking pre-vaccines, there’s also some evidence that breakthrough infections may be capable of leading to Long COVID (PASC) even in the vaccinated:

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/long-covid-among-breakthrough-cases

[mad-dyspunktional]

“What’s the point of getting vaccinated at this point?”

Not getting sick enough to be hospitalized or killed by the virus. Vaccination is still incredibly fucking important.

[deathtoskinnyjeans]

A Twitter Thread from David Bowles:

[Text transcript at the end of the screenshots]

I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.

Most classroom practice is astrology.

Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.

We’re still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.

Most teachers perpetuate the “banking” model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.

Thus the elite “Lyceum” style of instruction continues even though it’s ineffectual with most kids.

What’s worse, the key strategies we’ve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents I’ve known flout research.

Some definitions:

Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.

Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.

Things we (scholars) DO know:

-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.

-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).

-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.

Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.

Maintaining the status quo? Nope.

Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.

If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.

They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.

And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.

For what?

It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.

WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.

We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.

The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?

Education is all about capitalism.

"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.

THAT is why modern education is a failure.

Its basic premise is monstrous.

"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"

Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.

[sae-something]

A lot of people with childhood trauma (and, from my experience, especially attachment trauma) find themselves yearning for a parent figure. A mother, a savior - someone to hold you and love you in all the ways you needed when you were a child. Someone to hold you while you break into a million pieces.

At some point in recovery/therapy you will have to face the harsh reality: there will never be anyone. Not like that, not anymore. And mourning that? That’s too much, that feels like a pain that cannot be survived. A pain that will swallow you whole, a pain that will drown you.

Therapists can offer a lot of support, but not like that. So maybe you want to switch therapists in hopes of finding someone who can (even though, if they are a good therapist, they can’t), or you would rather be without therapists because then at least they won’t have to suffer the pain of “someone’s here but they’re not enough”. 

Getting a little support, a little of everything we missed, a little of everything we want… Getting a little is worse, in some ways. Because getting a little bit activates the pain; it triggers the feelings of what we miss. Dripping a couple drops of water in an empty bucket makes you feel how devastatingly empty that bucket is.

Getting nothing and being absolutely alone is dull. It’s a drag of depression and darkness. But getting a little bit but not everything? That’s sharp and flashing pain, it’s dry heaving from the heavy crying. It’s intrusive thoughts and self-destructive thoughts. It’s breaking apart again and again and again.

[jhscdood]

liSTEN my therapist warned me about this and then she told me THERE IS A SOLUTION

you DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL THIS WAY FOREVER

the solution is reparenting yourself

YOU be the parent you wish you’d had. 

YOU give yourself comfort and love and acceptance (and ice cream and stuffed animals).

YOU talk to yourself the way a good parent would – tell yourself “it’s okay” and “everybody makes mistakes” and “you will feel better soon”. 

YOU can change the voices in your head. listen to those thoughts and hear whose voice they’re speaking with. your parents programmed those intrusive thoughts. and then ARGUE with them the way you were never allowed to before. tell yourself “YOU DESERVE NICE THINGS” and “YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY” until someday someday someday with enough time you CHANGE your programming into something BETTER.

It’s a process. it’s a looooooooooong process. I’m still going at it. BUT. it can really really help to know that the way you feel right now is not forever, and that you can re-parent yourself and start to feel better. that you have power now that you didn’t have before, and you can use that power to reinforce your programming and you can use that power to change that programming, and it’s all up to you.

OP is right that no one else can do it for you. you can’t get adopted by a new perfect family. your therapist / partner / BFF can’t do it.

but YOU CAN.

(p.s. https://www.outofthestorm.website/ is a really really great resource from anyone suffering from complex ptsd due to relational trauma, A++ highly recommend)

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

I suspect quite a few people on this site don’t realize they are struggling with the effects of chronic trauma. In particular I think more people need to learn about the symptoms of C-PTSD.

Distinct from general PTSD, Complex PTSD is caused by prolonged, recurring stress and trauma, often occurring in childhood & adolescence over an extended period of time. There are many risk factors, including: abusive/negligent caregivers, dysfunctional family life, untreated mental/chronic illness, and being the target of bullying/social alienation.

I’m not a mental health professional and I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, I just remember a million watt light bulb going off in my head when I first learned about C-PTSD. It was a huge OH MY FUCKING WORD eureka moment for me—it explained all these problems I was confused and angry at myself for having. The symptoms that really stood out to me were:

Negative self-perception: deep-seated feelings of shame, guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, and stigma. Feeling like you are different from everyone else, like something is fundamentally ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ with you.

Emotional avoidance of topics, people, relationships, activities, places, things etc that might cause uncomfortable emotions such as shame, fear, or sadness. Can lead to self-isolation.

Learned helplessness: a pervasive sense of powerlessness, often combined with feelings of desensitization, wherein you gradually stop trying to escape or prevent your own suffering, even when opportunities exist. May manifest as self-neglect or self-sabotage. (I remember watching myself make bad choices and neglect my responsibilities, and having no idea why I was doing it, or how to stop myself. Eventually I just stopped caring, which led to more self-neglect.)

Hyper-vigilance: always feeling “on edge,” alert, unable to relax even in spaces that should feel safe. May be combined with an elevated “flight” response, or feelings of always being prepared to flee. (I used to hide important documents and possessions in a sort of emergency go bag, even when I was living alone and there was no logical reason other than it made me feel “prepared.”)

Difficulty regulating emotions: may include mood swings, persistent numbness, sadness, suicidal idealization, explosive anger (or inability to feel anger and other strong emotions), inability to control your emotions, confusion about why you react the way you do.

Sense of foreshortened future: assuming or feeling that you will die young. Recurring thoughts that “I’ll be dead before the age of 30/40/18/21 etc.” As a teenager I used to joke darkly that I didn’t plan to live past 30—not because I planned to end my life, but because I simply couldn’t imagine myself alive and happy in the long-term. I couldn’t imagine a meaningful future where I wasn’t suffering.

Emotional flashbacks: finding yourself suddenly re-experiencing feelings of helplessness, panic, despair, or anger etc, often without understanding what has triggered these feelings. Often these flashbacks don’t clearly relate to the memory of a single event (since C-PTSD is caused by repetitive events, which can blur together), making them harder to identify as flashbacks—especially if you’ve never heard the phrase “emotional flashback” and don’t know what to look for. For years I just filed it under “sometimes I overreact/freak out randomly for no reason, probably bc I am just a terrible human being.” (It turns out there was very much a reason, it was just hidden in the past. I have since learned to be kinder and less judgemental towards myself.)

There are other symptoms too, here are more links with good info.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile, because I’ve noticed that a lot of the people I interact with online have risk factors and experiences similar to mine. These include:

growing up in a dysfunctional household

having caregivers who do not fulfill basic emotional needs (do not provide consistent positive attention, encouragement, support, acceptance, communication, a sense of safety and security)

on a very related note, experiencing neglect or abuse at the hand of caregivers or other adults. I also want to emphasize the significance of emotional abuse, since it is hard to recognize, easy to ignore, and utterly rampant in so many communities. In general, family dysfunction, abuse & neglect are quite difficult to identify when you are a child/teen and that is the only “normal” you have known.

(For example, in my family it manifested as an emotionally absent father I was vaguely frightened of, constant nagging from a hypercritical mother, and a house full of people who yelled and screamed at each other. It took me years to realize I grew up in an abusive environment, because there was no physical violence, because I participated in the fighting, and because my behavioral problems made me the family scapegoat. And I internalized that guilt: I thought I was the problem. But no—I was a child, and I deserved not to grow up in a household full of anger and fear and negativity. You deserved that too. You deserved to grow up safe and loved and treated with kindness.) 

anyway back to more risk factors:

being neurodivergent or chronically ill (especially without receiving proper treatment/support/accommodation)

being queer (especially in a conservative or undiverse community, or without the support and acceptance of family & friends)

being the target of bullying or harassment (from peers, teachers, authority figures, irl, online, etc)

being isolated or alienated from peers, from family, from your wider community.

growing up with chronic anxiety, discomfort, pain, fear, or distress caused by any of the above and more.

There are many other experiences that can cause chronic trauma, but these are some particularly common ones I see people in my own community struggling with. And I want more people to be aware of this, because we’ve been taught to ignore and second-guess the significance of our traumatic experiences. We’ve been taught to feel guilty for our own pain, because “other people aren’t struggling, so I shouldn’t either” or (contradictorily) “other people have it worse, so I shouldn’t complain.” But that’s not how it works—you are not other people, and you deserve to have it better. We all deserve better. We deserve to be happy. We deserve not to be in pain.

I used to think I couldn’t have a trauma disorder because (I argued in my head) the things that happened to me weren’t that bad. And then I spent five years in therapy learning to accept the full extent of my issues. I’ve since learned that trauma comes in many forms, and can happen quietly, invisibly, silently, chronically, and usually without the survivor being aware of the long-term repercussions of what they are surviving. That revelation comes later, after you have survived and must instead learn to live.

Finally, no single type of trauma is more real or harmful than any other. Severity is measured by the way the individual is affected, and the same situations affect different people in different ways. Because no one gets to choose how their brain reacts to trauma. No one gets to choose their hurt—otherwise there would be a hell of a lot less hurting in the world.

We can, however, choose to seek help. We can learn to recognize when something is wrong, we can learn when to reach out to professionals, and we can learn to educate ourselves on our injuries.

And gradually, we can learn to heal.

(posts like this brought to you by ko-fi supporters)

[modern-politics111]

[mysharona1987]

[lady-byleth]

Ohoho now let's get into this shit, shall we? Time for some numbers!

Estimates actually put the death toll between 30 to 60 percent of the European population, there were so many dead and so much variation from area to area you can't accurately estimate how many it really was

People who got infected by the "Black Death" were to 80% dead within 3 to 5 days, the population was reduced so dramatically that it took between 80 to 150 years to regrow to where it was before, varying from location to location

Some places were almost entirely depopulated. Over 60% of Norway died within two years, China's population was reduced from around 125 million to 65 million in the late 14th century, at its peak Damascus reported around 1000 dead every day, between 75 and 200 million people died overall in a time where the world population didn't even reach 500 million.

And let's not even get into the persecution the Jewish had to face. No wait, let's do that actually. "The Jews are poisoning our wells" was something people liked to say because they couldn't think of anything else and hey, why not blame the Jewish? The Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were completely annihilated (not a lot of character development happening in Germany, hmm) and about 2000 more people were killed in the Strasbourg massacre. Simply because they couldn't figure out where the disease came from and hated the Jewish enough to blame them without evidence

Fun fact, the word quarantine originated in the time of the first global outbreak. It comes from the Italian word for 40, which was the period of time people were isolated if they came from infected areas.

The world didn't survive the Black Death, too many people died for the disease to spread effectively

And then it came back several more times, including two more major pandemics and many more outbreaks. The most deadly one in modern times was, buckle up, 2017 in Madagascar where it killed 170 people and thousands more were infected.

Now, before someone starts worrying, here's the good news: thanks to modern medicine the fatality rate was pushed down to around 10%. I think we can all agree significantly better than before.

So next time someone says "the plague went away without vaccines", now you have numbers. Have fun.

[anarchopuppy]

Some experts believe that the Spanish Flu killed literally every person on the planet that was vulnerable to it before dying out