#notathreat

[a-fools-jester]

The neurodivergent representation that we get in the media is horrible. Why? you may ask. Well, mostly because we’re the antagonists or we’re the victims. Either we get painted as villains or we get dehumanized into something less than human for pity points. It’s rare to see movies or films show us with accurate symptoms and a fully-developed character and not just ____-code characters or use us as a trope. 

We have:

The “funny” kid with ADHD. So popular, always forgetful- hey look a butterfly

The genius autistic man that knows what you did 2 years, 7 months and 3 days ago by how you blink. 

Or on the other side of that coin, the “child in an adult body”, helpless, unable to do things others can, a tragedy.

The schizophrenic that hears people that tell him to kill people. No negative symptoms, delusions all tie in with the reason he’s violent and nobody ever thinks to treat him for schizophrenia.

The Abusive Bipolar who is a burden to their entire family. Always angry or in bed and their children cry outside the door of the bedroom.

OCD character with a color-coded closet. Move anything and they will Stab you. Do not do it. No obsessions are ever mentioned. All you know is they are super organized and perfectionistic.

The Anxious dorkball that somehow just looks cute and never shows any other of the ugly symptoms like shortness of breath, sweating, panic attacks, not leaving the house for days because the anxiety is too bad, or excessive fear. 

The Depressed teenage girl that is magically cured by a cute boy. 

But do we have accurately portrayed neurodivergent people? No. We have stereotypes and we have poorly-written characters whose arc ends in death or suffering. That’s the problem with the representation we get in the media- we don’t really see people like us getting a happy ending or learning to be happy with their life. It’s always in spite of their disorder, even though they’re disordered. And that’s not okay. People like us should have happy stories too. Tell the funny sides of the disorder, the dark sides of the disorder, the good and the bad times. 

But don’t reduce us to a caricature. 

[yellow-lemon-lime]

(Dear parents, teachers, school counselors etc. Please take our early symptoms seriously)

From 2006 to 2017 I went through a crisis

It all started in 9th grade. I had always been an avid reader, and I would read pretty much anything anywhere, and I was also relatively fast as reading a book. But in 9th grade something happened. I started getting slower at reading and I often had to read the same sentence over and over and over again, and other times I Had To Pronounce Each Word Perfectly In Order To Be Able To Continue Reading. In my Danish class we had to read a new book each month, and make a short essay about it, but what my teacher didn’t know was that I never got through one book during that whole year. I used to think I was just tired of reading, but I know better now

After primary school, I went to the Danish Watchmaker School, since I thought there would be more practical studying and less reading, but even with no books I struggled. I couldn’t keep up with the rest of the class and the things I made that are used for watchmaking were not of good quality, and I started not paying attention to the class. My teacher had me have a meeting with a school counselor who said “You are immature” and sent me off to another school I was hurt at being called immature, because that’s not what I am, but I was even more hurt at the fact, that a school counselor couldn’t see things were not right with me Around the same time I started having problems with personal hygiene. From when I was little to when I started watchmaker school I had always showered almost every day, but I started showering less and less, in fact so little that there could go weeks between the showers. One day at the school I had been sent off to, the teachers commented on how greasy my hair looked and what type of shampoo I used. NEVER once did they consider the fact that maybe I was just getting a little ill

I moved out in 2008 and although I’ve never been the one with the most clean room, it got really bad after living on my own, I couldn’t take out the trash, because what if my neighbors spied on me? When I moved back home a year or so later, my parents were furious that my apartment looked a mess, but never did they realize it was I who was a mess

So dear parents, teachers, school counselors and anyone else who works with young adults, please take changes in the youngsters seriously, and don’t just brush it off as being a teenage thing. I was lucky that I just got my diagnosis in time for proper treatment, but I do wish I had gotten help before I became psychotic.

Happy World Schizophrenia Day <3 

[ryoukenkogami]

Schizophrenia Awareness Month 2019 // Day 2: delusions

This… is probably going to be the hardest topic for me to talk about out of all of them to be quite honest. No matter how far I’ve come in the process of accepting myself and being open about my struggles, my delusions are the one thing I’ve very rarely (if at all?) spoken about publicly because quite frankly? I’m still afraid of what people will think of me. They were, however, the first symptom I began experiencing back senior year of high school. At the time I was going through my most prolonged mental health spiral to date and this was also the time period I first started seeing a psychiatrist (and they refused to diagnose me with anything other than severe depression even though I was referred to see one because of my therapist thinking I was displaying traits of type ii bipolar disorder… which I was later diagnosed with that summer, and which my medication for actually helps unlike the ridiculous list of antidepressants they tried to put me on prior to that). At the time my delusions were a safe haven for me; they made me feel like everything going to shit was okay and that I could just ignore it, because in the end none of it would matter. I won’t go into too much detail as like I said I’m still not very comfortable with it, but the long story short is they very prominently had to do with the idea of reality/unreality, which is something that did stick with me and became a very big trigger for more severe psychotic episodes within the next year or so following that. I never realized it was anything “different” than how other people thought at the time because 1)  I didn’t talk to anyone about it anyways because of how innately personal it felt, and 2) I was convinced I was special in a way other people weren’t, so why would I tell them and make them feel bad about themselves? These became more severe when I left for college though and fueled a lot of the bad decision making I did at the time when it came to taking care of my body and the things I would put it through. My favorite story to tell people is about the one time I walked all the way from the state house downtown to Cayce in nearly freezing weather wearing shorts and a crop top just because I was absolutely thoroughly convinced I was not vulnerable to the elements (for those of you not in the Columbia, SC area: this was like an hour walk, and yes I made it perfectly fine) just because it’s one I can laugh about and find pretty funny in retrospect. The reality of it is I was barely eating (maybe one thing that could be considered a small “meal” a week a lot of the time) because of the convictions I held about what my body could go through, I became a (poly)addict because I thought it would give me more insight into my delusions, and in general I did a lot of extremely impulsive and dangerous things that thankfully did not end up causing long-term harm. I still live every day with the same beliefs, but they’re more of a background noise a lot of the time unless something in particular triggers it to blow back up. I haven’t had a really severe psychotic episode where they got to the point they affected how I function in a year now which is a huge relief (the last one was right around this time last year though).

On a less personal note, this topic brings me to something that’s been grating on me more and more over the past few months. Please, for the love of fucking god, can we stop using “delusional” as an insult. Collectively we’re at the point where most people who’re respectful towards those with mental illnesses have stopped using terms like “psycho” to describe people, and some have opted away from “crazy” too (which I appreciate), but “delusional” is one I still see CONSTANTLY from people who otherwise seem to be big advocates for awareness and respect, including non-psychotics who have mental illnesses themselves. Psychotic disorders are some of the most heavily stigmatized, and this does absolutely nothing beyond reinforce the idea that delusions are something to be shamed and othered for; it’s the reason I feel afraid to talk about mine too. The stigma surrounding them feels heavier than the other positive symptoms of psychosis for me, including hallucinations. At least with those, people have some kind of understanding of them (whether it’s exactly accurate or not…) and are more likely to display concern rather than disgust. Delusions don’t get the same sympathy. Delusions mean “there’s something seriously wrong with you, you need help, you must be crazy to believe something like that!” and it seriously pisses me off so much. Do you think we don’t know there’s something different about us? Believe it or not, many of us are self-aware and realize that these things are delusions. That does not, however, make them any less real to us and you trying to convince us otherwise does infinitely more harm than good.

Delusional people deserve respect, and it’s something we often aren’t given. Delusional has become synonymous in most people’s minds with irrational behavior, when it’s a term many with psychosis feel wary to even use to describe their experiences out of extreme fear for how we’ll be perceived by those we love and trust, let alone the general public.

Respect people with delusions, whether they’re delusions of persecution, of grandeur, somatic, or anything else, and using “delusional” as a pejorative for people you think are being irrational. I promise, there will always be a much better way to describe someone without using a word that demonizes a serious symptom of psychosis, and, given that the rates for schizophrenia alone are 1 in 100 people (I say this because there are quite a few other mental illnesses that can cause psychosis/specifically delusions) they likely affect someone you know and care about.

[takataapui]

schizo awareness month prompts 2019 #5

List of prompts here, my last post here.

Just now realising that I could have scheduled these posts for like a week apart. Sorry to everyone who’s being spammed with these. Not sorry enough to stop though.

5 more beneath the read more!

21. How do your symptoms affect you in your everyday life?

Oh boy, my day to day functioning has gone way downhill. Some days I can’t leave the house because everyone’s trying to kill me and being outside my safe space is dangerous, sometimes I can’t sleep because the demon possessing me won’t let me, things like that.

Things like negative symptoms fucking me over when I’m trying to do homework, or even get out of bed.

For the most part, it’s getting more manageable with meds, but it’s still a daily struggle.

22.  When/how did you realize you had schizophrenia/get diagnosed?

Uuuh, up until today I thought I had schizoaffective disorder. Then my doctor explained why she doesn’t think I do, so I guess now I see her point of view.

But I don’t have an official diagnosis, just a verbal confirmation that I have schizophrenia, and just that has taken 4 years.

23.  Schizophrenia and creativity For me, schizophrenia both inspires and deadens my creativity. Certainly, the bizarre delusions my brain comes up with is a form of creativity, and I get many good ideas from my schizophrenia, but at the same time, as it sucks away my motivation it makes being creative that much harder than it already is.

24.  This is what schizophrenia looks like

/my-face

But also, it looks like people who look the same as everyone else, people who are visibly neuroatypical, people talking to themselves, people with their backs to walls and refuse to move, people who can’t bring themselves to make eye contact, people who can’t leave the house, just, people.

25.  Do you have any advice for newly diagnosed schizophrenics?

Lol, I am one. So I guess I don’t really have any advice for us.

Thanks for reading!

[psychotic-spectrum]

Schizophrenia Awareness Month Official prompt list 2018 12. Coping methods

General Coping Strategies

Some coping skills can be used to alleviate a variety of symptoms that schizophrenics may experience, such as voices, or delusions that someone is spying on them:

''Utilize distraction.'' Like with most mental illnesses, distraction is a key coping skill. Some schizophrenic patients find music, TV, or audio books to be good distractors. Patients who hear voices often find these auditory distractors to be successful.

''Document symptoms through a diary.'' Always documenting when a person suffers symptoms helps them track patterns and can provide insight into coping with the symptoms.

''Assess and test reality.'' This technique involves the assistance of a trusted person, who is honest with the schizophrenic at all times and can inform them if their symptoms are real or imagined. Additionally, they can be around to help distract a schizophrenic if they need help.

''Join a support group.'' Schizophrenics can benefit from the support of others who are dealing with the same challenges and obstacles. Being able to speak with others about certain delusions or hallucinations can also help with reality testing.

''Avoid stimulants like alcohol, drugs, and caffeine.'' Although avoiding these may not make all symptoms disappear, it can help lessen the symptoms.

''Find a relaxing escape.'' This might be a hot bath, painting, taking a walk, or sitting on the beach. Incorporating these aspects into daily life can not only interrupt hallucinatory events but prevent some from happening as well.

[stephiewoodcock]

#IAmTrans #TransIsBeautiful #GirlsLikeUs #ThisIsWhatTransLooksLike #NotAThreat #ErasingNobody #LwiththeT #SpreadLoveNotHate #GetTheTERFsOut #IAmSprouticus

[satanspersonal666]

Mental Health/ Schizophrenia/ Psychosis Awareness Month Prompts!

Day 1- introduction: Hi everyone!! My name is Emmett, im a disabled trans guy (he/him pronouns) and I have bipolar disorder with rapid cycling and psychosis! I also have ednos, ptsd, and anxiety. Im super pumped to be doing this so thanks @sweetschizo for putting it together!!

[schizo-cripple]

15. Tips on how to best help and support a person with schizophrenia?

Be kind to us Be gentle with us We may be frightened But we get to choose

Let us be the ones To write the rules For you to follow When we’re to frightened to think

Don’t tell us we’re faking Don’t say our delusions are real Keep us safe from shadow creatures Do not make us a joke

Essentially, we fight a war Where you cannot see The battleground, the struggle The fighting or the weapons

But you can see us Let us tell you our story Keep listening where you can If we can lean on you, let us know

And don’t flinch from us if we’re odd Don’t demand we be healthier Or pretend to be for you Meet us where we are

We don’t get that often enough.