Too old for Tumblr?

[theinvisibleenby]

Finally. The discredited Graded Exercise Therapy is removed from recommend treatments for ME/CFS in the UK.

[bigfatscience]

doctoring while fat

[veganvenom]

This graffiti appeared overnight at 5 different job centres in Birmingham.

It’s referencing the increasingly harsh benefit sanctions in the UK which are punishing disabled people in particular.

Claimants who cannot work due to severe disabilities or chronic illnesses are being categorised as “fit to work” in order to meet targets and are not being given enough money to survive.

The majority of people who legally challenge their benefits sanctions or ‘fit to work’ decision have them overturned, but only after months without the money they need.

Estimates generally put the number of people who have died in the last few years directly due to benefit sanctions in the thousands. These include people who have died of starvation, exposure, because they couldn’t afford electricity to keep their insulin cold, or because they couldn’t afford treatment, among other things.

The DWP has even sent letters to people declaring them fit to work when in fact they have already died from their illness.

Fuck the DWP and job centres.

Good job, whoever painted these!

[sunflower-cane]

disability benefits, and the excuse of "weeding out the fakes"

Its hard for disabled people to get disability benefits, no doubt, and were always told its to “weed out the liars who pretend to be disabled”

All theyre saying, is that they want disabled people to pay the price for abled people who lie to get something they dont need.

Now, when i first heard that excuse i wasnt taken aback by it,

I mean, abled people? Feeling entitled to something specifically meant for disabled people? To the point where disabled people cant get it anymore? That just sounds like another day that ends in “y”.

But i am frustrated with this constant excuse, and why am i?

Because the answer to weeding out the liars isnt to make it ten times as hard to get disability benefits, its to teach abled people that those benefits ARE NOT THEIRS, if one person needs a drink and the other person is stealing drinks, the answer isnt to make it near impossible to get drinks, its to stop the person stealing drinks. Its to teach that person not to steal. And yes, there will always be thieves, you cant stop them all, but these are the LIVES of disabled people that youre messing with, not giving them what they need can KILL them.

*opinion here* Id rather have one or two abled people be ableist and take what isnt theirs, ya know, like they do with our parking spots and elevators and bathrooms, than have it be ten times harder than it already is for disabled to fucking live. Between the time a disabled person gets denied for benefits and the next time they can apply and appeal and possibly get approved(or most likely denied again), their meds, doctors appointments, mobility aids, therapy appointments and general medical problems can increase and cause mental, physical and financial stress that couldve been avoided if they were not denied in the first place.

If youre worried about the “fakers” the answer is not to assume all disabled people are liars and run the risk of making their lives harder and them sicker.

Its to teach abled people to not treat disability as a money grab, its to teach abled people to not take what isnt theirs,

Adding to the ableism isnt gonna make ableism go away

[chronic-illness-resources]

👆🏻

[superlibby-deactivated20181209]

https://twitter.com/tommysantelli

[theinvisibleenby]

A thorough look at the flawed research that over reported the "benefits" of Graded Exercise Therapy. Rethinking the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome—a reanalysis and evaluation of findings from a recent major trial of graded exercise and CBT https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-018-0218-3

[fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton]

When people ask, “How can I tell if someone is disabled or just lazy?” I think about my parents.

My parents have known me my whole life. When they’re not actively contemptuous of me, they do seem to be somewhat aware of my general personality and character. In one of his nicer moments, my dad has called me “sweet-natured.” They can tell that when I make them a surprise breakfast or lunch that I enjoy being helpful and doing nice things for people.

They know from watching me grow up that I have always had trouble keeping my room clean, getting homework done, and keeping my desk tidy at school.

The longest I can push myself past my limits is about nine months. Then I collapse and end up less functional than I was before I pushed myself. This has been a pattern throughout my middle and high school years. I would go to public school for about a year, and then collapse and have to do the rest of my education at home. My work history follows this pattern, too.

I once sat in a therapy session with my dad to talk about the constant struggle we were having at home because he wanted me to help out more and do better in school. When he asked me why I didn’t do things, I broke down in tears, because I couldn’t explain it. “I just CAN’T. I want to, and I CAN’T.” Nobody listened.

My mom asked me why I don’t do things, and I said, “I just can’t. I sit there for hours trying to convince myself to do things, and I can’t. Move.”

And she said, “Don’t think about it, just do it,” completely missing the point.

When I got older I found words for the things I was dealing with. I got professionally diagnosed, and I’d look up information about my diagnosis and e-mail articles to my parents explaining what my disability is and why I can’t do things.

My parents have firsthand information about my character (helpful, likes doing things for others) and my history with disability (can’t consistently keep things clean, can’t manage a daily schedule). I’ve talked to them extensively about my diagnosis and given them information about it. They have known me my whole life, and I’ve always been this way. And they still, STILL choose to believe I’m just a bad person who doesn’t try and doesn’t care.

My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.

People like problems they can yell at. They like having a target for their frustration. They don’t want to admit disability is real, because they want problems that they can either solve, or blame someone else for. And the disabled person themself is  their scapegoat, someone who can’t ever opt out of their role because the disability is never going to go away.

[anniebasterd]

My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.

[fancyfade]

Able bodied people who think that if you can walk/stand at all you shouldn’t use a wheelchair … like… i hope you guys don’t use cars or buses

what do you mean that’s different? you can walk right? and you can run right? since distance doesn’t matter just walk and run everywhere u cowards

[boolbaga]

I win this time.

[theinvisibleenby]

interesting research. Wonder if any useful treatment will develop from it?

[vikingsrph-deactivated20140511]

I AM ALLOWED TO COMPLAIN

I AM ALLOWED TO CRY OVER SIMPLE THINGS

I AM FULLY AWARE THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE PROBLEMS TOO AND THEY ARE PROBABLY WORSE OFF THAN I AM

DO NOT REMIND ME OF THAT WHEN I AM UPSET

MY FEELINGS ARE VALID

I AM ALLOWED TO COMPLAIN

WHAT IS SIMPLE TO YOU COULD BE STRESSFUL TO ME

STOP TELLING ME TO THINK ABOUT PEOPLE THAT HAVE IT WORSE

STOP STOP STOP

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

Why I secretly taped my disability assessment

Some ill and disabled people are so worried about the process, they are using mobile phones to secretly record those interviews, critics say.

This fella secretly recorded his disability assessment hearing and caught them lying about his ability to work 

[mikkeneko]

“Under government rules, secret or covert recording like this is banned. If it is spotted, the claimant is told to stop. If they refuse it is likely that their benefit application will be rejected …. A claimant does have the right to ask for a PIP interview to be formally taped and used as evidence, but unlike other disability benefits like ESA, they have to provide their own equipment. This must be a secure, tamper-proof double recorder which can cost as much as £1,500. A mobile phone, digital recorder or dictaphone does not meet the requirements.”

uh huh

[kittenwitchandthebadvibes]

[jasper-rolls]

there’s a difference between “just do a little yoga it will cure your depression forever :)” and “going for a run won’t solve your problems but it will make you feel a little better and that’s the first step” but this site seems to treat them as the same thing

[thequantumqueer]

the problem is that yoga/coconut oil/green tea/exercise/whatever is suggested by very nearly literally every perfect stranger who happens to find out that we’re disabled in any way. it’s not “someone told me to do yoga and how could they think that’ll solve everything? im upset now” it’s “this week alone 12 people have told me to try yoga as soon as they found out i can’t stand for more than a few minutes at a time without being in pain and gee darn why didn’t i think of that?” it’s “i opened up about my mental illness because you seemed like an understanding but it turns out you’re the third person today who’s going to tell me that what i really need is some fresh air.” it’s “you just need to eat this super food” “i can’t eat that for medical reasons” “well try just a little bit anyway you never know it might help” it’s “you’ll never know what you can do if you don’t push yourself.” “i am pushing myself through intense pain just to be here with you having this conversation” “well that’s a depressing and defeatist attitude…” it’s “going for a run won’t solve your problems but it will make you feel a little better and that’s the first step.” “you see my cane, right? i am physically unable to run.” “that’s ridiculous. i saw this story on the news about a kid who…” “yoga” is shorthand for all of that in disability-speak, and we also have to deal with a truly absurd number of able-bodied neurotypical people who truly believe that if we “just do a little yoga it will cure your depression forever :)”

EDIT: holy shit i just looked at the notes and jesus fucking christ. you should do the same if you don’t believe me

[azu203]

When they say “the people on this site is so anti-recovery”, what they really mean is “how dare you invalids refuse to sacrifice your health, dignity, comfort, privacy, autonomy and general humanity for the rigorous public performance of a humbled repentant cripple”. Fuck that noise. If I have the financial means and competent, respectful healthcare providers that’s willing to help me with every concern I have, why wouldn’t I be open to the idea? Actually, fuck healthcare, if I could just have unlimited money, I could make the world my playground regardless of my disability. But we all know damn well either scenario will ever be a reality for most of us - poor, non white, gender non conforming, having no access to even basic healthcare let alone the very expensive specialised healthcare that we really need. Neither will the possibility that fucking strangers - both abled and even disabled, online and in real life - will offer us the tiny morsel of respect that we understand ourselves better than anyone to know or ways around our personal disabled life and keep their generic advices to themselves. It’s like they can’t sleep at night if they can’t pass on that worthless piece of knowledge to feel secure in the ignorance and illusion that the possibility of an abled life is just right there around the corner and we’re just too lazy/busy wallow in self pity/“anti recovery” to just reach out and get it.

[chronicillnessproblems]

Yeah, usually when people say things like “yoga/kale/exercise/positivity” it’s upsetting and ableist because:

Often it’s things we CAN’T DO. I am medically not allowed to run. (Too high impact for my joints.) Or do yoga. (Can’t stretch my joints, it makes them 1000% worse, that’s my whole problem.) So being suggested these “cures” weekly is extremely frustrating.

Often we’ve already tried them. You really think when I became too sick to function I didn’t immediately try everything I could, including eating healthier, popular OTC vitamins and supplements, etc.?

They come from a place of healthy people assuming they know more about our own health than we do, when very likely whoever is recommending cures to us has never even googled our illness, or if they have they only read one page about it. We’ve been dealing with this for much longer. Trust me- unless the study came out yesterday, we’ve heard about it already.

Not to mention that “cures” aren’t accessible for everyone. Even if we have doctors and insurance, they aren’t willing to prescribe everything the internet says will help our illness, whether it would or not. Plus insurance doesn’t always cover 100%, it almost never does. And insurance doesn’t cover non-prescription things at all. Diets are expensive. Yoga classes are expensive. Supplements are REALLY expensive. Hell even running shoes and the time to run, on top of having illness plus school/work/life whatever is expensive.

It’s blaming people for not being able to get better when we don’t take your suggestions. Because chronic or degenerative, incurable, and even untreatable things exist, but to ableds it’s, “they must just not want to or they’d get better.” I mean do I seriously have to explain how ableist that is?!

It gets patronizing- “well *I* can do this and be healthy, why can’t you?” “I don’t know, maybe because you don’t have the shitty genetics I do, Brenda!”

[art--felt]

I remember first learning that you can cry from any emotion, that emotions are chemical levels in your brain and your body is constantly trying to maintain equilibrium. so if one emotion sky rockets, that chemical becomes flagged and signals the tear duct to open as an exit to release that emotion packaged neatly within a tear. Everything made sense after learning that. That sudden stability of your emotions after crying. How crying is often accompanied by the inability to feel any other emotion in that precise moment. And it is especially beautiful knowing that it is even possible to experience so much beauty or love or happiness that your body literally can’t hold on to all of it. So what I’ve learned is that crying signifies that you are feeling as much as humanely possible and that is living to the fullest extent. So keep feeling and cry often and as much as needed

[wishyroses]

SHIT WHAT

[teal-deer]

Also let yourself cry. It really is a biochemical release valve to dump out all the chemicals that make you feel stuff.

I honestly think one reason men in western culture have so many problems is that we don’t let them cry, and literally their brains get stuffed with all this crap that doesn’t have a release valve. Men, please cry. You’ll feel better. It’s ok. You are not lesser for taking care of your health.

[freewillandphysics]

This is why tears from different emotions look different under an electron microscope. They’re literally made up of different things. 

Happy tears are structurally different than sad tears than angry tears than overwhelmed tears etc.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

“Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry, there’s nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don’t know the trick. It’s like whistling or singing.” 

- Lestat de Lioncourt, Memnoch the Devil  

[theinvisibleenby]

[theinvisibleenby]