honestly Pokemon go is probably going to help a lot with people who have depression because rather than laying in bed all day we are getting up and going outside and actually enjoying ourselves rather than laying in bed all day
someone already reblogged this saying how much is helps this is wonderful thank u Pokemon
When I was twenty-one, I had my tonsils removed. I was one of those people who got strep throat every few minutes, and my doctor finally decided that I needed to have my tonsils taken out. For the entire week afterward, swallowing hurt so much that I could barely open my mouth for a straw. I had a prescription for painkillers, though, and when they ran out but the pain hadn’t, I called the nurse and said that she would really need to send another prescription over, and maybe a little mixed grill of drugs because I was also feeling somewhat anxious. But she wouldn’t. I asked to speak to her supervisor. She told me her supervisor was at lunch and that I needed to buy some gum, of all things, and to chew it vigorously—the thought of which made me clutch at my throat. She explained that when we have a wound in our body, the nearby muscles cramp around it to protect it from any more violation and from infection, and that I would need to use these muscles if I wanted them to relax again. So finally my best friend Pammy went out and bought me some gum, and I began to chew it, with great hostility and skepticism. The first bites caused a ripping sensation in the back of my throat, but within minutes all the pain was gone, permanently. I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds—the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both—to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases we don’t even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us. They keep us moving and writing in tight, worried ways. They keep us standing back or backing away from life, keep us from experiencing life in a naked and immediate way.
Anne Lamott, “Perfectionism,” Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (via pigmenting)
What do ruined people do? Weird shit. This seems to be the consensus of psychoanalysts as far back as Freud and Jung; the traumatized self creates, out of necessity, a system of self-care that is keen to avoid repeat trauma. This makes change difficult; it makes people who’ve had part of their psyches destroyed by unmanageable emotions push people and emotions away, create obstacles, generate unnecessary drama.
I dug through my entire archive to find this quote, scrolling back a few years, because this phrase stuck with me as I find myself doing “weird shit”. I needed to read this essay.
Yeah, see, THIS is a trigger. Something that prompts a horrible flashback that makes someone go into a literal panic attack. It is NOT something that makes you slightly uncomfortable, so can we all just stop tossing that word around like it’s nothing.
thank you Wreck It Ralph
Reblogging for valuable commentary
Also, can we talk about how Felix dealt with it? He NEVER used that word again (only once in front of Ralph, never by her), there was never any talk about how she could get over it, and in their wedding they all made plans to help her with her paranoia by recognising her fears and showing she was safe by pointing guns at the window and having extra security.
A++++++ on dealing with mental issues magnificently, Wreck-It Ralph!
Will never not reblog this when I see it
also this was the greatest 5 second character development in cinematic history
Concept: Maybe “neurotypicals” who consistently reblog post about autism and other mental disorders and illnesses because they relate to them actually aren’t neurotypical, and just don’t know it.
Even the ones who say, “But everyone does this!” might only be saying it because they do it, and therefore think everyone does, when that’s not the reality.
Like, I remember someone who very obviously had OCD saying, “Everyone gets constant, upsetting intrusive thoughts, and does things to make them go away! It’s normal!” and everyone who responded to them were like, “Uh… No, it’s really not. You have a mental illness.”
I hate how everyone is so quick to assume anyone who relates to their posts without having every aspect of their mental state listed on their blog is obviously an evil, appropriating neurotypical. Maybe they are technically neurotypical, but have one or two traits associated with whatever form of neurodivergence. Maybe they’re neurodivergent and just don’t feel like listing it. Maybe they think they’re neurotypical, and are in the process of realising that they actually aren’t.
Please don’t be so quick to judge. This gatekeeping helps no one.
This is an extremely important point.
I know at least one trans person who didn’t realize they were trans until they were talking about how much they relate to trans things. Only, it was in the context of being dismissive of trans people. “Oh, sure, of course you prefer those pronouns. Everyone does.” But that wasn’t a cis person being dismissive of trans experiences; it was a trans person not understanding that they were trans.
Same thing with a lot of mental illness stuff.
Honestly, if you relate to an experience, you have the experience. Doesn’t matter whether you have it for the same reason someone else does.
On a similar note that I was thinking about recently: perhaps some neurodivergent people who are dismissed by their parents have neurodivergent parents who don’t know it. Like, if your mom says “everyone has that” when you tell her about your depression, there’s a decent chance that she’s not minimizing you, she just has depression herself and doesn’t realize it.
This is so so important. I started my journey with anxiety like this. And one of the first things my therapist asked me was whether or not there was a history of anxiety in my family. I honestly couldn’t answer her, because as far as I knew… there wasn’t? But then I thought about my mother.
My mother who can’t sleep if she can see that the outside light is still on at my house because she knows that it means I’m not home yet.
My mother who calls me at 9:30 on Wednesday nights, if I haven’t called her yet, just to ask if everything is all right because I usually call at 9, when I get out of class.
My mother who insisted on me calling her every night when I got home when I lived further away because otherwise I could have been kidnapped and no one would have known because I lived alone.
My mother who will work herself up for WEEKS over the fact that family members haven’t RSVPed to the summer family get-together because then she can’t plan food appropriately.
My mother who constantly imagines these dire futures for my niece and nephew based on the fact that they don’t have a swingset in their backyard.
My mother who imagines the worst case scenario for EVERYTHING.
And I realized… if my mother doesn’t have anxiety, too, then I’ll eat my fucking shoe.
And I had spent so much time feeling like how I felt was normal, in large part because I had my mother as an example of what “normal” looked like and I knew i was just the same. By the same token, she also has a huge difficulty understanding why my anxiety is occasionally so crippling–because she knows that she and I are alike in many ways and she’s always managed to do everything that needs to be done, so she doesn’t understand when I can’t. And just the fact that I was finally able to grasp where that communication breakdown was coming from helped A LOT on my end, at least.
So, yeah. Thank you, OP, and commenters, because this is definitely something that I think gets overlooked by people doing those gatekeeping behaviors.
If you fucked up today, that’s okay. You’re still smart, and good, and people still love you.
If you’re in a dark place today, that’s okay. Even if you feel like you can’t get out of bed, and all you can do is breathe, that’s okay. You breathe, take the time you need, and we’ll be here when you’re ready.
Every day is a battle. On some, you demolish whatever’s ahead of you. On others, you just have to hang on for dear life. Either way, you’re a warrior. Don’t forget it.
eirenical17 