no offense but this is literally the most neurotypical thing i have ever seen
Uhhhh… no.
This is what they teach you in therapy to deal with BPD and general depression.
When I got out of the hospital after hurting myself a second time, I got put into intensive outpatient program for people being released from mental hospitals as a way to monitor and help transition them into getting them efficient long-term care.
This is something they stressed, especially for people with general depression. When you want to stay at home and hide in your bed, forcing yourself to do the opposite is what is helpful. For me, who struggles with self harm- “I want to really slice my arm up. The opposite would be to put lotion on my skin (or whatever would be better, like drawing on my skin) the opposite is the better decision.” It doesn’t always work because of course mental health isn’t that easy, but this is part of what’s called mindfulness (they say this all the time in therapy)
Being mindful of these is what puts you on the path to recovery. If you’re mindful, you are able to live in that moment and try your best to remember these better options.
I swear to god, I don’t get why some people on this website straight up reject good recovery help like this because either they a)have never been in therapy so don’t understand in context how to use these coping tactics. Or b)want to insist that all therapists and psych doctors are neurotypical and have zero idea what they are talking about. (Just so ya know, they teach this in DBT, the therapy used to help BPD. The psychologist who came up with DBT actually had BPD, so….a neurotypical women didn’t come up with this.)
I have clinical OCD and for me, exposure therapy–a version of “do the opposite”–has been fundamental. I’ve had huge improvement in the last year, but I’m 100% clear that if I hadn’t done my best to follow this protocol I’d be fucked. I have a lot of empathy for that moment when you’re just too tired to fight and you check the stove or you wash your hands or go back to the office at midnight to make sure the door is locked. But the kind of therapeutic approach outlined above has been crucial for me.
It’s hard to do. I’ve weathered panic attacks trying to follow this protocol. But I’ve gotten remarkable results. I was afraid to touch the surfaces in my house, okay? I was afraid to touch my own feet, afraid to touch my parrot–deliberately exposing myself to “contamination” has helped me heal. I can’t speak for people with other issues, but this has helped my anxiety and OCD.
I feel that tumblr, in an effort to be accepting of mental illness, has become anti-recovery. Having a mental illness does not make you a bad person. There is nothing morally wrong with having a mental illness anymore than more than there’s something morally wrong with having the flu. However, if you’re “ill” physically or mentally, something is wrong in the sense that you are unwell and to alleviate that you should try to get better. While there is not “cure” for mental illness, there are ways to get better.
There was a post on tumblr where someone with ADHD posted about how much you can get done when you focus and was attacked for posting about being “nuerotypical” - when she was posting about the relief she got from being on an medication to treat her illness.
I saw another post going around tumblr that said something along the line of “you control your thoughts, why not choose to have happy thoughts” which again was shot down as “nuerotypical” but while you don’t have control over what thoughts come into your mind, you absolutely can and should choose to have happy thoughts. In DBT we call this “positive self talk”.
I’m in DBT to help treat PTSD stemming from child abuse. The abuse and abandonment I experienced destroyed my self esteem and created a lot of anxiety over upsetting other people. DBT has taught me to recognize when my thoughts are distorting realty ‘no one likes you’ and answer back ‘plenty of people like you, you don’t need everyone to like you, especially if the relationship doesn’t make you happy’, to respond to the thought ‘I’m so worthless’ with ‘you’re really great and have accomplished something’
And it’s not easy to challenge your thoughts, it’s a skill that’s learned and it’s hard to force yourself to think something that doesn’t seem authentic or even seems wrong to think - it’s hard to be encouraging towards yourself when you hate yourself - but you force yourself to be aware of your thoughts and push back when you fall into unhealthy patterns
That isn’t “so neurotypical” that’s recovery.
Not shaming mental illness doesn’t mean shaming RECOVERY.
Pro-Recovery isn’t anti-disability.
Do not shame healthy behaviors as “neurotypical”.
Learning healthy behaviors and taking steps to treat mental illness and disorders including taking medication if that’s what works for you is important. You shouldn’t be ashamed if you have mental illness, but you shouldn’t say ‘well I’m not neurotypical therefor I can’t do anything to get better’ - while there is no cure for mental illness, there is a lot you can do to get better, to function better, to manage your mental illness and be safer, happier, and healthier for it.
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To take it a step further consider all the people who scream ‘neurotypical’ about the people they meet in a normal day. Someone suggests you do something to cheer yourself up? Fucking neurotypical. The doctor wants you to try this new therapy before prescribing you a different medication, how neurotypical.
Let’s get one thing straight, there’s no such fucking thing as a ‘neurotypical’ brain. You are never going to find two brains that function in an identical manner. The human brain generally shaped the same, yes, and the various parts are normally in the same areas, in that way almost all brains are typical, but how they work/convey information is not typical at all.
If I see the word ‘neurotypical’ I ignore the post.
That word has been used thusfar to disregard people with mental disabilities that are in recovery, to disregard people who have very specific and sometimes mild mental illnesses, to disregard people who don’t seem to obviously have a mental illness at all.
It is a blanket term designed to completely and totally sweep other people under the rug because they don’t fit your idea of what a person with a mental illness is.
Neurotypical is the internet version of some asshole leaving a note on a car parked in a handicap parking space saying ‘you don’t look handicapped’.
Oh. I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware I was supposed to show you the fucking list of medications I take and the therapies I go to. I was unaware that in order to get my ‘congratulations you fit in the special snowflake community’ card I had to have a hulkout. Excuse me, sir, while I provide for you my latest receipt from the fucking pharmacy, you piece of shit.
donald trump is like. a parks and rec character. if there was a continuation of the show and there was a season where leslie ran for president he would be her opponent. angry orange man with no real policies who just shouts offensive stuff while leslie looks aghast that people are agreeing with him.
Donald Trump never had a real job in his life
donald trump’s had everything HANDED to him…… on a silver platter. donald trump wants you to just HAND him this election. DON’T
I do wish the Steven Universe fandom would stop immediately assuming that small gems are analogous to “children.“ I know a lot of arguments about this revolve around skeevy fan art but that’s not what I’m referencing here, even people just talking innocently about how “cute” Peridot is are calling her a child. That default assumption has bugged me since the introduction of Ruby and Sapphire because little people exist, and are rarely represented in cartoons as anything more than shallow comic relief.
People accept that Sadie is a very small young adult seemingly only because the show explicitly says she is and then take every other short character to be a little kid at a glance. It just seems ableist and erasing.
