being mentally ill is just being fed up with your own shit 24/7 like oh my god are we really going to do this again can I have like one hour of peace just one fucking hour oh my god p l e a s e
I feel like neurotypical ppl tend to underestimate MI ppls level of self-awareness abt our disorders. Like, believe you me, I am well aware that my brain is a rampant shitshow. That doesn’t mean I can make it stop doing shit though.
I have heard at least two people deride Tumblr as an “echo chamber”, and while I’ve seen great discourse that would prove that description far from all-encompassing, I want to take a moment to comment on the kinds of things I’ve seen echoed down these halls:
– Explanations about abusive relationships and raising awareness that it is okay to take care of yourself, that you don’t exist just to make someone else’s life better.
– Education on the spectrums of sexuality, romance, attraction, and gender, and a multitude of people responding to these posts with “there’s a word for it?” and “you mean I’m not broken??”
– Signal boosts for people in bad situations who are trying to earn / raise funds to get themselves to safety.
– News from all over the globe and all over America that isn’t being reported by US mainstream media, because it doesn’t fit with the worldview that most media conglomerates are being paid or pressured to feed to the public. Daesh is bombing Muslim holy sites. White cops are murdering black children. The impact of how our environment and ecosystems have been changing.
– Images of beautiful art.
– Critiques of the heroes and villains and story-lines in the “myths” of our time, reminding each other that you can still be a hero even if you have flaws (like many of our heroes do) and that those cast as villains rarely develop into such in a vacuum. That even the worst people can still do good; that it’s not only your sins which define you. And a grand showcasing of the possibility that if someone hands you a world, you can change it.
– People trying to bring some cheer into the lives of complete strangers.
– People letting each other know that they are not alone in their depression, their grief, their feelings of powerlessness and their fear for the future. Reminding them that in general, they are not alone.
An echo is a fine thing, if the original message is something people will benefit from hearing.
Friends, family members and loved ones of learning disabled and mentally ill people need to have a working knowledge of what Executive Dysfunction is, and respect the fact that it is a prominent feature of that person’s psychology and life.
Executive Dysfunction is best known as a symptom of autism and ADHD, but it also features in depression, anxiety disorders schizophrenia, OCD (which by the way is also an anxiety disorder), personality disorders; etc, a whole myriad of mental illnesses and disabilities can result in executive dysfunction.
Years ago when I was like 14 and had recently learned of my autism diagnosis, I watched a youtube interview between autistic people, and an autistic woman said something along these lines:
“Sometimes, a lightbulb will burn out, but I cannot change it. I have the physical capability to change the lightbulb, and I want to change the lightbulb, and I know I need to do it, but because of my autism I just don’t do it. So the lightbulb remains unchanged for weeks. Sometimes people have to change the lightbulb for me.”
When she said that I related so much, because constantly throughout my whole life I have wanted and needed to do things with my wanting and needing being akin to my spurring an extremely stubborn horse who refuses to move. For the first time I learned that I wasn’t just “lazy”, I had a condition that prevented me from doing things as easily as other people can, but unfortunately it took me years since then to understand that.
Imagine that you are a horserider, but your horse is entirely unwilling to move even if you want to move. You dig in your heels, you raise the reins, but the horse refuses to respond. Your wants and needs are the rider, and your executive functions (the parts of your mind responsible for getting things done) are the horse.
I think it’s incredibly dangerous for neurotypical loved ones to not understand, or be aware of, or respect executive dysfunction. Neurotypical can assume that we are just being lazy, careless, selfish or difficult, when in reality we want to do the thing but our brains prevent us from consistently and reliably doing the thing.
That misinterpretation can lead to toxic behavior and resentment on the part of the loved one, which will harm us emotionally and do us a lot of damage gradually over time.
That damage can take the form of internal self-criticism, complicating executive dysfunction even further and making it worse.
edited for easier reading!
I think about this a lot, because I have to. In my own life, as a parent who struggles with executive dysfunction and yet has to teach a child basic life skills, it’s important to know my blind spots and learn to function around them. He’s watching me and learning from my example, so I have to do my best to explain what I can’t always do, and try to do it anyway.
Executive function is such a fundamental and yet hidden trait. It is in charge of reasoning, flexibility, problem solving, planning, and execution/prioritization of necessary steps in any action.
Each task is never one task. Take changing the lightbulb – from beginning to end, it’s a series of steps that must be put in proper order:
Notice light bulb is burnt out.
Recognize that it can be fixed by putting in a new light bulb
Remember where new light bulbs are stored
Go to light bulb storage area
Select new one
Find stool or chair to stand on
Take out old bulb, put in new one
Screw in bulb
Replace chair or stool to previous spot
Throw away old bulb
That’s not even all of them, but it’s a good enough summary for now. There are hidden stumbling blocks in every single step.
A burnt out bulb may go unrecognized as a problem – there’s two other bulbs in the room, it’s a little dimmer, so what? It might take all three burning out before you see it as a problem.
Maybe you forgot where the bulbs are, because it’s been a while. Searching the house is a task you put off, because it’s messy/disorganized/big/you have other more pressing matters. The bulb can wait.
You find the bulb storage, but you’re out of new ones. You have to shop. You’re busy, you put it off until the next time you shop, by which time you’ve forgotten you need a light bulb. Repeat cycle.
You’ve been depressed for a while, or maybe you’re just a messy person. A stack of important documents is on the chair you’d use to stand on to get to the bulb. You know if you move those documents you’ll forget where they are, and it’s tax stuff/homework/your mom’s birthday card, and you can’t forget that. The bulb gets put aside until you deal with those things. But you don’t want to deal with them now, so the bulb waits.
Throwing out the bulb requires safe disposal so that you don’t break it and accidentally cut yourself, or someone else in your home. You have no idea how to safely dispose of it. You put off changing the bulb until you figure out what to do with the old one.
On and on and on. Each step requires problem solving, prioritization, and reasoning. These are the hidden processes that go on in our minds every single moment of every day. Difficult tasks build up, compounding the problem of completing others, until each action requires ten more before you can solve the minor problem you started with. Changing a light bulb ends in a night of doing your taxes. Doing the dishes ends in standing in the dish soap aisle at the grocery story for a half hour trying to figure out which soap to buy for the dishwasher.
When a simple action requires the same effort from you as the most complex, abstract problem-solving…. to put it mildly, you’re fucked. Every day tasks require exhausting mental gymnastics.
So, be kind to the person who can’t seem to change a light bulb. There’s a lot that can stand in the way.
The actuality of depression that no one seems able to grasp is you have to fight for your own life. You don’t have doctors forcing standard treatments or have an entire support team praying for you. You’re solely responsible for providing the encouragement and care necessary to keep you alive. The times I’ve been at my sickest I had to fight with every last drop of hope I had to get myself out of the grave my mind was digging for me. The disease is what kills you. It corrupts your mind forcing your every thought to scare you enough that suicide seems like your only way out. I wish people could understand that… not only to show the respect those who lost their battle with depression deserve and not view it as an act of selfishness, but also to realize how f*cking strong a person living with depression has to be to not slip into that same scenario. Personally, I think that there’s always going to be something better than not being here at all… not to mention the fear of where I’ll end up, there’s far too much unknown, which terrifies me, which is good…
Because I know what it feels like to be in the position people are in before they end it all. It’s a feeling I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy and I wouldn’t even want to attempt to explain it to you. Because it’s, well, depressing.
About as depressing as it can get really
Something else people don’t understand is the massive amount of self-advocating depressed (and other mentally ill people) have to do.
Through my latest crisis, the system meant to help me access care has failed me repeatedly. With two exceptions it has been up to me to find every door myself, and either open it myself or fight until someone FINALLY opens it. Nothing I have asked for has been provided without a fight or without ridiculous delay.
This shit is asked of people who by definition are less capable of fixing things by themselves. It’s like asking someone with a broken leg to run to get help.
You really don’t. If it’s crap, move on. There’s no prize for finishing crappy books, only so much magic waiting in good ones.
Oh, how I need these to hand out! I am so pro-abandoning bad books.
Take it from a bookseller- life is too short to finish bad books. If you’re not enjoying something, put it down and move on (and this goes doubly for the “classics”)
(2/?) as soon as they’re alone they hug it out. And none of that “bro hug” shit like this is real hugging. And imagine tiny thirteen y/o Obi-Wan staring up at them like “when do I get my hug????” Dooku teaches Obi-Wan some of his lightsaber techniques and Qui-Gon is kind of really pleased to see his master teaching his Padawan. And like Dooku pulls the “lets kid eat sugar and stay up late when their parent says not to” bc fuck the rules.
***
Now I can’t help but imagine Dooku hearing about Naboo, hearing that Qui-Gon had been critically injured.
Dooku is a man very conscious of his image, but he would abandon that in an instant to dash like a madman straight to the Hall of Healing. Nobody has ever seen him move that fast except in battle, and certainly not with a such a terrified expression.
And then he sees that Qui-Gon is there. Hurt and swathed in bandages and barely able to stand, but still there. Still alive.
Although they both would have preferred it, Anakin and Obi-Wan are off on missions assigned by the Temple. They can’t stand vigil over Qui-Gon’s bedside.
So there you have Dooku, prim, regal Dooku, lathered in sweat and on the verge of tears, and Qui-Gon looks up at him, dips his head, and says, “Master.”
It’s one small word, but it opens up all the old memories Dooku has. Of choosing Qui-Gon as his apprentice, of training the headstrong Padawan into Knighthood, of watching him become a respected Master in his own right.
And it breaks him.
He’s fully aware that Jedi don’t form attachments. That Jedi don’t love. And maybe to spare himself the shame, he calls them something different in his mind. Maybe he just doesn’t give the feelings any name, and simply crushes his former Padawan into a hug the likes of which no one else would ever receive.
And if he happened to finally let a few of those tears soak into Qui-Gon’s hospital tunic, Qui-Gon would certainly never tell.
*clenches teeth* Arghhh these feels.
I was highkey waiting for Dooku to come to the halls and find Qui-Gon barely alive but alive and Obi-Wan sitting in the chair beside his bed an absolute wreck, tears tracking through the dirt and sweat on his face and maybe wrapped up in a shock blanket and Dooku breaking over him first, since he’s the only one conscious to take comfort in it, and revert back into that mother-hen-master role
Giving the healers what for about leaving a traumatized /child/ to sit by his critically injured master with little to no medical attention and allow him to suffer on his own (maybe Obi-Wan wanted it that way but Dooku would certainly never stand by and witness this treatment of a Padawan) and he sees to Obi-Wan himself, helping him clean up and calm down and eat something before they come back to find Qui-Gon slightly coherent
Obi-Wan’s lips tremble precariously as he is confronted with his master’s loopy smile and the warm touch over their bond because he feels like he’s failed him yet again and he nearly /lost/ him but both Qui-Gon and Dooku assure him he did no such thing and they are immeasurably proud of him
Dooku waits until Obi-Wan is safely asleep in his and Qui-Gon’s quarters to lose his cool and feel that pesky attachment he’s not supposed to have tugging at his heart and he only sheds a few tears but that is enough. Qui-Gon understands. He knows how much he is loved.
Yikes I am feeling too many things
This may need to be a fully fledged fic
Yeah
It definitely, most certainly needs to be a fully fledged fic.
I utterly agree. Here, let me get the ball rolling.
It was a widely accepted truth amongst the Jedi that if Master Yan Dooku were to ever truly loose his cool, it would be a sign of the galaxy’s end.
And so, needless to say, the sight of said ever stoic Master running through the halls of the Jedi Temple, cloak whipping out behind him like a living creature, panic and fear roiling around him in the Force, had many of the younger members of the Order going pale and backing away a pace or two. One particularly young Padawan even hid behind their Master’s legs as the former Council member rushed past.
You can ship characters for happily ever afters, sure, you can ship them for tragically-then-happily, you can ship two or three or four or more, you can ship endless combinations of personality types and relationship dynamics
but you can also ship characters under very specific circumstances, or for a certain period of their life but not for all of it, or only in a certain universe. You might say “I ship these characters” and what you mean is you think they are fascinating together and could have a story together. That story could be any kind of story.
Sometimes it means you want them together for the rest of their lives. Sometimes it means something different than that.
I don’t know about you, but for me, “I ship it” means “There is a story in this ship and I am interested in that story.”
for me, “I ship it” means “There is a story in this ship and I am interested in that story.”
There's a Mirror on the Wall 