youarenotyou:

conjuringseed:

intending-to-burn:

gotmagicwithoutwands:

onlinecounsellingcollege:

There are some easy tools that anyone can use to cope with their feelings of anxiety. They include:

1. Learning more about anxiety: This will help you to understand what is happen when you start to feel increasingly anxious. First, remember that we all feel anxious at times. It can help us to prepare for and cope with hard tasks – such as sitting an exam or teaching a class. However, it leads to problems when the danger isn’t real yet our body is signalling a high state of alert.  

2. Learning strategies that help us relax: The two most common strategies for relaxing and unwinding are calming down our breathing and muscle relaxation. The former involves taking slow, gentle breaths (breathing in through the nose, pausing for a few seconds, then breathing out slowly through the mouth, again). The latter involves learning how to tense and relax the different muscles - and then repeating this until our stress levels fall.

3. Actively challenging our anxious thoughts: When we’re anxious and tense we often see the world as a threatening and hostile place. This usually reflects faulty, negative thinking where we jump to conclusions or expect the worse to happen. This is out of proportion, exaggerated thinking which is unrealistic – and makes us feel uptight. A strategy for helping is replacing faulty thinking with a more realistic and accurate approach. This necessitates us challenging our automatic thinking so we see things in a clearer, less distressing way. Of course, it takes practise and effort to shift our change anxious thinking – but it’s worth the effort in the end

4. Facing our fears: One of the best ways of dealing with our fears is exposing ourselves to what makes us feel afraid. For example, if you avoid being with people as this leaves you feeling anxious then the best way forward is to simply face your fear.  You could make a list that goes from “least to most scary” - and then reward yourself each time you move a level up the list.

Note: In many ways, it just takes practise and a conscious decision to not be beaten by anxiety!

Okay, I need to rant for a moment.  While I’m sure that this post is well intentioned and may apply to some people who experience issues with anxiety, it also reads strongly as an “it’s all in your head” argument throughout much of the passage, which is something that I, as someone who has both Bipolar Disorder and Generalized/Social Anxiety issues find deeply disturbing and offensive.  Yes, relaxation techniques might help a bit, but anxiety episodes and/or attacks are not something someone can calm themselves down from in many cases.  If you feel that your anxiety is out of your control, by all means, please speak to a mental health professional and discuss options, including talk therapy or medication.  

I personally have several sets of circumstances that provoke a very strong anxiety reaction (though usually not full on attacks) and that reaction is in no way under my control.  Not being able to find something (due to significant short term memory damage/loss issues), feeling isolated or cut off (ie. cell phone battery running dead when out in public alone), and many other factors can provoke an anxiety reaction even though I take a maintenance medication for my anxiety.  I do also use a case by case basis medication as needed.

So if relaxation works for you, that’s all fine and good, but if it doesn’t, please don’t buy into the idea that you should be able to deal with it if you just think about it and calm down.  Mental Illnesses and disordered behaviors are often caused by real, physiological issues in how the neurological system and neurotransmitters work.  They are not things that you can think your way out of.

Reblogging for the commentary, because when we saw this post we got really pissed off as sufferers of panic disorder. We wish some deep breaths and saying “It’s not really anything to be anxious about” was enough to make everything all better.

^ yep.

loooool @ #4. exposure therapy is NOT something a person should be doing on their own, that is very dangerous advice. these things are good tips for like, mild, day to day, common anxiety that doesn’t impair a person’s functioning, but absolutely useless for anyone with moderate to severe anxiety disorders including PTSD (which has been proven to structurally change the brain.) and srsly as a person who has had debilitating anxiety for most of their life, it has only gotten worse as i’ve gotten older. i thought i could deal with it on my own and refused to take medication and continued forcing myself into situations that gave me extreme anxiety, because i’d heard so many times that this was the One Way To Cure Oneself, except it didn’t cure anything. i barely got through high school and couldn’t keep a job to save my life. and it never got easier, it only got worse. panic attacks, dissociation, paranoid delusions, the whole deal, and it got way, way more severe after PTSD. like i would pass out or throw up if i was around other people. i would start hallucinating. i would be unable to hear anything because the voices of people talking would turn into this loud buzzing. for over a year. trust me, i fucking TRIED but there was nothing i could do about this until i started taking meds because it’s a goddamn chemical problem. and eventually, i stopped taking them (again) because shit like the OP wrote has caused me to internalize so much victim blaming ableist nonsense about how i just need to try harder. this time, the anxiety was so bad i wound up drinking alcohol every time i needed to leave the house. in the end, i dissociated so badly for over a week that i unknowingly walked into oncoming traffic when i forced myself to leave the house because i thought i could “fake it til i made it”. so yeah anyone who thinks that anxiety is something we can control can fuck right off.

Yeah, all this commentary. Bolded just above is mine. Telling myself that everyone experiences anxiety is pretty meaningless when I have PTSD and don’t know where the fuck I am. It would be totally false to tell myself then that everyone goes through that, because they don’t.

Exposure therapy can work but needs to be done really carefully and in a controlled environment. And again, that’s not shit I’m gonna just try on my own and assume that my upbeat attitude will make it okay.

I really hate this accusation about how your anxiety comes from how fucked up you falsely think the world is. That’s really unhelpful when plenty of people’s anxiety is caused by the fucked up things that happen in a fucked up world. My shit comes directly from structural oppression. Like lack of resources and criminalization of people of color. What good would it do to tell myself the world isn’t that bad? That shit happened, and keeps happening, and it makes no sense to pretend it isn’t the case to sooth my own anxiety.

Like was said above, putting all this emphasis on people just trying harder to get better, as though things larger than them don’t also need to be fixed, or as though fucked up things aren’t happening around them, is really limited and really dangerous. Maybe this is self-help for stress out suburban white kids, but I don’t know a whole lot of people whose shit this applies to.

inflateablefilth:

Because what else is there to say? How many murders can I point out, how many times can I say I don’t want a cure, how many times can I read that you see your children as burdens? How many times can I be told that my feelings as an autistic person matter less when it comes to this ‘debate’ than an allistic parent because I’m ‘high functioning’ before I give up?

I am written off as ‘not autistic enough’ by so many of you Autism Speaks supporting folk because I can type online, because I am married, because I have sex and friends. My meltdowns matter for nothing, my sensory issues, my long term unemployment… None of it matters. Because I don’t fit your idea of what an autistic person should be. You don’t believe anyone would willingly be around your childre, your siblings, etc, so how on earth can I be autistic and married and with friends? How on each could I be living my life as I do with autism?

And I so almost wrote ‘suffering’ in there but I’m not suffering. I’m not. I hate the meltdowns, I hate being unemployed, I hate that I’m shitting myself before my first job interview in two years in case I actually GET the job. I hate that I have to live above a bar and the vibrations make me snap. I hate that I can’t go to live gigs, I hate that I get bullied. Jesus, I hate a hell of a lot of my autistic existence. But god da,n it, I am autistic and I am proud and I do not want a cure! And the more I read about people looking for prenatal tests and cures and all the rest of it, the more I see from the absolute fuckwits who still buy into that vaccine conspiracy theory, I get more and more terrified because I live in a world where people don’t want me to exist. I live in a world where the biggest charity ‘for’ my disability is promoting eugenics against me.

You know what that’s like? You understand what it’s like reading you people saying you understand when parents ‘snap’ and kill their kids or beat them or whatever when they’re like me? You understand what it’s like to mention this in passing to your own mother and having her say she understand too?

You don’t, you couldn’t possibly. So please stop supporting Autism Speaks. Please start seeing your kids as awesome people, not irritations that don’t fit into your selfish, cookie cutter idea of what your kid was meant to be. Please stop talking about how a diagnosis makes you grieve as though we we dead. Because your kid will grow up. Your kid will read this shit from other people and your kid will feel how I feel right now. And I care about autistic kids, more than Autism Speaks does. Most autistic adults do. And your kid should never feel worthless.

*this whole post is an uber mess but I am very emotional about this kinda stuff right now and it just kinda came out. Presenting as is.

This is a really awesome piece, no need to apologize for it being emotional! An autistic student where I work is doing Autism Speaks support stuff at school & I don’t want to step in and suggest he shouldn’t support them, but I might show him this and see what he thinks. It’s also totally important to have intergenerational conversations, especially since in the case of groups like Autism Speaks, so much emphasis is put on kids (how to care for autistic kids, shit about “curing” autism, rhetoric that generally treats autistic people like perpetual children, etc.).

youarenotyou:

Seeing as how it’s the beginning of a new semester, I’ve spent a lot of time in the past week hearing professors talk about their classroom policies and, specifically, the obligation of all students with disabilities to 1) register with campus DS (disability services), and 2)…

(via feministrobot-deactivated201203)

At least 10 times a day. I live with a psychiatric disability. (via microaggressions)

Or else, “Don’t listen to them, they’re just crazy” or any variation on that dismissal.

Mia Mingus, Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability

Damn. This is one of those cases where I’ve thought about snippets of what she’s saying, but never put it all together as part of one setup. My mind is blown.

For my zine, one of the borders I am thinking about (and hoping to synthesize stuff on) is the border between an individual’s body and their sociopolitical surroundings; basically, who is allowed autonomy over their body, and how thoroughly are they allowed it. Things like sterilization abuse, imprisonment, environmental racism. I think I’m not going to work on sexual assault or disabilities and how they relate to body autonomy, because they are very big broad topics that I can’t do justice to. This passage is perfect for me to come across right now!

ETA: I also do not mean to respond to a quote about ableism by saying that disabilities and body autonomy can wait for another zine. I want to hold off until I can do that right. For now, I want to look at a few of these ways that she is pointing out that narratives of ability and fitness shape other social forces.

imaginalfreqs:

readnfight:

and how can I make it stop?

He should seriously be in a mental hospital. But you know, the dominant culture / corporate music industry LOVES to put psychopaths on pedestals, give them lots of money, and a microphone. And our youth are the first to listen to this shit. #crazyy

I don’t like Eminem because his shit is oppressive. I don’t want to argue against what he says with other shit that is oppressive, in this case putting down people based on mental health. “He’s crazy” is absolutely not why I want to see his popularity end; his sexism is. Just like I don’t want to see people make money and fame off of misogyny, I don’t want to see people locked up in mental hospitals against their will.

In fact, some really amazing MCs have talked about dealing with mental health issues, especially if you include addiction and alcoholism, and that’s not a reason to trash them; if anything, I want to see far far more space made in hip-hop for talking honestly about mental health.

youarenotyou:

shortformblog:

If Jared Lee Loughner takes psychotropic drugs, he could become competent enough to stand trial. A while back, a judge ruled that Loughner can take any medicine he wants voluntarily, but his lawyers must be notified if he’s forced to take any medication to restore him to competency. However, those lawyers say that they weren’t in the room during a June 13th hearing which allowed a mental hospital to force him to take drugs to improve his mental condition — against the wishes of Loughner. Now they’re having a judge decide on the matter for a third time. So, the question is: If his lawyers are trying to prevent him from taking the medicine he needs to get better, how is he supposed to stand trial? Answer: If the decision favors Loughner, he probably won’t. source

Read ShortFormBlog • Follow

Hold the fucking phone. His lawyers are not “trying to prevent him from taking the medicine he needs to get better”. They are fighting for Loughner’s right to refuse medication. No one should be forced to take medication. EVER. People with mental illnesses — yes, even if they are dangerous, experiencing psychotic delusions, and unable to stand trial — have rights, can we fucking recognize that?

 Yeah, for real. I had drank too much coffee to sit still long enough to write “THIS SHIT IS FUCKED” when I reblogged this yesterday. This shit is fucked. The entire story about him has been a really telling look at how mental health is treated in the US, starting with the assumption that for him to do have shot up the place, he must be mentally “ill” and therefore dangerous, and now him being forced to take meds—not for his own well-being, but so he can be put on trial. No one would have given a shit about his mental well-being before. (I’d like to know if he even had health insurance before, or if he had insurance that covered psychiatric care. I just heard the story on Democracy Now about the guy who robbed a bank for $1 so he could get health care in prison.) This isn’t about what’s best for him, or taking care of him, after the fact. It’s about revenge.

Thank you for adding the trigger warning to this. I’m sorry I didn’t think to do it.

(via youarenotyou-deactivated2012022)

These are comrades in New Haven, and the space is used for gardening and bioregionalism meetings, in addition to other events and church services. I know there are at least a few members of this church community who are in various ways disabled, though I don’t know if anyone currently doing work out of the church uses a wheelchair or walker.

by Thomas MacMillan | Jun 16, 2011 4:01 pm

Holy rollers will have to wait a while longer before they can wheel themselves into services at the Unitarian Universalist Society on Whitney Avenue, after zoners nixed plans for a ramp there.

The Board of Zoning Appeals took the side of next-door neighbor Dr. Joseph Sabbatino, who said he was “very concerned about the aesthetics” of a wheelchair ramp, having spent $200,000 renovating the facade of his historic building.

Sabbatino made his comments at the Tuesday evening meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals, where the First Unitarian Universalist Society made its pitch for installing a wheelchair ramp on the south side of their building at 608 Whitney Ave.

The society sought special permission to have a smaller side yard than is required by law, to allow for the ramp.

Zoners voted unanimously—with one abstention—to deny that plan. Chair Cathy Weber said the society should come back with a plan to put the ramp on the north side of the building, away from Sabbatino’s property.

That will effectively double the price of installing the ramp, require cutting down at least two trees and creating a property easement of some kind, said Gaianne Jenkins, the caretaker of the Unitarian building.

imissedtumblr:

When you compare people with disabilities, no matter what you think of those disabilities, with fetuses, you are using ableism to score political points.

People in whatever state of disability you disapprove of are people.  When you imply that it is morally permissible to kill people with disabilities by comparing them to fetuses, you are basically stating that it’s okay to kill some people with disabilities because they are not people to you.  They’re not human to you.

I’m not your punch line. I’m not your worst case scenario.  I’m not your metaphor.  I’m not your punching bag.  I’m not your educator.  I’m not sitting down and biting my tongue so you can look better.  I’m not standing up for people who think me and mine are their learning experience.

You have worn down my last nerve, Feminism, and we are fucking done.

(via se-smith)

aqrima:

after my professor played a recorded piece of his friend reading the prof’s work in a monotonous voice on the computer…. while only passing ONE handout of all the poems (text being read aloud) to the entire class, so i barely got to read along and hear/understand, i decided to have this conversation with him. i was trying to get his attention as he was saying goodbye to other students and only half-listening to me. even after the first thing i said he refused to really give me attention.

me: i would’ve appreciated it if you had provided more handouts for your poems/performance, because i couldn’t hear enough of it. because, you know, that’s.. the way it works, since i don’t hear enough.. [totally getting all befuddled and anxious at this point, and cursing myself]

prof: oh, it’s okay, i was just experimenting with form and poetry, i may never do it again, you know.

me: oh, um, no, i mean, i don’t mean that it’s not worthwhile or anything, it’s a problem i have with performances in general since they almost never have transcripts and so i can’t hear.

prof: i don’t care if you think it’s worthwhile or not. i don’t care about that.

me: oh, well, i’m not trying to say anything about that, i just mean it would be more helpful if you had transcripts so that deaf people in your audience could hear more.

prof: [standing up to leave, EXTREMELY snarkily, and believe me, this guy *perfects* sarcasm and snarkiness] Thanks for your comments. Gotta run.

i’m trying to register a formal complaint, and this isn’t even the first time this kind of thing has happened with this professor, and he KNOWS i’m deaf (hearing-aided), and… but the dean of disabilities is of course acting as yet another cog in the liberal hegemonic machine and, uh, it probably won’t happen, or it won’t do very much.

i have been crying and venting and shaking and i was crying in her office and i asked her if she believed me and she just said that she believed i was feeling upset, that there are many layers to situations. many. layers. to. situations.

i was crying when i left the classroom and i told my friend that “i guess it’s my fault that i’m deaf” and she said “no it isn’t” and i said “yes, it is” all while running out of there, i do have a flair for the dramatics.

disability services doesn’t do shit and it was fucked up of me to ever think that i could get the help i needed. i was brought up to believe that the system is corrupt; why do i try to make it work. it won’t. it will never work. i told the dean that i have never been so disrespected for my disabilities by my professors/teachers (and a whole bunch of other administrative people) since i came to this college. this is true; but it’s also true that it’s only in college i started advocating for myself.

i never felt safe enough to give my accommodations request form to this professor. (i meant to. i tried to be able to.) and i am being blamed for that, too. by the dean. by everyone. i didn’t feel safe enough to ask for my rights, so i don’t have them.

i wish someone cared. i have two people in my life who really do, at least, but it isn’t enough. nobody is going to advocate for me; this is my life and i am going to keep having to do this forever and ever.

fuck the art world. fuck the poetry world. full of performances and experiments. this guy is interested in experimental form and elite performance and shit. naturally, it’s elitist and ableist as fuck. he assigned so much great reading, but he divorces the political from the formal. it stinks of westernness. seeping through everything.

a lot of this problem also arises from the great divide between professional and personal. he doesn’t give a fuck about me, as a person. at least if he did maybe he would apologize for hurting me, even if he didn’t recognize his ableism. personally, i prefer people at least thinking i’m worthy of not being hurt. he doesn’t. i am a student; i am his job, but not a person. he has said to our class: “oh, i don’t believe in sharing my work with you [he does so very limitedly], you can go buy my books if you like.” the implication being he is above all of us. great poetry workshop.

anyway. the intersections bleed and i am so tired of being on the precipice, always. yesterday i was told that i’m influenced by USian liberalism. as though liberalism is anything but imperialism and fascism and genocide. and yeah, the language i’ve learned because there was never any space for me. so i learn the oppressor’s language, the oppressor’s tools.

oh, and apparently i was just hurting myself in bringing this up. and i’m too intense, and i bring this all upon myself…

it really must be my fault i’m deaf, mustn’t it.

i’m so desperate for commiseration, solace, replies, reblogs, something, something, anything, that i’m blogging this on tumblr too. please? help me?

but i really don’t think anyone will care. this isn’t harassment, right. or.. or.. maybe this is only a MICRO aggression. oh right. because you get to decide what’s micro and what’s macro. (i really hate that term now, i think. the weight of oppression is felt differently, how dare anyone dichotomize and separate it out like that. every time this happens, i am closer to killing myself or being shut permanently in the psychward. intersections. context. goddamnit.)

your sense only perpetuates ableism. your sense is rotten. it is fucked up. it is ignorant and vile. it is wrong.

but this doesn’t count, right. this doesn’t count as harassment, as violence. no. of course not. i’m not dead yet, right?

if any of you think i’m wrong to be upset about this and whining and complaining and whatnot, just get the fuck out already. you are an asshole. end of story.

“disability services doesn’t do shit and it was fucked up of me to ever think that i could get the help i needed.”

THAT IS NOT FUCKED UP OF YOU!! It is fucked up of them!

It wasn’t fucked up of me to be a female physics/engineering student, I committed no crime by taking classes I wanted to, but I was punished by being assumed to be dumb & bad at math by all the dudes, and by having to take long walks to the nearest women’s bathroom. It was actually fucked up of them. It isn’t fucked up of me to speak up for myself & my family, but I get punished by being portrayed as too pushy, too loud, too angry. It is actually fucked up of the white people who refuse to listen or understand, who think there is no way we can communicate but they really just haven’t tried.

Disability Services sounds like, duh!, services for the needs of people’s disabilities! No way you’re the one who made a mistake by appealing to them; what else are they there for?

I don’t think my school even had a Dean of disabled students. Is the Disability Services run by people with the types of disabilities that are (supposed to be) provided for? Or is it run by people who totally know everything not from experience but because they studied it in school? I’m curious, cause this affects how things would be taken care of.

(via delphiniums-deactivated20111230)

This is an excerpt from the Feminists with Disabilities for a Way Forward blog about ableism, police interactions, and rhetoric around those two things. It’s very good. Copwatch New Haven is my crew.

copwatchnewhaven:

Very good critique of how the discussion around police interactions leaves out the complications brought up by disabilities. Important things we need to be aware of when we talk about tactics in our organizing.

The outcome of interactions with law enforcement is highly inconsistent and is very much tied in with intersectional issues like race. Let’s say you have a situation where a person who uses a cane is pulled over and ordered to get out of the car. The person says ‘ok, but, Officer, I want you to know that I use a cane for mobility. It is not a weapon, but I do need it to stand and walk safely, and I wanted you to know that before I got out of the car.’ The race of the person being pulled over shouldn’t affect the way the officer responds to that, but it will, and the colour of your skin should not determine whether you get your mobility device seized or not.

The idea that you just tell the Nice Officer about your disabilities and everything is ok is quaint and all, but really does not work out in practice. I’m trying to imagine a situation where I say ‘Officer, I’m not trying to give you the sideye, I just have a very difficult time making eye contact with people.’ Yeah. That’s going to go over real well. How many cases of ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ do there need to be before we acknowledge that the ‘communication breakdown’ here is not on the side of people with disabilities, but on the side of law enforcement?

…

But one thing I see repeatedly being left out, not just from guides for civilians, but also in pushes for police reform, is better training for interacting with people with disabilities. I see lip service occasionally, usually in the wake of really awful cases like Deaf folks being shot for ‘refusing’ to comply with verbal orders from police, but I don’t see much follow through. Some disability rights organisations are working with individual police departments; I’ve actually interacted directly with several police officers and provided advice and suggestions on making encounters with people with disabilities go more smoothly, but this reduces the situation to individual cases. It’s good that something rather than nothing is happening, but I would like to see nationwide policy initiatives, like very clear requirements that all law enforcement officers receive appropriate training in working with people with disabilities.