people on this site will be like “support trans men!!” and then reblog 6 posts about how men are smelly, gross, uncreative wastes of space and should shut up
like. either admit you see trans men as Soft Innocent Diet Men (nothing like those nasty, horrible smelly cis men!!), or start hating on us the same way you hate every other man. (or even better stop hating men altogether but yall are NOT ready or willing to even consider that idea lol!)
can’t wait until I’m cis-passing and stealth and the same variety of Tumblr People who would support me unconditionally back when I was Soft and Cute and Visibly Kweer despise me on sight.
'How Lucky It Is Now To Be Boring'
autistic, cat lover, disabled, psychiatric system survivor, vegetarian
autism things: lonely kid edition
- befriending an object and becoming horribly distraught for days when you lose it
- putting all of your toys in rows and just looking at them instead of playing with them the “right” way
- constant echolalia because there was never anyone around to tell you off for it (until you were at school)
- staring at the wall/ceiling for hours and daydreaming until you forgot who you are
feel free to add on anything i forgot!!
When the system engages in a control struggle with an individual [disabled person] no one wins. The system achieves control by using restrictive environments, behavior programs, increasing numbers of
staff, and the use of medications. The expense of this effort reduces the funds available to support others. The restrictive nature of the efforts adds to the reputation of the individual. In the absence of positive control over their lives many people with severe reputations seek negative control. With the perception that they have nothing to lose they will escalate until they are overpowered.
This supposedly novel insight is older than I am.
(via loyisagoy-elgoycherev)
(via stimmingintherain2)
The only ‘behavior program’ that some of these individuals need is to be treated with respect. They want to live in a place that they like where there are people with whom they want to spend time. They need to have people in their lives with whom they identify and who they admire.
Supporting People with Severe Reputations in the Community by Michael W. Smull and Susan Burke Harrison (1992)
(via stimmingintherain2)
thinking about how the only time i saw something that actually resembled the seclusion rooms i was put in was when i saw an actual literal fucking prison cell, i forget the exact context in which i saw it, if it was a documentary or whatever, but like it looked exactly like the so called “Quiet Room”
it had the same metal toilet bolted to the floor. it had the concrete floor and walls and no window except for the tiny unbreakable square in the door with no doorknob on the inside, and the same giant camera watching you
i pretty much can’t watch anything fictional that realistically depicts prisons cause it reminds me too much of the psych ward. lmao
but still, in the ongoing court case in my province trying to get those detained in psych wards some tiny small fraction of a sliver of basic rights is being told condescendingly by the government that Detention For The Purposes of Mental Health Is Fundamentally Different Than Other Kinds Of Detention Because It’s Purpose Is To Help People
cool, but the fact that you’re locking someone in a concrete cell doesn’t change when you pretend the reason you’re doing it (or even if you actually believe that you’re actually doing it) is for Good Helpful Purposes. being forcibly stripped naked by a group of people, some of whom are armed with literal guns, and then being locked in a concrete cell, will always be a bad experience for literally anyone no matter who they are and why you’re locking them up
My Very Successful And Lengthy Career As A Mental Patient: A Memoir
How To Advance Your Career As A Mental Patient In A Competitive Psych Ward: A Self Help Guide
Lemon Sharkpup has caught his tail and doesn’t know what to do next
(via verbose-vespertine)
someone saying that there are two “schools of antipsychiatry”, the first being based in szasz and the second being laing is such a deliberately incorrect way of framing things, for many reasons, but the main one is that they’re both psychiatrists
if you’re radical idea of what antipsychiatry is and can be only extends as far as what some psychiatrists have written negatively about psychiatry than you don’t understand like the psychiatric survivors movement at all
the psychiatric survivors movement didn’t erupt because two psychiatrists said something negative about psychiatry, it developed because institutionalized people were being treated like shit and they still are and we’re mad about it
also, the critiques of psychiatry that emerge from being a psychiatrist and thinking your profession is bad are extremely different from the critiques that emerge from actually having the experience of having been institutionalized and treated like shit and wanting to change that
being a person who was thrown in a seclusion room for long periods of time who then goes, hey maybe we shouldn’t do this is vastly different from being a psychiatrist who says things like “all mental illness is malingering”
If Goldilocks tried three beds, then Momma Bear and Daddy Bear slept separately. Baby Bear is probably the only thing keeping the family together.
You ain’t have to put those people business out like that.
Y’know, the story straight-up tells us why Mama Bear and Papa Bear sleep in separate beds: they have very different needs in terms of mattress firmness, and those fancy responsive mattresses that can be soft on one half and firm on the other hadn’t been invented yet. There’s no shame in valuing your spinal health.
The fact that they’re secure enough to admit that they’re better off in separate beds probably indicates that they have a very healthy relationship built on a foundation of mutual love and respect.
their relationship was just right
(via clatterbane)
cw: (psychiatric abuse, sexual assault) sorry i forgot to add this, edited to add it
when i was stripped naked by staff (this particular incident happened at a different hospital than the one mentioned in the previous post) i remember thinking “this is legal. it is legal to do this to me.”
the whole thing happened in 24 hours, i couldn’t stop sobbing when the police came, i still remember all the faces floating around me, telling me to calm down. and then within 24 hours taken to hospital -> slammed into wall and tackled by cops at the hospital -> dragged into Quiet Room -> stripped naked, pushed to the floor, briefed on The Rules (no standing while staff were in the room, sit with my hands visible and flat on the floor, etc) -> didn’t really sleep -> woken up at 4 something in the morning to be given meds -> discharged that morning -> tried to kill myself same day and was taken to a different hospital (ironically, the one mentioned in the last post)
like the reason i attempted suicide was because i just couldn’t process it. i had been, at this point in my life, raped and sexually assualted in previous contexts. yet this was somehow, not worse, but a different kind of worse
it was legal. that doesn’t really mean anything, i mean it’s not like i ever pressed charges for the other shit, but just knowing. just knowing i had no one to report it to, no one would be held accountable. just knowing that what happened to me was considered, not just forgivable, but something to be encouraged. an act of bravery on the part of the nurses and cops and security guards who “dealt” with me, who “treated” me, who “helped” me
it broke me, as a person, to not just have bad things happen to me, but to have no way to heal from it or even talk about. i can talk about it on here. people believe me
but my medical records, they say i got changed in front of security guards. they do not say i was held down while i was stripped of everything, even my underwear. i actually asked for the privilege of changing in front of the guards, if they must watch me to at least do it myself. but that’s not what gets written in the official account
supposing someone else were to view this situation, who would they believe, me, the violently dangerous crazy person who had to be subdued so that they would not engage in heinous acts such as “crying” and “wandering”? or would they believe the kind, helpful, ever sacrificing nurses and staff and cops who bravely, and non-violently slammed me into walls and stripped me?
i need to go to bed because of my appointment tomorrow but yeah. it’s legal, it’s legal, it’s legal. some of the stuff that’s happened to me is illegal. but you can abuse a psych patient pretty bad without breaking a single law, because legally it’s not abuse
legally, in my province, you are deemed to consent to involuntary treatment. legally, it is considered that real you, non-Crazy you, would want this treatment, and is in there somewhere consenting to being stripped naked
i guess that’s the additional layer of trauma onto it, that in the eyes of the law and psychiatry and society, i am said to want and need and secretly desire what was done to me
legally speaking, i am said to have wanted it, and any statement i make saying i didn’t want it is just the sad misfirings of a diseased mind. and thats why i couldn’t live. it wasn’t because there was something wrong with my thinking that i was suicidal, it was because i saw the world in perfect clarity, and what i saw was something terrible, something i couldn’t bear to live in
“At the outset I’d like to say that if we can be called CMIs - chronically mentally ill - then they, the mental health professionals can be called MHPs. If we must be relegated to a three-letter acronym - and basically stripped of our identity and individuality - then they too can be lumped into one pot. I present a series of vignettes from my history with the mental health system that depict what it feels like to be treated like a CMI.
[…]
After the second hospital stay, you’re supposed to come up with a new MHP to follow you. They send you back to the same clinic where you found the first jerk-therapist. You enter a room, and there are two male MHPs seated in front of you. You ask questions; they look at each other and respond to themselves, not to you. You spend the entire hour having the two shrinks talk to each other, not to you, but about you, in front of you. At the end of this hour long frustration, they say they have no openings, that there are no openings in the entire clinic. You wonder why they wasted their time and yours. You wonder who’s really crazy - them or you. You start to see more clearly: You’re a CMI.
• • •
During your third hospital stay, one of the MHPs approaches you to inform you that they’ve asked - demanded - that your parents come in. Today. This afternoon at 1:30. Apparently your parents have replied that they couldn’t. It was the first good planting day and your dad was in the fields. The MHP informs you that the hospital threatened to send you to a big state mental institution, if your parents didn’t come in. You express indignation at their ultimatum and defend your parents. They have six kids. You’re one of them, but your father has to put food on the table for eight people. The MHPs seem alarmed by your defense of your parents. Well, their threat worked: your parents are there that afternoon. Now the MHPs haughtily announce that they’ve changed their minds. They’re sending you to a state mental hospital anyway. Your defense of your father was an “admission” that you feel less important than the rest of your family. Your lack of self-esteem is deplorable.
The lesson? A CMI, even a CMI’s family, is powerless next to one or more MHPs. Your parents discharge you AMA (against medical advice) from the clutches of this hospitals self-righteous MHPs. The MHP’s pronouncement of your “low self-esteem” is their first lesson in doubting your own basic instinct.
[…]
You’re sitting in a huge lecture hall in a medical school where first-year med students are receiving their first psychiatry lecture. You’re taking this course as part of graduate studies, and you’re in a depressive phase. A woman who is an inpatient of the psych ward is being interviewed. The uneducated and uninformed medical students find her delusions “funny” and do not hide their laughter but display it openly. You try to hide your crying. But it;s not tears for you or for the woman. The tears are for these future MHPs who will never acquire the education or insight or sensitivity they need to help heal the CMIs in their world.
• • •
Then you end up in Psychopathic Hospital - don’t you love the title? They tell you you were misdiagnosed. You find out your not schizophrenic, you’re manic-depressive. You tell the new MHPs that the former MHPs sued you for a $3,366.66 bill. They sent the sheriff after you with a subpoena. That you want to sue them. Would the new MHPs testify that you’d been misdiagnosed and mistreated—treated with the wrong medications—your symptoms made worse, not better? Oh, no! They wouldn’t consider testifying against fellow shrinks. Who knows! Someday they might be sued. They have a collegial loyalty to each other. Their reputations are on the line. Their salaries are at stake.
And who are you? One little patient, one little CMI!
• • •
As an inpatient in what’s called a “mental institution” you go to something they call OT—occupational therapy. Everything here is called therapy—even when it isn’t.
And today it’s “assertiveness” class! Whoopie! Someone back in the 1960’s decided that the hallmark of a mentally healthy person was being assertively able to choose and refuse, speak, act, and listen. This is a mockery inside a place called a “mental institution,” because here no mental patient is free to choose, refuse, speak, or act. You can’t even listen to each other without someone spying, reporting, recording, and charting. And then calling you paranoid if you notice. Or object.
And when you refuse an activity or “therapy"—which they tell you is your right—and which they’ve taught you to do in their “assertiveness” class, then they badger you by sending nurse after nurse, attendant after attendant, into your room to remind you that “It’s 1:00. Time for OT!” Your refusals mean nothing. They badger you until you either give in and go, or they’ve frustrated you to tears. Or enraged you to anger. And then they can justify calling you by the malignant label they’ve designated you by—resisting treatment or “noncompliant,” passive dependent, passive aggressive, paranoid, or borderline personality disorder. They’re all different labels. But they all mean the same thing: you’re not really you. You’re just a CMI. And that justifies the MHP’s dehumanization of you.
[…]
You’re depressed. You’re feeling suicidal. None of the medications are working. The blackness ushers in suicidal ideation almost without your needing to give any conscious direction to your thoughts. Your thoughts—they’re all negative. Trying to steer them into something positive—because they’ve said cognitive therapy works!—only ends in bringing up something negative along with it. You catch the negative thought and start over with something new, until it, too, leapfrogs you into another negative one. It’s as if a whole Pandora’s box has been opened up in the attic of your mind, only that box is labeled “black.” And the box labeled “white” is locked tight, the key thrown away. And you tire of this endless exercise of redirecting the thoughts. Your mind, nerves, and body are fatigued enough as it is. You call a place named Crisis Intervention Services. The person who answers is brusque and unkind. She adds more stressors to your already overtaxed nervous system. You don’t want to go on with this life. You’re told your situation is not serious enough. And besides, she doesn’t have time for you. You feel insignificant. You are. You’re a CMI. And you’re only one CMI in a county with 1,500 CMIs.
• • •
You have a cyclical disorder. After the second year at the same job and the second episode, your MHP tells you it would be better if you worked part time. You know you can work more than full time when you’re well, which is three-fourths of the year, and you can’t work at all when you’re ill, which is one-fourth of the year. But he’s the MHP, so you go along.
Now, you’re working for the State—and they encourage accommodating for the handicapped, and you guess you’re one of these. And you’re working at a typist classification, for which job sharing and finding another typist to work the other half-time should be a cinch. But your boss happens to be a big-shot neonatologist. And he insists they need one full-time typist. He won’t budge. And the medical school won’t budge. And their affirmative action officer can’t make him budge. And so you’re forced out of the job. It’s then you’re reminded: You’re only a CMI.
• • •
You have severe abdominal pains again in the middle of the night. The last time the Emergency Room (ER) doctor said to come over right away when you get the pains to better diagnose them. So you go. A different ER doctor is there. He asks you the preliminary questions. Then he comes to “Are you taking any medications?” After you name the psychotropic drugs you’re on, his face changes to one of skepticism. Suddenly he doesn’t believe the pains are real. He finds nothing in his examination. And he says he doesn’t have any notes from any other ER doctor (though your last visit was only a week ago). He doesn’t believe you. You’re malingering, or hypochondriacal, or psychotic, or worse. You know the truth. But the truth can’t be believed: You’re only a CMI.
• • •
You file a sexual assault grievance against an MHP. The investigation is as painful as the episode, and you are depressed for days. But the examining board finds in his favor. You get the transcripts of the testimony. It’s said that you have a personality disorder (news to you). It’s said that you put people in no-win situations. But, he wins the suit and you’ve been losing all your life. It’s his word against yours, and you have a psychiatric label. He’s the respected professional. You’re only a CMI.
• • •
What have you learned as a CMI? Abuse—physical, emotional, spiritual, sexual, and financial; humiliation; belittlement; vulnerability; lack of credibility; reduced to a three-letter acronym; stripped of dignity; denied your own inner convictions, feelings, and instincts; frustrated; stigmatized; expected to conform; always wrong; put in double binds; given a lack of choice; lack of control; and lack of love; left with nothing; and finding it’s better not to feel, not to try, and even not to live. Until today.
Today you speak out. Today you reclaim yourself. Today you begin to heal, to heal others. Today you educate others and reeducate still others. Today life begins anew for you and for others whose consciousness you are trying to raise. Today the patient, ex-patient, mental health consumer movement is reclaiming the dignity and power of the CMIs of this world.”
Betty Blaska, What it is Like to be Treated Like a CMI (published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin and republished in Beyond Bedlam: Contemporary Women Psychiatric Survivors Speak Out)