It Would Be So Funny If Autistic People Started Describing Allistic Experience The Same Pathologised

Not to sound like a 90s shallow prep, but how you dress can affect your self esteem, and putting energy into wearing things you actively like and projecting an ideal of yourself through fashion instead of seeing clothes as things you have to put on out of obligation helps.

It also can give you a sense of control over your appearance that you otherwise wouldn’t have lmao

for my fellow psychotics who struggle with thinking someone is in their house, a method I’ve found that really works are these guys:

i put them on my front door and anytime it opens they ring. that way if i think someone has broken in or i see someone who isn’t there i can think back to if the bells have rung, and if they haven’t i can assure myself it’s not real. obviously it’s not fool proof, like if you are prone to auditory hallucinations, but it has really helped me calm down in time to avoid major psychotic breaks. it’s a real lifesaver

nonpsychotics encouraged to rb

You're neurologically simple. That's what we should call them. 😂😂😂😂This is @andrewrusso is the only reason why I have TikTok. His mental health skits and because of Timmy. If you don't know Timmy check @andrewrusso on IG, TikTok and YouTube.

I have trouble taking care of my teeth because everything that involves doing that is a sensory nightmare. I decide to do some research to see if there's anything I can do about this. The results?

"How to make your autistic child brush their teeth"

"Autistic Children and Sensory issues relating to tooth brushing"

"How to get your little shit to brush his fucking teeth"

Like, yeah Google, thanks, that really helps. And like, even if I was a child, some of the advice seemed... unhelpful. Like, doing a dance and singing a song while brushing your teeth? Even for a kid, I don't think that would help distract from a sensory experience as intense as brushing your teeth. Like, the extremely intense and unpleasant flavor, the intense feeling of the brush against your teeth scraping across it, even mouthwash has such an intense and disgusting flavor that I have difficulty keeping it in my mouth for more than a few seconds. I wish there was SOMETHING that could be done.

Finally got around to making an ADHD, Bipolar and Autism Diagram to show the overlapping symptoms.

(Both low self-esteem and inflated self-esteem are listed for Bipolar - this is because it is made up of a depressive and manic stage. When they’re in the depressed state, they have low self-esteem, but have high self-esteem in the manic stage.)

your bare minimum isn’t actually that bare or minimum. my dad once told me that there’s nothing in this world that’s easy and that’s true tbh. everything we do takes energy, time, and effort. even the little things. if you feel like you’re not doing enough please try to think about your circumstances and what’s currently available to you: chances are, there’s something that’s diverting or otherwise draining you. and to pull away from that and get something done regardless? well, i think that’s really admirable! please try to take pride in the things you do accomplish in a day, no matter how small or trifling you perceive them to be. you can’t be proud of your growth if you don’t notice where you already are!

I'm in a support group for queer adults with disabilities (before I joined i didn't even know there *were* groups for that overlap, it's amazing and I love it) and we had our digital meeting on Monday. I shared your most recent flag update, where you had moved the new version to the public domain. Especially since we were talking about the ADA and its anniversary, it was very fitting. Everyone really liked it! Several people commented about the symbolism, in particular. So, just letting you know of some responses from outside tumblr. Thank you for putting it out there!

Thank you!

(Confession: At the time you first sent me this ask, the new version of the flag was not yet in the Public Domain. But it is, now! 🏴🎇🏴)

Shamelessly plugging the new version, again – especially since I want it to eclipse the old one:

To the extent possible under law, Ann Magill has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Visually Safe Disability Pride Flag. This work is published from: United States.

And for those who want detailed ‘specs’:

The ratio of overall breadth to overall length is 3 to 4. The ratio of the flag’s overall length to the width of each stripe is 10 to 1 (So the ratio of the overall length to the width of the combined stripes is 2 to 1).

The Hexadecimal codes for each of the colors are:

The Field: #585858

The Red: #CF7280

The Yellow: #EEDF77

The White: #E9E9E9

The Blue: #7AC1E0

The Green: #3AAF7D

Now, as to the symbolism: in the original flag, the zigzags were meant to represent “navigating around barriers.” But instead, they were the barrier – so they were removed.

So let me put the story of the new symbolism into words – here and now– and thereby bring it into being:

The Black, as it was from the beginning, represents rage and mourning for those who’ve suffered violence and abuse because of their disabilities.

The five colors, in order from left to right, represent bodily disability, neurodivergent disabilities, invisible and/or undiagnosed disabilities (always in the center, because any disability can be invisible at any time), mental illness/emotional disabilities, and sensory disabilities.

The colored band starts at the top of the hoist, which is a starting place of honor, and ends at the fly, which represents moving outward into the world.

Walls and locked doors (behind which Disabled People have been hidden for too long) are right angles, and square. And so the colored band is a diagonal that cuts across those right angles, in defiance.

The five stripes are parallel, to represent our solidarity.

There! How’s that?

I see this a lot in leftist circles but mental illness, trauma and abuse will exist with or without capitalism, your “mental illness is a social phenomenon” might be true for your depression and your anxiety but I beg all of you to think about psychotic people, systems and people with personality disorders when you make posts like that. It might be true that we wouldn’t be labeled as mentally ill but we would still need resources to help us cope, there’s still something we would need help coping with and you should focus on making that help available and accessible and free of bigotry for all of us instead of living in a “no mentally ill people” pseudo progressive eugenicist dream.

whats the ice cream bar approach ?

So, @bipolarings has a post talking about this a little already, but I'm always happy to be given an excuse to blather about brains :D

The ice cream bar/sundae bar metaphor was originally created to describe the autism spectrum, but it works really well for other things too, including bipolar disorder. I'mma adapt it a lil bit here, in fact, to make it work even better. Yay me.

The principle is this: instead of trying to divide up bipolar disorder into I/II/NOS/etc, or classify it as 'severe' or 'mild', picture it as a sundae bar.

Now, every day, you make yourself a sundae. You can take as many toppings as you 'want' and as much of each topping as you 'want'.

There are some toppings that go well together, so, for instance, if you take a lot of euphoria there's a good chance you'll also get some hypersexuality, some delusions of grandiosity, some creative drive, some ambition, some psychomotor agitation. And that would be called a 'manic episode'. You could get somewhat less of each, maybe leave off the delusions of grandiosity, and people might call it a 'hypomanic episode'. Even less and people might call it 'euthymia'.

But the thing is, you don't have to get it that way, and you can take any amount of each! So you might get low mood but a lot of psychomotor agitation, irritability, and disregard of consequences. Or you could get a huge amount of emotional numbness but combine it with the stuff other people like to put with euphoria. Or you could get just a bit of low mood but spice it up with hallucinations and delusions (other). Or you could get a lot of delusions of grandiosity but only a tiny amount of euphoria.

And what you get one day doesn't determine what you get the next. You could spend years getting nothing but the 'hypomania combo' and the 'depression family-size' and then one day decide to dump the entire bowl of euphoria in your cup and top it with so many delusions it starts to spill over the sides. Or maybe you've only ever gotten small, carefully curated sundaes with a healthy amount of two or three toppings but today you just tell the server 'fuck me up' and get some of absolutely everything.

Without all the metaphor:

While certain sets of symptoms commonly appear together, and are then labeled 'mania', 'hypomania', 'depression', or 'euthymia', symptoms don't have to appear in those particular combinations. (Also the DSM isn't necessarily even right about what combinations are common.)

You could also have different proportions of symptoms than someone else does. (And that doesn't necessarily make your disorder or theirs automatically more 'severe'.)

Even if you do only get common combinations of symptoms, that says nothing about how 'severe' it is. If you get an enormous amount of emotional numbness, lack of motivation, executive dysfunction, suicidality, paranoid delusions, and disregard of consequences, continuously for 98% of your adult life; and someone else gets one (1) single 3 day long episode with a medium-sized serving of delusions of grandiosity, hallucinations, and disregard of consequences; they'll probably be diagnosed with Bipolar I and you with Bipolar II, but your life is probably being affected a lot more.

What symptoms you get can also change, which can include changing from what a psychiatrist might call 'Bipolar I' to 'Bipolar II', or 'BP-II' to 'BP-NOS', or whatever. You haven't magically gotten a new disorder. You just got a different sundae today. You're still eating at the same sundae bar.