Friendly Reminder That Bipolar Ii Isnt The “easy,” “soft,” Or “lesser” Bipolar Disorder.

Are you having a hard time keeping yourself and your brain stimulated? Can you even stimulate yourself at all? Maybe you should try making a Dopamenu!

I made a Dopamenu today by following How To ADHD’s guide.

How To Give Your Brain The Stimulation It Needs (Dopamenu Guide!)

I recommend watching the video and trying to make yourself a Dopamenu as well. I used OpenOffice to make my Dopamenu, it’s a free alternative to Word and it works pretty much the same!

LINK TO MY GOOGLE DRIVE SO YOU CAN GET THE FILE & FILL IN YOUR OWN DOPAMENU YOURSELF

just bc it’s a coping mechanism doesn’t mean it’s healthy

some e-cards you can send to help with distance communication ♡ free to use privately, if you’d like to repost them publicly please credit! 

A while ago, I made up the word bipolarian to mean someone with bipolar disorder.

There's nothing wrong with "people with bipolar disorder." But it takes a lot of characters, and sounds too much like person-first language.

Bipolarian amuses me because it sounds like "planarian." Cut our heads in half, and we'll become one body ruled by two heads. Seems appropriate.

Here's a plushie two-headed planarian. Aww, such a cutie

I find myself explaining to people a lot recently why using "bipolar" "narcissistic" "psychopath" etc is an issue, because it can be hard to articulate in the moment, so here it is all together:

The terminology that is related to certain conditions, disorders, and neurotypes being appropriated by others to be used in commonplace situations necessarily creates problems for those whose conditions these terms are supposed to belong to and help. It stigmatises certain behaviours, makes them the butt of the joke, or underplays how debilitating they can be.

For someone who has to live with bipolar disorder, people using "bipolar" or "mania" loosely suggests that the actual bipolar people are overreacting, or else that their condition is a joke when in fact this condition not only hinders them in an ableist world, but also brings violence and discrimination against them because of the condition.

Such also is the case for personality disorders and complex disorders like schizophrenia. Using "psychotic" as an insult or a modifier erases the fact that it's a condition which most aversely affects the psychotic person, it stigmatises them as dangerous when in fact psychotic people are the ones more likely to receive violence than inflict it statistically and historically.

Saying psychopath when you mean a serial killer and sociopath when you mean someone who is cruel is also wrong in that same vein because these are ((now redundant)) subtypes of anti social personality disorder, which does not make people more likely to cause harm or to be "evil" or abusive, but rather causes issues in their own lives due to a lack of empathy, which must also not be confused with a lack of compassion.

Narcissistic personality disorder similarly is a cluster of self esteem issues, identity crisis, and a fragmented sense of self that shows itself in certain behaviours. Borderline personality disorder also is similarly stigmatised, when in fact people with this disorder are far more likely to be victims of abuse. Terms like "narcissistic abuse" or "borderline abuse" suggest that these people abused you because of their disorder, which is not at all true, and any idea of abuse can already be encompassed simply by calling it "abuse" plain and simple rather than stigmatizing a bunch of people in the process of this.

All of these disorders, though not curable, still are treatable in that people are trying to get help and adjust to life despite their symptoms. This only becomes possible as long as these symptoms and terminologies are not stigmatized any further by an ableist society. The terms used to describe these disorders are meant to HELP the people with those disorders. Not to become an excuse to treat these people worse and make them feel unwelcome.

Credit: Ashley McMinn

for anyone who needs to hear it 💫

joy will help you heal.

this applies to everything from “staying home sick from school is easier if you play a low-stress game you like between naps instead of wallowing in your snotty misery” all the way up to “grief and trauma is hard, i understand, but learning to live for yourself again means cherishing all the good moments on purpose”

it may not be everything you need to get better – but joy will help you heal, i promise.

October is ADHD awareness month! 🎉

The memory issues ADHD causes are some of the scarier and more frustrating parts of living with it - so here’s a set of reaction doodles that all my fellow ADHD peeps are welcome to use whenever anybody decides to comment on your forgetfulness ^ 

My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.

I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”