Losing Your Skills And Abilities To Physical Disability Can Be So Scary. Especially When You Don't Know

when you’re healing, you will fuck up. maybe you’ll relapse, maybe you’ll do something you know is gonna hurt you, maybe you’ll deprive yourself of something you need, whatever. but healing isn’t linear, its wibbly wobbly and weird. you’re not terrible for messing up, you’re not terrible for not being ready to move forward, you’re not terrible for not being perfect. you still deserve healing, and you still deserve respect.

“And I don’t think anybody should feel bad if they get diagnosed with a mental illness, ’cause it’s just information about you that helps you to know how to take better care of yourself.

“Being bipolar, there’s nothing wrong with it. Being bipolar is like not knowing how to swim. It might be embarrassing to tell people, and it might be hard to take you certain places. But they have arm floaties. And if you just take your arm floaties, you can go wherever the hell you want.

“And I know some of you are like, ‘But Taylor, what if people judge me for taking arm floaties?’ Well, those people don’t care if you live or die, so maybe who cares? Maybe fuck those people a little. I don’t know.”

Taylor Tomlinson, Look At You (2022)

in recognition of World Down Syndrome Day on March 21

another thing that people are clearly having a bit of trouble wrapping their heads around is the concept of objecting to the terms in which something is criticised, and how that does not necessarily equate to defending that thing.

some people tend to like to reduce things to "pro" or "anti," and any attempt to delineate a position more nuanced than that will still be immediately assigned by them to one of those two "camps"

nothing has made me feel like an ancient grumpy crone more than the “using chatgpt for school is fine actually” sentiment among youths

in light of recent events, fuck

my number one woman behavior is saying i’m fine with any pronouns and silently ranking people in my regard based on what they do with that information

I was just thinking about how weird it was that my mother never let me have a job, she was so against me working. and then I realized:

I had a job. She didn't want me to waste time flipping burgers when she could be pimping me out. That was my job, to her.

My sense of self and understanding of my own situation is so shattered that it's taken me like 15 years to even put that together.

So I'm reblogging this from a fandom person I follow but it's on brand for the shit I post so, hello! I have OSDD and CPTSD (both of those disorders have a HUGE amount of symptom overlap and are caused by severe, prolonged trauma). I have different types of flashbacks, triggered by different things, so I'll try to organize my answer below but please be aware that my answers might be triggering especially for anyone who has experienced childhood sexual abuse and/or child trafficking. These terms are just what I use to discuss them with my therapist, so idk if they are official terms or not.

• Tactile flashbacks, also called tactile hallucinations

In these, I am entirely aware of where and when I am, but I feel sensations that were occurring during my trauma. It's usually triggered by experiencing pain from old injuries. For specifically (TW!!!!), I occasionally get nerve pain in my vulva from an injury where I was penetrated with an object and it damaged my cervix severely. Sometimes that nerve pain triggers a tactile flashbacks, where I can feel hands and the object touching me exactly the way it felt when it was really happening. It is so realistic that the first few times it happened, part of me was shocked that I wasn't bleeding or hadn't sat on a knife or some weird shit. It makes it feel like I don't even have pants on. It's fucking disorienting and PAINFUL and scary.

I've spent years training myself to show it as little as possible if it happens in public, because it's not the kind of thing that's easily explainable. But the added stress of hiding it triggers me even more- because hiding was an important job I did to cover up for my abusers, so hiding pain is both instinctual and triggering now- that it kind of just makes it worse. So if I'm around someone, they might see me grimace or shift on my chair a bit, I've also heard that I get pretty pale, but I almost always lie and make up an excuse like cramps, which people tend to believe.

But in reality it's horrific and once I'm in privacy, I am pretty useless for the rest of the day unless I have a close friend or my husband around to help me stay grounded and get back on track.

•Emotional flashbacks

This happens a lot when I'm triggered by an everyday normal occurrence that in normal life, is totally fine, but in my past was something I used to know whether or not I was in danger. Probably the most annoying one is the sound of dishes clanging as someone puts them away. If that happened in my childhood, it meant I hadn't put away the dishes in time, and would be punished (but not grounded because my parents were fucking monsters- punishment for me was things like being locked in very small spaces, being forced to braid my hair in high pigtails and hairspray it and go to school looking stupid, not getting food for a few days, having things thrown at me, sometimes the dishes themselves being physically broken on me).

So imagine what a child's emotions might be, knowing they're about to undergo a severe punishment- fear, regret, remorse, defence, desperation- and then transplant all of those emotions into my 32 year old body. It makes me have some wacky ass responses to my husband putting away the clean dishes. I've spent YEARS working on it but we've been together since I was 19, and just last year I got to the point where I could let him put dishes away without me actually yelling at him, or apologizing, or crying. Thank god for therapy.

Emotional flashbacks can really have drastic, immediate control over my behavior, which makes them pretty dangerous when it's not a situation as innocuous as putting away dishes. It's very hard for me to control what I say and do during these episodes, and it's one of the reasons I was diagnosed with OSDD, because my therapist thinks that when I have emotional flashbacks, I dissociate and another part of my personality kind of takes over. And it really is a dramatic personality shift. Still a part of me, but a much younger version. I used to have total amnesia of these episodes and only knew they were happening because my husband would explain them to me. Now I manage to stay conscious (sometimes called co-conscious by people in the OSDD/DID communities) but still have partial amnesia. It makes it very difficult for me to understand what someone is saying to me long enough to formulate a response that makes sense. It's horrible and really challenging to hide or control.

•Visual/dissociated flashbacks

These have only ever been triggered by sex, and they're very similar to the way flashbacks are portrayed in the media, like in movies. Either all or most of my visual field changes from the current situation to a traumatic sexual abuse memory. I completely dissociate, have no idea where I am or what's happening, but the difference from this and movies is that even within the memory, I don't understand what's happening. I don't go into it with my knowledge of what's happening and 15 years of therapy, I'm right back in the exact mindset I was when it was happening, just with the added idea that something is very wrong. Sometimes it feels like I'm asleep in a nightmare, sometimes it feels like I'm literally living it. They don't last more than maybe 30 seconds or so, and my husband tells me that he knows it's happening because my eyes get really wide, I go totally limp, and don't respond except in a way that's similar to how people might talk in their sleep. Once I come out of it, it's straight to having a panic attack, which as you can imagine is kind of awkward when you're in the middle of trying to fuck your partner. My husband is amazing about it all, but when we first got together it scared the shit out of both of us.

•Some other notes: I often try to ground myself so that I don't dissociate during or after a flashback, but for years the only way I knew to ground myself involved pain. I eventually tried to switch to methods that would hurt but not injure me (pinching the skin between my fingers, punching my thighs). But now I do grounding in a way that doesn't hurt myself- or at least I try to. I talk to myself, out loud, to remind myself where I am, what year it is, what's happening, etc. I do breathing exercises, sing loudly, try to hold a conversation. All of those things can help me stay in the present moment. Unfortunately they don't always work, but hey ya can't win 'em all.

@z-mizcellaneous-z I know that's a LOT but lemme know if you have questions or want any more details/info! I'm happy to share!

Call for People who Have First Hand Experience with PTSD

(Part of The Research Game, question by @z-mizcellaneous-z)

We are wondering if anyone who has first-hand experience can share with us what PTSD flashbacks look or feel like to you, as well as what it might look like from the outside perspective (such as witnessed by friends/strangers).

(please only share if you're comfortable. You can also send me an anonymous ask instead!)

Everyone else, reblog this around until we can find someone who has the answer!

(Otherwise, there's a Youtube channel I know of that aims to spread awareness of PTSD and may help you here: https://youtu.be/vdLfrJSzMY8, though it's important to note she has Complex PTSD, which is slightly different and is characterized by prolonged trauma rather than a single event)