Different Thought Disorders Common With Those On The Schizophrenia Spectrum / Psychosis Spectrum

In defense of pre-natal screening

I’ve seen a lot of protests against screening fetuses for things like Down syndrome, autism and so on. Here, I’ll explain why I, an autistic person, disagree fundamentally with those.

(PLEASE NOTE: My reasoning is based on the idea that abortions in and of themselves are morally fine and that a fetus is not a person.)

“In a few years, there won’t be any people with Down Syndrome born anymore, because these days everybody chooses to abort them!” Ridiculously unlikely. There’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t have an abortion. True, there won’t be exactly as many born as there are now, but who’s to say that the current number is inherently better? How, exactly, do you calculate that?

“Well, what if everybody with Down syndrome fetuses gets an abortion, though? Just what if?” I say this with a maximum of respect: While obviously Down syndrome people have the same value as humans that everybody else has, it’s still true that Down syndrome causes a huge risk of poor eyesight, poor hearing Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and an early death. If a condition kills people then we do not need to actively try to preserve it.

“This indicates that people with Down syndrome or autism or whatever are undesirable!” No, it doesn’t. For many reasons.

Simply telling a woman that her fetus has, say, autism is not the same as saying it’s an undesirable fetus.

That a woman aborts an autistic fetus doesn’t mean that she wants everybody to do the same. It just means that she wants to have an abortion. As is her damn right.

All abortions are based on the idea that the potential child is undesirable. That’s why women choose to get abortions instead of having the kid.

The fact that people want to abort Down syndrome fetuses and autistic fetuses and so on might make them seem undesirable, but not whether the abortions are allowed to happen or not.

“If your mom had felt like this, she would have aborted you!” Once again: That’s the case with all abortions, regardless of reason. So unless you find all abortions immoral, this is not a valid argument.

“This is eugenics!” No, it’s not. It’s not a concentrated effort to eradicate black people–or any other people. It’s just letting women make an informed choice about their own bodies that affects nobody else. Lemme use a simile to explain: If a political magazine gets forcibly shut down because it criticizes the government, that’s censorship. If it gets shut down because nobody is interested in buying it, though, then that’s not censorship at all.

“This is offensive to many people!” A woman’s right to choose is her right. Regardless of whether you find it offensive or not.

“It’s discrimination!” If a woman who got raped has an abortion, does that mean she’s discriminating against actual people who were born from rape? No. And this is the same. Actual people cannot be discriminated against by an abortion because we’re not affected the slightest bit.

“Well, what if a woman wanted to abort a black fetus because she hated black people?” Then we still can’t force her to have the child. A fetus doesn’t become a person just because of the reason that a woman aborts it.

“Look, it’s not that I don’t think women should be stopped from making choices about their bodies.” But you do clearly want to stop them from making informed ones. After all, you want to withhold information about a woman’s body from her, so that she won’t make the choice she prefers with, but instead do what you’ve decided she should.

TO FINISH OFF: Since we have info about a woman’s fetus–or at least the ability to easily get it–denying it to her is blatantly anti-woman. It’s saying “We’ve decided you don’t get to know things about your body, because then you’ll do as you want instead of doing what we’ve decided that you should.”

unfortunately for the both of us, i really like you

Not everything is fleeting. Some feelings are deep. The fact it isn’t close to me, that I can understand. But I find it sad it isn’t close to you.

Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019) // dir. Céline Sciamma

I know I'm unlovable, I just sometimes like to pretend that I'm not

Habits, Tics, Stims, Compulsions, and Behaviors

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You do. You feel no ill effects aside from maybe disappointment at having to stop. You tap your foot often. This is a habit.

You are tapping your foot, whether you want to or not. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t. If you try to it feels like holding in a sneeze and the pressure builds up. It might come out in a different, even less controllable action. This is a tic.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You do, but immediately feel worse physically or emotionally. It was a way for you to express yourself and how you feel. You may feel pressure. This is a stim.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t, because if you do something bad will happen, possibly some specific bad thing. You know it’s irrational, but not doing it gives you anxiety. This is a compulsion.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t, because if you do this specific bad thing will happen. It is not irrational to you, although it is to others. This is an erratic/disorganized behavior.

Adhd things that need to be talked more about (because adhd is more than just not being able to focus)

Short term memory loss. Seriously, I forget things that are said to me 5 minutes ago or will forget I opened a soda and will have 3 open cans by the end of the day with none of them finished. A lot of people don’t know about this, and so they think that I don’t care enough to listen to what their saying (which I do!!! I just can’t remember it) or that I’m lazy because of all the things I don’t end up doing because I forgot I had to do them.

Lack of motivation. Listen, I honestly can’t do anything on my own for the most part. I have to have someone else tell me to do something or have them set goals for me because it’s so damn difficult for me to do it myself. Again, I’m not lazy, I just have trouble doing things on my own

Language processing difficulties. Sometimes, English and words in general don’t work out in my head. Reading or even listening to someone talk can be extremely difficult for me to understand because my brain just won’t work. Why? Can’t tell you 99% of the time! It’s not that I need to focus, it’s that my brain is just buffering.

Needing multiple forms of stimulation at all times. I have a tin of putty that I keep in my book bag and a smaller one I keep in my purse at all times because of this reason. If I want to learn anything at school, I have to be able to look at something, hear something, and have something to do with my hands. Otherwise, it’s probably a big nope for me. What’s frustrating is that since this isn’t talked about enough, I often get called childish or get looked down upon because I have to play with silly putty in a highschool class.

Hyperfixation. Adhd can mean not being able to focus, but it’s also focusing too much on something! This can mean anything from a certain interest someone is in to at that moment, to something like a song that has been stuck in your head for a week. People seem to not understand this and think that we’re boring and have nothing else to talk about or that we’re annoying because we keep bringing the same things up over and over again but that’s not the case. Trust me, I’m annoyed with the hit or miss song too, but at least it’s not playing in your head constantly like it is for me

These are all the ones I can think of right now, but it’s really important we talk about this stuff more. All of these things that come with adhd can be very frustrating for those around us because they don’t understand that we can’t help it. To an outsider, it may just look like a person with adhd is just lazy and doesn’t care, when it’s actually just how our brains are wired. None of us want to be frustrating to others!! In fact, all of this frustrates us too!! But since adhd is just known as “not being able to focus”, people don’t realize what all comes with it and how it can really fuck everyone over.

Please add more if you can think of anything else!! I’m horrible with lists lol

Doesn't matter how much effort I put in, right? It's hard to love me.

Elizabeth Debicki and Gemma Arterton as Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-west in Vita & Virginia (2019), with excerpts from Virginia and Vita’s love letters.

Typing Tutorials With Different Keyboards

After switching from the Russian phonetic to the regular Russian keyboard, I’ve had to learn to type all over again. I did some Googling and found https://sense-lang.org/typing/. It’s a website that teaches typing, but the coolest part is they have a bunch of different languages available. Change the language from the drop down menu here:

Then click the icon that has the hand with the coloured dots (it should say “lesson” next to it in your target language).

It will take you to a dozen lessons or so to practice typing!

Once I clicked on the first lesson, it took a while to load — I thought maybe I had done something wrong. Just be patient and it will start up.

Hope that was helpful!

Workbooks and Self-Help Books for Mental Illnesses & Symptoms

Hello everybody! I was just thinking about how I always recommend people who can’t get therapy to use workbooks, so I thought I’d make a quick list of some you could look at. I’m not comfortable recommending books for things I have not struggled with (like, if I was looking at the description of a book on OCD I’d have no idea if it was good or not) but I think I’ve covered a lot. Some of these are series which have workbooks for specific disorders like bipolar, etc., if you want to find some. Plus, you don’t have to be diagnosed with something to use a workbook if you think it’ll help you.

Workbooks are sometimes made to be done in conjunction with therapy, or something like that, but anyone can still get something out of them if you put in regular work and try to apply the skills.

I’ve linked them all the Amazon because they’re usually cheaper on there.

For reference: DBT = dialectical behaviour therapy, CBT = cognitive behavioural therapy, ACT = acceptance and commitment therapy

Anxiety, Depression, and Intrusive Thoughts

The CBT Anxiety Solution Workbook

The Anxiety and Worry Workbook

The DBT Skills Workbook for Anxiety

The Anxiety Toolkit

Depressed and Anxious: The DBT Workbook

The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression

The Cognitive Behavioural Workbook for Depression 

Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts 

The Anxious Thoughts Workbook

Borderline Personality Disorder

The BPD Survival Guide

Stronger Than BPD

You Untangled

Mindfulness for BPD

The BPD Toolbox

Beyond Borderline: True Stories of Recovery 

Interpersonal Problems

The Interpersonal Problems Workbook 

ACT for Interpersonal Issues 

Anger

The DBT Skills Workbook for Anger

The Anger Workbook for Teens

Anger Management for Everyone

ACT on Life Not on Anger

Trauma and PTSD

Overcoming Trauma and PTSD

The PTSD Workbook For Teens

The Complex PTSD Workbook

You Empowered

Self Harm

Freedom from Self harm

Stopping the Pain: A Workbook for Self-Injury

Rewrite: The Journey from Self-Harm to Healing

General Emotional Issues/Multiple Disorders

Letting Go of Self-Destructive Behaviors: A Workbook 

The DBT Skills Workbook

Don’t Let Emotions Run Your Life

The Mindfulness Solution for Intense Emotions

The Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance Workbook

Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods Workbook