peetown

[peetown]

one aspect of schizophrenia i dont see talked about very much is one that is, in my experience, the most personally upsetting. and thats the breakdown of word articulation. as i write this i'm havign trouble even putting words to describe how its hard to put words.

i used to be a prolific (fanfiction) writer. i can barely formulate tumblr posts at this point. it's not even that i was a particularly good writer, but it came so easily to me to put words on paper. i've always been a little bad at talking out loud due to my autism, but that used to be much better too.

it's just genuinely upsetting to me. i would trade my medication out in a heartbeat if there was one that treated this instead of my positive symptoms, my ability to pass as 'normal' be damned.

[peetown]

You cannot know the history of schizophrenia as a diagnosis without coming to the conclusion that the fault of the misinformation surrounding schizophrenia and its setback in its research in modern society is a direct result of the laziness of past clinicians.

Negative symptoms used to be the focus of this illness when Kraepelin and Bleuler defined it - Kraepelin thought them to be more important and Bleuler literally defined them as FUNDAMENTAL symptoms.

Then in the 60s and 70s, since hallucinations and delusions were easy to spot and define, they were given more and more prominence in the hopes of "improving diagnostic precision." In real people language, that means they were lazy and wanted a quick checklist to go off of instead of, you know, caring about their patients.

What resulted from this is that now nearly everyone thinks schizophrenia is just hallucinations and delusions. On the medical side of things, the only treatments available for it treat psychotic symptoms, and the majority of the research focuses on them. Which leaves the rest of the debilitating symptoms untreated.

There are corrective adjustments being made to return to the emphasis on negative symptoms, and cognitive symptoms accompany that, but it should have never changed in the first place. Plus, the majority of society isn't adjusting their worldview to align with current perspectives on schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia was historically about the negative symptoms, and it always should have stayed that way. Schizophrenia is not just a "disorder that causes psychosis." It has negative, cognitive, disorganized, and catatonic symptoms as well.

Schizophrenia is a disorder affecting thought, behavior, and emotion, that is accompanied by psychotic features when left untreated.

Stop boiling down illnesses to basic symptoms. Teach and treat them wholistically.

[peetown]

coming out as a system is so awkward. like what do you say? “hey, i’m that twink from death note possessing the body of your best friend” ??????

[peetown]

The wildest part about being a system and having known you are a system for a while (6+ years for us) HAS to be seeing people who are just figuring it out fall into holes that you've long left behind.

Like. Yeah. We also thought we needed to keep tabs on everyone to increase communication. In the end it became too unwieldy. Especially since DID evolves with what you experience all the time.

Microlabels are cool and I fully support anyone who uses them, but figuring out what to call every single structure in your system isn't for us anymore.

Another thing we notice is people who try their best to know who is fronting at all given times. A lot of that comes naturally to us nowadays, but it's also... OK not to know. Especially if you're not focusing on anything system related at the time.

I guess a lot of this boils down to, it's okay not to care. It's okay to go with the flow of things and figure out at your own pace. Identity is fluid, especially if you have a dissociative disorder. You don't HAVE to have everything figured out 100% of the time.

It's okay to take it slow. It's okay to not know. It's okay to just exist for a bit. It's okay to live and experience things beyond being a system.

To all the people who are just starting to comprehend this. You do not need to know and label exactly what is happening in your head all the time. Fuck, we sure don't. And we're happier for it.

It's okay to just be you.

[peetown]

cool, this is the anon who's ask didn't go through, i had it saved anyways because tumblr does this to me a lot. hopefully it works the second time:

hi, i have a question about a symptom (?) of DID that i heard a while ago and haven't been able to understand since — someone i know told me your blog can be helpful for this, so i hope it's ok if i ask. also prefacing this with I Am a system and i Do Not write this will any ill intent towards the subject of this post

i've heard a few systems over the years say that some of their alters have physical disabilities that the body does not experience and i wanted to ask if/how this can be possible?

for example, a few years ago i met a system who told me they had an alter who was blind. she had no sight in one eye, and very low sight in the other. this makes sense to me, since alters might perceive themselves in a number of ways that don't match the body! the part that confuses me though is that they said this alter was also blind when they were fronting? their body had 20/20 vision (or close enough to it that they wore no glasses) but they claimed that when this alter fronted they became blind. they also showed me videos of this alter fronting, and the alter wore glasses when they did (though it didn't look like they had any refractive power in the lenses)

i know that there can be differences in physical factors between alters, like blood pressure and so on, but from what i've read these factors are largely things with some psychological basis — like alters who feel more anger having higher baseline blood pressure, as blood pressure raises during anger. but i don't understand how something this large can change.

it doesn't make sense to me with my current knowledge and at most i worry it might be harmful to people with physical disabilities — i am chronically ill and if i saw an able-bodied system who said that they had one alter who had my issues and had to use a powerchair, while the body didn't, i would probably find it hurtful. but at the same time, if this is something that does legitimately occur, i want to know that and how it works so that i can deconstruct that reaction to best support others

(also — this is not intended to fakeclaim the system i used as an example, im just unsure of that specific symptom and want clarity on it. i only knew them very briefly and am in no position to make judgements of their character. i also just don't fakeclaim people, full stop.

this question is also specifically about alters who experience disability the body doesn't when fronting, not alters who perceive themselves internally as having a disability.)

The body and its experiences are fluid. An alter can present and have a disability in body that others don't actively experience. Symptom holders could hold underlying health issues, pain differences are active throughout systems, and people actually do "wake up blind" due to stress and trauma. It's a normal(for lack of a better term) phenomenon.

I understand that you don't understand, but it's a thing that happens, and someone claiming a disability they experience is never going to harm the disabled community. The only way someone claiming someone's "psychosomatic" disability is harming the community is if they're already being ableist on the basis of them being systems.

Disabilities fluctuate constantly, and people have good days and bad days. If it is still a disabling experience for this person, it is still a disability.

It's better to push for people to accommodate for others disabilities rather than try to play the "Well are they actually disabled?" game.

I know you sent this with the best intentions, I do, however, also know that people are not always as well meaning.

[peetown]

i need people to understand that when a person with a chronic illness talks about the fatigue that comes with it, we're not talking about the tiredness that comes from a 10 hour shift at work, we're talking about the inherent exhausting heavy malaise that hangs on your entire body like a weighted blanket from the time you wake up in the morning and doesn't get any lighter as the day goes on.

fatigue doesn't come from exertion. it's just innate- and when it does come from exertion, it's been worse than the innate fatigue that was already there in the first place, and it adds on top of it, not replaces it.

[peetown]

It's kinda sad that illnesses like schizophrenia/bipolar/other psychotic disorders are seen as boogeymen illnesses. Not saying that I don't understand where ppl come from cuz I was one of those people for sure before I was told that I literally had one of the above disorders. It's just unfortunate ignorance. No one is taught what these disorders are really like or what they actually look like.

With disorders like bipolar those are 1/100 chance odds, which are actually the exact same as Autism. There are as many bipolar people as there are autistic people, and it's sad to me that most people with that disorder can't feel like they can talk openly about it. Schizophrenia is only 1/300.

It's an entirely different world that I had to get used to after knowing what I had been dealing with had a name. That I had to conceal it from employers and peers in fear of discrimination and judgement, or how I realized that people are always going to think that you are instantly a bad person because of it. I can't tell you how much it hurt when I told a friend about my diagnosis and I saw them look at me with fear.

I hope that people can see this and understand that people suffering are just that, regardless of label. It's a silent disability that is still highly discriminated against in a world that promotes mental health.

[peetown]

i also watched arcane a couple of months ago. it was fun

[peetown]

Here’s to hoping that every single person with schizophrenia or a schizoaffective disorder or DID or NPD or any other ridiculously demonized mental illnesses has a wonderful day

[peetown]

If you don't judge people for saying "sorry ahdh brain" in public, then don't judge people for saying "sorry schizophrenia brain" in public

If you correct people when they misuse the term "ocd" then you need to correct people when they misuse the terms "psychotic", "delusional", "hallucinating" and "schizophrenic"

If you don't stare, laugh at or fear a stranger in public flapping their hands, then you need to do the same for a stranger in public talking to someone who isn't actually there.

If you give a trigger warning to sensitive topics then you need to give a trigger warning to unreality and false information as a prank.

If you want to normalize medication like antidepressants you also need to normalize medications like antipsychotics.

If you don't like people without your disorder joking about it online and report it as harassment, then you need to do the same for the tons of nonschizophrenics making "schizoposting" memes to make fun of us.

Just please include schizo-spec and psychotic acceptance into your mental illness/neurodiversity acceptance. We are part of your community whether you like it or not. We are constantly stigmatized, misrepresented and made fun of. We do what we can to help you, please return the favor.

Mental illness/neurodiversity acceptance is an ongoing action. We will get nowhere in the long run if we split the community into the "in" group and the "out" group. We could all accomplish so much if we worked together. But you need to include the "weird" people that don't fit into your aesthetic and don't fit the social norms.

Us psychotics and schizo-specs have been struggling for years and have been the only people fighting for ourselves while the people we plead to barely see us as human. If you are nonpsychotic and nonschizo-spec, you can help us more than you realize. Please include us and stick up for us the same way we have been including and sticking up for you.

[peetown]

(sorry if this has already been done, I haven't seen it)

#literally all of them

[peetown]

I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.

[peetown]

most of my OSDD comics are gone from the internet AFAIK but I thought this one would be good to reupload (also sometimes you have to google psychologytoday dissociative disorder to get the category to show up)

[peetown]

[peetown]

Allistic people really need to stop phrasing requests as questions because it's fucking with me

"Do you want to help me cook dinner?"

No, I'm still overwhelmed from earlier and want to stay in my room.

"well fine, dinner will be ready when it's done." And now they're upset with me

And I'm just here like ???????

[peetown]

ocd is so weird bc its completely belittled and infantilized on the surface level (aka the stereotype- what people think ocd is like) but then the reality of it, the actual symptoms, are completely demonized once you get into them and people see you as evil just for having this mental illness in a non quirky way like they assumed its like. and then at the same time its not taken seriously at all and all the symptoms are handwaved as not that deep because how could you be so upset about something so dumb lol just dont do the compulsion its easy. why dont you hashtag let the intrusive thoughts win and shut the fuck up

[peetown]

there’s a special kind of grief you feel towards yourself when you’ve been mentally ill for as long as you remember. you see ppl saying they long to return to their old self but you don’t have an old self, or if there was, you can’t remember it. ur “old self” was a child. this self is all you’ve ever known. then there’s the fear that comes with trying to find out who you are without your mental illnesses, it’s all new to you and you don’t know if you’ll like who you’ll be