#What about those with intellectual disabilities or cognitive impairments who struggle with this shit?

[rattusn0rvegicus]

Man I feel like a lot of leftist activists would do a lot better to just use common fucking language to talk about things rather than dense academic shit that's only understandable to people with PhDs and people who spend 95% of their waking life on Leftist Twitter lmao

Like, you're talking with other academics? Great, use academic language. You're a social media account trying to interact with the general public? Don't say "decarcerate", say "find alternatives to imprisonment". Don't say "collective liberation", say "freedom for all". By GOD don't say "bodymind autonomy", say "the ability to have control over our own minds and bodies".

Yes it takes a little more effort to explain shit in common language but I promise you people will stop looking at you like you have two heads and dismissing everything you say as Woke Bullshit if you like, actually get on their level, goddamn it. Not everyone has the privilege to have a graduate-school level understanding of this type of language or spend so much time reading leftist theory that they can perfectly understand this stuff.

#being a public health student has made me even more passionate about this too #like. You want to make a change? You have to make sure the general public UNDERSTANDS WTF YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT FIRST #Like for example I think Project LETS is a great concept and is doing great stuff #But my god their public outreach needs some MAJOR work #By using this type of language you are isolating the type of ppl who can benefit from your services to 'college educated Twitter leftists' #Social justice is a MAJOR INTEREST OF MINE and even I struggle with making sense of some of the shit y'all say!! #Like I have to translate it in my head to normal speak #And like. These types of spaces constantly talk about accessibility for disabled people? Bullshit man #What about those with intellectual disabilities or cognitive impairments who struggle with this shit? #What about people who are just learning English? What about people who work full time and don't have the time to learn this terminology? #Goddamn #It's all performative!!!!

[cy-cyborg]

I've been in contact with an advocate to help me deal with the NDIS and holy shit things are actually moving now.

Despite not acknowledging my cognitive/developmental/intellectual disabilities or giving me any support for them, the NDIS has apparently deemed me "too impaired" to speak for myself without my nominee - my mother currently - or an advocate present. The only thing they have on file is my leg amputation and no one thought that it was weird that a 28 year old amputee legally required their mum to be present for all meetings? I didn't realise my lack of leg impeded my capacity to understand finances.

No one told me this. No one told my mum either, which is why she decided 5 years ago she just wasn't going to help me anymore (she wanted me to figure it out on my own, and used the sink-or-swim method). 5 years, and no one thought to mention that "hey, the reason you can't do this thing we need you to do is because legally you're being treated as a minor and we need your guardian's permission" (I'm being literal here btw, these are the same conditions placed onto minor's plans). At least, no one thought to mention it until an advocate got involved and started pressing for information.

Even she was confused though, nothing about it makes sense. She said she's been an advocate since the NDIS's inception and she's never seen this before. I've somehow ended up with the worst end of both sticks (no support for my non-physical disabilities, but also those same disabilities being used to justify limits on my plan due to a lack of capacity).

We have answers now, and we're figuring out the next steps to take. Weirdly enough, I'm kind of relieved. Here I was thinking I was just not understanding the system and getting angry at myself (I'm nearly 30, why can't I figure this out? none of my other physically-disabled friends are struggling this much!). Turns out it's not just me, not even the professional who deals with the NDIS for a living knows what the hell is going on or how this even happened in the first place.

#disability #disabled #ndis #the ndis #australia

[sleepy-shutin]

i feel like the tik tokification of CDDs has been so fucking bad and no one really wants to talk about it out of fear of fakeclaiming or whatever but like, i’ve seen a lot of people talk about how they literally can’t get into therapy for system related shit because their therapists doubt them because of how it’s such a trend right now. and because of it, all the “quirky” aspects of systems like switching on camera and full cosplaying your alters and doing little tik tok intros for all of them are so popularized but the actual disorder aspects are doubted or ignored or deemed “problematic”, like having genuine persecutors and not just edgy aesthetic alters who do black and white thirst traps on tik tok to sad boy rap or emo rock. and another thing i’ve noticed from this is people doubting RAMCOA as a whole, or telling survivors that they can’t talk about their trauma or vent because it’s too extreme or “unbelievable” (not a survivor myself but i’ve been reading about RAMCOA systems’ experiences with this). even besides that, system servers in general being inaccessible for a lot of survivors and systems who don’t want to use plural kit or have a system name or whatever. it’s just so! annoying! that i’m so scared to tell people about my disorder or talk about it publicly or even show symptoms of it, because i feel like people are inherently going to doubt me because of how it’s honest to god a trend. and i remember in early 2010s tumblr, it was a trend during that time too, but at least it was relatively contained to tumblr but tik tok is so far reaching. idk maybe i’m an asshole but i just wish people would take it seriously.

i don't think you're an asshole for this. i feel very similarly. i hate when people say "[disorder] isn't a trend!!" when it literally has actually become a trend among people on social media.

people say "DID isn't a trend", but what was that one tag that was trending for a few days straight on twitter? #systemsfordream?

if DID isn't a trend, then how is what's going on online it affecting real world people and their life experiences?

if DID isn't a trend, explain what the hell is going on on tiktok in general.

if DID isn't a trend, explain why all of these people are self diagnosing and armchair diagnosing their friends with DID based on extremely minimal reading and continuing to give genuine self-diagnosers an awful name, and doing anything they can to relate their symptoms to DID.

doubting RAMCOA-related experiences is not new, but yeah--systems that experienced RAMCOA have been shoved out of spaces for having trauma that's "too extreme" to vent about. i hate that shit so much, because people will see people with RAMCOA-related trauma venting about their experiences, and suddenly think these people are playing the trauma olympics when it's literally just their fucking life.

like, sorry some people are trafficking survivors while you survived medical neglect. them talking about their experiences and you feeling uncomfortable with that because it makes you feel like your trauma isn't as bad is not a them problem, it's a you problem, and you need to work through those feelings on your own time. believe it or not, from what i've seen, many survivors of RAMCOA-related abuse struggle with feeling like their trauma was 'enough' as well.

and yeah--tiktok has just. done so much damage to disorders like that. it's not just DID, but also ADHD and autism, both of which they've boiled down to "hyperfixation and special interest disorder", ESPECIALLY when they stomp on and speak over *permanently* non-speaking autistics, or autistics with higher support needs because of their autism, or autistics with cognitive impairments or comorbid learning/intellectual disabilities.

so many syscord servers just fucking suck, because they force you to use pluralkit or have a system name, force littles into one specific chat, etc, but like... bestie how are you going to know a lot of these things if i don't tell you that i've switched, lmao. the normalization of just instantly telling everyone you've switched or when something happens, or over-publicizing your system has and continues to do so much damage to people with DID that have trauma around sharing too much personal information about themselves online, or have had their profiles found by abusers, or similar traumas.

we use aliases online for just about everything *for those exact reasons*.

don't even get me started on the persecutors thing. i've heard more than a few stories about black people with persecutor alters that internally appear white and are racist, but that's "problematic" so people don't like it. i've heard more than a few stories about people with alters that internally reenact abuse in some form, such as an introject of an abusive father that hurts the littles/child parts, but that's "problematic" so people don't like it. i've heard more than a few stories about persecutor alters that try to commit suicide when they front, but that's "problematic" so people don't like it.

the worst part is that these alters aren't given any kind of nuance because they're not treating or understanding them as parts of a whole dissociated consciousness, but rather entirely separate people who are, on their own, wholly responsible for their own actions. people won't look into why a person would have a racist alter, or an alter that reenacts abuse internally, or alters that try to commit suicide, they don't give these alters the benefit of the doubt or think that they might be hurting as well, they just shit on these alters with no reprieve, even when the system is trying to tell them not to do that.

and like, i understand being avoidant towards persecutors and being mean to them because they're reminders of trauma and they're not pretty about it, because they can be scary to see and deal with. but in the end they're just as traumatized as you are, and are dealing with it in unhealthy and destructive ways, and they deserve help, not to be shunned or further abused. even ignoring the fact that that kind of behavior will only make theirs worse, that's really no way to treat a part of yourself who is traumatized and struggling.

i'm just so tired of tiktok and the tiktokification of my disorders, and i'm tired of people acting like it's not happening.

#ask #anon #part zero