#tw psych ward mention | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

writeouswriter · 5 months

Note

Heya!

For any OC who needs a bit more development/ 'on screen' time:

What is your OC's pain tolerance like? What memory would your OC rather just forget? What is your OC's weapon of choice? Have they ever actually used it?

(also, if required, use this as permission to slack off for a bit. Take some rest, do something fun, and remember you're cared about)

Heya! You're always a joy to see in my notes, such a positive force in this community, lovely, lovely, thank you for the ask!

I'm gonna do these for Anthony, full name Dr. Anthony Kasperek, an OC I've had for over a year but never really talked about, but the basics are: he's a scientist in the field of astro*incoherent mumbling* uh something or other, tentatively astrobiology, but maybe astrophysics or something else entirely depending which way the story goes or if I at all figure out what I'm talking about, point is, space science of some sort, okay, and he's one of a number of scientists invited to this somewhat shady facility to study what may be a possibly earth-shattering extraterrestrial artefact. He's stubborn, paranoid, jumpy, and a bit of an insomniac (because which of my ocs aren't at this point), but has a passion for space and the stars and unlocking the mysteries of the universe like nothing else. He's also very very good at his job, but has a manic edge that tends to scare people away, himself included sometimes. Anyway, onto questions:

What is your OC's pain tolerance like?

I'm oscillating between the idea of it being really low or really high due to the fact he's used to having to deal with things like massive migraines, needles and too much stimuli, but I don't know if that would make him more or less susceptible to the pain it causes. Because on the one hand, the familiarity could make him more numb to it, but on the other hand, it could also make him even more wary, elevating the issue in part psychosomatically. It certainly still causes him stress, so I'm inclined to think the amount he's been relegated to has actually lowered his pain tolerance over the years, making the sensations all the more unbearable/worse each time because he knows it's coming but still is never prepared because in an ideal world, he wouldn't have to deal with it again at all, and he wants to believe he's done with it, believe the pain will never come back, so it's a source of fear and shock every time it does.

2. What memory would your OC rather just forget?

Oh, for Anthony, I'm sure there are too many, especially the way his brain works, solidifying the worst of them, while throwing the rest into chaos when he's trying to focus and suddenly can't remember that vital piece of information in his head that was just there, it was just there, and also especially with his reputation as the “eccentric” scientist, which he’d rather have left behind. There's definitely the... incident that led him to be let go from his job at NASA, which he doesn’t like to talk about, (and also doesn’t understand how it hasn’t barred him from working on such a sensitive project, because what’s up with that? Why did they choose him? Why did they choose him?), and there’s the time in college when he had to spend a semester in the psych ward, but even then he had the stars to comfort him, (he somehow talked them into letting him have those little plastic glowing ones on the ceiling).

3. What is your OC's weapon of choice? Have they ever actually used it?

Is it trite if I say his intellect/his mind? Though sometimes in that case, the weapon occasionally turns on himself. Actually, I'll go with something even more trite and say his genuine love for the universe and everything in it is his greatest weapon (and probably a secret tool that will help us later.jpeg). Barring that, I think he'd think daggers are pretty cool, but I doubt that will come up in the story, I'm sure he might whack someone with his telescope if in a pinch, but ough the calibration, but when cornered, his weapon of choice would probably be his fists or his nails, or throwing whatever random objects happen to be in the vicinity, perhaps if given the opportunity, he might find a way to give someone a little zap with the building's electricity. He may or may not have used those last few methods before...

#writing #writeblr #tw psych ward mention #my ocs #ask #ask game #thank you again #i'll answer the other couple asks soon if anyone's reading this i swear #writing asks #look at my character boy 🥺

2 notes · View notes

frogmanfae · 9 months

Text

Newsies as things that I heard at the party I was just at

Davey, Crutchie, and Albert: *talking about a song*

Davey: Wait there are words on the screen but it's just instrumental??

Albert: oh wait yeah??

Crutchie: Oh yeah I've been restarting the same 2 bars over and over again for the past 2 minutes to see if you guys would notice *holds up the remote*

Blink: That rain was juicy

Davey: Cottage core Kim Kardashian NO I MEAN KIM POSSIBLE I GOT TOO WRAPPED UP IN THE ALLITERATION

Race: There's a car part up my crotch!!!

Finch: Are you really playing Family Feud on 360??

Buttons: I have the autism socks

Davey: You have THE autism socks??

Buttons: Yeah!!

Davey: They make those???

Buttons: No no I just have special socks I have to wear because other socks overwhelm me. These and I have one specific pair that's hot pink and also are fine

Davey: What about the trampoline socks with the sticky stuff?

Buttons: YOU MEAN THE GRIPPY SOCKS FROM THE PSYCH WARD???

Buttons: Oh you have THAT autism?

Sarah: HE'S GOT THAT 2MM DEFEATER

Race: Ooooooh I'm blinded by her coooch no I can't sleep until I suck someeee dick

Albert: please stop

Race: ooooooh I'm suckin dick tonight-

Spot: *hits him*

Henry: I wanna eat it

Splasher: Please do not eat the pepper spray

Jack: Why does everyone here have glasses?

Davey: We're all gay, everyone knows gay people can't see

Mush: Not all heroes wear capes, some of them are gay

Romeo: You like women just not in the hanky panky way

Race: *picks up a tiny toy egg plant* IT'S AN EGG PLANT!!

Albert: *takes it* rah *gives it back* you can have it I don't want it

Race: *holds it by Albert's leg* It's as big as yours!!

Albert: *shoves him* shut up

Finch: *accidentally steps on Davey's foot like 4 times in his socks* We keep having toe connections I'm sorry

Davey: *shrugs* It's cool

Race: The only time I identify as a woman is when you hit me so I can say that you beat women

Albert: *sobbing but also laughing* I DON'T NORMALLY HIT WOMEN

Romeo: *runs across the room that's so loud you have to yell to hear the person next to you* I heard my name

Davey: Other species have bodies that naturally make sense while giving birth but our hips are more narrow so we can walk on two legs

Finch: So as humans we're actually inferior

Davey: *nodding* We die a lot

Albert: Didn't we fix that?

Race: Spread Eagle, full split, reverse scorpion-

Jack: I'm begging you to stop

Albert: *screaming running down the stairs*

Crutchie: What happened??

Albert: *sobbing* HE PUT HIS FOOT IN MY MOUTH

Jack: who???

Albert: *still sobbing* RACE

Crutchie: Oh my god NOBODY IS EATING PEPPER SPRAY

Jack: I could eat pepper spray. I could handle it

Crutchie: Oh my god you're such a man

Jack: *flexes with a smug look*

Crutchie: I mean that negatively

Jack: Oh...

Race: You know it's insane when I'M the voice of reason

Jack: Play 18 naked cowboys

Race: What does gonorrhea taste like??

Finch: I mean probably bad?

Buttons: Oh, that guy just got murdered :(

Race: September was a bad month for America

Davey: I was born in September!!

Race: Me too!

Davey: Oh I guess it was a bad month

Race: Yeah that's right, fag bag

Davey: :0

Tommy Boy: This is you... Before the lobotomy??

Race: *About a skibidi toilet compilation* this is exactly like the walking dead

Albert: The neighbors probably think we're being beaten to death but it's literally just skibidi toilet

The whole gang: *intensely watching 56 episodes of skibidi toilet*

Jack: Did he just suck all of those guys??

Crutchie: The tv just UwUed??

Spot: Ahem

Elmer: ...

Spot: ...

Elmer: Do you want attention or were you just-

Spot: Oh no I was just clearing my throat

Elmer: oh, you just did it in a way that-

Spot: Yeah I realize that now

Spot: ...

Spot: some attention would be nice though also thank you

Henry: Why is Joe Biden in a toilet??

Blink: Not the UPS- I mean USB!!

Elmer: *jolts*

Albert: !...

Elmer: *totally normal*

Albert: You good?

Elmer: Oh yeah, I don't shiver I just do one big

#newsies #skibidi toilet took up a weirdly large portion of this party #like several hours #and everyone was so into it #tw f slur #tw psych ward mention #newsies as

6 notes · View notes

chargetheintruder · 1 year

Text

This, in a nutshell, is the problem.

Read the article. It might be a bit tabloidy but read it.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ohio-man-kills-neighbor-because-204600966.html

It isn’t just Nancy Pelosi or her husband. A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF PEOPLE BELIEVE LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATS AREN’T HUMAN BEINGS. This is a piece of what’s called “stochastic terror.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stochastic-terrorism-appears-rise-globally-215511411.html

In plain English, “stochastic” is a statistics term referring to loading dice, or using a tool to tweak the odds in your favor. Stochastic terror acts happen when lone-wolf types have the use of a Force Multiplier, like the Mass Media, or the Internet, to both get bolder in their tactics, and to get better organized and equipped than usual. The guy who went after Nancy Pelosi and got her husband instead? Was led down a pristine, untouched and unanswered path of dehumanizing Democratic people, by his choice of Mass Media, then empowered by Social Media on the internet, most likely, in terms of resources (getting zip-ties, making plans, getting transportation and locating people).

Some on Tumblr would call this “radicalization” but it goes deeper: who bought the zip-ties? Who doxxed the Pelosi household, revealing a street address?

THIS is the face of the enemy that we face: he’s a punk-bitch hellbent on life-hacking his way into attacking us at all cost and any price. Sure, there’s more we could have done with the 2022 midterm elections, to try to keep the alt-right the hell OFF OF the Ballot Boxes, for example, but making those too hard to find also makes them too hard for VOTERS TO USE. Trying too hard to get things off of GPS and to make them non-doxxed also means the resources can’t be used by those legitimately wanting to use them to vote.

And in truth, this shouldn’t even be happening. This whole Abuser Party/Victim Party dynamic has no business happening. Trump/Traitor Party abuses “them libs” and Democrats, and we just go limp and take it. Why is that? Why don’t we retaliate, ever? It’s not like soft targets don’t exist among the alt-right: QAnon are a bunch of soft little nerds and wannabe Karens, by and large. Actual Guy Fawkes wearing Anonymous are so scared of being exposed that they don’t dare do anything violent. WE have access to the same force multipliers they do.

Well, it’s simple. For starters, too damned many people adhere to an ineffective and outdated Kennedy/Gandhi mentality when it comes to politics. Meaning they swear by the “non-violence is the ONLY answer” dogma, when historically speaking? Uh, no, non-violence is non-action against fascists, racists, misogynists, anti-labor union shits, and cultists. If you are not violent against the abusive or threatening? You either get ignored (because you’re out of reach at the moment) or you become the next victims. Non-violence only works against rational people who know you’re human. Not against sociopathic sorts who insist you’re an animal to be put down. You know, like that Fucker Carlson on Fox News, or indeed ANY QAnon freak ever?

And for enders? This has been a bad habit of mine as well, as an abuse survivor, so I know what I’m talking about here when I say this, fuck some loser and their self-authored Wiki page. A LOT of us, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on down, suffer from post-traumatic stress reactions, from having survived real-life abuse and bullying and domestic violence. What this means is that a lot of us have over-extended stress reactions. Our fight-or-flight reactions go too far and no, your average cognitive behavioral therapist REFUSES to touch this--their de facto cult refuses to admit that anger, or the fight response, even exists.

And this becomes a critical issue that resembles Stockholm Syndrome when you consider the fight-or-flight response actually goes FOUR ways, not two: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn (a.k.a. Pander, Suck up, or Suck it down). Too many of us abuse survivors have an over-extended Freeze response (we go quiet, freeze up, shut down and “wait it out” when actually we’re a clenched knot of nerves) and more of us have an over-extended Fawning reaction (we keep trying to reason with or pander to our abusers well past the point of little to no returns, we keep talking and smiling and praying inside that they won’t HIT again).

Does ANY of this ring a bell? Is anything I’m saying making sense here? Bullies can smell fear in their victims--human sweat changes during a fight-or-flight response. When we HAVE a fight-or-flight reaction, everybody who is out to fuck us over can SMELL the shift to ecchrine sweat (distress/arousal sweat) from down the hall in a large building. Stress sweats are just that--from stress, and temperature, and humidity, have nothing to do with them. No really.

No really, you haven’t lived until you have been in a psych ward, for a crisis, and been accused of being an alcoholic by Staff when you’re having a stress sweat because a) the bastards keep waking you and everyone else around you UP every fifteen minutes, and b) the last THREE new clients admitted after you showed up, ended up being grown-ass men having violent breakdowns. Fun times. My mother died from alcoholic diabetes and emphysema, and I DON’T drink, fuck y’all very much.

Sorry to sidetrack, but the point is, they know. And in their eyes, our rightful distress marks us as prey and less than human. And we neither can nor should have to ditch the trauma just to pander to fucknut Trumpist Nazis. Which means we have to INVEST in self-defense at minimum, if not openly consider organizing ourselves for retaliation purposes.

Stochastic terrorists need their asses kicked by stochastic patriots, is what I’m saying. We need to do better for future generations, and that starts with doing right BY OURSELVES.

#2022 midterm elections #TW violence mention #TW abuse mention #TW bullying mention #TW domestic mention #TW psych ward mention #analysis #Gandhi is wrong #non-violence is non-action #against fascists and racists and worse #fight-or-flight reactions #trauma #PTSD #actually PTSD #actually abuse survivor #ecchrine sweat #self-defense #stochastic terror #Abuser and Victim Party mentality

8 notes · View notes

borderlinereminders · 2 years

Note

Hi! Since you said that you're also someone who can't do the whole breathing and focusing on your body thing, I'd like to ask if you know why that is? Like, everyone always tells me that surely, it can't be a negative experience and that I'm just being difficult, but whenever they made me do meditation or the traditional method of mindfulness in psych ward, I ended up feeling way worse and usually had a breakdown? And it's just that I've never met anyone who is similar, so I'm curious if you have any idea why we might be this way.

Hello!

For me, I won’t go into detail, but I think it’s trauma related. It forces me to be aware of my body and can freak me out. I don’t know for sure but I’ve always felt panicked about it, even at a young age when they tried to force it on us in school.

I also can’t do the “visualize yourself in a meadow” or a safe place thing that they sometimes include as part of it because I have aphantasia so it’s just black to me and uncomfortable if I close my eyes.

You aren’t being difficult. Whatever the reason is (maybe there isn’t one and that’s okay), it’s valid. We’re all different. And there’s no universal thing that helps everyone.

#tw trauma mention #tw psych ward #tw psych ward mention

14 notes · View notes

count-doodoo · 4 days

Text

genuine q

i've heard that the ttpd mv is kinda psych ward themed so. as a psych ward... alumni??? (survivor sounds dramatic idk, i wasn't actually there for long)... do we think it might be triggering or no

#idk i didn't realize how much i was Not over it until i saw some of the hospital wristband / friendship bracelet jokes #i feel like maybe i've answered my own q there but ik popular fandom tweets are often more angering to me than the content itself #so #sjflkdsjfsfsd #tw psych ward mention

0 notes

leucoma · 4 months

Text

warning for depressing subject matter (check the tags as well for specific warnings) but i think this is important, even if it’s not my usual kind of post.

i don’t want to speak over anyone but i very strongly agree with the post i just reblogged abt not calling the cops on homeless people, mainly because i’ve been in shelters before, and people were always telling me basically to cheer up, or else. and instead of being arrested, i was sent to a psychiatric ward (twice), which some people there told me was just as bad in some cases, with them having been through both. people who do not have a stable place to go sleep in, or stable access to food, are going to be very unhappy and possibly act rude/unsettling, especially since they definitely don’t have access to therapy (and many homeless people, in my experience, suffer from ptsd and/or other mental illnesses). and they also don’t really have any sort of guidance or reassurance in life more often than not.

a point i’d like to make separately from that post, though, is that u can’t really take it personally if someone on the street is acting that way towards you unless they actually harm you/say something clearly expressing the intent of harm. i know there are cases where people may be drunk/high and get aggressive or inappropriate, because these are the people i was around constantly for months, but if someone’s just pissy or discombobulated because they’re homeless, DON’T call the cops and DON’T take it personally! they’re not evil, and it could get them in serious trouble just to complain about them publicly…

and don’t judge other people’s coping mechanisms too harshly, even if they’re harmful to the person doing them, because you can’t know the same kind of desperation unless you’ve been there too. (obviously i’m not supporting drug use, it’s dangerous, but definitely don’t interpret it as a moral failure). and if there are a lot of homeless people in your area, i do recommend getting trained in narcan use. i still carry some just in case, because i’ve seen too many emergencies happen.

#tw drug mention #tw alcohol mention #tw psych ward mention #important

1 note · View note

trans-axolotl · 8 days

Text

content note: discussion of suicide.

this next monday will be the six year anniversary of losing one of my friends to suicide.

when he died, my high school barely mentioned his death, even though for other students who died by things like car crashes or illness, there were so many public expressions of grief. they believed that having any memorials for a student who died by suicide would encourage other people to die the same way. in their rush to erase the circumstances of his death, they erased the memory of his life.

there are so many things i am angry at that high school about in terms of how they treated mental health (mandatory reporting and collaborating with cops, their refusal to recognize the ways in which that system led to peer-to-peer crisis support, their refusal to recognize the ways that trying to keep each other alive through trial and error was scary and exhausting, carceral disciplinary policies, etc etc etc). but i think one of the things i am still angriest about is the way they enforced shame around his death. it felt like they were retroactively blaming him for the constellation of circumstances that made suicide an option in his life. it felt like they were blaming those of us who missed him and cared about him and wanted to grieve him. it made those of us still there who were actively suicidal feel even more scared about the reaction if we did reach out for help from one of those mythical safe adults.

as an adult now involved in psych abolition/mad liberation work, it makes me so fucking mad to see the ways in which he was discarded by people in authority positions. and the older i get, the more options i have found in my life for making sense of the world and finding healing and community and support which were never available to him because he died when he was 16 and the only things offered to him were a carceral psychiatric system that blamed him for his own fucking death. it feels so incredibly unfair.

i miss him and i think i always will; i can't remember his laugh or the sound of his voice or his favorite color any more and that aches. this grief is so heavy and it feels harder in a new way each year, when i become older than he will ever be. sometimes meeting new comrades or seeing new anticarceral suicide support models hurts because i wish so fucking bad that we had that back then. i remember how close we came to losing even more people that year and i know it is simple fucking luck that i'm still here when he's not.

i remember another letter (never sent) that i wrote to a friend while they were in an ICU bed after a suicide attempt when i didn't know if they would live or not. i have spent so much time in the past 10 years begging for anything to keep me and my friends alive, but even in that letter i knew that there is so much fucking violence that is hidden beneath psychiatric logics of cure and safety that promise a "solution" to suicide. I knew that institutionalization, coercion, and shame would not have helped build a life more liveable for him or **** or any of the people i've loved and lost since.

there needs to be more fucking options for care and support that aren't so incredibly cruel to suicidal people. i know so many people doing incredible work in alternatives, peer respite, a million different frameworks for healing and liberation. but it makes me so mad every day i have to live in a world where there are still people restrained, locked up in psych wards, having all autonomy and personhood taken away from them. knowing there are dozens of people every day getting blamed for their deaths the same way he was blamed for his.

i miss him. i cared so fucking much for him. and he died by suicide, and all of those things are true. he has been dead for 6 years and he lived before that and the people who loved him want to remember all of him; our celebrations of his life should not require hiding the way that he died.

Image description: [1000 origami cranes in all different colors and patterns that are tied together in strings of 25]

(these were the 1000 cranes we made to give to his parents, in memorial and recognition of how much he meant to us.)

#personal #suicide tw #suicide mention tw #psych abuse tw #psych ward tw #ok to reblog if u want #psych abolition #mad liberation #psych survivor #it's a lot of grief hours over here and will be for a while all week i think #lots of grief so many ways this year for so many people #but this week. his memory . my grief for him #is hitting especially hard. i think partially because of all the transitions in my life. i'm graduating college. he will never become an ad #adult.#i think i might ask my roommates if they will go do something to remember him with me. maybe making origami cranes and sending them off in #the river. or writing things down and burning them #idk. grief is hard #six years in grief is different. but hard

255 notes · View notes

mysidaesm · 4 months

Text

Been thinking about this lately but after my suicide attempt what I needed wasn't to be locked away and have my bodily anatomy taken from me for over a week but a hug, actually

#suicide mention #tw: suicide mention #tw suicide mention #anti-psych #anti psych #anti psychiatry #mental hospital #psych ward

52 notes · View notes

cats-depression-diary · 5 months

Text

I want this thoughts to stop. I want everything to stop. I can't keep on fighting against my own brain I just idk I just want to be okay. I just want to finally LIVE not just survive while letting myself bleed. Idk what to do anymore. Everyone says it gets better. BUT WHEN?? give me a time, tell me how many hours I have to experience this pain for, tell me how often I have to cut to feel okay, how often I have to ignore the voices in the back if my head. Just give me a bit of hope, because rn I'm so hopeless and empty and depressed and angry and idk arghh I don't want to be here anymore I just want to dissappear, to never feel again, to never BE again.

#tw depressing stuff #depressing shit #this is depressing #sorry for being depressing #tw depressing thoughts #solitaire #tw self destructive behavior #tw selfhate #psych ward #sui mention #tw sucidal ideation #sui ideation #tw sui ideation #su1cide #su1c1d4l #suicudal #su1c1dal #su1c1d3 #su1c1d10

53 notes · View notes

gillipopmoji · 4 months

Text

at urgent care for chronic fatigue as of queuing this so i decided to make some wordmojis about hospitalization

27 notes · View notes

loaflovesdoodling · 6 months

Text

So, y'know how I always talk about how Ades has these really traumatizing nightmares about being locked in a mental hospital almost every night?? Well, even if the theme does slightly vary between nights, naturally, I thought I'd still describe how they usually go:

(TW: chains, psychiatric ward, gore, angst, trauma)

Somnum Exterreri

Pleiades slowly opened his eyes, everything was blurry and.... sideways? His mind was fuzzy, sounds were muffled, until his vision finally cleared up a bit, but he still didn't have the strength to get up. What the Hell was going on?

He groaned in fatigue and slight aching, when he finally realized the huge trail of golden blood splattered across the ground, coming straight from his head.

The mere sight of the liquid was apparently enough to alarm him, as he, despite his condition, jolted up, now sitting. He placed two of his hands to the side of his cranium, gently rubbing it to explore the source of the pain and bleeding. He exhaled:

"..h..uh..?....h..ow...?.....wh...a...t...?..." his slurred speech sounded out his thoughts.

But before any other questions could come to mind, he was alerted by the steps of two mysterious guards coming towards him. It was then he realized he was in an almost empty cell. The only other things near him were chains and cuffs scattered all across the ground. He didn't know what was going to happen, but, still confused, his mind told him to run. Immediately.

A sense of dread washed over him, as he swiftly got up and tried to make an escape,

One step, two steps, three--

He hit something, someone. A guard held him tight while the other grabbed his hand and sliced the skin bare with an unfamiliar blade. He yelped in pain, but was quickly shut up by a sudden stab in the stomach; he, agasp, could barely manage to stifle whimpers of agony and shock, as the other guard then picked up the sample of blood from his hand with a cotton swab and placed it in a container, before nodding to the other guard and walking away. The latter quickly pushed him back in the cell, making him once again hit his head on the walls, stunning him; they closed the cuffs on his hands, one by one, and wrapped the bigger chain all around his torso, still bleeding from the stab wound. Pleiades was trapped and scared, now chained to the ground, he got up, and was quickly pushed back down. Why was this even happening? His questions were soon answered by the passing of multiple stretches down the corridors. Had he really snapped? Who did he hurt? Where were all the others?? They couldn't possibly have been...

The guard looked down at him in disgust, then said something through the radio device he had in his pocket:

"Yeah, Demigod's locked up. Analyze the blood samples and prepare for lobotomy."

His eyes widened, loud and fast palpitations followed; Ades was terrified. As the guard left the cell, he got back up and pushed his body forward, trying to pry himself free from the fetters and shackles, instead, hurting himself even more. Tears now streaming down his face, he pleaded:

"NO!!!! DON'T LEAVE!!!!! YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME HERE!!!!!!! LET ME GO!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

his cries were ignored as he kept on struggling, to no avail.

Pleiades had a sharp intake of air, before coughing out a few sobs and giving in. He bellowed.

#hhhh this is so bad AGSSHSHDBSJDJDJSH #kirby ocs #sir pleiades #tw nightmares #tw mental hospital #tw psych ward #tw screaming #tw blood #tw gore mention #tw gore #tw medical procedure #tw angst #tw chains

42 notes · View notes

shattered-yet-whole · 3 months

Text

WIP - I was gonna write an AU psych ward fanfic but then i just started writing my psych ward trauma. Antipsych. This happened a while ago, I'm okay now (and I'm not grateful it happened).

tw - suicidal ideation, descriptions of suicide rehearsal, psychiatric abuse, trauma

--------

“Why are you here?”

I look at the psychiatrist’s tie blankly. He’s dressed in a suit, a clipboard and pen in hand. I haven’t even gotten my clothes back, I have to wear a hospital gown and pants four sizes too large, and am not allowed footwear other than grippy socks. The only thing I have left that's mine is my chipped glittery nail polish. I've picked it halfway off over the past day despite desperately trying not to. But this guy is walking around in shiny Oxfords and a suit.

I don’t look at his face. I know he’s looking at me, expecting an answer. Something I’m learning here is that they wait for you to speak. Even if you take a long time. They don’t try to speak for you. Sometimes I wish they would. It would be easier to say what they wanted to hear if they did. Instead I have to guess. I suppose I’m used to doing that, but it’s a lot scarier. “Don’t you know?” I say.

“Yes. But I want to hear it from you.”

Great. I have to tell him in my own words. It’s like a school assignment, but the grade is how long I’m going to be locked up.

I had been in the ER for 13 hours before I came in, and then I stayed up 2 more hours getting here. I wasn’t allowed my phone until I’d been there for 6 hours. No calling my friends. No telling anyone where I was. No one to talk to. Just me and the book I brought, the book I couldn’t focus on because I’d just gone to the counselor’s office because I was having a hard time and now I was at the ER for a psych eval. The counselor who sent me to the ER had said he thought I would just get connected to resources in the community. He said he didn’t think I would be sent to a psych ward.

I’d done a lot of staring at the ceiling to just get through to the eval part, 4 hours in. 2 hours after, when I finally learned I was recommended inpatient, the social worker told me even if I hate it now, I will be grateful later. Once I feel better, I will approve of the decision to involuntarily commit me. My current wishes tossed aside for a theoretical future me who is glad I never a choice. If they’re right, I should kill myself now so I never become such a monster. All alone, with a life shattering brick dropped on my head, I finally cried.

After the eval, I’d begged the nurse for my phone so I could tell my friends where I was. So I could tell my roommate why I still hadn’t come back at 9pm when we usually saw each other by five. My phone was nearly dead when I got it. I called my friends. I called my parents. My friends stayed with me the rest of the 7 hours I was there. They hugged me and cried with me until I got taken away in an ambulance at 3am. I wondered how much a 45 minute ambulance ride cost. I wondered if it mattered.

What a fuck-up I must have seemed. I’d heard of some college kids going to psych wards before. I knew someone who had called a suicide hotline at 4am and got the cops called to take them in. I hadn’t thought it would happen to me.

It’s nice, in a way. To know how bad I’m doing. I’m bad enough that I need to be locked up. For my own safety. I’m so crazy that I can’t be trusted to make my own decisions. I hadn’t known I was that bad until now. I still don’t believe it. It’s a mistake. But it’s nice they think I’m struggling.

He’s looking at me again. I don’t remember what he asked. “Can you repeat the question?” I ask.

“Sure. Why are you here?” he says again.

Right, that was what it was. I smile. I smile when I’m nervous. “Well, I… I…” Why is he making me say this. He knows what I did. I didn’t even try to kill myself. It’s not that bad. “Well, I was… I was… Sometimes I get into these moods. A lot of times I’m normal and fine. But sometimes I just… sometimes I just want to die. I used to try not to think about how I could do that or anything.” I sigh. I had tried so hard to not think about methods. I must have known I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from doing shit like this eventually. “Because I know this sort of thing would happen. But this time… this time I did. I looked up bridges I could theoretically jump from. But that seems like it would suck.”

I laugh. It’s a nervous laugh. It’s a ‘isn’t it funny that jumping from a bridge to kill yourself would suck?’ joke. One of the classics. He’s not laughing.

“Anyway, I was just feeling… I don’t know. I felt useless. I just keep thinking about dying and killing myself. It’s stupid. And I—I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I don’t know if people think I was trying to kill myself and that’s why I’m here. But I wanted to do something. To—I don’t know. To see what’s even possible. So I—so I—so I—”

This is the part I always get stuck on describing. I don’t know how to put what I was feeling into words. I don’t know how to describe what I was doing. I don’t know why I was doing it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But then again, it had seemed like a good idea to go to the counselor’s office at the time.

“I took—I took a belt. Right? And I hooked the metal buckle part over the door knob—it’s one of those long ones. And I kind of—I kind of—I don’t know. I kind of wrapped it around my neck once and held it with my other hand. So that if I passed out I would be fine. And then I sort of… pulled down. To see if that would… do anything. I did that a few times, and then I was scared that I did it. And I told the counselor the next day.”

It hadn’t been empty blackness like I’d hoped for. It had been a pulsing pressure in my head. I did it a couple times, to see if I could get the empty blackness. Then I stopped. Because it had seemed like such a good fucking idea before I did it, but then I realized I’d done something very worrying and should probably be in therapy. Even if the voice that had started the whole thing was telling me to do it again. It wasn’t real before I’d done it, but once I’d done it, it was too real to ignore.

He’s writing on the clipboard. I have a sinking feeling I’m not getting a good grade. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” I repeat.

“I know,” he says. He’s still writing. I wish I knew what it was.

It’s just me and him in my room. He woke me up when he came in. I went to sleep after breakfast. When I was admitted at 5am last night, one of the techs told me I should try to be awake during the day and asleep at night. Go to groups. Talk to people. It would help me get out sooner. But I’d already been up for 20 hours and it was 5am. So I was going to sleep and they were just going to have to live with that. Apparently you can’t skip the psychiatrist appointments, though.

“What’s got you so suicidal?” he asks.

The world. Everything. And yet, nothing. My life is great. “What do you mean?” I say.

“What do you think about that makes you want to kill yourself?” he elaborates.

“I… I don’t know,” I say. “The… the environment, I guess. Global warming. Kinda sucks to feel like the future is ruined. And the species and the ice sheets. Rising fascism.” I remember a tumblr post where a therapist talked about her patients talking more about those sorts of things making them depressed. That made it seem like an okay enough reason to give to a psychiatrist. And it’s not like that isn’t a big fucking bummer making me not want to be alive.

He makes more notes. “Anything else?” We both seem know that’s not enough on its own to make me constantly thinking about suicide.

I shrug. I’m just so stupid and worthless doesn’t feel like a cogent enough explanation. And I can’t phrase it like that. That would be stupid. “Feelings of… worthlessness, and um.” I search for something in my head. It’s fuzzy. There’s nothing there. I always remember everything so well when I’m crying in bed thinking about how much I want to kill myself. I could write essays on the subject in those moments. Instead I just rehash them to myself, over and over. But I can’t remember any of it now. “I dunno. I can’t remember unless I’m spiraling. A lot of anxiety. Around… people. Social anxiety.” I nod.

Sometimes I get attacked by my social anxiety, memories from years ago—three years, five years, a decade—sending jolts through me as I remember them. I remember what I should never do again. What I’ve learned. Lessons I can never forget, even when I can’t remember what taught them. I usually throw myself onto my bed and writhe in the agony of memories, clinging to ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I want to die’ like I'm falling in an abyss and they're the only rope up. I can never remember what the memories are until they’ve started their assault. I don’t know how to describe that, though.

I’m not being as amicable to him as I usually would be. I haven’t been amicable since they recommended me for inpatient at the ER. Something broke in me then. I’d felt it snap, a crack of terror, and then—nothing. I’m more stone-faced now. Quiet.

I can be friendly when I need to be. I can be talkative and responsive and say all the right words and have the appropriate “mmhmm”s and “oh no”s and “yeah”s. I can laugh in the right places, when it’s polite to laugh at a joke I don’t think is funny. I can make eye contact and break eye contact at what I assume are appropriate moments. I never know if I’m doing it right, though. I poured over a book about body language in high school, trying to learn how the fuck to do it. It said that the exact percentage varied, but around 40% eye contact 60% not eye contact. I tried to get the proportions right for years. Every conversation. Look at their eyes a few seconds, look away a few more seconds. Look eyes, look away. I used to look between their eyebrows, because the eyes were too much. But I read somewhere that some people can tell and they think it’s weird. So eyes it was.

I’m dead now, though. I’m already in a psych ward. They know I’m crazy. What’s the point in trying to appear like I can converse like a human. I don’t want to have to do it. So I don’t. I stare soullessly past people when they talk to me. I examine their clothes. I look at their hair. I don’t smile when they talk to me. I don’t laugh at their jokes. They ask me how I am and I don’t ask them back.

He seems to conclude I’ve finished explaining. “Well—okay, are you voluntary?” He leafs through his papers. “Yes, voluntary. Let’s see…” He leafs through them again.

Voluntary patient. What a laugh. When I came in, I was involuntary. During intake, they gave me some forms and said if I sign them I’d be a voluntary patient. I asked if anything would change. No, they said, it was a distinction with no difference. A voluntary patient still can’t leave until the psychiatrist says they can. But I would be seen as complying with the recommended treatment. It would be beneficial to be seen as complying with the recommended treatment. So I signed. But I never mistook that little black-and-white print Voluntary for consent, even if everyone else did.

#antipsychiatry #anti psych #creative nonfiction #personal narrative #psychiatric hospital #psychiatric abuse #suicidal ideation #suicide tw #trauma #complex ptsd #work in progress #dissociation #depression #anxiety #climate change mention #psych survivor #psych wards #institutionalization

14 notes · View notes

jellypawss · 1 year

Text

I’m going to be very transparent for a sec. I’ve had two alcohol induced psychosis events happen to me in the past week where I attempted to harm myself and ended up talking to police officers. I’m a recovering alcoholic that tries really really hard but keeps relapsing. I’ve tried AA and therapy and nothing is helping because they keep telling me to look for “my higher power” and I’m not gonna lie, in my opinion, that shit is wack. I’m struggling a lot and faith is the last thing on my mind. Anyways, I wanted to make this post to thank y’all for being one of the main sources of happiness and support for me. I don’t get a lot of people outside of this community that reach out to me when im hurting so im very grateful to have y’all in my silly little phone. I promise I will be back to making mods and what not soon but I’ve been really enjoying making music, it feels almost therapeutic. But yeah, thanks for being here for me y’all. I love you guys.

#the police officer last night was surprisingly very friendly and even made me laugh #I’m glad I’m still here and I’m going to make things right for myself because there’s so much more in this world that I want to live for #suicide tw #tw sui attempt #tw self harm #tw #tw alchohol mention #tw alcohol #also I couldn’t make myself go to the psych ward because I needed to stay home to take care of the kitten #I was bawling my eyes out because I felt so guilty about even thinking of having someone else take care of him #he’s so bonded to me that he cries for me when someone else holds him #I just couldn’t #also the psych ward sucks #and I’m not knocking it entirely but #it really is a last resort thing for me now #after being in one that drugged me up on Ativan and took me off my heart meds to the point where I didn’t remember it #a whole ass week I have no recollection of

35 notes · View notes

borderlinereminders · 14 days

Note

You look absolutely gorgeous, especially in that dress! And the pictures are absolutely beautiful…

Genuinely those pictures made me a little weepy, to see such pictures from someone who is like me, in terms of having BPD, makes me a little more hopeful for love and the future

Awe I’m so glad, anon!

I spent a lot of years struggling. I ended up in the psych ward multiple times. Attempted to end everything more than once. Hated everything. Thought nothing was worth it. I was so angry at the world. And at everyone. I’d lash out and accuse my loved ones of not caring. People kept leaving me because of how I was. I’d have breakdowns almost daily and in some cases, multiple times a day. And everything felt so dark and hopeless.

I am sharing this because I want to talk about how things can get better! And there is hope! There is so much hope!

Stuff isn’t perfect now but I’m overall happy. I haven’t attempted to end my life for 6 years or been in the psych ward! I haven’t self harmed for 7. I have a wonderful dog who is my world. I have a loving husband who goes above and beyond for me even more so than the most romantic men from romance movies.I have a best friend who my friendship with outshines even the best friendships in movies/shows. (Yes, even Sam and Frodo). And while I still have bad days, I am able to handle those bad days in a lot healthier ways which makes them not spiral as bad.

People don’t leave me anymore because I’ve learned to communicate in healthy ways and foster healthy relationships. Now friendships end because I realize they aren’t for me. Things like people taking advantage of my compassion and stuff like that. Which means I also stand up for myself and feel comfortable ending friendships because I’m not so scared I’ll be alone. I used to tolerate a lot of bad friendships because I was so desparte for friends.

Sometimes things do feel dark but I also understand that it’s temporary and things will be good again.

Sorry for the long ramble but I wanted to express that things were so terrible for me and now they aren’t. Things can get better. It takes a lot of work but it’s so worth it. And I’m happy.

I believe you can have a happy future, anon. I really do.

#april answers #tw suicide #tw suicide attempt #tw self harm #tw psych ward #tw hospital mention

18 notes · View notes