Just Saw A Spicy Hot Take In The Notes Of An ADHD Post That Was Like “adhd Isn’t A Mood Disorder

I see this a lot in leftist circles but mental illness, trauma and abuse will exist with or without capitalism, your “mental illness is a social phenomenon” might be true for your depression and your anxiety but I beg all of you to think about psychotic people, systems and people with personality disorders when you make posts like that. It might be true that we wouldn’t be labeled as mentally ill but we would still need resources to help us cope, there’s still something we would need help coping with and you should focus on making that help available and accessible and free of bigotry for all of us instead of living in a “no mentally ill people” pseudo progressive eugenicist dream.

From what I’ve read and observed, bipolar symptoms exist on a spectrum. Using these charts inspired by @levianta’s graphics about autism, you can visualize the extremity of every symptom you experience. As an example, here is a chart visualizing how i personally experience hypomania:

talking to your parents in your 20’s moodboard

“The focus on cis white male presentations of autism creates a massive diagnosis barrier for marginalised people. Our actions are viewed differently depending on our race / gender etc. We need better representation in media and we need academics to understand and embed cultural nuance, not seek to further restrict diagnosis.” (@girl_unleeshed on Twitter)

Here’s the second comic I worked on for Autism Acceptance month! This comic is a collaboration with Leesha (@girl_unleeshed). Please check out her Twitter to read more of her awesome and thoughtful writing!

I-d

Why do we love to pathologise normal behaviour online?

By reducing nuances of mental health to sweeping statements, social media might actually be leading to over-diagnosis.

Did you enjoy reading as a child? I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the cherished hours you spent reading Harry Potter books were actually just your body’s way of dissociating in an uncomfortable environment (also RIP to your idea of JK Rowling as a decent person). Do you sometimes forget to text your friends back? It’s probably, definitely, because of a past trauma, and certainly not the natural result of a culture in which we are expected to be socially available at all times. Better get a therapist on the line! Do you struggle to concentrate at your office job, where you spend eight hours a day performing boring tasks in front of a screen? I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there’s probably something immutably wrong with the chemicals in your brain. 

As far as the internet is concerned, just about everything you do might be evidence of a troubling pathology. Social media can undeniably be a great resource for people experiencing mental illness, alongside people who have ADHD, and people who fall somewhere along the autism spectrum. A condition like ADHD, for example, is still said to be underdiagnosed (particularly among women) and raising awareness about this might bring people to a diagnosis they sorely need. But as with many things online, there is a downside to a free, entirely unregulated flow of information. 

This is good. It talks about capitalism too.

whats the ice cream bar approach ?

So, @bipolarings has a post talking about this a little already, but I'm always happy to be given an excuse to blather about brains :D

The ice cream bar/sundae bar metaphor was originally created to describe the autism spectrum, but it works really well for other things too, including bipolar disorder. I'mma adapt it a lil bit here, in fact, to make it work even better. Yay me.

The principle is this: instead of trying to divide up bipolar disorder into I/II/NOS/etc, or classify it as 'severe' or 'mild', picture it as a sundae bar.

Now, every day, you make yourself a sundae. You can take as many toppings as you 'want' and as much of each topping as you 'want'.

There are some toppings that go well together, so, for instance, if you take a lot of euphoria there's a good chance you'll also get some hypersexuality, some delusions of grandiosity, some creative drive, some ambition, some psychomotor agitation. And that would be called a 'manic episode'. You could get somewhat less of each, maybe leave off the delusions of grandiosity, and people might call it a 'hypomanic episode'. Even less and people might call it 'euthymia'.

But the thing is, you don't have to get it that way, and you can take any amount of each! So you might get low mood but a lot of psychomotor agitation, irritability, and disregard of consequences. Or you could get a huge amount of emotional numbness but combine it with the stuff other people like to put with euphoria. Or you could get just a bit of low mood but spice it up with hallucinations and delusions (other). Or you could get a lot of delusions of grandiosity but only a tiny amount of euphoria.

And what you get one day doesn't determine what you get the next. You could spend years getting nothing but the 'hypomania combo' and the 'depression family-size' and then one day decide to dump the entire bowl of euphoria in your cup and top it with so many delusions it starts to spill over the sides. Or maybe you've only ever gotten small, carefully curated sundaes with a healthy amount of two or three toppings but today you just tell the server 'fuck me up' and get some of absolutely everything.

Without all the metaphor:

While certain sets of symptoms commonly appear together, and are then labeled 'mania', 'hypomania', 'depression', or 'euthymia', symptoms don't have to appear in those particular combinations. (Also the DSM isn't necessarily even right about what combinations are common.)

You could also have different proportions of symptoms than someone else does. (And that doesn't necessarily make your disorder or theirs automatically more 'severe'.)

Even if you do only get common combinations of symptoms, that says nothing about how 'severe' it is. If you get an enormous amount of emotional numbness, lack of motivation, executive dysfunction, suicidality, paranoid delusions, and disregard of consequences, continuously for 98% of your adult life; and someone else gets one (1) single 3 day long episode with a medium-sized serving of delusions of grandiosity, hallucinations, and disregard of consequences; they'll probably be diagnosed with Bipolar I and you with Bipolar II, but your life is probably being affected a lot more.

What symptoms you get can also change, which can include changing from what a psychiatrist might call 'Bipolar I' to 'Bipolar II', or 'BP-II' to 'BP-NOS', or whatever. You haven't magically gotten a new disorder. You just got a different sundae today. You're still eating at the same sundae bar.

My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.

I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”

[Image description: four slides with black text on a light blue background that read as follows: 

Victim blaming by abusive parents looks like… “You’re disrespecting me by having boundaries that are inconvenient to me. Therefore, I’m entitled to hurt you.” “You know I get mad when you do this and you did it anyway, so it’s your fault I hit you/yelled at you/belittled you.” “You’re hurting my feelings by accusing me of being a bad parent.” “What have I done to deserve this?” (Usually as a reaction to you establishing boundaries). “You’re tearing this family apart (by fighting back against the abuse).” “You’re a bad child. Look at all the bad things YOU’VE done to ME.” (often, those things are trauma reactions, like avoiding their presence or acting behind their backs). (When you try to hold them accountable) “Oh, I forgot, you’re always right and I’m always wrong. Nobody cares about me or my feelings. I do everything for you and this is what I get in exchange.”

In reality… Every person is responsible for their actions. You didn’t make them abuse you—they CHOSE to abuse you. You have the right to be able to establish boundaries without fear of punishment. You have the right to have your needs met. Your trauma reactions are not something you’re doing to disrespect them—they’re something your body is doing to protect you from harm. End image description] 

These are just some examples of things abusers say to frame their abusive actions as the victim’s fault (taken from personal experience and the stories of people who have messaged me). Feel free to add your own examples if they’re not listed here and if you want to help spread awareness about what victim-blaming looks like!

And remember: abuse is never the victim’s fault.

What does guilt-tripping by abusive parents look like?

What does gaslighting by abusive parents look like?

Pals, I’m gonna tell you one of those hard truths, and I hope that you can read this and think about it in the spirit in which it’s intended.

The vast majority of you do not have “triggers”, you have “squicks”. If you learn the difference, I promise you will be happier and healthier, and you will feel much MUCH less as if all media is attempting to personally attack and traumatize you. 

It is ABSOLUTELY LEGIT to dislike something in a piece of media, or to feel disgusted and revolted by it, or to have an aversion to it for any reason and to any degree. That’s normal! That’s absolutely normal, and if that has happened to you, then you are normal too.

But… Words matter. Words have power. There is a difference between “disgust” and “trauma response” – if a person without PTSD or other forms of trauma calls something that disgusts them a “trigger”, they are giving that thing undue and dangerous power over them. You do not have to legitimize your disgust, because your feelings are already valid. But saying “this triggers me” if it doesn’t actually trigger you in the clinical definition means that you are voluntarily giving up some of your own power and agency to the thing you dislike. It means that you are allowing the thing to have a disproportionate impact on your life, that you are giving it power to affect you and get under your skin and stay there. You are building it up into something much more terrifying and monstrous and serious than it deserves to be. Calling it a “squick” makes you bigger than the thing that’s grossing you out – it makes the gross thing into something that you can have power over, that you can vanquish and reject and entirely discard from your life according to your own whimsy. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term “squick”, it’s something you don’t like which causes that icky squirmy “ew! no thanks!” feeling. Here’s the Fanlore page for more detail.)

We live in a society that wants to take power away from so many of us at all costs. Nobody hands you power or agency or confidence or strength – you have to claim those for yourself. If you have the ability to take control over something that squicks you, do it. Stand up for yourself and your media experience, and use the word that gives you power. You can turn your back on a squick and walk away without more than a lingering “ugh” feeling; it is almost impossible to do that with a trigger. A trigger ruins your whole day (ask me how I know!).

Words have power. Disgust is a normal human emotion. Your feelings are valid even when they’re not severe and catastrophic.