Tag: mental illness

enigma731:

aliform:

dion-thesocialist:

No one here seems interested in the grimy parts of mental health. Everyone wants to talk about mental illness as quiet introverts drinking tea and nervously stuttering over words. No one ever talks about symptoms like paranoia or hallucinations or hypersexuality or compulsions or homelessness or drug addiction or delusions or psychosis or violent urges. Every time a clearly mentally ill person commits a crime, and someone says, “Hey, maybe this is a sign that we need to improve mental health awareness in this country,” everyone goes to screaming: “This isn’t about mental illness! Mentally ill people aren’t violent!”

But yes, sometimes mentally ill people are violent. Sometimes we are bad people. And even those mentally ill people are in need of advocacy, maybe even more so.

When you post “Protect people with mental illnesses at all costs,” do you mean all of us, or just the cute ones?

I get sick of tumblr’s version of self care, which 90% of the time threads into this beautifully: go pet a fuzzy cute animal! pile up your favorite blankets from childhood and watch disney movies! take a nap! play a game from this list of cute soothings games! 

More realistically: go take a shower because it’s been three days. Wash the dishes that have been in the sink since last Friday that you can smell as soon as you open your door because rotting food stinks. Pick all your clothes off the floor because that’s where your entire wardrobe is and you’ve already cried today because you tripped over a sweater and realized the cat puked on it. Call someone who can give you enough courage to pay that bill you’ve been ignoring. Put away the crackers because that’s all you’ve eaten for two days straight. Apologize to the friends who are worried sick about you, and if you can’t at least let them know you are ok and need space. 

One of the most empowering types of self-care is responsibility, but tumblr just wants to sit in a closet strung with fairy lights and read their favorite fic.  

“Cute” self-care for “cute” mental issues. That’s not reality. 

One of the first things I learned in training to be an actual therapist was that actual therapy involves empowering and pushing people to take responsibility in these ways. It’s not just about giving patients a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, because that doesn’t get them anywhere in the longrun, and I think that the portrayal of self-care or therapy in that way is just as harmful as a lot of other inaccurate representations of mental health in media.