Adulthood Really Does Hit You Like A Fucking Truck When You Spent All Of Your Teenage Years Thinking

Fuck you *hypos your mania*

im calling myself out on this one

“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!

As it was requested by quite a few people, I made a Venn Diagram showing the overlapping symptoms of ADHD and PTSD. I really hope this helps!

( click here for other diagrams )

joy will help you heal.

this applies to everything from “staying home sick from school is easier if you play a low-stress game you like between naps instead of wallowing in your snotty misery” all the way up to “grief and trauma is hard, i understand, but learning to live for yourself again means cherishing all the good moments on purpose”

it may not be everything you need to get better – but joy will help you heal, i promise.

Simone Biles saying “Mental health is more important than sports” on the biggest platform she could have possibly done it from is why she’s incredible, actually

For anyone wondering what the difference between type 1 and type 2 bipolar disorder (BP-II), this graphic is really nice. For the record, I’m type 2.

Unipolar Major Depression is also known as Major Depression Disorder. Another Graphic that helps compare the two, and provides references for normal moods, bereavement depression (after a loss of a loved one, for example,) and Cyclothymia:

Other facts about BP-II:

Bipolar Type 2 Patients do not receive full manic episodes, which means they will not exhibit the psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations associated with Manic episodes in BP-I patients.

Bipolar Type 2 patients are more likely to commit suicide than their Type 1 counterparts

Those with bipolar type 2 cycle from Hypomania to Severe Depression more frequently than Type 1 does from Mania to Severe depression

BP-II are more likely to experience rapid cycling than Type 1

BP-II patients typically experience longer depressive episodes than their Type 1 counterparts.

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.