You Are Not A Burden.

Comic by howbabycomic.com. Perfect for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities

“Go to therapy” Are you gonna pay?

had an interaction a few days ago that i’m still thinking about. I was talking to two students about the Day of Silence protest coming up that friday, and both of them seemed interested but needed more information. Both of these students were disabled with relatively high support needs for communication, processing, and learning. At least one was intellectually disabled.

I explained the basic premise of Day of Silence, and one of the students asked me to repeat myself, explain again. I did this several times, and she was engaged with me, even if she wasn’t processing yet she clearly wanted to know more and was interested in what i was saying. Her para-educator then came over and said it wasn’t worth trying to explain anything to her because she wouldn’t understand.

The para-educator’s intentions were good, she wanted to save me time and believed i may not have known this student was disabled. But to say that, in front of the student, as though she couldn’t hear the comment, is rude at best and downright hostile at worst. Furthermore, to be in a position in which you are the one in charge of helping this person navigate the world, and to believe they only deserve information that you think they can digest, is such an awful way to view someone you are supposed to help. This student was asking me questions, she was listening, and honestly - who cares if in the end she didn’t understand? just because we don’t end up understanding something doesn’t mean we can’t engage with it.

Intellectually disabled individuals and disabled individuals in general are not infants, they’re not incapable of learning or connecting with others. Yes, they may need extra help, and yes, some topics may be too complex for them to tackle, but let the individual decide that for themselves.

TLDR: The person who was supposed to be helping an intellectually disabled student navigate the world decided for that student what they could understand. In doing so, she projected her beliefs about the students abilities and overshadowed the student’s ability to define her own boundaries. Intellectually disabled people deserve the autonomy to decide for themselves what they want to engage with at a given time, not told they are too dumb to understand.

　⟢　Compulsive Liar　𓃉

A flag for those who are compulsive liars! This is intended for people with aspd and npd, but it can be used by anyone that it applies to.

　— Requested by anonymous .

Genuinely I don't care about the opinions of someone who has never been a compulsive or pathological liar when it comes to anything related to compulsive and/or pathological lying. If you haven't been that person you have no clue what it feels like, why someone is doing it, or how to tell the difference between the two or any other kind of lying.

No I don't care if you're a therapist or a psych major or a psychiatrist or whatever, your opinions are only based in what you can observe from the outside and that will never be a full and accurate understanding, and when the nature of the condition itself gives you an easy pass to not believe the experiences of the person living with it, I will find any argument you could make to be suspect.

shout out to the disabled people with emotional dysregulation particularly in regards to anger. people who get overwhelmed just by feeling things, people who don't know how to direct their strong emotion so its directed inwards or outwards indiscriminately. people who hurt themselves or break things, especially things they don't want to. people who start crying when they're angry and hate that people treat the anger less seriously as a result. anger is considered monstrous sometimes, like some sort of failing when it's just one emotion out of many. people act like if you can't control your anger you're automatically an abuser who exclusively and specifically takes their anger out on other people. there are indeed many instances where someone needs to learn to regulate their anger, but i'm talking about strong emotion in the context of disability. where just the act of feeling is too much, where people don't have the capacity to process their own emotions, and how difficult that can be

"Fun" little things I did as a pyromaniac growing up (with possibly a hint of pyrophilia)

-staring into every candle flame ever especially the tealights around the house

-staring directly into every fireplace, the automatic one my grandparents had, the fake one at Tim Hortons, the display fire at a lobby in what was probably an airport

-staring and watching the flames of campfires and bonfires, watching with a smile as marshmallows caught fire, paper and cardboard turned to ash, the wood for kindle cracked and popped as it turned to charcoal even watching while my eyes watered from the smoak

- playing with lighters once I taught myself how to use them and got over the hot sting of the metal on my thumb when it's been recently lit. Flicking it over and over till the sparks turn to a steady flame and doing it again when the flame dies out

- burned my hair clippings in my friends garage after she did my hair during high school

- burned old school papers I no longer needed

- accidentally burned a while in a plastic bag full of garbage and created a burnt mess in my room after trying to burn some receipts over the garbage so the ashes would fall into the bag but instead the stuff in the bag caught fire and yeah wasn't fun cleaning up

- stole from my mom's tealight stash and burned candle after candle

- left a candle burning too long and got wax everywhere

- enjoyed standing in the candle isle in stores and wishing I could have them all except the scented ones

- got happy when places my mom took me too had some sort of flame like a candle in the corner even if it was scented (cuz it was usually mild and okay enough for my sensory issues to handle, like lavender or vanilla)

- got sad or bored when other people blew out birthday candles

- waited for cars to catch fire while driving past a crash scene. They never did

- related way too hard to the meme with the girl and the burning house behind her

- thought burnt down buildings were aesthetically pleasing

- loved every fire scene in media especially loving stuff with explosions

- staring at YouTube videos for days about people burning stuff, blowing stuff up, watching lava, worked with hot metal etc

- got fixated on the tv whenever the fireplace channel was on

- got way to into science class when fire was involved and asked the teachers assistant to demonstrate again so I could sit with her and watch tirth up paper turn to ash

- proceeding to poke said ashes

- always trying to touch something after its been burned

- sometimes enjoying the smell of burnt food like popcorn or pancakes

- trying to see how long I could hold something that was on fire

- daydreamed about fire eating esp after mark and Ethan did it for unus anus that one time

- proceed to ask my mom for sparklers after my friends mom stood us on the back deck and and gave us all a bunch of sparklers to hold and watch fizzle for my friends birthday. Never got sparklers

- daydreamed about lighting the matches I had given my mom after finding them near our back yard. At least I was responsible and didn't let my little siblings have them when I found them.

- related far too deeply to this girl in a book of misfits who lit matches and put them out on her arm just to feel something.

- again with a girl who did something similar with a lighter on her thighs in some show my mom watched.

- loved every character ever with fire powers

- wished I was a firebender like Zuko and being afraid of the fact that I related to azula just as much as I did Zuko. But also thinking azuka was badass until I realized we're both just mentally ill.

- demanding fire resistance even if I didn't play a teifling in dnd

- dragons.

- saved and still save up things like leaves from my house plants just so I can burn them later

- purposefully trying anything to do with fire in my witchcraft, whatever involves fire and burning stuff I wanted to do

- made several attempts to start a fire without any idea how to make one

- tried lighting a fire in our firepit during winter, did not last

And much more

Pyromania is not just burning down a building one day, not just waking up one day and deciding to start fires on people's property or blow stuff up and become a terror and a menace.

Pyromania is much much more than staring at flames as a kid because its visually stimulating, and more than just being drawn to the fire element.

It's impulses, it's intrusive thoughts, it's the small things for satisfaction, it builds up, it typically starts during childhood development because we're all fucking mentally ill and likely very traumatized.

It's not quirky or cool, it gets scary.

It kept me from doing worse things, it saved me when my brain chemistry was so unbalanced I would have done a lot of regrettable things, it terrorises my mind with constant "what if x burned or you burned x" thoughts

And so on

It's never been a thing to take lightly

good afternoon everyone! not so friendly reminder that correcting someone’s grammar and/or spelling as a comeback to something they said is ableist! implying someone is not worth listening to or their argument is automatically invalid because of their grammar and/or spelling is ableist!

disclaimer: i’m not saying everyone who has ever done this is a horrible person or that you consciously knew it was ableist, i’m saying that it’s a harmful way of thinking and going about things and it needs to stop now. you’ve done this and now you feel guilty? good on you for recognizing that it was bad. not many people are willing to do that. get up, keep going, don’t do it again, and point out ableism where you see it. as i always say, in an ableist society like ours, the only people free of internalized ableism are those who have already unlearned it.

what's the most upsetting ask you've ever received?

The one from last night where someone who claimed to be pro choice not only approved of aborting fetuses with Down Syndrome. In fact, they thought it should happen with every Down Syndrome pregnancy. I don't even want to post a screenshot of the ask.

There's also the death threats, suicide baiting, and rape threats, but those were for another blog.