stigma Archive

Hysterical Woman Problems: Jealousy

One of the most common things people with BPD have in common is abandonment/attachment issues. Mine run incredibly deep & I feel that I need to warn people about in advance so they can give emotional consent about whether or not they want to invest in a relationship with me. I feel the need to warn them that I’m incredibly sensitive, have a lot of unexplainable triggers that result in dissociation (a whole other article!), and that I have problems trusting that people aren’t going to randomly disappear. And while I own these feelings, actively work on them & and try my hardest not to bring them into my relationships (often going as far as to isolate myself for periods of time when I’m feeling them), they still come up. They still permeate every single aspect of my life. With such BIG emotions, I have to ask for a whole lot of patience & understanding in all types of relationships. People who are diagnosed with BPD often have the tendency to either dive in way too deep or constantly prevent themselves from dipping their toes in the water at all, all due to fears of abandonment. Some of us are trying our hardest every second of the day to figure out some sort of healthy balance for our interpersonal relationships to the point where it gets super confusing. Many of us are very, very tired a lot of the time because of this. Sometimes, I sit around and think about how fucking un-cute that must sound to all of my potential dates and I feel really fucking defeated & lonely.

I Get It.

I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Tori Jezebel. In hir first post with us, ze talks about the stigma attached to the labels people have assigned to hir. Thanks for sharing with us, Tori!

I Get It.

I’m a mentally-ill deemed patient, a survivor, a hooker, a modified masochist, somebody’s daughter, a 2 Spirit Queer, an internet porn star, a chronic pot smoker and a psychiatric survivor/consumer. I get it. I am not supposed to talk about my body. I am offensive. I get it.

My Experience with Dissociative Identity Disorder (Lily)

Trigger Warning: Self-Harm, Abuse, Rape, Human Trafficking

I’ve been half-aware that I’m multiple since about the age of fourteen, when I started to realise that it really wasn’t usual for people to experience severe blackouts and time loss and memory issues (lasting hours, days, weeks, months and even years); that it wasn’t usual for people to so routinely and constantly be addressed by a completely different name by strangers who will insist that you have met them and that your name is something else; that it wasn’t usual for moods and personalities and tastes to change so drastically and so constantly. I had no word for what I was experiencing; I had no knowledge and no understanding and after about a year of being so, so aware of this I finally told my (then) therapist about those experiences. The result? A long lecture about self-diagnosis and “making up more lies to make my supposed PTSD more believable” followed by being asked about where I had researched Dissociative Identity Disorder and that I did know that it was made up and not real and that nobody would ever believe me. So, for almost ten years I hid it except from a very close friend online and one of my partners (he lived with me so it was very difficult to hide).

I’m not in denial, what are you talking about?

I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Starfish. In her first post with us, she tells us her coming out story. Thanks for sharing with us, Starfish!

When I decided to confide my doubts about my sexuality to my mother when I was 13 years old, I had a vague idea of how she would respond. She had always impressed upon me that discrimination was bad and that homosexuality was ok and not to be made fun of. When I choked out, ‘I think I might be bisexual’, I thought she’d be surprised. Maybe ask if there was a certain girl I liked.

“Good” Victim, “Good” Self-Care

I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Nikki. In her first post with us, she talks about the expectations placed on abuse victims/survivors. Thanks for sharing with us, Nikki!

There was a thing going around Tumblr that I can’t find now because I still don’t totally understand Tumblr, and it was about being a “good abuse victim.” How a “good victim” never gets involved with abusers again. “Good victims” have scars to prove their abuse, they get everything documented, they go right into therapy. They get fixed, they don’t get abused again. “Good victims” publicly call out their abusers… or wait, is it that “good victims” just talk about it with people close to them and work it out themselves and never make a scene? I don’t know, I never did it “right.” I marched around calling myself a Survivor for years which, to me, was like a “better victim,” a stronger one. Cuz when you’re a victim you’re weak and when you’re a survivor you’re strong and you did “good victim” properly and graduated. I said FUCK YOU to victimhood like it was bad. But in retrospect that’s saying there’s a right and wrong way to handle abuse, and that’s bullshit. As a repeat VICTIM of abuse I wanted to look strong even though repeat abuse makes people look weak. But fuck these hierarchies of who handles abuse the best. I am a victim of abuse and I’m surviving.

Trans is not a Mental Illness

There was the equivalent of a 8.0 Earthquake in the psychiatric community this past May. Although very few people outside the trans community noticed it, there was a casualty. It’s name was Gender Identity Disorder (GID). The funeral was poorly attended, and the only people mourning it are right wing ideologues and rabidly anti-LGBT organizations who feel that LGBT people need to be as stigmatized as possible by the medical and psychological communities.

Tracking Bipolar Mood States and the Herbs that Love Them

I decided to track my moods intensely and also experiment on myself quite a bit with certain herbs and diets. I have written a couple of times before how a gluten-free vegan diet, and how reducing my refined sugar intake have drastically aided in helping me stabilize my mood rollercoaster. Another thing that greatly helped me was tracking my moods over time in a journal. I was able to take a few months and track my mania, depression, mixed states of every variety, as well as social, environmental, hormonal, and physical triggers for said mood shifts. I found that many of my mood changes are triggered by certain things (sexual assault triggers, social conflicts, hormonal shifts, dietary changes, etc) and behind those triggers is a larger more independent cycle of ups and downs lasting a couple of months at a time. In tracking the triggered ups and downs existing along the larger up and down shift of my mood over time, I can now identify when a mood state is changing and can identify where I am at.

Two Months Later

Editor’s note: this is a continuation of Fuck. Schizoaffective?

It’s been two months since my diagnosis. Two months to process the psychosis, the diagnosis. Two months to adjust to new medication.

Coming to terms with childlessness

I never wanted to be a mother when I was young. Seduced by the freedom I could have as a single woman, at varying levels of “being about to take care of myself” financially and psychologically, I pushed onward. When I was 19 and in college I had an abortion. The father was irresponsible and unemployed, and I wanted to graduate. I wanted to live an exciting, satisfying life and knew if I kept the child I would be doomed to poverty and single-mother-dom before I had even gotten started.

The stigmatization of Mental Illness in a Modern Society

It remains difficult for some to fathom the weight of stigmatization that is carried on the backs of the millions diagnosed with mental illness each year. Mental illness is, indeed, an illness. A disorder of the mind that equally affects the body. Mental illness is something that can make living day to day extremely difficult, painful (both emotionally and physically), and nearly impossible.