ube-makaveli:

revan-trevelyan:

Sometimes the help you need isn’t the help you want. Call 1-800-273-8255 if you’re thinking of suicide.

This comic meant a whole lot to me. It was sincere in its depiction and treated the issue through the eyes of a grounded person. Not some godly hero saying everything is better than it seems, but a person trying his best before bringing her somewhere who can actually help.

What to do if your parents refuse to let you have access to mental healthcare

abusedkidproblems:

If you have the ability to pay for it, are close enough to one, and can get transport there and back a lot of grad schools that have psych programs offer therapy for cheap so that the students can get in the hours they need. University of Louisville for example offers therapy for $15 a session.

If you are able to do this and are prescribed medicine, but your parents won’t help you pay for it this post gives you several ways to pay for your meds.

However, if you are not able to get these services there are ways that you can help manage your mental illness on your own.

For starters you can use shitborderlinesdo‘s diagnostic checklists or this list of self-screening quizzes to try and figure out what exact disorder(s) you may have. From their you can work with self help tools that will be geared towards what you have.

CBT and DBT are two of the most common types of therapy. Here is a post that explains a little bit about the differences between the two and ACT.

CBT self-help tools

DBT self-help tools

Other helpful tools

Not sure if there is a minimum age to use it or not (couldn’t find anything on the site) but Maven Clinic offers mental health (and other medical) appointments online. It’s not free (appointments range from about $20-$70)), but they do send out freebie codes from time to time. There is also a forum community where you can ask general questions as well. 

coping-skill-toolkit:

During my first month with my therapist, I was given this worksheet to read and work on. She noticed that while I was talking with her, that my thoughts followed a lot of these. I wasn’t aware that my anxiety had brought me down paths of low self-worth and stinky thinking. 

After a couple of weeks of talking with her, she gave me this worksheet to work on. 

While, at first, I thought these weren’t going to work out, I was very surprised to see just how easy they were to use . My homework at that time was to identify which sort of thinking I used on the regular and which ones would best challenge them for me.

So, what do you think? Do any of the maladaptive thinking patterns sound like you? which ways would you like to untwist your thinking? 

So your kid’s autistic: A handy guide to not being a dick from a mom of an autistic teen daughter

slowlygettingouttamyhead:

1. Stop calling yourself an Autism Mom and making it all about you.
2. Meltdowns suck, but they’re harder on her than you. Work with her to figure out her triggers and don’t dismiss them.
3. Some types of behavioral therapy which focus on emotional regulation can be beneficial but anything that rigidly demands forced eye contact, forbids stimming, or aims to make her act “less autistic” is abusive.
4. Autism Speaks is garbage.
5. Vaccines don’t cause autism.
6. Focusing on causes and cures is both ableist and pointless.
7. Listen to and respect your kid as a valid human being.
8. Make whatever accommodations she needs to function optimally without making a big deal about it.
9. Be prepared to fight if school is unwilling to make accommodations.
10. Know your kid’s educational rights as a disabled person and make damn sure her school honors them
11. Don’t just rely on teachers and therapists to understand autism. Talk to actually autistic adults to gain a better sense of what to expect for your child’s future. Don’t know any? Follow blogs with the tag #actually autistic. And encourage your kid to do the same, especially as she gets older.
12. Your kid is capable of a lot more than you may think and she’s growing up. Stop infantilizing her and let her make mistakes.

Any and all constructive feedback from the #actuallyautistic community is welcome. I’m trying to continue to grow as a supportive parent.