New skills: Santas brush up on their sign language during a Santa School held recently at Royal City Centre. The Santas return to school each fall to fine-tune their skills for the holidays.
Friendly reminder that Vincent van Gogh willingly checked himself into an asylum so that he could get better, resulting in him creating some of the most iconic paintings of his entire career, done in the asylum, when he was being treated 24/7, because he finally didn’t have to struggle with his demons and could instead focus on his muse, WHICH WERE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS!
Remember this little insignificant painting?
How about this one?
Check this one out:
All of these and more were painted in the asylum when he was receiving treatment for his mental illnesses and I know I just said that but I said it again and I’m saying it a third time until you dramatic abled assholes understand!
VINCENT VAN GOGH
– KNEW THAT HE WAS MENTALLY ILL
– WANTED TO CHANGE THAT
– WENT TO AN ASYLUM
– GOT THE HELP HE NEEDED
– PAINTED SOME ICONIC MASTERPIECES AS A RESULT!
SO DON’T YOU DARE COME OUT HERE WITH THIS, “I WISH I WAS DEPRESSED SO I COULD BE AS CREATIVE AS VAN GOGH” BULLSHIT BECAUSE EVEN HE KNEW THAT HIS DEMONS WERE HARMING HIS WORK, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, HIS HEALTH, AND HE DID EVERYTHING WITHIN HIS POWER TO FIGHT THEM EVERY SINGLE DAY OF HIS LIFE, UNTIL THEY ENDED UP WINNING!
This is also incredibly important for any creative persons dealing with mental illness, and their parents.
Receiving mental help improves your craft, not hurt it. Before getting put on medication for the first time to treat my mental illnesses, my mom expressed to me how she’s worried about my getting treatment because of my art. Regardless, your mental health should be more important anyway, but, honestly, it’s a lot harder to produce good art when you struggle getting out of bed, let alone creating masterpieces. When you’re in more health, improving your craft comes much easier!
Personally I think the most beautifull painting of him was this one:
He made it when he heard about the birth of his nephew who was named after him. Still in the asylum but really happy for his brother!
“How glad I was when the news came… I should have greatly preferred
him to call the boy after Father, of whom I have been thinking so much
these days, instead of after me; but seeing it has now been done, I
started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom,
big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.”
Oh I have sucb rants about how “good” art comes while suffering.
No.
look at me.
The idea of the “suffering artist” comes from bunch of alcholic, drug abusing, womanizers trying to justify their bad life choices as some sort of artistic angst.
IT IS 100% BULLSHIT
Take your meds, get your therapy, be happy, and live life
The art will be there.
it’s true that i wrote a higher volume of words when i was untreated. that’s because i was using writing to avoid my life. i spend more time these days on self-care. but the words i do write are of much higher quality, and my craft in plotting and organizing, collaboration and research, has gone through the roof.
i used to just put my head down for 16 hours and pound out ten thousand words from a pit of misery, and shove them in a file named with a keymash to collect dust. now i spend 4 hours on research and planning, an hour talking to my collab partner, and an hour writing a thousand words that are structural and focused and advance the project, then go have a nice bath and text my friends pictures of my cat. my work day’s less than half as long and infinitely more productive.
(and in case you’re imagining those 10k misery files were some kind of De Profundis, no, they were mostly porn.)
i am a MUCH better writer now that i’m on meds that work and have had some years of good counselling.
you won’t lose your creativity if you get help, darlings. that’s YOU. it’s not the disease. it’s yours. you’re the artist. what makes you better isn’t suffering, it’s practice, and you’ll practice more and easier when you’re happier.
This whole idea that suffering is what makes the art is baffling to me. I do MUCH LESS work, let alone quality work, when I’m hitting a low point. It’s like creating anything is a struggle. When I’m doing well is when I can freely write and paint and craft, and the quality of work is present.
Here’s your reminder that relationships are extremely difficult. the delusion that you are going to find that person who you move into a small apartment with and read books all day and cook naked and cuddle with and play footsie under the table with is a gross romanticization of reality.
You’re going to have great times in a relationship. You’re going to go on fun dates and have great sex and hot make out sessions. But you’re also going to fight. You’re going to be in that weird stage where you like them more than they like you or vice versa and that’s going to hurt. You’re going to have to deal with jealousy and insecurity. You will have to deal with boredom in the relationship. You’re going to be too busy for them or accidentally hurt them. And you are going to have to deal with a few break ups before you find that right one.
A relationship is not going to solve all of your problems. It’s not going to suddenly make you happy. It isn’t easy. They are much harder than being single. Relationships are an unbelievable amount of work and effort and compromise and it’s not always going to be perfect. But the effort you put into it is what make it worth it. Because you fought and worked hard for this person and hopefully they did the same for you. So remember that.
My complete and total inability to keep anything clean or tidy for any amount of time is a symptom of my depression. I may never be able to do this. It’s important that I remember that and forgive myself when I clean something out (like my car) and it ends up trashed within a week.
Depression IS A DISABILITY. Requiring accommodations is okay.
Medications don’t make you better, they don’t cure your depression. They serve as an aid. Their purpose is to help you get to everyone else’s minimal level of functioning.
Depression can cycle through periods of inactivity. This doesn’t mean it’s gone away.
The reason I don’t feel like other people understand me is because … well … other people DON’T understand me. They can’t. They don’t have my disability.
Paranoia is par for the course.
Depression can and will interfere with your physical mobility. Forgive yourself when you can’t physically do something.
It’s entirely possible that I may never be able to live by myself. I can’t take care of myself. I need help to do it. And that’s okay.
As someone who suffers from depression and who experiences all these things as well I think this is important and needs to be reblogged. Depression is a very difficult thing, not only for people who suffer from it, but for everyone who knows a depressed person. My family doesn’t know how to deal with it, my friends try their very best to support me and I have tried to pretend I was fine until I was in ninth grade.
Everything makes so much more sense
Depression is a disease of the brain. The brain is an organ. When organs are not functioning properly, you are advised to see a doctor and get help. So why is it so hard to understand that the brain can suffer as well, and that we need help for it?
The brain controls the body. A sick brain means a sick body.
…. Shit.
Don’t disregard it as just sadness. Depression is life threatening.
The day I rebuked someone for saying “depression is in your head” with the comeback “Yes. And there’s an organ in your head called the brain – or at least in MY head, sounds to me like you don’t have one at the present moment – and a brain is a physical component of the body, therefore depression is a Physical ailment”…
that day was the day I took my first step toward accepting it as a disability and forgiving myself for having to live with something so stigmatized
and;
when people attribute depression to being “all in your head,” what they’re really doing is connecting your illness to an expectation of sufferers being virtuous and having enough willpower, almost making it an issue of personal integrity, as if fostering and growing those is the only – or even the most effective – “cure,” and if you’re weak in those areas and not persevering hard enough, then it’s a moral failing
it’s not
My former boss once asked me if I was sure the depression wasn’t “only” in my head.
And I said, “Yes. That’s why they call it a mental illness.”
Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Holy cow, so y’all. A lot of us have sensory issues. A friend of mine has a toddler who is basically me when it comes to this sorta thing. A lot of OTs recommend weighted blankets but those are 1. expensive to try (I mean WHAT IF THEY DON’T WORK?) 2. HOT.
Now, I haven’t tried these myself because after decades of trial and error I have found what works for me (and I’m claustrophobic…so these frighten me as much as they fascinate lol), but I will tell you that my friend is RAVING about them on facebook. Her toddler has been sleeping through the night finally without getting under his fitted sheet with all his stuffed animals and blankets) and he is taking actual naps. A weighted blanket didn’t work for them (and they were fortunate to be able to borrow one), but these are much more economical.
That’s right. 40 bucks compared to the hundred plus I see for most weighted blankets (and those aren’t even adult sized).
Now, we know tumblr doesn’t like to allow linked posts in the search results so if y’all could pass this around that would be great. These sheets have already changed the life of a family I know, I’m sure they’d help others.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often find it difficult
to look others in the eyes. This avoidance has typically been
interpreted as a sign of social and personal indifference, but reports
from people with autism suggests otherwise. Many say that looking others
in the eye is uncomfortable or stressful for them – some will even say
that “it burns” – all of which points to a neurological cause. Now, a
team of investigators based at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
at Massachusetts General Hospital has shed light on the brain
mechanisms involved in this behavior. They reported their findings in a Nature Scientific Reports paper.
“The
findings demonstrate that, contrary to what has been thought, the
apparent lack of interpersonal interest among people with autism is not
due to a lack of concern,” says Nouchine Hadjikhani, MD, PhD, director
of neurolimbic research in the Martinos Center and corresponding author
of the new study. “Rather, our results show that this behavior is a way
to decrease an unpleasant excessive arousal stemming from overactivation
in a particular part of the brain.”
The key to this research
lies in the brain’s subcortical system, which is responsible for the
natural orientation toward faces seen in newborns and is important later
for emotion perception. The subcortical system can be specifically
activated by eye contact, and previous work by Hadjikhani and colleagues
revealed that, among those with autism, it was oversensitive to effects
elicited by direct gaze and emotional expression. In the present study,
she took that observation further, asking what happens when those with
autism are compelled to look in the eyes of faces conveying different
emotions.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),
Hadjikhani and colleagues measured differences in activation within the
face-processing components of the subcortical system in people with
autism and in control participants as they viewed faces either freely or
when constrained to viewing the eye-region. While activation of these
structures was similar for both groups exhibited during free viewing,
overactivation was observed in participants with autism when
concentrating on the eye-region. This was especially true with fearful
faces, though similar effects were observed when viewing happy, angry
and neutral faces.
The findings of the study support the
hypothesis of an imbalance between the brain’s excitatory and inhibitory
signaling networks in autism – excitatory refers to neurotransmitters
that stimulate the brain, while inhibitory refers to those that calm it
and provide equilibrium. Such an imbalance, likely the result of diverse
genetic and environmental causes, can strengthen excitatory signaling
in the subcortical circuitry involved in face perception. This in turn
can result in an abnormal reaction to eye contact, an aversion to direct
gaze and consequently abnormal development of the social brain.
In
revealing the underlying reasons for eye-avoidance, the study also
suggests more effective ways of engaging individuals with autism. “The
findings indicate that forcing children with autism to look into
someone’s eyes in behavioral therapy may create a lot of anxiety for
them,” says Hadjikhani, an associate professor of Radiology at Harvard
Medical School. “An approach involving slow habituation to eye contact
may help them overcome this overreaction and be able to handle eye
contact in the long run, thereby avoiding the cascading effects that
this eye-avoidance has on the development of the social brain.”
The
researchers are already planning to follow up the research. Hadjikhani
is now seeking funding for a study that will use magnetoencephalography
(MEG) together with eye-tracking and other behavioral tests to probe
more deeply the relationship between the subcortical system and eye
contact avoidance in autism.
“So now that neurotypical scientists have said so, can we stop forcing Autistic people to – For fuck’s sake.”
ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this. you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.
humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.
i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy.
i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet.
it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more.
have a cookie.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
3. Two good quotes by Kurt Vonnegut: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve
got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of,
babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
And: “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do
not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your
sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may
disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
hello! I don’t know if anyone has already made a post about this before, but I just stumbled upon this app made specifically for when you’ve gone into a nonverbal anxiety attack!!!
it was made by Jeroen De Busser who is an autistic computer science student.
the app is really easy to use! all you do is open it and hand your phone to someone you need to communicate with during an attack but physically cannot, and it shows this cool little alert for the person to read, and then it takes them to an easy to use chat (that looks a lot like texting! except both of you are communicating using the same device).
the alert message is completely customizable and you can have it say whatever you need!
the app is called Emergency Chat and it’s available in the Apple Store and google play store.
I highly recommend it to anyone who might need it 🙂
OH MY GOD?!?!?? BOOST
That’s so bootiful!
thank you so much for this because i never know what to do when i cant talk to people and they just start trying to ask me questions and its really hard to force myself to say i cant talk and stuff. im definately getting this right now
Holding the Bowl 