@only-knives / only-knives.tumblr.com
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Hey! We're The Twilight System. We're a bunch of disabled queers who are surviving complex trauma. We have ~30 conditions, and funnily enough there's ~30 of us that we know of, too.
We'll be using this blog to share our experiences and thoughts, while reblogging things that help us or otherwise make us happy.
More about us below:
Being chronically ill is like
“It’s fine”
“It’s fine”
“It’s fine”
*complete mental breakdown because you can’t do this anymore*
“It’s fine”
they don't make staying up until 3am fun and exciting like they used to
me: i dont have a dissociative disorder
also me: *relapses on opioids because weed lowers the dissociative barriers too much and last time i tried it when i was in denial i ended up having a violent dissociative flashback*
this is fine. i hope she dies. i hope she dies a miserable and lonely death. who does that to a child.
welp. i was able to go a bit over 3 months without using drugs (aside from weed and nicotine). but i'm not going to beat myself up. i know i did it tonight because i just couldn't cope anymore. and i know i'm capable of recovering i just. yeah. this is too much =/ and um. to say the least...
harm reduction saves lives :')
we are so confused. i don't know. i don't understand anything that just happened. it's like. we all kept fighting for our version of reality. and now none of us know if we exist. and we each have different reasons for why we don't exist. and now we don't know who each other are. i don't even know if one person is typing this or what. i straight up just don't know.
I feel like ODD being an official disorder in the DSM should be the thing that makes everyone go “hm” about how psychology is practiced
[looking a child directly in the eye] i diagnose you with Shitty Bitch Syndrome. this makes it legal to do medieval german tortures to you by the way
cmon man
I work in EMS and we transfer kids to and from psych wards relatively frequently, and I have had multiple occasions had adult staff warn me about certain kids because they’re, like, bad, and it’s normally over petty shit like name calling. Almost every time we get these kids, I look at their CHART and they’re diagnosed with ODD.
When I get them in the back of the ambulance, I usually try to talk to them. I always try to be nice and respectful to all my patients, but especially these kids, and they usually warm up to me! I can’t think of a single time one of these kids has been an issue with me and I’ve been doing this for a while.
Depending on the length of the trip (some can be multiple hours), they’ll start telling me about their life. And each and every time, it’s exceedingly obvious that the adults in their life are failing them in significant ways.
For example (TW: description of child abuse), I once encountered a real young kid that told me that his mom and stepdad were doing drugs around him, beating him, and locking him out of the house and threatening not to take him back after he got out of the hospital. He said he’s told multiple other adults and that nothing had ever gotten done about it. He was real sweet with me, wanted to watch cat videos with me, and didn’t give me a single but of trouble. I did, for the record, report this- I’m a mandatory reporter but honestly I would have done it anyway. He gave me a hug at the end of the trip and thanked me for listening to him. I don’t know what happened to him after that. (End TW)
Not every story is quite that severe, but in every single one it’s clear that the kid has needs that are not being met or outright denied in some cases, and/or they just are not getting any kind of respect or autonomy from the people in their lives and are likely not being taken seriously by adults. And they are virtually never a problem with me after I have treated them with the same dignity and respect I would for an adult.
Now, full disclaimer, I’m not any kind of specialist and don’t work specifically in mental health, childhood development, or child psychology. I don’t have any degrees or any qualifications to diagnose anyone with anything, and I’m only in contact with these kids for a couple of hours at most. I’m just mentioning a correlation I’ve noticed in my experience, but my experience is limited and I do have biases and other pitfalls in my worldview like everyone else. I’m sure there are many with more ethos on the subject than me who have a better understanding and more insights than I do and many of them may disagree with me outright. This is just my experience.
But my experience with the healthcare system in regards to mental health, especially with these kids, has certainly changed how I view behavioral health as an institution. There’s great practitioners out there, and there’s things in it that I think are absolutely valid and performed with care. But there’s even more aspects of it that I think should be questioned or thrown out entirely. And this is one of those things.
I’d have to actually go into the research / literature / studies used to justify ODD as a diagnosis since it’s one of those things I’ve only looked at from a non-diagnostic mental health worker and as a peer in the mental health system, but I just wanted to 100% second @venturingbone with those experiences as someone who works in the mental health facilties that receive kids like that. In my time I think I’ve only really seen ONE kid w/ ODD that didn’t have an obvious and apparent “adults in my life are / have failed me”.
I’d have to read more into it to actually firmly and confidently say “This diagnosis should be thrown out” but from a non-diagnostic professional lens and from a peer lens, I agree that diagnosis should be thrown out
“Oh how do you stay positive when the world is so awful how can you stay positive when our lives are falling apart-“ SPITE!!!!! ITS SPITE GODDAMN IT!!! REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE ANGRY AT THE WORLD AS A TEENAGER?? THAT KID WAS RIGHT AND YES IT FUCKING SUCKS AND NO, ITS NOT FAIR, SO YOU HAVE TO KEEP TRYING TO MAKE IT FAIR!!!!
IT GETS BETTER!!!
I WILL MAKE IT GET BETTER
Can I be so for real with you?
I work in the medical field, not as a practitioner, but as a back end billing specialist.
I deal a lot with insurance companies, usually because they have denied a claim.
Its my job to fight insurance companies, so I see a lot of people's medical records to use as proof for why something was done a certain way in relation to treating my patient.
So I've seen a lot of stuff.
Bodies are whack. We are constantly learning new things about humans and how they function and malfunction.
So the fact that you present doesn't "fit" the very narrow very strict and specific way insurance companies have delegated diagnoses is actually quite normal. Lots of people don't fit in the tiny insurance box of what is a proper human with a proper disability/disorder.
That's why I have a job.
So don't give up on yourself because someone somewhere said no.
Lots of love to all of you.
🥺 thank you, this means a lot to us. sometimes we call the DSM an "overglorified insurance manual" lol... but we lose sight of that often. it's a relief to be reminded that we're not alone in this.
