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I'm university student and this is my first time I've properly used reddit, I'm finding it very useful. I'm making a documentary about anxiety I don't suffer from it myself however a lot of people close to me do. I want a deeper understanding I would like to know personal stories good and bad if anyone would be willing to share? Im really interested in PTSD if you have any stories? thankyou

This is a throwaway because I'm pretty ashamed/embarrassed to be asking.

No physical issues but I've got multiple, severe, longstanding mental illnesses and a developmental disorder.

It seems (at least from the people in my own life) that it would be inappropriate to call myself disabled unless I'm entirely unable to work and am receiving federal assistance.

I mean, there are lots of disabled people who do work, right? And I'm currently unemployed (in large part because of my illnesses) but it's not that I can't, it's more that nobody wants to hire me because I have a big gap in my resume from when I was very very sick.

Basically, I'm a youngish person who is physically healthy. I volunteer, I do manual labor under the table, and I could very likely do formal paid labor if someone were willing to hire me. But I am also living with some illnesses that will require careful, lifelong management and that have proven nearly deadly without adequate treatment.

Do I "count"? Would it be ok to call myself disabled? I feel like there probably should be more to disabled/not than my capacity to be traditionally employed, but... it really doesn't seem like that's anyone else in my life's definition, and I'm afraid of coming across as malingering or whiny or lazy.

I am genuinely sorry if this is insulting to anyone.

I'm particularly looking for a webpage because it would be simple and universally accessible for quick uses but I also would love recommendations for a basic TTS program.

This place has been pretty dead lately, but the community is always so awesome, I thought I'd try posting this here first. This turned into a really weirdly long thing, so seriously, feel free to tl;dr the whole thing and just share your experience if you want. I'm sure others experiences could help.

I've had mobility issues for many years now, starting in my early 20s. For a few years, I would be bedridden for a couple weeks at a time. I've had to use wheelchairs at places that rent or lend them, but I never got used to people staring at me and the awkwardness of it.

Then I got slowly better until I just needed a cane unless I was going somewhere big like the airport or certain museums. I still couldn't go for long walks in parks, or into certain places without accessibility.

I didn't care too much though, because I looked so much more normal- I was no longer hunched over in pain. I could even take short trips without a cane! Briefly passing for normal, and losing the 'invisible or glare-at-able' aura I had, was a really refreshing change.

But I pushed too hard and too fast, I guess. Or my body is just mean. I've been mostly bedbound this winter. I have a surgery booked for the end of this month, which I'm terrified of, because I've had such a horrid time with surgeries before.

So it's probably time to get a chair. I could rent one for right after the surgery, but even when I was at my most recent best, I still was limited in where I could go and what I could do. But to me it seems... Like the emotional and life equivalent of "WOMP WOMP WOOOOOOMP"

On one level it seems like giving up. My GP, who has been with me through most of this (though I did try others) has refused to put "permanently disabled" on any of my medical forms, because, as he put it, 'You're young. That might make you give up.' In truth, we have and had absolutely no idea if I'll get better or not. No idea.

That refusal royally fucked me over back when I had just went on medical leave, my husband was working retail, and we had to spend over $1000 a month on medication. I can't even put into words how much that fucked us over. Long story short, due to what my case worker called 'cracks in the system', I wasn't eligible for any financial aid. I had to go to my extremely abusive (and also near poverty line) parents for help and that contributed to an even worse position, and the worst months of my life.

But now, with this upcoming surgery, my GP finally put 'Permanently Disabled' on a form. Too little, far too late. My husband was lucky enough to get a job where he can support both of us- it was pure luck. But now I'm stuck feeling like that's a form of giving up, since it certainly doesn't help me now, and, uh, the doctor basically said that it was giving up.

I'm trying to view the chair as I learned to view my cane- as something that helps me live more, that lets me go places. That thought is why I'm buying one this weekend. But, fuck, it certainly doesn't feel that way yet. It feels like a giant sign that I'll always have to deal with funny looks. Also, if I'm bedridden long enough to gain back the weight I lost, I'll also have assholes assuming again that I need the chair because I'm too fat. Though I was around 230 (iirc) at my heaviest (before treatment for pcos) that was a thoroughly bizarre assumption for several separate people to make. It's just a shit cherry on a shit sundae.

Another thing that keeps worrying me is that I feel like some sort of poseur. It feels in some way like using a wheelchair when I could walk sometimes is an insult to people who need them more. I assume it's not logical, but something about using or buying it seems wrong.

My legs work, I just have severe, debilitating pain when I walk too far. But I theoretically could walk some unknown long distance, if there was a way I could avoid literally collapsing from the pain. Pain... is invisible. Pain is something you pride yourself on pushing through. You can push this pain all you want, but there is no through. I've tried. It ends up with me curled in a ball, unable to breathe or cry the pain is so bad, and traditionally has ended with a trip to the hospital. There's no 'through' this pain, there's just more until I can't go on. But that just doesn't seem good enough. I'm crying just thinking about how pitiful a reason pain is to not walk, when your legs work.

It doesn't help that I have already had able-bodied people I'm acquainted with accusingly eye me up and down and cross their arms, "Where's your cane?" the few times I've been able to go out without one. Chronic conditions wax and wane. Pain waxes and wanes. Of course the people around me have a hard time understanding that- I still don't have a firm grasp on it. I really thought I was just getting better and that I wouldn't need a wheelchair or surgery again, until it waxed again.

For the majority of the time in my life I have been self-aware enough to understand my medical condition/impairment, I have identified to others as being disabled. Most of the time it feels okay but there is sometimes a part of me that recalls my younger days where I was reluctant to identify as such. Before it was to remove myself as much as possible from having a disability but now I feel reluctant for other reasons. Perhaps it is because out of all the terms to describe my state as a human being, that is the one that makes people feel more comfortable when used in conversation or maybe it is for other reasons that I do not entirely understand.

I was hoping that if I searched through this subreddit or in other areas on reddit, I would be able to find some discussion about the use of the term "crip" as empowerment and self-identification in the disabled community. However, my search was disappointing and unsuccessful.

My desire to use the term "crip" (short for crippled) for identifying myself is rooted in the initial discomfort that it often causes the person I'm interacting with but also because I want to take control over a word that has been used to hurt me in the past. I have done a lot of reading about crip theory and the use of the term within the disabled community and pretty much the consensus is that each individual can decide for themselves whether they find the term appropriate or not. As you can see, I labeled this post with a trigger warning because the word has indeed caused much emotional pain for many.

Anyways, I guess the purpose of this post was this:

1.) to open discussion about the use of the term "crip" for disabled individuals to self-identify with

2.) to see what terms other individuals with disabilities use for themselves

Hi,

I'm a writer, and I'm currently working on a sequel to a YA superhero book I wrote last year. Towards the end of the first book, one of the characters is so badly burned that her left arm has to be amputated. I want to keep her a major character in the series, and depict her recovery and rehabilitation as thoughtfully as I can. I'm looking for resources to read about the issues facing people with prosthetic limbs, especially resources about the emotional fallout of such a traumatic injury and the adjustments that a person has to make in their life when something like that happens.

My main concern is that this character's injury takes place in the context of a setting where getting her a prosthetic arm that restores upwards of 80-90% of her functionality is very possible. This, as far as I know, is far more than what modern prosthetic arms can achieve, and so already I'm moving away from the real-world experience of amputees, and I'm concerned that in doing so I may inadvertently repeat some harmful tropes.

A few notes:

• The character in question is a sort of Captain America type hero, with no explicit superpowers but greatly enhanced athleticism.
• Her prosthetic will have explicit downsides. It's heavy, and uncomfortable to wear for more than a few hours. Her dexterity is not as good with her prosthetic hand, and the weight imbalance means she is not as adept a gymnast as she used to be. It can feel temperature and pressure, but not texture. She has difficulty gauging where her left hand is without looking at it, although this is changing slowly as her brain adapts to the neural interface with her arm.
• Her arm has the upside of being able to shoot a grappling hook out of her palm, which I think is a neat idea and also helps her stay relevant on a team that features a lot of capes with very high mobility, but is also one that I'm cautious about because it's the one that seems to get closest to a disability superpower.
• Her self-esteem has taken a hit, since she had a self-image of the experienced one that knew what she was doing, but her overconfidence is what got them into the fight where she lost her arm. She remains, however, the most competent character on the team and is the hero that other capes look up to.

Does this raise any red flags for anyone? Is there any recommended reading you could point me towards? All help appreciated. Thanks!

So I ran out of my massive dose of effexor late last week. I called in on Monday to request a refill. I called again on Wednesday asking what was up, and the nurse on call told me that it takes at least three days for a doctor to return a message, let alone put in a refill (because typing in a refill and hitting 'enter' must take days.) I called back Thursday, freaking out because the withdrawals have started and I'm getting to be a mess. Oh, there is a message for me, but it says I have to physically come in because the original prescribing doc no longer works there. I was losing it, freaking out, crying, you name it. I've been on anxiety meds for the better part of twenty years, why in the fuck do they need to see me for this? The nurse told me not to kill the messenger, so I told her that it wasn't her fault, but I was going without meds, so what did she expect? She was able to schedule me for yesterday, Friday.

I got in with no problems, but when I filled out the questionnaire, my handwriting looked scary to me. It was wobbly and for some sections I just scrawled "N/A" because I couldn't deal with writing things out right then. On the "have you been feeling down lately?" section I scrawled "WITHDRAWING FROM EFFEXOR."

But the nurse who took me back was totally soothing and kind and told me that it was so silly that docs couldn't coordinate refills and made the patient come in all the time. I told her that it was especially bad because I see a different doc every time and none of them will refill each others scripts without seeing me again. She had to do my blood pressure twice, and after soothing me, it dropped about twenty points. She asked if I had checked into "emergency refills" with the pharmacy, and I told her I had done that before but the jackass pharmacy manager was mean to me about it so I wouldn't do it again. She agreed that he was a jackass. (Military medical, it's all in the same building.)

When the doc finally came in, she reviewed my meds, asked if I was okay otherwise, and told me to go to the pharmacy. If she had made a single mention of my weight, drinking or smoking I would have lost my shit right then and there. But she didn't. Just "I'll put in the refill, go ahead and go to the pharmacy now."

It makes me wonder about their policies and whether or not they were nice to me just because they knew I was a loose cannon. Which, to be frank, I was. I could have done anything had anything upset me.

Withdrawing from anxiety pills is the worst. It is everything I hated about pregnancy hormones, which I'm still not sure were hormones or me just being off my meds. Either way, I can't do that shit again. And now I know that for sure.

Thanks for reading my novel, and if you are on anti anxiety meds please try to remember to refill them on time so you don't have to withdraw.

I'm just struggling a bit and wondered if any other SRSters have experiences with it.

My GP prescribed it for fibromyalgia and back spasms but after a week I was so sick with vertigo and fatigue I called my doctor and told her I was stopping it. Has anyone else had a bad experience with it? What other options are there (with anti-inflammatory drugs off the table because I'm allergic) that I can mention to my GP? How do you manage chronic pain without strong painkillers?

I posted this about 5 months back!: http://www.reddit.com/r/SRSDisabilities/comments/1jabdw/i_need_help_but_no_clue_where_to_start_applying/

I just thought I'd update you guys that I finally have Health Insurance thanks to the AHCA/Obamacare! I'm calling Magellan, my local mental health network, to schedule my first appointment with a therapist! When I get my actual card (I just have my insurance number so far, which can get me to mental health, but not a primary care doctor, etc.), I'm going to go to a doctor and get myself checked out and taken care of and start getting my paperwork together for my Cerebral Palsy so I can make a proper Social Security case.

Thanks for all your well wishes and advice!

It's hard sometimes to find like-minded players, and for those on the autism spectrum especially as we don't like to put ourselves out there too often. Come join us in a safe place to get together and form playgroups for any type of game you can come up with :o)

so I raged pretty hard at the prime post about deaf accents. and i screamed at the poop:

Hi. I'm from SRS. Posts like this really illustrate why.

You see, the thing is, I am going deaf. I have a bit in my right and that's it. My mother didn't vaccinate me, didn't take me to doctors, and as a result advanced scarlet fever took out most of my vision and hearing when I was six. It's how Hellen Keller went deaf and blind. I have a lisp. Sometimes I wonder what else I will have by the time the rest of it goes. And it's times like this when I question even being part of the hearing world anymore. Maybe I should just eschew the implants and give up hearing altogether. That way it won't hurt when people make fun of me for turning 360 degrees when (and IF) I hear my name called. No one will think it's funny when I ask someone to repeat themselves twice if I can't see their mouth (the only way I can lip read after all). I'll gain more than a lisp: I'll lose timing. I wonder if implants are the way to go because I don't think there is anything wrong with me. I like signing. I like lip reading. I like other hard of hearing and deaf people. It's not like hearing people really sympathize with me. You just mocked us for trying to meet you halfway. And that's all I have ever gotten from most people when they hear I am hard of hearing: mocked for meeting you all halfway. Even with the little I have, it's like being a side show. Then I might lose more. I'll lose music. I'll have to turn the bass up on every piece of music I "hear." Then I'll lose my rhythm and I won't be able to dance as well anymore. I'll forget sonnets and flutes and morning bird chirps will be replaced by crushing silence. That's what is coming. That's my loss. Many have already lost more than me. But you know? I have never heard of a deaf person mock a hearing person for "signing with an accent." I'm not afraid to go deaf because I don't think anything can be worse than having everything, having all your precious gift, not seeing it slip away like sand, and mocking me and mine for trying to speak your language. I don't pity you. I hate what you stand for. I hate that you think going after SRS means you have the moral high ground when really, you are just a fortunate asshole. You are a Mean Girl. You are ignorant spite. You are deafer than I ever will be. I won't repeat it because it's not true: we don't have a fucking accent. YOU have a listening problem.

why do fully hearing people thinks it's so fucking amusing deaf people try to cope in their world? true, i am not fully deaf yet, but i am getting there and... oddly enough i am getting stubborn about it. i don't know if i want to hear anymore after everything i have learned about deaf culture and from my deaf friends. i'm glad i don't hear the comments made behind my back anymore. i'm glad i know how to sign. i'm glad i notice things in the world and guess what: it's true about your senses making for it. i swear to god my eyesight (which is also piss poor) and my sense of touch has gotten better.

and then some asshole thinks my trying to cope is a fucking accent? he thinks he can own and mock it? like i chose to have advanced scarlet fever and a religious nut mom who let bacteria and pain and rashes and disease take my body away?

sorry if this is misappropriating in any way to any other deaf/hard of hearing people. that is not my intention.

I tend to write a lot, so I'll try to keep this as focused as possible.

I am a white, hetero, middle class, cis woman thus I carry many privileges but I also suffer deeply from mental illness (anxiety, depression, and OCD). In recent years I have tried to become more involved in social justice initiatives, learning about the struggles of oppressed groups and trying to be an advocate and ally. However sometimes I find it difficult to care when my state of mental health is at its low points, which makes me hate myself even more for being a shitty ally (yeah, I know, white guilt, it's stupid). Whenever I feel the need to take better care of myself and put myself first, I question where to draw the line. Sometimes I can't attend workshops, conferences, read articles, learn, listen, or just bear the weight of the world in general because I am in too much pain. I'm not sure if there's a solution to be found or if that's even necessary, but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or thoughts on this that they could share. How can I look at this differently so that I can maximize my own self care, empowerment and recovery without neglecting my social responsibility and vice versa? Yes I am a woman living with a disability but I'm not a person of colour, queer or trans or socioeconomically disadvantaged. Having this kind of mental illness makes it extremely difficult to see my self worth and see the need to care for myself and I feel like I'm never enough and that I'm a bad person and need to do better, but that keeps me stuck in a cycle of inaction where I can't be a good ally even if I want to because I'm hurting too much. Help.

All over Reddit. Every single slightly funny subreddit I visit has jokes about stutterers in their content every now and then, and even the serious ones have them in the comments. I love r/breakingbad, but they CONSTANTLY make fun of Walt Jr. for his stutter. r/HipHopHeads, also one of my favorites, has one of their top posts of all time as "What is Walt Jr.'s favorite rap label?" "M-m-m-m-m-m-Maybach Music." Alright, alright. That one was kind of a funny joke, in context. It's just that it's completely inescapable. It feels like no matter what sub I go on, there will be something, at some point, and people will think it's funny. Maybe it's just that we're by definition not really people who speak out a lot for ourselves (at least in person) that makes us easy targets. I also get why it's kind of funny to someone who doesn't have a stutter. I just get sick of hearing about it so often on my favorite website, one which I go to many times because I feel like I can freely communicate my points and arguments to people without blocking up or getting weird looks. And when I do comment "oh hey, maybe you guys shouldn't make fun of us quite so often, it's already hard enough that it's so pervasive off the internet" I always get a bunch of downvotes, or I get called butthurt or whatever.

I guess it's always been part of our pop culture, just look at Monty Python's Life of Bryan, or the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, both of which use a stutterer as comic relief. Or My Cousin Vinny (the stutterer in that movie is a stutterer in real life, which is crazy to me), Tropical Thunder, a Fish Called Wanda, or the Right Stuff. All portray us as either mentally challenged, deranged, or pathetic. Or my favorite musical artists (I listen to more hip hop than anything, I'm actually starting to rap a little bit, which is cool because I don't stutter when I do rap) who every now and then add in little jokes about stutterers (Capital Steez (RIP) - "I spit more than speech impediments," etc).

So between that, the professors, students, service workers, and other adults who don't really understand what it's like to stutter and still comment on it constantly, I'm just sick of being treated like some comedic object for pop culture to use as an easy target.

/Rant over

I posted a question similar to this over on /r/srsmicroaggressions I've been noticing a lot lately that people will use autism interchangeably with "neckbeard" as an insult for people who are generally less socially equipped than the average person. What I'm curious as to is why? Why is it suddenly ok to just call someone autistic when they're being a horrible person, or just when they don't fit into social norms? Being someone with an autism spectrum disorder myself it particularly bothers me, especially when I see it in ostensibly social justice oriented places.

This thing of mine is all about wrecking my legs. And my teeth, but that really isn't relevant so let's move on.

As I said, wrecking my legs. To the point I have now been on crutches for more of my life than I haven't. And, if that weren't enough, loves to send all kind of pain through them. Laid out in tears wishing everything would go away pain. (and they took my pain clinic away. so there's that) I'm typing a lot, and I will not stop unless I stop myself right now, so I'll cough up that point now.

Does anyone know of any yoga positions/exercises/things yoga people do that would work for something like that? Ive heard yoga can help with the pain and maybe do some strengthening but even the "differently abled oh so brave" yoga I've found has involved quite a bit of things-I-can't-do or are classes you have to, like go to. Where people are.