Aros with disabilities

[Natkat]

43 minutes ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

I definitely condone doing whats comfortable! if anyone doesn't want eye contact then they shouldn't have too. I felt bad because, the way that I sat down, the guy had to shift in his seat, I wish I'd figured out to shift my own body angle before i forced him too, sigh.

 

 we all have different experiences. I've been purposefully trying to make more eye contact, like over the past several years, and I can actually do it in conversation now. it makes me kind of sad tho, how much more people are smiley and energetic when I'm looking them in the eye regularly during a conversation. that shouldn't have to be a required thing at all. I should have had to even bothered learning to tolerate eye contact, I always liked not having to look people in the eye tbh. 

 

 

I guess what i'd do is, I'd first look people in the eye briefly as I finished a thought, as if to pass the baton to them, or as if to affirm their emotional reaction to my idea. it was weird but after awhile it was habit. and from there I forget how I did it, and I wouldn't say I'm 100% comfortable with eye contact, I am actually uncomfortable with it, but I'd move from there. 

 

that's what I did and it helped. and like I said, if you don't like eye contact then all power to you. tbh, it makes me happy that you were able to be in a good school environment and, I feel like, considering what they say about google's work environment, and considering the various job placement groups, and the mentorship program, I feel very positive right now about people being able to get in healthy environments. 

 

7

 

I can do eye contact if I really want to but its kinda exhausting for me and I also get annoyed about "feeling I have to do it so people will like me" so I feel like refusing it so they can "like me for me and not only when I doesnt look autistic" but its difficult cause in some situations its important that I dont "appear autistic and do eye contact (like with job interviuws)" + its start to become a habit that I try eye contact despite the fact I dont like it since I grew up and wanted to please neurotypicals and appear "normal". 

 

I tend to get in problem if I look complitely away or I look at peoples neck/chest (because well 50% of people around me are female and get angry at a guy staring at their boobs, I wont blame them..) people said I should look at their nose but it doesnt help at all. the only thing beside doing the up and down eye contact is to look just right beside their face allitle to the left or right.. I think usunally people dont notice you are actually not looking dirrectly towards them unless they are standing really close. 

but yeah I think I can cope with most situations but I still get annoyed when people comment on my eye contact or gets angry for not having enough eye contact and so.

----------

I dont know if it was a good enviroment. it had its good and bad sides to it but being autistic was obviously more easy because well everyone was autistic no big deal, compared to when you go to a typical school where neither students or teachers knows what autism mean.

[iigolden]

I've got G.A.D (it means Generalized Anxiety Disorder), but it's okay, I am proud for who I am! 

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

@natkat it's kind of funny. mostly embarrassing. but I actually recognize women by their breasts more often then not

also, male chests too, of course, although it's a little inconsistent because of winter season attire. with women, I can tell it's their bust through winter attire more often, then I can with a man's bust. chest? can you call a man's chest a bust?

 

and more often, actually, the waist and hip is very identifying of individuals. humans are actually very uniquely expressive with many parts of their body, with their entire stance as a whole even. and even though it's a little more difficult with the shoulder than the rest of their stance and figure, I actually usually check people's shoulders first when trying to recognize them because the shoulders change the least over time. 

 

I actually ran into an old friend from high school and I didn't recognize him at first. everything about him was different, his hair, his face, his BMI was soo much lower than it was in high school, and he was taller too, he must have had a late growth spurt. but the second he said his name, I recognized his shoulders. they hadn't changed at all. both their parametrics I guess, but also the way he held them in his posture. 

 

 

 

buutt... all that being said. a person's face? I am hopeless at recognizing them. put your hair up in front of you and I feel shocked and shy because you look like a stranger it takes me a few minutes, even an hour, to get used to someone changing their face/hair. 

[Jade]

On 11/3/2016 at 1:47 PM, Natkat said:

I felt like asking. does anyone feel its more difficult comming out as aro when you are disable?

 

I feel that since people with disabilities tend to be desexualised and deromantizised that in one way it can be "expected from us that we are aro or ace, but on the other hand people may just think we are so due to the disability or we are holding ourself back because of it?

 

also specially those with mental disabilities or illness may get told this is just a part of that. 

Oh gosh, yes, this! I'm already dehumanized enough for being crazy, being aro is such a double-whammy... And there's the fact that I have a lot of Scary Neurodivergencies™ and I'm an alloaro (both stereotyped to be monstrous, predatory). I'm the sweetest person but nobody would believe it because of how my brain is.

 

On 11/4/2016 at 2:17 PM, Natkat said:

I tend to feel too queer for the autistic comunity and too autistic for the lgbt comunity. -__-

yup. I'm not autistic, but I don't know if I've ever found a place that accepted all of me; I feel like I'm too aro for lesbians, too lesbian for the aros, too crazy for the overall lgbt community, too queer for the disability community. My identity gets chopped up into pieces and it's so rare for me to find a community where I can be open about all of it. 

 

I never had issues with eye contact, personally, but I wish everyone was allowed to act however they wanted as long as they're not hurting others. Like, this:

On 11/4/2016 at 2:17 PM, Natkat said:

it will even hurt my grades if I dont do enough eye contact during the exame

is really really sad to me. Your grades shouldn't be based on how 'normal' you look! Like, that's just....chilling.

 

Even though I never had issues with eye contact, I had issues with other parts of being normal--talking to "myself" (actually hallucinations), being too sensitive, and stimming (flapping my hands, chewing on EVERYTHING, rocking back and forth...) were the main ones. For years and years I steadily destroyed myself in an attempt to look more NT. I'm slowly getting more comfortable being my crazy self, and it's amazing--but at the same time, it opens me up to more and more discrimination and hate. I agree very much with Teagan:

On 11/4/2016 at 2:25 PM, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

 I've been purposefully trying to make more eye contact, like over the past several years, and I can actually do it in conversation now. it makes me kind of sad tho, how much more people are smiley and energetic when I'm looking them in the eye regularly during a conversation. that shouldn't have to be a required thing at all. I should have had to even bothered learning to tolerate eye contact, I always liked not having to look people in the eye tbh. 

I've forced myself for so so many years to act neurotypical and hated myself for not being neurotypical, but honestly, it shouldn't be a required thing. Disabled people shouldn't be required to do things that make them uncomfortable for the sake of the people around them.

 

On 11/4/2016 at 3:31 PM, Natkat said:

I can do eye contact if I really want to but its kinda exhausting for me and I also get annoyed about "feeling I have to do it so people will like me" so I feel like refusing it so they can "like me for me and not only when I doesnt look autistic" but its difficult cause in some situations its important that I dont "appear autistic and do eye contact (like with job interviuws)" + its start to become a habit that I try eye contact despite the fact I dont like it since I grew up and wanted to please neurotypicals and appear "normal". 

Yup. Very much so. Balancing "need to avoid ableism, be liked, get jobs, stay closeted/pass as NT" with "feeling obligated to do things you don't like, that exhaust you or hurt you, etc".... it's hard.

 

 

internet hugs for everyone here. y'all are great, whether you pass as abled/nt all the time or whether you can never pass at all or anything in between. 

(now time to try and believe that of myself... )

[Natkat]

Jade your post makes me happy.

im not alone with these feelings, and yes I relate to the evil sterotype as well. despite the fact i'm a pretty calm person 98% of the time I have been into a few situations where I been viewed as special aggresive. funny enough those situations had always been when the other person knew I was disable and never when they thought I was NT. I heard other simular stories from people with mental illness or disabilities. 

 

being aro I was worried this would go even future into my evil stereotype in the way that it would affect my work. at the time I was doing volunteer work so I worried if I was open about it it would hurt my cases of what I was doing. Now I arnt really that active anymore so I dont worry so much about what people think of me anymore. 

------

oh and I also stim alot actually and I try to unlearn how you arnt supposed to stim.

most of my stimming are social acceptable like I walk alot bite pencils and touch my bracelet. its not something people tend to notice that much. however when im at home I walk around in circels for hours to music, flapping my hands and I know I look REALLY wierd XD.. So I am kinda nervous about living together with people who seams "fine with me" cause.. like what will they think of me if they see me while im at home and stim alot more? would they threat me differently then?

 

living with people are like one of my biggest concern being disable, my biggest concern is school and work..-__- I just began to realise that I may NEVER be able to have a fulltime job since I find it hard enough having a full time study. Its really hard to accept cause I know it means its going to be quit difficult for me.

----

[UncommonNonsense]

I fake eye contact!  I learned this trick way back in grade 4, when I had (an abusive) 'teacher' (not worth a spit into a waterfall at actually teaching, but incredibly good at playing local politics).  He used to physically grab my head and restrain me in order to force eye contact on me if I did not meet and hold his gaze of my own accord.  He would shove his face right up to mine and use his eyes to cause me distress.

 

I find eye contact terribly invasive and overpowering.  He knew this and used forced eye contact as another way to abuse me.  So I began focusing my eyes on a spot between his eyes just above the bridge of his nose or on one of his eyebrows when he demanded eye contact.  He could never tell that I wasn't actually looking in his eyes - and believe me, if he could have noticed that, he'd have gone into an absolute rage... so no rage = no way of telling I wasn't actually making eye contact!  It's even more convincing when there is some space between me and the other person.  

 

I've been doing it ever since.  The only people I actually make real, authentic eye contact with are those who are very close to me, who I trust completely.

 

 

[DannyFenton123]

So I have very, very sensitive hearing (part of why I believe I have a case of autism) and yesterday was pretty rough. In art we're doing a somewhat strange unit on constructing musical instruments, and this involves power tools. Very loud, jarring power tools; the whole week I kept flinching and attracting strange looks every time one of them went off, and I was absolutely exhausted by the time I left the room.

 

Now I was trying to avoid using these tools, so I brought in cardboard stuff and sat at the back of the room where it was the quietest. My teacher noticed this, and yesterday she brought in this metal box because the cardboard wouldn't make a good instrument or something. Really nice of her, but it did require me to go to the front, stand directly behind some very loud power tools and actually use them.

 

I was standing there for ages before she was available to show me how to use them, and she definitely noticed just how badly it was affecting me. The very nice teacher she is, she didn't make me use the power tools and let me use a knife to cut a hole in the metal. So that was nice, but I was still an absolute wreck by the time the class was over. Seriously, I signed up for quiet drawing classes, not this!

 

1 hour ago, UncommonNonsense said:

I fake eye contact!  I learned this trick way back in grade 4, when I had (an abusive) 'teacher' (not worth a spit into a waterfall at actually teaching, but incredibly good at playing local politics).  He used to physically grab my head and restrain me in order to force eye contact on me if I did not meet and hold his gaze of my own accord.  He would shove his face right up to mine and use his eyes to cause me distress.

 

I find eye contact terribly invasive and overpowering.  He knew this and used forced eye contact as another way to abuse me.  So I began focusing my eyes on a spot between his eyes just above the bridge of his nose or on one of his eyebrows when he demanded eye contact.  He could never tell that I wasn't actually looking in his eyes - and believe me, if he could have noticed that, he'd have gone into an absolute rage... so no rage = no way of telling I wasn't actually making eye contact!  It's even more convincing when there is some space between me and the other person.  

 

I've been doing it ever since.  The only people I actually make real, authentic eye contact with are those who are very close to me, who I trust completely.

 

 

That sounds absolutely awful!

 

My dad forces eye contact, though in a much less extreme way. If he notices I'm not looking at him, he'll point two fingers at his eyes and  angrily shout something like, 'Hey, over here!' Ironically, he's one of the only people I actively fake eye contact with now; I stare just to the right of his face.

[UncommonNonsense]

3 hours ago, DannyFenton123 said:

So I have very, very sensitive hearing (part of why I believe I have a case of autism) and yesterday was pretty rough. In art we're doing a somewhat strange unit on constructing musical instruments, and this involves power tools. Very loud, jarring power tools; the whole week I kept flinching and attracting strange looks every time one of them went off, and I was absolutely exhausted by the time I left the room.

 

Now I was trying to avoid using these tools, so I brought in cardboard stuff and sat at the back of the room where it was the quietest. My teacher noticed this, and yesterday she brought in this metal box because the cardboard wouldn't make a good instrument or something. Really nice of her, but it did require me to go to the front, stand directly behind some very loud power tools and actually use them.

 

I was standing there for ages before she was available to show me how to use them, and she definitely noticed just how badly it was affecting me. The very nice teacher she is, she didn't make me use the power tools and let me use a knife to cut a hole in the metal. So that was nice, but I was still an absolute wreck by the time the class was over. Seriously, I signed up for quiet drawing classes, not this!

 

That sounds absolutely awful!

 

My dad forces eye contact, though in a much less extreme way. If he notices I'm not looking at him, he'll point two fingers at his eyes and  angrily shout something like, 'Hey, over here!' Ironically, he's one of the only people I actively fake eye contact with now; I stare just to the right of his face.

 

Yep, you never want to assume art class is going to be quiet, orderly, or even bloodless (long story I won't go into here for brevity's sake).  I can remember a few similar classes of my own that involved not only bizarre class subjects but also bizarre teachers!  One of those latter ended up making me feel totally alienated from my own style and causing me to become totally disillusioned with art for years, leading me to pursue computer science courses a lot more, choose an IT job after university, and stop drawing for years after having her as my prof... she was an absolute train wreck of an instructor who believed that all art had to be some formless abstract mess for it to have any artistic value at all - and as my style has always leaned more to the side of photorealism, you can imagine how well my work was received (and marked!) by that particular prof!

 

Musical instruments... ye gods, what a sensory nightmare in itself!  Having to add power tools (and the ear-shattering din they make when combined with metal!) is just adding insult to injury!

 

Yes, that 4th grade teacher was awful.  The forced eye contact was just one of his ways of abusing the five of us he picked on that year (he choose a handful of kids out of every years class, always misfit or special needs kids, to abuse and bully).  He also used yard sticks to hit us across the back and buttocks, used rulers to hit our hands, he slapped, shoved, hit, and punched us, verbally abused us, encouraged classmates to bully us, and I fully believe that the only reason the abuse didn't become sexual was that we 5 banded together and never allowed any one of our number to be alone with him - if one of us got in trouble and got detention, another of us would intentionally get in trouble to also be given detention just so no one kid would ever be left to deal with him alone.  We had no idea what sexual abuse was at that point - we were 9, and it was the 1980s - that stuff wasn't talked about! - but we all had a bad feeling that something terrible would happen to any kid left alone with him.  We tried to protect each other.

 

It isn't easy when the people who should be the most accepting and supportive of you are trying to force you to change into something you're just *not*... I look at it this way... There's this dog lover.  He loves dogs.  Loves their behaviours and their social nature.  But this guy is given a cat.  His cat is typical of cats.  The cat is much less social than dogs, and he socializes like a cat.  Instead of jumping all over the guy, slobbering all over him, and following him around all the time, the cat occasionally rubs up against his shins, waits to be pet, and purrs.  So the guy starts trying to train his cat to act like a dog.  He rewards 'dog' behaviours and punishes the cat for acting like a cat.  

Do you think he's going to actually get a dog out of all that? 

 

Nope.  He's going to get a massively psychologically damaged, neurotic, depressed cat who no longer knows what exact kind of creature it really is. 

 

Autistic people are like cats.  Non-autistics are akin to dogs.  We socialize like cats.  No amount of pressure, training, 'intervention', ABA, shock 'therapy', medication, psychotherapy, family demands, or punishment will ever make us into non-autistics.  All it will do is damage us in terrible, lasting ways, ways that have driven far too many of us into suicide.  I believe that the focus should be on helping us be the best autistic people we can be, not in trying to forcibly remake us into non-autistics.  

 

Er... sorry about climbing up on my soapbox there!   Rant over!

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

16 hours ago, Natkat said:

J. however when im at home I walk around in circels for hours to music, flapping my hands and I know I look REALLY wierd XD..

omg mee tooo! we should totally make it into a dance

9 hours ago, UncommonNonsense said:

 

Autistic people are like cats. 

actually, totes. there's a kiddie's book called, "all cats have Asperger syndrome" and when I read it. I was like, OMG I feel so validated right now. I totally want a copy tbh. 

[Natkat]

17 minutes ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

omg mee tooo! we should totally make it into a dance

actually, totes. there's a kiddie's book called, "all cats have Asperger syndrome" and when I read it. I was like, OMG I feel so validated right now. I totally want a copy tbh. 

 hehe.. im not alone.. awsome..

--

oh and this is why I love cats i kinda get them.

[UncommonNonsense]

7 minutes ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

omg mee tooo! we should totally make it into a dance

actually, totes. there's a kiddie's book called, "all cats have Asperger syndrome" and when I read it. I was like, OMG I feel so validated right now. I totally want a copy tbh. 

 

Whoa.... am I ever out of the loop!  Of course, I haven't read kids' books since I was a kid, and that was 25+ years ago.  Maybe I ought to go replace my card for the local library (I lost it about 10 years ago) and see what kind of cool new (to me anyway) titles there are out there.

 

And yeah, the flappy, spinny, tiptoe-ey, rocky, jumpy, flicky stimmy dance really should be a thing.  It would make me laugh like mad if such an autistic dance actually became honestly popular with NTs.  We'd actually be able to go dancing and not stick out like a sore thumb like we usually do!

[Natkat]

9 hours ago, UncommonNonsense said:

Autistic people are like cats.  Non-autistics are akin to dogs.  We socialize like cats.  No amount of pressure, training, 'intervention', ABA, shock 'therapy', medication, psychotherapy, family demands, or punishment will ever make us into non-autistics.  All it will do is damage us in terrible, lasting ways, ways that have driven far too many of us into suicide.  I believe that the focus should be on helping us be the best autistic people we can be, not in trying to forcibly remake us into non-autistics.  

 

Er... sorry about climbing up on my soapbox there!   Rant over!

no prob I get so angry over these things as well..

expecially because for many its a very social acceptable opinion that we should be threated in such a way that we have to make other confortable and ignore our own disconfort, and some of these people even tend to be parents or other adults you in an ideal world would had fate in but who just play the "im an ally so you cant say anything to me haha" card.

[UncommonNonsense]

1 minute ago, Natkat said:

no prob I get so angry over these things as well..

expecially because for many its a very social acceptable opinion that we should be threated in such a way that we have to make other confortable and ignore our own disconfort, and some of these people even tend to be parents or other adults you in an ideal world would had fate in but who just play the "im an ally so you cant say anything to me haha" card.

 

You know, there's something sadistic and perverse about expecting the people who have the most difficulty with conformity, fitting in, and change to do *all* the conforming, learning foreign (to us!) ways of socializing, and changing our behaviours.  If life were fair, the NTs would have to meet us at least half-way and learn how to avoid eye contact, learn to stim, and be forced to pick up an intense, life-dominating special interest (er.. one that isn't sex and romance - NTs already have that one!) so they can fit in with *us* better!  I'm tired of always having to be on the side that's putting forth all the effort!

[Mark]

On 06/11/2016 at 1:47 AM, DannyFenton123 said:

So I have very, very sensitive hearing (part of why I believe I have a case of autism) and yesterday was pretty rough. In art we're doing a somewhat strange unit on constructing musical instruments, and this involves power tools. Very loud, jarring power tools; the whole week I kept flinching and attracting strange looks every time one of them went off, and I was absolutely exhausted by the time I left the room.

I also have sensitive hearing.
It's human generated sounds, especially voices, which bother me. At times I can hear someone talking 10m away as clearly as if they were next to me.

Mechanical sounds tend to be much less of an issue for me.

[UncommonNonsense]

20 hours ago, Mark said:

I also have sensitive hearing.
It's human generated sounds, especially voices, which bother me. At times I can hear someone talking 10m away as clearly as if they were next to me.

Mechanical sounds tend to be much less of an issue for me.

 

Isn't it amazing how different we can be while still sharing some of the same issues/diagnoses?

 

I'm sound sensitive too, and mine are a mix of biological and mechanical sounds.  For me, my worst triggers are barking dogs (esp. smaller dogs - that shrill, sharp, penetrating, repetitive yapping!  Just hateful, that is!), thumping bass music, unusually loud engine noises (think transport trucks using engine brakes and glasspack mufflers), vacuum cleaners and other similar equipment (leaf blowers, etc.), the hum produced by fluorescent lighting and, to a lesser extent, the hum produced by electricity in general, the general din produced by a lot of people talking in a confined space (I am not good at large meetings, conventions, and dealing with crowds), and the noises some people make while eating.  

 

There's a reason that despite me thinking that I'm starting to experience some hearing loss (decades of using headphones and loving my music LOUD are catching up to me), I have not sought to do anything about it.  If anything, the fact that I'm getting a bit hard of hearing has been beneficial for me, since it has made my auditory sensitivity issues a lot more tolerable.

[LunarSeas]

Chronic migraines, depression, anxiety, and my therapist just mentioned I had ptsd. 

 

So yep, treated like a hysterical junkie by every gp ever. :v 

[James White]

 

ADHD is the reason I know I'm aromantic. I'll explain.

 

The defining characteristic of ADHD is a mutant reward pathway. The exact neurochemistry behind it is still a bit over my head, but it boils down to this: I value short-term reward more highly than most people. I have less control over what I think or do in the short-term because of that. For example, when I should be working on a history project, I might start thinking about dinosaurs. It isn't because I think procrastinating is a good idea. It's because my subconscious places more value on me thinking about the evolution of feathers than the order of succession for Roman emperors. Without me ever getting to decide against it, dinosaurs suddenly own my brain for the next five minutes. I can logically tell that procrastinating like this has destroyed me time and again, and will continue to do so. However, this gives me very little extra control over the decision of whether or not to procrastinate because my brain does not have a powerful enough system in place to regulate it.

 

Now consider romance. Dating was something that I always logically thought I should do. If people are willing to cite an emotion as their reason to live, it makes logical sense to try and experience that. From what I've seen of many people on this forum, it's common for an aromantic person to pursue that conclusion a while, dating a few people before realizing something is out of place.

For me, however, the story is different. I've never dated because the moment someone gives me that sort of attention, my subconscious blasts me with all the boredom, anxiety, and inability to focus that my disorder is heir to. I can't just ignore the lack of feeling. I can't chalk it up to them "not being the one" and try again. I simply don't have the capacity to ignore that which motivates me. That's what ADHD is all about. Folks like me don't have the option of ignoring things that are truly important to us because the subconscious almost always wins. To me, freedom is more important than companionship or sex. It doesn't matter what pressures people put on me, the result of the decision is fixed. I reliably pick freedom regardless of what I logically conclude is the best option. Five of my friends have expressed feelings for me at some point in my life. Each of them has been qualified, kind, and generally a good person. These are some of my favorite people. In the face of an easy logical answer (saying yes), I rejected every one of them solely due to the obscure feeling of restless dread that my mutation amplified.

 

To this day, I've never once betrayed my romance repulsion, because even when I "knew" that solitude was the incorrect answer, my disorder forced my hand. 

[Ace of Amethysts]

Cerebral palsy, though it`s just stiffness in the legs. That`s all I`ll say for now.

[Ettina]

On 11/4/2016 at 10:38 AM, Mark said:

Even though being aromantic is more common amongst autistic (possibly neuro-diverse in general) people than amongst neuro typical people it's still a minority situation. Even in the "autistic community" I find myself to be one aromantic amongst many alloromantics. It's in aro, solo poly and relationship anarchy spaces that I'm most likely to feel having things in common.       

Do you have stats for that? I think you're probably right (especially since several studies have found that autistic aces are common), but I've searched and found only one study looking at prevalence of aromanticism in NTs, and nothing about how common autistic aros are.

 

Oh, and my disabilities:

Autism

PTSD

Hypermobility

Asthma 

some kind of blood sugar issue 

[anzu2snow]

For mental illness I have:

-Type 2 Bipolar

-PTSD

-Agoraphobia

-Anxiety

-Sexual abuse (I was afraid of men for a while, because of this)

 

For chronic physical illness:

-IBD (not sure if Crohn's or UC. I'll sometimes refer to it as colitis, since my colon seems to be affected the most)

-Eczema (used to be so bad, I scratched until the area bled, and then would rip off layers of skin)

-A genetic skin disease called keratosis pilaris (makes my skin super sensitive, have weird 'pillars' or bumps everywhere, bumps can painfully open)

-Eustachian tube dysfunction in both ears (changes in air pressure hurts, excess fluid and wax, get dizzy easily, etc. Traveling by plane's fun...)

-a weird bleeding issue that doctors don't understand, and I have to use an IUD for. It's like a band-aid, though.

 

The worst thing for me right now is the colitis. I'm in constant pain (can't even sleep because of it), yet I'm supposedly in remission. Apparently, my colon has terrible scarring throughout the entire thing. This can cause pain. They say if it's too damaged or too painful, surgery is one of the best treatments. If I flare again, which most people do, it could damage those areas further. So, I'm contemplating that, yet scared of it.

 

My worst thing used to be with bipolar 2. I was misdiagnosed at first with severe depression. With this type of bipolar, our mania is never 'happy'. Instead, we get irritated easily, have a million thoughts a minute, etc. It's considered to have a lower low than the first one, and we're at high risk for suicide. I was extremely suicidal from when I was 14 up until I was about 24 or 25. I'm surprised I didn't succeed, but glad I didn't now. Anyways, after trying tons of antidepressants, and realizing they didn't work, they realized I had bipolar 2. The meds I'm on are great, keep me stable, balanced, and I haven't had suicidal thoughts since.

[Ace of Amethysts]

@anzu2snow Want some hugs and empathy?