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  • 292 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Yay, boobies & locks!!

    Do you think the HRT could be making the feelings you describe in your first comment more intense? Female puberty is often a tumultuous time emotionally until the brain acclimatises, even as it brings great relief and many satisfying changes, and fluctuating levels at any time can have a similar effect.

    Be gentle to yourself, and try to do things you find comforting.



  • Not wild at all - who better to help with intelligence than defectors?

    Founder of the school I went to maybe somewhat similar to your idol, having had to flee himself once he spoke out against the regime he’d previously advised on education, then persuaded parents to send their teenagers to him after. It is said the war memorial is one of the few which has British and German in equal measure, so he wasn’t successful beyond keeping his own pupils safe whilst they were still his pupils.

    Wake every day overwhelmed with dread, and the clinging stench of death and misery coating my everything.






  • Because they mostly have no clue that measles is a potentially fatal illness, with potential severe lifelong complications including some which require 24/7/365 full nursing care.

    They think of it as a mild rash with mild flu-y symptoms for a week or two.

    They also have no idea it is so very contagious.

    So though the measles vaccine has an amazing safety & efficacy record, whether singly or as part of the combined MMR, with endless research turfing up no link to autism whatsoever, and carrying only a negligible risk of vaccine injury (none as severe as the complications of measles), those who reject it do so not only out of totally false beliefs about the vaccine, but also out of fully wild misconceptions about the risk of measles.

    Though now the anti-vaxx movement has become such a big thing for a while, they’re all egging each other on with the help of ideological pundits. This combines to create a group highly distrustful of public health organisations and all medical advice on the matter, who are much more resistant to accepting correct information than their vaccine-shy counterparts ever were in the past. It also seems to be true that scary conspiracy theories are comforting to them in a world where serious infections can just catch a person, where autism isn’t something one can simply opt out of - they want simple answers, and everything which debunks that simple wilful ignorance is a threat to their sense of security.



  • Might not even flag up the origin of the term, unless the person queries why it has fallen out of use.

    Mostly because it can lead to them feeling the need to then explain that they didn’t use it with eugenic sympathies, and me needing to reassure them that I knew that they used it in innocence, all of which is a big diversion from the original topic of conversation.

    I feel it easy enough to mention a change in terminology where there’s a good deal of consensus regarding the switch, as there is with Asperger’s & Oriental, but altogether more delicate where members of a group are split on which they prefer for themselves. Not because I find it difficult to acknowledge & move to the language the person I am speaking with prefers, but because I see the blinkers come down when gently explaining to others who want a definitive answer that there is no consensus, and to take it gently themselves.


  • A skilled therapist will be able to assist anyone to use CBT or other modality as a tool, even if they don’t have training or experience specific to that person’s needs.

    Nobody here needs to be told that finding such a therapist is far from a given, and engaging one who is not helpful (or worse) tends to make it hard to convince oneself to try with a new therapist. Run through a few, and the reluctance compounds into aversion.

    That said, I do feel that CBT attracts therapists who have a strong preference for an unreflective practise, and who are more comfortable with very straightforward & commonplace anxieties.

    It doesn’t help that many health services, whether publicly or privately funded, push short courses of CBT as the predominant or sole psychological therapy. Even a highly skilled therapist will struggle to arrive at the point of being of assistance to those whose difficulties don’t map so closely to those most commonly found in the general population, if they have just six 45 minute sessions to work with, and even more so if the person comes to them undiagnosed.





  • Going to come back to this to reflect in more detail to your original post and to this comment, but wanted to quickly float the idea that perhaps these people view you as particularly sound, so when they lay things on you or are just more emotional or intense in front of you, and you seem unphased - neither rushing to condemn them nor scrambling to reassure - they interpret that as disapproval from someone whom they find sound. And that because they value your judgement & integrity, they get sheepish and awkward in the absence of a strong outward reaction, which in turn you interpret as them thinking ill of you.

    Only suggesting this because have seen quite a bit of this between people, and experienced mild versions of both ends of that dynamic.

    Not that it helps, if it even resonates, or provides guidance.