Psychoticallytrans

So, it's firmly past the holiday season now, and the New Year is nearly two months past. This is about when a lot of donations to charity start falling off.

Some charities get enough in the holiday season that they don't have to worry about operating, but not all. Food banks in particular often get the short end of the stick because people hold food drives instead, which don't always bring in usable food and require sorting of the donations.

If you have an extra five dollars or so a month, your local food bank could use it to pay utilities for freezers, fridges, and lights, purchasing food directly for discounted prices because it's unsaleable for some reason but still edible, and paying staff who aren't volunteering.

This is especially important in the summer, because that's when kids aren't getting lunch, and sometimes breakfast, from school. There's a surge in demand right when donations tend to be slowest. So, if you can afford to, I recommend setting up a recurring donation.

Signed, a man who patronizes his local food bank weekly.

Kids are going to start getting out of school next month, so now is a great time to look up your local food bank if you have a few dollars to spare.

The whole "the brain isn't fully mature until age 25" bit is actually a fairly impressive bit of psuedoscience for how incredibly stupid the way it misinterprets the data it's based on is.

Okay, so: there's a part of the human brain called the "prefrontal cortex" which is, among other things, responsible for executive function and impulse control. Like most parts of the brain, it undergoes active "rewiring" over time (i.e., pruning unused neural connections and establishing new ones), and in the case of the prefrontal cortex in particular, this rewiring sharply accelerates during puberty.

Because the pace of rewiring in the prefrontal cortex is linked to specific developmental milestones, it was hypothesised that it would slow down and eventually stop in adulthood. However, the process can't directly be observed; the only way to tell how much neural rewiring is taking place in a particular part of the brain is to compare multiple brain scans of the same individual performed over a period of time.

Thus, something called a "longitudinal study" was commissioned: the same individuals would undergo regular brain scans over a period of mayn years, beginning in early childhood, so that their prefrontal development could accurately be tracked.

The longitudinal study was originally planned to follow its subjects up to age 21. However, when the predicted cessation of prefrontal rewiring was not observed by age 21, additional funding was obtained, and the study period was extended to age 25. The predicted cessation of prefrontal development wasn't observed by age 25, either, at which point the study was terminated.

When the mainstream press got hold of these results, the conclusion that prefrontal rewiring continues at least until age 25 was reported as prefrontal development finishing at age 25. Critically, this is the exact opposite of what the study actually concluded. The study was unable to identify a stopping point for prefrontal development because no such stopping point was observed for any subject during the study period. The only significance of the age 25 is that no subjects were tracked beyond this age because the study ran out of funding!

It gets me when people try to argue against the neuroscience-proves-everybody-under-25-is-a-child talking point by claiming that it's merely an average, or that prefrontal development doesn't tell the whole story. Like, no, it's not an average – it's just bullshit. There's no evidence that the cited phenomenon exists at all. If there is an age where prefrontal rewiring levels off and stops (and it's not clear that there is), we don't know what age that is; we merely know that it must be older than 25.

In another episode of "mind-body dualism is a farce that gets in the way of treatment", would anyone like to guess what was causing the treatment-resistant portion of my depressed mood and fatigue?

Excessive production of unusually thick mucus, as it turns out. It was inhibiting my ability to breath while I slept, which was harming my sleep quality. My ENT was impressed that my lungs were strong enough to breathe through it most of the time.

I'm now on a prescription to thin the mucus, as well as a twice day rinse to directly eliminate a lot of it. I have never slept this well or felt this good in my entire life, and it's only been a few days.

#yo i also have crazy snot i need to see an ENT about!#everyone goes oh sleep apnea clearly when no im like drowning in my own goop#weed helps bc it just dries out my stupid sinuses#maybe for once LOSE WEIGHT isnt the answer. ever think of that doctors?!?

If it helps, what I'm on is just a basic saline rinse, which is easy to get ahold of, and the generic of Flonase, which can be found at most pharmacies. It'll be in the allergy section, but it's for symptom relief, and works for excessive mucus. You do have to boil and then cool the water for the rinse if you make it yourself, and you will probably hack up chunks of gunk the first time or two, but after that it is just a few globs. If you haven't tried those, they may tide you over while you find an ENT.

A commonly overlooked symptom of depression is anhedonia, the inability to feel joy or pleasure. The reason that it's easy to overlook is that it's easier to miss the absence of something that's not around all the time than it is to miss a symptom that causes active distress, such as feeling tired and miserable all the time.

Anhedonia is good at being a persistent undercurrent to your life. My aunt, who has major depressive disorder, related to me that she figured out that something was wrong when she looked at the daffodils she had planted blooming, and couldn't recognize the emotion that she felt when she looked at them. It had been long enough since she had felt happy that she lost the ability to recognize the emotion.

It's a particularly dangerous depressive symptom, because it robs you of the ability to feel those little spots of joy that keep a lot of people going, while not doing anything to impair your ability to function. If you don't know that this is a treatable symptom of depression, it's easy to assume that your ability to feel good is permanently broken, and decide to commit suicide because you don't want to live like that. It's not an irrational conclusion, but it is an uninformed one, and everyone deserves to have all the information when making a major decision.

This is what a lot of questionnaires are trying to look for when they ask about "loss of enjoyment". If you can't remember a loss of enjoyment because you can't remember enjoyment, then you probably have anhedonia. If you struggle to define how it is to feel "happy", "content", or "good", or how it feels when you feel those emotions, you probably have anhedonia. If you can't remember feeling any of those emotions for a week or more, you probably have anhedonia.

Symptoms commonly co-occurring with anhedonia are fatigue (often the cause), clear and thoughtful consideration of suicide, loss of desire to socialize or do activities that used to make you happy, and weight loss (due to lack of enjoyment of food).

This section is anecdotal. In what I have observed, anhedonia due to fatigue rarely responds well to depression treatment unless depression was causing the fatigue. If fatigue and anhedonia are co-occurring and are not both alleviated by depression treatment, consider other causes for the fatigue.

Well, not quite! The most well known is frequent or persistent sadness and hopelessness, probably followed by suicidality, and then by fatigue. Anhedonia is often part and parcel of fatigue, but it's definitely not one of the most well known features of depression.

It also doesn't define depression. Anhedonia is not present in all cases of depression, and it's not required for a diagnosis. It's a common symptom, certainly, but not universal. Many people with depression are able to feel happy to some extent, even if it's more limited. That may seem paradoxical, but it's important to take into account.

There's also a specific subtype of depression where a lot of the usual symptoms are inverted, appropriately called "atypical depression". It's generally diagnosed based off of having at least two of the following symptoms: sleeping too much rather than experiencing insomnia, overeating instead of undereating, a "heavy" feeling in the arms and legs, and/or rejection sensitivity. People with atypical depression frequently do not experience anhedonia. It's estimated that roughly between 15% and 36% of people with depressive disorders have atypical depression.

This post is for trans women and transfems with highly stigmatized mental disorders.

Schizospec trans women and transfems? You make spectacular art that is stunning to perceive.

NPD trans women and transfems? You are always incredibly beautiful and improve any area you walk into.

ASPD trans women and transfems? The way that you carry yourselves makes a strong positive impression.

Bipolar trans women and transfems? You are incredibly funny and have great personalities.

BPD trans women and transfems? You are vibrant and lively people that are wonderful to talk to.

ODD trans women and transfems? You are inspiring people worthy of being listened to.

Psychotic trans women and transfems? Your imagination is incredible, and hearing about what it creates is riveting.

Trans women and transfems who are systems? You light up any space that you are in.

You are all spectacular trans women and transfems who enrich the lives of those around you. You deserve to be proud and joyful in who you are.

*NOTE: in this case, phobia refers to a very strong irrational fear, not being a little scared of something. if you can handle snakes but they make you nervous, that's not a phobia.

huge thank you to people reblogging and talking about their phobias in the tags. it's genuinely super nice to hear that im not alone in this and im not super irrational for being scared of things. <3

I think I can trace my intense hatred for the whole "regulations are just corporate bullshit, building codes are just The Man's way of keeping you down, we should return to pre-industrial barter and trade systems" nonsense back to when I first started doing electrical work at one of the largest hospitals in the country.

I have had to learn so much about all the special conditions in the National Electric Code for healthcare systems. All the systems that keep hospitals running, all the redundancies and backups that make sure one disaster or outage won't take out the hospital's life support, all the rules about different spaces within the hospital and the different standards that apply to each of them. And a lot of it is ridiculously over-engineered and overly redundant, but all of it is in the service of saving even one life from being lost to some wacky series of coincidences that could have been prevented with that redundancy.

I've done significantly less work in food production plants and the like, but I know they have similar standards to make sure the plants aren't going to explode or to make sure a careless maintenance tech isn't accidentally dropping screws into jars of baby food or whatever. And research labs have them to make sure some idiot doesn't leave a wrench inside a transformer and wreck a multi-million dollar machine when they try to switch it on.

Living in the self-sufficient commune is all fun and games until someone needs a kidney transplant and suddenly wants a clean, reliable hospital with doctors that are subject to some kind of overseeing body, is my point.

from what I know of just the general history of building codes and osha rules, I would not be the least surprised if every single one of those healthcare codes exist not just to prevent someone from dying, but because pre-code, someone did.

osha rules, building codes, food production rules are all written in blood

I've worked in a food production factory. Specifically, peanut products and peanut butter. A huge point that was emphasized for me during training was that if we skimped on cleaning any of the parts that ground the peanut butter, we would be risking the health of potentially thousands of people- let alone if something other than peanuts and salt went in. You needed to make sure all parts are sterilized at the end of the day, that they stay in the sterilizing solution for the right amount of time, and that you rinse all of it off afterwards, because that's toxic too.

It's not exactly a space with a lot of grey area, because if you do it incorrectly, people will at best get sick, and at worst die.

It bothers me how many people are morally incurious, and it bothers me even more how many people seem to think that interrogating morality is proof of immorality- because I'm pretty sure that the latter is at least partly driving the former. Asking why an action or institution is wrong does not necessarily mean that someone thinks that that action or institution is right. If you never ask yourself why something is wrong or right, then what is determining your morality? Because it's not you.

I think it comes from beleiving that morality is a stagnant thing, never changing, black and white. If something is wrong it is always wrong and in no circumstances can be right. If something is right, it will always be right and never be wrong.

Thus any look at morality become 'If it is wrong now, it was wrong when I did it before'. And people will fight agaisnt all reason to not see themselves on the wrong side of morality.

Granted there are a few things that are objectively one or the other, but those actions/concepts tend to come with definitions that are more abstract than concrete.

It is easy to say Murder is wrong, but everyone has a different idea of what Murder is.

Honestly, I think that murder is one of the more interesting examples, because it's nearly universally agreed on, but the reasons are wildly diverse even when we do all agree that it's murder.

Reasons I've heard people give for why murder is wrong include and are not limited to:

"Human life is sacred."

"It's against the law."

"If you kill someone, then you remove something unique from the world."

"Because we are made in god's image, murder defiles the image of god."

"We have the right to live, and nobody has the right to violate that."

"Because of the amount of collateral suffering it causes to the people who depend on them and care about them."

"If you murder people, something is wrong with you."

"Murder is an antisocial choice to make and harms the fabric of society."

"You remove the potential of the good that person could have done."

"That's just not what you're supposed to do."

These reasons often drive how we define murder, and how we respond to murder. For instance, people that think it means something is wrong with the murderer are, in my experience, more likely to support the death penalty than people who believe in the inherent worth of human life. People concerned about the social fabric of society may see covering up a murder as a legitimate solution if they don't see the primary problem as the murder itself.

People also often hold more than one of these opinions. None of the above are wholly contradictory.

fun fact (not fun at all fact actually) :

aromanticism and asexuality are still treated as issues to be fixed in most therapy settings, at least in the western psychiatric institution. i cannot fucking mention my aromanticism or asexuality to a therapist or it’ll immediately become their primary concern and goal to fix. whether or not i have a partner/am trying to have a partner is actively being used as an indicator of my wellness, regardless of if i WANT one. i cannot have access to needed mental health ressources because of fear of conversion therapy. aro and/or ace conversion therapy is the norm in most psychiatric institutions and we are getting told by the rest of the queer community that our oppression isnt real and that there is no link between our struggles and theirs.

Unfortunately, this is the reality for many ace and aro people.

Although the websites aren't very extensive, Aro Recommended and Ace Recommended are two sites where you can find mental health professionals who are aromantic- and asexual-friendly.

The sites also have other ace- and aro-friendly professionals listed, such as medical doctors, religious leaders, and aro-owned businesses.

If you're aware of any professionals (especially doctors and therapists) who are ace- and/or aro-friendly, please feel free to submit recommendations! The recommendation forms can be found on the sites themselves.

"Labor issues are, by nature, tied to axes of oppression. When we discuss labor, we also must discuss racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and, of course, ableism."