shehasathree

awesome disability/divergent-embodiment things:

2015-09-24T02:10:08Z

http://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/129610156974/c-is-for-circinate-so-hey-disabled-version-of
c_is_for_circinate

So hey

Disabled version of Cinderella where the prince is entirely faceblind, and Cinderella has a musculoskeletal condition where her mobility could be seriously improved by custom orthotics. Which of course she never had until the fairy godmother made them for her, which explains why her entire gait and posture changed at the ball and her stepmother/sisters never recognized her.

After that, well, the shoe-fitting is just efficient.

http://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/129609861769/dyspraxia-gothic

weird-mcgee

You choke on water. You choke on air. Your friends ignore you choking. Things are always going down the wrong way. You’re not sure there was ever a right way.
The bruises appear mysteriously. Sometimes you wake up to a constellation that wasn’t there yesterday (or maybe it was; there are always bruises somewhere).
“If you keep practising, you’ll get better at it,” they say about football, about netball, about volleyball, about basketball, about baseball. You wonder how many people they’ve lied to before. You keep practising.
The words won’t come out, or they come out wrong. You have the sentence in your head but something else controls your mouth, something unknown.
You could do it yesterday. You might be able to do it tomorrow. You cannot do it today.
All you want is a routine. All you have is a fear of the things you’ve left undone. Nothing fits.
There are things you’ve left undone, aren’t there? You think you might have written them down somewhere. Someone saw you write them down. When the things are left undone, they will come for you.
Your hands have betrayed you again.
Your muscles do not talk to each other about anything except for pain.
Do this, then that. Do this, then that. Clothes off, then shower. Shirt on, then coat. You know the rationale behind these things but the rationale is not enough. It is never enough.
The doctor asks, “What did you trip over?”. You do not know. You did not see. Maybe it was the eternal shadows that haunt the corners of your vision. Maybe it was your own feet.
Everything is too loud. Everything is too bright. Everything feels too rough. You scream until you can leave either this place or your body.
The form asks what support you require. You do not know. You’ve never had it.

http://timetolisten.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/movement-teachers-i-am-your-dream.html

NeurodivergentK/kassiane:

Movement teachers: on the surface I am your dream student.

I'll walk in. You'll show me basics. Or have someone show me basics. They will do them at the same time I do, so I can exactly follow. I'm echopraxic, you see. If I have someone to exactly follow? I can do that. I can make my body do exactly what they do--or as close to exactly as different builds allow.

You will probably think that I am talented. I probably am not. I am echopraxic and I have a big library of movement to draw from. So as long as I have someone to follow I can look comfortable with the things.

You may be tempted to skip steps. You may forget there's things I haven't learned. I know how to do a lot of things with my body because of years of dance, gymnastics, & team sports. This is why I can give you the impression I have an aptitude: because if it is on the ground or in the air I have probably done something similar. I've done gymnastics. I've spun a flag & marched at the same time. I've done some ridiculous number of styles of dance. I've played basketball on feet and on wheels. Whatever you're showing me, I'm sure to have a bit of muscle memory that relates enough that I can copy you or more advanced people.

Here's where I'm your nightmare:

I can only copy for a substantial amount of time.

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repost for linking purposes

2014-08-09T04:29:46Z

( on emotional flashbacks )

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tw for mentions of SI, trauma, CSA etc

2014-06-21T02:06:59Z

so, at some point i'm totally going to write an essay about "what 'counts' as trauma".

Relevant stuff:

*the microaggressions : microtrauma analogy/metaphor
(the point being, if your tendon is f*cked through a series of almost-unnoticeable microtraumas rather than through a one-off catastrophic trauma, it's still just as f*cked, but without the legitimacy of being able to say "what happened". Also, in the absence of an obvious traumatic injury, you're much less likely to get prompt treatment, and to think that your ongoing experience of pain and dysfunction is "normal" (after all, it is normal in your experience).

For the kicker, this sort of cumulative microtrauma seems to be a much more common pattern in women (especially those of up who are syndromically hypermobile). Ask me how i know! (see also the speed with which Steve was given medical attention for his acute but less-severe-than-mine tendon issues arising from triathloning, vs. The ten or so years i spent trying to convince people that yes! I really do have tendon issues all over my body (and no, i haven't been doing anything obvious, and yeah, if you splint one joint the problem really does shift to the next joint along the chain. no, not because i'm somatising or a hypochondriac).

*the way feminist work on self-injury focuses almost exclusively on women with a history of Childhood Sexual Abuse. I am so glad that there are brave feminist scholars and psy professionals doing this work and talking about this link! But it's a pretty totalising discourse, and from personal experience and from hearing others' stories, i can say that it feels pretty damn pathologising when the only discourse of why women self-injure is all about something much worse than anything that ever happened to you. (like, they've got a *reason*, so you must be extra screwed up to be doing that without a (good enough) reason.)

*the discursive slippage between BPD vs. PTSD and how C-PTSD as a diagnostic category has grown out of a recognition of the gendered nature of
that split and the gendered nature of what has historically counted as being sufficiently traumatic to cause PTSD.

(and also the violence done by assigning a label of BPD to a person, cf. Butler)

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captain america recs

2014-04-30T09:48:12Z

http://unfitforsociety.dreamwidth.org/221187.html#cutid1

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autism links roundup

2014-04-11T04:09:11Z

http://joashline.com/2014/04/its-not-autisms-fault-other-people-suck.html
http://musingsofanaspie.com/2014/04/10/creating-autistic-spaces/
http://unstrangemind.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/awareness-versus-acceptance/
http://lamonthelam.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/autism-speaks-never-spoke-for-us/
http://thethirdglance.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/april-autism-acceptance-series-3-age-appropriate-play-and-toys/
http://www.autismacceptancemonth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/AAM-Why-Acceptance.pdf
http://jack-not-jacque.tumblr.com/post/48645978990/so-you-want-to-work-with-autistic-kids-primer
http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2014/04/02/3975084.htm
http://queerability.tumblr.com/post/81400569820/queerability-2014-statement-about-autism-speaks

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perfectionism scale

2014-03-11T01:12:39Z

From here: http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/1%20What%20is%20%20Perfectionism.pdf

Let’s find out if perfectionism is an issue for you. Here are a few statements for you to consider:
(rating scale: True - Somewhat True - Somewhat False - False)

1. Nothing good comes from making mistakes
2. I must do things right the first time
3. I must do everything well, not just the things I know I’m good at
4. If I can’t do something perfectly then there is no point even trying
5. I rarely give myself credit when I do well because there’s always something more I could do
6. Sometimes I am so concerned about getting one task done perfectly that I don’t have time to complete the rest of my work
If you have answered most of the above questions with True or Somewhat True, then perfectionism might be something you want to work on. If you haven’t answered True or Somewhat True, you may still want to stay with us as you might learn some skills that could be useful in the future.

( Read more... )

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culture i've been ingesting:

2014-03-10T08:15:03Z

(in the last ... while)

TV:
*Friday Night Lights (Season 1)
*The Guilty (miniseries)
*Mediawatch
*Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell

books:
*Historicising Gender & Sexuality (Murphy & Spear, 2011)
*The Edge of the Bed by Lisa Palac
*Last Night in Paradise by Katie Roiphe
*Speaking Secrets: Sex and Sexuality as Public Property by Sue Joseph
*After Homosexual by D'Cruz & Pendleton

movies:
*Hysteria
*Ghostbusters
*Ghostbusters II

audio:
*The Night Manager (Le Carré)
*For the God Who Sings (ABC classic CD)
*Grigoryan Brothers "Impressions"
*Emilie Autumn "Enchant"

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this is the life!

2013-06-30T10:14:01Z

watching White Collar and tagging dw entires

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attitudes towards illness/es: poll

2013-06-20T06:04:37Z

(i suspect that invisible, long-term fluctuationg illnesses tend to provoke similar stigma to mental illness...)

View Poll: #13726

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ears!

2013-01-24T08:00:24Z

View Poll: ears

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meta post is meta (guess what i'm supposed to be doing right now?)

2012-10-15T07:53:23Z

1. I don't think my brain was ever a 'typical' brain per se. But I feel so very not-normal now. I don't understand how I can be so 'smart' in some ways and yet so very unable to do 'normal' things. I'm sure a lot of it is due to chronic illness and fatigue (my concentration sucks). And yet, that is an oversimplification, because I hyperfocus/perseverate (?) like mad when I am excited about an idea or avoiding doing things that make me anxious, or just get distracted enough...
( not navel-gazing, but brain-gazing. An excercise in endless reflexivity and some self-importance. )

This post brought to you by my day staring at a computer screen, losing time, and forgetting to eat until after 5pm.

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different kinds of spoons

2012-08-08T02:21:29Z

ahjkhdkashdf

The Energy Problem
Twice-exceptional children face an even more complicated dilemma. Not only are they often bored and under-stimulated, but, given their intelligence, they are also over-aroused and anxious when faced with tasks of production that should be easy for them. A child may start out with the equivalent of a master’s thesis on turtles, for example; but by the time the child struggles to organize her complex ideas and get those thoughts onto paper, what comes out may sound like “I have a little turtle that lives in a box in my room.” To fully understand the frustration and difficulty of this situation, we must consider energy.

About 10 years ago, I sustained a mild traumatic brain injury. After the accident, I was still as “smart” as I had always been; but I couldn’t do things with the same consistency and efficiency as before. ( cognitive processing takes energy! )

Too Tired! Energy and Wellness in 2E Children, By Marlo Payne Thurman
Article originally published in 2E Twice Exceptional Newsletter November- December 2009 Issue 37

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giftedness, achievement-orientation, depression & acitivities (and me)

2012-08-02T22:42:51Z

The other day I was complaining to my friends about a student I taught last week (filling in for Janet). The student is a boy in Grade 5, has been learning the flute for 1 term, and seems to have a fair bit of potential, based on the range of notes he can read and play (albeit slowly). He told me, though, that he hadn't really done any practice that week. His reason? "I have sport more than 7 days a week!". He does soccer, football and swimming (? I think). Three sports, anyway.

So I was thinking, either this is an example of a massively overscheduled kid, in which case, what were his parents thinking signing him up for flute, which requires regular practice, or maybe he really is gifted and talented and passionate, in which case why can't he fit in 4 x 15 minutes practice of flute into a week that manages to fit heaps of sport and sport practice into it? Priorities (his and/or his parents/ obviously). Frustrating.

Anyway, this got me thinking about all the activities I did when I was a kid in late primary and high school. I was thinking along the lines of, "I did lots of different activities but still always practiced Piano, so that shows it can be done if the student is motivated and the parents make it a priority" (although I don't think I made that overly clear when I sent the message and listed my acitivites. I got two very different responses from my two closest friends:

kathryne_deannasent me her reply via text, so I don't have it verbaitm, but it basically said that different kids can handle different amounts of stuff (and also asked if I'd read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother).

(I have, and I have strong feelings about it. Also, while my mother may show some elements of a destructive narcissistic pattern, is overly identified with me and strongly achievement-oriented, she is totally not a Tiger Mother. And when I was a kid I was happy doing all ym activities, begged my parents to do more, and still had time left over to read for fun, etc. I think it helped that I lived 12 minutes' walk from school, and most of my activiities were either at school, so I took myself to and from them, or were in the later evenings or Saturdays. So I had much more time in my week than kids who travel an hour or more a day just to get to and from school!)

louise_allana

Um, [shehasathree], that's an insane schedule and you were an abnormal child. I understand more about your drive to get many things done/woe when you only accomplish five things in a day now.

It is undoubtedly true that I was an abnormal child (and am an atypical adult?). I'm not sure about my childhood/high school schedule, though... I was happy doing all those things, generally I was the one wanting to do them, and my parents had a Thing about not doing too many sessions/hours of any one activity;

( Read more... )

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“If you say ‘no,’ and the other person keeps talking..."

2012-06-21T13:10:47Z

This is right out of Gift of Fear: “If you say ‘no,’ and the other person keeps talking, ask yourself ‘Why is this person trying to manipulate me?’”

(Captain Awkward)

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Blogging Against Disablism Day

2010-05-04T10:15:09Z

some things i found particularly noteworthy:

The self-pity model by kaz

There is this incredibly widespread idea - I mentally refer to this as the "self-pity model" - that if you give disabled people the chance, we will just stay at home feeling sorry for themselves the whole time and will answer any suggestion to do anything at all with "I can't do that! I'm disabled!". That there is this grave danger that a disabled person will seize on their disability and start using it as an excuse to get out of doing things. I've seen this idea in action - with my mum, with stories I've heard from loads of other disabled people, even with myself. The constant second-guessing - am I really right when I say I can't do this, I have trouble with this? What if I'm using it as an excuse. What if calling myself disabled means I'm giving up. What if I'm just feeling sorry for myself.

What if I just need to try harder.
( Read more... )

and
Hands off my codeine by jeneli

it’s hard enough to get painkillers that are capable of treating pain as it is. I don’t find it easy, having to summon up the courage to ask my GP for a refill. Every time I do it, I’m worried she’ll say “I don’t think this is a good idea.” And she’s a fantastic GP, but this fear just won’t go away.
( Read more... )

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