metryingtobeme:

that-one-transguy:

deadpan-snarkeet:

coffeeandcomposition:

becketts-one-and-done:

thexfiles:

hanniballecterlicious:

thexfiles:

suicidal people deserve a space to talk about their suicidal feelings without risking hospitalization/institutionalization or being accused of being manipulative or attention seeking

It’s a therapist. The word you’re looking for is a therapist.

wrong

The second a therapist thinks you’re even slightly suicidal (ie. Whenever you even say the word suicide) they “pink slip” you, which means you get sent to a mental hospital against your will.

I think about suicide almost every day, but it doesn’t always mean I’m gonna go kill myself.

I just want to say, as someone who has taken courses in ethics and regulations regarding psychology and therapy and has worked at a counseling center for more than five years, THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE. The only time a therapist or other healthcare provider is required to report suicidal or homicidal ideation is if there is a specific plan. I am deeply sorry to anyone who has ever experienced a therapist who acted otherwise. To the person above, I am not sure what your experience has been, but I promise you it is not a typical one, at least not in the area where I live (California). I have never heard of a “pink slip”, and I’ve worked with therapists for 5+ years.  

Going to a therapist changed my life. I was able to open up and say “I think about suicide almost every day”, and for the first time in my life someone said “You don’t have to live like this.” She didn’t have me hospitalized, she didn’t raise any alarms. She gently asked me if I had a specific plan, and when I said no, she said “We are going to help you get better.” 

YOUR THERAPIST ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT HAVE YOU HOSPITALIZED AT THE MERE MENTION OF SUICIDAL IDEATION. 

If you say, “I’m going to kill myself tonight by overdose,” then yes, they are required by law to have you hospitalized. Otherwise it is THEIR JOB to help you process your feelings and find a way to help you function and feel better. 

I cannot be more emphatic about this. Therapists, by and large, are here to help, not to hospitalize. If you have health insurance, contact them today to find out about your mental health coverage. Go to your general care doctor and tell them how you’re feeling so that they can refer you to the right person. If you don’t have health insurance, find a resource for a free/reduced fee clinic near you. Marriage and Family Therapist Interns are a great option, as they often see clients on a sliding fee scale. PLEASE GET HELP.

LISTEN TO ME: YOU CANNOT LEGALLY BE HOSPITALIZED AGAINST YOUR WILL FOR SUICIDAL IDEATION. FEAR OF HOSPITALIZATION SHOULD NOT STOP YOU FROM SEEKING HELP. 

I understand that many people have hospital related trauma, and I understand, and sympathize. Talk to me. Send me a message. I will be happy to find you further information on laws and regulations in your area, referrals to other counseling centers, or even just listen to what you have to say. 

I couldn’t in good conscience scroll past this without saying something. As someone who struggled with depression for much longer than I should have because of fear of seeking treatment, I want to encourage everyone, experiencing any degree of mental illness to get help. I will do anything I can to support those of you going through something like this. I’m here for you. 

I literally talk to my therapist about suicidal ideation all the time and all she’s ever done is have me clarify that I wasn’t planning on acting on it. I’m tired of tumblr discouraging people from trusting mental health professionals.

I’ve been in and out of therapy my entire life, shitty therapists are the ones that will jump to recommend meds or hospitalization if you so much as mention thinking about suicide.

Good therapists will ask you questions: “do you have a plan?” “Why did you feel that way?” “Do you have people to talk to when you feel that way?” “Do you have a way to distract yourself when you feel that way?”

It won’t always be those kinds of questions, but they also won’t shove a hospital down your throat unless you have/had a plan.

As a mental health professional (I am a licensed clinical social worker in a children’s hospital) we are not required to hospitlize people unless we are concerned for their safety – which usually means a plan. I have talked to several people in my job and sometimes their baseline – their normal- is suicidal thoughts. I personally have told my therapist I would love to not wake up in the morning or how I would love for the pain to end and never did she send me to a hospital. Often times the therapist may do a safety plan or contract with a person who is having suicidal thoughts which helps the person know what to do if the thoughts get worse or they start actually making plans. I work in childrens/teens and often times the psychiatrist will send a teen Home with a safety plan with their family even though they came to the hospital thinking about suicide and their parent did not know what to do and was scared.

I know there are crappy shitty therapists out there – unfortunately there are crappy shitty people in every profession. I personally had such a horrific experience with an OB/GYN that I told my primary doctor I did not care if I had ovairain cancer I would never under any circumstances return to that doctor. But I found a new doctor that I love. (And thankfully did not have cancer).

Please don’t let one or even two bad experiences stop you from getting help. Or let anyone else’s story of a bad experience stop you from getting help.

If you need help please get help. Please. There are amazing therapists out there that that is why we got into the profession is to help people.

1dietcokeinacan:

It’s disgusting to make fun of someone who battles addiction regardless of who they are, but Demi Lovato has done so much to help lessen the stigma of mental illness just by being so publicly upfront about living with her multiple disorders, I can’t believe someone would ridicule her for this recent overdose. This is a woman who has lived in the spotlight since she was a CHILD. Since she was 16 years old she has had to navigate her addiction, bipolar disorder, self harm, and bulimia within a hostile, enabling industry and in spite of constant public scrutiny. More than any great talent she possesses, Demi Lovato is a fucking hero for being a woman who has kept on living and loving and fighting thru it all. Shame on you if you think this is fodder for jokes and memes. Fucking misogynists

1dietcokeinacan:

It’s disgusting to make fun of someone who battles addiction regardless of who they are, but Demi Lovato has done so much to help lessen the stigma of mental illness just by being so publicly upfront about living with her multiple disorders, I can’t believe someone would ridicule her for this recent overdose. This is a woman who has lived in the spotlight since she was a CHILD. Since she was 16 years old she has had to navigate her addiction, bipolar disorder, self harm, and bulimia within a hostile, enabling industry and in spite of constant public scrutiny. More than any great talent she possesses, Demi Lovato is a fucking hero for being a woman who has kept on living and loving and fighting thru it all. Shame on you if you think this is fodder for jokes and memes. Fucking misogynists

catchymemes:

Source: facebook.com

dogbearinggifts:

I know this is different from the sort of stuff I usually post, but this has been on my mind for a while. As I’ve browsed certain fandoms on this site, I’ve stumbled across a common argument. One person, usually an abuse survivor, says they believe a character was abused, citing signs and personality traits that echo their own experiences. Another person, who was usually not abused, will say “No, they couldn’t have been abused,” and then cite one misconception or another. 

And as an abuse survivor, it bothers me. 

I know that in many cases, the character fans argue over is controversial to begin with. One that comes to mind is Draco Malfoy. Those who argue against the abused!Draco headcanon might have good intentions—in many cases I’ve seen, they feel as though fans in favor of the headcanon are trying to turn a racist asshole into some precious woobie—but the problem is that in doing so, they’re talking over actual abuse survivors. When they say “No, he couldn’t have been abused because no abused child would say ‘My father is going to hear about this!’” or “An abused child wouldn’t know that parents are supposed to protect their kids,” they’re discounting actual survivor stories and perpetuating the myth that there is only one correct response to abuse.

So, I’m going to address some common fallacies brought up in these types of arguments. 

1. “They couldn’t have been abused. Their parents spoiled them rotten.” 

My dad is a self-made man, the type who started at the very bottom of the ladder and worked his way up. As such, I enjoyed a childhood that became progressively more comfortable. I wore nice clothes, got a car on my eighteenth birthday (an old car, but it was still a gift I couldn’t have afforded on my own) and not only did my mom cook dinner at home every night, but when she learned I had food sensitivities, she began buying only organic and all-natural ingredients. When I wanted to paint my room purple at age 13, my dad took me to Home Depot to look at paint samples, then came home and painted my walls the exact shade I’d chosen. 

This was thrown in my face at every turn. 

If I ever disagreed with my parents, even over something trivial, or made a joke that they found offensive, I was treated to a tirade of verbal abuse beginning with a litany of all the things they did for me, how they never got such nice things at my age, and how ungrateful I was for them. These “lectures” usually ended with me in tears—not because I was a sensitive brat (as they claimed) but because they knew every one of my sore spots and pressed and pressed until I couldn’t take the pain. 

2. “If they were abused, they wouldn’t know that parents are supposed to protect their kids.” 

My parents treated me like shit. There’s no other word for it. I vividly recall one time when I did something that made my mom angry. I think I interrupted a lecture about my grades (I had a B in math, which was Absolutely Unacceptable to them) to say that I was trying as hard as I could and a B was the best I could do. She found my tone disrespectful (in reality, it was probably more desperate than disrespectful) and left me to my dad. I’ll never forget what he said: 

“The way you treat your mom is like if some rich guy found a homeless man on the street, gave him food, new clothes, all the money in his bank account, signed over the deed to his house and gave him his car, then asked for a ride home—and the homeless guy said ‘Nope. Get your own ride.’” 

That was normal, coming from my parents. It was normal for them to wound me as deeply as they could over trivial matters. And yet when my mom learned I was being bullied and the school was basically sweeping it under the rug, she was ready to rain down righteous fury on the entire administrative staff. She was livid. She treated me like garbage when I annoyed her, but when someone else hurt me, it was time for hellfire and brimstone. 

3. “They’re too sassy/not sassy enough.” 

This is a misconception I had, before talking with other survivors. See, in my household, compliance was the only way to survive. The only way to get through the day without being subjected to hours of verbal abuse was to do whatever my parents wanted, as soon as they wanted it done, and do it with the biggest smile I could muster. As a result, I internalized the abuse. For years, I thought that whenever my parents sat me down and railed about how selfish I was, it was because I really was a sinful, selfish brat. 

As a result, Harry Potter’s sass toward the Dursleys struck me as unrealistic—because in my household, it was. Had I shown my parents half the sass Harry showed Petunia and Vernon, I would have been grounded for a year and verbally abused every morning before I went to school. Then I spoke to other survivors, whose situations were different from mine, and heard that “No, sass was how I survived.” 

This brings me to….

4. “Their situation doesn’t read as abusive.” 

There is no universal experience of abuse. As Leo Tolstoy once said, “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

There are multiple forms of abuse—verbal, physical, emotional, psychological, sexual. Each one of these carries profoundly different psychological consequences, and these consequences are determined in part by the severity of the abuse, other circumstances in the home, role of the abuser, and the personality of the one being abused. 

In other words, no two abuse survivors are alike. Two siblings can have the same parents and experience the abuse differently. 

Which leads me to….

5. “They don’t act like an abuse survivor.” 

Tom Card, Michael Westen’s former handler on the show Burn Notice, summed it up better than I could: 

“Imagine that you’re holding onto two bottles and they drop on the floor. What happens? They both break. But it’s how they break that’s important. Because, you see, while one bottle crumples into a pile of glass, the other shatters into a jagged-edged weapon. You see, the exact same environment that forged older brother into a warrior crushed baby brother. People just don’t all break the same, Mrs. Westen. Just don’t.” 

The “environment” to which he refers here is a home with a violent, alcoholic father. Michael, the older brother and protagonist of the show, fought his dad at every turn, joined the military, and eventually the CIA. His younger brother, Nate, became a compliant people-pleaser, blaming himself for a string of failed relationships. 

In conclusion: If you don’t think a character was abused, fine. That’s your opinion. But don’t talk over abuse survivors to get your point across. And do not, repeat, do not assume that a character who does not fit your preconceived notion of an abuse survivor was not abused. 

Because people don’t all break the same way. They just don’t.