What makes you feel loved?

What makes you feel loved?

Whether in a familial, platonic, or romantic relationship, what are the things a person does that really let you know that the other person loves you? How do you show love? Have you ever talked about these things with your family, friends, loved ones?

The ways in which we communicate love is a language that is made up of words, actions, behaviours, and so on, and each person has their own individual language that is shaped by their culture, upbringing, socialization, experiences, and so on.

While this communication is highly individual, there are commonalities which exist and which can often be grouped into types. Additionally, certain commonalities also seem to occur as a result of specific phenomena.

There was a meme going around Facebook recently which paraphrased said basically that people who grow up feeling unloved or unsure of whether they are loved overcompensate in relationships by doing everything they can to be useful. The idea being that if they couldn’t be inherently loveable, that they could at least be useful.

It makes sense if you think about it.

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What makes you feel loved?
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Politics, Public Relations, and Social Psychology

With the federal elections of both Canada and the US approaching, not to mention the constant political maneuvering happening across provinces and states, a lot of things are happening at once. It can feel like a whirlwind, just getting your bearings about one issue before the next one suddenly crops up demanding your attention. The breakneck pace of the news cycle means that a lot of the resolution or lack thereof of one issue often gets missed.

It’s the perfect setting to employ several tricks of social psychology that make it possible for politicians (and salespeople and so on) to change the conversation without ever having to convince the electorate of the issue. I’ve talked about at least one of these social psychology manipulation techniques before.

Additionally, it allows them to employ several public relations tricks to encourage several extreme side groups, while also counting on the majority of the population to forget about it before it’s time to vote.

It’s called a Test Balloon.

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Politics, Public Relations, and Social Psychology

War on Patients

For all the various experiences I’ve had as a disabled person, a long distance move is a relatively new one. I’m lucky in a lot of ways because the place I’ve moved to isn’t completely new. Although it has been 13 years since I’ve lived here, my parents have been here that whole time. As a result, I have access to certain resources that I wouldn’t have otherwise had. Among these resources is faster access to a family doctor – the same one that has served my family since I was a kid.

I’m lucky because that’s not the case for most people. There is currently a pretty significant shortage of Family Doctors or General Practicioners as they’re sometimes called. Your GP is meant to be the point person of your medical care. They’re responsible for managing the big picture of your overall health – receiving updates from all your specialists, all test results, providing referrals to specialists, and in many cases managing the vast majority of your prescriptions.

As part of my move, I had to transfer my prescriptions from Ottawa to here. Since I was using the same chain of pharmacies, I didn’t much foresee a problem. That’s because I didn’t know about a law that prevents pharmacies from transferring prescriptions that are categorized as narcotics. It’s part of the ongoing war on patients masquerading as the various wars on drugs. The problem is that narcotics are the recognized treatment for a variety of different conditions including ADHD. If I needed a refill of my medication, in this case Vyvanse, I would need to find a family doctor and get a brand new prescription.

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War on Patients

I Can’t Move On, It’s Not Over Yet

I cant move on, it's not over yet imposed over a blurry picture of a frozen winter landscape
The type of writing I do, the type of people I connect with, I tend to come into contact with a lot of people who are struggling with medical systems. Because of my own experience navigating these same systems, as well as because of the way some of my areas of privilege align – and sometimes not even privilege but just random chance that turned out well, I have also been finding myself more and more acting as a patient advocate for people.

This can mean helping someone find a doctor, helping them come up with questions to ask or ways of phrasing things, making phone calls from location to location, and sometimes even showing up to physically advocate for someone.

There are many people who I have been able to help in some small way and it was enough for them to be able to move out of trouble enough not to need me anymore. There is one core group of people, however, who no matter how hard I advocate, what strings I try to pull, what privileges I bring down to bear, I never seem to manage to get through to their primary caregivers enough for them to start receiving the help they need. Continue reading “I Can’t Move On, It’s Not Over Yet”

I Can’t Move On, It’s Not Over Yet

What Are the Chances?

CN: Discussion of Statistics in relations to disability, other social issues, sexual assault, and abuse.

There are times when I am talking to someone about my life- about the fact that I’m scared of new proposed laws making it harder for me to survive in Ontario, or about how I’m one particularly unlucky day away from being homeless – when I get the feeling like the person I’m talking to thinks I’m exaggerating. They get this look on their faces that makes it clear they’re just humoring me by not pointing out how ridiculous I’m being. Meanwhile, I’m already minimizing how severe my situation is out of fear of being accused of exaggerating. Worse still, my circumstances are relatively minor compared to that of many of my friends and readers. 

When they don’t automatically dismiss what I’m saying as being hyperbole, the people I speak with assume that my case is rare – an exception. A circumstance not worthy of planning against because it’s unlikely to happen again. And yet? Every day I meet someone new in the same type of situation I find myself in. It’s become so textbook, some people look at me as though I’m performing magic when I manage to guess the ridiculous circumstances they find themselves in or repeat almost verbatim what they’ve heard from doctors, therapists, or other people.

It’s a matter of framing, of perspective.

To someone in the mainstream, what is happening to me must be the result of either something I did wrong, or something extremely rare, or impossible. It seems like the probability of all the things going wrong that go wrong happening seem impossible.

What are the chances that every relationship you’ve been in is abusive?

What are the chances that so many of your doctors end up incompetent? That so many doctors end up holding biased opinions?

What are the chances that everyone around you is so terrible? Doesn’t it seem more likely that you are the problem? Statistically speaking that is?

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What Are the Chances?

Disability Misery

I’m multiply disabled, by whichever model you use. I am on disability assistance and I live in Canada where I even have access to healthcare. Given all this, you might think that the fact that I still have disability related depression, that I am proof that disability really is misery. That the medical model is right.

I want to make this really easy to understand.

I’m not miserable because I’m in pain.

Continue reading “Disability Misery”

Disability Misery

Oryx and Crake: Jimmy’s Mom

CN: Spoilers for Oryx and Crake, Mentions of abuse and infertility,

Sometimes when I’ve read a book multiple times, enough to know it really well, and I need something to read for a short period of time, I will pick up a book and read it at random spots. For a while now, Oryx and Crake has been in the bathroom, and every once in a while, I’ve picked it up and read certain parts.

While doing so lately, something has been jumping out at me and I have a new suspicion about something that I think is going on in the background of the story.

I believe that Jimmy’s mom suffered some sort of illness that resulted in her becoming infertile after she gave birth to Jimmy.

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Oryx and Crake: Jimmy’s Mom

The Unfunny Incompetence of Social Services in New York

TW: Domestic Violence, Systemic Violence, Bigotry

As some of you may remember, I talked about the possibility of going to New York, to help a single mom friend who had hurt herself. I was doing a fundraiser to be able to afford to go (I could still use some donations to help recover from the financial strain. And also to cover unexpected expenses).

Well, earlier in July, I finally went. Many of you may be wondering why it was so urgent. While it is true that an injured ankle makes things hard to deal with, especially for a single mom with an active kid, but it doesn’t seem like the type of thing to really justify spending so much money to go help out. Heck, taking a cab around would be cheaper.

The truth is that out of concern for privacy and at the request of my friend, I left out a lot of details. While it is true that she did injure herself, and that a portion of my help was to make things easier on her for a few days, the truth of the matter is that I was going there to stand witness and see what I could do to help her with a much more complicated issue.After my visit, my friend gave me permission to release some of the information on my blog.

You see, my friend was a victim of domestic abuse. Severe domestic abuse. Her partner hit her, sexually assaulted her, the details of which are so unbelievably horrible, that the court had a hard time accepting the truth of it. That was six years ago, and this man will likely never see the inside of a cell for what he did. My friend however, has had her life, and that of her child, completely hijacked.

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The Unfunny Incompetence of Social Services in New York

Guest Post: The Stigma of Mental Illness and Religiosity: A Dual Insult

Guest post by Katrina Halfaker

 

My life is defined, to some extent, by my mental disorders. To be chemically different is to be a lesser. It is to be stigmatized. We’re cast as violent, deranged, and irrational even though we are ten times more likely to be victims of abuse, often by those in positions of power, whether they be police officers, academic administrators, loved ones, or strangers on the street.

 

I’m an atheist with OCD, which is comorbid with other anxiety-based disorders, and I noticed clues of their onset as early as when I was ten, as did my family, though they never took me to a doctor. In the last year, I’ve dealt with mild pubic trichotillomania. Years before, I developed a binge-eating disorder (which led to childhood obesity). It went quiet for a while, but still, it occasionally asserts itself in relapses. Every single person in my immediate family has been or is currently affected by at least one major disorder (diagnosed and undiagnosed: SAD, borderline personality disorder, and depression). I was raised in a religious household and educated until teenage-hood in a low-key Creationist school. We never had a licensed school therapist or nurse, or any provisions outside of an occasional hearing and vision test – but we did have chapel every week.

 

So, yes: I know the difference between reinforced frameworks and chemical diversity.

 

Many of you, my fellow secularists, need to understand one very crucial aspect of this dilemma: you have made it personal when you call religion a mental illness. And you have transgressed in ways you believe you have not. And you are unwilling to acknowledge it.

Continue reading “Guest Post: The Stigma of Mental Illness and Religiosity: A Dual Insult”

Guest Post: The Stigma of Mental Illness and Religiosity: A Dual Insult