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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The Emotional Labour of Asking for Help

I think one of the hardest things for me to learn after I became disabled, was when to slow down, and when to ask for help. We talk about the energy cost that comes with living with chronic illness, but accepting it is still a process. Coming to terms with the fact that you can’t do certain things is hard. You’re determined not to let being sick change you, but you have no choice. You have to. Because you are different now. There are things you cannot do, and moving on and becoming yourself means coming to terms with that.

What many people don’t understand is that it’s not a onetime thing.

It happens again every time we have to ask for help.

Society tells us, as well as everyone in our lives, that we are a burden and that that is all we can be. No matter how much we learn that it is not the case, it is still hard not to internalize that message. The message is passed along in the media around us – with disability being presented as the worst possible thing that can happen to anyone, and in the reactions of people around us.

When Alyssa and I were together for example, it was not uncommon for members of her family to question her as to what good our relationship was with me being so broken. When she had called her mother to announce our engagement, what should have been happy news was instead met with a sense of mounting horror and dramatic exclamations of “no, no, no”. Later when discussing it with her father, the concerns about tying your fortunes to a disabled person came up again. When I was with my ex before Alyssa, so many people would tell me over and over again that I was lucky to have found someone who was willing to stay with me. I think the worst however, was when a friend who also happened to be Alyssa’s partner tried to talk me out of getting a dog to train as a service dog for myself by bringing up how much Alyssa already had to do around the house.

Although it was never flat out said, the implication was obvious. I was a burden.

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The Emotional Labour of Asking for Help

How the Current Disability System Puts us at Risk for Abuse

The way that people with disabilities are kept in poverty cause problems on many fronts, including reducing the access to healthcare and accessibility, and making just basic survival more difficult. In addition to those problems, however, the current set up of the disability system puts people with disabilities at higher risk for abuse with less possibility of getting out of abusive situations.

Financial abuse is a common tactic employed by abusers. It both keeps the victim isolated and makes it more difficult for them to leave and escape the abuse. When it comes to disabled people, the reliance on disability support payments makes it easier for abusers to maintain financial dominance. Continue reading “How the Current Disability System Puts us at Risk for Abuse”

How the Current Disability System Puts us at Risk for Abuse

The Nice Guys of Seattle Grace: Part 1 McDreamy more like a McNightmare

CN: Abuse, Trauma, Assault, Suicide Attempt, PTSD, Depression

I’ve been re-watching Grey’s Anatomy as my background show. I got pulled back into it after re-watching the episode where Dr. Bailey has to treat a Nazi. There were enough things going on in the episode that I just recognized based on watching the show a long time ago, and there are times when I can’t help it. Not remembering things, especially stories, irritates me and I feel the need to refresh my memory.

The following rant will contain spoilers for the first three maybe parts of 4 seasons.

One thing that struck me quite a bit on this go round, is how the nice men, the “Honourable men”, the so called good guys of Seattle Grace Hospital, are all abusive assholes.

Let’s start with Derek Shepherd aka McDreamy.

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The Nice Guys of Seattle Grace: Part 1 McDreamy more like a McNightmare

THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST OF ABUSE

TW: Discussions of Abuse

A graphic related to Beauty and the Beast has been making the rounds again. It discusses a different perspective of the movie, which suggests that rather than a representation of domestic abuse and Stockholm syndrome, that the movie represents the force of finding that special someone when you are socially outcast and isolated. It describes how both the Beast and Bell exist in social isolation. In the case of one, because of his monstrosity and in the case of the other as a result of being an avid reader and thinker in a town in which the social convention is for women to avoid books.

This graphic has some interesting ideas, but I think that even while what it said there is true, it is also important to discuss how that truth doesn’t invalidate the legitimate criticisms regarding the abusive elements of the Beast and Belle’s relationship.

The beast might be a social outcast because of the way he looks, but the way he looks is a result of his refusal to give shelter to an old woman for the night. It was meant to teach him not to judge people based on their appearance, and in the older stories it was also a punishment for being a mean-spirited and selfish brat.

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THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST OF ABUSE