Daily Archives: January 23, 2015

    Happy Friday My Blogging Friends! I wrote this piece “Out in the Milkweed” for the cutting-edge, award-winning website/blog STIGMAMA. STIGMAMA’s tagline is “Motherhood. Mental Illness. Out Loud.”  I loved it as soon as I read that.  I started … Continue reading →

Last night I started to feel blue. Just a little sad. There was no reason for it so I know my bipolar depression was trying to slam it’s heaad through the door.

Sometimes I can just sleep it off. However this morning I woke up twice as sad and I’m feeling very hopeless. I think I will just go back to bed. I see no reason to be awake and spend all day alone and miserable.

later..

The meme lives here.

4. How do you feel about people who diagnose themselves online and then treat themselves for bipolar?

If you’re enjoying manic depression, you haven’t got it.

I think they’re melodramatic malingering munchausen muggles. We all know that Dr Google will give you any diagnosis you want, and that online quizzes are far from accurate. Beyond that, bipolar is a bitch to diagnose and the average time it takes is 13.2 years. Even if a psychiatrist thought they were bipolar, they would go and see a psychiatrist about it. 

I love this quote about faking bipolar:

I mean who the fuck would want to. why? its bloody fucking horrible we all know that, why would someone do that. it’s not like claiming incapacity benefit like long john silver is it. least he got a fucking parrot
source

People don’t even do the research before they decide their moodswings = bipolar affective disorder. They get their definition from a fuckwitted and media saturated public, who thinks weather is bipolar too. I’ve read people saying omg and then I went totally psychotic and when I’ve asked exactly what happened, they seem to have mistaken a tantrum for psychosis.

Article: faking it: how to detect malingered psychosis (a very interesting and worthwhile read actually).

They get so much wrong and generally seem to stick to the myths and misperceptions. They’ll complain about their moods changing all day, every day. They’ll tell you that mania is pure fun. They’re either attention seeking fools, or in really in need of psychiatric help (but not for bipolar).

A very mixed bag of answers to someone asking how to fake bipolar disorder.

A note to the fakers:

Treating it yourself is a joke, without a lot of experience to get you to that point. Faking treatment is ridiculous unless you’ve read a pile of books etc. I’m fine with you wanting to fake my disorder, as long as you’re willing to go through all the same pain. And that includes having to try out fucknose however many meds and their attendant side effects. Thank you for flying Bipolair; please enjoy the itching, aching, shitting, puking etc. Or perhaps flip through the DSM 5 again and choose a less severe issue to start with, then work your way up to the big boys like bipolar and schizophrenia. Get a cheaper one too, you’d be shocked at what bipolar costs you in money, along with the huge impact on every other area of your life as well.

You’re insulting, offending, belittling and disrespecting us. You’re contributing to stigma against mental illness, which has seriously negative effects on an enormous amount of people. You really haven’t thought it through properly and you’re pissing me off.

And could I trouble you to stop using BPD as an acronym? It belongs to borderline personality disorder. If your lifestyle doesn’t allow you enough time to type out bipolar, BD is acceptable (some even use BAD).

Good luck with your performance, gimme a yell when you do cancer.

Since going viral last October, the invitations to speak at conferences and other events have slowly but surely started trickling in.

At first, it was thrilling. I’ve always wanted to travel and talk about my experiences, because I still believe that face-to-face interaction does something that my words on the screen simply can’t. I wanted people to put a human face to the very important issues that I’ve been talking about.

I wanted people to realize that trans people exist, trans people with bipolar no less, and that I am not only surviving, but thriving in a world that often limits us.

But just as quickly as the invitations came in, they were being revoked. Not because I wasn’t capable of speaking, or that the engagement was cancelled – time after time, the conference and workshop invitations were being withdrawn because I had asked for disability accommodations.

As a lifelong sufferer of anxiety, I had requested what many folks with disabilities request – a travel companion.

Sometimes we ask for a companion because we need an interpreter with us. For others, we need someone to offer us assistance because our mobility is limited in some way. For me, with a history of panic attacks, I ask for a companion so that I can better cope with my anxiety that is frequently triggered by travel.

This is not an accommodation I ask for because I want a friend to go with me for fun. This is not an accommodation I ask for because I am trying to inconvenience someone. This is an accommodation I ask for because anxiety severely limits my ability to travel, and having someone with me has made that anxiety more manageable.

In a perfect world, I wouldn’t need to ask for an accommodation; it would be built into the system. Heck, in a perfect world, I wouldn’t have an anxiety disorder to begin with.

But folks with disabilities often need accommodations to be able to participate in events. It’s unavoidable. And in almost every case, we are either asked to foot the bill for the “added expense,” or in many cases, our invite to participate is mysteriously (or sometimes, not so mysteriously) revoked.

We’re told it has something to do with budget, but I can’t help but hear it as, “Your voice does not matter enough for us to accommodate you.”

We are seldom represented at conferences and events – not only because we aren’t asked to be there, but because even when we are, there are obstacles preventing us from accessing the event.

We’re often told that it’s an issue of money, that they would LOVE to have us, that it’s so unfortunate that they can’t accommodate us. I’ve heard this more times than I can count.

But here’s my question: If you cannot make your events accessible to people with disabilities, who exactly are these events for?

By being unwilling to take the necessary steps to ensure that folks like me are able to participate in events, we ultimately create conferences that are by and for able-bodied people. We effectively erase and marginalize people with disabilities.

If you are denying someone the opportunity to participate in your event on the basis of their disability, it’s no longer about money and has everything to do with ethics. It’s not a question of money, but rather, a question of what YOU are doing to ensure that your event is accessible, diverse, and representative of the communities that these events are for.

This applies not just for those who are attending, but for those you have invited to speak.

To suggest that folks with disabilities are too expensive to bring to an event, or a financial burden you are unwilling to take on, tells me that you are less concerned with accessibility and more concerned with the bottom-line.

And that tells me that the problem isn’t with my disability or accommodations – the problem lies with you.

I am blogging about this not with the intention of shaming anyone in particular, but rather, because accessibility is a very real issue that speakers and writers like myself face. I raise this issue, too, as a challenge to those who are organizing events. What effort are you making to both recruit and retain speakers with disabilities? People of color? Queer and trans folks?

It’s so important, especially in blogging communities, that the events we create include as many of these diverse voices as possible. And if you aren’t making an intentional and sincere effort to be inclusive, it’s time to change strategies.

Otherwise, it’s a lose-lose situation. When folks with disabilities continue to be silenced and excluded, these events will inevitably fall flat because they only represent a small slice of what our broader communities really look like.

So I ask again: Who are these events really for?
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Sam Dylan Finch is a queer activist and feminist writer, based in the SF Bay. He is the founder of Let’s Queer Things Up!, his blog and labor of love. With a passion for impacting change through personal narrative, Sam writes about his struggles and triumphs as genderqueer and bipolar with the hopes of teaching others about his identity and community. When he isn’t writing, he’s probably eating takeout and dancing to Taylor Swift.

Connect with SDF: Website ; Facebook ; Twitter ; Tumblr

Author’s Note: I know that there is some debate around whether to use “differently-abled,” “disabled,” or “person with a disability.” I acknowledge that there is some disagreement there and validate those concerns completely. I used the language that I identify with most, but recognize that not everyone uses this same language.