You don’t actually have to love yourself to be happy, healthy, and stable. Here are some beliefs that you can work towards instead
- no one deserves bad treatment, including you
- You deserve to be treated with self kindness & to meet you own physical and emotional needs
- Physical appearance isn’t the most important thing, and even if you’re unattractive you deserve to be able to live your life without shame
- that no one is expected to be perfect at everything they try, and that it’s ok to enjoy things you aren’t good at
- It’s more interesting and fun to focus your thoughts outward on the world and other people than to think about how much you like or dislike yourself
- That everyone makes mistakes and does embarrassing things, and that an embarrassing event might feel really terrible but it’s not actually a threat
- It’s not worth obsessing over whether you are a good or bad person, bc those things don’t really exist. (There are only good & bad actions; humans are way too complex & ever changing to fit into black & white labels)
- Your thoughts and emotions are as valid & team as anyone else’s
Basically, the goal with all of this is to accept that you can treat yourself with self compassion. It is going to be near impossible to be happy if you constantly tear yourself down, or if you don’t respect needs, but it’s definitely possible to be happy feeling pretty meh about it.
I recommend focusing on things you believe are true for all people, then working back to yourself (for example, that everyone deserves to be treated kindly, that physical appearance isn’t shameful, that everyone makes mistakes, etc). Make self kindness the goal. When you are being mean to yourself, remind yourself to be kinder. If you feel horrible about a mistake remember you are only human. And the rest of the time? Pour your energy into creating meaningful activities in your life. Make art, chase goals, call friends, read books, learn, create, engage. You will find the works is much bigger and brighter when you make room for something besides self criticism.
Friendly reminder that the reason you feel so much better is because of your meds, don’t stop taking them unless you talk to your doctor first, you really do need them, I promise.
Around June I stopped taking my eye medication because I hadn’t had a problem with my eyes in months. I got really lazy about doing it; then I stopped them altogether.
Turns out, the reason I stopped having problems with my eyes was because I was religiously taking my medication. Whodathunk. Now I have to work to get back to the place I was before I decided I was “better” (I wasn’t!).
If you thought this post was just about anti-depressants or lithium, it could be! For me, this post is about eyedrops, for you it might be about antibiotics, or it might be about zoloft. Whatever it is, please consider talking to your doctor before making a sudden shift to stop taking it. It’s not bad to be on medication. It’s not bad to need it.
…and on a related note, do not let anyone tell you that because you start feeling worse if you don’t take your medication, that means you’re “addicted”. That is not how addiction works.
When I was a teenager when I lived with my parents, my bedroom was in the basement, and as such they didn’t particularly care what I did to my walls, ceiling etc
Which is why they didn’t care at all when, at age 13 in the mid-2000′s, I told them I was going to paint my walls with 6 foot tall murals of my favorite anime characters at the time.
Now, my parents have turned my old bedroom into a family room but refuse to cover up my adolescent shame, and every time I go over to visit I’m confronted with the troubling reality of the towering, hand-painted Inuyasha glowering at me from on high, reminding me I can never truly escape the sins of my past.
You asked, and I harangued my poor mother into getting pictures.
Notice how they DID paint the room, but left my… Beautiful artwork in tact.
And a hidden treat in the corner…
From when I had a brief and horribly misbegotten adolescent mega crush on Hiruma from Eyeshield 21
hey op that’s quality fucking artwork in terms of sheer technical skill that the fuck
Yeah my dude you actually did a pretty good job especially considering it was a wall and not tilted at a friendly angle
Hey, op, cringe culture is dead, you did a good job on that art and these characters meant something for you. Your mom saw that importance and she kept them. There’s nothing to be ashamed of
I think my favorite jokes are the ones that weren’t even all that funny until I was an adult, and now they’re fucking hilarious. I’m not even talking about the dirty jokes. I’m talking about in Finding Nemo where the sharks are having fucking AA for fish eating. Remember that shit? “I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself.” Who ever thought of that? That was brilliant. Or what about that time in Shrek 2 where Shrek and Donkey infiltrate the castle pretending to be union workers? Little me didn’t give a shit about unions but big me is remembering Shrek going “It’s okay buddy, we’re from the union” and the desk worker secretively “we don’t even have dental,” and Shrek just shakes his head and looks at Donkey like he can’t believe this shit and goes, “They don’t even have dental.” What the fuck. I’m dying of laughter. Who comes up with this shit.
I have a lot of feelings on how indigenous groups who didn’t build permanent structures like cities aren’t seen as being as sophisticated as ones who built large cities, without accounting for the fact that maybe it’s in our values systems to leave as light of a footprint as possible and it’s important that our structures are easily taken down or fade with the passage of time because it’s easier on the landscape, but ya know.
This made me think of the story one of my Coast Salish acquaintances tells of how her family would travel from the Puget Sound up Mt. Rainier every year and, sure, following herds but also they had berry bushes and trees and prairies (with camas is the one she always talks about but I’m sure other foods) that were in the care of specific families so they also followed the plants through the year. They cultivated and cared for them, not just coming to gather and move on to the unknown. They came back and to the same places, the same plants and trees every year.
I think a lot of people mistake what a huge connection that is to land and territory. They hear “nomadic” and dismiss it without realizing. It doesnt mean you dont have roots in the area. It means your roots are so ingrained in the area outsiders dont even see them there.
In order for disabled people to receive any sort of financial assistant for their housing, food, bills, medical supplies, etc., they cannot ever have more than $2,000 of resources to their name. Ever.
It doesn’t matter what it’s for.
You’re saving up for a new wheelchair?
For college?
To put a downpayment on a house?
Hell man, you just happen to budget for once in your life so that you can have some extra money in case something bad happens?
Your benefits immediately get cut off if you’re a cent over $2,000.
And, even worse, you usually end up having to pay back every dollar the government gave you that month.
So say you get $400. If they find out you’re twenty dollars over the resource limit, you have to give them all $400 back and you undergo an investigation of your funds to see if you will continue getting money.
“What if I spend the money that day?”
Doesn’t matter. In fact, from what I can tell, people who do this are actually put under investigation for fraud.
And yes, this system literally kills people.
Remember when “Guardians of the Galaxy” came out? one of Rocket Racoon’s creators, Bill Mantlo, suffered an accident in 1992 and has irreparable brain damage.
before the movie came out, Marvel gave him an exclusive preview screening. SOme people were upset because they felt if Marvel was really wanted to thank mantlo, they should have donated money to Mantlo’s family.
Bill Mantlo’s brother had to come out and explain: If Marvel gave them monetary aid, Bill Mantlo would lose his financial assistance.
That’s so utterly depressing.
disgusting
I have friends on welfare who won’t pick up a penny in the street because they’d risk the welfare they struggled to get for 10 years.
oh look another fucked up thing in this world. let’s just add it to the list. number 63858b
My brother has been on California State SSI for autism for the last 10 years, and he absolutely has to (no joke, HAS TO) spend all 720 bucks of his SSI every month, because if he puts it in the bank he risks losing his SSI altogether.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.
And here’s the funnest part of the story!
One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.
The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.
He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.
Please, legal side of Tumblr, tell me what positive reasoning this law has?
Happy 4th of July everyone! This is what the “nation of opportunity” looks like.
There’s something called an ABLE account that can help. If you are on SSI and were diagnosed as disabled before the age of 26 you can apply for an ABLE account that will allow you to save up to $99,000. More people need to know about this!
thank you so much for this information. i’m applying for an abled account right now
THERES A WHAT
OH GOD BLESS THE SHIT OUTTA YOU YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW FREAKED OUT OVER THIS I WAS
I’ve been looking into SSI; I had no idea about this!
love the trope where an authoritative side character pointedly pretends not to help the hero they’re not supposed to be helping by saying shit like “well I can’t just let you wander around up to the THIRD FLOOR where you could just FIND THE THING YOU NEED in the FIRST ROOM ON THE LEFT. And under no circumstances should you USE THE KEY FROM UNDER THE MAT. I wish I could help you, but I CAN’T. Now excuse me, I need to take this phone call for the next 37 minutes EXACTLY.”
me trying to get comfortable in my covers at night
thats the kind of thing i would love to just have in a little jar on my shelf so that when people came over they would be really unnerved by the mysterious shifting blob i have in a flask and i would refuse to acknowledge its existence
