I’m sorry if that’s how I came across. I didn’t mean to.

For example: walking down a hallway at a university and glancing into a classroom to see an anatomy class in the middle of dissecting a several human cadavers may well be deeply scarring (especially if it’s unexpected) to a lot of people for various reasons. To me, since I know my office is next to the anatomy classrooms, it’s business as usual, though I might go tell the class technicians they forgot to put the privacy screens in front of the doors again.

Mnemosyne at #16:

the definition of depression is slanted towards “female” symptoms like crying uncontrollably. Men would not commit suicide at the rate they do if they were less prone to depression than women.

Absolutely. I added the stats to emphasize that mental health issues are not at all rare, they’re taboo, and often unrecognized/undiagnosed. I think there are a lot of problems with current diagnostic criteria being based on only one gender or one races presentation. This applies to physical conditions as well (for example: filipinos have a very high rate of Type 2 Diabetes, but they do not have an accompanying high rate of overweight/obesity).

There was an article on the Mind Hacks blog recently that brought up the role of cultural conditioning in trauma and PTSD: part of what makes an experience “traumatic” rather than bad, but non-scarring, is the personality and beliefs of the person experiencing the trauma. Not to say that trauma is “all in your head” and therefore not really a problem, it’s more that it’s such a difficult thing to treat/identify/prevent because it’s so deeply personal, and can be affected by cultural conditioning.

For example: walking d

Both cripple and crazy are abelist terms and I would have said the same things about someone who referred to themselves as “I’m just a cripple”. I would also have said to that person that your negative self talk is limiting you. It tends to keep you where you are, dependent on others for assistance. “But” such a person might reply, “It’s how I cope, don’t tell me what to do.” True, but a better, more effective and ultimately more satisfying coping mechanism would be to change your language to give oneself positive messages. This will have an effect one ones quality of life. The choice is up to you.

The way that our brains work is that words are seen by the subconscious as indications of what it should be doing. So when someone says to another person or to themselves, “You’re just a cripple” it says “Oh, we’re feeling ashamed right now” and goes into it’s file system and brings up all the negative images it has associated with being disabled and feeling ashamed. That is why people have decided it’s a good idea not to use certain words. They hurt others and ourselves.

There is an Institute for the Blind near where I live and we also have many folk in various wheelchairs and they all end up on the street around here. I don’t help them unless they ask or are in dire need. It would be disrespectful to do otherwise.

You’re not crazy Natalia, there is no such thing.

I don’t know why you think I am. I’m saying that, in general, negative self talk like “I’m just crazy” only serves to keep us stuck where we are

Noen, you told me to stop doing something and start doing something else. That’s personal. Now you’re suddenly telling me that you’re speaking in general. But that was not the case. Furthermore, your mention of negative self-talk assumes that I view the word “crazy” is automatically negative, and I don’t, I think it’s a word that means many things. Finally, I disagree with your analogy regarding fast food.

Actually I do.

For Cthulhu’s sake. You do not know me, you do not know what’s good for me. Stop telling me what is or isn’t effective in my case. Thank you.

But you don’t know if that’s effective or not.

Actually I do. It’s backed up with solid research. Google Marsha Linehan.

It reminds me a bit of the Fat Acceptance movement where the people I’m aware of treat fat as a descriptive term rather than as a perjorative that includes “lazy and stupid” implied.

So (I am thinking) I’m crazy. There’s nothing inheritently wrong with saying that, nor is there anything wrong with saying I’m fat.

But people who say “that person over there spouting homophobic nonsense is crazy” associates crazy with “things that I disagree with”, just like that person who called me a fat freak wasn’t doing it because I’m awesome but because to him fat is bad and calling me fat is a great insult.

Destigmitizing a word is a difficult and uphill battle. I remember Kate describing someone in a MSM article as “fat” and people freaking out because fat is a perjorative, and she was confused because she uses fat to mean, well, someone who is fat. Not “fat = bad”.

What this all means to me (in my rambling way) is that getting away from the stigma and abuse of mental and physical disability is a two-fold process. First, I think, it would be embracing the terms and using them to self-describe. “Well, of course I’m crazy!” (And treating ourselves accordingly – like others here I remind myself that my judgement is either occasionally or frequently compromised.)

The other is to stop using crazy as an attack. “That guy is crazy with his homophobia!” isn’t really embracing the idea that crazy doesn’t mean bad.

Or, I could be talking out of my ass. It was a very pleasant lunch that involved chocolate.