Improv #11: I’m Mrs. Bright Blogs

*Knock knock* "Who's there?" "The Bright Side" "The Bright Side Who?" "The Bright Side Who Doesn't Actually Exist" "Oh. Then I guess this is just another dissociative conversation with the bully-in-my-brain, then?" "You catch on not quickly at all, don't you? Also, your joke sucks." I'm fairly sure the first rule of building a blog …

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Where Would the NHS Rank Trauma on the Pain Scale?

Hi everyone, First, I want to say thank you to everyone who talked me through the past two days. I made it out of that Sheraton break room eventually, and I did manage to give my presentation the next day. I know some people asked what I was presenting on, but in the world of …

Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite

*In the 9th Circle of Hell, bed bugs warrant a CW. Respect your mental health when reading.* I have a standard caveat on my blog that I will change minor details or abstract timelines for the sake of maintaining anonymity. Despite that claim - sensible though it probably would be to actually do that - …

Déjà Voodoo

Update: I also posted this in the comments, but then I remembered that smarter folks than I often skip the comments. The author of the original blog post that inspired this one contacted me. She has taken it down and apologized. She also seemed like she was still beating herself up over it even after …

For Better or Worse

CW: Anonymity is so inconvenient sometimes. I can't, for instance, tell you the actual state motto of the 9th Circle of Hell. "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here," while appropriate, is actually not nearly as morbidly satisfying as the true state motto. If I ever write a memoir of my experiences in Hell - …

Frozen in Time

CW: Don't read this if you are in any sort of a bad place. I'm physically safe. I'm mentally shattered. You don't need to do anything. There's nothing anyone can do anyway unless they had serious political connections. I am not a danger to myself or others. No, the danger, as always, is from others, …

Blog Awards Series #2: Veteran of the Blog Awards

Back in college, I was an RPG gamer. I didn't actually start with D&D, though. I started with a few more "freeform" type systems where I could create my character with all sorts of attributes that don't fit into the standard D&D class system. I'll be honest, D&D felt kind of limited after having freeform …

Absent without (Family Medical) Leave

I know the DSM-V no longer includes the term "nervous breakdown" anymore. I'm fairly confident even if it did include it, since the origins of my panic attacks, crying, dissociation, and depression are quite well known, I'd still just end up labeled with the "dissociative subtype" of PTSD (aka the compromise that is supposed to …

Cheez Whiz for Brains

*CW: oblique references to intense subject matter, but without details. The human brain - especially the ADHD brain - has a way of latching on to the most inane of details. It dutifully encodes what the original package writing was on the box of records carried into the courtroom itself. It encodes the original sticker …

Trust and Mental Health Treatment (Part 3): What the Asses Meant

Assessment (noun): the act of assessing; appraisal; evaluation Also known as a determination of what a bunch of asses meant. Psychiatrists have fifteen minutes with their patients, so it's already a reasonable assumption that they base the majority of their assessments of patients on immediate impressions, stereotypes and whatever was current when they graduated medical …