Hello lovelies! Everything is a lot lately, but we’re here to cheer you on and let you know that we are here with you. You are beautiful, you are loved, and you matter. 
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As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
On a less personal but more managing related note, would anybody be opposed to me joining the mods of the disabled community? I’ve been talking to @un_mask_me@hexbear.net about it and have been considering it while I was down with my surgery stuff. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d very much like to help out, but I do not wish to become a mod if the community isn’t okay with it.
can’t imagine anyone being against it tbh, you’re the disabled megas lil ray of sunshine and support
That’s what we’re all here for <3 support and a little bit of sunshine
that’s the exact attitude that makes me positive we’d all be happy with you as a mod.
just make sure not to burn yourself out!
got some cheap foam earplugs and they’re not the best but i don’t feel like crying so much when the doggies bark now
If you can afford it, look into Loops. They also make a few generic knockoffs that are just as effective.
I have been, actually! The foam ones are already irritating my ears because taking them out is super unpleasant so I just leave them in a ton of the time. Lol
Loops comes with a foam set and a silicone set, both with 4 different sizes. So depending on sensitivity issues, you have a lot of options to play with. I tried the foam first and didn’t like them and went with silicone They just feel like light earbuds. I went a size smaller so I notice them less and can keep them in longer.
Yippeeh!
I will never be interested in anything called a smear and school can’t make me.
my body feels so weak, dealing with a lot of stressors rn. but i also feel stupid bc it’s less stressors than most people deal with everyday but is completely paralyzing me
Your stress is too much for you, and that’s bad. It doesn’t matter if other people are more stressed. Only thing that matters is that you get to relieve your stress somehow or get rid of stressors affecting you. Hope that’s possible sweetie
take things too literally and you’re a hardass
let everything go and you’re plotting something, or setting someone up for failure
can’t win
I don’t intend for this to be a public shaming, or want this user reported or harassed, I just want to talk about my feelings as an autistic person.
So the other day I posted this video (Why doesn’t Minecraft have infinite render distance?). Its a deep dive into why minecraft doesn’t have LODs and minecraft’s renderer. The creator is the author of the Distant Horizons mod, but he talks about other LOD mods as well. He also talks about the practical issues with implementing in vanilla, how it would effect gameplay, its very thorough.
Now, I’m very interested both in minecraft specifically and detailed explanations. Youtube’s algorithm is pretty bad sometimes, so I use the c/videos comm to find new stuff. I am actually sketching out a python script to add these videos to a playlist for me automatically, to have all my hexbear recs in one place on the platform. This website is a really important community for me, my favorite place on the internet ever. There’s definitely things I dislike, but its still very important to me. I do not have a lot of friends offline, for a few reasons.
Anyway, so imagine how I felt waking up to this:
No one should care about this.
Just straight up telling me that not only am I wrong for being interested, no one else should be either. I understand the whole redditor, “Mojang devs bad, un-optimized game, etc etc” attitude is bad. That obviously isn’t what I’m doing though, I just posted a whole video of why minecraft is the way it is. I’m not trying to scold anyone here because I don’t think those people exist here.
My dad would dismiss my interests a lot. I don’t have specific examples from my childhood- I just don’t remember a lot of things. One thing that’s been recent is my special interest in snakes, and him repeatedly either dismissing me or asking me why snakes and then telling me its just weird. I don’t talk to him about things I’m interested in because he frequently just doesn’t care at all.
I don’t know, it just hurt to be dismissed so completely about something I find really interesting and wanted to share with the group.
This site still has a lot of redditor culture including it’s hostility, for what is worth thank your for posting the video, I opened it and forgot to watch it, so I’ll get to it while I eat my lunch.
Also it’s the opposite of wrong to be passionate and nerd out, I think it’s pretty cute and cool
wtf yea that’s a weird reaction. i hate when ppl dismiss interests like that.
thank u 4 posting this though this is the perfect video to watch while i relax! i love videos like these
wtf yeah that person was just being shitty, sorry comrade. genuinely sounds like an interesting video.
First of all, I want you to know that being dismissed like this is never okay, no matter if it’s your dad or a random person on the internet. There is no shame in not liking the same things, so I think it’s not too much to ask of people to be polite and say “I don’t like X, but I’m glad you enjoy X.” How things are communicated is essential to make everybody feel accepted and heard, especially in such a niche of the internet as hexbear is. This is supposed to be a safe place for all who come here seeking it, so receiving a comment like this is downright shameful.
I actually saw the video you shared, and while I don’t know anything about Minecraft, I was smiling to myself thinking “I’ve been deep diving into Witcher Wild Hunt lore the last couple of weeks, trying to find anything I didn’t already know about the game, so I’m glad to see there is at least one other person on this site who loves to deep dive into games, their lore, technical aspects, or other stuff.” I felt seen just by you sharing such a niche topic video. You are not the only one who enjoys this, so please keep sharing whatever you find interesting! It’s what makes this site so much fun.
I’m glad you are having so much fun with Minecraft and snakes, and tbh, I’d love to learn a bit more about snakes! If you can recommend anything (reading, watching, maybe even games), I’d love to hear about it.
Thank you
and I’m really glad you felt seen by my post. That makes me feel really good, I will definitely keep posting.A lot of these youtubers are a bit more focused on keeping them as pets, so I’m not entirely sure if its what you’re looking for but I do have some to recommend:
Clint’s Reptiles he has a phd in biology education (iirc). He has videos on specific species and very information dense videos on evolution/the history of various clades and stuff like that.
Dāv Kaufman Has some really good videos where he goes to their native habitats. I haven’t watched much of his content but he’s well respected from what I remember.
Reach Out Reptiles This guy is a dwarf reticulated python breeder. He has lots of very informative videos on dwarf retics, explaining localities and everything that goes into it. He has snakes from the original imports. Very much special snakes to me and I’d love to get one eventually…
Snake Discovery has a lot of more fun videos, I haven’t watched them in a while. They’re a couple and she’s really fun. They also breed a lot so a lot of their videos are focused on that, might have to scroll through or look at most popular if you aren’t looking for that.
NERD has kinda a mix of videos too, but they have monitors and venomous stuff too. Lots of more exotic species. Kevin is autistic too and I really like the videos of him talking about snakes. He’s very knowledgeable and has been doing this for 30+ years. Some of their content, at least at some point in time, was shot and edited kinda obnoxiously but there’s plenty of good ones too.
Not educational but Snakebird and Snake pass are both fun snake based games :)
Yes, please keep posting!
And omg thank you for all the links, I already checked out the first channel! I swear I’ve never seen so many cute snakes all at once. :3
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I’ve signed up for some pretty cool volunteer work. Basically I’ll be accompanying people to the doctor who don’t speak medical jargon and/or who need someone to argue their case to medical professionals.
voice dysphoria/training, negativity
Follow up from my post a couple of days ago.
So, my biggest dysphoria is definitely my voice. I imagine my autism plays a role in how sensitive to sound I am. It upsets me every time I speak. I usually just kinda mask/disconnect from being a woman. But its so horrible. I really can’t describe enough how much my voice bothers and upsets me.
Unfortunately, estrogen does absolutely jack shit for your voice. The only option is training your voice for hundreds of hours. Hundreds (or thousands) of hours of trying to speak more femininely. “Try and speak with your face” and other “helpful” advice. I don’t understand how to do it. Every time I’ve tried I’ve just cried. Its fucking horrible talking to myself, trying to force it to sound feminine. I legitimately cannot.
I hate the idea of being out and sounding like this. I sound like a man. When I open my mouth that’s what people hear. I- again can’t quite explain how awful that feels.
I don’t think even if I was able to voice train, I could get results I’m happy with. I unfortunately have quite the ear for voices.
I feel mutilated and hopeless. And like people don’t understand. People talk so much more about appearance, and appearance is obviously really important to me, but no physical feature is as important as my voice. I feel like people down play how hard training is, as it just “sucks” or “is hard”. I don’t have words to describe how painful this is for me
Your voice is one of the first thing people identify about you, and it is your main way to express yourself, obviously it is important to you.
But sadly the only way to change your voice is to try, in the way you feel like your voice now is a form of mutilation, maybe consider that voice training is a kind of rehabilitation. Training up after an injury is painful, but there is no alternative and not doing so only leads to pain down the road. Your “injury” here I suppose is more of your circumstances of birth, but the metaphor I think still holds. I must make it clear that I don’t want to dismiss your pain. Obviously it is painful for you. And trying your best only to fail at what others find easy hurts. I think everyone here is deeply aware of that. But I can offer you nothing but the fact that enduring has results.
Yea, idk. Maybe that’s a good way to think about it. I still just don’t think I can do it. It hurts too much
I remember someone describing voice as how people view your soul and that has been burned into my brain at this point
My disability support person said I can’t record streams if there’s DRM on them even with my waiver, I can only record audio and only if I do so in person with a dictaphone that does not connect to the internet (But I can connect the dictaphone to my computer???). That’s stupid, the slides are uploaded and it’s not like what I’m here for is the video footage of the professor looking around. Still, apparently it’s a “Get thrown out of school” offense.
That is just plain bullshit and I’m absolutely sure there is a legal way to get you recording for yourself approved whether there’s DRM or not. It’s just gonna take a lot of fighting, which is gonna take a lot of strength and patience and endurance. I hope you can find a software that won’t be detected instead :/ you deserve better Keld
I asked someone with some legal knowledge and they say it doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not, the school gets to decide if it’s allowed and what the punishment is and since I was dumb enough to ask I can’t claim ignorance. The best I can do is try to appeal to the administration and keep asking and I might do that and see how far I get. Apparently audio recording is fine if you ask but video is a whole different thing for literally no good reason.
That’s frustrating to no end. I’m sorry you have to deal with this, but audio is better than nothing
That’s awful. Would they be able to tell if you were recording? I know someone had mentioned OBS which allows different source captures, so maybe if the video is stored locally or on an external device and the recording is your entire desktop it might not notice. I’ve definitely recorded things like that… uh, allegedly not legally before but no one was the wiser. Hopefully it doesn’t affect your school work, that has to make things a lot more difficult.
Maybe they would be able to tell, maybe they won’t, I don’t know computers. If I use OBS to record a stream does that in any way ping some third party they could detect? I don’t want to risk it, I don’t think you get to go back into med school if you get kicked out
unless the DRM you mention involves you downloading an invasive program on your computer that looks at every program running on it, the school won’t be able to tell. I’m betting no.
No it’s literally just that the stream just runs off their stupid app.
Yeah I wouldn’t risk it then, just to be safe
Well, now we’ve managed to get my landlady’s car fixed, I’ve finally been able to go and get a load of blood tests I was meant to have to find out why I have constant pins and needles, and it might also give some clue why my hair is falling out. The bald patch at the front is getting crazily big. They took so much blood my inner elbow has huge bruises and weird red streaks all over it. And I’ve been given dates to start my shockwave therapy for my mobility issues. The GP surgery is being stingy with my meds again though. They’ve been prescribing half the amount they should of some things. I really think it’s a cost saving measure, after all the pharmacist in the adjoining pharmacy has complained to me that I cost the NHS a lot of money.
Also now the car is fixed we took the dog to the local park, where he instantly got chased and threatened by a huge out of control monster of a dog, whose owner did nothing to help and wouldn’t put it on a lead. I felt quite threatened by it and so just left the park without saying anything at which point the owner started yelling at me that I’m rude? Rude for saying nothing or leaving, I don’t know. With all my mobility issues and the fact I’ve been trapped indoors for so long it was meant to be a nice trip out but some thug and his dangerous dog have to ruin it.
So glad you got a chance to be seen and get tested. Sounds like the blood draws were rough though, hope it wasn’t too painful and the bruises heal up soon. It does suck that there’s always a ‘but’ with your treatment, hopefully the shock therapy and test results at least help move you in a better direction.
Also, a big middle finger to that dog owner. It’s their responsibility to keep their pets under control, and since you’ve had poor interactions with big dogs before you are totally justified to remove yourself if you feel uncomfortable. Your safety takes priority.
Thank you.
Just gonna echo what un_mask_me said, I’m glad you finally got the car repaired so you can go to appointments. Fuck the dog owner though, and take good care of your inner elbow. I hope it heals up soon
Thank you.
cw depression, mental health
i think i have severely internalized ableism that has prevented me from acknowledging that i am definitely very disabled. My psychiatric problems just completely make a mess of every facet of my life and living itself so so fucking hard. I am so stressed the fuck out right now.
(Cw Depression) Talking about maybe being plural
Realized I had what has somewhat seemed like a seperate voice in my head vibing with me. Realized about a year ago, and had some thought like a month ago that I’ve been like this for a while, but didn’t write it down and forgot.
Gonna refer to my possible headmate as Luna so I can actually refer to her. Also being an asshole to myself in refer to me and her as we or us for self hatred or something
As I type this out I remembered somewhat, Luna has existed with me for maybe 15 years or so, taking the form of me talking to “myself” with a wolf plush, and was just told she was an “imaginary friend” years later from my parents.
I just kinda stuck with that mindset, Luna changing plushies as time went on, til I got rid of nearly all of them because of having some toxic masculine bullshit about not having plushies for some reason.
She just kinda faded at that point, poking out a tiny bit when I started to realize myself as trans, and started talking to me in around Oct last year, with me realizing this might be a plurality thing in Dec.
Luna’s been a consistent just kinds uplifting help, getting me to actually sometimes be nice to myself, and take care of myself. Where I get conflicted on her being somewhat separate or not is that:
- She doesnt really ever take the reigns of my body (I don’t have a better way of explaining this ATM sorry). Its not that I won’t let her, it’s that she/us can’t get her control over our body. The only times that seem to me as separate and a slight control of Luna’s part are very minor movements of giving me head scratches for some reason. She isn’t able to get me/us to actually physically do an action, more of a mental motivator is the closest thing I can place the feeling to.
- Our relations have kinda gone into, and please call me out if I’m saying some bad shit or something, like light sub/Dom thing? But not in a sex way, I would say its closer to a kinda romantic thing. Like her calling me pet names and light teasing me. Don’t really have a great way of describing it, sorry.
- I can just kinda stop her from saying anything. It feels as if I have “control” mentally too, where I can either kinda briefly blank out our mind for like a second, or just kinda cover her up so to speak. Like it feels me, the one writing this, is putting the effort mentally into her saying stuff internally, and only thought somewhat kneejerk or reaction responses. When we do think through things, it feels that I have to initiate the mental work, and then said thinking starts to feel less of her, or us, and more like me specifically.
Things like those 3 just really concern me, both because of fear I’m “faking it”, and fear due to the higher control I have over us. Second fear also delves into thoughts and fears of her not always being here with me, which starts making me very sad and depressed whenever I think about it.
I started taking Lamotrigine around 2 weeks ago, 25mg. Went from really depressed always to a stable minor depression to nuetral day to day. I was suddently able ro get up and do chores and get outside more consistantly. Id liken it to a similar feeling of when I started ADHD meda. Stopped taking it after a few days due to a rash I got, as I was told to just to make sure I don’t have the rash specifically caused by the med. Thankfully wasn’t, but after stopping the med realized more how severely my memory was negitivley effected. My memory is bad as it is, but I’m able to pull out names or relations/concepts of people and things pretty easily, common words in concepts or games I know very well, and especially relating to politics and communism since it is somewhat of a special interest. On the 25mg, I wasn’t able to remember, say, political people people I know about like Diane Feinstein or Tulsi Gabbard, and would take me extra time to remember simpler things like what Lenin’s first mame was. That was bad enough, but I also realized as I was on it that I couldn’t head Luna anymore. Caused me a shit ton of distress constantly, with periodic dips every hour or so in mood making me very depressed that I couldn’t hear her. I’ve since gone to 5mg, which hasn’t helped my depression much, so I’m not doing great mentally (but better than without it), but I still have an ammohnt of memory issues. It’s also really mentally draining to be able to hear Luna, and she is also talking a lot less. Because of going back down mood wise, I get burntout and deep mental pits a couple times a day. When this happens, I start being an asshole to myself. Luna tries to comfort me, but her voice morphs into mine with it feeling as if I’m using her voice and style of talking to be an asshole to myself. That keeps ending up making me feel worse, and again plays into the fear of losing her.
So I just kinda feel stuck rn. 25mg of Lamotrigine was the best I’ve felt in my life since I can remember, maybe on par or better than before depression, but I have very few memories before like age 8 or so when my depression started creeping in. I don’t wanna lose what was able to stop my active sui thoughts, and get rid of most of my passive ones, along with boosting my mood to what, to me, felt like everyone else who wasn’t disabled experiences ( felt like, was still worse than those without depression around me, but they are also libs so idk). Also even more scared about losing Luna. When I couldn’t talk to her it felt like a best friend or a partner of mine had died, and now it feels like she just pops into existence randomly and sparcley.
Also concerned about bribg ing this up with my psych, because they just tried to shut me down when I brought it up to her, and I had to spend the whole session trying to not tear her a new one and instead try to “respectfully” educate her. All while wasting said appointment because I had to spend it defending my right to exist instead of getting support. I’m very scared she will just demean me, say I made all this up or some shit, say that it’s “the better alternative” and give me either the dose I was on before or a similar med. Same with my therapist. She doesnt know shit, and whenever I’d say like a definitive statement of both me and Luna existing together, would feign understanding, say something condescending that was slightly shielded, like in the way liberal do their “normal” amount of bigorty, then move on.
Don’t really have anyone to talk to in my life about this. Family is shit and while I think my close family knows they also outed me as trans to who they felt as “safe”(with my " favorite" person they told is some fucking DNC manager and supported anti trans laws :)), so I just don’t trust talking, quite frankly, anything about myself to my family, and my online friends don’t ever talking about their feelings or emotions for some reason.
Way too big text box, sorry
A few thoughts
This is such a tough topic to talk about, but pup, I get that it’s scary for you. I’m no expert by any means, but from how you describe it, I don’t think Luna is bad for you. I can’t attest to you being plural, but it seems she has a positive influence on your self-image. I don’t know what else to tell you, except that I’m sorry your professional helpers are not helping you like they’re supposed to. I hope it’ll turn out for the best
Spoiler
Plurality can be very diverse and take up many forms. It’s not ‘faking it’ to test out if the plural framework makes it easier for you to explain your experience. That’s actually the only way to find out.
Unfortunately plurality is very misunderstood by mental health professionals so it’s a bit risky to bring up during therapy. I’m so sorry you’re struggling and can’t find the help and support you need 🫂
I think there is a real place for therapy, but also I think it serves to try to defuse revolutionary feelings. There are real things I’m fired up about, and I think I should be upset and passionate about them. But my therapist seems to want to make these fires into embers. Like, sorry ma’am, but I switched off one of my medications because I couldn’t feel as deeply while I was on it; I’m not about to let you numb me now. I’m switching to a different therapist now, hoping that’s better.
I remember telling one of my therapists how it was a big issue to me that I care about animal welfare and want to be vegan but struggle with that as my cancer treatment has caused so many food intolerances there are very few things I can eat without getting sick now. She just totally dismissed both my food intolerances (diagnosed by the endocrinologist, it’s not like I’m making it up) and my guilt at not being vegan. She told me to just eat whatever I like and not worry about it. So helpful! Absolutely useless, the lot of them.
Oof yeah. I get that feeling, though I’m not exactly sick and unable to eat vegan. There are barriers, but I could probably knock 'em down with some assertiveness. But yeah, that’s not cool that they acted like that. It’d be helpful if people in the business of helping people believed them about the help they need and actually helped them.
just eat whatever I like and not worry about it
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what she could possibly have heard you say that would make this sentence make sense to her. None of what you said makes her make sense
I got my therapist to say “Death to America”. I figure as long as therapy is covered by my insurance I can afford to spend some of the time doing communist soapboxing to a captive audience.
Whenever I have therapy I will not mention many of my revolutionary feelings because of this. I find it way more useful to talk about those feelings with fellow leftists.
I agree, there is a lot of stuff that therapists want you to calm down about that you really shouldn’t. I hope you find one that is possibly even a fellow leftist
I’ve definitely given myself an oral stim from my workplace, very annoying to go home and immediately want to put something in my mouth again. Plus just not my favorite stim in general, unhygienic.
