Hi, my name is connorwithstripes. I've been diagnosed with
#MightyTogether #Anxiety #PTSD #Migraine #OCD #PosturalOrthostaticTachycardiaSyndrome #HypermobilitySyndrome #AutismSpectrumDisorder #ADHD #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #Depression #Blindness #BrainInjury #graves 'Disease#Gastroparesis
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Having impairities or disorders may put lots of barriers over our life line or even make ourselves and our self stem fall in a state of comfort zone. But it's not always bad nor it should be seem as something negative, in my experience I heard a lot of people criticizing me stating that "You talk like you praise being disabled."
No, first of all, I don't see myself as _disabled_, I'm very able of doing absolutely anything I aim for and work hard to gain even if I can't see more than some little colours and near movement with my best eye, and even if my social skills are compromised, or tolerance to some high stimulations like noise, touch (In Brazil we have a huge touching culture), smells and emotions. And yes, I aknowledge that I'm not able to see in a very seeing focused world.
Second, my blindness, autism and BPD are not bad nor good, they are characteristics just like any other, like my sense of humour, or my interest in cats, or being a person that doesn't laugh much, they all have up and down sides to them. And here I tell some that I experience in my workspace:
1. Not always I greet my co-workers if they don't greet me.
Of course it's not because I'm rude, when I'm entering my workspace I always greet everyone I can, but as soon as I do my routine of washing my hands, washing my water bottle, filling my water bottle, positioning my cane and bottle in the table, etc. I just focus on what I have to do, so those who enter the place after me I either don't see them or am too focused with my activities to hear their steps, voice or objects like keys, white canes, or smelling what kind of perfume they usually use. So unless they make their presence to me using my name while doing so, I don't say anything untill I myself stop what I'm doing and realize the person arrived so I go and greet them.
2. I'm too focused on timing.
That's good and bad, I make an effort on being efficient and want to make my co-workers proud, mainly cause I'm an intern, so I have to show them I can keep up the pace and learn to do things properly and not fall in the intern stereotypes.
So if someone give me an activity, I don't stop doing it untill I'm done, I analyse and find strategies to do it more efficiently without commiting mistakes and not getting dehydrated because I love water so my 1,1L water bottle is always by my side while I work.
Problem about it is that when I'm not able to keep up the same pace as normally because of something else, I feel like I'm tarding everyone and put too much responsibility on myself wanting to do my work faster to get in the pace again. But my co-workers keep telling me to chill out because nothing is tardy, the pace is fine, and everything is okay, and I'm not messing up anything. Note: they tell me it without I even mentioning that I feel like I'm messing so I guess they can sense my worries.
3. I'm a fast learner
That's certainly a good one. I learn fastly absolutely anything that strikes interest in me, because I always devour every bit of knowledge I find about the subject. Of course, I never stop trying to learn because it's foolishness instead of intelligence and wisdom. That means as someone who struggle with low self stem, everytime I do it unconsciously, I get compliments and it makes me feel so good. So I always aim for more, and what I am good that others are not because they didn't have the same contact as I did (like in my workspace I'm the youngest and also the one who most had contact with computers.) I always try passing what I know to them so they can also learn something.
It doesn't matter our age, we always can learn and teach.
4. I tend to be methodically organized.
That really is good for the kind of work I do. For context I work in a Braille Library, although I'm currently on Biomedicine School. But being organized about things help me a lot on understanding how to find and put away a book, how to organize the system, how to keep up with dates when we do certain events, how to organize what books do I scan what books do I review for producting, where to find informations I need, what to say on the phone when someone calls, everything gets easier because organization, and even if you know some autistic kids' rooms that are messy, believe me, we know where to find what we want in our messes and changing where we put our things may end up badly for us emotionally. Bonus about being in a place for blind people is that hardly will the sighted workers change anything to another place without previously informing, because we need to be able to find things there, and the users also need to be able to orient themselves inside there.
Well that's all for now, I don't remember anything more since it's late/early in dawn, so I should try sleeping. Hope this post was informative and can help people realize that their "disabilities" are never to be seen as disabilities, but indeed if seen from another point of view, they can be a huge help on living and great talents to be proud of.
Image Description: it's a rectangle with the borders black and filled by a pattern of a puzzle with the pieces coloured with the autism puzzle colours, with a highlighted blind person icon. (Those that has a man holding a white cane) The icon is completely black, taking the shape it stands for.
1 reaction Hi, my name is mightypowers55. I'm here because of having multiple mental health issues and blindness from birth.
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some days I wake up with confusion. The confusion of who? Who am I? Who is coconscious with me? How will I keep from what I call flicker switching where it's like a game of tag, one moment me, the next someone else, the next another person. It goes with being forgetful as hell, "what was I doing? Did I finish it? Did I leave anything out?" It can be useful, because if there's only one other person out with me and I'm grounded, they're grounded too, then we can focus. If it's flicker switching, we're in for a visit to the hell museum because focus is hard to maintain. Add to that the fibromyalgia stuff and whee! we're off to the races! I'm trying to laugh at it, especially because all of us inside find ways to laugh at our situation when we can. I'll give this example. This might freak some out, and it did me for a while. We had a stink bug in here. I could hear it, it would land on me sometimes. I went into panic, old helplessness uncovered. One of the others was asking me, "Hey, you're the scholar. What do they call these scientifically?" My answer "brown marmerated stink bugs." He said "ok we can work with that." I said, "um, what? How?" His answer was "well, let's se. We can hear it. We can't reliably get rid of it." Me: "yes, both are true." Him: "hi there marmerator" Every time we were in the same room with it, he would always call it "marmerator" Then he asked me "what the hell does ""marmerated" mean?" I had no answer. But it did make both of us laugh. Another example was when I was required to sign for my medicine to be delivered, and instead of, you know, ringing the bell or knocking, they just left an effing post it in my box saying, I'm guessing, some nonsense about needing to reschedule delivery because they had "missed" me, when really they were just too damned lazy to do their job. The other thing making this more frustrating was the fact that a couple months before, something similar had happened, so I went to the post office and signed something that was supposed to be a signature for packages, the people there told me that it was suppose to apply automatically to any package that needed one without me having to go online and sign using my electronic signature, or be there to sign in person. I was mad. I was on my last dose of this particular medicine. One of my other inside people just said "sometimes, you have to give the sighted world the finger and move on." Not sure why, but we both burst out laughing. He knows, being blind himself, that dealing with government organizations that regard you as a number, maybe a nuisance, can be really infuriating. In fact, we realized just recently that it's really triggering my cptsd because with abuse comes being objectified (is that a word?) and it was so subtle, with people working for these organizations not even trying to communicate. Sometimes DSS will send me letters, but they won't return my phone calls or voicemails, lose my paperwork, etc. It's just the name of the game. That doesn't mean it doesn't royally suck. But at least with some, I'm able to find humor in it. #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #CPTSD #Blindness #Anxiety
1 reaction It finally happened, I knew it was bound to sooner or later. I was verbally shamed for using my disability placard, right there in the parking lot for everybody to see!
While I was loading my groceries into the car I heard a woman’s voice shout “Nice parking spot!” I looked up to see this lady staring very intently at me. And she did not break that stare even as she walked towards the entrance, as if she was trying to intimidate me. I looked back at her a bit shocked. It seemed to really bother her that I was parked there. Little does she know, the fact that I parked there bothers me too, every single day.
Those three words combined with the look of disgust she gave me had me questioning myself all weekend. Do I really need to park there? Is losing sight in one eye really that hard? Should I have told her to f*ck right off? And the answer to all of those questions is yes! Yes, this is hard – hard to live with, hard to be stared at for parking there and hard not to have given her a piece of my mind.
Every time I use a disability parking spot, the questions start swirling around in my head. Before I even get out of the car, the anxiety kicks in and I move into defensive mode. Is that person staring at me? What if they say something? How am I going to react?
Like this woman, many people are still unaware that invisible disabilities exist. With an estimated 20% of people living in the United States with an invisible disability, it is more common than people think. Invisible disabilities can consist of mental, cognitive and physical conditions that are not obvious to others. These conditions can greatly impair a person’s mobility, senses or affect their daily activities. For example #Blindness, mental illness, ADHD and chronic illness all fall under the umbrella of #InvisibleDisability. A person with an invisible disability may not require the use of an assistive device, making it appear as if they are totally fine. However, it is important to remember that we don’t see their private struggles and it’s not right to assume misconceptions about people without knowing anything about their situation.
I owe nobody an explanation of why I park my car in the disability parking spot and I should not have to justify my reasons to some stranger. People like her fail to realize that I do not love this for myself. It takes a great amount of confidence for me to park there when I never wanted to qualify for it in the first place. This woman has no idea how hard it is for me to have the strength and pride to go out and do things that bring so much anxiety.
Let this serve as a reminder that we should not judge a book by its cover. We can never really know what a person is dealing with just by observing them for a short period of time. I mulled over the decision to even ask for a disability placard. The reason I need one was and still is a tough pill to swallow. If you feel like you need to rudely speak your opinions to somebody that you know nothing about, just don’t.
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sometimes it feels like having no lights in the house on, going about doing things in the dark is safer because for someone who is blind plus abuse issues makes you feel like someone is always watching. Can anyone see in through the windows? Is there someone in here who is doing what mom and brothers used to do, where they would come into a room and wouldn't say anything? How much can a sighted person actually see? If I have the blinds down can they still see in? There are people outside on the sidewalk, can they see in? Would they care to look? So many questions. It's really a struggle to not go down this road, because my suspicious mind will take any of these and run with it. For blind people living alone, how do you keep yourselves safe? What do you do to make sure you are the only one in your apartment? I guess I should also mention that there were times over the summer when things needed to be fix and the maintenance guys didn't call, knock nothing. I woke up with some stranger opening my bedroom door and yelling my name. This really freaked me out because in one of those times I wasn't dressed. My therapist wrote to the complex and explained exactly why they needed to call and give notice before they came in and they didn't. Looking forward to the day I leave. #CPTSD #Blindness
People with vision problems - do you have brain fog as a result? i'm partially blind in my right eye and that also causes it to be very light sensitive. when i have to look at a bright screen it's so disorienting it makes my mind all foggy. same thing for being under bright lights. people don't understand why i don't want to look at their computer screens (mine is inverted using the magnifier app so it is mostly black and easy on my eyes) or to be under their lights (the bulbs are removed from mine). when i try to think in a bright environment i get all "fogged up" and dont function like normal. i feel like people are judging me or making fun of me and they don't understand that i can't function well in this environment. i'm also so sick of having to think about it all the time and always be mindful of sunglasses, and worrying about what kind of light i will be exposed to outdoors and indoors. i am wondering if it would be possible to get a dark contact lens for the bad eye and maybe that would help. something like what axon optics makes. another thing is i have a lot of balance issues because of my bad eye and i'm always worrying i will trip or run into something. it's just so much mental energy this is taking up and so much anxiety it is causing. i've also been having trouble appreciating anything visual because there is so much anxiety around it, and i have to wear sunglasses all the time. i do think i can adjust to this. when i was a teenager i lost a small amount of my hearing suddenly and for no apparent reason. for a while i stopped being able to appreciate music but eventually it stopped bothering me completely and i loved music again and now i dont even notice there is a problem anymore. i'm lucky to still be able to drive and work and see all the things i can. this is nowhere near the worst case scenario. but i do feel like it is making me not function well and i also feel like i am being judged for doing things differently or when i do have a slip-up and also depressed and not enjoying life.#Blindness #BrainFog
So I have a visual disability. Kind of. It’s super mild. I can still drive, work, etc but I’m partially blind in one eye because of an injury years ago. That eye is also extremely light sensitive. I had gotten used to it and barely noticed it, and then in 2021 after having covid it started bothering me again.... a lot. Covid made me really dizzy and the eye problem affected my life more. I face planted a couple times and it was embarassing. Eventually the dizziness got better, but it made me hyper aware of my vision defect and now I can’t “tune it out” anymore. It’s gotten to where I simply don’t want to go anywhere because I’m afraid of noticing it. I just want to follow my routine all day and go to work and avoid lights, then go to sleep. I wear sunglasses inside more often than not but often it bothers me with them too. My friend keeps inviting me over and I won’t go. I need to go to the grocery store but I wont. All because I don’t want to notice that the picture that I see is not perfect. It seriously just drives me mad and it’s all I can focus on. Im also ashamed and embarrassed about people noticing. I’m tempted to look into tinted contact lenses for the light sensitivity, but idk. I hate asking doctors about stuff like that, as if I know more than they do. I just needed to vent. At some point I have to start living my life again. It’s been on pause for almost 2 years. I am not depressed by nature either. I just stopped doing things because I didn’t want to notice I have this flaw in my eyesight. And now i dug myself into a hole and I’m afraid to do everything. #Depression #Blindness
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