Comic Strips

oh god!

For those who haven't seen it this is the video (or at least, the version I know about).

Thanks for reminding me about this gem.

This was my first thought!

Unfortunately, also all-too-possible to slip in to self-righteousness, evangelism, etc.

well.. therapy absolutely helps you figure out your needs as an autistic person (complete with a real diagnosis) and helps you develop safe coping strategies for this and being queer in a hostile place.

A good should help you build a real support system and protect your self-identity from harmful family, including forming a plan to leave them. And learning to love yourself, awkward as you may think you are.

I guess I see a lot of things in your post that a therapist could and should help with. I'm wondering if you had good ones, and what they were doing with you in that time.

Just as you wouldn't go to a surgeon or dentist and let them work without a treatment plan, you should agree on your goals and the modalities a therapist intends to use to get you there, at the beginning. And you can refer back to this to see if you're making progress or not.

Unfortunately like all healthcare now, you often have to research and become your own self advocate first. You should fire a therapist long before you spend thousands and years doing nothing. Bad therapists are out there, a lot of them. But good therapists can move mountains.

I spent years in Therapy to no effect, the lessons on mindfulness and cognitive exercises did nothing for me.

It took finally connecting with someone who better realized what my issues were to accurately gauge where the problem was, and he didn't pull punches. He explained that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works profoundly well for so many people because largely, most people don't exercise cognitive thought.

The human brain is so amazing and has so many layers of operation, and our society so tuned for our survival, that you can go through your whole goddamn life on autopilot, never forming an internal dialogue, never using language inside your head to analyze and compare things, never exploring the source of your own feelings and the narrative that spring from them. Most people do this, just surf through their days reacting appropriately to whatever they experience.

My problem was the opposite, I spent every waking moment in conscious dissection of every facet of my existence, always forming stories and ruminations with narration and comparisons, even when I just need to sleep and stop feeling and thinking.

Yah so anyway, that's how I got diagnosed as being on the spectrum.

Yeah, the modern society teaches us that if we have any problems, be it health, financial or anything else, it's all fixable and we are supposed to fix it. Yet there is so much we don't have control over. Mental health problems are especially hard to tackle, as there are so few options, they are expensive, time consuming and often don't really help.

For me, the real answer is "spend time outdoors, in nature". This is so overlooked, but studies confirm the mental health benefits of "forest bathing"/spending time in nature.

I should go get lunch

It is everyone at least once.

I love second hand therapy!! I've gotten it from aunts, sisters, my grandmother, my friends. Heck I've benefited from third hand therapy! My first hand always works best, of course, but keep on sharing what you're learning! Best case, you help a buddy, worst case your buddy learns something about you!

reminds me of ted talks

Therapy actually does something, though