I love seeing those posts where people are like “if you have headmates or whatever you should be on meds because that’s not okay” posts. Like neurotypicals just think that there’s some magical pill out there that will ‘cure’ anything they don’t consider ‘normal.’ Meanwhile, in the land of reality, my shrink thinks it’s pretty healthy that I’m finally getting to know my headmates, and has no intention of putting me on magic pills, because as long as I’m not hurting myself or anyone else, who cares what neurotypicals think is ‘normal?’ Actually, let’s be real: who cares what neurotypicals think at all?
It is not a magic pill, it is called “Therapy” and you can even do it in groups!
i… literally mention my therapist… right there… in the original post…
did you not actually read this… do you honestly believe telling someone who has already admitted to being in therapy… to go to therapy… is a “gotcha” moment???
Okay, so there’s a relevant quote from Slatestar Codex here. (The link is to the source; attribution is a Thing.)
Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every morning and worry she had left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house. So she’d drive back home to check that the hair dryer was off, then drive back to work, then worry that maybe she hadn’t really checked well enough, then drive back, and so on ten or twenty times a day.
It’s a pretty typical case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was really interfering with her life. She worked some high-powered job – I think a lawyer – and she was constantly late to everything because of this driving back and forth, to the point where her career was in a downspin and she thought she would have to quit and go on disability. She wasn’t able to go out with friends, she wasn’t even able to go to restaurants because she would keep fretting she left the hair dryer on at home and have to rush back. She’d seen countless psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors, she’d done all sorts of therapy, she’d taken every medication in the book, and none of them had helped.
So she came to my hospital and was seen by a colleague of mine, who told her “Hey, have you thought about just bringing the hair dryer with you?”
And it worked.
She would be driving to work in the morning, and she’d start worrying she’d left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house, and so she’d look at the seat next to her, and there would be the hair dryer, right there. And she only had the one hair dryer, which was now accounted for. So she would let out a sigh of relief and keep driving to work.
And approximately half the psychiatrists at my hospital thought this was absolutely scandalous, and This Is Not How One Treats Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and what if it got out to the broader psychiatric community that instead of giving all of these high-tech medications and sophisticated therapies we were just telling people to put their hair dryers on the front seat of their car?
I, on the other hand, thought it was the best fricking story I had ever heard and the guy deserved a medal. Here’s someone who was totally untreatable by the normal methods, with a debilitating condition, and a drop-dead simple intervention that nobody else had thought of gave her her life back.
It is not a therapist’s job to make you normal. It is a therapist’s job to give you your life back, on whatever terms are acceptable to you. And if your therapist can’t do that, you need to find a new therapist.
For some people, having headmates and/or alters is a debilitating condition. They’re losing large amounts of time, having trouble going to work and/or school, or hurting themselves or other people. In that case, they probably do need help, but I think most people who are getting fucked up by their headmates that badly are willing to seek out help on their own anyway.
Other people who have headmates and/or alters find it to be a neutral thing, or even a positive thing.
Have you ever been in a roommate situation where different people do different chores, because, (say) Kate loves to do the dishes, but can’t stand to vaccuum, and Toby’s the exact opposite? If Kate and Toby are headmates, they can wind up doing the same kind of thing. Headmates can also comfort you when you’re sad, remind you that your depressive or intrusive thoughts are not true, or help you deal with difficult people.
So, if you’re in that kind of situation, where your headmates are helping you to be more functional than you’d otherwise be? A good therapist is going to treat it like the hair dryer on the front seat of your car.
Sure, it is a Weird Thing. It makes you look a bit eccentric, and it’s not normal. But if having headmates keeps you from having repeated nervous breakdowns, helps you hold down your job, or makes it so that you can deal with your abusers? Then it’s a win, and a good therapist won’t try to ‘fix’ that.
It is not a therapist’s job to make you normal. It is a therapist’s job to give you your life back, on whatever terms are acceptable to you.
as a child, i had this really interesting way of dealing with executive dysfunction:
when i needed to do something but did not get the impulse to actually start, i counted to 20.
and at 20, i did the thing.
i started this in order to get me out of bed in the morning, and after a few weeks it was a reliable source of starting impulses. every time i hit 20, i got started.
somewhere along the way i stopped doing it, because it was weird and nobody else needed to count in order to do stuff.
it makes me wonder, how many brilliant coping skills do we loose or never develop because we live in a neurotypical world and nobody teaches us these things? because we think they’re weird, because we don’t have words for what we’re doing, because they seem to have no place in this world?
a goddamn calrissian. who, like their father before them just shows up and is crazy awesome. like, imagine landos fly ass daughter who rocks up with a blaster and has a million and one embarrassing stories about kylo ren that she uses to taunt him in a fight. who flirts with rey and finn and is frenemies with poe and is just the best.
*shoots blaster* hey benben! remember the time our parents took us to endor and that ewok claimed you as his bride? cause i do!
If Jesus was born from a virgin birth, doesn’t that mean he has only an X chromosome. Wouldn’t that make him female?
wait
TRANS JESUS TRANS JESUS TRANS JESUS
I have taken 3 years of Theology, 1 of Apologetics, and 1 of Anatomy and Physiology and I’m honesty stumped by this one
Those species which are parthenogenic (i.e. self-fertilising, certain lizards, snakes, frogs and fish) the offspring is always genetically/physically female-typical. So yeah, if we were to take the nativity as a scientific story, a parthenogenic human pregnancy (still a scientific impossibility) would result in an AFAB child, and since that child has always been referred to as “he”, voila, trans jesus.
Like it would make a lot of sense for superheroes to like, double up. two or more people alternating in the one suit:
you’ve had a REALLY tough week but some dude is holding up a bank??? no problem ur bro can do it, you’ll catch the next next one.
in fact “AH YES THE SUPERHERO IS BADLY INJURED, NOW IS MY TIME TO TAKE OVER THE WO-wait what the fuck? I saw you take a bullet literally two days ago??? foiled again”
“I’m just saying that Angela looks REALLY like the city’s super X” “yeaaaaah true but she was with me that one time I saw super X take down a mugger” “oh…. okay then….”
ur fighting styles aren’t going to be IDENTICAL no matter what, anyone who tries to find a pattern is gonna be really confused.
it would be less of a big deal if you wanted a weekend off. none of the “AND WHERE WAS OUR BRAVE HERO IN OUR TIME OF DESPERATE NEED??” “I was out of town for my sister’s wedding alright, i didnt know the giant robots were going to attack. CHILL.”
like yeah you’d have to have roughly the same body type and the same powers (or maybe not, see fighting style above)
it would be ruin the illusion if things were really bad and you needed two people at once – but why stop at two people and one superhero identity?? why not a half dozen friends as a duo or trio? a whole 20 of ye masquerading as a five piece band??
“shit its aliens again. red suit and orange suit NOW” “no we’ll need someone who can fly, take out the green instead” “Well do YOU want to wear green? cause i’m not squeezing my hips into that, not today my friend” “Can’t Em do it?? they haven’t been on duty all week” “Em’s having lunch with their mum at three” “wasn’t green meant to be a wildcard for emergencies?” “well we can’t take out red with orange, don’t ANY of you know ANYthing about colour theory” “ALIENS DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT COLOUR THEORY ARE YOU COMING OR NOT”
Just like … keep muddying the waters until your secret identities are totally safe.
Kimchi and Justice 