Tag: funny how that works

The prevalence of orthorexia nervosa among eating disorder patients after treatment.

heavyweightheart:

“Orthorexia nervosa symptoms are highly prevalent among patients with AN and BN, and tend to increase after treatment. ON seems associated both with the clinical improvement of AN and BN and the migration towards less severe forms of EDs. It is necessary to clarify if ON residual symptomatology can be responsible for a greater number of relapses and recurrences of EDs.”

What’s going on in this small (but in my experience representative) study is that, unsurprisingly, people with bulimia and anorexia had high levels of orthorexic traits. What’s really alarming tho is that the severity of their orthorexia increased 3 years after treatment, presumably 3 years into recovery. The authors of the study are highlighting the fact that a transition to orthorexia during/after treatment – as opposed to what I’d call a full recovery effort – might be responsible for relapses back in to anorexia and bulimia. 

Basically, many ED patients are turning orthorexic instead of recovering, which leads right back into more severe eating disorders.

It’s not the ED patients who are responsible for this trend! It’s fatphobic, diet-culture-indoctrinated clinicians and treatment centers that eschew evidence-based protocols in favor of a wellness aesthetic. 

The prevalence of orthorexia nervosa among eating disorder patients after treatment.

swirlymind:

candidlyautistic:

teaboot:

This may just be my experience as an autistic person, but the kids I’ve nannied whose parent’s complain of ‘bad awful in cooperative selfish autistic behavior’ are… Not like that? At all?

Like, for example, I cared for a kid for a while who was nonverbal and didn’t like being touched. Around six years old? Their parent said that they were fussy and had a strict schedule, and that they had problems getting them to eat. Their last few nannies had quit out of frustration.

So, I showed up. And for the first little while, it was awkward. The kid didn’t know me, I didn’t know them, you know how it is. And for the first… Day and a half, maybe? I fucked up a few times.

I changed their diaper and they screamed at me. I put the TV off and they threw things. Not fun, but regular upset kid stuff.

Next time, I figured, hell, I wouldn’t like being manhandled and ordered around either. Who likes being physically lifted out of whatever it is they’re doing and having their pants yanked off? Fucking few, that’s who.

Next time, I go, ‘hey, kiddo. You need a new diaper?’ and check. ‘I’m gonna go grab a new one and get you clean, okay?’ ‘Wanna find a spot to lay down?’ ‘Alright, almost done. Awesome job, thanks buddy’.

I learned stuff about them. They liked a heads up before I did anything disruptive. They didn’t mind that I rattled of about nothing all day. They didn’t like grass or plastic touching their back. They were okay with carpets and towels. They liked pictionary, and the color yellow, and fish crackers, and painting. They didn’t look me in the face (which was never an issue- I hate that too, it fucking sucks) but I never had reason to believe that they were ignoring me.

Once I learned what I was doing wrong, everything was fine. Did they magically “”“become normal”“” and start talking and laughing and hugging? No, but we had fun and had a good time and found a compromise between what I was comfortable with and what they were comfortable with. (For the record, I didn’t magically sailor-moon transform into a socially adept individual, either. In case anyone was wondering.)

I don’t like eye contact. It’s distracting and painful and stresses me out.

They didn’t like eye contact either.

Is eye contact necessary to communication? No. So we just didn’t do it.

Was there ever a situation where I HAD to force them to drop everything and lay down on the lawn? No. So the thirty second warning came into play, and nobody died.

“But they never talked!”

No, they didn’t. And they didn’t know ASL, and they didn’t like being touched.

So you know what happened?

My third day in, they tugged on my shirt. ‘Hey monkey, what’s up?’ I asked. And they tugged me towards the kitchen. ‘oh, cool. You hungry?’. They raised their hands in an ‘up’ gesture. ‘you want up? Cool.’ and I lifted them up. They pointed to the fridge. I opened it. They grabbed a juice box out of the top shelf, and pushed the door closed again. ‘oh sweet, grape is the best. You are an individual of refined taste.’ I put them down and they went back to their room to play Legos.

“But they didn’t say please or thank you!” “But you should be teaching them communication skills!” “But!” Lalalalala.

1. The entire interaction was entirely considerate and polite. I was never made uncomfortable. I was made aware of the problem so that I could help them solve it. There was no mess, no tears, no bruises, no shouting.

2. Did my brain collapse into a thousand million fragments of shattered diamond dust out of sheer incomprehension? No? Then their communication skills were fine. Goal realized, solution found, objective complete. They found the most simple and painless way to communicate the situation and then did it.

Kids are not stupid. AUTISTIC kids are not stupid.

I’m willing to bet real cash money that the real reason the last few nannies had quit had a million times more to do with their own ability to cope, not the kid’s.

To this day, that was the most relaxed and enjoyable job I’ve ever had.

And I know I don’t speak for everyone. All kids are different. All adults are different. But in my time and experience, pretty much 95% of all my difficulties with children come from ME not being understanding enough. Every single “problem child” I’ve worked with turned out to be a pretty cool person once I started figuring out how to put my ego aside and let them set the pace.

Again, not speaking universally, here. I’m just saying. Sometimes social rules are bullshit, you know? People are people

Have you ever read an article about the study that found that teaching the parents to cope with autistic kids yields better results than other therapies? Because this is exactly what they were talking about.

I watch two autistic boys every once in a while, and they are honestly the easiest kids I’ve ever watched. Neither of them speak more than a few words, usually one at a time, but they have no issue with communication.

One of them is really quiet and reserved and happy to play on the computer. The other one gets excited to see people he knows and ran up to me at my University the other day and felt my hair (I recently shaved it down, he loved it).

But everyone I talk to, except their mom, is so impressed by how well I handle them?? Their mom knew we’d get along famously, so she isn’t. Because since they don’t talk and prefer to be on their own and initiate touching and don’t make eye-contact and whatever other reason people thought that it would be hard for me to deal with these cool little dudes.

The first day was a little hard, because I didn’t know them very well yet and I hadn’t seen them at home before. But it was easy enough to just respect their boundaries? And their communication was very clear, just different.

Everyone is so impressed that I handle them so well, especially when I tell them I’m Autistic too, but like, of course I do? I know how to treat people with respect and I understand how being Autistic affects you, since I am myself.

No eye-contact? Not a problem. More comfortable guiding me by hand to help you get a snack? Cool. They are the most respectful 10 year olds too. If I need to finish something before I can help them, they wait patiently. If I need help they come running over to try.

Basically, learn to cope with autism, not work against it. Speech isn’t the only form of communication. People are happier when their needs are respected. People are people and respect goes both ways.

And maybe? Watch how autistic people act around other autistic people, and take note? Because we’re supposed to be the rigid ones, but it seems that we’re better at adjusting.

elodieunderglass:

angelsintheslips:

thecringeandwincefactory:

ostdrossel:

Starlings are weird. So pesky, loud and aggressive, but also flying rainbow wonders.

The bird above is the Common Starling, the type that got introduced to North America from Europe. What’s bonkers to me is, we got the most boring kind of Starling. 

Y’all seen Starlings from other continents? BANANAS:

@elodieunderglass I feel these fabulous birbs very much belong on your blog.

I love starlings! The best name! The finest iridescence! The excellent glitter! The yellin! The fact that they were introduced to North America because One Guy wanted to fill New York City with all the (English) birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays! Doesn’t that sound made up? It sounds made up. “Yes, the Glittering Invasive Small Thing From The Stars has taken over because of… uhhhh… Shakespeare. Look, don’t worry about it.”

I suspect that starlings are actually a kind of reality-patch hiding a historical glitch in time.

Source: ostdrossel

This is something a white person asked me and i wasnt sure what to say but what do you think of people saying “if natives hate this country so much why do so many of them fight in the military?” Im really dumbfoundead at that logic i guess?

bannock-and-biopolitics-deactiv:

Natives ain’t a monolith, kemosabe. There are conservative, patriotic, USA-lovin NDNs who fly the stars and stripes at powwows and make sure there are veterans honor songs and dances there and who vote Republican and shit like that. 

But there are Natives, some who are my own kin, who hate this country and yea, they enroll in the military, because they’ve been kept by colonial capitalism in some of the shittiest conditions in the world, and want an out, and the benefits provided by VA and the GI Bill are one of the most accessible ways “out”. When I lived in Montana, half of the NDNs I knew were either in the military off-duty, or had served in the past, including cousins of mine, and they hated it with every fibre of their being, but contrary to popular belief, universities and tribal councils aren’t pulling strings to shower Native Americans with free money to go to school or learn a trade, so sometimes a trip around the world in Uncle Sam’s murder machine is the only way they can find to make sure they don’t get stuck in permanent poverty (I don’t have enough time to elaborate on this but I’m sure you know that this doesn’t always work and the cycle of poverty continues, plus with an added dose of extra PTSD and frustration dealing with the VA bureaucracy) 

Plus there’s a multigenerational situation going on here of people who had uncles and fathers and mothers and aunts and grandparents who served in Vietnam, WWII, etc, and you’re usually guaranteed to get a few veteran honours if you do a stint in the military, so there’s that pressure too, a lack of knowledge about different options, opportunistic military recruiters knowing that reservations and towns with high native populations are a good quota filler, basically a toxic brew of circumstances that, if you could distill it into a picture, would make an excellent cover image for The Wretched of the Earth. 

Also in Canada (not sure about in the maritimes where the military is more prolific than where I live in Western Canada, but bear with me here) every single Native I know is about 100x more vocally contemptuous of Canada, and they don’t generally serve in the Canadian military. My armchair sociologist anthropologist observation notes that, unlike in the U.S, many First Nations have band funding so students can go to school or learn a trade with financial support, almost every single large Canadian university has an Aboriginal Services branch that’s meant to help students adjust to university life, and there is not an active culture of military recruitment present on reserves or at Native friendship centres or powwows or cultural gatherings. Hmmm! 

How did the English destroy Greece?

kolovratsk:

kokkinisto-kounoopi:

:

Awful but not totally destructive shit:

-Stole our most valuable artifacts

-Pretended to be the heirs of ancient Greece to justify their  white supremacist colonialist actions/thinking while making up theories that current Greeks weren’t descendants of ancient Greeks and that we’d ruined our pure lineage by mixing with Middle Easterners

More destructive shit:

-Helped liberate Greece from the Ottoman Empire so they could put it under the control of the Great Powers, giving Greece a horrible German king for ages. For that moment, Greeks got to be Christian Europeans so that the British public could be convinced to support the huge effort of the liberation of Greece. Basically making sure Greece was under the control of the Great Powers

-They arranged the massacre that preceded/helped trigger the Greek Civil War

-During the Greek Civil War, they armed nationalists to keep Greece from joining the Soviet Union and keep Greece under their/western sphere of influence. This eventually resulted in them creating and arming ultra-nationalists that would evolve into Golden Dawn, Greece’s extremely violent fascist party. So they basically created a terrorist group within our borders for their own geopolitical interests. The Greek Civil War was also the first proxy war of the Cold War

-Other geopolitical fuckery

-More generally about Greeks overall, they also colonized Cyprus, stirred up ethnic tensions which resulted in the deaths of countless people, planned the partition of Cyprus which resulted in thousands of Greek-Cypriots dead and displaced, and arrested and tortured thousands of Greek-Cypriots including civilians. 

@kolovratsk

On the subject of Cyprus, the British government also used it to goad Greece into abandoning neutrality during World War I, despite having been the ones to establish a Danish-German monarchy, which automatically meant Greece would have great difficulty supporting the UK. They promised to withdraw from Cyprus and stop standing in the way of enosis but quickly withdrew that promise once the war had been won and Greece had been left in ruins.

Another interesting point I recently discovered was in the 19th century, Greece was controlled by the Great Powers Britain, France and Russia, which all created their own political parties in an attempt to fully colonize the country. The UK used Greece’s English Party (which they had set up) to promote one of their supporters – Charilaos Trikoupis and make him Prime Minister. Incidentally, once that happened, Greece went bankrupt within less than a decade, and the British started privatizing important parts of the country, all while pretending to save it from the other two powers. This influence has, unfortunately, not yet faded. E.g. we still do not own our country.

British intervention in Crete was also criticized strongly, especially in the late 1940s because the aim was to keep Greeks fighting and dying against the Italians and Germans, while the British government had instructed its army to protect Turkey (from Greece, ironically) so it would gain access to the Middle East.

Not going to talk about the Parthenon Marbles because that’s old news, @kokkinisto-kounoopi said it already. But I am going to mention that the Civil War was one of the most brutal conflicts in Greece, with 190000 natives dead, and a million people displaced. The British Army essentially entered the country, killed members of the resistance force that actively helped them just years before and helped win WWII by stalling the Germans long enough to postpone the Invasion of Russia, and disarmed them with the promise that they wouldn’t attack. The rebels laid down their weapons, and the next thing that happened was British bombs raining down on them. This bloodbath, known as the Dekemvriana, lasted a month and resulted in the death of 20000 civilians.

The squeeze on the average Brit’s finances is getting even worse

With inflation currently sitting at 2.9%, Wednesday’s wage numbers show that real wages are actually falling in the UK for a third consecutive month.

Prices are rising across the board thanks to the fall in the pound seen since last summer’s referendum, with food prices increasing particularly rapidly...

“Households are being squeezed from both directions, with inflation rising faster than expected and wages rising more slowly. This doesn’t bode well for economic growth – the UK economy is heavily reliant on the consumer and falling real incomes will eventually translate into lower retail sales.”

The squeeze on the average Brit’s finances is getting even worse