eridan imagines i made like almost two months ago
this shouldnât have to be said but if someone who struggles with cognitive issues due to things such as fibro fog, autism or adhd etc has difficulty speaking or getting their point across, do not point it out. im talking about stuttering, misremembering words and definitions, using the wrong words in place of other ones, mixing up words or merging them together. you are allowed to help us find the right word but wait for us to ask first and give us a chance to find it ourselves. blurting out random words causes a lot more confusion for us and we often end up losing our train of thought.
also, in a similar vein, we may pause to think about what weâre going to say next, and itâs important that you not interrupt. for me, my train of thought is already on the verge of derailing. if i stop talking mid-sentence, give me a second to find my words and sort out my jumbled mess of a brain. donât start speaking like weâve finished our sentence and please donât just abandon the conversation. itâs very frustrating, especially when you make jokes or tease us for forgetting words or misspeaking and it makes it much harder for us to get to our point. and tbh itâs embarrassing and it sucks because our brains arenât doing what we want or need them to do and we donât need a reminder every time it happens.
like the jokes might seem harmless or lighthearted but it hurts nonetheless because we are constantly in a struggle against our own brains. it seems like it should be such an obvious thing, not to tease or make fun of someone with cognitive issues, but so many people do it, including some of you who donât think you doâ particularly if you donât think the reason behind it is a disability. ïżŒitâs not the same as joking about your friend making a typo in the group chat. those are minor slip-ups and they happen to everyone. for a lot of us, theyâre constant. weâre almost always trying to get our brains to work with us rather than against us and pointing it out only makes it that much harder to concentrate on actually articulating our thoughts instead of focusing purely on avoiding misspeaking so you wonât point it out again. obviously this will vary from person to person, not everyone with these symptoms feels the same way i do, but i think itâs a good rule of thumb to just. not interrupt and/or draw unnecessary/unwanted attention to our speech problems. i donât think itâs too much to ask.
"Don't be a Job Hopper" 1940s Disney WWII propaganda poster
Shout out to mentally ill people who dropped out of school
- shout out to the kids who were âso brightâ and âheading somewhereâ and had to drop out because school was too much to handle along with mental illness
- shout out to the kids who struggled to get where they got before they dropped out
- shout out to the kids who tried and tried and tried and still couldnât finish
you arenât unintelligent because you dropped out of school, you arenât a delinquent or a bad person because you dropped out of school, just because you did what you had to doesnât make you a bad person