You Will Live And You Will Say The Wrong Things And Make Mistakes And People Will Love You Anyways.

Hey runners (and walkers)! Thought this might be helpful :)

I have trouble taking care of my teeth because everything that involves doing that is a sensory nightmare. I decide to do some research to see if there's anything I can do about this. The results?

"How to make your autistic child brush their teeth"

"Autistic Children and Sensory issues relating to tooth brushing"

"How to get your little shit to brush his fucking teeth"

Like, yeah Google, thanks, that really helps. And like, even if I was a child, some of the advice seemed... unhelpful. Like, doing a dance and singing a song while brushing your teeth? Even for a kid, I don't think that would help distract from a sensory experience as intense as brushing your teeth. Like, the extremely intense and unpleasant flavor, the intense feeling of the brush against your teeth scraping across it, even mouthwash has such an intense and disgusting flavor that I have difficulty keeping it in my mouth for more than a few seconds. I wish there was SOMETHING that could be done.

Anyone can help!

(Real pen the last picture)

It is important for EVERYONE to know how to help ANYONE. Not everyone can give them selves their medicine under every circumstance. Be educated, help out.

In the last year, i have gotten about five new violent allergies from foods i used to be able to eat. Next time i eat a fruit, my throat could close. I may not be able to inject myself. My boyfriend and i played with my trainer pen for like 30 minutes. He knows how to inject it. I know how. This is important.

If anyone's looking for really gentle or disability friendly exercise...

Doctor Jo on YouTube is a physical therapist who offers lots of therapeutic stretching and exercise videos for specific conditions and pain relief. [x]

Leap Services is a Canadian physical therapy group that has a YouTube playlist of gentle exercise routines. All of these exercises are done in a chair (except for one which is done on the floor) and are intentionally adaptable to different bodies and needs. [x]

Yoga with Zelinda on YouTube has yoga that's adapted to a large number of conditions, for instance, providing a playlist of routines that don't require kneeling and another of chair yoga. She also offers yoga for specific health challenges, like fibromyalgia and mobility issues. There's a playlist of yoga routines for people with bigger bodies as well. [x]

Santosha Spirit on YouTube has yoga routines for people with chronic fatigue, chronic pain, POTS, and EDS. [x]

Yoga with Shaunneka on YouTube has a playlist of slow seated yoga, including chair yoga, as well as a playlist of gentle yoga. [x]

Qinergy on YouTube has tai chi sets broken down into easy tutorials. There is a seated version of her shibashi set. [x]

Perth Tai Chi Academy on YouTube is similar to Qinergy. It provides a seated version of daoyin yangshen qigong. [x]

Let's do a grounding exercise together! - 54321 Method

I know a lot of people often think about grounding as something that's reserved for panic attacks or things like that, but grounding can be good for almost any overwhelming emotion. It can be good to just center yourself. Even if you aren't feeling stressed, if you're up to it, take a moment and do this. This is still good to do when you're perfectly calm because this allows you to practice so that it will be easier to remember when you're stressed. (I don't recommend waiting until you're stressed to try a grounding exercise for the first time.)

We're going to look at the 5-4-3-2-1 method. Feel free to do this in your head, write it down somewhere private or share your answers in the replies, tags or reblogs.

Step 1 - Start with breathing if you can. Breathe in to the count of five, hold it for five seconds, and breathe out to the count of five. (If five is too long, feel free to adjust this to four.)

Step 2 - What are 5 things you can see around you? Examples: the clock on the wall, a plant on the windowsil, etc.

Step 3 - What are 4 things around you that you can touch? If you're up to it, also touch them and think about what they feel like (soft, hard, rough, etc). Examples: Maybe it's the blanket on your bed, maybe you're sitting on a chair, etc.

Step 4 - What are 3 things around you that you can hear? Examples: Maybe it's your cat purring, the fridge running, maybe there are birds outside, etc.

Step 5 - What are 2 things around you that you can smell? If you are not in an environment where you can smell something, feel free to move somewhere that you can or even bring a scent to the space (like body spray, body lotion, etc).

Step 6 - What is 1 thing you can taste? I find that people sometimes get frustrated with this one because if you haven't recently brushed your teeth or eaten, taste isn't easily identifiable. As an alternative if you don't currently taste something, what is is something you like to taste?

Step 7 - Take one final deep breath, counting to five as you breathe in, holding for five seconds, and then counting to five as you breathe out.

Step 8 - Take a moment to be proud of yourself. You did it and made it through this! If you can, try and put this aside to try and do once a day so that it may come to you easier in a time you need it.

diet culture is so fucking sad.

i once played the asking game with my mom when she was talking to me about her diet plans.

why are you dieting? because i've gained loads of weight recently. who cares? everyone does. i don't care. but i do. why? because i don't want to be fat. why don't you want to be fat? because it's embarrassing and i don't want to be an ugly pig. is being fat hurting you? not especially, but it's not nice for other people to look at.

at this point i looked at her and said "don't you think it's sad that you're spending your whole life putting these rules upon yourself, rules that naturally skinny people aren't expected to abide by, all for the effort of trying not to be fat?" and she looked back at me with suddenly wet eyes and said, with an amount of difficulty, that yes, it is sort of sad when you think about it.

she's been fat ever since i, her eldest child, was born. she was always super skinny in her youth, but pregnancy changed her body shape and her metabolism, and i only ever knew her as a very fat woman growing up. chances are, she will never be thin again. her lifestyle is no different to how it was before my existence; her body just works differently now. she sees it as a personal failure. she doesn't eat her favorite foods anymore, doesn't go out dating, doesn't make friends, doesn't go to events, doesn't allow anyone to buy her clothes for her birthday because she can't bear anyone knowing her size. she lives a lonely life, unwilling to do her favorite things. she elected for a gastric bypass surgery which, over the last few years, has introduced multiple complications that came very close to killing her, and yet she doesn't regret the surgery because it helped her lose a few pounds. she basically does not have a stomach anymore and she still believes her fatness is because she's been doing something wrong for the last 20something years.

diet culture is deadly not only because of the self-starvation and malnutrition but because it rips away pieces of your life that you're supposed to enjoy. relationships and sex are only for thin people, a glass of wine and some chocolate at the end of a difficult day is an indulgence only allowed to thin people, cute clothes are only for thin people, family photographs are only for the thin relatives, riding a bike on vacation with your kids is only for families with thin parents.

doesn't your soul ache? doesn't it hurt you to see people doing this to themselves, to inflict this on YOURself? you can do all of these things. your life can be lived fully and joyously and with love, but you distance yourself from the things that make you happy because you feel like you aren't good enough for them. it breaks my heart.

fatphobia is something oft inflicted upon people by others, but it comes from inside too. kill the part of you that thinks you aren't good enough. your body is perfect already, my love.

“no matter how badly you think you’re doing it, someone else has done it a lot worse and been fine” is applicable to a wide, wide range of things and i say it to myself all the time

Please do things to strengthen your attention span. It stresses me out so much when people just accept their small attention spans and cater to them without any acknowledgment that they are making it worse by doing that.

There is a reason attention spans are worse now and it didn’t just happen by chance. Media and the internet designed it that way and we went with it because it was easier.

Some of us with ADHD and brain fog need to meet ourselves where we’re at and exercise our attention span by watching a two minute video instead of a one minute video. Some of us need to sit down and read a novel with our phones turned off.

Wherever you’re at, just realize that not doing things that feel hard will keep making your attention span worse.

weird anti ideology finally leaking out into the mainstream