Disorderland

Tidings, ghouls! Gather round to listen to a demon (Jess) and a demon clown (Ayesha) discuss a shared love of horror. We talk about how microdosing on fear through film can be grounding, how the genre uses disability and madness for cheap shock value, movies that subvert those shitty tropes, and all the big, existential questions horror movies ask us to grapple with.

!! SPOILERS FOR: Hereditary, Grave Encounters, War of the Worlds, The Babadook, The Power

Show Notes

* More on Jesse’s Self-(S)care Routine

* Ayesha’s post on microdosing change

* Horrible Heroes: Liberating Alternative Visions of Disability in Horror by Melinda Hall (the paper Jess mentioned in Disability Studies Quarterly)

“horror fiction presents the opportunity to dis-identify with ableist culture. Horror, when it distances the audience from what is taken as the natural order, may also allow us to encounter disability differently. Indeed, it can allow us to be horrified by ableism”

“A horror audience ideally identifies with protagonists and is horrified by what those characters find horrifying. In the work of both Burton and King, the audience is drawn to identify with the traditional outsider, the person rejected by the social world or considered interstitial and unnatural. This outsider sees the decaying and deadening communities around them as the terror.”

“If we fail to accept vulnerability and incorporate it into our understanding of political communities, disability will always be the monster under the bed. Ironically, the horror genre, by posing new monsters in the social and its exclusions, can provide a ladder to grander inclusion. Empathizing with "monsters" for whom exclusion is typical, draws the vulnerable forward and prepares us to challenge ableism politically.”

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Jess and Ayesha discuss a New York Times article that wants us to think all our relationship problems are caused by an undiagnosed brain disorder.

Tangents include: navigating conflict in relationships without reducing our loved ones to a diagnostic label, the usefulness and limits of the word “neurotypical”, how very not cute those #ADHDWife TikToks are, misapplying the concept of “object permanence” to relationships, and why we keep forgetting to put the laundry in the dryer.

See disorderland.substack.com for extended show notes!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit disorderland.substack.com

Jess keeps getting Instagram ads for some probiotic supplement that’s supposed to cure depression — luckily, we have an in-house microbiologist to consult! Ayesha critiques the studies behind Neuralli, talks stressed-out microbes, and explains why trying to fix social problems with one patented microbe is never going to work.

Find detailed notes, sources, and further readings at disorderland.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit disorderland.substack.com

Are you eating enough blueberries to optimize your dopamine? Did you make sure to take a timed cold shower this morning after your Peloton workout to increase your neurochemical satisfaction by 500%?? Are you manifesting hard enough???? FIND OUT TODAY! We’re taking a dive into the world of ADHD Boss content on TikTok, a pseudoscientific iteration of some very old bootstrap brainwash.

LINKS: 

Neoliberalism and the Commodification of Mental Health paper

Capitalism Loves Neurodiversity, As Long As It Is Profitable (from Ayesha’s newsletter)

The Capitalist Origins of #Manifestation (from Jesse’s newsletter)

xx

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit disorderland.substack.com

What’s it like to be a survivor of psychiatric oppression? What was the a-ha moment that made you see the system for what it was?

We asked our listeners recently and got some great responses, a few of which you’ll hear in the beginning of this episode, and then we talk to psych survivor Maggie Leppert (@thebooksmartbimbo) about psychiatric gaslighting and wokewashing, why talking about informed consent is not med-shaming, how psychiatry co-opted anti-stigma work from survivors, and her work on Mad in America’s Suicide Hotline Transparency Project.

* Follow Maggie on Instagram: @thebooksmartbimbo

* Find the Suicide Hotline Transparency Project Spreadsheet here and more information about the project here

* Join the MindFreedom International Shield Program, which uses “mutual support to protect one another from unwanted coerced psychiatric procedures.”

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Ayesha explains what’s wrong with all these genome wide association studies that keep saying they found the ADHD genes (or the schizophrenia genes, or the bipolar genes, or the autism genes..)

We also get into the ways that capitalism skews scientific research results, why racists love genetic research so much, and what responsibility scientists have to question their questions.

You can find our notes for this episode and further readings on this topic at disorderland.substack.com. Be sure to give us your email so you don’t miss bonus content and future episodes! We will only send you interesting things, we promise!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit disorderland.substack.com

Is executive function “a set of capitalist values masquerading as skills”? Neurodivergent educator and artist Marta Rose thinks so!

We sat down with her to talk about:

* her journey from diagnosis to critical disability theory

* how creativity research and design thinking can offer us alternatives to the pathologizing framework of executive function

* The ADHD Industrial Complex!!!

* how much of our “symptoms” are actually just shame & trauma

* what it’s like to build community on the internet

Plus: a new segment we’re calling What’s Hot in Disorderland, where we talk a little shit about the latest psych news! This week, we discuss a survey that found the richest countries have the worst mental health, take the world’s most depressing personality quiz, and Ayesha explains why the DSM continues to be so damn vague. 

Timestamps:

2:28 Mad in America report about mental state of the world

4:56 The Mental Well-being Test

12:47 New DSM version

25:09 The vagueness of diagnoses is on purpose

31:00 Interview with Marta

34:30 Creativity research vs executive dysfunction

45:30 Marta’s diagnosis story

53:04 Design thinking

1:02:00 How shame gets pathologized

1:11:00 The ADHD Industrial Complex

1:18:10 Marta’s digital peer support work

1:25:00 The perils of parasocial relationships

1:29:00 Social media is for finding each other

Connect With Us:

Check out Marta’s livestreams on The Spiral Lab

Join Marta’s digital peer support group Divergent Design Studios

Subscribe to get Disorderland in your inbox

Follow Ayesha (@wokescientist / Cosmic Anarchy) and Jesse (@queervengeance / Sluggish)

Follow the pod on IG or email us at [email protected]

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit disorderland.substack.com

Ayesha and Jess take a stroll through ADHDtok to understand the trend of self-pathologization — why has it become so popular to turn your personality traits into symptoms of disease?

What purpose does a psychiatric diagnosis serve, and what are the limitations of defining your mental suffering and anguish solely through a medical lens? Why does capitalism absolutely thrive on all these new mental illness micro-identities?

Plus: we get a little personal about our own experiences with diagnosis.

FURTHER READING:

* Our handy infographic on self-pathologization

* Nick Walker on the Pathology Paradigm vs the Neurodiversity Paradigm

* You’re Using the Word Neurodiversity Wrong (by Jess)

* ADHD: Dopamine Deficiency or a Bodymind Protesting? (also by Jess)

* Diagnostic Cultures by Svend Brinkmann

* The Buzzfeedification of Mental Health by P.E. Moskowitz

CLIPS IN THIS EPISODE:

* “Things I thought were personality traits that were just my undiagnosed adhd” by @carlie_chimenti1

* “Welcome to ADHD” by @kayblasko

* “#1 Bestseller in Treating Mental Disabilities” by @colbywattsmusic

* “The ADHD Coach Connector” by @kamden_adhd

* “Is this a cult?” by @malblum

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>> CONNECT WITH US

Dr. Ayesha Khan:

IG: @wokescientist

Newsletter: cosmicanarchy.substack.com

Jesse Meadows:

IG/Twitter: @queervengeance

Newsletter: sluggish.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit disorderland.substack.com