Also: aphantasia
You have no idea how pissed I was to find out all of you had a fucking superpower, would have been nice to learn this before I wasted 3 years at graphic design
Having a constant noise in your head/ears. It was so normal to me I didnt question it for many years. I randomly asked my friends about it one day and found out most people actually dont have an old crt tv like noise in their ears (and that its the disorder tinnitus).
In my case its not very severe thankfully, I dont notice it unless Im in a silent room or Im actively thinking about it.
Oh plenty of things:
having respect for others
being honest
helping the needy
fair pay for fair work
honestly considering others’ perspectives
loyalty
Basically every virtue I was ever told was worthy to embody has been used against me as a weapon or a tool
And of the hundreds of people I know IRL less than 10% give any of these internal value or even attempted to put into practice
And here I’ve been a sucker all my life doing the proper social contract thing because I don’t like the way the world is shaping up and getting CONSTANTLY bent over for it
Homophobia
I was raised in a right wing, rural area, and i didn’t meet a gay person til higschool. When he said he was gay, i assumed he was joking.
Im trans now lol
Dude tells you he’s gay, immediately turns you trans. The danger is real, people! 😭
if my grandma were to be believed my dad’s babysitter when he was 4 years old infected him with homosexuality then he passed it onto his children because one (me) is trans and the other is bisexual
She’s not very harmful about it but is just really damn confused lol
So if I get this right, your dad turned homosexual from his babysitter… Then proceeded to have two, presumably biologic, kids?
presumably biologic kids
Yeah, my dad fell for the “get a woman to protect you from same sex attraction” propaganda. Over the years he changed his mind and learned that it’s not something to be ashamed of, but he was in a relationship with kids now.
when I came out and my mom was very verbally abusive he kinda had the realization that the relationship wasn’t benefiting the children either. Also my mom was very very controlling over who he could talk to/make friends with.
He is currently in the process of a divorce after 22 years and is coming to terms with how he let fear control his life for that long.
It’s kinda sad.
This was a really recent realization for me. I am one of the people who can voluntarily activate the tensor tympani muscles in my ears to create a low level rumbling sound. I recently tried explaining this to someone else and they still think I am making it up.
Wait, not everyone can do that?! What the fuck?!
Fellow rumbler rejoice!
As I kid I thought it activated some kind of telekinetic or telepathic power so i’d keep doing it and gesturing at ping pong balls or candle flames
So sad to learn that it has nothing to do with psychic powers
Wait, that’s not normal?
It’s more that most people don’t figure out how to tense those muscles independantly of the rest of the neck
Seems so.
My first long term relationship was with a woman who could orgasm from penetration in less than a minute.
After like an hour of foreplay, right?
…Right?
Nope lol
She had the shortest fuse I’ve ever seen
I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
That’s me. I had no idea other families were affectionate and said crazy stuff like, “I love you.” My god, they even hug.
To this day I struggle with affection, even though I love it. If you touch me unexpectedly I’ll involuntarily flinch. I don’t mind, at all, but I still jerk and can’t help it.
I think my family was the same but I turned out cuddly, maybe the difference was the cats?
That not everyone secretly wanted to be a woman.
Oof yup that was a doozy
My family was super meat-centric for all holidays except Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Any meal where it’s physically possible to barbecue, we would. And a family barbecue meant hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, pork steaks, and beef steaks – one of each per person, plus a couple of extras. Sides were German-style slaw and potato salad. Buns were not included, but my grandma would always put a stack of white bread on the table (she was the only person who ever ate it).
When I started dating my husband and took him to a family holiday, he was shocked by the fact that my whole family was eating hamburgers and hot dogs with flatware instead of on buns. And he was actually sad at the lack of side dishes.
When I went to one of his family barbecues, I was sad that there was just one hamburger per person (already on a soggy bun) and a ton of weird casseroles.
eating hamburgers and hot dogs with flatware instead of on buns.
That sounds so German. I know the bun-less burgers as “frickadellen”, my own parents (both German immigrants who met each other over here) used to make them fairly frequently.
Excruciating period pain that would leave me fainting and vomiting every. Single. Time.
“Every girl goes through this” said the doctor, convincing my parents that I was just “dramatic”.
Turns out I had huge polyps growing out of control! Left scarring in my uterus and high-risk when pregnant.
Dealt with that hell every fucking month since I was 11 until I got onto birth control in my 20s.
My wife went through something similar. Took until she was in her 30s and we were pursuing IVF for someone to take her seriously and actually do the investigation to realize she had crazy scarring from endometriosis causing all kinds of issues.
It’s insane to me how much the modern medical community seems to normalize or straight up ignore this shit, like you said.
I realize we could have pushed harder, but when multiple doctors tell you “yeah, some women just experience periods differently, here’s 500mg Naproxen to help you through” you tend to believe it.
Sucks when doctors just assume things, it can cost lives.
It’s barbaric. They assume that if you’re girl/woman, most problems are basically “female hysteria”!
Not even “it could be [blank], you might want to keep an eye on that and report back if it doesn’t go away.” Nope! Diagnosis: dramatic.
And women die from this shit. Or become disabled / handicapped. Or it affects their long-term future if they want children. It’s awful.
Some people did a thing with a specially configured tens machine where the woman would turn it the levels up and up until it was at the level of their normal period pain and then the man would go through the same levels stages and be gasping and writhing before it got there.
Turns out men have been massively underestimating period pain for centuries.
That said, some women experienced far, far higher levels than normal and were encouraged to take that data to a non-dismissive healthcare professional.
As a dude, I want to believe that it’s less than it is because that’s just wholly unreasonable that women have to put up with that.
They’re were a lot of men who insisted on immediate medical attention who got told that their partners had tried that and absolutely nothing would come of it.
When I was much younger: that normal people could see much further than me.
One of my oldest memories is going into a McDonald’s for the first time with glasses; I stopped and read the entire menu, because I couldn’t believe normal people could read it as soon as you walked in. I always had to get up to the counter to make it out.
I got a lot better in school after that!
A woman I used to know said when she got glasses for the first time, she was amazed at being able to discern leaves on trees from further than a couple meters.
O my god. This is so relatable. I was 14 or so when a girl in my class told me I need contact lenses because I couldn’t read the school board unless I sat in the front (spoiler, I sat in the back).
And I was like nahh. Then I got a checkup and I was already at like -2. Then I wore lenses for years and I absolutely hated them. They stick to my eyes. Then only at like 18 I got glasses (not cool to teenage me) and I never switched back.
Maybe they should give children check ups, at least once in their life lol.
Watching porn to get relief.
I – as many other guys in this society – learned to watch porn at a young age. So I wired sexual stimulation as well as the dopamine release after orgasm to porn. For many years of my life, I would not masturbate without it.
I denied my addiction because everyone watches porn, right? Also I thought, being addicted to porn means sitting at home all day fapping and watching more and more perverse stuff. So I can’t be addicted, if I watch porn once a week, right?
Well, it took me a long time to figure all that out. The society having such a positive attitude towards porn did not help. Maybe, we all are addicted. I think it’s super fucked up. If not due to the effect it has on our brains, then at least due to the humiliation of women for capital.
An addiction is when your habit starts having significant negative impacts on your life. So, for example, if you are choosing to stay home and watch porn instead of going to work, buying groceries, go out with friends, or sleep with actual women, then yes, you have a porn addiction.
If you jerk off on a Tuesday night before you go to bed… that’s fine. Watch porn, or don’t, it doesn’t matter. If you enjoy your life more when you don’t watch porn for whatever reason, that’s fine too. You do you. But regularly watching porn isn’t an addiction any more than regularly grabbing a beer with friends on a Friday night makes you an alcoholic.
Also, yes, there is a problem of the exploitation of women in some porn. Some porn studios do take advantage of women. But women aren’t “humiliated” simply by being in porn. There is nothing wrong with a woman willingly engaging in any kind of sexual act in front of a camera, whether it’s plain ol missionary or an interracial CNC gangbang. Many women enjoy making porn and sharing it - just peruse FetLife and you can see tons of porn made completely for free, just for fun.
Like, really. Unless it’s a problem, it’s not a problem.
FetLife is a good counterexample I did not know yet. And I completely agree: there is nothing wrong with women willingly doing porn.
But looking at other freely available porn, I cannot agree that only some porn studios treat their actors like submissive cash cows doing literally anything to feed the dopamine rush of their viewers. Sure the actors are paid for it. Prostitutes also get paid and still nobody would claim they are enjoying their job. In the end, we all need money to survive.
I said some, since I didn’t feel comfortable giving even general statistics here.
Prostitution should be legal and regulated, which would significantly lessen incidents of abuse of women.
Do porn stars and prostitutes like their jobs? Some of them do. For some it is just a job. For some, they hate it, but it is their best option for making money. In all these cases, this is not different than any other job, and I don’t see a problem with that. Only if there is real significant coersion does it become problematic to me.
The way I was raised.
- “Maladaptive Daydreaming”
- I have an issue with being remembered in person (at least that’s what my therapist said). I will go to different chains of the same store on rotation, or stop going to a store all together if they remember me “too much.” I’ll wait until shift changes or that it’s been long enough that they’ve forgotten about me. I’ve stopped going to certain places all together if there’s no alternatives. Outside of lemmy, I have no social media. I don’t want anyone to ever be able to look me up. Apparently people don’t do that.
- Using different cutlery based off of meal size/how long you want to savor something (ex: You like ice cream, so you may eat it with a smaller spoon so it lasts longer.).
- Wondering what people were thinking/picturing when they bought their clothes (not in a “wow, that’s ugly, what were they thinking” but what they saw themselves as. Did they see this suit and think of themselves as a ceo? Did she buy thay dress and imagine the places she’ll wear it? That sort of thing).
- Having multiple paths to one place. I could get to my classes or office multiple ways. I would rotate, take these stairs one day, this elevator the next, etc.
- I believed everyone had some kind of food that would give them the boo-boos. I’m actually just lactose intolerant.
I have that issue #2 at least when it comes to going to stores and restaurants. As soon as the staff recognizes me I never want to go again for some reason.
I have massive social anxiety that’s probably the main part of it.
Same! I don’t know why, but it’s like, “they were nice… I can never come here again.”
It’s not that bad for me, but fear of being perceived, fear of being know… It’s all a giant mess
For me at least I think has is something like:
If I’m odd and they don’t know me I’m just an odd customer. But if I’m odd and a regular than I’m an odd person they are thinking about a lot and that makes me nervous like I might mess up.
Exactly this with me too. If they know me I have to hold myself to different standards and more small talk and stuff like that.
I have been trying to force myself to go to the same places but I usually fail. The only thing that works for me is going with someone else.
Getting locked in the basement without water, or thrown out into the streets for half a day, when you misbehaved as a child.
I mean, yeah? Is that really so bad. I guess it depends what the intent was. The town I grew up in was pretty tame, and the room I’d get locked in without food or water if I’d misbehaved had books
