You’re going to disagree with people your entire life. There isn’t ever going to be a time where you aren’t currently in disagreement with someone somewhere on this planet.
Part of growing up is learning how to deal with disagreement in a healthy way.
A healthy way is not wishing death on them, or encouraging them to commit suicide, or digging up their personal information to frighten or threaten them. That’s not a healthy way to deal with anything.
What you do when you meet someone you disagree with is either:
1) Agree to disagree, and continue interacting amicably based on what you do agree upon
2) Agree to disagree, and attempt to help them see your point of view in a non-violent, non-antagonistic way
3) Agree to disagree, and simply avoid them
You do not threaten them. You do not encourage them to harm themselves. You do not doxx them.
sometimes you say or do bad things while you’re in an awful mental place. sometimes you say things that are rude or uncalled for or manipulative. and i’m not going to hold that against you. mental illness is hard, and no one is perfect. but once you’re through that episode, you need to take steps to make amends. you need to apologize.
“i couldn’t help it, i was having a bad episode” is a justification, not an apology.
“i’m so fucking sorry, i fucked up, i don’t deserve to live, i should stop talking to anyone ever, i should die” is a second breakdown and a guilt trip. it is not an apology.
when you apologize, the focus should be on the person you hurt. “i’m sorry. i did something that was hurtful to you. even if i was having a rough time, you didn’t deserve to hear that,” is a better apology. if it was a small thing, you can leave it at that.
if you caused significant distress to the other person, this is a good time to talk about how you can minimize damage in the future. and again, even if it is tempting to say you should self-isolate and/or die, that is not a helpful suggestion. it will result in the person you’re talking to trying to talk you out of doing that, which makes your guilt the focus of the conversation instead of their hurt.
you deserve friendship, and you deserve support. but a supportive friend is not an emotional punching bag, and mental illness does not absolve you of responsibility for your actions. what you say during a mental breakdown doesn’t define you. how you deal with the aftermath though, says a lot.
Reminder
this is such a good post.
please also remember that even if it’s hard to do this, and even if you fuck up a bunch of times, it’s still worth trying and you will still get there eventually.
I’d like to take a second to list all the people I wish had known more about dyscalculia growing up:
My first grade teacher, who noticed when on a verbal counting test that I went from 99 to 100 to 200 and told my parents I just needed a little practice
My third grade teacher, who couldn’t understand why I would turn in a timed multiplication table test with absolutely nothing written on it, or burst into tears when asked to bring it home and have it signed by my parents
My school corporation, who placed me in advanced mathematics for two excruciating years based on aptitude tests, apparently unaware that aptitude and ability are not one and the same
My fifth grade teacher, who privately admonished me for “laziness” because I couldn’t stop making “silly mistakes”—like switching multiplication and addition, or flipping numbers like three and eight, or failing to follow every step of a math problem
My sixth grade math teacher, who publicly called me out for writing the formula for the Pythagorean Theorem on my hand, claiming I didn’t study, though I had spent five hours the night before preparing
My parents, who grounded me every time my report card came out, trying their best to discipline what they thought was laziness
My family doctor, who, once told about my math troubles, prescribed me ADD medication without any running any kind of diagnostic
My Algebra teacher senior year after I was diagnosed, who claimed that giving me extra time on my test would be “unfair to the other students”
Every teacher who ever laughed and pointed at the clock when I asked them what time it was
The boy in my band class that said I was the “stupidest smart person he’d ever met”
My former boss, who when I told I had dyscalculia told me “I probably have it too, I am always mixing things up!” (she was an accounting major and ran the accounting portion of that place of business)
But you know who would have really benefited from knowing about dyscalculia? Me. I wish I had known. I wish I could go back and tell my ten year old self that it wasn’t my fault, that I am extraordinary in the best way. I wish someone, somewhere along the way could have seen what was really going on.
That’s why dyscalculia awareness is so important.
oh my god.
I. had no idea this was a thing. looked up the symptoms and
‘inability to tell, at a glance, how many objects are in a small group’
THIS. THIS IS A THING? THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE?
‘struggles with directions, anxious about moving from one location to another’
I memorized the route to all my classes in high school and yet if I didn’t have COMPLETE AND UTTER FOCUS I would STILL GET LOST it was so unbelievably stressful
‘is constantly late because struggles with understanding the passage of time’
‘struggles to read analog clocks’
‘moves too fast or too slow’
‘struggles with basic math/memorizing math facts like times tables and formulas’
GOD. I spent MONTHS on those times table tests; long after everyone else had gotten theirs done, I was still taking and retaking those awful, awful tests.
And I still have to turn everything into addition to get it to make sense. 10-7? count up from 7 to 10, on my fingers. do it again to make sure I’ve done it right. 4×6? that’s 6+6+6+6. keep track of it on my fingers. do it again to be sure. 18/3? start adding threes together, keeping track of how many it takes, on my fingers. do it again to be sure. STILL SOMETIMES GET IT WRONG because even addition is hard.
just.
dyscalculia.
is a thing.
thank you for this post.
I see people trash-talk Tumblr all the time but I’ve lost track of how many people have said something JUST LIKE THIS about their mental or physical health, their gender or sexual identity, and their understanding of social issues or world politics during the less-than-18-month I’ve been here than at any other website or classroom I’ve ever had a presence in.
I literally didn’t learn that I might have dyscalculia until I was studying to be a teacher and had to learn what the hell that was. And oh hey, look, I have practically every symptom but I’m about to graduate and there’s really no point in me putting forth the money to diagnose anything. Seeing kids FINALLY get something in math after working really hard at it, only to forget by the next day, JUST like I used to do, but knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop that. All I can do is teach them the little tricks I learned to remember and figure stuff out and get around the fact that I knew only about half the times tables.
(Most of my symptoms have been mitigated or alleviated by technology and I would like to tell my third grade teacher: fuck you, I have a calculator with me at all times and I do not need to know my times tables FFFFFFFFF and I am not stupid or lazy for not being able to learn them)
I was 38 fucking years old when someone said to me “It’s like you have dyslexia, except with numbers” and when you look up “dyslexia with numbers” you get dyscalculia.
I went through the list of “symptoms” and it was like a fucking checklist: yes, yes,YES.
For probably 34 years, I was told (and believed) that I was dumb and stupid.
Imagine my surprise to find out otherwise.
I too, found out I had dyscalculia when I went to university to study to be a teacher. I’ve always had trouble with math, lately it’s gotten worse which is weird as I use math almost everyday at work. Can no longer see the difference between 3 and 9 for some odd reason, 8 becomes 0 and so on.
I DID learn the multiplication table, but that’s only because I had a poster on my wall with the table on, and I got a A+ on the test. I think I had that poster till I was 18 or so. Very helpful.
In gym class, we were handed maps and do orientation: I got lost because I had no idea how to follow a map.
I didn’t learn the analogue clock until I was in the 6th grade. I still don’t know how to do the Pythagorean Theorem, I remember asking my 7th grade teacher about it, and he just said: There’s nothing to get, it’s just is like this! But I have to like… KNOW and UNDERSTAND the problem before I can solve it, just having to be told “It’s like this“.
In 10th to 11th grade I had to take the easiest problems to solve in math class (and they were like super easy). I was the only one in the class who had just the EASIEST problems. And I couldn’t even solve them, I wasn’t even halfway through the book when we got to 12th grade, and the others were already into the 3rd or 4th book. ANd they solved ALL the problems.
In my 12th grade, the math teacher had to sit with me and almost tell me every answer on the last test I had in school so I would be able to graduate.
I’ve been told so many times that if I only try harder, if I only better, I’d understand.
I’ve been told to take extra help courses, as if that’d solve the problem.
We need to raise this awareness. WE need more people to understand how difficult this is for us, it’s not fun to get anxiety and suddenly cry because you see a math problem.
We need to make people understand that we’re not stupid.
We’re not alone in this.
i failed/nearly failed every single math class up until the 11th grade due to this and now i am in 12th grade just learning that dyscalculia is, indeed, a thing, and i’m not just ‘slow’ or ‘just bad at math’
