Trust me, mental health app. I would schedule when my mental disorder affects me if I could.

My therapist and I accidentally ended up personifying my OCD and phobia as an Among Us imposter today, which is so fitting. Now whenever my disorders give me thoughts that make me afraid, I’m going to try to think of this picture of the button in the game

My brain storing very specific memories most people would forget in order to make my phobia I develop later in life worse

When I find a really beautiful drawing or picture of a fat person for my fat positive blog but something about the picture/post triggers my disorders so I can’t reblog it because my disorders say it’ll cause some bad thing to magically happen

Touching things, which includes cleaning and cooking, as well as being in my kitchen are extremely difficult for me with my OCD and phobia. So there are a lot of foods I can’t eat because I can’t make them. I’ve made small progress by thinking of accommodations to help me work around this, such as using paper plates and plastic cutlery, storing the paper plates in my fridge, keeping the box of plastic cutlery on my bed, forcing myself to accept that I have to spend more money on things than neurotypical people and just buy a new [insert whatever product that cost no more than five dollars] instead of avoiding the old “contaminated” one I own, etc. I still have severe difficulty, but these coping methods have helped me even just be able to eat at all. 

For Christmas, my long lost cousin (she’s been back in our lives for a few years now thankfully) and her husband bought me a My Hero Academia ramen bowl. I’m not a fan of the anime because of the fatphobia in it, but I really appreciated the thought she put into the gift since she’s the only person who ever buys me anime-related presents for Christmas and she puts a lot of consideration into the gifts she buys us. I also no longer had any bowls I could use. (I probably have like fifteen bowls that my parents separately gave me when I moved, but they’re all contaminated). I haven’t been able to use a bowl in at least seven months, so I wanted to try with this fresh start. 

I put some salad in the bowl (I can’t put anything on the kitchen counters so I had to put the bowl on top of a paper towel to put the salad in it) and used a salad kit to keep me from having to touch more stuff than I have to. The bowl worked really well and the salad was great! However, since it’s a real bowl and not a one-use disposable product like my paper plates, I now had the ordeal of having to clean it.

I did not clean the bowl for at least a week and a half because the idea of cleaning it was so stressful. I knew that the longer it went uncleaned, the likelier it would end up with something like mold and possibly even become uncleanable (and I mean that legitimately, not “uncleanable” in an OCD contamination way). 

I finally worked up the energy and courage to try cleaning it today. I bought a new sponge and brought the bowl to the kitchen sink. Thankfully the bowl was still able to be cleaned. I managed to fully clean the bowl and stored the sponge in the fridge where it would be safe (I hope a damp sponge can be stored in a fridge without risking something like bacteria growth). 

After all of that—all of the fear and stress and putting off the task and finally cleaning the bowl—as I finished drying the bowl with a paper towel...I accidentally dropped the bowl onto the kitchen counter. It was a real bowl, not even a plastic bowl, so it cracked completely down the side. It’s probably not safe to use now. 

I was so proud of myself and finally had a bowl again. And now it’s all been wasted c’:

For anyone who has a disability or is in a situation that makes eating more difficult, I highly recommend this product:

I have extreme difficulty cooking, touching things, and using plates/cutlery due to my OCD and phobia. I have to rely heavily on premade food like ready-to-eat products made at my grocery store, frozen dinners, etc. This product I recently discovered has been an amazing help. 

There’s only four of these breakfast sandwiches in the container, but they’re a pretty good size and very filling. I can eat one of these sandwiches and be good for hours. The only thing you need to make them is a microwave. They cook for only a minute and thirty seconds, which is super fast! 

They require no preparation other than slightly opening the end of the package. You actually cook the sandwich right in the wrapper it’s stored in. This means that YOU DO NOT NEED A PLATE OR CUTLERY! You can use the wrapper you cooked it in to hold the sandwich as you eat it! So it is easy and quick to make, requires no preparation, it doesn’t make a mess, there’s no dishes to clean, you barely have to touch anything, and it tastes seriously good!

There are two versions of this product that both use different ingredients, but to me they tasted the same. The only real difference to me was that this sandwich uses turkey sausage and the other sandwich uses chicken sausage. This brand also makes some other similar breakfast items that are also very easy, but they require a bit more effort. The frittatas have to be put on a plate, and the breakfast burrito needs to be wrapped in a paper towel. I store paper plates in my fridge as an accommodation to help me still occasionally use plates, so I sometimes buy the frittatas. The breakfast burrito tastes so good and is a little easier for me to prepare with the paper towels than the frittatas that require a plate. But the breakfast sandwiches are probably the star of the show.

I know these sandwiches can’t fill someone’s entire dietary needs and that they won’t be useful for every disability that makes eating more difficult, especially disabilities like sensory disorders since they’re so individual, but I hope this recommendation can still help someone. If you have some days where cooking, touching things, standing for a long time, etc. is too hard, then this breakfast sandwich might be useful for an easy, filling, and tasty meal. The main obstacle of this product is that the price is about $6. Buy it on sale if you can. Since I tend to eat this as an entire dinner/snack, it’s not a terrible price since it averages out to $1.50 per meal. I’ve also accepted that food is just something I personally have to save more of my money for so I can spend more money on food that I can actually eat. Food that my disorders will allow me to eat is what I splurge on.

I hope this suggestion might help someone!

It's wild that I perform compulsions due to my OCD and phobia at almost every waking second/moment (secondmomentsecondmoment) but most people will never realize this. They don't know I'm repeating words in my head over and over again or avoiding reading and saying common words because they trigger me. They don't realize that I put my purse in a certain place to keep it from sitting on contaminated things or how I shift my backpack while I sit in class so that only the bottom of my backpack will touch the floor and just be contaminated there. My dad offered me a cutting board when I was helping prepare food during Thanksgiving and he saw me continue to use a paper plate when cutting the food instead of the cutting board he gave me. He had no idea it's because the cutting board had a hair on it and was thus contaminated to me and unusable. People at the grocery store see me buy only premade food, frozen dinners, and snacks that do not need to be prepared but will never realize it's because my OCD and phobia make me unable to cook without extreme distress. Even the people who do know this don't realize that I have to buy specific frozen dinners that don't require the food being put on a plate because even touching a paper plate is so hard for me. The flight attendant on the plane who told me I had to put my purse on the floor underneath the seat in front of me and not just resting on my feet didn't understand that doing so made me inwardly, silently scream. No one's around when I pull on my car door handle 8-16 times when locking my car or when I pour more shampoo and conditioner in my hands than I need so I can use half of it to wash my hands every time I touch the bottles the shampoo and conditioner were in. And I doubt anyone realized I had to specifically say "the bottles the shampoo and conditioner were in" instead of "the bottles they came in" because my OCD and phobia make me scared that saying that will cause what I have a phobia of to appear in bottles and in my house. I also said house instead of apartment because if I say house when I don't actually have a house maybe they won't appear here. Now I'm repeating the word "scary" over and over again in my head to keep anything bad from happening and to make the thoughts go away. But you never would have known that had I not told you.

I like that a post that gets filtered will still show me that there was a post and its tags so that I'm aware of it and can choose from the tags if I still want to engage with it. However, I wish there was a way to choose for a specific filtered word to make a post never appear on my newsfeed. Like for it to continue as it has always functioned but to add the option to say if a specific word is in a post to not even make me aware the post exists.

My phobia extremely triggers me every hour of the day, and angrily just the name of what I have a phobia of will scare me intensely and never leave my mind. I will have intrusive thoughts about something that has triggered my phobia for days, weeks, months, YEARS. I cannot read those words at all.

It makes me so upset that I then can't filter for those words because doing so would mean the posts would still be visible on my dashboard and force me to read the names that trigger me because it would tell me why the post was filtered. I wish so badly I could filter for these names and just have those posts never even made visible on my dashboard while at the same time being able to choose for other filtered tags to still be visible. I don't want to know the triggering posts exist, but I do want to be able to choose whether I will engage with a post that has a tag I filtered merely because it makes me slightly uncomfortable or something.

Also, if I have blocked someone, I don't want to see their posts at all. If they have made a post that got popular or an addition to a post that became the popular version of the post, I do not want to see it! Even if it was reblogged by someone I do follow! In fact, I don't really even want to see posts on my dashboard that have been reblogged by someone I follow if they reblogged the post from someone I have blocked. I do not want to even remember the person I blocked exists.

This goes for people I blocked because they were assholes, but ESPECIALLY goes for people I blocked because their url was triggering to my mental disorders. There's this one popular blog whose url is extremely incredibly triggering for me, like it scares me so badly due to my phobia and gives me such intense fear, but even though I have blocked their blog I am still forced to see their blog name whenever someone I do follow reblogs a popular post either from them or that has an addition from them. Please stop this and let me choose to never have to see a blog's name again! I don't want to ever see a blog I have blocked!!!

Apparently my phobia is a "simple phobia." And it says this about "complex phobias":

It then lists social anxiety as a "complex phobia" and says

Excuse me? So a phobia that prevents someone from eating out and meeting friends is "worse" and "more complex" than mine that doesn't let me shower, makes me afraid of so many spaces and everyday situations, makes me afraid of my own apartment, makes me afraid of so many common words and even a whole fucking LETTER, makes me afraid 24/7 because there is ALWAYS a risk of me encountering it, leaves me unable to do daily life activities like cook or even use real plates and cutlery, has become inseparable from my OCD, and that also prevents me from eating out and meeting friends among a plethora of other things? Mine is "easier" and "simpler?" You have got to be fucking kidding me.

First it's "Mental illness is not a real disability." Then it's "Only autism and ADHD count as neurodivergence." And now it's "Actually, you have a lesser form of phobia, ouch 😬"

Are none of my struggles severe or disabling enough to be valid to a single fucking person on this planet? Am I not able to find community for my debilitating disorders anywhere? Not even with people who HAVE my disorders? Am I really just constantly lesser than every single person? Not to mention how the fatphobia I experience is also seen as a lesser form of oppression or even to some other oppressed people who are fatphobic as fuck and want to gatekeep "not oppression at all." Then I have to hear "Nonbinary women aren't really nonbinary." "Nonbinary people don't count as trans." "Bisexuals aren't actually gay." "Ace people aren't queer, sweetie." "Oh, hun. Fat women aren't real women."

"This identity doesn't count."

"That identity doesn't count."

"You don't count."

I'm fucking done.

I just looked in the phobia tag and half of the posts are about homophobia and other forms of bigotry.

When I looked at the OCD tag, 90% of posts were about neurodivergencies in general or specifically autism/ADHD.

I am so sick of not even not having a place in the disabled community but not even having a place in the mentally ill community either. Like for fuck's sake, is there anywhere that people like me are fucking welcome???

I constantly see people on here act like autism and ADHD are the only forms of neurodivergence out there, so here’s a shout out for people who are also neurodivergent but don’t have autism or ADHD. 

Here’s a shout out for people with OCD, phobias, dyslexia, dyscalculia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, Down syndrome, epilepsy, dyspraxia, synesthesia, anxiety, depression, and all other neurodivergent identities that don’t even get to be listed as the afterthought after autism and ADHD in articles about neurodivergency.

We are neurodivergent too!

You are included under the term “neurodivergent.” 

Please keep shouting until your voice is heard.

I’m tired of not being able to find phobia recovery content. I’m tired of looking up phobia recovery and only seeing eating disorder recovery content because that’s the only thing people give a shit about apparently. I’m tired of looking up phobia support and seeing posts about anxiety and depression. Phobias deserve fucking support too.

Mental illnesses other than eating disorders can affect how much and what a person eats. If you don’t have an eating disorder but your mental illness(es) affect your ability to eat, you are valid.