Jack Monroe #118 Diagnosis: gifted

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@Harrybosch babe, same. I was able to do gcse level maths from junior school. That’s my level of maths. Good for your lad, that’s the thing kids grow up and get good at all the other stuff they learn from life! (Most kids. Not Jack).
Just realised I was diagnosed gifted and now I’m unemployed, Just gonna howl and claw at the floor and create fake accounts on Twitter. BRB.
 
HarderFaster said:
The entire premise of the Breakdown just reminds me of this Dril tweet:



Rich girls who’ve done restrictive eating and have anxiety and maybe got prescribed Prozac and then their parents paid for therapy for them so now they feel they have the authority to talk about “self-care” without anything more than a cursory acknowledgment that self care is a dereliction of responsibility on the part of institutions, placing the onus on the individual to make themselves better while nothing is done to address the structural reasons that so many people struggle with mental health.

So. Very. Jack.
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YES to every you said! I read a few articles like this when I started to seek help for my mental health, hoping to gain a better understanding while I was on a waiting list. And they’re just so useless! For all the reasons you said. They’re always somehow both vague and OTT descriptive. I was lucky that I was old enough for my BS detector to quickly see though it. But I feel bad for younger people who are really struggling, reading things like “the breakdown“, won’t help. And on top of that, it just encourages people who are like the writers, to self-diagnose, pathologise things like everyday anxieties.
Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, I am a bit busy (not BUSY!), but it’s just such a relief to see that other people recognise what a load of crap this kind of ”journalism” is, and explain so clearly why!
 
Cookiecookie said:
She's the perpetual victim. Most people who live through the trauma of signing on for a few months are proud of being survivors. She always has to be so bloody hard done by. I'm a pessimist with depression and I'm more bloody cheerful than she is (I can cook better too!)
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That's her level of activism too, being the victim. "It should not have happened to someone like me", rather than "Our system sucks, let's change it!"

SuperlativeSea said:
YES! BINGO! Also mentioned that it’s not costed properly yet.... she’s not on a deadline, why not finish of the sums and then post it?

Also... why is everything so revolting? We used to eat really cheaply when the kids were little and I only worked part time ( massive mortgage two kids at nursery ) and we never ate anything horrible. It’s like she deliberately makes it over complicated and stressful. Egg on toast is a perfectly normal thing to eat, why add yucky poor quality food to make it worse?
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The weird thing is that even with basic things like onions, she doesn't do the things with them that makes them yummy. Like properly frying them (boiled onions for your gravy, still can't believe it).
 
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Harrybosch said:
The whole 'gifted' thing is such a load of BS. Many children are great at many different things. Because the educational system insists on having very specific targets for certain age ranges, it inevitably means that a number of children exceed these targets. To suggest that those children are gifted is ludicrous. All it means is that the kids at that stage in their lives are doing more than the 'average' child at that age. It's lovely, be proud of it as a parent, but don't draw any conclusions. My older one was working at 'two years above his age' in maths for ages in primary school. He's now a teen and doing fine. He's good at maths but not brilliant. Other kids have surpassed him. I actually think his talent lies much more in other areas, some of which he was 'behind' in primary school (he was a late reader).

Anyway, I realise none of you care about my son and neither should you. It's just a small example how easy it is to distort the truth.

My son is a mathematical genius.
vs
My son really enjoyed maths and grasped concepts quickly when he was a child.
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I agree with everything you’ve said, which is why we never mentioned the “gifted” thing to him as it didn’t really mean anything and never came to anything. He has his strengths in certain subjects and struggles in others, like any child. He might get a good result in a maths test but he’ll always come last at Sports Day and who cares? For Jack to still carry it as badge of honour all these decades later is embarrassing. I won an art competition in Year 4. Maybe I should write an article about it.
 
Sideboard Bob said:
YES to every you said! I read a few articles like this when I started to seek help for my mental health, hoping to gain a better understanding while I was on a waiting list. And they’re just so useless! For all the reasons you said. They’re always somehow both vague and OTT descriptive. I was lucky that I was old enough for my BS detector to quickly see though it. But I feel bad for younger people who are really struggling, reading things like “the breakdown“, won’t help. And on top of that, it just encourages people who are like the writers, to self-diagnose, pathologise things like everyday anxieties.
Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, I am a bit busy (not BUSY!), but it’s just such a relief to see that other people recognise what a load of crap this kind of ”journalism” is, and explain so clearly why!
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You're so right - so many words yet every single article I read says absolutely nothing of value at all. Presumably anyone who decides to read a magazine called The Breakdown is already familiar with mental illness and doesn't need to read an article explaining what OCD is like nobody has ever heard of it before. Who is this aimed at?!

Also - lol at this source. It's like the kind of tit I would have tried to get away with in my first year of uni when I had an essay due in that afternoon.
 

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Does egg on toast really need costing? Just say, “Here’s what I had for lunch” if you have to and leave it at that. The chip shop backstory and “I was a single mum on benefits don’t you know” shoehorned into a caption under egg on toast. Honestly.
 
HarderFaster said:
The entire premise of the Breakdown just reminds me of this Dril tweet:

View attachment 346303 q

Rich girls who’ve done restrictive eating and have anxiety and maybe got prescribed Prozac and then their parents paid for therapy for them so now they feel they have the authority to talk about “self-care” without anything more than a cursory acknowledgment that self care is a dereliction of responsibility on the part of institutions, placing the onus on the individual to make themselves better while nothing is done to address the structural reasons that so many people struggle with mental health.

So. Very. Jack.
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This is perfect. These types of articles somehow manage to miss the mark on two fronts. As you say, they never address the structural reasons (or if they do, there's never any discussion of possible solutions to those structural issues). They also place the responsibility on the individual, but ALWAYS in exactly the wrong way. It's always tit like 'if you do X, you'll get better', which is not true and essentially blames people who suffer from MH issues, because they clearly can't do X. But at the same time these articles perpetuate the whole 'I have ADHD therefore I'm a chaotic mess' type crap, which is reductive and doesn't give people an out.

My personal MH experiences have taught me that the route out of dealing with in my case c-PTSD, but this is probably applicable to other conditions is

1) full acceptance of what has happened/is happening/ is real
2) being truthful about one's own feelings
3) understanding that feelings aren't permanent
4) letting go of guild and shame
5) building an ongoing support structure, which will involve other people, perhaps medication and WORK which has to be done by you, no matter how unfair that may seem
6) being honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses
7) seeking and accepting help

These steps don't necessarily happen in sequence, you will stumble and fall and have setbacks. Certain tools will help you, but none will fix you - like a wallpaper planner is not going to fix things, neither is a chemical rollercoaster. Because life isn't easy, but it's worthwhile getting yourself better, because you are worth it (insert swishy hair ad).

I know so many of you on here know this, but perhaps this is useful for some of the newer coven members. It's also why JM triggers me so much. She's doing a lot of damage with her 'campaigning'.
 
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