(no subject)

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Hi, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name's Nicole and I'm a 24 year old senior at California state University Fullerton. I am double majoring in Psychology and Communicative Disorders. I am not a multiple but I am a mental health student so I just wanted to follow the rules. I'm really excited to have joined the group and I'm looking forward to conversing with everyone in the future. I work as a behaviorist for a California school district (no worries, I'm stim friendly and I detest old school ABA. My chief focus is dangerous behaviors; ie head banging and ways to supplement it with something less dangerous and I ONLY use positive reinforcement.) Thank you for reading this and I am just so incredibly excited to have found this group.

Comments

[laura-isaac.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the group. *smiles*

Heh, who'd have thought that, head banging is a dangerous behaviour... (yeah, I have that problem, tips on how to supplement it would be most helpful)

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Hi! Thank you for the welcome. Is there a specific emotion or event that will usually trigger the need to bang your head? I'm just wondering if it's linked to a pattern (and of course you may not have noticed that yet). I have seen it be connected to everything from hapiness to sadness and frustration (and everything inbetween). Are you living in a multiple sytem, and if so is the banging connected to one, or a few, or all of the individuals? Do you have any other major stims that are comforting to you? If you'd feel more comfortable conversing by email that's totally ok, my personal email is hang1013@aol.com.


Thank you,
Nicole

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

I hope it's ok if I add you as a friend :)

[overlord-mordax.livejournal.com]

Welcome! We look forward to your perspective in future discussions :D

-Massha et al

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm so looking forward to it!

[overlord-mordax.livejournal.com]

I see you added me/us to your flist. I've added you as well.

-David

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

[kyouketsusha.livejournal.com]

Welcome.

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh! Thank you so much! It's very nice to be here and to be greeted so warmly.

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Hi! *waves* Nice to meet you. Cool to meet someone in the mental health field with an open mind. We're a system of five in good shape, luckily. One of the kids says she loves your smile and sends one back at you.

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Hi! Thank you, having an open mind is my focus at all times. I'm so happy that your system is doing so well. Thank you to the child, what an amazing compliment and I will gladly take that smile in return. :)

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

I hope it's ok that I added you as a friend :)

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

None whatsoever. Feel free to ask us anything; we're fairly open.

And out of curiosity, what is a stim? We've never heard the term used before.

--Miranda

PS: the child squees.

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Hi, thank you! A "stim" is a behavior that is usually calming to an individual but it isn't what the neuro-typical would do to calm themselves. People who stim are usually on the spectrum, autistic, Asperger's etc. It's a lot like how some neuro typical people shake their foot while sitting and watching tv. It can be anything from rocking to head banging to staring to everything inbetween and then some. I am a proponent of tolerance when it comes to non-detrimental stimming, I have no problem with some flapping or spinning or anything else like that, my concern is headbanging and self mutilation (ie biting, scratching etc). I don't think you can eliminate stims, I think you can only replace them so I make it my focus to replace dangerous stims with non-dangerous, equally as calming behaviors. I get frustrated by some of the intollerance when it comes to stims by some of the employees at my work, especially the old school ones. I'm sure they wouldn't like their self calming behaviors forced out of them, heck I'm an emotional eater lol; I'd be like give me back my brownie if anyone tried to take that away from me lol.

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

"tolerance" is such an annoying and dead word, I'd like to replace that with "acceptance". Thank you.

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Bwahaha at 'tolerance.' Agree on that!

Interesting. We'd never heard of that concept before; I go for your opinion on it. All but one of us are nail-biters--what could be considered a very commonplace "stim"--and we have a hard enough time just with that, telling people, "Hey! Stop yanking our hand out of our mouth! MINE!"

You definitely sound like someone we could listen to; I can hear Miranda making gimme-gimme eyes. Consider yourself friended back, a bit belatedly.

--Writer

[lion-azure.livejournal.com]

Hi there!
I hope we're going to see that sunshine-smile of yours in lots of discussions. I for one like talking with open-minded singlets - but then, I like talking in general ;). I'm a blabbermouth when prompted (and also when not prompted, hehe).

- Malak

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

LOL, great, nothing better than a fellow blabbermouth :) Thank you so much for the compliment :)

[lion-azure.livejournal.com]

Blabbermouths unite! Spam the world!
And I think your attitude towards stims (hey, I learned a new word!) is great. The host has the habit of rapidly tapping her foot/leg when she's nervous, bored, or... well just because, I guess, and I know she hates it when people bitch at her (or even slap her leg) because of it - it's not as if she's doing it conciously, or can help it! So, more tolerance for stims and stimmers :).

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

Welcome ^_-. I have a BA in psych myself goo to see another person into psych =)

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Are you a singlet (sp, I'm sorry I'm not up on the lingo yet) or living in a multiple system?

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

We are a system ^_^ and we use our Ba to defeat evil singlets! just kidding =p

Introduction

[susanacts.livejournal.com]

Welcome Nicole...glad to have you here.

If you become interested in just learning about multiplicity, feel free to leave me a comment, as my case is starkly different from most. In the meantime, know I am a big California fan, friends, vacation, etc. there, so we'll get along just fine. LOL.

My name's Susana by the way. And again, pleasure meeting you. :-)

Re: Introduction

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

I would love to talk to you about your experience! Thank you so much! I'm so glad you're a California fan, it's a great place and I'm lucky to have been born and raised here. Do you visit often? It's pleasure to meet you, too, Susana!

[girl-and-muse.livejournal.com]

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Hi! Nice to meet you! It's a pleasure to join!

[tatteredscars.livejournal.com]

i'm mostly a lurker here, but "hello!" i hope you find much useful info here. there is rarely a flare-up of drama, which is nice.
~alison

Some one was being silly before. They were messing up stuff. But now this place is ok.
~the kids

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad to hear that it's usually a pleasant community. It's so nice to meet you all!

[inner-chatter.livejournal.com]

Hi Nicole. We're a trauma-based system of 13 (as far as we know... we're still learning who all may be here) ranging in ages from 2 to 27. It's wonderful to see an open-minded psych. major in here! We are having to sloooowly pry open our therapists mind. :oP Hope to see you around here often.

-Us

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Hi! It's a pleasure to meet you. I can imagine it's difficult to find an open minded mental health professional. Isn't it ironic that the people who should be the most open minded tend to be the least? I have made a conscious decision to never become that way. being jaded and thinking you've "seen it all" is basically a death sentence in this field. I mean who are you helping then, you know?

[weirdiguess.livejournal.com]

Stim friendly ftw (we don't head bang, but we have a few others, and we get really uncomfortable around people who quite clearly notice them and stare or look concerned)

~Selene

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

I can imagine so. I am really hoping that we can educate the wrld on spectrum behaviors so that people will understand and embrace the differences. It's nice to meet you :)

[heyyy-sunshine.livejournal.com]

Welcome. =D

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Greetings. Glad to have you aboard.

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Hi! We're glad to see someone in her who's a psych major AND has an open mind. People like you are really rare and far between. We don't post to LJ so much these days but we don't mind if you friend us if you like. We like making friends. We're a freshman in college with a university studies major.
Squished and blendy at the moment so we can't sign off on the post.

[vintagegirlnh.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Like I'd said above, it's a shame that the people who should be the most open minded aren't. I would love to friend you, thank you for the offer :). What exactly is a "university studies" major, is it kind of like Libral Studies?

[forever-alone.livejournal.com]

Welcome, we were/are psych majors too.

[shadowechoes.livejournal.com]

hi and welcome
we are/were psych majors too.. taking a break from it now though.. but we still love psychology
hm i've never really heard about stims though *headtilts*
when you say head banging do you mean like hitting yourself in the head/hitting your head on things on purpose? if that's what you mean that's kinda weird cause i didnt know other people did that too... o.o

~BrokenWings

[searchingstars.livejournal.com]

We mainly lurk here but wanted to welcome you and thank you for posting a little intro on yourself as a singlet/pysch person. Sorry, not too much on the talking/thinking thing right now.
~dawni/Tonight's Sky

[inmonopolus.livejournal.com]

Hello and welcome! One of my bonds used to be a psychologist type--a pet peeve of his is the way certain doctors and nurses treated people (mainly simple closed-mindedness, etc.), and he's considerably cheered and heartened by reading your post. We haven't actually gone to see a professional yet, but if/when we decide to, I honestly hope we can find somebody like you.

:3 Thank you, and we hope you enjoy it here. <3

~Theo

[rabbitsystem.livejournal.com]

Yo! Pleased ta meetcha!

Do you a deal: you can ask us about being multiple if we can ask you about being a singlemind :P

[shadowsgroup.livejournal.com]

*waves*

Sorry for the belated reply, we're a bit out of it and haven't been checking this journal's flist. We're a multiple system living in a body with Asperger's Syndrome. We're also a Psych major, though we are also majoring in History and most likely will end up focusing on that in grad school.

Have done headbanging in the past, but no longer. I only did it when I was incredibly frusterated and when I was in high school, having issues with people there.

One of our system members is a psych type, but he won't talk about it much.