Blog prompt week 10-22-12

I found Liz Fletchers visit to WGS very insightful and interesting. One thing that I found very interesting that she mentioned was that a lot of people think you have to have body dimorphic disorder you will most likely develop an eating disorder when the fact of the matter is that is not true. Many people have things about there body that they wish to change. Being a girl that is normal. Basically she was saying just because you wish your arms were a little more toned or your thighs were tinnier doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to develop an eating disorder. Another thing she said that caught my attention was anorexia nervosa has the highest death rate of any other mental disease with a 60% death rate prematurely.  She said that most frequently the patients die by suicide. One statistic that she said shocked me was 8 million Americans have eating disorders. That means 1 in 200 woman suffer from an eating disorder and only 30-40% if people with anorexia recover from it because many of them do not want to be treated for it because they think that is the only way they can live. In a broader since not just talking about eating disorders she said that 1 in 5 Americans are being treated for a mental illness at any given time. People who suffer from anorexia nervosa often times do not want to be treated which means they don’t want to get better leading them to just get more sick. 

Hopefully as time goes on we will know more information about this disease and be able to help more people over come it. I was also shocked to find out that one of the main reasons people don’t get treatment for it is because many people’s insurance will not cover rehab or therapy sessions for it so many people can not afford it causing them not to get treatment. 

my question

The question I would like to know is why do some people have such bad anxiety issues? I mean I know that everyone has some from of anxiety. I myself worry about tests coming up and joke that I’m having an anxiety attack when I know that I’m really not having an anxiety attack. I’m wondering why people who have nothing really to worry about begin to panic and think they are having a heart attack or something along those lines when nothing is happening. What causes this to happen to them in their head? Is there some type of chemical imbalance that is not present in most people? Or is it hereditary or even cause by some traumatic thing that happened to them that they cannot shake off and it lead to them to have bad anxiety issues. Can bad anxiety issues lead to worse mental health issues the longer they progress? I would like to know all of these questions because unlike and eating disorder I feel like it is something that is often looked over when in reality it is just as big of a deal and can maybe lead to other worse mental health diseases.

My first encounter with a lesbian

I guess you could say I was pretty sheltered child. Growing up my parents were going thorough a lot so I spend a lot of time with my grandparents and my Papaw was a preacher which lead to me spending a lot of time in church. It’s really weird though because my mom’s cousin is gay who was like an uncle to me. Even though my mom’s cousin is gay I never really considered him to be gay. I don’t think I put it together because that’s what I always knew him to act like so I just thought it was normal for him even though I knew he was different from the other men in my life.

Even though I grew up with a gay uncle, I never had an encounter with a lesbian. I knew what it meant because of movies of course but it was something weird to me and I didn’t really understand it. I remember being a freshman in high school and sitting in my art class when one of my friends. We were freaked out because there was a lesbian in the class who sat a table away from us. This was my first encounter with a lesbian. The class was small and it was one where you could talk so you got to know people In it. One day my friend and I were sitting at our table and the girl came and sat at the end of it. Being the narrow-minded people we were when we were 14 we freaked out and kind of gave her the silent treatment. We thought she had a crush on us. Eventually we began to make small talk and by the end of the year she became one of our good friends. She explained to us that just because she liked girls that didn’t mean she liked us like that. She told us she had a type and straight girls weren’t her type.. She is only attracted to other lesbians for the most part except for the occasional crush of a straight girl but she would never do anything to peruse them or make them feel uncomfortable.  In the beginning of the school year she was the weird lesbian and by the end of it she was our friend Noelle. It just goes to show you that you can’t be so quick to judge and you should give everyone a chance no matter what there sexuality is.

Activism

This is probably one of the harder posts for me. I am a pretty laid back person and I tend to keep to myself a lot. I wish I was a really big activist and I believed passionate in things, and took a stand in them. The only thing I can think of me being an activist for is littering. I know it sounds silly, but every time I see one of my friends littering or someone else I always say something to them. All of my friends know that the one rule I have in my car is do not litter. I think its so stupid to throw your trash out the window when it is harming the environment and animals living in out environment. My friends get so annoyed with me when they want to throw out there old fast food cups sitting in there car and I don’t let them. When I explain to them why I think its wrong and how its lazy and inconsiderate I’ve started to notice they don’t really litter anymore either. Even though by me telling my friends not to litter is not going to stop global warming and save our planet, I like to think I’m helping out in someway even if it is just keeping our earth clean. After having to write this post I’m starting to realize how little I stand up for. I wish I had stood up for the gay kid getting made fun of in high school or the black girl getting mocked. Even though it’s tough because I am scared of what others will think of me and I’m scared that people will think my ideas are silly and stupid I’ve realized life is too short to not speak up. The older I get the more of an activist I hope to be.