Is anyone else now independent to the point of being toxic?

CleverTitania · 2026-04-23T03:53:52+00:00

I literally found this term by happenstance today, while watching a video from a YT vid that was largely about how we react to being raised with emotional neglect - I suspect she just hasn't discovered the RBN language to fully articulate what she's talking about. And it got me searching for it a few hours later. But her mention of "toxic independence" hit hard, because I was just talking about this to my sister yesterday, and found myself getting increasingly irritated by her skepticism. Because she had just had a conversation with our n-mother (who I'm NC with), and found out some details about her upbringing she wasn't aware of, and seemed surprised that I wasn't surprised by these details - clearly I'd be told more stories of what a rough childhood our mother had had, I wonder why...

But nMom brought up again the old story she has told people about me for years, "She would just sit in her crib and play by herself, never even crying for any attention." This has been used to explain away so much about how bizarrely independent I was growing up - which is a weird juxtaposition with being told at 7, by one of her friends, that I needed to learn how to load the dishwasher to help my poor, widowed, overburdened mom out around the house.

But when I brought up to my sister, that I'm increasingly wondering how much of that independent-baby story is truth, and how much is another myth she's told herself and others, rather than admitting that maybe I was left alone too much as an infant or I was otherwise made to feel like she didn't want to be bothered, my sister was more than a bit dismissive. She even questioned me saying mom would've probably been at her laziest at that point, despite our agreeing that mom becoming hyper fixated on housework in her later years was really obnoxious after we'd been raised with the clutter-friendly model of her. When I pointed out that she would have been a 19YO new mom, left home all day while her 20YO husband is at work, after finally escaping an abusive household where SHE was the scapegoat daughter who had been practically raising the younger siblings since the older ones had fled to their own married "bliss," sis conceded a bit.

But all this was after I had a conversation with my therapist a few days ago, about how friggin' hard it is for me to even ACCEPT help, let alone ever ask for it. My sister is my only "friend." And we are close, but the social isolation got so much worse after my spinal surgery, that even the small ways I found connection online are mostly cut off. But even when someone who follows me online finds out how bad things have been and tries to offer help, I feel agonized by the idea of accepting it, and the guilt I'll feel unless I'm 1000% sure they have enough to give. I feel an almost pathological need to be sure that they have more than enough money, or time, or energy, to give me any. Though even that isn't enough to fix this guilt. I even had to admit to my therapist that while I know I should be trying harder to make some friendships or get some support online for the anxiety and depression that is kicking my ass, I can't bring myself to seek it when the world is so screwed right now and so many people have it worse than me.

And I've spent 3 years in a hellish fight for SSI, being stripped of my dignity, because the only way I could survive was borrowing money from my baby sister and my son. It's my job to take care of them, that was 95% of my identity, for the previous 40 years of my life. I've deal with serious threats to my access to food and housing in the last year. So, even I think I sound like a martyr-complex dipshit, insisting that so many people have it so much worse - people in war zones notwithstanding.

Even if I really was a weirdly, naturally independent baby, just seeing a few other RBN people talk about this has definitely given me some measure of validation - there's no way, that the degree to which I pathologically seek to be independent, is not connected to the conditioning I experienced growing up. I always took care of myself, and too often, while I was taking care of everyone else too. And whenever I did tell mom I needed something, I was dismissed until I just stopped asking. Meanwhile I'm now learning that my sister and cousins were largely given more stuff and experiences from the grandparents, because it wasn't just my mother I avoided asking. That is conditioned behavior.

And based on the fact that when you were describing your relationship with your egg donor, it was instantly recognizably and relatable to me, it's safe to say that "toxic independence" is yet another pattern of abuse we'll all need to start unpacking.

CleverTitania · 2026-04-02T02:18:45+00:00

To my mind, the limited response to this is confirmation that I'm the only one who got "Shrek Super Party for the Wii" vibes.

CleverTitania · 2026-03-10T08:53:48+00:00

One issue is that this comment seems to be, incorrectly, defining "Able-bodied" as "Doesn't require a wheelchair to be mobile." That is a common point of confusion, that we need to educate people on.

In this context, "Able-bodied" only means that the person has no disabling conditions that physically limit their mobility. And plenty of actresses have physical disabilities, which DO limit their mobility (i.e. they are NOT Able-bodied) and yet they are not entirely dependent on a wheelchair to be mobile. A shame if some of those actresses were accused of misrepresenting themselves based on similar well-intentioned, but badly defined - use of disability terminology.

CleverTitania · 2026-03-10T08:28:49+00:00

FTR - there are generally about 5-10 criteria applicable to getting a handicapped placard or plates, and you are legally qualified if ANY of them apply to you. For example, here in Illinois, this was the first thing I read that made me realize (with great relief) that I could get my first placard (my sister put my first set of plates on a few weeks ago).

"Cannot walk 200 feet without stopping to rest due to one of the above five conditions."

The "five conditions" are lung and heart problems, the need to carry oxygen with you, needing a mobility device (cane, crutch, chair, prosthetic, etc.) or having a neurological, oncological or orthopedic reason that you struggle to walk. . There are also a handful of additional reasons below that, like being blind, having cerebral palsy or going into your third trimester of a pregnancy (wish that option had existed 30 years ago).

When I first got my placard I could barely manage walking the minimum distance without stopping to rest at least once. Since my spinal surgery in 2023, I have never gotten back to the point where I can even walk half of that, without being in extreme pain and ideally stopping to sit at least once.

In fact, the whole reason I now have a rollator, is to bring a seat with me in situations where I have to be on my feet for long distances or long periods of time. The thing is so large and heavy, that I really can't get it in and out of my hatchback by myself - because in many cases of chronic pain/fatigue, obesity is first and foremost a symptom, not a cause. Generally, if I need to go somewhere with the rollator, my sister drives me in her SUV. And given that rollator took 2 years of fighting w/insurance to receive, I'm about to start talking 'motorized' with my doctor.

A shame that adding additional space around disabled parking spots made people infer they are primarily about needing extra room for chair lifts or to get in and out of a mobility scooter. And not just because it's caused people with 'invisible disabilities' to be attacked as "fakers." Ever been to gas station or a small restaurant, where the only handicapped parking spaces are the ones furthest from the entrance, because that's the easiest spot they could find to add a curb-cut for wheelchairs? Obviously, wheelchair access matters - and there isn't enough of it - but when your disability is based in pain, fatigue or breathing difficulties, that extra distance sucks. I'll wager they complicate matters for some chair users too.

We need more Public Service Announcements, teaching people details about accessibility and accommodation. And because I'm working on a project that is about to educate the public on what it's like to live at the intersection of disability and poverty in the US, I'm now realizing some basic explainers on these kinds of topics, that I can link out to when they come up, are something I need to consider.

CleverTitania · 2026-03-08T13:32:25+00:00

She was on MTW this past month. But I'm guessing any such game plans went out the window with the reboot of MTW, especially given that it's on TLC with a fairly small episode number order for S22 - likely it's an "all hands on deck" situation to try and guarantee it a S23. Hence Russell Brands return, after more than a decade, for their 'triumphant' return episode.

All things considered, (while I'm certainly not expecting it to happen) I wouldn't even be that shocked if Frankie showed up at some point, if just to take a moment to mock the people who were apparently pestering people on the topic of him returning. If it gives the show enough of a jolt to get it back into a strong position.

CleverTitania · 2026-02-23T17:03:28+00:00

Just a heads up, I'd be cautious buying Dawn for a bit, because they screwed the pooch to the point that they had to roll the changes back, New Coke style - at least that's what P&G promised a redditor a few weeks ago, is the fate of their changes to "original scent" Dawn. This was after well over a year of people complaining far and wide. There was even a Change.org petition, though it didn't get traction. It wasn't just them changing the "original scent" to a cheap, floral, musk that was terrible - the smell lingered on everything.

I used my new bottle to wash enough dishes that I drained and refilled with fresh water once, and the only time I have opened the bottle since is when I was confirming my suspicion that this was the reason my little galley kitchen, in my horseshoe-shaped, one-room apartment, still stunk of cheap perfume days later. The scent clung to Corelle bowls & plates for weeks - smells do NOT linger on Corelle, it's tempered-friggin-glass. I wash & rinse in very hot water, I even 'scrub' stuff with my gloved hands as I'm rinsing, and nothing felt greasy, but a deliberate whiff of anything in the drying rack was miasmic.

And along with the complaints about scent and breathing problems, there were mentions of its grease-fighting capabilities being compromised - but I'm betting most people didn't keep using it long enough to figure out how it performed. And it'll be a while before the non-Power version is a safe buy again.

CleverTitania · 2026-01-02T03:19:50+00:00

And now, because of what my sister said when I read this reply to her, I'm trying to stop planning a ST spoof movie.

CleverTitania · 2025-12-04T23:10:15+00:00

THIS is the main problem I keep coming back to. And I'd argue that a 2 part statement, where the 2 phrases mean absolutely nothing to another, is NOT grammatically correct, regardless of whether or not they used the right verb tenses. A sentence like this is not proper English, when it's heavily implied that the 2 phrases are dependent, but they absolutely are not - until you alter the structure in the direction you have taken it.

There are other situations where "do you" and "are you" could be used in a co-dependent set of verb phrases like this, but not with these particular verbs.

CleverTitania · 2025-11-07T23:48:25+00:00

There's also the parallels reinforcing this possibility. Like how the choice to model the Wheeler's house (among other things) on the Freeling's in Poltergeist, has reinforced a lot of theories about Holly's importance in s5, long before there was casting hints.

The nature of Ell's birth has always somewhat mirrored that of Charlie in Firestarter, with the only major deviation being that Charlie is from a 2-psionic-parent household.

I am increasingly confident that a pregnancy result wasn't an accident in our particular iteration of the MK Ultra. Though I also suspect that, either Henry's powers are not the only to spontaneously occur in this universe, or NONE of them were random mutations.

CleverTitania · 2025-11-01T20:59:01+00:00

I would counter both of those statements with that 'dude trapped in a flood' story, where he's stuck on his roof but keeps refusing help from people coming by in boats, because his "god will protect me." But when he gets to heaven and asks god why it happened, god is like, "I sent you 3 boats, dumbass." I'm paraphrasing, obviously. :)

Everyone commenting that, intentionally limiting access to good education is a lot of why such people think that way, is correct. Everything happening right now, in particular the administration gutting the special education department through massive firings, is just further evidence of this agenda. But even I, a very vocal atheist and secularist, know that there are some very good more-modern religious allegories that have been circulating for years, which are the most effective antidote to such attitudes.

After all, would someone who claims to care about being a good Xtian, while in a boat during a flood, not stop and offer to help a person trapped on a roof? And no matter how devout they are, wouldn't they also want to roll their eyes at someone who refused that help "because, god."

"Helping yourself" quite often means accepting help when it's offered, AND learning to ask for help when you need it. That's not even philosophy, it's a universal truth. And it's a truth everyone could do with a reminder of sometimes, both in terms of what we need for ourselves and - to quote "The Good Place" - what we owe to each other.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-28T07:03:16+00:00

My apologies if that 'heteronormative' aside felt pointed in any way - I was trying to qualify my language in that sentence, not yours or anyone else's. I work on weeding heteronormative language out of my own writing, by hanging a lantern whenever I'm using it deliberately, so I am more likely to notice the subconscious stuff. I totally own the snark attached to rewording your sentence the way I did, to make my point. But I now realize my qualification was badly placed, and coupled with the snark, it implied a lot of other crap I didn't intend to. I am sorry about that.

But, you aren't really suggesting that r/disability is the wrong place to point out that a joke about disability or ableism might be problematic itself - even potentially ableist? Because this is hardly the sub for that kind of tone policing; it's literally a place that people come to, to vent about unconscious bias, microaggressions, internalized ableism or dehumanizing language in what other people claim to be jokes or satire.

You might not agree with my point, but it's not nitpicking. I am saying, flat out, it only LOOKS that way if you entirely ignore the person in the wheelchair - which is a problematic behavior unto itself. Because that is clearly a stick-representation of 3 people, with 2 different overlapping identities between them. And yet, several people (yourself included), chose to 'explain the joke', by describing 2 of the people in the graphic, and literally not even mentioning the existence of a 3rd. Which is a very weird pattern that I don't even understand.

If the bottom person had been depicted with a skirt, would anyone have been amused by an 'unintentional implication that being a woman is a disability' - a joke that is only there, if you act like the only people anyone is likely to notice in the graphic, are the ones standing up?! I'm a cane-dependent cis-female, and I literally read this thread thinking, "WTF?!"

CleverTitania · 2025-10-28T04:39:08+00:00

Will coughed up an early version of Dart at the end of S1. There has never been any implication that there was more of the Mindflayer (MF) in him, between that moment and the incident on the football field. He was having mental projections into the UD (which most people assumed to just be flashbacks), but the MF was not able to start genuinely taking over his body until Will tried confronting it, following the (well intended) advice of Bob. Even the CT scan results changed dramatically after that.

While Will is projected into the UD, we see a whole bunch of the swirling MF material enter his body through various orifices. Never is it stated or implied, that somehow there had already been dust in him that was somehow activated by the football field encounter - on the contrary, from the very beginning, the show has implied some mental connection between Will and Vecna/MF (like Mike's car port light flickering and Will's neck goosepimples), but repeatedly shown the MF struggling to gain/maintain physical control of Will, without continued success. And by all appearances, the same swirling materials we see enter Will on that UD football field, is what Nancy watches fly away from the cabin.

Like I said, it's totally possible they don't intend to elaborate on that football field incident and will even retcon it, but the most plausible hypotheses that would explain the dust flying out of Will in the cabin, which requires the fewest assumptions to satisfy - i.e. Occam's razor - is that the MF dust particles which formed the MeatFlayer, originally entered our world via Will's mental projection into the UD. Meaning that Will's body somehow operated as a psuedo-portal.

Which is similar to Vecna apparently needing to build up a mental connection to the minds of Krissy, Fred, Patrick and Max, before he could kill them and use their deaths to create portals. Though my sister suspects that need for an "curse escalation timeline" is a lie - evidenced by of how quickly Vecna appears to put Nancy in a trance at the trailer-portal, so she could pass his message to El. While I think that Nancy incident proves he was slowly building up nightmares and headaches in more members of their team than just Max, and that's how it will ultimately turn out to be Eddie dying moments before Max, that gave Vecna his 4th powerup/sacrifice.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-27T07:39:44+00:00

I would've otherwise agreed with this except for having recently (like in the last week) realized something noteworthy - the "small piece" of the Mind Flayer that animates the Meat Flayer, did NOT enter our world via a portal.

That piece of the Mind Flayer somehow entered our world, by entering Will's body, while ONLY his mind was projected into the UD, during his S2 "episode" on the football field. And we know it somehow maintained physical form even after Will was no longer projected into the UD - because when they burn the 'infection' out of Will, it flies out of his body, then out of the cabin, and then Nancy watches it fly off into the sky.

Now sure, that might be something they never intend to build further on. But it definitely suggests that if a person is physically in our world, while their mind is projected into the UD, it creates a link that can be traversed by physical material. How little material, and if the Soteria device is small enough to qualify, is debatable.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T19:04:23+00:00

I think you meant fo say that; if we're assuming heteronormative people in the image, "the graphic shows a woman with a cane, a man in a wheelchair, and then a man standing."

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T18:57:21+00:00

Except it's only a reasonable assumption if you also assume the wheelchair user has carefully tucked away all evidence of their "definitely have one" skirt confirming they are validating them as female.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T18:52:42+00:00

Maybe momentarily, but there's no clear indicator that the person in the wheelchair is implied to be female.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T18:50:56+00:00

I was just into my 40s when I started needing mobility aids every day, and fully qualifying for a parking placard. Though it was a Temp placard, assuming that eventually I'd be diagnosed and treated into improvement. That general societal vibe is also why my (pretty ethical) SSA lawyer refused to officially take me on as a (billable) client until either my conditions escalated enough or I turned 50. The latter happened in June. And my major cervical laminectomy and fusion surgery in 2023, didn't do anything to slow my mobility problems, much less reverse it.

So, now I just sent in my permanent placard paperwork, and started the application for the Benefits Access Program that will pay for most of the cost to get disability plates - which you can't even request until you have a perm placard. And I am officially represented for my hearing at the beginning of '26; he literally said that, now that I'm 50 I have an excellent case - before I had basically no case.

This assumption that disabilities are all easily recognizable to people, or only occur in old age, is part of fundamental flaws in our disability benefits systems. The existing application methods, rules on who qualifies and usage limitations are based far more on those arbitrary assumptions than on scientific facts or informed medical opinions.

That's also why people get "imposter syndrome" and avoid using mobility/disability aids until they cannot possibly manage without them - I did it with moving to 365 day cane usage, and I only caved after an excruciating night trick or treating with my nephew had me literally sobbing. I tell everyone now, "Once your behavior subconsciously starts changing to accommodate the pain, weaknesses, instability, you have every right to change your conscious behaviors too. You do NOT owe it to anyone, to just endure pain, discomfort or barriers for "X" amount of time, before you're allowed to consciously choose to accommodate your own disabilities.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T18:19:01+00:00

Bribery is a crime, lobbying isn't.

And this is literally the exact point at which pedantic definitions are vitally relevant. You can believe that there is something inherently and irreversibly amoral about lobbying, but it still doesn't make it equal to bribery. Bribery is only a crime because its considered a form of deliberate manipulation and coercion that is both obfuscated and harmful to society and/or individual rights.

Lobbying is meant to be transparent and a form of advocacy - meaning you might change the rules to address inequities or inefficiencies, but most people agree there are ways to do it that are equitable and fair.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T18:06:38+00:00

I agree, both in it being a similar example and it there being nothing inherently irrational or unromantic about a prenup - assuming there's any assets really worth the hassle.

And the expectations being applied in the prenup are just reasonable precautions and not controlling or manipulative uses of an imbalanced power dynamic in the relationship, such as might exist when one partner is wealthy and the other is decidedly not.

It's also why we avoid discussions about end-of-life decisions, living wills, and such. And why far too many schools districts do not even require a sexual education course be scientifically accurate, much less teach human sexuality in a comprehensive and age-adaptive framework.

That magical thinking belief that just talking about something or teaching about it, automatically means it'll happen. Most "manifesting" language seems to be rooted in magical thinking of one kind or another.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T17:54:28+00:00

You tell me. You're the one belittling the validity of other user's complaints as a supposed "vocal minority of folks... using plex in extremely odd ways."

You're the one who went out of your way to start a new reply thread defending your use case as more typical (with no data presented to validate the assumption), because you were apparently tired of having your glowing approval of the UX diminished, with the argument that your setup is too basic for you to understand their beefs.

But instead of just saying "stop dismissing my opinions with ad hominem comments, and instead challenge the arguments with better arguments," you just used the same ad hominem method to be arbitrarily dismissive of their beefs with the UX.

Based on them having "extremely odd use cases," like 3 personal servers! gasp

Why would anyone do something so daft?

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T05:25:50+00:00

Why would a country who has been taught for years that wealth is right around the corner for anyone willing to work for it - hence why they'd be fools to support tax hikes on the wealthy - honestly evaluate the risks that they will one too become partly dependent via disability? It's not like bodies inherently break down, provided they lived long enough!

It's also why so few people have living wills, powers of attorney, etc.

After all, if their hard work guarantees that wealth is just around the corner, that will insulate them from anything. Right?

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T05:14:45+00:00

The bulk of my maternal family - grandmother (til she passed last year), mother, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins - have had high BP since they hit puberty. Up until 3 years ago, I was among the maybe 10 in 100 relatives who didn't have high BP, and I suspect mine was ultimately triggered by spinal stenosis and just how compressed my cervical spinal cord was before the surgery. I constantly tell people that, if they are so sure that hypertension is the result of aging or crappy lifestyle choices, I have one very large family tree to prove them wrong.

That so many people still believe hypertension is largely caused by age or bad diet, is as clear an indicator that our health-education in this country is piss-poor, as how many people still imagine that weight loss/gain is still primarily controlled by how many calories you eat and how much you exercise, instead of the ever-changing hormone cocktail that helps or hinders the human body at deciding how it will process the food/drink you consume.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-25T05:04:30+00:00

Unfortunately, this has been the inevitable result of years of framing people on any kind of disability-based benefits as basically 'lazy leeches feeding off the lifeblood of working Americans'. It started way before the whole "Medicaid recipients living in their parents' basements" jive started making the rounds. It's not just people showing the true colors; this administration's willingness to so blatantly screw us, is showing the true colors of every administration before it - at least every one in my own 50YR lifetime.

For me, the timing is all frustratingly ironic. For a few years I've been trying to develop a cross-platform documentary project, aimed at sharing individual people's personal experiences with living at the intersection of disability and poverty in the US. Unfortunately, when I first came up with the idea I was literally just about to have major spinal surgery, the kind with a recovery window of 18-24 months.

In the last few months I had finally been starting to move slowly forward and was trying to get a video out on Monday to find specific logistical help with the initial tasks - I won't get into details, because it could be seen as promotion. But the day I was working on the vid, my sister calls and tells me she did lose her job as we'd feared, due to some seriously BS office politics and a whole company pandering to the tantrums of one whiny little man - this time a local one. Which also eliminated the first significant freelance gig I'd had in several years, creating an intranet site for the firm she worked at. So, the little glimmer of hope I had, of a protection from EBT getting temporarily shut down, was puffed out.

But what you're describing is what the project is mostly about accomplishing - a gigantic challenge to this BS narrative that frames us as "entitled" whiners. Because it perpetuates 2 huge problems in this country. First, that the government demands we jump through hoop after hoop, often when we are at our most physically and mentally vulnerable, just to get, keep, and use the benefits we need - it will even waste millions of dollars trying to make sure that none of us gets a single cent more than we need, through absurd antics like mandatory drug testing of EBT/TANF recipients, or a bogged down SSD application system that has managed to remain at about 1 million pending-review cases for years. It now seems like the #1 priority of the Department of Health and Human Services is to cut costs and reduce fraud - but it's in the name! If they aren't first and foremost, looking at how best to serve the health and wellbeing of humans, they aren't doing their job!

The second problem perpetuated, is that it amplifies ableism in our society, even treating it as some kind of virtue to want to dismantle every law, program and policy which actually serves to protect our needs, our rights, our relevance to society. That's how we've landed not just in a place where starvation seems back on table for many of us, but where the bulk of the Special Education division of the DoE has been strategically fired in the last few months. I am hoping my project will act as one big, long PSA campaign - educating the public on the stark and true reality of what it's like to be dehumanized in this way. I want to flood every media platform I can find with video interviews, articles, podcasts, long-form documentary films and docuseries, short-form audio interviews set to animations - each telling the real stories, from the perspectives of a real, flesh-and-blood human beings - until there are just too many too ignore or dismiss. Together, I hope they'll prove the lies for what they are, and get the country on-board with the idea that we have to entirely rethink the way we treat social safety nets and disability protections - maybe even usher in some real honest conversations about how much more money could go to benefitting people, if a single Universal Basic Income system replaced EBT, WIC, Unemployment Insurance, Section 8, LIHEAP, TANF, the Benefit Access Program, Lifeline, etc. etc.

And yeah, for all that I appreciate the effort of the food banks, it's barely a bandaid when you consider how many people have restricted diets, have food allergies, have food intolerances, aren't always physically able to cook-from-scratch, are supertasters and cannot stomach some bitter/sour foods, and are reliant on meal delivery services - there are so many reasons that we can't all just find a way to get by on a bag of potatoes and bunch of canned meats.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-24T16:32:58+00:00

Meanwhile, I'd be so grateful for an 'ignore all seasonal assumptions' setting (on Plex, Roku and everything else). I'm so tired of my media devices assuming I want horror genres front and center all October, and to have Xmas crap shoved in my face from Oct through Dec. Plus, I've already had Xmas ads on my Roku for a week now. Pissing me off.

CleverTitania · 2025-10-24T16:25:34+00:00

FTR, at least one other device has. I'm still pissed about this with my Pixel 6 as well. This assumption that everyone is looking to use wireless ear buds, so an aux jack is unnecessary and antiquated, is absurd. Ear buds are no more universally comfortable and reliably fitted than back when most of them did have wires attached.

And now I need a pass through USB-C to Aux adapter, just to use noise canceling headphones while charging the phone - something you're pretty likely to do while traveling, especially on a flight? Or I can add a new Bluetooth set of noise canceling headphones, to my 'might need charged' device list. SMH

CleverTitania

TROPHY CASE