Once you start noticing how the incapacity to handle discomfort affects how people live their lives it's actually pretty shocking how it ruins pretty much every conceivable aspect of existence. Interpersonal relationships, romantic and platonic. Career and education opportunities. Your politics Your willingness to go anywhere. The kind of food you eat. The kind of art you expose yourself to and your ability to read it. It's never just one thing, it touches everything, and once you notice it it's like suddenly being able to see germs or something. Just this horrific catastrophe people look at you askance for screaming about. As I grow older and see what became of my friends and peers who could not learn to handle discomfort, the more I'm like. This is a genuine societal issue

When you can't handle discomfort, eventually discomfort itself starts to feel like you're under attack. Your body enters flight or fight mode, and your amygdala starts screaming at you that you are In Danger even when the "danger" in question is like, making an unpleasant phone call or like, you're reading a book about something gross.

Your ability to make frank assessments about your situation becomes compromised, because, well, when you're under attack who's going to stay still and go "Let me think this through?" Of course you're going to panic. The phone call isn't just unpleasant, it's potentially life-ruining. Someone is going to think you're dumb and that's going to be TRUE and then I guess you die or something except dying would be better. The book isn't just gross, it's actively coming for you, tainting your mind with the memory of its contents, it has RUINED you.

Obviously, you want to try avoiding danger whenever possible. So you create a world in which you avoid all dangerous things. Traveling? Well that's scary, what if you get robbed or lost? Better to avoid it (plus there are so many things to read, rules to remember, forms to fill out... it's just too much, it makes you uncomfortable, which means YOU'RE IN DANGER, what if you FORGET SOMETHING CRITICAL? Better to avoid). A new job? Well what if it's worse than your current one? You at least know the rules here. The unknown is so much more uncomfortable, which is DANGEROUS, so better to stay where you are. A dark-skinned foreigner? Do they even speak English? You don't know how you'd communicate. They don't know the laws here, surely? Plus what if other people think you're racist? It's so uncomfortable which means THEY ARE A DANGER. Best to avoid at all costs, keeping your bag clutched tightly to your chest. Vaccines? You don't really know what's in them. The explanations have a lot of words you don't understand. That makes you feel suspicious and dumb, which is DANGEROUS. You said something that was kind of rude? UNCOMFORTABLE. THIS PERSON IS ATTACKING YOU. FIGHT OR FLIGHT. Someone says you were incorrect about something? DANGER. Someone says you reacted impulsively and seem to have misconstrued someone's words as a personal attack? YET ANOTHER ATTACK.

Eventually you lose yourself and become this. I don't even know. This totally reactive thing, unable to think analytically about anything (which is uncomfortable and a danger), unable to assess harms, unable to encounter anything new without having a meltdown. And none of it is a real escape because, well, you've created a life defined entirely by aversion to discomfort, which is the most uncomfortable life you can possibly imagine. Of course such people end up falling into fascist ideas about Why Your Life Sucks. When you build a life around trying to maintain as comfortable an equilibrium as possible, you cauterize the parts of you capable of growth, expansion, creativity, learning; at the same time, the knowledge of your own stuntedness is haunting so best not to think about that either. The world becomes this horrifying mirror maze where the only way to survive without offing yourself is by projecting your flaws onto others, bitterly externalizing your self-hatred (who could live like this and NOT hate themselves) just to avoid turning it inward. You end up living like a hollowed-out sea urchin

A lot of people I've met seem to think that mental healthiness is characterized by a lack of discomfort whatsoever, and are therefore justified in building a life where all discomforts can be avoided. On the one hand, I completely understand the impulse. Lord knows I have had colossally shitty times and wished I could just retreat into bed and fall asleep for as long as needed for everything to blow over. But like. You also have to understand that that's a fantasy, not a solution. When you have grown up living a crap life with nothing but discomfort, the ability to avoid it feels like exercising autonomy. But you really do have to be careful about making this your life ethos. I know so many people who have lapsed into total learned helplessness, so consumed by discomfort (mentally catastrophized into dangers) re: looking dumb, looking rude, looking X, looking Y that they just. Idk. Don't do anything except be bitter. You don't have to be that way. The solution isn't "tough it out" because that's also just a manifestation of your inability to handle discomfort. I also hesitate to say the solution is to focus on how much better your life will be when you do X and Y, because the entire point of the inability to handle discomfort is that it constantly manifests in precluding the possibility of even wanting X and Y in the first place since to want it and not be able to do it IS in itself another source of discomfort.

Idk what the solution is, exactly. I just think it's important to understand that sometimes things can feel awful and still not necessarily harm you

re-posting bc reblogs got turned off etc

@ancient-rome-au this could be us...

gameshow voice: is it gay subtext or are the writers just so catastrophically bad at writing female characters that the only relationships in the entire story that feel human are the ones between the men.

I adore this

this is how spending a really fun day with your friends feels like

The reactionary backlash to media analysis is a natural part of the wider "fascists hate anything intellectual" phenomenon, btw.

Wanting you to ignore the politics of Star Wars comes from the same exact place that wants you to substitute the germ theory of disease with the 'sickness comes from failure to be a good christian and most people who claim to be sick are just faking anyway' myth.

To take a quote from Dan Olson:

kinda heavy but: i hope abuse victims of any type of abuse know it's literally ok to never forgive your abuser and that it's ok to have complicated but also hateful thoughts towards them.

sometimes it's healthier to just feel rage and unforgiveness towards someone than trying to force yourself to understand the nuance into why you were hurt. like, it's just ok to feel upset and pissed off instead of trying to be the bigger person.

i am cringe but i am not free 💔 im cringe and extremely self conscious

Allowing an addict to eat might be the most holy thing my tax dollars have ever done.

[ ID: a Facebook post, reading “I've been hearing criticisms about the type of people some folk think take advantage of government assistance. "But Josh, what if it's a drug addict that uses SNAP funds?" Oh honey, my American tax dollars have funded terror across the world.

It has purchased bullets that murdered civilians in Iraq, paid for bombs dropped on children in Gaza, financed police violence against Black and Brown bodies in my own country, subsidized private prisons, been used to exploit the poor, and enhanced the wealth of billionaires.

Allowing an addict to eat might be the most holy thing my tax dollars have ever done.” It was posted to Facebook by Dr. Josh Olds. end ID]

the only "welfare fraud" I care about is handing billionaires and rich corporations our tax dollars

When you drink a minuscule amount of alcohol and still get absolutely wasted: Night of the Hog

When you drink a ton and yet feel nothing out of the ordinary: Night of the Wolf

I reference this literally every time I'm at a bar because I somewhat convinced I saw it in a tumblr post somewhere but I have been informed that this is not in fact a known tumblr post in circulation and I was shown a prophetic vision at some point leading me to form the dichotomy from first principals

windows xp profile pic buddies. which profile pic did you have?

straight up it should be illegal for a physical storefront not to accept physical currency, or for restaurants not to provide physical menus

I'm assuming the above is a normie opinion (as it should be) so i do wanna go a tiny step further and explicitly state any laundromat that requires digital payment should be burned to the fucking ground

if a business cooerces its customers to download an app, i should legally be allowed to set both the business and its board of directors on fire

Absolutely horrid that a 10hr sleep does not cure you of all that ails you

it doesn't even cure me of being tired

It should work like in RPGs. I want to be able to go to bed exhausted, poisoned, and missing half of my blood and wake up at 100% fully recovered