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,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
Its my birthday!!!!! Well, my birth-month. Last year I did a sale for icons and emotes on my ko-fi, and this year ive decided to extend my birthday sale to my entire store!
For the rest of January, you can get any level of commission for 25% off using this link or code HBD25 at checkout.
can someone tell Jacqueline Durran that the issue with the wuthering heights costumes isn’t even that they’re historically inaccurate. it’s that they’re fugly
This is the first time we see adult Cathy. As the film opens, we’re trying to lay out our intentions – this is a stylised version of Wuthering Heights, and it’s difficult to nail this look because it has a nod to the period, a nod to contemporary fashion and also a nod to Old Hollywood. It has all the themes that we want to bring in visually to the movie, so it was about meshing it all together. It’s a costume and you know it’s a costume – and it’s not necessarily realistic or unrealistic.
i get that. i get it. but it’s hideous. jesus christ
tequila is like drinking the tears of a very happy young woman and whiskey is like drinking the tears of a very sad old man and gin is like drinking the tears of a closeted gay man named james
THE advantage of memorizing poetry is that when somethings happening, maybe even you’re in a situation or a location, you can just go “ok. lady of shallott time” and boom. you reclaimed your mental space and attention for YOU for the next ten minutes
Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
i know this is humorous but! i learned from one of my college friends (who learned from a therapist) that reciting a poem you have memorized is a great grounding & focusing technique when you’re spiraling into anxiety or panic. i can personally attest that The Tyger has staved off several panic attacks.
so like if said “situation or location” is freaking you out really badly, “lady of shallott time” can help reclaim your mental health too
Ok everybody share what poems you can recite in case we’re trapped in an elevator.
I’ve got the first 42 lines of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, the first 10 lines of Beowulf in Old English, the first canto of Tolkien’s Lay of Beren and Luthien, and Sonnet XVI by Pablo Neruda (“I love the handful of the earth you are”). I used to have the Proem of the Kalevala but I’m a bit shaky on it it now and I think i’ve only got the first two sentences. Anda handful of others I half-remember which i could probably do if I were with someone else who half-remembered the same ones and we could prompt each other back and forth.
like, david gaider’s stated justification for thedas’ promiscuous mage stereotype is kind of laughably simplistic but also fascinatingly revealing, right. mages are outcasts, isolated outside of ‘normal society,’ and so not subject to the same cultural expectations regarding sexuality. which gets framed in his word of god comments and the few textual nods (like that one bit in the calling) as almost a freedom from the framework of (heterosexual) marriage for the purpose of childbearing as the ideal/only form of sexuality. they don’t have to worry about passing down a family name (because they wouldn’t get to raise a kid anyway and wouldn’t have anything to give to them.)
but if we’re honest about the power dynamics here, what it really is is that mages are excluded fromhaving sexual relationships that are accepted and respected by society. you are watched at all hours and have to sneak off if you want to have sex in private. you cannot get married (not without permission that you’ll never be granted). you should not have children, because they would be tainted from birth by the possibility of inheriting your magic. if you do have children, they will be taken from you.
all expressions of mage sexuality are sexually deviant, therefore all mages are conceived of as inherently sexually deviant, and furthermore mages as an outgroup can serve as a kind of dumping ground for members of the ingroup to blamelessly act out their own 'deviant’ desires without it reflecting back on them. is it gay if you fuck a mage? he’s not really a man like you are, is he? is it cheating if you fuck a mage? you could’ve been ensorcelled into it. they don’t have morals and standards of behavior like us - we don’t allow them to, of course, but they don’t even try. so if you think about it it’s not really possible to do anything wrong to them, is it?
I was having writers block and so I took a break and soon enough it was 3 in the morning and I had impulsively sewn together a tiny mouse you’re welcome
I see people reblogging this with “to buy” but this pattern is free??? Someone even asked me “why don’t you charge money for it, it took you forever to put the document together” and I said “Not a lot of people have money and if they have some fabric scraps and a couple of buttons lying around they can make themselves a little mouse friend for free and that might make them happy and that makes me happier than receiving money???” Make yourself a liddol creacher! Heals the Soul!
I know this post is like 7 years old atp but I still get hundreds of notifications a week on it as well as some emails having problems with access, so I’d like to update since many haven’t seen my addition in the replies.
This pattern took off WAY more than I was expecting. Tumblr is the only place I’ve ever posted it, so if you see a repost on any other website, I’m not OP. Apparently some people have downloaded the pattern and put it behind paywalls on skill share sites. If someone wants you to pay money for the pattern, just know it’s not going to me, so it’s up to you whether or not you pay them because as always, the original pattern is still free.
Also the pattern link access is public! It’s shared via the Google Drive link underlined above and you don’t need to have a google account to open it. If you get a message saying you need “permission to access”:
Most of the time it seems to be connected to those trying to access Peaches via a school or workplace. Be sure you are not accessing the document while logged into a google account with an email address connected to a school or business and avoid accessing the pattern on school wifi and computers, employee-only wifi and computers, or another controlled networks, as these may use firewalls and other content blocks which may prevent the document from opening “without permission”
Be sure you are accessing the pattern using a web browser that supports the opening of Google Drive
If you have several tabs open that are logged into google, be sure they are all logged into only one google account. Sometimes if you have other tabs open logged into different google accounts, Drive will insist you need to request permission to access
That being said, I’m really impressed to see everyone’s creations and am so glad Peaches has reached so far! As we all know, Tumblr is notorious for not working right so I don’t always see every single message or photo addition, but just know I’m glad this little craft brought so many of you a little bit of joy over the years if you’ve ever made one!
