some of you on here really don't seem to understand that the goal of healing should be to get better so that you feel better. not to get better so that other people like you better or take you back or forgive you or treat you differently. learning to manage your symptoms is so that you can take care of yourself better, not make yourself more palatable for others
Hey, man, c'mere. Listen. Get in real close, this is important.
You're gonna make stuff again. You're gonna make stuff you're proud of. You're gonna make stuff you're excited to share. You're going to feel that overwhelming drive to create, not just the frantic I want to want to you're stuck in now. You're going to have awesome ideas, and you're going to make them into reality. You're going to create again. You're still an artist. You're still a writer. You're still home to the same passion you had before. You'll find it again. It's not gone. It's just resting. Let it rest. You're going to make stuff again. I promise.
Cannot stress tf out of the importance of discernment. Be careful of spaces or people that tend to feed and enable delusions rather than teaching how to be mindful and how to discern the mundane from the magical.
Unironically I think the early to mid 20s age group in America has unbelievably bad consent boundaries on all levels and so much language to defend it but this makes me sound like elon musk if I say it however the commonality of someone who will be like “I had 47 panic attacks and it’s your fault” if you tell them no is insane
I rejected someone and got called “the scariest person I’ve ever met” with so much therapy speak interspersed like alright okay alright okay alright okay
“You just say whatever you’re thinking and I don’t know how to handle it” was verbatim part of this conversation. Also everyone hates to see an autistic bitch
When I was in this age bracket, there was a huge emphasis on improving consent culture via graceful rejection, and it's gone by the wayside. Which sucks.
Twice in my youth (once in high school and once in college) I was in situations where I was asking someone out and I could tell they were calculating in their heads the risks of rejecting me, and both times I said, out loud, "you can say no, I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't prepared for either answer." And then they said no. This wasn't some spark of special wisdom I had - I knew to do it because feminist conversations among my age group brought it up regularly. This isn't happening nearly enough anymore.
More recently, I was really glad when we got to "rejection sensitive dysphoria" in my IOP program and it was one of those symptoms where the therapists really emphasized how it affects others. Because it does.
Being someone who cannot handle rejection makes you much more likely to violate boundaries, and yes, that includes sexual ones. Yes, you, reader who has never hurt a fly. If you don't want to stumble backwards into sexually assaulting someone, fix your RSD meltdowns. If you keep them up it's only a matter of time. Because if you're nice enough to interact with, but are known to have RSD meltdowns, guess what happens when your friends and acquaintances need to reject you?
A customer contacted our team with questions, and then finished their email with: "I am daunted by the complexities and unknowns." I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.
Reblog if you are daunted by the complexities and unknowns
Sent this to my mom (she’s a nurse) and this was her reaction
I love her-
you can never go back. this is your one life. you had a bad childhood and that's it. you lost your teen years to mental illness and that's it. you're miserable in your 20s and that's it. you just go forward
Tired, scared, depressed people are easier to control and less likely to fight back. It is quicker to temporarily feed anxiety with trinkets than to create structures to dismantle and prevent anxiety.
It is not your fault if you are exploited in these ways. You are not weak, or bad, or "not trying hard enough" if you feel the weight of the world upon you, if it takes all you have just to survive. It's okay if you have ups and downs, if one day you're able to do many things and the next barely get out of bed. You did not create the system we are all trying to function within, one that punishes what it cannot exploit.
But your ongoing survival is a message that you are not defeated. Every single moment you are here offers the opportunity to try again, to be better, to grow and change and learn. Missed the last opportunity? That's okay, another one will come along any moment now, and the next, and the next. You just choose which one is the best for stepping aboard a new pathway, when you're ready. If it takes a while because you are, in fact, tired, scared, depressed, that's okay. There are many, many moments before you and who knows what could go right?
Self-care is rebellion. Joy is a radical act. Love--given to others, and above all to yourself--is a key part of the antidote to what ails us. Even if your embodiments of these are not big and momentous, they are no less important a part of your ongoing story, and the weaving of a better world.
Not to be atheist on main again, but like: I really do think this wing of tumblr, as a whole, is getting way too comfortable with being reflexively pro religion. I've been to mass, as a child and as an adult. I'm grateful I was not raised religiously because I can say this for certain: the things that get taught in mass are often hateful and deplorable, and it it is not uncommon for children to develop a deeply harmful relationship with those teachings.
I simply do not doubt that a great many lesbians required to attend mass during their formative years would have developed traumatic guilt and self loathing as a result.
"Oh, so now having all the adults and authority figures in your early childhood talk about how the being that runs the entire universe will torture you forever in fire if you do something bad is somehow 'traumatic'"
I mean, not every mass or Christian actually teaches that, but like... a lot of them do.
and all that without mentioning that this is lesbians, and the catholic church teaches that women are inherently lesser in the eyes of god (sure, they might avoid saying that explicitly but there is literally no other way to take eg the priesthood thing) and that homosexual desire is "intrinsically disordered". gosh i wonder why lesbians might struggle with catholic upbringings
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
trans men that havent yet medically transitioned or dont want to medically transition have a right to be gendered correctly
trans women that havent yet medically transitioned or dont want to medically transition have a right to be gendered correctly
nonbinary people, regardless of how they look and where theyre at in their transition, have a right to be gendered correctly
xenogender people have a right to be gendered correctly, that includes using neopronouns and any other terms related to their identity that they prefer
intersex people, regardless of how they look, have a right to be gendered correctly
gender nonconforming people have a right to be gendered correctly
stop treating peoples identities as optional.