freyakitten

trippineverywhere

freyakitten

c-ptsdrecovery

(Seen on FB)

RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.

When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by.

I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say.

“What are you struggling with?” he asked.

I gestured around me and said “I dunno man. Life.”

Not satisfied with my answer, he said “No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?”

I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it.

I wanted to have something more substantial.

Something more profound.

But I didn’t.

So I told him, “Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.”

I felt like an idiot even saying it.

What kind of grown ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with *actual* problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes?

But my therapist nodded in understanding and then said:

“RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.”

I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.

“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules.”

It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express.

That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times.

I felt like I had conquered a dragon.

The next day, I took a shower lying down.

A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever the fuck they fit.

There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again.

Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower standing up. I sort my laundry.

But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson:

THERE ARE NO RULES.

RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!!!

(by Kate Scott 2018)

lesbian-bookworm

This reminds me of several other posts.

One is where the person said they weren’t eating because they so depressed that even making a sandwich took too much energy. So their therapist told them

“If you don’t have energy to make a sandwich, just eat all the individual sandwich ingredients separately.”

And one where the person didn’t eat breakfast because they had some kind of trauma around breakfast food. So the therapist was like

“eat non-breakfast food at breakfast time.”

And one where the woman was always paranoid that her straightened would burn down her house while she was at work. It would cause her to panic all day and not focus so her therapist told her

“put the straightener in you bag and bring it to work with you that way you wont have to be paranoid about it..”

We really do make our lives harder with arbitrary social rules.

freyakitten

chead-deactivated20181204 asked:

hey what's up with the "!" in fandoms? i.e. "fat!" just curious thaxxx

molly-ren answered:

I have asked this myself in the past and never gotten an answer.

Maybe today will be the day we are both finally enlightened.

molly-ren

woodsgotweird said: man i just jumped on the bandwagon because i am a sheep. i have no idea where it came from and i ask myself this question all the time

Maybe someone made a typo and it just got out of hand?

stevita

I kinda feel like panic!at the disco started the whole exclamation point thing and then it caught on around the internet, but maybe they got it from somewhere else, IDK.

The world may never know…

molly-ren

Maybe it’s something mathematical?

michaelblume

I’ve been in fandom since *about* when Panic! formed and the adjective!character thing was already going strong, pretty sure it predates them.

hosekisama

It’s a way of referring to particular variations of (usually) a character — dark!Will, junkie!Sherlock, et cetera. I have suspected for a while that it originated from some archive system that didn’t accommodate spaces in its tags, so to make common interpretations/versions of the characters searchable, people started jamming the words together with an infix.

(Lately I’ve seen people use the ! notation when the suffix isn’t the full name, but is actually the second part of a common fandom portmanteau. This bothers me a lot but it happens, so it’s worth being aware of.)

nentuaby

“Bang paths” (! is called a “bang"when not used for emphasis) were the first addressing scheme for email, before modern automatic routing was set up. If you wanted to write a mail to the Steve here in Engineering, you just wrote “Steve” in the to: field and the computer sent it to the local account named Steve. But if it was Steve over in the physics department you wrote it to phys!Steve; the computer sent it to the “phys” computer, which sent it in turn to the Steve account. To get Steve in the Art department over at NYU, you wrote NYU!art!Steve- your computer sends it to the NYU gateway computer sends it to the “art” computer sends it to the Steve account. Etc. (“Bang"s were just chosen because they were on the keyboard, not too visually noisy, and not used for a huge lot already).

It became pretty standard jargon, as I understand, to disambiguate when writing to other humans. First phys!Steve vs the Steve right next to you, just like you were taking to the machine, then getting looser (as jargon does) to reference, say, bearded!Steve vs bald!Steve.

So I’m guessing alternate character version tags probably came from that.

word-for-today

Word for today: bang path

The use of exclamation points to distinguish between variations of a character or name

freyakitten

Add “distress” to your pain scale

spoonie-living

Pain scale? More like pain in the booty. No two people seem to read it the same way, and chronic folks tend to downplay their pain.

So here’s an idea: when asked to rate your pain, provide a number to rate your distress levels in addition to your pain levels.

Some examples:

“I’m at a 5 on the pain scale, but my distress is basically a 1 because this is my usual.”
“I’m at a 3 on the pain scale, but my distress is a 7 because this is new pain and affects a part of my body that’s very important to my work.”

It’s a great way to consider how your pain is impacting you—and to get a doctor’s attention where it’s actually needed.

adizzycollegekid

OP is a genius

freyakitten

dragonomatopoeia

people who use my public transportation and infrastructure posts as an opportunity to complain about having to see unhoused people or people with substance use disorders: We Are not Friends, I Am Not Affiliated with You, Get Off My Post

dragonomatopoeia

without fail, any time someone mentions the lack of public spaces or inaccessibility of those places someone complains about how ALSO there are POOR or CRAAAAZY people there and how that's one of the biggest problems

i'm not sorry to break this to you, but public spaces are for the public. every single person is entitled to use that space, to exist within it, and to be granted the same dignity and respect as everyone else

that means you will be inconvenienced. You will be annoyed. You will be annoying one. A constant, innate quality of public spaces is the all-consuming awareness that people have different needs and desires and those butt up against each other

again: public spaces are for the public. if you want more of them, you'd better get used to dealing with other people being there. They have as much right to be there as you do

avelaandi

Hi! A bus driver here, not with a huge service but wanted to give a little tidbit. I agree with OP 100%. Poor, well off, it doesn’t matter - the bus line is for everyone. It’s rare we deny service to someone, but if we do it’s because of violent behavior or way too intoxicated. The thing I wanted to note though is about the real demographic versus speculation.

Over a year ago my county went free fare for buses which is awesome. For me personally I’m glad I no longer have to touch money cause so small a company us drivers had to count the fare ourselves at the end of the day. We’d never get much either, could be $0 one day and highest I remember is $24…. Obviously, we’re not making a profit, we’re not that, the bus lines are a service. People who were homeless or going through hard times still could pull enough for fare. The demographic I saw immediately increase when free fare hit is the Senior citizen community. Many couldn’t drive anymore and without the worry of paying fare it made things easier for them to get to appointments, grocery shopping and even going out to have fun. But when that free fare hit, everyone talked about how it’s be the homeless riding all day. Well, it does happen but it’s not a common occurrence. As long as there’s a destination, my fellow drivers and I don’t care. A lot of they do, going to a charity that has supplies, food and even showers. Are those that talk to themselves? Yes and they’re mostly harmless.

And there’s times where us drivers do encourage them to ride because they’re human beings and the weather went to shit. During the snowy days we let them ride to keep warm and during our heatwave too to keep cool. Because sometimes the buses were the only options around. Shelters throw people out in the early morning, cooling stations close in the early evening - so where else to go when most public spaces are closed? They’re not common days for my region but when they hit people can get hurt or die.

No matter what a person is going through, the least I can do is get them from point A to point B. Sometimes we have real shit days and great days, either way I plan to show up as scheduled.

cumaeansibyl

If you're mad about homeless people existing in your space ask yourself where else they have to go. And then ask how the fuck they're supposed to get there if they can't take the damn bus.

I've seen a lot of people in the public transit network who weren't doing well, and some in active distress, but blaming public transit for their presence there is getting it all backward. You know that's the city doing absolutely fuck all to help people who need a safe place to stay and a support network.

freyakitten

inkskinned

it's been said before and i'm sure said better than i can phrase it. but really, really - if you like making "i'm going to kill myself" jokes, please try switching to being ironically conceited instead.

anytime something goes wrong, say things like "ah well at least i'm beautiful and charming and everyone loves me." when you forget something, try "my big huge brain is so smart and thinking about too many other very big wizardly thoughts you wouldn't even understand." when you're frustrated by one of your symptoms, start talking like you're in My Immortal. "Life has come for me but my eyes are beautiful pools of gorgeous fire and my hair is amazing. I stuck my middle finger up at life and told it to fuck off and it did."

just... try it for a month or two. try saying the most absurdly self-congratulatory shit you can think of.

i know it's tempting to make suicide or self-harm jokes. and for me at least, a decade ago (!) when someone suggested i stop making those kinds of jokes, i was kind of at a loss for what to replace them with. i wanted to make light of these moments, but genuinely (at the time) my first thought really was suicidal ideation. there was a part of me that even felt like ... i was kind of "making light" of that voice. that if i could say i want to die lol, it would help take the sting out of that genuine (albeit passive) desire. like i could turn my illness into a joke.

when i started complimenting myself instead, it felt awkward and stupid. it felt really, really ironic. what i was actually saying was nobody would ever think this stuff about me, that's what makes it so fucking funny.

but. the effect was immediate. first thing i noticed was the people around me. when i dropped a glass and said ah my skin is too beautiful and sleek the glass has swooned and broken for me, other people were suddenly overjoyed to jump in with the joke. rather than making an awkward moment, we'd both start cracking up. ah princess sleek hands, i've heard of you.

i was 19. i hadn't noticed i'd been making others tense when i said i want it all to end. i know now that it's incredibly hard to know how to walk that moment - do you talk to them about your concern? do you potentially make them uncomfortable by asking if they're okay? do you ignore the situation? do you help them pick up the glass, or do they need to do it by themselves? are they genuinely made suicidal over this small moment? and most importantly, how do you - without professional training or supplies - actually help?

most people want to help you pick up the glass in your life, they just have no fucking idea how to do it. they don't want to make anything worse. they don't want to make assumptions about you. they love you, they're scared for you - and being scared makes people kind of freeze up. it's not because they don't love you. it's because they do.

now when something bad happens, my first thought is how can i make a stupid joke about this. it isn't my brain saying you're a dumb fucking bitch. i spend more time laughing. i spend more time being gentle with myself. i spend more time feeling good.

and the thing is - what's kind of funny - is that you'd be surprised by how many people agree with you. the first time i said i'm too pretty to understand that, someone else said to be fair you're the prettiest person in this room. i promise - you really don't know how kindly your friends see you. but they love you for a reason. they sort of reverse-velveteen-rabbit you. your weird and ugly spots fade away and you just become... the love they want to give you.

go love yourself ironically. the worst thing that happens is that you end up tricking your reflection into actually loving you.

naamahdarling

I saw this just after it was first posted and want to update: it hasn't been long, but WOW is this making a difference.

And it is one thousand times funnier.

freyakitten

Anonymous asked:

...what is the "sex is just rock climbing" category

runawaymarbles answered:

It was kind of a joke between me and a friend (“you wouldn’t judge someone for having gone rock climbing with a bunch of different people”) but honestly the more I thought about it the more I bought into it unironically because:

It is a physical activity done with one or more partners
You should only go rock climbing with people you trust not to let you fall
You should not go rock climbing with someone who is drunk or currently incapable of rational decision-making
Some people get super super super into rock climbing and do not shut up about all the places they have climbed and how many are left on their bucket list ~~and these people are usually men between the ages of 20 and 35~~ and like it’s fine dude I’m glad you’re happy but I don’t know what most of those mountains even are
While many consider it a fun activity, pressuring someone into climbing when they don’t want to (or ignoring their feelings and just dangling them off a cliff,) could cause both psychological and physical trauma
There is no moral value to it whatsoever. Who you have gone rock climbing with (or whether you have rock climbed at all) has no bearing on who you are as a person. Imagine telling someone “it’s not that heights make you nauseous, it’s just that you haven’t found the right person to belay you!” or “you need to save your first time rock climbing for someone special.” That would be absurd.
historically I have not asked myself “will this aggravate my hip flexer injury” before participating when perhaps I should have 😔

freyakitten

leviathan-supersystem

90% of arguments about media could just be solved by saying “different people like different things in their stories” and leaving it at that

fakeosphere

this person probably humanizes cops/racists, rape, child abuse, incest etc as long as its fictional lol

williamfbuckley

this is a good and normal leap in logic to make from this post!

wetwareproblem

I certainly hope they do, and not just when it’s fictional. Humanizing them is an important step in stopping the actual real-world harm.

If you recognize that they’re human, then you can understand it’s an issue of rationale and perspective, not Inherent Evil - and you can learn to think like an adversary. This is the first step in developing a good security mindset. That mindset, in turn, is the first tool you need to build functional safety measures and protections for your community.

There’s an added bonus, too - if you recognize that they’re people, you’ll notice that not many people are villains in their own narratives. They aren’t choosing to be evil, they’re rationalizing their harmful choices. And you start asking questions.

If you recognize that cops are people, you learn to ask yourself “Am I being reactionary, authoritarian, and needlessly violent?”

If you recognize that racists are people, you learn to recognize and unpack the racist lessons you were taught.

If you learn that rapists are people, you learn to actively verify consent.

By recognizing that terrible people are not Inherently Bad, but choosing to do terrible things for reasons they think justify them, you get better at protecting yourself from them - and protecting everyone around you from your worst tendencies. It’s a difficult and ongoing process, but it’ll protect you far better than any list of specific Bad Things to watch out for.

wetwareproblem

There’s a flipside to this, of course, and it’s important:

Anyone who tells you that your enemies are inhuman monsters is using you.

Either they’re trying to convince you that they couldn’t possibly be an Enemy because they’re a normal person… or they’re trying to keep you from noticing the little rationalizations. To convince you that atrocity is okay when you do it.

Don’t fall for either lie.

somenoneelse

That last point there is really important. How often do people get away with truly atrocious shit, because everyone around them thinks that inhuman monster thing?

Of course my friend can’t be a rapist. They’re my friend, not some inhuman monster!

Of course my sibling doesn’t hit and gaslight their spouse. They’re my sibling, not some inhuman monster!

etc etc etc

So all the little and big things that point to [fill in blank] doing [thing] are rationalized and explained away. Because [fill in blank] is a person and not some inhuman monster, so they’d never!

By dehumanizing people who commit atrocities, we blind ourselves to the ability to do that shit in people we first and foremost see as people already (friends, family, co-workers, etc.) and in ourselves.

inkytrinket-irii

Reminds me of the cautious: People don’t want a democracy, they want a dictatorship they agree with. The problem with that, of course, is when a dictator changes you don’t get a say.

freyakitten

dilfosaur

i noticed my burnout comic was making rounds but the full comic is no longer available after the collegehumor website went offline…. so here it is!!!

i wrote/drew this back in 2018 when i was struggling w hella burnout and depression. i hope everyone is taking care of themselves :3

freyakitten

reachmouse:
“leafstranger:
“theseancequeen:
“mathcat345:
“fullyfunctionalminiaturebeehive:
“dino-the-lore-god:
“gossip-girl-of-middle-earth:
“marithlizard:
“ taraljc:
“ seperis:
“ sapphic-pink-kryptonite:
“ phoenixonwheels:
“ linkedsoul:
“...

tundrakatiebean teaboot

teaboot

Please don't ask me for relationship advice unless you are prepared to receive some truly upsetting information because some people are ready for the "He's exhibiting the literal textbook signs of a psychological abuser and you need to get away from him before he successfully cuts you off from your support network" talk and some people aren't

teaboot

FOR WHOEVER NEEDS A REMINDER:

There is never any justification for someone putting their hands on you in any way without your consent short of immediate risk of harm or death.
If someone tells you that "the way I'm acting is your fault because you know that doing X thing would make me do it and you chose to do it anyway" is just fancy bullshit talk for, "I know my behaviour is wrong, but I don't want to be held responsible for it so I'm pushing it on you"
Nothing good ever, ever comes from someone who tells you, "I don't want you talking about our relationship with anyone". This person cannot handle accepting responsibility and processing criticism so they need you to never, ever question them. That's easier if they control the narrative and your friends aren't there to cut in.
Nothing constructive comes from screaming.
"It's not like that all the time" is optimistic and sweet, but the truth is, it shouldn't be like that at all. Sweet words and gifts and gestures don't erase being frightened for yourself or for your loved ones. That is not normal. Don't minimize it.
It is not healthy or normal to be genuinely afraid of saying "no" to someone, for any reason at all. Violence, outbursts, retaliation, anything. You should not have to be afraid of someone's reaction to your boundaries.
You are not responsible for saving anyone. Even if you love them. Even if they have nobody else. At the end of the day, if they want to hurt themselves in any way, they will, and you can't stop them forever. People need to want to improve before they can actually improve, and if they're threatening to harm themselves to keep you around, they're using your love to hold themselves hostage. You do not decide their choices for them, and they don't get to shunt that off on you.
There will always be other people who can love you better. You will not be alone forever. This will not be the last time you care for someone like this and it will not be the last time someone cares for you

important you’re worth more especially if they tell you that you aren’t

Kitteh Likes To Nom

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Word for today: bang path

Add “distress” to your pain scale