#all i can do is practice radical acceptance and worry about myself | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

butch-reidentified · 11 months

Note

https://www.tumblr.com/butch-reidentified/719996145360830465/butch-reidentified-vaspider

i'm trans and i have issues with several of these bullet points but honestly that first one is just true and i'm genuinely at a loss about what to do ab it bc for some reason the community has decided that since we're accused falsely by transphobes, any accusation whatsoever is inherently transphobic. like, i never see these people talk about what to do if you ARE assaulted by another transfem- it's SO fucking clear the answer is 'suck it up and be quiet' and i worry that having a demographic in the community that can unilaterally not be held accountable *is* going to start drawing in creeps if it hasn't already. but if i say that, i'll be excommunicated from a community i care about and have been a part of for most of my life. like, why is it safer to say this to a fucking radfem than to my own community?

I'm really genuinely sorry to hear this. The truth is, all else aside, I've found WAY more love, support, and acceptance among radfems (even when I disagree with the majority of them on something! that's actually allowed here!) as a sex-dysphoric, happily medically transitioned person than I EVER found when I was half-heartedly slapping a gender label on myself and participating 24/7 in irl + online trans spaces and online transactivism.

I always felt so uncomfortable in trans spaces with the fact that respecting the pronouns of r-pists and abusers was always the focus of conversation over making sure we actually held such people accountable, called them out, refused to make space for them, and looked out for their victims. Even with the trans woman who was a serial abuser who primarily, like 90%, targeted trans people as her victims, the response was that all 15 or so victims who spoke out were transmisogynistic/transphobic liars - even though about half were MTF themselves, and all but one or two were trans in some manner or other. And there were photographs from injuries some victims had sustained, and many screenshots of damning things the perpetrator had said. It became more and more clear to me that when trans women were accused of sexual assault, abuse, or similar behaviors, the community was more concerned about how this might make trans people look (optics) and about making sure everyone knew that even serial r-pists and partner beaters MUST be treated as their identified gender no matter what. The focus was never on intra-community accountability or caring for victims, whether those victims were trans themselves or not. It always upset me. Idk how I tolerated it for as long as I did.

NO ONE should have to live in fear of being ostracized from their community for speaking up about abuse and/or violence. That was one of the major red flags that started pushing me away despite still considering myself trans in a material, non-ideological sense. There were many others, some of which the following paragraph sort of hints at. But if I'm being 100000% real, I realized more and more how much I was lying to myself (and as a result, to others) after I started separating from trans spaces.

As for your last question, it's safer to say this in radfem spaces because: 1. Radfems are extremely anti-abuse, anti-sexual violence, etc. no matter what. We don't just recite mantras about believing victims - we take doing so in practice very seriously. 2. Radfems encourage dissent, critical thinking, civil discourse even within radical feminism. It's easy to feel safe because you aren't walking on eggshells, constantly watching every tiny word you speak/type, terrified that you'll phrase something slightly wrong just once and lose your entire social group and support system overnight.

I find it very easy to exist within my corner of radblr. I don't have to be afraid to ask questions or not understand something. I feel genuinely supported and given room to breathe and grow in every way, especially intellectually, which I now have the clarity to realize felt so thoroughly stifled in trans spaces. I don't feel restricted or constrained, I don't feel constantly anxious. I no longer have that unsettling deep-down awareness of being disconnected from the "normie" offline world, so to speak - and since leaving Oz and returning to the normal world, my irl relationships have healed and flourished. I've also been able to be a much better friend to my trans loved ones, because they have largely been excommunicated from the "trans community" for their own "thought crimes" as well. I'm not constantly checking myself for thought crimes, and as a result, I trust myself more and am more confident in my views, thought processes, and analyses.

Your community should damn well support you. Your community should take you seriously when you speak out about abuse. I wish I could say you were an exception or an outlier, but there's a reason I have SO many trans friends who want nothing to do with the "community." I really am sorry. I see that struggle and that isolation in many of my friends and neither they nor you deserve to feel that way.

#mine #ask #anon ask #anon

21 notes · View notes

phleb0tomist · 8 months

Note

I've been having Me/CFS/POTS symptoms for almost three years but in my country these aren't really known and it's always been attributed to me being overweight when I even wasn't ('m not exactly thin, I'm more athletic-type, and I was an athlete most of my childhood, but one puts on a bit of weight with age anyway). I'm going to the doctor next week and I'm scared that it's gonna be chalked up to my weight, when I've already done efforts to shed it and did shed it as much as I could without hurting myself more. Do you have any tips as to how to speak to the doctors so they take me seriously and actually look into all the fatigue and pain and dizziness?

Thank you so much for speaking about these things so openly.

hi!

it’s heartbreaking to be dismissed like that, i’m so sorry. i honestly don’t know how to help, your worries are rational, there’s a weight discrimination problem with doctors and they are already not very informed about stuff like ME and POTS.

I just want to say, it is not your fault if your doctor isn’t listening to you. we can try to make them listen but it doesn’t always work. the medical system is the issue, not you.

practical tips - be clear and assertive. “these problems are impacting my quality of life, my work, and relationships. I am not functioning because of this, I want testing and treatment so I can live my life.” find reliable info, like an official medical page, and print it or send your doctor a link so they have something to refer to. if they say anything inaccurate, maybe you can point to the paper. the international consensus criteria (ICC) for ME is used all over the world, it could be helpful for your doc. I don’t have any tips for POTS

this is the UK-only treatment guideline for ME - you probably can’t use this in another country, but your country may have its own version you can show to your doctor. my doctor didn’t know there were treatment guidelines for ME until I sent her a link

if i know i’m not going to be taken seriously in an appointment, I mentally prepare myself and radically accept all possibilities of how i might be treated. it makes it less hurtful for me personally.

I hope your struggles ease

#answered #medical neglect

8 notes · View notes

radicalesbians · 1 year

Text

I may regret this, but, tumblr, I'd like to ask your opinion on my url.

I chose the name 'radicalesbians' when I was 15 or 16. We were asked to write a research paper about one of the Civil Rights movements in my tenth grade history class, and I chose to write about the Gay Civil Rights movement. I was a budding bisexual, barely out of the closet, who wanted to learn more about her own history. I stumbled upon the "Radical Lesbians," a group of second wave feminists who practiced political lesbianism. Essentially, political lesbians choose to only be in wlw relationships, regardless of their sexual preference.

(I identify as bisexual, lesbian, and queer interchangeably. I feel comfortable calling myself a lesbian because I'm engaged to a woman. No, bisexuals dating the same sex don't magically become gay, and bisexuals dating the opposite sex are not straight. This isn't the place to litigate my identity. I'm just clarifying vocabulary).

At the time, we were in the "MALE TEARS" coffee mug era on this here tumblr.com. I subscribed to a lot of these beliefs. When I found the Radical Lesbians, I thought changing my url would be a fun call back to a historical queer movement.

I'm almost 25, and the queer community has changed a lot in the past decade. Most of us grew out of our blatant hatred of men. Biological essentailism is absolute trash, we are all a little intersex and a little trans. Recently, I started to identify as genderqueer, although I'm comfortable being perceived as a cis woman.

TERF ideology is not only emotionally damaging for trans people, it actively kills people. Radical lesbianism is unmistakably TERF ideology. The doctrine outlines that the only way for women to be safe and reach self-actualization is to date other cis women. This is biological essentialism. It ignores the social construct of gender that teaches cis men to be aggressive and cis women to accept it. We owe it to ourselves to hold cis men more accountable than this.

Trans people deserve all of the support and resources that the queer community can give as a matter of basic human rights and decency. We hurt ourselves when we choose to divide the queer community into pieces. Unless explicitly founded by trans people, most organizations in the Gay Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century excluded the trans community in favor of campaigning on respectability politics. Real change began when trans people stood up for queer rights. Stonewall is an obvious example, but my personal favorite is less infamous. Homosexuality was finally removed from the American Psychological Association's list of mental illnesses when all of the flavors of trans people in the Gay Liberation Front stormed the annual APA conference for the second year in a row.

I've been hemming and hawing over my url for the past few years. I'm a radical leftist. I'm a lesbian. Why should TERFs get to take all of the fun words? Why shouldn't I get to redefine the meaning? But connotations matter and the historical through-line is obvious. When you look at the radical lesbians tag, there is about a 50/50 split of posts interpreting the phrase in the historical sense and in the way that I use it.

The reason I haven't changed my url yet is entirely selfish. I'm worried that after a decade of posting under this url, the small presence I have will disappear. I'm not tumblr famous by any means, but there are mutuals on here that I've had from the beginning. Whenever my mutuals change their urls or icons, I no longer know who they are. Sometimes I figure it out, but sometimes I don't. Others seem to be perfectly comfortable changing their urls and icons. Maybe it is just a me thing that I need to get over.

If I were scrolling on tumblr and I saw my url, it would scream TERF to me. I know others feel the same. I don't want to cause anyone harm by thinking I'm evidence of a large TERF community on tumblr, and I don't want to scare people away. But I truly do not know what to do.

So, I would like your feedback. I won't event say TERFs dni, because the responses of TERFs will likely be just as informative.

Should the url radicalesbians be reclaimed, or go in the trash?

#radical lesbians #lgbtqa #trans #queer history #genderqueer #lesbian #bisexual #opinion

4 notes · View notes

qwanderer · 1 year

Text

Sometimes I have. Such mixed feelings about my job. Like do my coworkers have absolutely unconscionable politics? Absolutely. Do I hear them say things that make me want to sock them in the jaw on behalf of all humanity? Yep. Are they perilously close to being Nazis? Perhaps.

But also.

Do I need this job? Yes. Do I like this job? Yeah I like what I do. Am I doing bad stuff? No. Am I helping small businesses stay afloat? Yeah.

I don't have the energy to engage in a ton of arguments while I'm working, and anyway our perspectives are so radically incompatible that any conversation on straight up politics is just mutually incomprehensible. So I'm not like. Kicking ass and changing minds with any kind of speed.

But sometimes I have the opportunity to have a conversation that comes at politics from the side and I think I do okay at those and maybe give my coworkers something to think about.

Like today one of my coworkers who is friendly but low key racist in all kinds of ways asked my opinion. He said one of his relatives is dating a guy who immigrated from Iraq and is a practicing Muslim and was like, how do they treat their women? Should I be worried?

And I was like, okay, first of all, it varies. In every segment of humanity you can use to divide people up you're going to find kind people and terrible people. But if one of my acquaintances was dating someone who practiced Islam, I would be much less worried than if they were dating, say, a cop. Cops have a much higher rate statistically of being abusers.

And then I was like, Muslims are more similar to Christians in this way. (My coworker is protestant.) You have Christians who treat their wives wonderfully and Christians who use their religion as an excuse to be absolutely terrible to them. Islam has the same range.

You have to get to know him to find out where he falls there. It's an individual thing.

So my coworker was like, yeah, that makes sense.

I was pretty proud of that. I think I did okay.

Anyway there are some days when I feel like I shouldn't even associate with people like these people. I should just walk out and never talk to these gross people ever again. But if I did that, they would just replace me, and probably with someone who is more like them, and then there wouldn't be anybody there telling them these things. So as long as I can keep the job and stay sane myself, I'll be there to give them any kind of input I can get them to understand that might make them even a little bit more open and accepting.

#irl adventures #politics #racism #religion

4 notes · View notes

abishekmuses · 1 month

Text

Facing the Music

For years, I've harboured envy, resentment, pride and slothfulness. I'm not a christian or anything - don't know why this is taking that form - but I want to roll with it. I've been having a pretty intense time of it recently - For years, I've felt like I've been stuck. Years. Today, I even thought that maybe I've never really felt well-adjusted throughout my entire adult life - that's a scary thought. I don't know if it's true though - how can I know? I've not been in other people's heads. Anyway, about a month ago I decided to take my writing more seriously - you see, I'd spent most of my life wanting to be a doctor - wanting's the key word here - I just wanted it. Wanted it - said I wanted it anyway and thought I wanted it. I realised that I'm not in control of my life and was getting swept away with events and the changes in mood/perspective that they brought about only to find myself in pretty much the same place again after months or maybe even years. There was this sense of "now or never" - I felt like like if I didn't do something radical, I'd keep getting sidetracked by the crosswinds of life - so I decided to go on a 3 month period of silence. I'd still play badminton and to make sure it didn't get unnecessarily weird, I'd speak minimally to my mates there. Likewise on the odd occasion that i'd need to buy something, I'd speak sparingly. (although the idea was to keep this to a bare minimum) And, I'd still speak to my boss. (which is not often anyway)

I was also going off social media (which at this point was just whatsapp and telegram) and youtube. No music either. I also switched off my phone.

I'd been on a "high" wave of sorts - the past few months had felt pretty "flow-y" - There was this sense of positivity in me that was reasonably stable and it felt like this was the right time to do something like this. In the beginning it was all hunky dory - I felt good about myself and got into this "everything's gonna be so great" kind of a mindset that I tend to get into - a high-energy, high-optimism and high-creativity. (I have been thinking if I'm actually bipolar; Not a fun thought)

I had a lot of time; I had a lot of clarity and energy; Good stuff flowing - great all through! Gradually, the fears and icky emotions started to surface.

"Hey! I'm equipped for this stuff now - I've done a bunch of sadhana - plus I know that doing these kinds of things hasten the processing of negative emotions - this is totally par for the course - let's just keep going towards these emotions and just let them go! That'll do the trick!" I felt good about my odds against these dastardly old nemeses of mine. I even wrote a post on this selfsame blog about how much of a game changer this "letting go" thing was. Just sitting with emotions and watching them leave. Managed to finish reading the book "letting go" by David R Hawkins btw. Great read. A book straight out of the heart - and a heart full of love and compassion at that. Highly recommend.

Anyway, been letting out a lot of emotions - been crying practically every single day. But today was something else. It was the motherlode - fear, insecurity, guilt, heartbreak, anxiety, shame - all the negative emotions you can think of - rolled up into one ginormous feeling of pressure and "oh fuck the walls are closing in on me".

At some point, I remembered Richard Rudd's words from the Gene Keys (another book I highly recommend having at home and reading every now and then when the inspiration strikes; It's a prophetic piece of writing and the book has an almost oracle like quality to it) saying that one just has to accept and feel one's fear - that's all it takes.

But it was pretty non-stop. The onslaught of panic and fear just wouldn't abate - I was worried about losing my job; I was worried about ending up broke; all sorts of stuff. But somehow I was able to remind myself that what I was actually afraid of was continuing to feel the way i was feeling in that moment.

The suffocating emotional pressure was the problem - not some hypothetical scenario where i'd lose my job and be broke. I realised that a situation where my inner state wasn't one of stress/fear and I lose my job, wouldn't be such a bad situation after all - I guess what i'm trying to say is i remembered something crucial through that intense negative state - that the real problem is just the state itself. The fears about a certain situation coming to pass in life is just a projection of that internal state.

To make matters worse, I'd woken up thinking about my ex today. I felt a lot of old memories coming up - of me cheating on her - me being a reckless addict in general who caused a lot of damage with his inability to control his impulses; Guilt emerged. Sadness emerged; Desperation ensued. She was on my mind a lot today and I guess that's why I googled her name - Found her website, IG etc - saw that she was upto a lot of cool stuff with her life - she'd been writing (incredibly well) and seemed to have started some kind of service where she was helping people release their inner pain and find lightness. My instant response was one of constriction - A lot of fear, anxiety, insecurity and inadequacy came up. Old patterns of such feelings were recognised. I went for a walk and kind of reckoned with myself for a bit - "hey this is not who you are - are you really upset that she's doing well?" the answer came back that I'm not but I did feel terrified about my own prospects. Felt this feeling a lot of us are familiar with which goes along the lines of "why am I such a fuck up? Why did I waste so much of my life? yada yada" Now you see why I'd mentioned earlier about wanting to do more with writing - now that I saw my ex writing and doing so well with it - I was like "fuck I'm late even to this and I'm not sure i'm even at this level yet - blah blah blah - self-defeating rhetoric. Classic insecurity and fear.

At some point while I was swimming in stress and anxiety, I stumbled on one of her blog posts where I found that her best friend, Julia, a girl that I'd spent quite some time with (she's about my age) had just died! That piece of news was a real shocker and did quite the number on me! I bawled my eyes out and just couldn't hold it.

I was like "to heck with the silence - I'm gonna go tell my parents that I love them and hug them - which I did; I didn't want to go through my period of silence out of some misplaced sense of pride/propriety only to face that feeling of "oh fuck I never got to tell them how i felt!"

I hugged them, cried to them and wrote some stuff to them. For what it's worth, the verbal silence is still intact. Kept crying non-stop. At some point, after hugging my parents and soaking in their love, I couldn't help but feel a profound sense of gratitude for life - that I was even alive. Some of the things I was worried about even hours ago felt churlish. To think that I was thinking things like "fuck I'm 30! Is it too late to pursue my dream of becoming a doctor?" - Man that chick I smoked weed with is dead now! fucking dead!

That really knocked some perspective into me. Even being broke isn't nearly the same ballpark of a problem as being dead. Fuck. That news really knocked the wind out of my sails for a bit. But it also showed me that I was holding back a lot with unnecessary worrying. I felt an inner loosening - a relaxation - a coming back to life.

I got on my motorcycle and went for a ride through my town. I fell in love with everything my eyes saw. I felt reborn.

Let's see where we go! But for now, I love you all and I love this beautiful world we live in for all its fuck ups and dramas and heartaches - I love being alive!

0 notes

psycholojosh · 8 months

Text

Almost There!

Been wanting to write on my blog for quite some time now, but I haven't got the time because of practicum. Since September last year, I struggled fulfilling my psychotherapy hours in my master's clinical practicum because I couldn't let go of other commitments, such as my jobs. Being the only person who has to finance his own personal needs and ambitions, I made it a point to make ends meet no matter what -- without compromising *too* much of my wellbeing. But I learned that the hard way. Throughout the months, I struggled with juggling and switching between tasks because there was just so much. (And I'll write more on this in another blog entry.) But it took a toll on me.

So come January this year, I made it a point to rest and recalibrate until I could find my rhythm. And thankfully, I did. Around the end of March, I was able to restart my practicum journey and have been consistent ever since. I learned how to practice boundary and expectation setting -- even if I still suck at it. But, hey, that's progress, if I do say so myself.

By next month, I'll be hitting an important goal. I needed 200 hours of psychotherapy work. And currently... I'm at 190! I just need 10 more hours and I've done the bare minimum in this area. Then, I can switch into assessment practicum more intensely (but I've started this as well). But it's still gonna be a challenge, considering what I'm about to talk about next...

The other thing that I foresee as a challenge is... thesis season. It was hard to believe at first but I thought, "Oh shit. I'm so close to finishing this." And I sooner realized that I needed to prepare for it right away. You see, the ideal scenario for a graduate student is to think about thesis development even before the semester of it. In fact, we were all encouraged to think about it as early as our applications and our first semester!

I already had thesis topics I was passionate about. One of them (which I will not share here in full just yet) has something to do with LGBTQ+ mental health (of course, duh!). I took very brief periods of time throughout the last 5 years reading up on it, exploring it, and studying it. I wouldn't say I'm an expert just yet, but with every learning moment, I feel much more excited to see how I can turn it into a study. But two weeks back, I asked a colleague of mine about some advice with thesis preps. And he aired caution on me. "Start now," he said. And frantically, I did.

But I've been having a lot of questions in my mind recently. Is my topic acceptable by our department? What value do I add to the field? Can I finish this within my preferred timeline (a year, lol)? Am I being too ambitions or too simple? Is this the right time to start my thesis? What if I drop some commitments - quit my job? And how will I sustain myself financially if I do leave work behind? What about my momentum - will I lose it? I didn't realize that there were so many things to consider beyond what the process of graduate thesis goes. And I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this way.

I'm honestly not sure how to deal with it, nor do I have the answers to my questions -- at least clear ones anyway. But, I'm trusting my gut in this one (as I've always done since I tasted life after college). I feel like I can always pivot on something and make things meet. I'm just worried about what comes next -- and if it's something I don't prefer to happen.

But for now, I'm radically accepting that this is my situation. And pondering about it for too long may not give me my answers. I figured I might as well lean into it and see how I can make things work.

Nearly there. Almost there.

#filipino psychometrician #rpmentries #psychometrician #grad school #clinical psychology #self care #master's degree #master's thesis #anxiety

0 notes

wetpapert0wel · 4 years

Text

turned anon back on if anyone wants to anonymously say anything to me, good or bad idc

(pls don't rb)

#shut up connor #send me hate mail if you want i genuinely don't care #i'm kinda numb right now and like. i doubt anyone can say something i don't already know about myself #or if you've got something nice to say i'd appreciate it #i deserve either one depending on who u ask lol #bc on the one hand yeah i fucked up a lot so i deserve to be bullied abt it. sure #but on the other hand despite Everything that's happened because of me i feel like i still deserve to be loved #obviously not by him or his friends but by people who ? want to see me get better i guess #my mom and my brother are shockingly enough my biggest supports right now #they've gotten so much better since i moved out and like #i definitely think i would've been much worse off if i had never met him #he? saved my life i think #his goofy little smile will never stop making me happy lmao #but i know it's not going to happen between us. and that's ok #radical acceptance baybeeeee learned that one in therapy :D #all i can do is practice radical acceptance and worry about myself #i need to learn to be my own cheerleader so i don't ever pull that shit again #i really need to learn self love and self worth before i can have Any relationships outside of my family #i don't know how long that's going to take #for now i'm just going to work on accepting that he's gone #it's going to take a long time but i'll get there one day. for myself. because i'm worth it

0 notes

d3nt4l-d4m4g3 · 3 years

Text

A few days ago, I emailed my former professor about a paper on women’s food practices in the middle ages. At least, that’s what I told him it was about, initially.

But actually, I wanted to discuss heresy. This professor teaches a women’s rights course every year. Every year at the beginning of the class, he calls attention to why he, a man, is talking about women’s rights. He looks us in the eyes and says, no one else is doing it, and I’m sorry it’s me.

This man made us read the SCUM manifesto, Gerda Lerner, Maria Mies. He grazed the subject of the Lesbian Sex Wars, delicately, so gingerly, posing the question: “Can sex work ever be just work?” And my (all woman) classmates, generally mute—in a Women’s Rights class, they all seemed averse to saying the word “woman,” at all. Then one woman raised her hand. and she said, “Sex work is real work.” A statement that, as I hope you know, is a deflection and a discussion killer.

At the time I was non-binary. Hah. I submitted a comic at the end of the year of my final project. My thesis for that project was this: the very language female people have to use for themselves was constructed by the patriarchy. for example, the english word “vagina” comes from the latin word for “sheath”. so the vagina invokes the act of penetration upon its utterance. Whereas the word “penis” has no clear etymological root, implying that it is original while the vagina is constructed for him. Why should I carry the fact that I will always be a tool, the hole, of the human that is man? My solution, at the end of the comic, was to continue using they/them pronouns, to shield myself from the horror of being a wo-man, a s-he—an appendage of Him.

I got a good grade. A stellar report. And it wasn’t a bad comic, for what I knew then. For my condition of blindness and deafness. I made a compelling argument, using sources from class. But oh, how much older I feel now. I’ve always felt old but now I feel almost like I’m dying. Like I don’t have enough time to fix the world before I disappear. And women’s stories never survive. They are not surviving. networks spring up like mycelium and then every century at least they are burned. Witchcraft is in the air shared by women in a room of their own, and witchcraft is doused in gasoline.

I don’t have enough time to explain how the veil lifted for me. Maybe I forget the big moment. the days after were a blur of searching the no-no tags like radical feminist, GNC, gender critical. Amazed at the wealth of journals that these women linked to with real statistics showing that children are being sterilized for no reason. Mostly gay children. like me, a lesbian, who now lives in a house with three “non-binary afabs”. This summer, one of these women, who I have known since freshman year, will start taking testosterone, a procedure I took up for three turbulent months during my freshman year of college. I get to watch her become what I turned away from, knowing the experience fractured my sense of self to a point of terror and estrangement. I get to watch her hide from her problems and cut herself off from womanhood the way I did for 3 years. I am not a woman, so do I not feel Woman’s pain, she is telling me, I told myself, when I was in a dream. She has so many problems, she laughs. But trans is a separate problem that has nothing to do with those other problems. A coincidence.

(For any trans people reading this, you may think: This transtrender fake-trans never-was-trans woman is treating these nonbinary people as if they were dead! as if they weren’t happy people finally living their truth! —well. I put my mom through the process of trying to convince her that I should have always been a man. and I did lose her, for months. For her it was the height of cognitive dissonance that I should want to go on a life-altering hormone to cure my lifelong social awkwardness and self-hatred and self-harm and depression. And I blamed her for not accepting my real self. I was basically made to shun her and my family because of transphobia.. It is disrespectful to anyone’s sanity and integrity for me to perpetuate that cognitive dissonance in this post.)

So I eventually got through to the professor. I knew because of the texts he had us to read for class. He is gay. He has read all the theory, and lives by it. And no (woman) student wants to speak to him. To bring the theory alive. They cannot breathe into it and it sits dead in his mouth.

Maybe it is because he is a man. because the presence of one man in a space of all women immediately sends up alerts. lockdown. Certainly that is the case. Radical Feminists here: I know he’s a man. But I don’t have a woman. And I felt on the strength of the texts he’d given us that he would be my best bet. Maybe somewhere in the corrupted, rotting heart of my college there was a person who knew about thoughtcrimes and was thinking them anyway.

My professor starts with diversion. He starts by talking about my paper. I find it disconcerting that he starts that way. I worry that he won’t want to refer to my email. Where I say: I have woken up from a dream to the apocalypse—Does this man think I’m crazy? Chipper and kind of frantically, he lists off primary sources of medieval nuns and women saints. for my paper. Does this man think I’ve turned into a bigot? Am I confessing lunacy, like a flat-earther?

But I steer the conversation to the meat at his first tentative encouragement. I tell him something like: “children, mostly gay children, a whole generation of gay children, are being sterilized. Porn is a symptom of late-stage capitalism—men’s ownership of women’s bodies. trans is an extension of this. I was part of this. I was in a cult.” I was shaking a bit. I don’t think I’d uttered those words out loud. They sound crazy. Some of the things I said did sound far-fetched. disorganized, remote. But I prayed that my professor would believe some of it, any of it.

What I will say is that he believes me. Thank fuck, right?

He tells me something along the lines of this, vocalizing my fears:

that all of academia is being scrubbed of anything that doesn’t support Trans.

And it is trans-identified female students and women who are reporting him to Title IX, who spend all their time in his classes fuming at the lack of validation for trans women in the history of women. My sisters, footsoldiers for the cause. What cruel irony. This man is holding onto this class by his fingernails, speaking through his teeth, hoping any of the twenty young adult women staring blankly or angrily at him will hear him and listen.

Looking back, the professor’s responses to my emails are vague, completely refusing to acknowledge a point of view other than “WOW. I look forward to discussing this.” I think he thinks he could be blackmailed. Anything he says on gmail dot com can and would be used against him. It’s like, really, really, really that bad.

No ideology should involve a cultural cleaning of women’s history feat. witch hunts.

I will end here with an excerpt from my first email to this professor:

I'm sure you know what a total bummer it is to realize this.

#detransition #tra #gender critical #radical feminism #radfem #radblr #feminism #academia

4K notes · View notes

hobbit--punk · 2 years

Text

Okay, so Hobbitpunk is a thing now. We're doing this.

This started because of... well, you can read it here. But the basic premise is that I love punk and I love cottagecore, but can't seem to find an online community that isn't mostly about “the aesthetic” without practical lifestyle ideas. Look, I love a moodboard as much as the next person, I really do. But I can only handle so many scripted TikTok videos and screenshots from Animal Crossing.

We've all been sitting here pining for a romanticized life that we see in curated media, but the facts of the matter are that most of us can't have that life, not the way things are now. I don't know about you, but I have neither the money nor the skill to go peace out to a farm and live close to nature. It would be a disaster. It would also accomplish absolutely jack for anyone who wasn't me and my husband. I also can't open a bookstore or a tea shop, and I'm WAY too broke to fill my wardrobe with fair trade, sustainably made clothing unless I pick up the needle and do it myself (which... in progress.).

If you're anything like me, you're at best living in a meh apartment that the landlord doesn't take care of, in a city somewhere. You might also be living with family in an environment you can't control, or in a small town where you're literally the only person with your interests. I've done both of these as well, which is why my punk/goth phase waited until I was in my 20s to actually become visible. Heh heh. “Phase.” I'm in my late 30s now.

Anyway. I'm not really proposing an aesthetic. There probably will be one, I can't see this happening without inspiration photos from time to time, but I actually want whatever this is to be a practical lifestyle that everyday doofuses like you and me can do. “Hobbitpunk” is... exactly what it says on the tin. Punk ideals in a hobbity skill set, or vice versa. Tearing down a defunct, bullshit system and replacing it with something wholesome.

The original post included this, as the sort of thing I've been picturing:

Imagine drinking tea while lounging in a room full of mismatched, thrifted furniture that’s comfy as shit, but held together with duct tape. You’re wrapped in a handmade quilt, and reading Karl Marx. There are assorted dumpster dived containers on your windowsill full of herbs and salad greens. You’ll make hot soup for supper, and share it with a half-dozen other freaks who showed up to plan a direct action that will probably involve stolen fireworks. Somebody baked bread to go with the soup, and a friend with a green mohawk and waistcoat covered in patches brought cookies.

From discussions with others, here are some of the ideas.

Ideals: Crafting, anarchy, adventure, home and hearth stuff, homecooked food, radical body acceptance, political activism, books, music, sustainability, feminism, and socialism (or communism, if that's your thing) are good. Transphobia, homophobia, the patriarchy, white supremacy, consumerism, capitalism, abuse, war, and whatever the hell these “Tradwife” folks are doing (I'm still not sure, other than promoting some serious Stockholm Syndrome with your abusers?) are bad.

I'm personally a fan of peace and love, but I do know that sometimes, you gotta swing the frying pan and bash some orcs.

Decor: Your living quarters are probably fine as they are. I'm not telling you to go shopping for this. If you don't like how your place looks now, then keep your eyes open at thrift stores for things like handmade quilts and afghans, good quality cooking tools, and anything that looks cozy and comfy. Don't worry if it matches or not, just make it the sort of place that someone would feel safe in. Books, maps, embroidered pillows, swords, whatever. You do you.

Clothing: Yes, yes, I know there's a “punk uniform” and the Hobbits in the movies had a very specific “look.” We're not cosplaying here. Put down the prosthetic ears. PUT THEM DOWN. Your closet... is probably fine as it is. If you've made it this far in my post, then I imagine you're already kind of halfway there. Dress comfy, and to your tastes. Have fun. You wanna dye your hair purple? Wear a corset and an apron? Combat boots and a wool waistcoat? Go for it.

Just try not to purchase “fast fashion” clothing from WalMart, or wherever. Thrift stores are what I'd recommend. Or learn to sew, and just kind of stay aware of where your fabrics are coming from.

Activities: Learn to make things. Sewing, cooking, woodworking, leatherworking, whatever. Hop onto YouTube and explore. Read books, all of the books. Take care of your neighbors and make sure the people around you are safe. Hunt racists for sport. Steal from the rich (if that's your thing). Rescue animals. Rescue people out of abusive/dangerous situations. Show up to the protests with soup. Find what needs done in your community and do it yourself if you can. Host potlucks and feed people. Go on road trips. Make tea. And beer if you want. Share your skills with the community so others can do the thing too.

If I can pull this off, I'll try to share videos with skills and links to information as I can find it. If y'all find something cool too, please feel free to show it to me. The asks and submissions are open. Do the thing.

#hobbitpunk #hobbitcore #cottagecore #cottagepunk #tolkein #lord of the rings #the hobbit

220 notes · View notes

kiefbowl · 3 years

Note

I mean, I was thinking about how many of us are able to achieve autonomy in our own lives before we're able to support other women, or how I wouldn't snub my nose on certain liberal feminist goals such as having more female bosses because further down the economic hierarchy this actually does correlate to more female opportunities in a company and gender balanced policies, etc. I don't call myself a Marxist feminist, an eco-feminist, whatever, because there are bits and pieces we can take from the different academic feminist movements to create something more comprehensive.

This is a thought I have often. I'm 30 years old, I'm just starting to get some financial stability in my career, but I realized 30 is very young. If I stick with nurturing my shitty ass career I hate in a male dominated field that does nothing for my other goals, maybe I'll have the stability in 20 years to help young women around me in a way that will be very meaningful to me. plus, there's always skills to learn whatever situation you're in, even if it's not a "feminist" one. it's reductive to try to measure all your circumstances in a binary of "feminist" or "not feminist." Of course not everything you do is feminist, you can't possibly be a political agent 100% of the time. Like sometimes you gotta eat. you have to sleep. you have dingus thoughts. you go to work. you're nice to your neighbors just because it's nice to be nice. you buy shitty toasters at target. you forget to call your grandma. Forgive yourself, and read BOOKS, and talk to women, and get involved with your community and with practice you grow much more into what you want to be as a woman and a feminist.

Like you, I don't really call my self a radical feminist, not in actuality. I'm a woman interested in feminism, therefore my personal tumblr blog is filled with feminist stuff. "radfem" on tumblr has a very interesting use at this point in that it's really just applied to any pocket of women who are feminist leaning and talking about it and unwilling to edit their language regarding sex base oppression.

if you're in your twenties, don't worry about the label so much. be okay with reading a lot of theory and not understanding or accepting all of it. you do not need permission to be critical.

39 notes · View notes

potatopossums · 3 years

Text

Alright. I've written tons of drafts trying to capture my thoughts on this.

Aromantic people, I'd love to have a discussion about this either in reblogs or DMs or whatever.

I don't know if I'm on the aro spectrum. Ever since I saw the word, I kind of felt like it described something in me. When I saw it, I was coming out of a difficult yet amicable divorce, was thinking I was a lesbian and not bisexual or pansexual... the works. The whole time I felt so cold. My ex husband, when I first told him, he was more blindsided than I expected. I didn't like how much he wanted me to change for him. To be honest, I had been hiding a lot of aspects of myself for years, not only from him, but from just about everyone. To see him be so upset, I felt like I was just... cold. I thought he would be happy for me for finding myself. And it wasn't like I wanted to leave him forever. It wasn't like I hated him; I still saw him as my friend, one of my only supporters since coming out as pan/bi. We had never had sex and we didn't do many romantic things for the whole of our relationship. He wasn't great at planning fun stuff like that, and while I was creative and could absolutely emulate what I thought a "romantic" relationship looked like... I actually valued his companionship more than what he could offer me sexually or romantically. Heck, even before we got married, I described our relationship as a companionship, rather than a sexual or romantic tie. Yes, I have a history of religious shaming, so there is an aspect of that on the sexuality note, but I know I experience sexuality in my own way.

As a people pleaser, I also struggle with emulating what I think is right or expected of me. I am very creative, a great actor, and selfless to a fault. I can convince myself of things quite easily and create a passion based around that as long as it involves creativity and a fool-proof plan. Church and religion was easy for me because of my environment. As soon as I left that environment of constant reinforcement... it fell apart.

So with that said... I think I might be aromantic, or at least on the spectrum. It's been confusing for me because.. I also kind of like romance. Of course I would want that for myself in theory. All the movies portrayed it as so very nice. I've had crushes on people plenty of times, mostly unrequited. I mostly wanted my romantic relationships to save me and take me away from my oppressive home life, which stifled my sexuality down to nothing. I had no freedom of expression in that area, including in my gender. And as soon as I left that environment, again—boom. Within a year I knew I was attracted to women/afabs and that I was non-binary. That's not a coincidence.

I like the idea of being with a partner. I like the idea of partners. So I cling to that in real life, in my relationships. It feels like a compulsive behavior though. As soon as it happens, as soon as someone likes me, something in my brain just clicks off, I disregard my family, friends, or even myself, all to fit perfectly into a role, probably in order to protect myself (either from being abandoned or from being alone—even though I'm not alone). When someone likes me "like that," I have this glimmering hope of being seen in a sexual light. That amount of emotional constipation for years upon years of my life has built up and become something that, when met with even the slightest bit of compassion or friendliness or potential for acceptance, comes out with the pressure of a fire-hose.

It is uncomfortable. For others, and for myself.

I'm not saying it's wrong for me to want to experience that acceptance that I largely did not in my childhood and teen years. Of course everyone deserves to feel loved and accepted for who they are, including their sexuality.

But this perspective also has me wondering how much of romantic attraction is conditioned? I'm not exactly romance-averse, obviously. But I do like to do romance differently in a lot of ways. I would love to see how I would do without my trauma-driven compulsion. I imagine now that if I didn't have that issue, my relationships would just be friendships, or friends with benefits even. No huge romantic anxiety. And in a way, hearing other aromantic people describing how they feel doesn't come off as different from how I feel. The only difference is this compulsory romantic action of mine. Without that, I feel extremely close to aromanticism in practice, not just in theory. (I've legit had people ask me on dates now as an adult and I don't know if I would really say yes except to have a friend, not a sexual or romantic date.) I have trouble separating friendships from romantic feelings, I struggle separating romantic gestures like touch from friendship normalities. I can tell the difference between sexual and platonic feelings. But Christianity really did a fucking number on me, which is where I think half of this grief even comes from to begin with. I know I'm polyamorous and I love to spend time with lots of people at once and not worry about being somehow wrong for loving lots of people. I know aromantic polyam people exist.

(I swear to god the more I explore myself, the more pride flags I end up with and I'm starting to get annoyed 😂)

Does anyone have a similar story to this one? I've seen only one other person who described something similar. I've always felt that the kind of romantic feelings I felt were more the result of obsessive conditioning than they were my own will. And that conditioning started so so young, no doubt. I know I'm not happy with this compulsory behavior.

Does this sound like an aromantic story? What is romantic behavior? How is it even different from friendships? And do you think hyper-romantic behavior is naturally occurring in humans? Do you think it's radicalized by consumerism? Is it entirely fabricated by consumerism?

(My natural state is being tired, depressed, wanting to paint/draw, and wanting hugs—I only want hugs because I have been touch-starved all my life due to the Church's teaching of "touch = sexual and sexual = bad")

#aromantic #questioning #polyamory #lesbian #enby #demisexual

34 notes · View notes

whentherewerebicycles · 3 years

Text

i am doing SO much interesting reading this morning and it’s making me feel so invigorated and alive!! one hazy thing i am thinking about today is how much of social media culture (but maybe especially twitter) encourages people (maybe esp young people) to focus on & amplify the negative aspects of their lives, characters, relationships, personal experiences, etc., while sort of tacitly discouraging (by not rewarding as strongly) the sharing of strengths, talents, dreams, aspirations, or the fulfilling aspects of our lives/relationships/work.

these hazy thoughts are attached to some even hazier thoughts i’ve been working through over the past year or so, about how social media rhetoric around “destigmatizing mental illness” may help to reduce shame around depression, anxiety, etc. (i’m not entirely convinced on that point), but in many ways seems to more deeply entrench people in a depressive mindset. the way social media encourages people to talk about & share experiences of mental illness tends to strongly reward divulging painful or negative aspects of our lived experience, while dismissing or not directly rewarding (with attention, engagement, etc.) efforts to share practical tools for refiguring the habits of mind and features of one’s environment that can entrench depressive symptoms. social media culture elicits and strongly rewards expressions of suffering, and it also seems to encourage people (especially young people) to see mental illness (or the distress that mental illnesses cause) as a core aspect of their identity, ie, an essential and immutable part of who they are. it’s almost like, under the guise of “accepting ourselves as we are,” we are encouraged to see our depression, anxiety, bipolar symptoms, etc as part of our “authentic selves,” which i think can subconsciously dissuade us from pursuing treatment or lifestyle changes that could significantly alleviate the suffering those conditions cause us.

i also feel very strongly (and this is anecdotal experience drawn from almost 10 years of working closely with college students) that over the past decade social media culture has normalized depression and anxiety in ways that i find extremely disturbing. many of my students now act as if it is completely normal and unremarkable for a person to live with (and to regularly express) lowgrade feelings of “i hate myself,” or “i’m trash,” or “i want to die / it would be better if i were dead.” it also seems to be much less common for students to talk openly about pursuing happiness, well-being, a sense of personal fulfillment in one’s work and relationships, etc. of course, there are absolutely students who still prioritize those things (i see it in their work & in the way they pursue and talk about that work). but they seem to do so in increasingly quiet, inwardly-directed ways, as if there is something slightly taboo about openly expressing a desire to be fulfilled by one’s work, or about openly prioritizing emotional well-being.

i am getting way too far into the territory of drawing Big Conclusions from anecdotal observations so i will back off for now!! BUT I do want to note that i tend to work with students who self-identify as very leftist (somewhere on the progressive to radical spectrum) and who have an avowed concern with a wide range of social and environmental justice issues. now THIS is the haziest thought of all, but i feel like there is a link between what i am describing in social media culture & the extremely-online left’s obsessive focus on what indigenous scholar & researcher Eve Tuck calls “damage-centered narratives.” Tuck defines damage-centered narratives as accounts of the world, or of one’s self and community, that center experiences of exploitation, trauma, damage, pain, loss, and oppression.

Tuck argues that progressive and radical movements tend to rely on a flawed “theory of change,” namely that obsessively and endlessly documenting the damage caused by oppression will somehow move the dominant group to redress historical & ongoing injustices—when actually, historically, the dominant or oppressive group is almost never moved or shamed into changing course. damage-centered narratives not only fail to produce the desired change, but also tend to leave people with a distorted understanding of themselves and their communities as fundamentally damaged, flawed, incomplete, too traumatized or oppressed to heal, etc. in essence, damage-centered rhetoric teaches both marginalized people and members of the dominant group to see damage as both a normal and essential part of the marginalized group’s identity. Tuck’s argument is not that we should pretend like the damage doesn’t exist, or stop documenting the suffering it causes. but she does argue that we need to think about what we center in the stories we tell about ourselves and our communities, and about what happens to our sense of agency and wholeness when we repeatedly choose to center trauma and suffering in ways that crowd out stories of individual & community power, resilience, agency, and healing.

i feel like there’s some link here—like, some way in which social media culture’s rhetoric around “destigmatizing mental illness” has gotten entangled in these leftist damage-centered theories of change. or maybe it’s less of a direct connection and more like, Tuck’s analysis offers a useful framework for describing what i observe in these social media cultures. idk! still working through the tangled threads of this thought (and it’s possible that the connection to political views isn’t the most compelling part of this observation, just a personal pet idea of mine that i am always trying to fit into this narrative).

anyway i think i just want to end by saying that it is in fact NOT normal for lots of young people (or older people!) to be living everyday with a lowgrade feeling of wanting to die, and that we should be really concerned first and foremost with the political and economic conditions that are producing those feelings, but also with a social media culture that presents those feelings as “normal” and tacitly rewards them. but even that articulation does not feel very precise! because i am not saying at ALL that the solution is to stop talking about the lived conditions of our lives, or the fact that many of us DO live in a state of distress. it’s not the sharing of feelings that concerns me at all (all i do all day is share my feelings on the internet!!! sharing and reflecting on feelings is Good, actually!!). rather, it’s the way in which the sharing itself (of feelings of despair, depression, worry, social isolation, hopelessness, suicidal ideation, etc.) becomes an end point & a “good” in and of itself. the sharing becomes disconnected from, idk, a deep culture-wide examination of the conditions that produce those feelings, or from a culture-wide mobilization to materially address those conditions.

AND ALSO, to circle back to my very first point: when the sharing of negative emotions & experiences is rewarded and treated as an end in and of itself (ie it does not spark further individual or collective action/response), it tends to crowd out (and perhaps even render taboo) the sharing of strengths, hopes, dreams and aspirations, our efforts to build more fulfilling lives and relationships, and so on. sharing and focusing on the positive aspects of our lives does not automatically solve the negative stuff, and obviously we are often going to find ourselves in situations where we don’t have a lot of agency or the power to change our material circumstances. the negative stuff is real, and the way it makes us feel deserves to be closely and compassionately attended to. but i just worry about a particular kind of dysfunctional coping mechanism that encourages us to treat the shittiest, most distressing aspects of our lived experience as somehow central or essential to our identities, while persistently downplaying or discouraging us from cultivating the traits and habits of mind that make life worth living & our personal and collective well-being worth striving for.

#is there anything in this?#probably not! but #just working through a thought #i also feel like #i hate to invoke identity/personal experience as if it automatically qualified me to speak with authority on the subject #but it does seem important to note that i speak not from a place of 'mental illness isn't real / isn't that bad! just get over it!'#but from a place of 'for a long time my head was an extremely bad and painful and distressing place to live in #and i have spent a lot of time reading widely in research on counseling & psychological well-being & emotional regulation #and developing strategies that are probably similar to what years in therapy might've taught me #so as to stabilize myself & heal'#my goal is not to be like SOCIAL MEDIA BAD (although IT IS BAD OK. IT'S PRETTY BAD)#but to understand the environments my students are growing up in & to kinda try to figure out the toxic sludge they are like #swimming in all the time #so that i can figure out how to effectively help people move from 'i lowkey want to die all the time' to a diff way of living in the world

29 notes · View notes

mr-entj · 4 years

Text

Mental Health Wellness Tips for Quarantine

Sharing a piece a clinical psychologist in my network published.

______________

After having thirty-one sessions this week with patients where the singular focus was COVID-19 and how to cope, I decided to consolidate my advice and make a list that I hope is helpful to all. I can't control a lot of what is going on right now, but I can contribute this.

Edit: I am surprised and heartened that this has been shared so widely! People have asked me to credential myself, so to that end, I am a doctoral level Psychologist in NYS with a Psy.D. in the specialities of School and Clinical Psychology.

1. Stick to a routine. Go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable time, write a schedule that is varied and includes time for work as well as self-care.

2. Dress for the social life you want, not the social life you have. Get showered and dressed in comfortable clothes, wash your face, brush your teeth. Take the time to do a bath or a facial. Put on some bright colors. It is amazing how our dress can impact our mood.

3. Get out at least once a day, for at least thirty minutes. If you are concerned of contact, try first thing in the morning, or later in the evening, and try less traveled streets and avenues. If you are high risk or living with those who are high risk, open the windows and blast the fan. It is amazing how much fresh air can do for spirits.

4. Find some time to move each day, again daily for at least thirty minutes. If you don’t feel comfortable going outside, there are many YouTube videos that offer free movement classes, and if all else fails, turn on the music and have a dance party!

5. Reach out to others, you guessed it, at least once daily for thirty minutes. Try to do FaceTime, Skype, phone calls, texting—connect with other people to seek and provide support. Don’t forget to do this for your children as well. Set up virtual playdates with friends daily via FaceTime, Facebook Messenger Kids, Zoom, etc—your kids miss their friends, too!

6. Stay hydrated and eat well. This one may seem obvious, but stress and eating often don’t mix well, and we find ourselves over-indulging, forgetting to eat, and avoiding food. Drink plenty of water, eat some good and nutritious foods, and challenge yourself to learn how to cook something new!

7. Develop a self-care toolkit. This can look different for everyone. A lot of successful self-care strategies involve a sensory component (seven senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell, vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (comforting pressure). An idea for each: a soft blanket or stuffed animal, a hot chocolate, photos of vacations, comforting music, lavender or eucalyptus oil, a small swing or rocking chair, a weighted blanket. A journal, an inspirational book, or a mandala coloring book is wonderful, bubbles to blow or blowing watercolor on paper through a straw are visually appealing as well as work on controlled breath. Mint gum, Listerine strips, ginger ale, frozen Starburst, ice packs, and cold are also good for anxiety regulation. For children, it is great to help them create a self-regulation comfort box (often a shoe-box or bin they can decorate) that they can use on the ready for first-aid when overwhelmed.

8. Spend extra time playing with children. Children will rarely communicate how they are feeling, but will often make a bid for attention and communication through play. Don’t be surprised to see therapeutic themes of illness, doctor visits, and isolation play through. Understand that play is cathartic and helpful for children—it is how they process their world and problem solve, and there’s a lot they are seeing and experiencing in the now.

9. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and a wide berth. A lot of cooped up time can bring out the worst in everyone. Each person will have moments when they will not be at their best. It is important to move with grace through blowups, to not show up to every argument you are invited to, and to not hold grudges and continue disagreements. Everyone is doing the best they can to make it through this.

10. Everyone find their own retreat space. Space is at a premium, particularly with city living. It is important that people think through their own separate space for work and for relaxation. For children, help them identify a place where they can go to retreat when stressed. You can make this place cozy by using blankets, pillows, cushions, scarves, beanbags, tents, and “forts”. It is good to know that even when we are on top of each other, we have our own special place to go to be alone.

11. Expect behavioral issues in children, and respond gently. We are all struggling with disruption in routine, none more than children, who rely on routines constructed by others to make them feel safe and to know what comes next. Expect increased anxiety, worries and fears, nightmares, difficulty separating or sleeping, testing limits, and meltdowns. Do not introduce major behavioral plans or consequences at this time—hold stable and focus on emotional connection.

12. Focus on safety and attachment. We are going to be living for a bit with the unprecedented demand of meeting all work deadlines, homeschooling children, running a sterile household, and making a whole lot of entertainment in confinement. We can get wrapped up in meeting expectations in all domains, but we must remember that these are scary and unpredictable times for children. Focus on strengthening the connection through time spent following their lead, through physical touch, through play, through therapeutic books, and via verbal reassurances that you will be there for them in this time.

13. Lower expectations and practice radical self-acceptance. This idea is connected with #12. We are doing too many things in this moment, under fear and stress. This does not make a formula for excellence. Instead, give yourself what psychologists call “radical self acceptance”: accepting everything about yourself, your current situation, and your life without question, blame, or pushback. You cannot fail at this—there is no roadmap, no precedent for this, and we are all truly doing the best we can in an impossible situation.

14. Limit social media and COVID conversation, especially around children. One can find tons of information on COVID-19 to consume, and it changes minute to minute. The information is often sensationalized, negatively skewed, and alarmist. Find a few trusted sources that you can check in with consistently, limit it to a few times a day, and set a time limit for yourself on how much you consume (again 30 minutes tops, 2-3 times daily). Keep news and alarming conversations out of earshot from children—they see and hear everything, and can become very frightened by what they hear.

15. Notice the good in the world, the helpers. There is a lot of scary, negative, and overwhelming information to take in regarding this pandemic. There are also a ton of stories of people sacrificing, donating, and supporting one another in miraculous ways. It is important to counter-balance the heavy information with the hopeful information.

16. Help others. Find ways, big and small, to give back to others. Support restaurants, offer to grocery shop, check in with elderly neighbors, write psychological wellness tips for others—helping others gives us a sense of agency when things seem out of control.

17. Find something you can control, and control the heck out of it. In moments of big uncertainty and overwhelm, control your little corner of the world. Organize your bookshelf, purge your closet, put together that furniture, group your toys. It helps to anchor and ground us when the bigger things are chaotic.

18. Find a long-term project to dive into. Now is the time to learn how to play the keyboard, put together a huge jigsaw puzzle, start a 15 hour game of Risk, paint a picture, read the Harry Potter series, binge watch an 8-season show, crochet a blanket, solve a Rubix cube, or develop a new town in Animal Crossing. Find something that will keep you busy, distracted, and engaged to take breaks from what is going on in the outside world.

19. Engage in repetitive movements and left-right movements. Research has shown that repetitive movement (knitting, coloring, painting, clay sculpting, jump roping etc) especially left-right movement (running, drumming, skating, hopping) can be effective at self-soothing and maintaining self-regulation in moments of distress.

20. Find an expressive art and go for it. Our emotional brain is very receptive to the creative arts, and it is a direct portal for release of feeling. Find something that is creative (sculpting, drawing, dancing, music, singing, playing) and give it your all. See how relieved you can feel. It is a very effective way of helping kids to emote and communicate as well!

21. Find lightness and humor in each day. There is a lot to be worried about, and with good reason. Counterbalance this heaviness with something funny each day: cat videos on YouTube, a stand-up show on Netflix, a funny movie—we all need a little comedic relief in our day, every day.

22. Reach out for help—your team is there for you. If you have a therapist or psychiatrist, they are available to you, even at a distance. Keep up your medications and your therapy sessions the best you can. If you are having difficulty coping, seek out help for the first time. There are mental health people on the ready to help you through this crisis. Your children’s teachers and related service providers will do anything within their power to help, especially for those parents tasked with the difficult task of being a whole treatment team to their child with special challenges. Seek support groups of fellow home-schoolers, parents, and neighbors to feel connected. There is help and support out there, any time of the day—although we are physically distant, we can always connect virtually.

23. “Chunk” your quarantine, take it moment by moment. We have no road map for this. We don’t know what this will look like in 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month from now. Often, when I work with patients who have anxiety around overwhelming issues, I suggest that they engage in a strategy called “chunking”—focusing on whatever bite-sized piece of a challenge that feels manageable. Whether that be 5 minutes, a day, or a week at a time—find what feels doable for you, and set a time stamp for how far ahead in the future you will let yourself worry. Take each chunk one at a time, and move through stress in pieces.

24. Remind yourself daily that this is temporary. It seems in the midst of this quarantine that it will never end. It is terrifying to think of the road stretching ahead of us. Please take time to remind yourself that although this is very scary and difficult, and will go on for an undetermined amount of time, it is a season of life and it will pass. We will return to feeing free, safe, busy, and connected in the days ahead.

25. Find the lesson. This whole crisis can seem sad, senseless, and at times, avoidable. When psychologists work with trauma, a key feature to helping someone work through said trauma is to help them find their agency, the potential positive outcomes they can effect, the meaning and construction that can come out of destruction. What can each of us learn here, in big and small ways, from this crisis? What needs to change in ourselves, our homes, our communities, our nation, and our world?

(x)

#coronavirus #covid-19 #stress #mental health #fear #anxiety #mental wellness #psychology #life #resource

209 notes · View notes

islamicrays · 4 years

Text

I found this useful.............💗Advice from a psychologist:

MENTAL HEALTH WELLNESS TIPS FOR QUARANTINE

1. Stick to a routine. Go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable time, write a schedule that is varied and includes time for work as well as self-care.

Source: Unknown

#pandemic #reminder #covid19 #muslim #self isolation

87 notes · View notes

c-ptsdrecovery · 4 years

Text

Mental Health Wellness Tips for Quarantine

From Facebook, written by Betsy Williams Briggs

[As an anxious person myself, please note: this is not a list of EVERYTHING YOU SHOULD BE DOING. Pick the things that will help you and let the others go! <3 ]

From a psychologist: After having thirty-one sessions this week with patients where the singular focus was COVID-19 and how to cope, I decided to consolidate my advice and make a list that I hope is helpful to all. I can't control a lot of what is going on right now, but I can contribute this.

MENTAL HEALTH WELLNESS TIPS FOR QUARANTINE

1. Stick to a routine. Go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable time, write a schedule that is varied and includes time for work as well as self-care.

#coronavirus

70 notes · View notes

fyregrayfong · 4 years

Text

Hesitate 10|15

FryeArcana

Chapter 10

Foolish

Summary:

You go through inner turmoil when you heard news about a close friend of yours being involved with the Equalists. You try to be professional at work but it proves to be difficult. Are the rumors true or are you the only one who can see past it.

You metalbend your cables holding the edge of the roof before you launch yourself up the side of the building and land. You walk over to Lin, Tenzin and Korra “Did I hear you correctly that you want to investigate Mr. Sato?” you look at everyone in a shocking voice. “what brought on this?” you try to search for an answer in everyone’s eyes but Korra gives you a question “why are you here?” Lin buts in “if anyone has any knowledge on Mr. Sato it’s officer y/n. Since she’s an officer she has a responsibility to act as such first before being a friend and tipping him off.” Lin eyes you and you give her a nod “I haven’t said anything to anyone, I just want to hear what Korra has to say” you look over at Korra just when you think you finally have a chance to be friends, she pulls this from under you.

Tenzin looks between the two of you before turning his attention to Korra “so you think Mr. Sato manufactured those gloves for the equalists, then framed Cabbage Corp?” he asks her calmly. Your eyes widen “you what?!”

“that’s a bold accusation but what proof do you have?” Lin chimes in right after your exclamation. “well I don’t exactly have proof” Korra slowly says which you roll your eyes and scoff “but I know what I heard. Sato is up to something” she quickly added. “I know I said I think the gloves were planted but I didn’t think you’ll go and accuse Future Industries! what did you hear exactly?” you ask her as you try your best not to sound biased but it’s really not working. Korra thinks back “he was on the phone saying how the Cabbage Corp investigation bought him time, and that he was getting ready to strike.” She balled her fist and smacked it on her palm. You think long and hard before Lin speaks up “well he does have the means and he does have a motive” you look at her “Come on Chief really, you’re believing this?” you wave over at Korra and Tenzin speak up after her “That’s right.” You look even more shocked as you turn your head over at Tenzin. “a motive? What is it?” Korra looks at Lin surprised that Lin was listening to her instead of fighting against her. “12 years ago, the Agni Kai Triad robbed Sato’s mansion. A firebender killed Sato’s wife during the break-in.” Tenzin sadly retold the story. “that’s terrible” Korra look sadden while you’re looking down at the ground “it was tragic.” You muttered. Tenzin adds in “it’s possible he’s been harboring anti-bending sentiment all this time.” Lin quickly adds before you can talk “maybe we should look at Mr. Sato a little more closely.” You look at everyone surprised that they’re actually thinking Mr. Sato could be part of the Equalist Revolution.

“Are you serious?! You both are buying in to what Korra is saying? Look you brought me here because out of the four of us I’m the one who is close to the family. I’ve worked with Hiroshi Sato closely at Future Industries. Korra most likely was just hearing business talk. Everyone knows that Future Industries and Cabbage Corp are each other’s fiercest competitors. I know that Hiroshi is planning on releasing a new line of Sato-mobiles. That’s what Korra probably heard.” Before anyone else can input their thoughts you continue on your analysis “How can Hiroshi have any anti-bending sentiments when he’s been nothing but kind to me, an earthbender, all these years?! He offered me a job even allowed me to stay at his estate for a considerable amount of time. If I would’ve known he was harboring these feelings I would’ve known at some point, but he hasn’t. Hiroshi and Asami have been nothing but kind, respectable people.” You look at everyone but mostly at Korra.

She looks down “I’m sorry y/n, but I have a strong feeling about this. I can just feel that Sato is hiding something” she looks at you determined in her voice. You step forward “Fine, but seeing as I have a close involvement with the Sato family, it would be best for me to sit out of this investigation” you look over at Lin using your tone of professionalism “I can be professional and promise that I won’t tamper or get in the way of the investigation, but I fear I cannot emotionally detach myself to do a good job at a scene. I’m sorry but the Sato family are practically like my own. But I would ask if you’ll let me join you on the investigation. I just want to make sure everyone is handling this fairly, and not just to point the finger on anyone.” You look at Korra. Lin looks over at you. “I’ll accept your request to sit out, but absolutely no hog-monkey business” she points her finger at you and looks you in the eye. You look back at her then at everyone “you have my word, I want to take Amon down just as much as everyone else, but I want this done right.”

Lin, Tenzin and Korra walk in ahead of you into the Sato mansion you walk up the stairs behind them. “what’s going on? Why are they asking Hiroshi more questions?” Mako asks Korra as Asami looks over at you then at Korra. You’re standing besides Asami as Korra explains to them what she experienced. “what? I don’t believe this?! Y/N you’re taking Korra’s side?!” Asami blows up as she turns to you and you put your hands up. “hey, I tried to talk her out of it, but she is adamant on what she heard. I don’t believe this any way than you do. I think this is all just hog-monkey nonsense.” You glare at Korra as you walk besides Asami and put your hand on her back walking away from Korra. “of course, it is” she mutters angrily as she walks to her father’s office, you and Mako follow behind her followed by Korra.

Asami burst thru the door and barges in “My father is innocent! Just because we’re not benders doesn’t mean we support those awful equalists.” Asami angrily speaks out and stands beside her father. While you stand over besides Lin facing Hiroshi with sorry eyes “Equalists? Is that what this is about?” Hiroshi surprised by the comment and looks at Tenzin and Lin. “I can assure you; I have nothing to do with those radicals.” Hiroshi speaks out assuring Asami, Mako, and you look at Korra glaring at you for having to do this in the first place. Korra getting upset points her finger at Hiroshi “I overheard you on the phone. You said the Cabbage Corp investigation bought you time, you’re getting ready to strike. Explain that.” Korra looks at Hiroshi in an accused tone. Hiroshi chuckles at the comment and raises his hand up “this is all just a misunderstanding, resulting from a young avatar’s over-active imagination. My number one competitor was knocked out of the game. It’s providing me an opportunity to strike the market with a new line of Sato-mobile. It’s just business, nothing nefarious.” Hiroshi calmly explained putting his palms together as he rests them on his desk. Lin looks worried that maybe she messed up and that Tenzin and she should’ve listened to what you had told them.

You speak up “see! That’s what I said. It was just business talk that Korra heard.” You glare at Korra. “yes, well y/n helped me designed those new Sato-mobiles a few years past.” Everyone stays quiet half angry at Korra for starting this mess the other side trying to ease out their suspicions. Tenzin speaks up “in order to put all suspicions to rest, might we have a look into your factories and warehouses?” Asami sighs annoyingly so which Hiroshi quietly stopped her by raising his hand then looks at Tenzin “if you feel it’s necessary, you’re welcome to search all of Future Industries.” He calms and confidently speaks to everyone in the room.

Lin and Tenzin walk out with Korra as they get the elite force to head out to start the search. You and the rest of the gang follow behind in Asami’s car. You and Asami watch as Lin and the rest of the police force open each crate looking for evidence. She crosses her arms and sighs “I can’t believe they’re doing this” she angrily spats out. “it’s better to just let them do what they need to do. The faster the investigation against your father goes the father they will leave and be out of your hair” you talk to her softly and pat her back. “why didn’t you try to stop them, y/n. You know my father better than them. My father isn’t an Equalist supporter.” She looks over at you. You open your mouth “I tried, really I did. I told them what Korra heard was most likely business talk. Tried to explain every possible reason why Korra could be wrong, but they still wanted to keep the investigation going. I was outnumbered.” You look down and sighed, “I’m sorry”. Asami gives you a hug and you return the gesture “it’s okay, I know it’s not you. Korra brought this” she glares over at Korra. Mako walks up and puts his hand on Asami and tries to comfort her. You, Asami and Mako walk over to Lin and Tenzin after the investigation was concluded and Korra comes forward with Naga. “I can’t believe we didn’t find anything.” Korra sounded upset that nothing came up “it would appear Hiroshi is innocent.” Lin looked out. “okay, you did your search. Now you can all leave.” Asami sneered at Lin. Lin looks at Asami eyeing her Mako pulls Korra aside and they end up having an argument. You look over at them but try to pry into their conversation. “I’ll make sure they are staying to the book and keeping it fair against your father, Sami” you look at her putting a hand on her shoulder. Soon Mako comes up and takes Asami then walk out to her car. You turn to Lin and Tenzin “so what’s your plan of action now that you weren’t able to find anything here?” you glance at them neither one knowing the answer. Korra comes up to you three with a piece of paper “I think you guys should hear this, if you want to find the truth, meet me under the north end of the silk road bridge at midnight.”

The four of you walk under the bridge and look for anyone suspiciously standing by who could be the one who slipped Korra that note. Soon an older guy in a long coat walks out of one of the columns and starts to speak when we get close enough “listen I joined the equalists, because I believed in what Amon said. I thought he could make life better for us non-benders., but I didn’t sign up for this – this war.” He turns to look at everyone. Lin speaks up wanting to get to the point “what do you have on Hiroshi Sato?” she asked him pain and simple. The guy quickly responded back without a thought “he manufactured those gloves for the equalists” your eyes widen at his information. “I knew it!” Korra spoke out but the guy continues to speak “and there are rumors he’s working on something even bigger; some new kind of weapon.’

“but we searched all of the Future Industries and found nothing.” Tenzin quickly rebutted the guy’s statement. “that’s because he has a secret factory. Right underneath the Sato mansion.” Everyone’s eyes widen and gasp including you when you hear this information. This can’t be right, Hiroshi Sato conspiring with the Equalist? The man who basically took under his wing and gave you a job, a place to sleep, and treating you kind and fair. You feel glass shattering your eyes when you come to the realization that the man you’ve come to respected is possibly not the man you thought. No this can’t be right; how can you be sure this information is true. You think in your mind trying to come up with any possible explanation. Nothing is making sense. You’re standing in the police airship looking out at the city while Tenzin and Lin talk about raiding the mansion and Korra is sitting on the floor chilling.

Korra slowly gets up and walks over to you, putting a hand on your shoulder. “y/n, you okay?” she softly speaks you continue looking forward out the window not saying anything then look down and sigh “I still can’t believe it. I mean how do we know what that man said was true. He could be giving us false information.” You turn around and look at Korra your eyes filled with hurt, pain, but still angry at her. “you know if we raid the estate and find nothing, Chief will lose her job, both you and councilman Tenzin will be made out like fools. Are you sure you want to go ahead with this plan?” you look at Korra trying to search for some kind of sign that your doubts are right and this whole thing is wrong. Korra sighs and looks down searching for an answer “I just know Sato is behind this. I’m sorry you had to find out about who he is like this, but we have to stop him from giving Amon that weapon.” She looks back at you.

The Elite force bust into the house and the four of you walk in, Asami yells out “what are you doing here?” Lin announces to everyone in the room “we have reason to believe there’s a factory hidden below the mansion.” Asami is aggravated with the intrusion of yet again another raid “I think I would have noticed if there was a factory underneath my house. The lies you people come up with just to persecute my father…” She spat out. Asami tells them that her father is in his personal workshop behind the house. “come on, I know where it’s at” you wave to Lin and Tenzin soon everyone follows you and you escort them to the workshop. “that’s the building there” you point at the building and the officers start doing a sweep around the exterior of the building and nearby areas. A couple of officers go inside and bust the door you follow Asami but see no one in the workshop. An officer walks up to Lin “the area has been secured no one has walked in or left since we have arrived.” Lin walks over to the center of the room “perhaps we just couldn’t see him leaving” she wondered and then opened the bottom of her metallic shoe and used her seismic sense, you’ve only seen one other person use that sense, her sister. “there’s a tunnel beneath the workshop. Running deep beneath the mountainside” You and Asami look at each other then she looks at Lin “what? There’s no tunnel.” Lin turns around and metalbends a sheet of metal out from the ground and exposes a metal staircase that leads down a large tunnel beneath the mountainside just like Lin said. Your heart starts to race as you start to think maybe Korra was right after all about Hiroshi. “Sami…” you whispered with so much concern in your eyes as you look over at her and you see that she too has just as much confusion. “I don’t understand. There must be an explanation.” She looks out. Korra look at her “maybe you don’t know everything about your father. I’m sorry” she quietly speaks then Lin starts ordering her officers into the tunnel as she, Korra and Tenzin follow behind them. You turn to Asami, “I’ll go down and see what this is all about. Hopefully there is a reasonable explanation behind all this” you look at her putting a hand on her should then follow the rest of the group. Lin orders Asami, Bolin and Mako to stay behind with Officer Song to watch over. The group take a ride on this large mechanism that runs down the tunnel. You’re holding onto the railing trying to mentally prepare what you’re about to find. Lin walks over to you and puts her hand on your shoulder. “You didn’t have to come, you could’ve stayed back with the other three” she spoke you quickly shake your head “no, I need to see it, or else I won’t believe that everything I knew was a farce” you look ahead of you with a new sense of betrayal.

Soon the machine stopped, and you all walk off with the officers in front you walk into this large room and see it covered with banners of Amon everywhere. “not your average backyard workshop” Lin comments at the size of this secret workshop. “I’m guessing those are the new weapons” you hear Korra say as you look up at the giant mecha-tanks your eyes widen. “Hiroshi was lying, but where is he?” Tenzin asks and as soon as he did a large wall burst from the floor and blocks the only exit out of the shop. You and Lin try to metalbend the wall but aren’t successful, you hear a voice call out to everyone “I’ve afraid you can’t metalbend that wall, it’s solid platinum” You recognize the voice immediately “Hiroshi?” you call out in disbelief as you look around and all the mecha-tanks come to life surrounding everyone. “my mecha-tanks are platinum as well, not even your renowned mother could bend a metal so pure.” The comment targeted directly to Lin. Korra taunts Hiroshi to come out of the suit to which he refuses, “I’ll fight from inside here, where my odds are a little more… equal” you look up at Hiroshi and can’t believe the man you’re seeing. This isn’t the man you knew; you wonder if this is some clone or some evil twin no one told you about. Lin looks over at you “you sure you can take on to fight this man?” she already taking in a fighting stance. You’re just in shock standing still but you know that taking down these tanks is the right thing to do. Even if you have to fight your friend to do what’s right. Lin looks over at Hiroshi “that source was a setup. You’re lured us down here” she yelled at him. Hiroshi with a sense of confidence and pride “guilty as charged.” Hiroshi looks at you, his face unrecognizable, filled with hate and evil, “it’s such a shame, Asami is going to lose a friend. Your mind is quite brilliant. Sadly you’re filled with such impurity.” He spat out at you. You look at him taking a stance and your eyes filling with betrayal and anger “I was just some pawn, wasn’t I! You were just using me as some sort of beard. To fool the public and the police that you loved benders, when in actuality you despise them. I considered you a friend, Hiroshi, a father figure!” you yell out trying to withhold your tears. “foolish girl, I hated when Asami brought you to the house, but I figured I’ll take advantage of your mind and make my company successful. Which you did. So for that I give my thanks.” He sneered at you. “enough long talk. I’m done with you benders ruining it for us!” he yells out and shoots out a metal cable with a claw straight towards the group. You and the rest of the group quickly jump out of the way, the officers use their metal cables to grab a hold of the tanks while you and Lin run to take one each to take over. Lin jumps up in the air and launches herself bending out a metal sword and starts stabbing the glass of the mecha-tank. You launch yourself up and do the same, stabbing the glass to create an opening for you to metal your cable through and wrap around the guy. You jump down and pull the guy out the glass piece using all your strength to break him from his seatbelt and grunt as you slam him to the ground. Knocking him out cold, you look over and see Lin still whacking at her tank and see the officers holding down two with as much grip their cable can carry.

That’s when you saw the sparks come thru the tank and watch the officers get electrocuted, then as Lin takes down her tank she gets grabbed him behind and then throws across the room. “Chief!” you call out and make a run to her sliding beside her and check on her. You put a hand on her cheek, your face softening before looking over and see Korra and Tenzin try to fight off Hiroshi. You grit your teeth and start making a run at him, bending out a dagger of your own as you yell out “Hiroshi!”. He looks over at you and gives you an evil smirk as he starts shooting a metal claw at you. You dodge his attacks but get caught by another tank and get throw across the room hitting the ground hard. Korra gets slammed against a large metal pipe and Tenzin helps her land on the ground with some of his air bending, Tenzin tries to tackle three tanks but soon gets overtaken himself.

Mako and Bolin sneak their way into the room and see the scene then the four of you nearby on the ground. Mako runs over to you and Korra while Bolin handles on getting Tenzin and Lin. Right when they’re about to grab your arms they get stopped by Hiroshi wearing gloves. You try hard to wake up, but your body doesn’t allow you, you just hear murmurs coming from Mako and Hiroshi. “Sponsoring our team. Supporting the avatar. Letting y/n stay at your house and giving her a job to work for you. It was all just a big cover.” Mako looks over menacing at Hiroshi “yes, and I thought Asami making friends with that girl was bad, but the most difficult part was watching my daughter traipse around with a firebending street rat like you!” Hiroshi raises his voice and turns on his glove looking at Mako as he and another man walk towards them ready to take them down.

“Dad, stop! Why” Asami yells out to her dad with much pain and hurt in her eyes and voice. You finally wake up and slowly lift your head up to look up at Asami. “sweetie, I wanted to keep you out of this for as long as I could, but now that you know the truth, please forgive me. these people, these…benders, they took away your mother, the love of my life. They’ve ruined the world! But with Amon, we can fix it and build a perfect world together. We can help people like us everywhere. Join me Asami” Hiroshi walks to Asami after finishing his monologue and takes off his glove and hands it to her. Asami slowly walks over to her father and shakingly decides whether or not to listen to her father. You try to get up and extend your hand out to Asami. “Sami….” You softly groan out as tears well in your eyes as you see her put on the glove. You close your eyes as you lay your head back down not wanting to see your friend, your practical sister joins her father. “I love you, Dad.” Asami softly tells her father before she electrocutes her father his screams cause you to lift your head back up and watch as she takes down the other man. Asami rushes to you and helps you up “I knew I couldn’t be wrong about you” you softly groan out as she holds onto you. Everyone looks back and sees the tanks powering back up. “let’s get out of here!” Mako yells out and everyone starts running out.

You stand behind Asami as you put your hand on her shoulder and comfort her as best as you can trying to process what her father is. Mako walks up and you take that moment to give them space as you walk over to Korra. “Korra, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I hope you understand where I was coming from” you look down your fists balled up. Korra steps forward and puts a gently hand on your shoulder. “I get it, you thought you had a friendship with him. You looked up to him like a father figure. He took advantage of your kindness. I don’t know how I would react if it happened to me. I’m sorry this happened to all of you.” Korra comforts you as she gives you a soften look and you look up at her. You extend a hand to her “friends?” Korra looks down at your hand then back at you and gives you a smile taking your shaking your hand “friends”. You give her a small smile before you excuse yourself and walk over to Lin. Tenzin walks over and talks to Korra, comforting her as best as he could as a mentor. “how you are holding up, chief.” You softly speak to Lin as she lays on the cot, you kneel down beside her. “I’ve been better” she groans out in pain, then looks over at you. “I’ve let the force down. I told Tenzin I’m handing in my resignation first thing in the morning.” Your eyes widen and you reach over at her “you can’t! don’t give up on the force.” Your hand over hers as you look at her. Lin’s eyes soften when she feels your hand, her fingers softly move in between yours without holding your hand then scoffs “what is it with you and Tenzin thinking I’m giving up. I need to get my men back, but I can’t do it while wearing a badge.” She muttered and you smile softly “I mean you could just take the badge off while you rescue the men. Don’t have to be extra, but I understand. You’re going off book.” Lin gives you a soft nod “if you’re going after them, then I’m following you. Those men are my brothers. No man left behind. There’s nothing you can say or do that will stop me.” You look her right in the eyes. “even if I have to stow away in or ride my bike to get wherever they are” you add in. Lin groans and rolls her eyes but can’t help let a smile appear on her lips. “now who’s being extra.”

#TLOK1Hesitate #fanfic #linbeifong #lin x reader #Fyrefics

8 notes · View notes