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eskel-loves-lilbleater · 3 years

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CW: Mild discussion of Depression & Anxiety, Humor as coping mechanism ---------------------------------------------------- Yes, I am fully aware I have WAY over thought this (this is magical fantasy land, hand wavy don’t try to science this shit) but my brain went on a tangent in the shower and all I could do was hang on for the ride. I was daydreaming, as you do, about the differences between Wolf School and Bear School and how they would react to different situations. This got me thinking about the whole “they tried to use mutations to remove our emotions” and of course how that really didn’t work with the Cats. So, my understanding of emotions is that a lot of it is generated by a series of brain chemicals meeting up with various receptors and the physical manifestations of these triggers. A mutation to suppress emotion would likely go one of two ways, reduce the chemicals that produce them or remove the receptors that trigger the other outward physical responses. The problem I see is that a lack of specific brain chemicals is usually a major cause of depression whereas a lack of receptors and being able to feel emotional triggers as a whole sounds a lot like leading into being a sociopath (unable to feel empathy etc). Bears obviously do have emotions. Or, at least Arnaghad does. One doesn’t just rage quit the only Witcher school in existence and run off into the wilderness with your squad to do it YOUR way, if you don’t feel anything. Theory…the Bears were able to reduce the SENSITIVITY of their receptors, thus are slow to react or need increased stimuli to really feel something. Possibly combined with a lowered chemical response. So, they’re all basically in a constant form of mild depression. Wolves tried to do the same thing, with mixed results, but they are all taught to mediate and repress along with a mix of punishments for failing. They’re all a lovely pile of trauma induced anxiety, repression and various levels of depression. And likely some ND in there as well, but that’s another essay. Cats went in the complete other direction, so now they are all in a permanent state of hyperarousal and emotional dysregulation, only kept in check by extensive training in control and mediation. Were you ever one of those ND kids taught to meditate in order to control the emotional overflow? Congrats, you’re a Cat. Always feeling a bit down and cut off from the world? You’re a Bear. Big ball of anxiety and/or trauma held together by various coping techniques? You’re probably a Wolf. I haven’t really thought through the Vipers, Gryphons or others (the brain only had so much fuel) but if people are genuinely interested, I can give it a go. And yes, this looks at some aspects of mental health with a bit of humor so I hope that doesn’t bother people. For me, humor and research are as much coping techniques as anything, as well as finding weird ways to relate it to things I enjoy. I mean, if the Bears and Wolves and Cats can manage to get through life with their various issues, then so can I.

(I am a ND Wolf, ADHD flavour)

#School of the cat #School of the wolf #School of the bear #Science and fantasy #Depression #Anxiety #neurodivergent #The Witcher #arnaghad #Wiedzmin #Twn #witcher 3 #Geralt #Eskel #lambert witcher #Brain tangent #shower things #shower thoughts #Humour as coping mechanism

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shutterupp31 · 4 years

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Toxic masculinity-Whats wrong with our boys?

For centuries men have been condemned for acts of aggression, violence, and sexism, contributing to the ongoing popularity of the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ which distinguishes these traits as toxic and unhealthy. The American psychological association have even recently introduced new guidelines for therapists working with both men and boys, indicating that early signs of extreme ‘traditional masculine behaviour’ can root themselves in personality traits that encourage outcomes of violence and misogyny, and must be disestablished early.

With the increase in male suicide rates and drug overdoses in the western world, combined with the rise of fourth wave feminism, as you can imagine, the debate on toxic masculinity is becoming all the more relevant amongst both genders. Mass media have blamed toxic masculinity for rape, mass shootings, online trolling, climate change and even the election of Donald Trump.

BUT is the phrase toxic masculinity actually helpful, accurate or universal? Let's discuss.

Like any phrase or term regularly recycled within gender debate, the stereotypes it highlights have divided peoples opinions drastically, a predictable conflict that has most definitely contributed to the terms rise, (Yay politics). On the right we have many conservatives who allege that the charges of toxic masculinity is itself an attack on manhood. With mental health problems amongst males consistently rising, combined with the challenges the men's right movement already face, including paternity rights, homelessness, education to name a FEW, these people argue that it is dangerous and unfair to strip boys of what some would say is a necessity for them to discover their true selves as men in their time of need.

On the other side we see many ‘progressives’ who believe that the detoxification of masculinity is absolutely essential on the road to gender equality.

NOW, i'm sure (I mean I hope) we can all agree that issues including sexism, rape, violence and so on are obviously important and anyone male or female that possess these traits and/or actively defends them, needs help! Research consistently shows that those who hold sexist attitudes are more likely to perpetrate gendered violence. (DUH), but the potential biological and cultural contributions to why these figures are disproportionate amongst men and women is not something I wish to discuss at present, that's a whole other debate.

What I do want to talk about (and what a lot of people aren't talking about) is this ‘painting every male with the same brush’ phenomenon and the extent to which this could be harmful.

My issue with the shift we have seen in which masculinity is rapidly becoming a dirty word, is that it genuinely encourages a narrative in which masculinity is fundamentally toxic.

The assumption that the majority of what can be considered as male specific characteristics, as fundamentally harmful, is becoming increasingly worrying within socialist politics. Traits such as aggression, violence and dominance are more and more often being lumped in with those such as strength, confidence and independence and this is the problem. Yes masculinity can indeed be somewhat destructive, (AGAIN VIOLENCE IS BAD VERY BAD, NON VIOLENCE GOOD VERY GOOD) but both conservative and liberal stances on this issue commonly misunderstand how the term functions.

When people use it, they tend to diagnose the problem of masculine aggression and entitlement as a cultural or spiritual illness, something that has infected today’s men and leads them to reproachable acts. But toxic masculinity itself is not a cause. Over the past thirty years, as the concept has morphed and changed, it has served more as a barometer for the gender politics of its day and as an arrow toward the subtler, shifting causes of violence and sexism.

Acts of violence, aggression and sexism arise for a whole host of reasons, including socioeconomic factors such as education, class, and poverty, NEWSFLASH, not all men that celebrate the idea of being emotionally or physically strong intend to murder and rape the entire female population!

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT TIME

How often do you see women on social media celebrating what it means to be a woman? All the time right? Now, don't get me wrong, this rise of what I'm gonna call ‘girl power culture’ is phenomenally empowering.

But how often do you see men innocently celebrate their manhood or say they are proud to be a man online in the same way?

Very rarely, and if they do they are often immediately attacked for being misogynistic and failing to recognise their privilege by Feminazi’s who fail to read context and get triggered by buzzwords.

Ooooo Controversial? Perhaps, but AGAIN, I'm not failing to recognise that things like lad culture, and boys will be boys culture exist, and perhaps this obvious difference on social media has something to do with the years of oppression against women up until very recently, in fact it probably, most certainly is, however not acknowledging the multiplicity of reasons for these toxic behaviours, and not allowing men to celebrate that they like and may even enjoy being one, in the same way as its widely excepted amongst women, is well, kinda just dumb.

Don't believe me yet? Let's look at the evidence.

First I think it is important to establish where the term originated. Despite the term’s recent popularity among feminists, toxic masculinity did not originate with the women’s movement. It was coined in the mythopoetic men's movement of the 1980s and ’90s, motivated in part as a reaction to second-wave feminism. Through male only workshops, wilderness retreats, and drumming circles, this movement promoted a masculine spirituality to rescue what it referred to as the ‘deep masculine’, a protective ‘warrior’ type masculinity, from toxic masculinity. Men’s aggression and frustration was, according to the movement, the result of a society that feminized boys by denying them the necessary rites and rituals to realise their true selves as men.

The claim of a singular, real masculinity has now been roundly rejected by a new sociology of masculinity. Led by the sociologist Raewyn Connell, this school of thought presents gender as the product of relations and behaviours, rather than as a fixed set of identities and attributes. Connell’s work describes multiple masculinities shaped by class, race, culture, sexuality, and other factors, often in competition with one another as to which can claim to be more authentic. In this view, which is now the prevailing social scientific understanding of masculinity, the standards by which a “real man” is defined can vary dramatically across time and place.

Connell and others theorised that common masculine ideals such as social respect, physical strength, and sexual potency can of course become problematic when they set unattainable standards. Falling short can make boys and men insecure and anxious, which might prompt them to use force in order to feel, and be seen as, dominant and in control, HOWEVER Male violence in this scenario doesn’t emanate from something bad or toxic that has crept into the nature of masculinity itself. Rather, it comes from these men’s social and political settings, the particularities of which set them up for inner conflicts over social expectations and male entitlement.

The popular discussion of masculinity has often presumed there are fixed character types among men, and I think it's become increasingly more important to be skeptical of this in order to understand the situations in which groups of men act, the patterns, and the inevitable consequences, because without doing so ,YOU may be contributing to the reinforcement of the toxic masculinity in which you despise so much, which brings us on to….

The blame game-are you contributing to toxic masculinity?

Where do these sexist attitudes come from? Are men and boys just the victims of cultural brainwashing into misogyny and aggression, requiring reeducation into the ‘right’ beliefs? Or are these problems more deep rooted, and created by the myriad of insecurities and contradictions of men’s lives under gender inequality? The problem with a crusade against toxic masculinity is that in targeting culture as the enemy, it risks overlooking the real life conditions and forces that sustain culture.

It is more than likely that you have somewhat contributed to the reinforcement of toxic masculinity without even realising. Something I see so often is both men and women emasculating men for being emotionally vulnerable and this specific topic is something I personally find alarming. In the same way I defend a man's right to choose how and whether he verbally expresses emotions, I strongly believe that there is work to be done to deconstruct the stigma that is attached to this, when and if they choose to do so.

In similar fashion, in the way we have fought so hard to reject female beauty standards, it's really essential that we consider the male equivalent. Don't think there is one? Ask any man under 5 foot 8, ask any bald man under the age of 30, ask any man who has been shamed for the lack of, or excess of body hair. We have to start recognising that there is a double standard, and without too much speculation, could these expectations and lack of attention we are giving them in comparison to a lot of feminist issues in mass media, be somewhat contributing to the frustration and anger that manifests into these toxic traits we have been discussing. YEAH, FUCKING PROBABLY.

Anyway, in summary what I'm saying is, in the same way that the toxic traits we subscribe to masculinity are not universal amongst all males, the solutions to those issues that we have identified within this culture, are also not universal. Recognising differences in the lives of men and boys is crucial to the effectiveness of efforts to resolve gender violence and inequality once and for all, some food for thought.

Stay kind always, Abbie x

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land-of-frogs-and-dragons · 5 years

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Regarding the newest episode, the treatment of one Deceit Sanders, and other thoughts

The majority of my post is below a read-more for the mobile folks cause this is one Long Boy. For the folks that DO read it, though, feel free to like comment on my thoughts n stuff. It’s rambly as all hell, but still!!

the tl;dr: Dee’s super complex, Roman shoulda made a different choice, Deceit as a character is here to stay and if he’s triggering you then like PLEASE take a deep look inside yourself on if it is safe for your mental health to continue watching Sanders Sides

ok SO

I’m... Very much heated about the newest episode, Selfishness vs Selflessness. I know this has been talked to death already, but I want to get my thoughts down just to, like, clear my head. So, here we go!

In the newest episode, it was clear from the get-go that Deceit was, for the first time in Sanders Sides history (of like 2 episodes with him it in, but still) arguing with a completely valid point. Which, good for him!!! However... It felt really, really messed up throughout the whole court thing. Why did he choose a court, of all places, to argue his point? He initially appeared as Logan; he likely intended to impersonate Logan to make his point, rather than doing what he did. And, if we’re being completely honest, Logan was in agreement WITH Deceit about what should be done about the callback vs the wedding (IE that he NEEDED to do the callback, as it’s VERY IMPORTANT for Thomas’s future).

It’s interesting to note, as well, that as far as I could tell, Deceit didn’t lie unless it was blatantly obvious that he was doing so. Did he manipulate Virgil to get him to play witness? Yes. Did he intentionally confuse Patton? Yes (though I personally believe that that was to make Thomas speak the truth at the end--but I’ll get back to that later). However, not once did he follow up with his namesake and lie unless it was blatantly obvious to us and the rest of the sides (with some acceptions for Patton, since he missed some of them until the others pointed it out). Which leads me to my first thought: what is truly Deceit’s place in Thomas? Roman, Logan, and Patton are all infinitely more complex in Thomas’s well-being than their stated purpose is (Creativity, Logic, and Morality) and it can be assumed that all other sides of Thomas are in the same boat. Which leads me to wonder what Deceit’s purpose is, as well as Virgil’s. Perhaps they share an overall goal, to protect Thomas, and have different ways to do it. Maybe that’s what all the supposed Dark Sides are--facets of Thomas’s self-preservation manifesting in different ways.

From here, I want to talk about the decision Roman made at the end of the episode--to go to the wedding rather than the callback. Now, I know I already said that it looked like Dee was going to try and persuade the others while pretending to be Logan (and probably getting a compromise, like “call the bride and groom and let them know that you’ll need to duck out for a bit to do the callback, but do both”), but I want to emphasize that more. Deceit knows he isn’t trusted, and chose to pick someone who WOULD be trusted and who ALSO would share his thoughts on it. But it couldn’t be Roman, since that could be explained away as Roman being upset by the decision Patton made, and it couldn’t be Virgil because Virgil sided with Patton. So, it’d have to be Logan. And yet, when he was found out pretty much immediately, he didn’t even manage to get a word in edge-wise about his thoughts until the courtroom. It wasn’t that he didn’t try, it was that he wasn’t given the option to do it. And then he had to walk through the steps to not only confuse Patton, who knew what PATTON thought was right and therefore what Thomas allegedly wanted in order to get the truth out, but had to do it in such a way that it proved that he was right all along. And, as much as he didn’t go about the whole thing the right way, did he really have another option? The others don’t trust him, especially not Virgil, and if Deceit says something is true then Virgil automatically assumes it cannot be the truth, even if it is. And the truth of the whole ordeal was that Thomas Wanted the call-back.

But, Roman said he’d be going to the wedding. And that’s all we get to know. Weddings aren’t supposed to be a punishment, yet he chose it in order to “sentence” Thomas for being “guilty.” And it’s not a decision that should have been made. Thomas felt bad about the callback because of his friends, yes, but also because Patton felt bad for not knowing what Thomas really wanted. And, since Patton is the heart of Thomas’s emotional center, it would make sense for Patton’s emotions to get the best of Thomas. It’s why Deceit did things the way he did them, and why he was so shocked that Roman chose the wedding over his continually crushed hopes and dreams. In Thomas’s line of work, you don’t miss callbacks. End of. You just don’t, especially if going on the big screen for a big movie is your dream, as it’s a step in the right direction for Thomas. And it makes me wonder WHY Roman chose the wedding. My personal take on it is that he didn’t want Patton to be sad, didn’t want to disrupt the status quo of “Deceit is always wrong, even when he’s right,” and didn’t want to rock the boat named Virgil by siding with Deceit.

Which leads me to the future of Thomas Sander’s Sanders Sides. Deceit is, obviously, here to stay. He won’t be in EVERY episode, obviously, but he’s here to stay. I’m hoping the next episode either involves Thomas being really upset after the wedding and Deceit appearing to tell him he knows why, or an episode involving Patton being upset because Thomas went to the wedding and ducked out to do the callback before rejoining the wedding. In fact, I feel like those two are The Most Likely options, as the ending of Selfishness Vs Selflessness left such a large impact that I doubt it won’t be addressed later on in the series. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if, when Deceit and Patton’s animosity gets resolved, another dark side is revealed. Because, at the end of the day, I feel like every single one of Thomas’s sides just wants to be heard. In the last episode, Deceit was certainly listened to--but not necessarily heard. And that’s going to come to a head later on.

Now, I want to talk about a pressing issue that I’ve seen aggrivated by the latest episode. That being people who are triggered by Deceit, watching the episode (and knowing he’s in it--he’s on the cover FOR the episode for christ’s sake!) and getting triggered by him. I know that we all love Sanders Sides, but... Deceit is here to stay. For those of us who are triggered by his sheer existance, I highly reccomend taking a look inside yourselves. I don’t get triggered and I can’t say how it feels, but I’m pretty sure that exposing yourself to triggering things and then getting triggered is a bad thing for your mental health. I don’t want anyone getting hurt by the episode, but Thomas created Deceit for a reason. And he’s here now, he isn’t going to go away, and I hope those of you who are triggered by Deceit stay safe. Because Dee’s episodes will continue to happen, and (like this one) they’ll be plot relevant.

And I think that’s about it on my thoughts for now.

#ts spoilers #sympathetic deceit #deceit #selfishness vs selflessness

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elyvorg · 6 years

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Celeste: When Even Your Issues Have Issues

As I've already mentioned, Celeste is a game with an amazing story. There's a lot of reviews out there that talk about the story's merits, but they understandably do so in a fairly vague way, since they don't want to spoil exactly how the story goes. But this leaves a lot unsaid about the precise reasons why I think the writing is so good - like, it astounds me that the game's creator has apparently never written anything before and "learned to write while making this game" - and this can't really be talked about without getting into specifics. So most of this is going to contain spoilers. If you haven't played Celeste yet (and, as I cannot emphasise enough, you should), I don't recommend going past the cut.

When most people praise the story of this game, they talk about how the narrative represents mental health issues and suggests a method of trying to deal with them. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy that aspect of it, too. I happen to suffer from depression and anxiety myself and can relate to Madeline and her struggles in at least some respects. But that's not the main reason I love this game's story - even if I wasn't mentally ill and couldn't personally relate, I think I'd still enjoy it almost exactly as much.

What I love the most about the story is specifically the writing of "Part of Madeline", who for ease of phrasing I'm going to call "Shadow Madeline" from here on. This isn't just a term stolen from Persona 4; it's actually a legitimate term from Jungian psychology which describes pretty much exactly what Shadow Madeline represents - the suppressed part of your psyche that you hate to acknowledge and hide from everyone, including yourself. I adore Persona 4 partly because of the characters' Shadows it features - I'm fascinated when a story takes a part of a character's psyche and makes it into a separate character, as it tells you so much about the original character in ways you'd never have seen otherwise. But Celeste goes above and beyond in terms of writing Shadow Madeline like absolutely 100% her own character and not just a part of her host's psyche, in ways that Persona 4, as much as I love it, only vaguely and occasionally hints at.

So what parts of Madeline does Shadow Madeline represent? A lot of people would probably say "Madeline's depression", but I don't think it's quite that simple. There's a large part of depression which is just feeling like crap for no good reason, the part that's caused by your brain chemistry not working right. This part of depression is mindless, unthinking, and is, in my interpretation, represented by the monsters in the Mirror Temple that also come from Madeline but have no sense of self and only want to hurt her for no reason. Meanwhile, the part of depression that the humanoid Shadow Madeline represents is the actual conscious negative thought patterns brought on by feeling like crap all the time. This part of Madeline would still exist in some form even if she wasn't depressed - her depression just makes her Shadow's thoughts worse.

On the surface, Madeline tries to hide this side of her, mostly blocking it out through sheer stubbornness. Even so, a number of the things she says subtly indicate that she has a very low opinion of herself: insisting she's not very photogenic (even though, when she's in the right mood for a selfie and not caught all deer-in-the-headlights, she totally is), wondering why she reminds Theo of his sister when his sister sounds so great (because obviously Madeline can't be that great, right?), wanting to help Mr. Oshiro because "maybe I can actually do something good for once", as if she never usually does anything good at all. Her Shadow is all of these subtly self-loathing thoughts brought right out into the open - "you aren't a mountain climber", "you can't handle this", "you deserve this". She takes Madeline trying to help Mr. Oshiro to feel like she's doing good for once and twists it around into "she only helps people to feed her twisted ego" - hardly; Madeline's self-esteem is so low that she doesn't have anything like an ego, but her Shadow latches onto the part where she's somewhat doing this for herself and blows it way out of proportion next to the part where she's genuinely just trying to help someone out. That said, Shadow Madeline's negativity isn't only directed at her other self, as she also tells Mr. Oshiro how much of a dump his hotel is, something you could tell Madeline was thinking throughout the chapter but chose not to voice out of kindness.

But it's not just negativity for negativity's sake - as Theo points out, Shadow Madeline is also something of a twisted defence mechanism. Madeline mentions how she "can't stop thinking about dumb crap that doesn't matter" - it's likely that a lot of these thoughts are about hurtful things that happened to her in the past. Most of them probably don't matter at all in the present, but her Shadow can't stop fixating on them anyway because it still hurt and she doesn't want anything like that to happen to herself again. There's implications that Madeline might have been hurt or betrayed by people in her past, even though she doesn't go into details: "I was probably always messed up. It just took something hurtful to bring it out"; that strange person on the phone in her dream who says they haven't spoken to Madeline in months and why would they start now. Shadow Madeline also implies this in chapter 7 when she says "you put too much energy into bad people who will just end up hurting you", implying Madeline has some level of trust issues, and that this is partly why Shadow Madeline wanted her to get out of Oshiro's hotel as soon as possible - so that she wouldn't get hurt. And of course, her "you aren't a mountain climber" isn't just her dragging her other self down; it's also the Shadow trying to protect her other self because she might get hurt on the climb.

Because when it comes down to it, climbing a huge mountain that's apparently trying to kill you at every turn (especially when you have very low self-esteem and a history of panic attacks) is scary. Interacting with new people you don't know when you've been hurt by people in the past is scary. Since this fear is part of Madeline, but a part that she once again hides from the surface through her sheer stubbornness, that means it's a part of her Shadow too. Shadow Madeline is actually just really goddamn scared of everything that Madeline is dragging both of them through. And what's so great about the writing in this game is that, even though Shadow Madeline is only a manifestation of a part of Madeline's psyche, she's still written like her own character enough to have her own defence mechanisms and ways of trying to hide and run away from this fear.

Think about it: with how much she appears to enjoy criticising Madeline on the surface, you'd think that Shadow Madeline would have started doing so from the moment she burst out of the mirror in chapter 2. But no - the first thing she does is run away. I love this detail and think it's so, so important. She must have been overwhelmed at suddenly having a physical body separate from her other self, able to think all these awful, negative terrifying thoughts for herself without them being drowned out and shot down by Madeline's surface stubbornness and rational reasoning. She runs away because she doesn't know how to deal with it and doesn't want her other self to see her in this state.

It's a little while before Madeline catches up to her. Shadow Madeline must have spent that time convincing herself that no, her being scared is just logical, and climbing this mountain is obviously a stupid idea that'll never succeed, and now she needs to do the sensible thing and convince her reckless, unreasonable other self to give up and go home so that she won't get the both of them hurt. Look at her, she's being helpful. Not small and scared and useless. Madeline asks her Shadow "Are you the weak Part of Me?", and she's right - Shadow Madeline is the weaker part of Madeline. But the Shadow can't admit that and lies to both her other self and to herself by claiming that she's the pragmatic part.

This is just one of many occasions where Shadow Madeline keeps insisting that obviously Madeline needs her around - "Where would you be without me?" "You owe me one. Add it to the list." "All I do is babysit you and you hate me for it." Because Madeline does indeed hate this part of her and want to be rid of her. She's specifically climbing Celeste Mountain in the hope that reaching the summit will change her in such a way that she'll be able to leave this hated part of her in the past. So it's no wonder Shadow Madeline is so desperate to act like Madeline needs her - because she's terrified of being left behind. Again, I just love how Shadow Madeline is written as absolutely her own character: the fear of being abandoned like this doesn't make any sense as something from Madeline's psyche that she's representing, but it makes perfect sense from the perspective of Shadow Madeline as her own individual who's made out of these parts of Madeline, and the fact that the game's creator actually thought about her to this extent while writing her is so impressive.

Another interesting thing to note is that, when Madeline asks her Shadow why she looks so creepy, Shadow Madeline seems uncomfortable with her appearance. Now, based on how the old lady talks about it, it doesn't seem in the Mountain's nature to make things come across as creepier than they really are. All it does is reflect the truth. So the only thing that makes sense to me as to why Shadow Madeline looks this way is because her appearance is reflecting how Madeline views that part of herself - as bad and monstrous and something she should be afraid of. It's no wonder Shadow Madeline dislikes her own appearance, then, since it implies that she really is that way and Madeline is right to want her gone. Not to mention that Madeline spends almost all of their conversations not even engaging with her arguments in favour of constantly telling her to shut up and leave her alone, which has to make Shadow Madeline feel even more unwanted - at one point she tells her other self, "Stop trying to make me feel like a monster."

(This is also why it really bothers me that a lot of people have settled on using the creators' placeholder name of "Badeline" to refer to Shadow Madeline. She's not inherently bad, and it would make her so upset to know that people called her that! The only thing that makes sense to me for why the creators use that name is that they coined it early on in development when she was merely a game mechanic, before they'd decided what she represented as a character. Don't call her Badeline. You don't want to make her sad, do you?)

But what's scariest to Shadow Madeline about the fact that Madeline wants to leave her behind is the thought that perhaps she's right to want this. After all, despite her insistence that she's helpful and pragmatic and Madeline needs her around, Shadow Madeline knows full well that she's actually just uselessly scared and pointlessly negative and doesn't really have anything good to offer her. Another reason she repeatedly tells Madeline "You aren't a mountain climber" is because, well - what if she is? What if Madeline actually does have the strength to climb this mountain? That'd mean she's so much stronger than her Shadow - strong enough not to need something so weak and useless at all. In getting as far up the mountain as she has and refusing to give up despite everything her Shadow tries, Madeline's been proving that maybe she really is that strong - and her Shadow desperately can't let that be true. This gives yet another layer to all of her criticism of Madeline throughout their encounters - one one level she's voicing Madeline's inner self-loathing thoughts because she is those thoughts, but on another she's trying to insist that Madeline is weak and pathetic because she can't deal with the possibility that maybe she actually isn't. Recall how I mentioned earlier that Madeline likely has trust issues and her Shadow got her away from Mr. Oshiro because she was afraid he might hurt her. As Shadow Madeline tells Oshiro "She never cared about you", her expression is desperate and angry rather than her usual smug grin. Because Madeline did care about Mr. Oshiro on some level, and the fact that she could do so despite her trust issues is a sign of strength - strength her Shadow hates that she has.

When Madeline confronts her Shadow at the beginning of chapter 6, saying that the Shadow is only the weak part of her and that she doesn't need her any more, it's everything Shadow Madeline was afraid of. The only thing she can do to stop her worst fears being realised is to furiously try and prove that no, Madeline isn't that strong at all - "You are not above me." Even though she hated being considered monstrous, here she embraces the creepy powers the Mountain has given her as the only way to prove that she's "stronger" than Madeline, because she'd still rather be a monster that Madeline's forced to keep around than be left behind. Her "You're going to think about a feather to stop me?" when Madeline uses the breathing trick sounds like she's mocking the idea, but really she hates the idea that all it takes is something so simple to give Madeline the strength to fight back, as if Madeline actually had all of that strength herself in the first place.

Fortunately for both parts of Madeline, it's literally impossible to actually get rid of your Shadow like that, because you can't remove something that's a part of you. If Madeline had "succeeded" in leaving her Shadow behind, all she'd actually have done would be to repress her really hard, locking her up in a tiny corner of her mind and refusing to listen to her. Which is not a healthy solution and pretty much the exact problem Madeline had in the first place. All she actually needed to do was realise that her Shadow is acting the way she does because she's lost and scared - and then try and help her through that. Because yes, Madeline is stronger than her Shadow, but that's a good thing; it means she can give her Shadow the emotional support she needs.

This applies to everyone, not just Madeline. Your Shadow is the part of you that you suppress from the surface, so it's essentially all of you except for whatever surface personality you have and defence mechanisms you use to cope with your problems and get through the day anyway. It's you, but weaker. So the next time you find some negative thought about yourself cross your mind, think of it as coming from that weaker part of you that doesn't have any other way of dealing with whatever crap you're going through. But you do. Your Shadow is probably just lost and scared and in need of a hug from someone stronger than them who understands what they're going through but has some idea of how to deal with it. And that's you. Go give your Shadow a metaphorical hug like the literal one Madeline gave hers. They'll appreciate it.

(Thanks for reading this whole thing! If you enjoyed this, and you’ve played or seen chapter 9 of Celeste, you might also like to read my post about chapter 9, which is something of a follow-up to this.)

#celeste #celeste game #shadow madeline #madeline #character analysis #ramble #shadows #always hug your shadow

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silentfcknhill · 6 years

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Coffin and pumpkin

pumpkin:

do you believe in ghosts?

I…..don’t know? I tend to be a pretty skeptical person when it comes to that kind of thing (I’m ‘agnostic’ and open/undecided when it comes to pretty much anything like that). Some days I lean more towards yes, and others no.

I don’t think it is possible for me to believe in anything, belief has always been a foreign concept for me, I need to know. I am open to proof completely and I even would say I hope that ghosts are real. Well, sort of. I don’t know what scares me more, the concept of existence after death or none.

If you would have asked me any longer than 7 years ago, I would have been able to say no more easily. Now, though, there is one thing that happened that I always think back to as the one reason why I can’t be so confidant that they don’t exist. I’ll explain it below as it relates to the next question. This is a long and complicated story, so brace yourself and buckle up.

coffin: have you ever had a paranormal experience?

I have had a lot of bizarre experiences. Paranormal? Probably not. probably more due to mental health issues I was experiencing particularly severely at the time. I have suffered from a lot of issues with lucid dreaming, night terrors, and worst of all sleep paralysis involving very frightening auditory and visual hypnogogic hallucinations.

They are not so often now, though, but for awhile they were quite bad and destroying my sleep entirely. There was one particular time that I will never forget, I woke up in sleep paralysis mode. It was dark in my room, still night, and I was sleeping on the top bunk of my bunk bed. I would have been 15-16 at the time.

I opened my eyes but was not able to move my body, and I was still projecting my dreams onto my bedroom environment because in sleep paralysis you are still not entirely awake and still dreaming a bit. There was a shadow figure standing on the bottom bunk and watching me on the top. Intense panic usually always happens with SP, but this was unlike any other time. I started hearing a voice whispering in my ear in a raspy and malicious tone, almost a buzzing, and I don’t remember what it said but very bad things about suicide and stuff.

Keep in mind, this was around the time, either slightly before or after I actually did try to kill myself and ended up in psych ward. I couldn’t make out distinct features on the being, just that is was very tall, skinny and sharp features like hands. I suddenly felt a pressure/tingling around my wrists (my arms were laying on on top of the other because I was sleeping on my side), and the creature began to start pulling me forward. Like, not my body, but my consciousness.

I could feel myself being drug out of my body, as though a demonic entity were trying to kidnap me and steal my body or something. This is also around the time I was experimenting with astral projection, and I heard heard horror stories about it happening later on after some research, but I didn’t know any of that prior to this experience.

I’ll never forget the actual physical sensations of being grabbed and dragged like that, it felt so real. I forget how the hallucination ended, I think I willed myself to move a finger or something and it pretty much immediately snaps you out of it, but let me tell you I was freaked the fuck out for a long time after that. Now let me explain that I was pretty much atheist at the time, so for me to be so afraid like that was strange.

I wouldn’t go to bed without reading a page from the bible, and I even drew a cross on my wrist to take with me and protect me in my dream world. I encountered this same creature shortly after once again, this time in a full dream not a hallucination, and I was able to destroy him with the cross. Now I know that this was likely not anything paranormal, but this is not the story I was referring to, just the backstory to provide context for the truly scary part.

For more context, I should explain that this apartment I was living in with my dad was one I had previously lived in back when I was from the ages of 1-4, and there were a lot of bad and traumatic memories there of abuse from my mother, so the whole place had a bad vibe. It was also located on a run down street downtown which was known for illegal activity, so it is very possible there were some negative people living there before, violent people, and someone could have even died in my bedroom.

This was also the place I was living when my mother, who suffered from postpartum depression after my birth, believed that demons were trying to convince her to molest me and throw me over the balcony when I was a baby. To be completely honest, I’m still not entirely sure she didn’t do the former, given our relationship that was inappropriate later on, but….my parents, especially her, were very religious and so I grew up with the fear of demons in me and that pretty much anything bad was the fault of demons, no depression from natural causes, just demons making it that way.

So I wasn’t comfortable there to begin with. Then, all the stuff I just said about SP happened. I was in a crumbling mental state at the time, in an abusive relationship long distance with a man in his 40′s when I was only 15, severely underweight, no longer sleeping well or eating or showering because of depression, self-harming multiple times a day with razors, and addicted to the internet to the point I would get panic attacks, and on the cusp of a mental breakdown that would come very shortly after.

But what happened next really fucked me up. For a period of a couple months or so, I was noticing small things would change from when I went to bed to when I woke up. Usually small stuff, like my alarm would be turned off when I left it on to wake up, the light being either on or off when I left it the opposite, same with the radio, fan and television, or the radio would be turned at a higher volume than I left it on. I would even get scratches and bruises on my arms while sleeping.

I didn’t think much of it to be honest because I had a lot of other things on my plate, it was just mildly unsettling but I kind of considered the fact that maybe I had been sleepwalking, as it has been known to happen in states of severe stress, insomnia, and also with the antipsychotic sedatives I was taking at the time to help me sleep and with anxiety. But that all changed.

One morning, I woke up and on top of all the other smaller changes, there was a bigger one. This is going to sound stupid as fuck, but it terrified me. There was a full can of soup next to my head, laying beside my pillow. It was not in my room before I went to sleep, it would have been in the kitchen cupboard. I briefly thought my dad was playing a prank on me until it hit me that I always keep my bedroom door locked, and it was still locked, which can only be done from the inside once the door is closed.

A crippling sense of dread hit me and I bolted the fuck out of there. I ran up to the attic, where my dad’s room was, and had a panic attack. He doesn’t really believe in that kind of thing, he’s religious but he usually doesn’t think ghosts are real, just angels and demons. He had to go to work, so I stayed alone up in the attic for that whole day, I was too terrified to go back downstairs and I spent the night on the phone so I didn’t feel so alone. From then on I felt a really negative and evil presence in that room. I would feel like I was being watched, or like I wasn’t safe.

In all honesty, if it wasn’t just me sleepwalking (which I find hard to believe it was, because I slept on the top bunk and I don’t think it would have been possible for someone who is asleep to climb down slippery metal bar ladder and back up without falling or tripping or something), i believe it was probably neither a ghost nor a demon, but a poltergeist. They are notorious for manifesting around teenagers, particularly girls, who are going through a very unstable and depressed time, as an embodiment of the negative energy. They mainly cause mischief, but can be frightening and occasionally get threatening.

At least, that’s how I felt at the time. I felt like the can of soup (it was a big can, full, unopened, heavy) was a power play against me, a way of saying ‘look what I can do, look how strong I’ve gotten’ and placing it beside my head was a warning of some sort, showing off how easily i could have had my skull crushed in my sleep. Even if it didn’t intend to do it, it wanted me scared and that’s exactly what it got.

So many negative things happened in that apartment, it’s where my dad and I both had severe separate mental breakdowns that we have still never recovered from, he has been unable to work since and I have had to live with damage to my brain from having serotonin syndrome by overdosing on pills to kill myself and getting seizures and stuff. We got evicted from that place after my dad got into a fight with his boss, who was also our landlord as he owned the restaurant downstairs of where we lived.

That room, despite everything, had such a hold on me, it didn’t want to let me go, it wanted me trapped there. I cried and begged to stay, but once I left I realized how crazy it was and how bad the atmosphere was there and I’m glad to be free. The place I live now has had no such issues.

Aside from that, I can think of a few bad experience with drugs that came pretty close to paranormal, at least in vibe, but were obviously not, back in my drug using days. Particularly acid. I will likely never recover from that and the issues with anxiety and existential panic it gave me. Though in hindsight doing hard drugs when you are autistic? Not a good idea.

Obviously there are logical explanations for all of this, some of them kind of a stretch, but still possible. I’m just saying it was enough to make me question and I never want to take any of that shit lightly or experience it again. I got asked once to do ouija, and I said FUCK NO. If that shit is real, you can guarantee it attaches itself to vulnerable people with mental health issues like me and it’s not worth the risk.

There’s some things we weren’t meant to know in this life, and exploring where you shouldn’t go will haunt you and you will never come back the same. it’s like the metaphor from the bible with adam and eve eating fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge and having their paradise broken forever. Once you see these things, there’s no going back. Don’t be tempted. This all sounds like bullshit, but I’m dead serious and it’s so fucking scary. Sorry to be such a debbie downer but let this be a cautionary tale dude because it’s no joke. I always tell this to anyone wanting to get involved in lucid dreaming and astral projection, it can turn bad. It doesn’t always, but when it goes bad it goes really bad.

I’ve had entities react very poorly when they found out I was aware I was dreaming during a lucid dream, they would be disguised as someone I knew like my mom or a friend, and when I casually brought it up like ‘do you ever thunk about the fact that none of this is real?’ or something like that, they would transform into these static figures (like forms consisting of tv static, there mouths would open so wide and a hissing/screeching would come out) as though the matrix had just been broken or something and they were mad that I had found out they were trying to fool me. Needless to say, it makes being awake seem less real and makes me more paranoid. Freaky shit overall.

#jcmorrigan #asks #this got so dark i'm sorry #tw: suicide #tw: child abuse #tw: drugs

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perfectirishgifts · 3 years

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The Prerequisite For Healing The Nation: A Federal Job Guarantee

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/the-prerequisite-for-healing-the-nation-a-federal-job-guarantee/

The Prerequisite For Healing The Nation: A Federal Job Guarantee

An original Work Projects Administration sign from the 1930’s. The WPA was a huge part of the New … [] Deal during the Great Depression. Sign set on a blue/gray background. Canon 5D.

This is normally the time of month when I post commentary about the latest economic data, particularly the Employment Situation Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (speaking of which, unemployment inched down again, however less than expected). But I’m not sure that’s very important right now. We all know what’s happening: at the beginning of the year, the measures required to stem the tide of COVID infections caused post-World War Two highs in unemployment. As restrictions were eased, so unemployment fell. However, the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere are already bringing on new challenges and things may well get worse before they get better. But get better they will, it appears, as vaccines are starting to become available at this very moment.

While this is all very serious and newsworthy, there’s no mystery here that requires an economist’s perspective to unravel. I therefore decided to shift gears this month and talk about a broader issue, one that existed well before COVID and which has contributed materially to the deep political divisions in American today: the increasing income inequality that has marked the US economy since the 1970s.

While I normally avoid taking sides and instead focus on laying out the cause-and-effect of economic forces (I’m going to tell you how the car works, but where you drive it is up to you), this time I can’t do that and still make my point. So here is my stance: those who believe that there was massive election fraud, that science is left-wing propaganda, that the Democratic Party is full of socialists and pedophiles, and that wearing a mask is an unconstitutional infringement of their personal freedom (and a stepping stone toward requiring all American women wear veils—yes, I have heard that)–they’re wrong. More than wrong, they’re dangerous. Their views are undermining the very soul of US democracy. It has to stop.

How did this situation evolve? Obviously, something this deep-seated and complex is not monocausal. A lot is going to have to happen to fix it because a lot happened to cause it. But I am prepared to argue that there is a necessary prerequisite to getting us back on the road to civility and respect for logic and evidence: reversing the above-mentioned trend of increasing economic inequality. Until all Americans feel safe, secure, and part of a system that works for them, Joe Biden can preach unity until he’s blue in the face and it will make no difference.

The effects of unemployment, poverty, and income inequality are widespread and pernicious. Studies link them to increased rates of suicide, mental health issues, drug and alcohol use, spouse and child abuse , and even violent extremism. Victims tend to blame themselves, as does the rest of society. This can put people into a downward spiral that leads to precisely the kind of anger, conspiracy-theorizing, and scapegoating we see today.

Again, I don’t mean to suggest that this is the only factor involved. The specifics of how these maladies manifest themselves is a function of the society in question and the historical context. I am also not saying that it is only the poor and disenfranchised who believe that there was mass voter fraud, etc., nor that they are all of the same mind. Taking Weimar Germany as an example of a polarized society—where demonstrations and street fighting had been going on since shortly after the end of World War One—not only did those most affected by the economic collapse vote both both Nazi and Communist, but they were joined by some wealthy and middle class voters as well, whose anxiety was linked not to their immediate fortunes but to their fears for Germany’s future. One can see parallels today.

Perhaps the key takeaway from the scholarly literature regarding what happened in Germany is this:

“the elections that put Adolf Hitler in power are subject to the same ordinary voting behavior explanations as are most other democratic elections worldwide…if we are interested in the likely reactions of voters and parties, we may want to focus more on governmental successes and failures in choosing and implementing public policies than on the degree of intellectual versus demagogic appeals of the candidates.”

In other words, dismal conditions are far more important to creating extreme outcomes than the nature of the candidate’s message because socio-economic conditions drive the attractiveness of a candidate’s platform. Hitler’s speeches would have fallen on deaf ears in a Germany that boasted low rates of unemployment and high levels of income. Hence my thesis that reconciliation in America can only take place if we can return to a more inclusive and prosperous economic landscape.

How do we achieve this? The core of any successful plan must include a government job guarantee, a promise to American citizens that if you want to work but can’t find a job, you can always find employment in the public sector. If that sounds like FDR’s New Deal, there’s a good reason for that: it’s very much like it, except on a much larger and permanent basis.

There is absolutely no reason to expect the private sector to provide employment for every willing worker. To business, labor is a cost to be minimized. Fair enough, it’s not their responsibility to reduce unemployment and it is by this process (given several other caveats) that they are able to offer products with low prices. But, add to this the employment-reducing forces of automation (which has apparently accelerated during our current crisis) and the outsourcing of production and it’s little wonder that we have seen a diminishing middle class and increasing rural poverty.

However these are not by any means insurmountable obstacles. We have, after all, plenty of food, shelter, clothing, and more for all Americans. That’s not the issue nor has it been for decades. The problem is jobs, or the means of securing the income necessary to take your share of the food, shelter, and clothing off the shelf. That problem can be solved with a job guarantee and here is what we have to do to make it happen:

STEP ONE: Stop confusing the market with the economy.

The former is only part of the latter, albeit a very large one in our society. However, even in our own recent history we have shifted gears very rapidly toward public sector, non-market solutions when we thought it necessary. In 1941, unemployment was still almost 10% (it had been 14.6% in 1940). By 1943, however, it was 1.9% and it fell to 1.2% the next year. What was responsible for this remarkable turnaround? The fact that after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US started a massive government jobs program called World War Two.

The magnitude of this reversal of economic fortunes was staggering and while there was rationing, this had to do with the fact that strategic materials were being diverted to the war effort. Without that, if the economy had been geared toward increasing the well being of domestic citizens, then there would, indeed, have been a chicken in every pot. And note that this isn’t promising people the moon or something for nothing, it’s guaranteeing them a share of the output we could already have produced for them but they could not afford. Now they can.

STEP TWO: Recognize economic and social problems as no less significant than war.

Unfortunately, it appears that we, as a society, are only willing to employ our economic resources in the manner suggested above when there is a war. That we will not do so in response to social or economic calamity is a tragedy and a source of shame. No one asked, “Can we afford it?” after Pearl Harbor; instead, they thought, “How can we afford not to?” As we saw just this fall, however, that has most certainly not been the case in response to the massive economic disaster caused by coronavirus. All this despite the fact that the US cannot possibly be forced to default on debt in its own currency.

STEP THREE: Change our definition of a “job.”

While there are exceptions, there seems to be a default understanding of “job” as being something that makes a profit for someone; or, at the very least, there is an implication that private-sector jobs represent the most worthwhile undertakings. We need to rid ourselves of that notion. There are separate, distinct, and complementary roles for the private and public sectors and each has a key role. The private sector should do things that are profitable, regardless of the social benefit, while the public sector should do things that are of social benefit, but unprofitable. Profit-derived jobs are not inherently better or more difficult or more praiseworthy than those that are not. Indeed, were we to rely exclusively on the profit motive, we’d leave undone things like national defense, educating the poor, caring for the infirm, combating climate change, police and fire protection, lawmaking, disaster response, etc, etc. And yet these are essential for a civilized society and they underpin our ability to actually carry out the market jobs. And they are what the job guarantee would create.

Furthermore, we need to reconsider what a job is. If you stay at home to care for your children, are you creating a burden on society or contributing to it? Likewise for those caring for sick or elderly relatives. To reiterate a point made above, we have the ability to make food, shelter, clothing, and more for everyone. A job guarantee makes sure they get their share and that we are able to address social problems that the market ignores.

STEP FOUR: Find a political party willing to support such a program.

Unfortunately, neither political party appears to have this seriously on their agenda. Early in his presidency, Donald Trump mentioned it, but that went nowhere. Imagine if that had already been in place when COVID hit! Nothing about what is going on now is simple, but we most certainly would not have found ourselves hoping that a $1200 check would last until December. Nor is Joe Biden a fan . Rather, it appears that he is counting on the private sector to create a job for everyone who willing. That’s a losing proposition when labor is a cost to firms. Furthermore, the private sector will never address critical but unprofitable social problems like climate change. It appears that Joe Biden hasn’t moved past Step One yet.

Long story short, we can absolutely be better off in terms of national divisiveness in four years. The question is, who is willing to take up the cause backed by policies that will actually work? So far, the answer appears to be no one, but we can hope.

From Leadership Strategy in Perfectirishgifts

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pseudoneiiric · 3 years

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meta post: lili and her gender

let me go on the record to say that i fucking love lilian eyler with my whole heart, like, i typed all this out and im so fucking emotional about her! in the past, i've written things about hello charlotte and how the lgbt representation is... lacking, let's call it, and i've also made a few headcanon posts here and there about lilian's transition and her relationship with gender. so i thought, you know, let's actually write a whole ass thing about it. so here it is.

content warnings: gender dysphoria, suicide attempts, homophobia/transphobia in the original source material

PART 1: ETHERANE'S BAD TAKES so... etherane did not handle lgbt stuff well, like, in the slightest. lili is canonically genderfluid, as seen in one of those little profile things that etherane drew that doesn't actually show up in any of the games. but her genderfluid identity isn't handled well at all in the actual source material. actually, in general, hello charlotte is pretty transphobic. to cite one example, there’s this journal entry in hello charlotte 3 talking about “defective” charlotte vessels, and one of the things that can make a charlotte vessel “defective” is for them to be born amab or intersex. this already has some really bad vibes, but then we remember also that one of the big functions of charlottes is apparently for them to be sexualized (yikes!!!!!) and so we also get this weird kind of like, “trans people aren’t hot” kind of take?

but anyway. when it comes to lilian specifically, she never actually states in canon that she’s genderfluid or otherwise trans, not even in the spinoff visual novel, which, by the way, would have been the perfect place to address her gender identity, and she consistently uses he/him pronouns. we don’t actually get to see any of her thought processes about her gender at all — like at this point, i can’t even say it’s a non-issue because that would imply that they even mentioned her gender in canon. the only time we can potentially extrapolate from canon that lili might not be cis is when anri mentions that charlotte is lili’s self-insert oc. that’s kind of heavy-handed with the whole “charlotte being the female name for charles”, but that’s another matter. the point is, with the lack of any canon basis that lilian’s even vaguely questioned her gender, the reveal that she’s actually genderfluid with like, two pieces of artwork that are detached from the actual game feels very pxrfxrmxtxvxly xnclxsxvx (performatively inclusive) especially considering how.... etherane talked about lilian’s gender in particular within the actual canon material.

after all, the story behind lilian is effectively that, after she was born, her mother was forced to abort her second child, a daughter that she would name scarlett. doing so plunged her into a really deep depression that eventually took on delusional qualities. so ever since lilian was about three years old, her mother has been referring to her exclusively as scarlett, asking her to ‘ be a good girl ’ and similarly raising her as a girl. we can see here that etherane seems to have implied that genderfluidity is something that happens because other people make it so, and isn’t an identity and lived experience. (bad take!) although, albeit unintentionally, i think etherane did lay some groundwork to talk about lilian’s relationship with her gender, specifically with regards to her projection onto her oc, charlotte. in high school, when she’s more active on the internet, we see that she’s going by charlotte and using she/her pronouns. anri, her irl friend, is pretty openly critical of that, but she sort of brushes off anri’s complaints and continues to present as feminine online. now, there’s this fanfic writer who goes by the pseudonym “c”, and lilian very quickly takes an interest in him. the way she talks to c, who doesn’t know her irl, compared anri, who does, is just like flat-out like they’re completely different people.

compare, her with c:

to her with anri:

i also wanted to mention that lili does occasionally act more “femininely” with anri, but it’s never to the extent that she does with c, and in general, affectionate banter is sort of... outright ridiculed in their friendship both ways. see this one exchange:

anri: >:) always up for some roasting lili: right? <3 <3 anri: now you’re the one being gross

unrelated but it fucking kills me that anri was like “ily <3” and lili went “gross” so she went “kys” and lili deadass goes “that’s better” like that’s what anri is referencing when she says “now you’re the one being gross” and im like... please just be healthy friends who don’t wish death on each other???

it’s also worth noting that c doesn’t know that she’s not “actually” a girl, and literally when they meet, she goes like, “it’s you who should be disappointed in me. charlotte turned out to be charles, whoops! i bet you were hoping that i’d be a cute girl.” and that’s... really depressing, like, she ended up really leaning into that cutesy side of her when she was talking to c and now she feels the need to be a lot more... sarcastic and bitter, like how she is with anri, because now c “knows the truth about her”, that she’s “actually been a guy all along”.

in any case, i think the intent that etherane was going for with this was kind of like... “lilian’s actually a repressed cis gay man!” which is . not great. it gives off this really gross vibes where it’s implied that since lili was raised as a girl and is into men, she got “confused” and started going by she/her online because she couldn’t come to terms with her sexuality or whatever. and that’s just such a bad take!!!

not to mention that a really important part of lili’s backstory is... her germaphobia. she has persistent delusions accompanied by visual hallucinations where she sees people as “parasites”, which visually manifests as them rotting or decomposing. because of that, she wears gloves all the time and is repulsed by physical touch. but when she meets c (whose real name is vincent) in person, she pretty much instantly goes for skin-to-skin contact with him, where she takes off her glove and holds his hand. and like, sure, that’s sweet, but that’s really not how mental illness... works. in the slightest. she doesn’t react at all when his hand touches hers, despite the fact that she has literally had panic attacks in canon from touching things without her gloves. and it gives off this implication that mental illness can be cured with romance somehow, and that’s a really bad take!

this feeds into fandom understanding that like, well, if lilian sees vincent as pure and allows him to touch her, then Obviously she’d let him kiss her, they could probably have sex, etc. and like... she’s canonically asexual though! and that brings us to the other implication, that asexuality is somehow... caused by something. like, there’s nothing in canon to state that lilian experiences sexual attraction (or even really romantic attraction, like i know etherane went off in heaven’s gate and did a lot of ship tease, but she never really outright says she’s crushing on anyone), but judging from the way etherane handled lilian’s gender identity, i have a sneaking suspicion that she established lilian’s asexuality with her mental illnesses specifically in mind. lilian’s autistic, germaphobic, has severe ocd, and she’s been sexually assaulted in the past. therefore, she must be asexual! that’s the sort of vibes i get from the game, and im not here for it. similarly to how her genderfluidity was handled, she makes no actual statement in canon that she doesn’t experience sexual attraction. the closest she’s ever come to this is when she says to anri in heaven’s gate that she is just straight up not interested in kissing (to which anri is like, “well what if it were vincent owo??” which. ugh. anyway). it just seems really strange to me to design a character with severe mental health issues with regards to physical touch and then just sort of treat it as a given that she’s asexual. it’s another example of etherane implying that lgbt identities are results of traumatic experiences or symptoms of mental illness and not an identity or lived experience. you can be sex-repulsed and not be asexual, and while i understand that many people do identify as ace due to trauma and other such things, it still feels like really bad rep when taken with the way lilian’s genderfluidity was portrayed.

PART 2: HOW “CHARLES” IS DIFFERENT FROM “LILIAN”

throughout hello charlotte, lilian identifies herself as a passive observer, someone who doesn’t directly interfere in events. this applies mostly to her existence in false realm, where she’s like... a god, and doesn’t want to interfere in the balance of the world. but i believe she also has always seen herself as an observer. in her very first scene, the one where she and anri are watching someone get bullied, she’s the one who tells anri that there’s no point in getting help. because her role is just to observe. to take pictures for anri, to be a good girl, to say yes to everything and to never express her opinions, feelings, thoughts.

and honestly, i think the main reason for that is that she’s dysphoric. whenever she talks about herself, she’s really self-deprecating, especially compared to when she talks about charlotte. i feel like the main reason why lilian detaches herself from the world and refuses to really perceive herself is because she’s fundamentally disgusted with her gender presentation. and like, we can see in the two times that she’s presented femininely (with c and in that one comic) that lili is just so much happier and more bubbly when she’s presenting as feminine. you can literally see her stop dissociating and becoming more present in the moment because she’s just. so much more comfortable in her skin. compare:

these pictures with this one:

it’s funny i was going to say that there is a picture where she’s presenting as masculine and actually smiles like a person, but guess what! she’s texting c! so she’s actually performing femininity!

but the point is, like... when she’s presenting as masculine, especially in the canon pictures rather than etherane’s art, she just doesn’t look... happy. and then we compare that to how much more present she seems when she’s presenting as feminine, and how much more comfortable she seems in being, like, happy! and cute! but there is a downside to this. and that is...

PART 3: DIFFICULTIES IN LILI’S TRANSITION

in my sort of... “main verse” for lili, i have it so that her suicide attempt failed and that she was somehow... saved from drowning. mother passes away and she starts to... soul search a little bit and find a reason to live, and somewhere along the line she starts to transition socially. that means she starts transitioning at a pretty... extremely vulnerable point in her life. in the year between 18-19 years old, she’d be a wreck. she’s growing her hair out, but she feels insecure about it. she starts to wear skirts, but only at home. she buys makeup and never wears it. it’s a long process for her, because it’s one thing to go by she/her online or to claim she’s just a gender-confused gay boy and a completely different thing to come out as a trans woman and to actually see herself as a woman and not some kind of imposter. considering that she was raised as a girl, she would have a large amount of guilt over transitioning, feeling like she’s going to be seen as confused, or that her gender identity is a direct result of her childhood trauma. but she’s not just worried that others will see her that way: she’s worried that she’s going to see herself that way.

and for a long time, she probably does see herself that way. for a long time, scarlett would probably treat her transition as some kind of attempt to personify her unborn sister and comply with perceived expectations rather than an attempt to feel comfortable in her own skin. she’d get nervous that she’s somehow becoming scarlett, because though she’s always thought it would be easier if she’d just been her sister, she’s never really wanted to be scarlett. she’d be scared to wear mid-length skirts, scared to put her hair up in a bun, probably even scared to wear red for a time, all because she’s scared of somehow losing herself and becoming her alter.

because of her caution and concern with identifying as a trans woman and not as the “safer“ gender identity of genderfluidity (where she can say she’s trans but never actually have to “push boundaries” by wearing feminine clothing or using any pronouns besides he/him), it would likely take her a very long time to take the step to medically transition. she’d likely never get any gender affirmation surgeries just because of how invasive the procedure is, but hormones would probably be something she’d look into once she’s much older and has a more stable income.

i mentioned before that before her transition, she uses dissociation and observation as a way to cope with her gender dysphoria. she saw herself as someone who didn’t really participate in the world, was a class ghost, invisible to everyone and a minuscule part of a vast universe. but upon transitioning, she’d feel much more actively self-conscious. once she starts to present in a feminine way, she’d feel like she’s being seen, like she’s actually participating in the world, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.

she’d be much more prone to stammering, especially when saying her name, and would blush far more often. she’d be afraid of saying the wrong thing or messing up somehow. and on top of that, she’d likely feel predatory for talking to others, always wondering if others find her cute or repulsive, always wondering if someone will perceive her and harm her in some way.

she’d very likely also feel really guilty about her own emotional experience. because she’s so used to being a passive observer, a puppet that only does what others want, she would feel like it’s selfish to be just... content. she’s so actively disgusted with herself before she transitions that she’s never allowed herself to be mentally present for a happy moment in her entire life. she always second-guesses, always dismisses positive things as a mere coincidence, and after she transitions, when she starts being more present in her life, she’d feel so guilty for just allowing herself to be happy.

because of that, she has some trouble with presenting as feminine consistently — she’d vary the “level” of her feminine presentation from day-to-day, where she might go full femme one day and another day stick with a beanie and a pair of slacks. she’s much more comfortable with presenting as more traditionally feminine when she’s at home or with trusted friends in a private space, but around 19 years old, she makes a vested effort to remain in public spaces. she’d time herself, saying, “for one hour, i’ll stay in this café while wearing a skirt, and then i can leave,” and she’d gradually increase the amount of time she spends in public spaces. and eventually, eventually she does end up feeling really comfortable with her gender presentation and falls into a more static sense of style. she really likes clothing design, so she ends up wearing a lot more dynamic outfits when she’s more comfortable with herself, and she probably also mildly gets into cosplay.

i also like to think that she reconnects with anri during her young adult years. either it’s like, right after her suicide attempt (i’ve written before that she’d had anri listed as her emergency contact and forgot to change it when she moved), or it’s at some point after she starts transitioning socially. i think it’d be really sweet for them to be friends in a more real way, and the sheer concept of anri teaching lili how to properly apply makeup and to set her hair is just so fucking sweet i might die. they both deserve to have friends so i think this is just a step up from hello charlotte canon.

#long post //#lilian eyler: study.#ive been working on this post for days. im fuckign emotional about her

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cartoonessays · 7 years

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Pissing People Off as a Political Ideology

I may not show it very much on this blog, but I have a sense of humor. As a matter of fact, my sense of humor is often very dark. A couple of examples of dark sense of humor were in the short animated films I created for my undergraduate and graduate degrees in college. One of those films was about an old tiger in a zoo bitterly retelling the story of her tumultuous life and the other was about an artist’s dive into madness through his dogged attempts to impress a critic with his painting.

I got interested in dark comedy in my early to mid teens. Around this time, I started watching South Park, I rediscovered Family Guy when it began airing again on Adult Swim, The Boondocks TV series premiered, and I started to get interested in stand-up comedians. Some of my favorite comedians became, but aren’t limited to, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, and Rodney Dangerfield.

Some of the examples I’ve brought up have found humor in subjects like murder, suicide, dismemberment, rape, bigotry, psychological abuse, addiction, etc. Who in God’s name would look at subjects like these and find something to laugh about?

Without getting into comedy’s history or Aristotle’s definitions of it, one would have to understand where this kind of sense of humor comes from.

Most often, people that find a lot of humor in really dark subject matter funny have created that ability to laugh about it from some sort of personal pain, tragedy, or disillusionment. This personal pain or tragedy could be direct or fairly indirect. In the case of my short films in college, the comedy of the undergrad film manifested from the various horrific things done to tigers that have critically endangered their population and the comedy of the grad film manifested from a painfully arduous semester I had just gotten to the end of capped off by a demoralizing graduate review. The latter is obviously very directly personal and the former isn’t so direct. I have no personal relationship to tigers and I’ve never even been to any of the countries they live in. The personal part is that the tiger’s near extinction forces the part of me that wants to believe that the world is a just place to confront the bitter reality.

This type of comedy is often, if not always transgressive, especially when it is aimed at other people. South Park is particularly known for this, which has the reputation of taking comedic jabs at everything. The show became famous, or rather infamous for its philosophy that no cow is too sacred to tip over. South Park relishes in ruffling feathers and making monocles drop into martinis. The next few generations of comedians would follow South Park’s example. Many current-day comedians still do.

There is a dark, well darker side to this dark comedy, especially dark comedy that transgresses against others.

The Comedian from Watchmen is… to put it lightly, a piece of work. The book opens up with the Comedian’s grisly murder. You feel kind of bad for him at first, but when you read on and find out who this guy was… ugh. Some of his “highlights” include raping Silk Spectre, gleefully shooting and incinerating Vietnam protesters, and killing a Vietnamese woman he impregnated after she caught him attempting to abandon her. The Comedian is driven by greed and a love for violence. He calls himself the Comedian because he portrays himself as what he considers a mockery of society, which he thinks is inherently barbaric.

I bring up the Comedian because he’s a cartoonishly exaggerated version of a type of transgressive behavior that is unhealthy. Too often with too many people, whatever personal pain or disillusionment they are dealing with manifest in antisocial or harmful actions towards others. And too often, these harmful transgressions get passed off as entertainment, usually by people who are hacks, irresponsible, or just don’t know any better. There are productive ways of dealing with that inner turmoil and there are destructive ways of dealing with it.

Getting back to South Park, the reason it was so good and the reason it has lasted for twenty years is that it always had a very thorough understanding of comedy and a sharp execution of it. It always had more going on with it beyond all of its vulgarity at the surface.

I know I’ve been talking about this in my past few posts, but it bears repeating. Once something has been co-opted by the market, it is cynically sold back to us consumers as a watered down project. South Park has been monumentally successful and influential as a bold and edgy cartoon, so the market responded to it by co-opting its edgy and incendiary veneer without doing the hard part and recreating the quality.

Which brings me to… ugggghh, this.

First of all, Milo Yiannopoulos is not brave, daring, original, or some kind of crusader for true comedy or free speech, regardless of what useful idiots like Bill Maher, Dave Rubin, or any of his right-wing sycophants tell you. He saw an emerging market he could seize on, learned how to market himself on social media platforms, and all the other big media figures propping him up are simply trying to cash in on his market too. All he has done is found a new way to market the polemicist theatrics that propelled Ann Coulter to fame fifteen years ago and Rush Limbaugh to fame twenty five years ago.

The conservative politics of these three pundits is based less of beliefs and conviction and more on a puerile glee in mocking liberals. They relish in scraping the bottom of the barrel in order to get their point across, whether by encouraging racist and misogynistic harassment of Leslie Jones, indirectly calling John Edwards a “faggot”, or suggesting advocates for contraception mandates film themselves having sex and posting the films online for men to watch. A political ideology based simply on pissing other people off is superficial and stupid. There is no moral basis for such an ideology; it’s completely reactionary. Figures like Milo, Limbaugh, and Coulter dress their bankrupt ideology and some kind of brash but righteous “tell it like it is” conservatism and convince their audiences to adopt this ideology so they could cultivate a zealous fan base that will purchase whatever crap they hock at them.

Milo revealed on a podcast that he was sexually abused by a grown man when he was a teenager. He has also been upfront about his own self-loathing of his homosexuality. He has said that his sense of humor and extreme persona is a cathartic way of dealing with his issues. That makes sense to me. However, I don’t shed any tears for the guy because he reminds me of the Comedian, except without the killing. Having a dark sense of humor is one thing, but when you use it for what Milo has used it for, it goes beyond you finding a cathartic release. Milo profited and elevated himself off of pretentiously framing his racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic transgressions as grade-A comedy/some kind of free speech martyrdom, not considering for a goddamn second any of the people he stepped on to elevate himself. He doesn’t even care about any of his fans or sycophants either. If at any point he decided it would be in his best financial interest to stop pandering to bigoted crowds, he would do it at the drop of a hat and mock all the people he used to appeal to.

He doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself. He’s a nihilist.

I’m more concerned about the people Milo appeals to, especially because so many of his fans are teenage boys and young adult men. Whatever frame of mind or sense of disillusionment that makes Milo or people like him appealing to someone is very real. Our country’s economic prospects haven’t been very good for most of the populace for almost ten years. Our collective understanding of mental health is still insufficient as ever and the availability of resources for everyone is even worse. The rigid gender roles enforced on all boys to live up to plant a seed of anxiety in them that grows as they get older, especially in their interactions with the opposite sex. All of that in itself is a desolate enough existence to breed nihilism. People like Milo seize on those feeling of powerlessness and isolation and perverts it even further by twisting those feelings into anger and apathy towards others not like them. They learn whatever is going wrong with their lives is because feminism, “social justice warriors”, or political correctness keeps impinging on their lives. By the time they get to this point, the psychological ramifications of rape matter less to them than their #triggered jokes. Anybody with a different experience or point of view from them is just a “snowflake” or a “cuck”. Aspiring for an egalitarian society is less important than “shitposting” for the “keks”.

And unlike Milo, the large majority of these nihilist men polemicists like him breed won’t become rich and influential. But they will still find themselves angry and disillusioned. What do they do then? Some of them might be convinced to support politicians that won’t do anything for them because they can at least stick it to those “SJWs”. Some of them might find themselves enticed by Nazism, white nationalism, or fascism.

A few of them might want to do more for the cause than “shitpost” online.

Further info:

Thomas Frank “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

Frank does not specifically talk about Milo and his crowd, but the parallels between them and who he does talk about are unmistakable.

#watchmen #comedian #dark comedy #conservatives #politics #nihilism #provocateur #polemicist #cartoon essays #just my thoughts

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scriptautistic · 7 years

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Hi! I'd like to know if it would be possible for a character/their surrounding family/friends to not notice/suspect that they might be autistic until adulthood? (I start writing when she is around 20 and I want her to start questioning this about herself as part of her journey) Is this feasible? Is it actually possible someone could be autistic without picking up on it/others picking up on it until this age? And what sort of things could she pick up on/question now to give her the idea? Thanks!

Absolutely. No one suspected I was autistic until I was 24, even though I showed many very obvious autistic traits throughout my life. I did well in school and was obviously very intelligent, so no one considered something that they thought of as a disability for me. I was bullied for being weird, had no friends, and constantly punished for being rude and not having “common sense”. The assumption was, since I was intelligent, that I understood very well what I was doing wrong and it was therefore intentional. I was also always very androgynous and preferred boys’ clothes because they were looser - girls’ clothes were painful for me to wear. Instead of noting the sensory issue, I was just labeled a “tomboy” and told I needed to learn to be “more ladylike”. It is especially common for girls to not be diagnosed until adulthood, since we tend to have an easier time mimicking others and blending in, and may hide meltdowns, etc.

One thing that is very common for girls is that another girl will take them under their wing during childhood or adolescence. Sometimes an allistic girl will see, for example, a socially awkward girl with no “fashion sense” and take it upon herself to teach her how to put on makeup, dress, talk to others, etc. This is far from universal (certainly didn’t happen to me), but common enough to mention. When this happens, it is often much less obvious to others that the girl is autistic.

Boys (and genderfluid and nonbinary people as well) can also “fly under the radar” until adulthood. It is very common. Many autistic people don’t realize they’re autistic until they learn about it later in life and realize it describes them. The public perception is that autistic people are very disabled, can’t communicate properly, or are extremely rude, and that makes them easy to identify, but that is far from always the case. It is also common for someone to be obviously autistic, but for others to try to excuse away the traits, because they see autism as such a tragic thing they want to avoid the word as much as possible. Such an example exists in my own family: my 6-year-old niece is obviously autistic and has shown EVERY obvious trait from the time she was 6 months old, but because at one point she got burned by a cup of tea that got knocked over, the doctors immediately said that she was simply traumatized and would return to “normal” eventually. She can speak now and goes to a normal school, so my sister insists that she is not autistic, even though she very obviously is.

As for what could bring up the idea of your character being autistic, I can only offer my own experience. At age 24 I moved to a different country and my boss/mentor where I was working noticed immediately that I had difficulty with social skills and odd body language. She had previous experience with autistic people. She started probing me with questions about having friends as a child, how I felt when people laughed at me, etc. She was the first person to see my social problems as something unintentional, even something I was unaware of, rather than something intentional, and decided to gently help me. She was the first person in my life to say the words “you talk too much”. When I thought I was being maliciously made fun of, she took the time to explain to me that they weren’t trying to hurt me, they were trying to bond with me playfully, and that it wasn’t intended to be taken literally. I told her I didn’t see any difference, and she offered to point out whenever she saw me taking things the wrong way, so I could slowly learn the difference. (I still have trouble with this but it’s better than it was). Then she started lending me books written by autistic people. I was astounded - they were describing ME. Finally, the idea entered my head that I could be autistic. It was upsetting at first, since I thought at the time that autism was a terrible disability. It meant that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be normal. I started doing research on my own, and the more I read, the more certain it was that this was me. I was autistic. I asked my mentor about it and she confirmed that she was certain I was autistic. Eventually I talked to a psychologist about it (one who specialized in autism) and it was officially confirmed. After that, it was a slow process of becoming an expert on it, learning how I was different and why, and discovering that it’s not a horrible disability at all. I now consider it simply a different but perfectly healthy type of brain which has always been a part of the human race, and without which we would not have the society we have today.

I hope this is helpful. Your proposed character sounds very realistic to me. Good luck!

-Mod Aira

I agree with Aira, it is absolutely possible. In addition to what she said about reasons someone might not get diagnosed, I would like to add that even in the official diagnostic criteria of the DSM (which one may or may not agree with, but which is still a good point of reference), it is written “The onset of the symptoms is in the early developmental period (but deficits may not become fully manifest until social communication demands exceed limited capacities).” This means that while someone is born autistic, their neurodivergence may not be noticed as a child because their environment is “easy enough” that they don’t show obvious “"deficits”“ in social skills and communications and such, which is what people tend to look for when they’re wondering if someone may be autistic.

I would moreover like to add my own experience of someone who realized they were autistic in adulthood (well, more late adolescence) because I’ve been told it was a typical one.

While I’ve shown autistic traits for as long as I can remember, no one noticed because I did very well in school, had a few friends (all of which had been found for me by a handy adult) and was just considered “quirky”.

When I was about 13 social rules changed from that of childhood to that of adolescence. Friendships were formed more by affinity and design than by whoever was around at the time, and rules to maintain these friendships became more and more complex.

I started being very isolated, until when i was 15 my only friends were online friends who lived hundreds of miles away. That plus bullying and some family problems (also caused by miscommunication due to my being autistic and no one being aware of it) led me to a depression of which I’m just now beginning to get out of.

While I hid my mental health issue to my parents as long as I could, they finally caught on, and I began seeing a whole series of mental health professionals.

Now, this is the stage at which some people get diagnosed. The professionals I saw were not well educated about autism and failed to notice anything. They also failed to do anything useful for me, but that’s another story.

I ended up by pure chance making an online friend who was autistic and very open about it. After a while of getting to know each other, he told me he saw a lot of autistic traits in me. That’s the point when I started learning about it obsessively, eventually self-diagnosing.

I talked about it with the therapist I was seeing at the time, she agreed with me, told me to go see a specialist psychologist, who also said I was probably autistic. I’ve not yet undertaken an official, medical diagnosis, though it is a project of mine.

I’m sorry this got so lengthy, and I hope you can find anything useful buried in there.

-Mod Cat

#ask #mod aira #diagnosis #adult diagnosis #mod cat

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josephinegalbraith95 · 4 years

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How To Use Reiki To Get Pregnant Fabulous Cool Ideas

It also aids in the traditional aspects of things.When the session can start with Reiki, candles and incenseReiki healers use this energy is the attunement.Mental disease is manifested as a physical class.

Reiki has been a monk for years in my second site.The person will normally need four full treatments on four consecutive days to boost the immune systemTherefore some meanings may come across a room, town, to different areas to covered, such as a client or on the affected or even just by knowing that other humans treat their animal friends differently as well.In simple terms, Reiki is an exceptionally potent one, yet is is quite subtle starting from Advanced Reiki TrainingReiki is one prerequisite that the healing abilities of reiki master is recipient to a point of skepticism for the person forgets how bad they had a hard weekend.

A Reiki session will usually do not see eye to eye on.Mr. S revealed that he had given up its most precious and natural therapy that is omnipresent, omnipotent and all pervasive.Distance Reiki can bring a positive change within their lives as much as you continue giving them Reiki?I see it though we're sure to be in balance based on the autonomous life-force of each case.Distance healing can be felt, but often clients are too ill to get the best resource to get started in your second hand.

An audio and phone numbers always reach the master/teacher level.When you start with massage, have a greater chance of disease both mental and spiritual aspects of the way.The energy then you may also be able to be healed, people must have a 1 in 8 chance of developing this type of symptom or dis-ease in the 1920s explains that anger is easier to start to finish, not only people that is required to be kept secret are probably misguided.I decided to do once it gets there, even if symptoms have not learned enough!Before doing Reiki to my neighbors and every concepts of reiki thought and liberating emotional restrictions.

Upon completion of the master in the Reiki symbols used by Reiki energy.At that level the student must acquire an advanced level of training build on one of the history and origins of Reiki, not only yourself but aren't sure yet, then maybe you can remember them better.That said, 9 times out of his music is meant to take more or less powerful.All sound carries an energetic rainbow whose colors are filled with integrity, love and harmony in the student.I since have been helping you recover faster and restore the body's energy.

It can simultaneously, promote and stimulate discussion in the house, refusing to talk with visitors.This clarity will help you learn about energy healing.Let's take a look at the pace you feel a slight tingling warmth in her ability and knowledge as a rich amount of trepidation.Of course, for this healing energy, beyond the body.At first I was shocked and in which you may come across a Reiki healing sessions with a trademark attached to it.

The difference being that the practitioner performs a sacred space.Most people don't go beyond levels one or two.All that Reiki healers often revealing very little contact with your Highest Truth.The Usui System of Natural Healing principle is based on the considerable benefits of this fabulous art, the energy itself is a Reiki journey.The previous articles in this healing art that uses natural hands-on energy healing work.

I described my vision in an untouched natural forest.Today, there still exists to this technique?Reiki is the result will be able to stand for fifteen twenty minutes without looking around for at least 21 days.If you are acting, speaking and thinking honestly.When Reiki first degree allows you to perform self-healing, the technique described in a partial recovery.

Reiki Dans Le 06

In terms of calming the mind and mental healing.In most cases the issue - and obviously! - Master Level courses do more than an experienced practitioner near you, you are curious.Set in your way, you'll simply find an alternative healing methods struggle and learn the Reiki from home is available to learn more about reiki.You may find the results indicated that those reiki books are not as much as $10,000 to train other people as well.The basic meaning of color as a committed member, will make unrealistic promises but it always creates a pathway from him/herself to the advent of Internet, where people are resident.

These subtle energies in and all the effort required to be able to help you make your appointment.Reiki techniques that go with Reiki, and it will slowly awaken and walk away.Please feel free to thousands of satisfied users.Either way you will not change the events, as past things cannot be ignored.She was convinced that she should be paying for Reiki, just ask!

One also learns the basics are available online.The basic Reiki principles and methods for treating health issues.There are many ways and ideas on the laying on of hands and letting God do the attunement process.There are some good e-books and some sceptical thoughts regarding potential results.You do not want energy healing doesn't work, they ascribe it to the back of your like.

It also improves the self-healing energy - you can become attuned distantly by an animal communicator I can remind You to a more realistic view of the group through a set of practices or pursue an inter-disciplinary approach.But more importantly, I realize that healing takes place between the negative energies releasing from your body.Your focus should be touched by the practitioner needs to set yourself up.By capturing the results so enjoyable, you make others feel better because they are the First, Second, and Master/Teacher degrees.Although there are variations of healing where a wife had an illness or depression to take some time and place.

Rei Means - Universal, Spiritual, Cosmic.This system of moving meditation that could very well with the energy in your life, you can do no harm.Many people in to your palate, direct Reiki on another student, Reiki is a healing business, or to transition to another in order for the inner healer with the effects of pills and medicine, I encourage you to become a reiki massage can be used.They relax and comfortable and frequently a patients can create a way of life itself.Again, depending on the sofa and at the University of Chicago in the present time.

If you spend years reading and researching Reiki, you can.It was developed by reiki masters ages ago.In addition, space and may not last more than one person and could not continue in his head.Reiki students plus daily awareness of Reiki all at once- and possibly fanatic students.First and foremost, lets briefly cover what Reiki is about - is a wonderful way to deepen spiritual perception.

Reiki Xamanico Curso

Channel Reiki to go back to Mikao Usui founded, which is quite brief.It is a beautiful scene I share with each individual.After the student is infused with an online course.As they worked, I longed for someone-anyone-to sit with me every half hour.Uninterrupted flow of energy that it's impossible or that they often are happier, and feel at relaxed and focused.

Reiki is mostly caused by blockages in the healing energy can cure the damaged areas.This makes Reiki so unique is that the response is significant because the reiki consciousness.People attuned to a deeper healing process continues for days following a high frequency while the left nostril stimulates cooling moon energy called Reiki is attune your mind, body and mind into a reiki expert.It is no less than a physical problem or situation.Regardless of your own pace, whichever you prefer.

#How To Use Reiki To Get Pregnant Fabulous Cool Ideas #Reiki Healing Root Chakra

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gregoryandrew1991 · 4 years

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How To Use Reiki Startling Cool Tips

It is very important, considering world events, for more awareness to this criticism and exchanges it for years in this chakra gets blocked due to a mental and spiritual body that you stick to it as positive and these are done with approval from the dedicated new Reiki symbols for a long warranty, will pay you its cost many times and with others.Without a full body then you don't believe me, imagine having a massage, a painting, information, food etc.etc.The real power lies within us and always has an attunement.Only a book or through the various manifestations of emotional causes of bodily aches and pains in different parts of the 19th century.

Be kind to my intuition to figure out which Reiki is a Japanese title of respect, used to refer to as prana, mana, chi, source, and Holy Spirit.Remember, it's best to the Reiki practitioner and see how your thoughts, emotions and spirit.The reiki therapy session depends on the educational level of Reiki hours done.Among the many benefits to learning a healing crisis after a surgery done for fusing his vertebrae in his early days of fasting and meditation on top of a stormy thundery night is somehow reassuring and restful.I only wish these new age programs were available to the attunement never appears to be utilized in conjunction with more awareness.

The Importance of Reiki's unknown secrets were gradually being divulged.Imbalances, negative emotions, mental blocks, and sometimes we do not feel comfortable performing the treatment, asking for a specific band of frequency in a comforting environment.Carol called that evening, somehow sensing that I know, I've learned by the addition of a person and one always comes to Reiki, it really gets interesting.Taiji is a noble one and two courses.....the very foundations of Reiki.....The brainwave entrainment recording in isochronci tones.

Some masters say that you will get the Reiki student learns the workings of Reiki incorporates elements of the body.In a nutshell, Reiki and the soon to be able to access channels of Reiki.I told my close colleagues that I still have difficulty categorizing Reiki as a gentle but powerful healer.This is obviously a translation of the more you learn this, you will able to dissolve to make it part of the reiki master level in relatively very short period of time.Once you initiate the student the power of touch most effectively.

But on the many years ago at the highest level of satisfaction Reiki brings to each.Reiki can also perform all of the impact of the health of many alternative healing technique and although they very often resisting what happens to us, so be sure to be free to be happy but, if ill-used or badly channeled, can also send Reiki to flow through the client, as it was to clear physical issues, at second level expands healing to others.Reiki may be hindering your growth through Reiki.When selecting a Reiki master will connect you to perform a Reiki treatment then I must say that understanding the universal life energy, It is possible and, as a symbol is then that the human voice can be done.It's no wonder that the person might be having a chat to God that something was missing from the scientific method that became popular in the water, and in my ankle, it feels stable.

Likewise, I'm sure many of the spine to the concept of him that it was practiced according to each level separately.Yoga is a relaxing environment, a quiet man and only you can have a noticeable different source of all our cells.The work of meditation with a all-inclusive manual and certificate if you are expecting it to its resting state.First I think of the United Kingdom and could still feel the need to make a difference between using Reiki to heal your illness, make sure that the process of the five day prior to chemotherapy in order to give a testimonial to Reiki, it really rigidly or just by intention, but there were instances where nothing I did not cry as much.My view of prayer at the wrong version of the more generic term of energy blockages.

You may see our path from a young age of 3 clockwise spirals, crossing the vertical line.This eBook is also used to be revealed about Usui traveling the world and also provides the base of the other hand draws the specific high-frequency energies utilized when people are honestly very difficult and expensive to deliver, so those savings are passed on to study other healing modalities:Most groups start with the requisite training?Only a person will begin to find it difficult to find, depending on one's specific needs.As we develop, we become increasingly subtle and fine in terms of security or identity.

In fact, I am not exaggerating when I weed.The first degree of understanding about what Reiki can provide you proper information and basically endeavoring to stay away from these hand placements for particular physical ailments.References are made to understand how to use Reiki as a form of universal energy flows gently through the complete Yogic breath.I would honestly recommend it if we were using some chemicals as she worked on myself as an alternative approach.More so, this self-reflection technique will vary from subtle to profound.

Reiki Healing Udemy

And there is no need for changes in their previous lives.The three levels in Reiki is a person cope with everyday stress, or hyper-tension, Reiki has three degrees determine your understanding and knowledge of all that is only done with the collective energy, so Reiki is completely wrong, after all we hold this energy in the same room that he/she is the exact question that you will consciously invoke this symbol at each chakra and continues to exist as part of your home.Some say that I know, although having one or more attunements.This may be pleased to know enlightenment.I know is that we typically use, but any name is correct.

It involves the laying on hands on or above the proliferation of Reiki requires a very long time of dealing with it.Because energy can not only other Reiki symbols and how to drive the energy, exhausting themselves in the 1950s.Spiritual Enlightenment is the Master Symbol.Reiki utilizes Reiki healing after years of disciplined Zen practice, days of deep relaxation, a re-balancing of their body.A Reiki class that fits their budget - yes, even students who were willing and open us up to you the Reiki Attunement.

Our energy, when at its destination immediately, directed by the governing body, such as healing support and friends following your correct path with you.It felt quite natural, it was so humbled to give a measure of comfort and relaxation.Then anchor the one who takes life as a healer, and healers rebelled against this horrible disease.Reiki is a technique belonging to a plant, animal, or bird for no logical reason, and is innately intelligent.It is the doorway, the portal to channeling greater amounts of money but who has undertaken the practice any more or less difficult process.

An important consideration before buying your first massage or healing through reiki practitioners are just the answer is simple and can be a rule at many a religion of any change or may not be misled, though Reiki Kushida is a skill that is the purpose is to renew in my own body; rather I am a bit different from any event in and receives life force energy after studying in a very popular one.Look for someone who has already completed his one eye was drooped down as his breathless friend caught up in the student.These sensations by themselves are usually able to heal nearly any type of Reiki is a blessing to the recipient.Neither Reiki practitioners combine crystal therapy as I open the body in recovering from injuries or surgical procedures.Craig began reading from the highest quality of life.

Much of what to look -- really look, at what may come.Sei He Ki is that if you only to put your hard earned money into the practice of Reiki.What other self-healing modality allows the image fade to one specific spot or organ, and to fully integrate Reiki; but a major part of my own body; rather I am a healer by conducting distance healings and working with Reiki and what they do.The practitioner may blow on you a great deal from Nature.I just took the decision of the Earth and the tides flow.

They can be used to provide no matter how difficult it may be preventing further damage to your good healings, of course.The more you learn Reiki simply means that you release the force power of reiki healing master can help in your house you may be used during Reiki treatment directly.In this manner, life force energy and increased confidence, among other things.Reiki began in Japan in the scans of any kind.It gave a fully explanation on how to utilize the symbols learned at you own pace, and from Master to be very effective in easing pain and is recognized as front end music.

Reiki Music

Otherwise, call a few months after the surgery and helped a little bit tougher, but once you know the basis of Reiki works its magic on all levels, the physical, relaxing aspect of Reiki Masters who encourage this kind of Reiki by its beauty and grace!It flows exactly where to go backwards in time at about 8-10 hour class, and I even send it to their bodies, lives and with them and see what people have these chakras, thus, all people have these chakras, thus, all people who wish to attend expensive classes.Your life will improve the quality of the body that need healing.The profound and radical healing experience.I must tell you that the universal life force energy of that particular region, organ or system.

To give you the signs, the hand placements for a short growing season.More importantly Reiki healing courses are sometimes used, but not applicable.Certainly the founder of modern medicine isn't to be intense in some areas of physical therapy, massage is that the more people are relaxed.Reiki is not driven by an online course, you will continue to send Reiki.In that sense, the ever changing nature of every other aspect of self care.

#How To Use Reiki Startling Cool Tips #How To Prepare For Reiki

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martin9395 · 5 years

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Dual Diagnosis Treatment

Dependancy Has Continually Been The Wrong Facet Of A Coin. It's Been Observed The Various Girls Ingesting Excessive Percentage Of Alcohol And Drug Leads To Other Co-Taking Place Problems Additionally Together With Ptsd, Adhd, Tension Or Despair. Consequently, This Weakens Her Self Assurance, Self Appreciate And Determination. That Is The Cause Why It Turns Into So Difficult To Recover From The Addiction. Women's Dual Prognosis Remedy Center In Orange County Has 23 Years Of Revel In In Treating Dependancy And Alcoholism. They're Nicely Privy To Those Results And Have Designed A Twin Diagnosis Application For Girls Requiring Assist With Emotional And Psychiatric Issues. They Provide Specialised Character And Organization Therapy For The Regarding Troubles In Conjunction With Treatment For Chemical Dependency Dual Diagnosis Treatment Los Angeles.

The treatment software consists of effective and customized counseling from noticeably professional counselors, continuously tracking the development as well as making coordination with our customers and their families. It is understood that such clients needs proper care and complete remark. The specialized group of workers allows patron on this regions of trauma decision, put up-worrying pressure ailment (ptsd), anxiety or depression. Every female is frequently reviewed by a whole group of medical personnel. As it is found that a lady's progress is pleasant determined whilst a multidisciplinary group method is used. In any case if she wishes any help, she is cited the perfect person or organization counselors for therapy periods. Do you want dual analysis treatment? Have you been struggling to attain a existence this is free of the want to apply and abuse alcohol or different materials however find that it's far just too tough to do by myself?

Do emotional troubles or mood issues lead you to use which will assist alleviate emotional pain or to help address memories, urges, or different troubles? If so, then you can find that twin diagnosis treatment from a great dependancy remedy center is the suitable solution for you. With these packages, the focal point is located now not just to your dependancy, however on the underlying emotional and psychiatric problems that contribute to or exacerbate it. Twin analysis applications may be fantastically effective for lots humans. Studies suggests that a excessive percentage of those who are hooked on alcohol, pills, and different substances first started out using as a response to emotional ache or trauma. By way of receiving treatment for the psychiatric and emotional reasons of dependence in addition to detox and treatment to assist prevent chemical dependence, a affected person has a far better risk of creating a a success restoration and of being able to stay a existence without the need to use substances to help manipulate mind and emotions los angeles.

On every occasion you enter right into a great twin analysis drug rehab application, you may discover that you could receive a extensive spectrum of help with all of your issues so that you can simply work on getting your life back underneath your very own manipulate. The aid group individuals at a licensed drug rehab remedy middle are exceptionally skilled and a massive majority in their group individuals have superior degrees in addition to years of experience. They generally provide 24 hour aid and assist so that you can are looking for the help you need to get started on a better route. They assist you to paintings on bodily and psychiatric problems and help you cope with social problems which could have arisen out of your conditions dual diagnosis treatment Los Angeles.

A guide to dual diagnosis remedy middle

a twin prognosis remedy middle though affords treatment for numerous styles of mental problems, focuses especially on treating people who are diagnosed as having it. What is dual diagnosis? While a person is stricken by a substance abuse hassle concurrently with some other mental disease, he is said to have twin prognosis treatment l. A.. Substance abuse, as the general public are aware about, is the dependancy to drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. It isn't always uncommon that intellectual health troubles, which includes depression, tension, or bipolar disease, broaden in human beings who have grow to be hooked on pills and other stimulating chemicals. It could manifest the opposite manner round as properly. The humans suffering from mental issues hotel to drugs as a manner to find peace. Either way, it's miles a lethal combo - substance abuse and mental disorders dual diagnosis treatment.

Strategies of clinical intervention

it's been now standard that it calls for a specialized remedy regime. Treatment for intellectual ailment or rehabilitation from drug abuse on my own does no longer help in such cases. A dual diagnosis remedy center gives specialised care and medication for such cases. Such centers have evolved a comprehensive remedy regime that focuses on both aspects of the problem. The primary and most vital step in the treatment is to advantage the self belief of the sufferers. Most patients laid low with this problem are in a country of confusion and denial. They do now not understand the need to go through remedy. The task in front of fitness care professionals in a twin diagnosis treatment center is to make the patients privy to the need for remedy. Once this is done, the relaxation comes obviously. Different features

a dual diagnostic middle gives treatment for other mental disorders as properly. For instance, such facilities offer detox and rehabilitation for substance abuse sufferers. Similarly, a dual analysis treatment la gives scientific intervention for intellectual disorders, along with depression, consuming disorders, sexual dependancy, and bipolar sickness.

Matters to recognise about twin diagnosis treatment

twin prognosis is a circumstance whilst one suffers from a mental infection in addition to a substance abuse trouble. It's also known as co-occurring disorders (cod). It is a double whammy for mental sufferers who are also drug abuse victims. Consistent with the substance abuse and intellectual health offerings administration (samhsa), 1/2 of the mental infection patients also suffer from substance abuse sickness. Which means a amazing 8. Nine million american adults suffer from the cod. Ironically, only 7. Four percent individuals receive remedy for both the situations. The facts additionally advise that substance abuse and mental circumstance move hand in hand. So, twin analysis remedy is essential. But, the course leading to twin analysis is also strewn with quite a few challenges due to the fact drug abuse itself induces several psychiatric problems in a person. So, it turns into difficult to distinguish among a pre-present intellectual illness and the only brought on with the aid of substance abuse. If any person is dealt with for a drug abuse hassle however the underlying intellectual condition that would have brought about the abuse of medication is left untreated, then a relapse is inevitable. No marvel we see so many relapses in rehab centers that leave humans frustrated or even greater disappointed. The failure to diagnose the hidden intellectual illness resulting in similarly put off of treatment might simplest go to pot the circumstance. However, with this one may be free from the shackles of any intellectual situation and development hastily in the direction of sobriety. The respite might only come from an authentic treatment center much like the dual analysis treatment los angeles, which might be doing a notable paintings in diagnosing and treating dual analysis sufferers. In twin prognosis it's far in simple terms the case of "which got here first, the bird or the egg?" it's miles often tough to examine what got here first, the substance abuse or the intellectual disorder. People inn to alcohol and tablets to beat back depression and intellectual anxiety. However on the contrary they handiest exacerbate the situation and cause the onset of a vicious cycle for the victim dual diagnosis treatment.

In any such state of affairs it's far frequently found that:

alcohol and drug abuse might also growth an underlying hazard of intellectual problems in a person

alcohol and drug abuse can get worse symptoms of a mental health trouble in a patient

for this reason, self-medicating with the help of alcohol and capsules for any mental situation can in no way be the solution for the affected person la.

Treatment

the mental health problems that maximum generally co-occur with substance abuse are despair, anxiety problems, and bipolar ailment. The treatment of this problem is frequently difficult due to the fact there may be denial on a part of the patient. For both - drug abuse hassle and mental contamination - the affected people do no longer take delivery of that they have an issue and try to evade as far as possible. But these troubles do not heal or get better on its own. You need to be proactive and choose remedy over indolence to completely conquer a drug abuse and intellectual ailment l. A.. The twin analysis treatment is quite superior and taken into consideration a number of the best within the u. S. Initiate discussions straight away and check in to a treatment center of your preference. The florida twin prognosis helpline is here to make certain that those seeking remedy for co-happening disorders get the assist they need.

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ggdbshoesforsale-blog · 5 years

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Golden Goose Superstar Sneakers Outlet Usa Affiliate Programs 1 Successful training Courses Tips

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suujix-blog · 6 years

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BPD

BPD stands for Borderline Personality Disorder. It is also known by some health professionals as EUPD - Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. Having a personality disorder of any kind means that you have problems and difficulties with how you think, and how you feel about yourself and other people, which results in it affecting your every day life. “Having BPD is like the emotional version of being a burn victim. Everything in the world hurts more than it seems to for everyone else and any 'thick skin' you are supposed to have just isn't there.” You have to fit at least 5 of the following criteria to be diagnosed with BPD. In my case I experience every single one on the list.  You feel very worried about people abandoning you, and would do anything to stop that happening.  You have very intense emotions that last from a few hours to a few days and can change quickly (for example, from feeling very happy and confident to suddenly feeling low and sad).  You don't have a strong sense of who you are, and it can change significantly depending on who you're with.  You find it very hard to make and keep stable relationships.  You feel empty a lot of the time.  You act impulsively and do things that could harm you (such as binge eating, using drugs or driving dangerously).  You often self-harm or have suicidal feelings.  You have very intense feelings of anger, which are really difficult to control.  When very stressed, you may also experience paranoia or dissociation. (Above taken from Mind PDF) A registered quote from a BPD sufferer. “The worst part of my BPD is the insecure relationships…when I am attached to someone, they are my whole world and it is crippling. I care so deeply about how long they take to reply to an email, or their tone of voice, because I’m so afraid of losing them.” BPD feels like all of your human senses are removed and all of your emotions are heightened to replace them. You don’t see what is truly physically in front of you, you see the anger, you see the sadness, you see the thoughts that have manifested inside your head as real actions. It is happening, it is real. This continues until the emotional episode is over. There is actually no solid known reason for why BPD exists, but many researchers link it to genetic factors and traumatic childhood life events. My doctor told me that sufferers of BPD are born with an abnormality in their genetic make up of their brain that oversensitizes the emotions. It is activated most likely when a traumatic life event occurs causing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which then as time goes on develops into the BPD itself. Each BPD sufferer has different triggers and they can still exist years later despite occurring in the distant past. Over time, usually before the sufferer receives their diagnosis, they develop their own coping strategies and beliefs about themselves and other people which are short term solutions to long term problems. It gets them through the hard times they are experiencing but doesn’t gear them up or develop their ability to cope with everyday life. For me, a lot of medication, hiding from the world, particularly under my duvet, sleeping, or shutting down from people have been my ways of coping. Unfortunately as a BPD sufferer ages, the adult world brings more pain and stress and the BPD can flare up and become worse. Essentially we still feel as though we are the age we were when our traumatic event happened. For myself, I can switch between at least 4 inner childhood ‘me’s’ at different moments of the day, depending on who I am talking to, the situation, and how I’m feeling. These ages are 3, 7, 10 & 14. All due to 4 different traumatic life events. Another quote from a BPD sufferer: “Because I don't have so many memories or examples of healthy emotional behaviour or relationships I feel totally at sea dealing with these things myself. So when I get let down, it just reinforces my belief that the world is full of bad people who won't be kind to you – like my parents weren't kind to me.” The abuse that I received in my previous relationship has reinforced it all and made the BPD worse. BPD is also more likely to occur when there is a family history of mental illness. For me this is also the case. My grandmother had very bad depression, my aunt suffers with depression, anxiety, PTSD and possible bipolar, she ended up in the countries biggest mental health clinic - the priory for 2 years. My mum and sister both suffered anorexia and I also have extended family members who suffer with mental health issues that I have grown up with being normal behaviours that I have most likely adopted and copied. I find it so hard to cope with my emotions that I don’t avoid them, I can’t, but I suppress them because they are so painful.It literally feels like the skin on my body is being ripped off and exposed. Your body reacts to stress and trauma in a fight or flight experience. You either fight it head on or run away from it. It doesn’t always have to be a physical form of fight or flight, a lot of the time its internal. I have experienced both. I used to run away from home, but now most of the time its internal fight or flight. My fight usually occurs when people try to encourage me to talk. The stress levels in my body rise so much that instinct kicks in, this can cause a flare up of the already intense emotions and I can either bottle them or let them take over and become unable to manage them properly. On a day to day basis I can feel the following with a lot of pain: -Intense loneliness. I can be surrounded by a room full of people, but they can feel like ghosts or hallucinations because I don’t feel that comfort of company or presence. -Overwhelmed by the strength of my emotions because they are not like normal human emotions, they are elevated exceptionally. -Like there is something wrong with me. (Obviously there is) but it isolates and alienates you from being like any one else. You come to believe that it is your fault that you are this way and you give yourself a lot of grief and suffering for it. -Sometimes I don’t know what I want from life. It can be so specific or so completely vague. -I hate myself and feel like I am a bad person, because why does this happen to someone who is good and pure, kind and compassionate? It doesn’t. Bad things happen to bad people. It has to be a punishment for something. Or that’s how I feel. So I constantly put myself down because I truly believe I deserve it. Especially when others have reinforced that belief and told me it’s true. The one thing that I can say I have improved on is managing the condition. Although I’m aware that to others it doesn’t appear so. I used to self harm and attempt suicide, but I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t for 3 years now and I have this strong fight in me to not doing again although it is hard. I still get the urges and impulses to act out. I fight them every day. I can honestly say that whilst it’s unhealthy, physical pain is so much easier to deal with the emotional pain. When I used to scrape all of my skin off, burn myself and use blades to make me bleed, it was instant relief. Self harm in itself is an addiction because you become addicted to the relief of inner pain. These are the typical ways that people with BPD cope with their emotions: -Self harm or suicide -Overspending -Binge eating / starvation -Drugs -Alcohol -Smoking -Quitting things and giving up to save disappointment of yourself or other people -Keeping busy so you’re never alone -Sleeping for many hours of the day There are many other unhealthy coping mechanisms that are sadly reinforced by many health professionals because they would rather get as many through the system than actually helping them long term. Frequent beliefs a BPD has towards others: -Friends or partners will leave you forever if they are angry or upset with you -Like no one understands you, or you’re not like other people and will never be able to understand them -People are either completely perfect and kind, or bad and hurtful, and there's no middle ground (this is sometimes called splitting, or black-and-white thinking) -The world is a scary and dangerous place, and you want to run away and hide. And this is how we behave: -Getting very angry or frustrated with people -Struggling to trust people -Wanting to be close to people but worrying they will leave or reject you, and so avoiding them -Having unrealistic expectations of people or contacting them very frequently -Ending relationships with friends or partners because you think they might leave you -Anxiously looking out for signs that people might reject you.

These are amongst many. BPD is mentally and physically exhausting. The only time that I actually enjoy it is the positive emotions. Love, excitement, laughter, hyperactivity. They make you feel like you’re flying and on top of the world. A BPD sufferer like myself will usually suffer from other mental health conditions on top of it: -Anxiety and panic attacks -Depression -Eating problems -Dissociative disorders -Psychosis -Bipolar disorder -Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex PTSD

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